8486 Book(s) Related to the duke and i pdf

I am the top algorithm genius on Wall Street.
When my wife's first love got into serious trouble, she didn't hesitate to cut off my daughter's medical expenses and force me to go to jail for that scumbag.
But she didn't know that without me, her multi-billion dollar empire was just an empty shell that could explode at any moment.
She could never have known that the little girl she cursed as a "bastard" and who was driven to her death by her own hands was actually her own flesh and blood, whom she thought had died at birth.
When, a few days later, I, who should have been dying in prison, suddenly arrived with short-selling capital and a top-secret paternity test... I wonder if this high and mighty queen will still be able to laugh.

I died—not in the way you'd expect, but slowly, painfully, while he was entangled with her.

He called her his savior, the woman who sold everything to rescue his failing empire. Little did he know, it was my money, my life's work, that he squandered.

The betrayal burned hotter than any flame, and I vowed he'd pay.

Now, he's gone—a leap from the heights he once ruled, his fall as swift as his rise.

I was blown up by my business partner and fiancée working together, only to wake up in an apocalyptic game where only one person can survive. They drew S-rank abilities and mocked my "worthless" wealth card. But they forgot—in a world with physical rules, money can buy sky cities, EMP bombs, and orbital weapons. Now they're kneeling in ruins begging me to open the door, while I stand atop Avalon City at 30,000 meters, finger hovering over the detonation button.

On the eve of the apocalypse, I awakened a survival system: send me $5,000, and the sender can unlock a safehouse and awaken a life-saving ability.
The first person I told was Chloe, my girlfriend of three years. In return, she humiliated me in public and cheated on me without a shred of remorse.
That was the moment I finally gave up. The "nice guy" she had drained dry was dead for good.
One month later, the zombie horde arrived right on schedule. For old times' sake, I saved her one last time. And she repaid me by shoving me straight into the jaws of the mutated dead so she could save herself.
What she didn't know... was that I wasn't the only one who had awakened powers.

Six hundred years into our marriage, I found out my husband had a son.

I had ended my border patrol three days early, wanting to surprise Valerius.

Not far away, Valerius was channeling his exclusive magic, teaching a boy how to weave the darkness.

"Dad! I did it!" The boy looked up. His bright eyes were a near-perfect reflection of Valerius's.

My mind instantly went blank.

Dad?

A woman walked over.

She draped a small cloak over the boy's shoulders, her hand brushing against Valerius's chest with practiced familiarity. "Valeri, the wind is picking up. He'll catch a cold now that he's sweating."

Valerius naturally wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "My fault."

The image of them huddled together like a picture-perfect family was an ice-tipped needle driven straight into my eyes.

The sharp sting made my breath hitch in my throat.

The man who had sworn before the Senate to love me for all eternity—the man bound to me by a Soul Blood Pact—had already betrayed me!

A sudden, agonizing cramp seized my lower abdomen.

It was an old wound from six centuries ago.

When the Sunfire Curse nearly reduced Valerius to ashes, I had offered my high-born pure blood and my womb as a sacrifice to forcibly block the hex for him.

The price was permanent infertility, along with an excruciating backlash of pain I had to endure every single month.

Back then, Valerius had held me, his eyes red and tear-filled. "I don't want any children! I would rather lose my seat in the Senate than ever betray you!"

Yet the scene before me crushed those words into fine dust.

I stumbled backward, my chest feeling as though it had been ripped open by bare hands.

I was terrified I'd lose control and rush over to scream at him.

Worse yet, in the face of this cozy, happy family of three, I was afraid I'd look like a pathetic, unwanted outsider.

Suffocation gripped my throat. I turned and fled.

Everyone says I'm the woman Jasper loves most.

But only I know that in his heart, I've always come second to Sadie.

Seven years ago, I shoved him out from under a collapsing rig and shattered my right ankle. I never skated competitively again.

He held me and swore that the day he won the Grand Slam, he'd marry me in front of the whole world.

I believed him. So I learned to be his support crew. I sharpened his blades, hand-sewed his costumes, dragged my bad leg around everywhere he went. I turned myself into the shadow that followed him.

Then Sadie came along. Young, healthy, able to do things I could never do again.

Tonight, Jasper wins the Grand Slam. The cameras circle him, the whole arena chanting for him to propose.

But he looks down at Sadie in his arms and smiles.

"Out of everyone, she's the one I want to thank most for this medal. I wouldn't have made it here without her."

That's the moment I stop wanting to stay.

I am the sole heir to the Hartwell fortune.
But this birthday dinner — the one meant to sign the family trust into my hands on my twenty-second year — was being ruined by the housekeeper's daughter.
Brianna had done it on purpose. She'd stolen the archival couture gown my late mother left behind, then thrown herself into the champagne tower and pinned it on me.
"Oh God, Audrey, why did you push me?" She was already crying, her voice pitched for the crowd. "I know you hate seeing me in this dress, but your father was the one who insisted I wear it. Please don't make me leave."
In my last life, I'd stood there sobbing, waving my hands, trying to explain.
For that, I'd been stripped of my inheritance on the spot, committed to a psychiatric ward, and in the end, every fingernail torn out one by one, I'd died in agony.
But I'd been reborn.
Now I looked down at Brianna crumpled among the shattered crystal, playing the victim, and I didn't waste a word.
I crossed the floor, stood over her, drew my arm back, and slapped her across the face as hard as I could.
"Shut your mouth."

We'd agreed to spend summer break in the Hamptons. Right before break started, my boyfriend suggested we hit the water park out in the suburbs first, just to blow off some steam.

I thought it was a date. Just the two of us. But when I get to the gate, my best friend Sienna is standing there in a string bikini.

I tell her that's not safe to swim in. Her face goes cold and she tells me to mind my own business.

Colton frowns too and dumps his phone, a towel, and Sienna's makeup bag into my arms. "Vivienne, do you have to kill the mood? Sienna's scared to go alone. What's the big deal if I keep her company?"

In the wave pool, he holds her against his chest and the two of them roll around in the spray, laughing.

When they come out, Sienna takes the ice water I haven't even opened and takes a big swig, then hands it to Colton, and he drinks half the bottle right from where her lips were.

I stand there feeling like the hired help.

Two years of killing myself to be the understanding, easygoing girlfriend, and all it got me was a boyfriend who walks all over me without thinking twice.

If he's that close with my best friend, he can't blame me for calling up his best friend since they were kids.

"Julian, can you come get me?"

Every time my husband’s adopted sister, Avey, had a tennis match, he would force a dark green concoction down my throat. As soon as it kicked in, my entire body would turn weak and aching.
He claimed it was a folk remedy, and I believed him.
In half a year, I lost twenty pounds, half my hair fell out, and I lost our four-month-old baby.
Until the night I overheard them whispering behind a cracked door—they had sought out a witch and cast a dark curse.
My forced standstill was the price for her endless stamina. All her fatigue and sports injuries were being directly transferred to me.
Late that night, listening to them plot to drain the life out of me, I made a choice. On the very night Avey won her championship, I climbed into a deep hibernation pod. I traded thirty days of absolute physical stasis to ensure she could never stop.

My daughter helped my husband cheat.

My ten-year-old begged me to take her to a summer camp in Italy. My husband looked at her like she hung the moon. Booked the tickets right there.

I thought I was the luckiest mom alive.

Then I checked the pet camera from overseas.

There he was, fucking my daughter's riding instructor on our couch.

But what really killed me? What he said, "Don't worry. Nina wants that horse bad enough, she'll keep her mom in Europe as long as we need."

Back home, my husband dropped a receipt. Two identical limited edition watches.

He froze. My sweet daughter didn't miss a beat, "Dad used the other one to bribe someone so I could get my horse!"

They lied in perfect sync. That's when something in me broke.

They thought I was still that stupid, trusting wife.

What they didn't know?

I'd already signed a contract. Going back to my art career in New York.

Nineteen times. That's how many times Lucas promised to marry me, only to leave me standing alone because of her.
Today was supposed to be our day. But as I stood in the biting cold outside the restaurant, watching him carefully help Selena into his Maybach, the marriage application still tucked in my purse, I finally understood—that "someday" would never come.
"Let's reschedule the registration, okay?" he'd said without even looking at me.
I walked straight to HR and submitted my resignation. Then I accepted the offer from the Morinetti family—his sworn enemies.
As I boarded my flight to the West Coast, my phone exploded with messages.
"We agreed to go to City Hall today. Where are you?"
I glanced at the screen one last time, then powered it off.
"We're done."

The man I marry will become the future leader of the company.
In my previous life, without a second thought, I chose to marry the eldest son
whom I had always liked.
But shortly after our wedding, he came stepsister,
and even took out his frustration of not getting her on me,
going so far as to poison and kill me.
This time around,
I chose his younger brother.
I'll see for myself
if he can spend his life with my sister without me standing in their way. me.
This time around,
I chose his younger brother.
I'll see for myself
if he can spend his life with my sister without me standing in their way.

My husband's childhood sweetheart lost her entry for the competition,
so he gave mine to her.
It was I who saved him all those years ago,
and that's why he married me.
But he turned his back on me right after our wedding.
I've been childhood sweetheart all these years.
But this time,
I suddenly feel like this marriage has lost all its meaning.
After handing in the transfer request I had prepared long ago to the factory director,
I rejected his offer to stay.
I can't bear to stay in this place for another day.
I want to go to New York,
start a new chapter in my life,
and let everything that happened before just drift away. all its meaning.
After handing in the transfer request I had prepared long ago to the factory director,
I rejected his offer to stay.
I can't bear to stay in this place for another day.
I want to go to New York,
start a new chapter in my life,
and let everything that happened before just drift away.

Seventeen-year-old Nora thought her biggest problem was surviving senior year—until she fell for Leo, her brother’s best friend and the one boy she was never supposed to want.

Leo is everything she shouldn’t touch: older, dangerous, and hiding something behind those icy blue eyes. When Nora discovers his secret—that he’s a vampire—her world shatters. But instead of running, she lets him in… and one bite binds their souls together forever.

As Nora struggles to balance love, loyalty, and the darkness that now lives inside her, a new person emerges: Killian, a powerful mafia king who sees her not as prey, but as an equal. His offer could change her fate—or end it.

Caught between two worlds and two loves, Nora must decide who she really is…
and what she’s willing to become.

Because the way they look at her—
might be the thing that saves her… or destroys her.

I only gave him one night. One night to prove I wasn't just the human maid cleaning his mansion floors.
And by dawn, the Alpha shattered me. He rejected me, humiliated me, and chose another to wear the crown at his side.
He never knew that night left me with more than scars. It left me with a son.
Two years later, I'm not the weak girl who cried when he cast me aside. And I'm back not for him, but for my child.
Kael thinks he can ignore the past. He thinks he can demand my forgiveness. But I don't care about his crown, or his throne, or the Luna who clings to him like she's untouchable.
All I care about is protecting my son.
And if the Alpha thinks he can claim us now... he'll learn that nothing is fiercer than a mother who refuses to be erased.

Vanessa is the girl everyone knows, but no one really sees. As a scholarship student at the elite Cresthaven Point Academy, she survives by being invisible, doing the Elites’ homework, and lets the popular kids think she’s a pushover. But she isn’t hiding because she’s shy, she’s hiding because she’s a werewolf. In a world where her kind is supposed to be extinct, staying invisible is the only way to keep her family safe.

Adrian is the guy everyone wants to be. He’s rich, at the top of the social ladder, and bored. He picks on Vanessa because she’s the only person who doesn’t seem to care about his status. There’s something about her he can’t explain, something quiet and strange that makes him want to figure her out.

When an incident at a beach party goes wrong, Vanessa loses control. Adrian sees her move faster than any human should, and suddenly, he’s obsessed with discovering what she is. But being stuck with Adrian makes it hard for Vanessa to stay a ghost. Her wolf is getting restless, and she can't just watch when people are in real danger. Whether it's a freak accident or someone about to die, Vanessa starts stepping in. Soon, the whole school is talking about a Ghost Guardian who does things no human being can do.

While Vanessa becomes the new queen of the school, Adrian's father is closing in. His family has been leading the hunt to wipe out werewolves since the beginning of time. He thinks they are all gone, and he's looking for any sign that one is left. Now Vanessa has to decide: can she really trust the son of the man who was born to destroy her? Or will her secret get them both killed?

I nearly died in the freezing ocean at my adopted sister Jane's birthday party.

When the yacht started tilting and alarms shrieked through the corridors, Dad grabbed Jane and bolted for the deck without looking back. Mom clutched Jane's ragdoll cat in her arms, following close behind under the bodyguards' protection.

They saved the cat.

But left their biological daughter to drown.

Three days later, I staggered home covered in wounds. The living room was decorated with scented candles and a three-tier birthday cake. Light piano music mingled with laughter—they were throwing Jane a makeup birthday party, celebrating how "the whole family" survived the disaster.

Chloe faked a billionaire family name, Ethan betrayed the girl who saved his broken knee, and both stole Aria’s award-winning business model to climb Ivy League’s social ladder. They paraded on stage with her crystal trophy, calling her a poor, delusional stalker in front of thousands. What they didn’t know: the “poor girl” is the sole heir to Sterling’s trillion-dollar empire. One phone call brought lawyers, police, and a terrified university president to their knees. Every lie, every theft, every cruel word comes crashing down—hard.

I'm the rightful fucking heir to the Sterling family fortune. My old man made me lay low, keep my head down, live like some regular broke college kid.
But there's this cunt in my dance crew. Walking around flashing her fake designer shit like she's hot shit, acting like she owns the fucking place.
And now she's got her eyes on my boyfriend.
To get close to him? She's telling everyone she's the Sterling family heiress.
Oh really? You're the Sterling heir?
Then who the fuck am I?

My name is Jack Morris, a bottom-rung janitor on the docks.
Every day, people walk all over me, and I live on moldy bread.
Until one day, an old man I saved handed me a photograph. "This is my granddaughter. She's being held at the Black Swan Casino."
That used to be my place. Ten years ago.
Her father was a brother who died in my place.
I was once the king of the underground.
And now, at the banquet celebrating the tenth anniversary of my death, they're treating that old man's granddaughter like a toy.
If my disappearance only made those animals more brazen...
Then they can finish that drink and celebrate their own deaths next.

My husband Michael's father and my own father shared the same name—Robert. His was Robert Carter; mine, Robert Smith. I once thought it a sweet coincidence, until that 3 AM phone call turned this quirk of fate into a living nightmare.
The nursing home called to say Robert Carter had died, but when Michael returned from his business trip, he assumed it was my father who had passed. "Old Robert's finally gone," he smirked. "Should've moved him to the cheaper nursing home ages ago." Can you believe it? His own father—the man who'd left him an inheritance—and there he was, helping his medical intern mistress cover up malpractice, dismissing the death as "just some useless old man."
He has no idea he's protecting his father's killer. No clue I've seen through his cold-bloodedness all along.
I wonder, when the truth finally hits him, how will this absurd tragedy end?

In my past life, the night before the National Cheerleading Championship finals, my "best friend" Lily, the scholarship student I'd been sponsoring, handed me a brownie she claimed she'd "baked herself."

She knew I had a deadly peanut allergy. Yet she'd loaded it with concentrated peanut butter.

When I collapsed on the locker room floor, hives erupting across my skin, my throat swelling shut until I couldn't make a sound, Lily just covered her mouth and nestled into my boyfriend Liam's arms, whimpering: "I'm so sorry, Chloe. I'm such an idiot. I mixed up the peanut butter with chocolate... you won't blame me, right?"

Of course I blamed you.

The quarterback I'd loved for three years didn't call 911. Instead, he frowned down at me convulsing on the ground.

"Chloe, stop faking, okay?" Liam's voice dripped with annoyance. "Lily already apologized. Why do you have to put on this dramatic show to scare her? You're always so controlling."

Controlling?

My airway was closing. My lungs were on fire. I was dying, and I couldn't force out a single word to tell him.

They didn’t call an ambulance until I stopped moving, but by the time it got there, it was too late. I was already dead.

When the police questioned him, Liam gave false testimony to protect Lily. He claimed I was afraid of losing the competition, so I tried to use an allergic reaction to avoid competing, but accidentally ingested too much of the allergen and died.

The man who said he loved me let me die with the reputation of a coward.

When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back on that day.

Translation

Zombies besieged the city. I fought through the infected zone alone and brought back the vaccine.

All of humanity hailed me as their savior.

But at the medal ceremony, my superior and fiancée Amy shoved me aside. "You're covered in blood. Stand over there. Would it kill you to be more like David?"

"A man who can't even bear to look at violence—that's what a civilized person looks like."

For the sake of being her idea of civilized, I locked away my weapons and spent three years as her errand boy. I took countless bullets meant for her, and still she complained I wasn't gentle enough.

Then the virus mutated. To save David, I crushed a Tyrant's skull with my bare hands.

She threw her arms around the trembling David, slammed the table, and screamed at me: "If you don't get this violent streak under control, you can forget about being the Chief's husband. Apologize to David. Now."

The vaccine I'd risked my life for—she used every last drop of it to win favor with her pretty boy.

I ejected the magazine from my rifle and tossed my medal into the rubble.

"That position of yours? Give it to whoever you want."

The masked stranger slammed into him with one devastating thrust, stretching Carter so perfectly he sobbed against the desk. “Fuck—yes, just like that!” he begged, hips slamming back as the masked alpha set a brutal rhythm, fisting his hair and stroking his cock in time.

“Finally mine, after all this time,” the man growled, then sank razor-sharp teeth into his neck and pleasure exploded through him like lightning.

Until the mask slipped and Dallas Cross, his childhood bully and bane of his existence, stared back with a vicious, satisfied smirk.

On the day Carter was supposed to propose to the love of his life, Carter walked in to find her in bed with his mortal enemy, Dallas Cross, wealthy heir of the Cross Group global empire.

One week later, a drunken club hookup leaves him marked, mated, and impossibly, pregnant with Dallas’s heir. The ruthless werewolf storms back into his life, demanding Carter pack his bags and move into the luxurious pack mansion to accept their unbreakable bond and carry his son… or watch his bankrupt family lose everything.

Trapped between red-hot hate, an unexpected pregnancy, and the tiny life already growing inside him, Carter faces an impossible choice.

His strict parents are pressuring him to forgive the cheating fiancée and save them from ruin. Meanwhile, Dallas’s possessive alpha instincts won’t let him go, blocking every escape, and whispering dark promises of protection, pleasure, and forever.

With every heated glare turning into uncontrollable lust and every denial crumbling under the mate bond, Carter must decide: run from the enemy who destroyed him… or surrender completely to the powerful alpha who now owns his body, his heart, and his fate.

Bullied, abused and dumped for a crush. Rejected by the coven for her sexuality. Seph and Dextra have a lot to over come when they arrive in Ireland. Can they survive on their own? Seph is only 18 and Dextra isn’t much help, an errant familiar with a tendency for setting things on fire.

Kayla had never known anything but a supportive loving family no matter what she found out about herself. Her twin Theo would always have her back, just as she had his. It didn’t matter what they were arguing over, they were twins. The one thing they couldn’t do was share anything.

The three of them together face a new challenge when both Kayla and Theo feel a mate bond snap into place. Can they deal with everything that fate has in store for them? Witches, spells, jealously, a prophecy, and a grumpy old man who isn’t really a man?

"And now, he's certain your life is over because he kicked you out. They're probably already placing bets on how long it will take for you to bow and beg at their feet to take you back. But..." He said coldly.

"But..." I breathed.

"Imagine suddenly returning with a husband so wealthy he makes them look like paupers. Not only is he filthy rich, but he's hopelessly in love with you, spoiling you rotten. Imagine their shock, their anger, and your satisfaction that you have exceeded their expectations. Won't that be fulfilling?"

"And... who would that husband be?" I whispered.

"Me." He grinned as he caressed my cheek. "Let's get married, my dear Iris."

••~•

After being humiliated and disowned on her wedding day, Iris is suddenly approached by Gordon Graff, the enigmatic and highly controversial billionaire and also her ex's uncle, who asks for her hand in marriage.

His goal: make her family and ex pay for everything they've done to her.

But what happens when the line between pretence and true love begins to blur, and dangerous secrets begin to unfold?

Will the man who has promised to protect her be her doom? And will she be a casualty in his dangerous game of revenge?

She rushed home late at night to celebrate her husband's birthday — only to find him with another woman.
"Daddy, when are you and Mommy getting a divorce?" her son asked, innocent and cruel all at once. "I want Auntie to be my new mommy."
She thought of the divorce papers she'd found the day before. Without hesitation, she picked up her phone and dialed her boss.
"I'll join the OriginWorld research program. But I have one condition..."
Months later, she stood at the podium as a national-level AI research consultant, delivering a keynote lecture.
And there, in the audience, sat her ex-husband — staring up at her, utterly stunned.

Lilly Browns thought she had finally moved on.

Three years ago, Eric, the boy she loved with all her heart walked away without an explanation, shattering her world.

Just when she begins to rebuild her life at Prestige University, Eric returns as if nothing happened, determined to win her back.

But Lilly refuses to be hurt again.

To make her ex regret leaving her, she kissed Dave Charles, the campus basketball captain, the most popular on campus, and Eric's biggest rival.

Lilly suggest fake dates to Dave and he agreed.

The plan was to pretend to be in love, make Eric jealous and walk away.

Except that nothing goes according to plan.

Because Eric isn't just her ex but he's the Alpha of a powerful rival pack.

Dave isn't just a basketball star but he has secrets dark enough to start a war.

And somewhere between stolen kisses, jealous confrontations, and dangerous pack rivalries, Lilly finds herself caught between two powerful Alphas willing to fight for her.

As old feelings resurface and hidden truths come to light, Lilly must decide who deserves her heart.

Dave or Eric.

But when a deadly pack feud threatens everything she loves, choosing the wrong Alpha could cost her more than her heart.

It could cost her life.

Luna Chen wanted a quiet life. Instead, she got a 1940s architect in a tailored suit who appeared in her bedroom at 3 a.m. and calmly announced:

“You’re my wife now.”

Rhen Blackwood has been trapped in her grandmother’s apartment for eighty years, bound by a supernatural contract.

The final condition? Fall in love for real… or the Spirit Broker drags his soul into eternal nothingness.

Luna doesn’t believe in ghosts. She definitely doesn’t believe in love. But Ren is infuriatingly perceptive, dryly funny, and the only person who sees straight through her walls.

As the deadline closes in, the lines between annoyance and aching want begin to blur. Lights flicker. Secrets surface.

And every time Ren’s form starts to fade, Luna realizes she might lose the one man who finally makes her feel alive.

She was supposed to fix his unfinished business.
She never expected him to become hers.

A slow-burn paranormal romance full of dark humor, haunted hearts, and one very stubborn ghost who refuses to stay dead.

Woke up with the power to command endless zombies. I guarded the fortress for my sister, only to find her tortured, drained of blood, and used as live bait. A fake hologram fooled me for two years. Now I unleash my million undead army to burn all traitors to ashes.

Eight years ago, I was the heir to a powerful dynasty—the man set to inherit an empire.

On the way home from a business deal, our convoy was ambushed and I was taken. My fiancée arrived with the ransom, and the kidnappers gave her a choice: save one man. She saved my closest friend—and left me bleeding in the ruins.

They thought I was dead. They went on camera, announced my “tragic death,” took my company, split my legacy, and lived on my name for eight long years.

But I didn’t die. A gray-zone mercenary unit pulled me out of a pile of bodies. I changed my name and climbed from the bottom of their world—training, bleeding, killing, leading—until I became one of their commanders.

Today, my fiancée is marrying my best friend. The invitation arrived with my name on it. I board a first-class flight under a new identity and head straight for their wedding.

Halfway through the ceremony, the priest asks if anyone objects.

I stand up. “I object.”

I didn’t come back to give my blessing. I came back to collect.

I found my husband's vasectomy certificate while sorting medical bills. The procedure was done a year ago. But I was six months pregnant now.

I stared at the date on the paper and my hand just... stopped. I kept checking it again and again, but it was still the same. I was freaking out. I looked down at my bump showing through this baggy sweater, and my hands started shaking.

I got in my car and drove straight to my husband's private club. I needed answers about this, now.

At the board meeting, he voted to dilute my equity.

"This is business, Elena. Not personal."

Three years of hidden marriage. I thought we were partners. But in that moment, I finally understood—I was just his technical supplier on the road to success.

What Ryan didn't know: that Technology Contribution Agreement he signed three years ago contained one clause. 70% of NexTech's core algorithm IP belongs to me. Personally.

Product launch day. Two hundred investors watching. I took the microphone.

He thought I'd present the tech specs like always.

He was wrong.

Dante Ashford is my stepbrother, and the one person I should never have fallen in love with.

When I was ten, my parents died saving his family. The Ashfords took me in. He was good to me back then. Somewhere along the way, I fell for him.

When I was eighteen, he nearly died in an ambush. I donated blood, then a kidney to save him. I was unconscious for three days. When I woke up, Vivian Ross sat by his bed—and he believed she was his savior.

After that, he pushed me away. Vivian became his fiancée.

In my past life, Vivian's crimes brought disaster to our family. Dante got on his knees and begged me to take her punishment. I refused. She died anyway. Then he pretended to love me, planned our wedding—and on that day, his assistant announced to everyone: "This wedding was a lesson to show Miss Elena Hayes what it feels like to be abandoned by the whole world."

I jumped from the church balcony.

When I opened my eyes, I was back at that moment—him on his knees, begging.

This time, I said yes.

Dante, from now on, we're done.

I thought I'd signed up for an immersive dating show.

Turns out it was a 99.9% death rate, globally livestreamed horror game.

And me? Half-blind without my contacts, desperate to go viral, I somehow talk my way through a death game like it's a romance.

I mistook blood for ketchup, human eyeballs for sashimi, a murderous child ghost for a kid who just needed some love.

Worst part? I fell for the guy running the place, the one who could kill you without blinking, and tried to get his number within the hour.

My teammate hissed at me, shaking. "You wanna die, fine, just don't take us with you!"

I just waved him off. It's a dating show. Relax.

I was three months pregnant when I found out my husband had been cheating with the cousin I had kindly taken in.

My son said he wanted her to be his mom, then shoved me down the stairs and caused me to miscarry.

The day I lost the baby, my husband sat beside my bed. His voice was gentle, soft enough to lull someone to sleep.

“Relax,” he said. “You’ll forget all this pain.”

I closed my eyes and let him plant layer after layer of hypnotic commands in my ear.

“When you wake up, you’ll be an obedient wife.”

Now I watch them living happily ever after as a family of three.

They think I’m nothing but an empty shell.

They have no idea that I’ve already posted this plea for help online:

[HELP] My cousin is wearing my sexy nightgown to seduce my husband, I caught them cheating, and my son calls her “Mom.” But I just feel numb. What am I supposed to do?

The day I died in a foreign country, my boyfriend was in the spotlight with another woman.

He's the man I built from nothing. Five years ago, I saved a broke orphan fresh out of college from the gutter. He said he wanted to be famous, wanted to make it to the top of the hockey world. In exchange, he became my boyfriend for five years.

I gave him the best coaching staff money could buy. Bought an entire hockey franchise and made him the centerpiece. Called in every favor I had to make him MVP.

But while he enjoyed everything I gave him, he refused to make our relationship public. Said it would "hurt his brand." He could make headlines with reporters and models, but nobody could know I existed.

He even said on national TV: "Those owners who just throw money around are pretty boring. Hockey is about skill, not money."

So why did he lose his mind when he found out I was dead?

In my previous life, on the very day of our marking ceremony, my Alpha fiancé met his fated mate at the banquet.
He didn’t break off our engagement. Instead, he chose silence and completed the ceremony with me. He chose to trap me with a twenty-year mate bond.
For twenty years, I fought wars for the Pack, bore him an heir, and ruled the main hall alone as Luna.
Meanwhile, in another Pack’s territory, he spent his entire life with that woman.
Before I died, he told me he was sorry.
But he also blamed me—saying that if I hadn’t insisted on taking the Luna seat, he could have left more completely.
Only then did I realize something cruel. Not only was I never the one he loved, I was also the obstacle to his freedom.
When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day of the marking ceremony.
This time, the mate bond had not yet formed, and the mate mark had not yet been sealed.
Whether he would abandon me for his fated mate no longer mattered.
Because this time—
I would never step aside for any Alpha again.

To fulfill a dying comrade's final request, I spent twelve years living in the shadows to protect his daughter. I took bullets for her, laundered her black-market assets, and eventually handed over my entire stake in the security empire. In her eyes, I am her father’s murderer; in mine, she is a mission—the only flicker of light left in my life. Until that fateful banquet, when she personally shoved me into the sights of mercenaries. Watching my blood bloom across her dress, she hooked her arm around my nemesis and ordered coldly, "Clean it up." In that moment, twelve years of devotion collapsed, and a heart that beat only for her finally learned to freeze. This time, I’ve decided to personally destroy the monster I raised.

Jonathan’s way of loving was always paying in silence. After we broke up, he cleared my shopping cart, stocked up enough makeup remover to last me three years, trying his best to make up for it. But during those three years when I willingly waited for him to propose, he never said a word. Until one day, he found a small note I’d written in pencil three years ago in that wedding planning book: “It’s okay, I can wait.” He cried all night staring at that line, and the next day, he bought 17 copies of the same book. On the title page of each one, he wrote neatly: “Wait for me.” It turns out, the stupidest person takes three years just to learn to say “I love you.”

I once loved Ryan deeply and helped him become the Alpha, only to be rewarded with chains in a dungeon and the mocking laughter of him and his mistress.

Fate gave me a second chance—I woke up reborn on the morning of the mate selection ceremony. There he was, still ordering me around in front of everyone, expecting me to play the obedient servant.

Everyone tried to convince me that Ryan, the man who killed me, is the "right choice."

Yet I chose Connor—the man feared by the entire clan, the one who will bring ruin to the clan for the sake of his one true love.

This time, I refuse to be the stepping stone on Ryan's climb to power.

I'm going to make everyone see who truly holds the reins.

Forty-eight hours before my wedding, I was kidnapped and gang-raped, surviving by only a thread in the depths of despair.   When my mafia boss fiancé and my police detective best friend stood guard by my hospital bed with bloodshot eyes, I heard him suddenly switch to Navajo and ask her, "The death row inmates from the dark web—were they dealt with cleanly?"   My best friend chuckled, replying in the same language. "Don't worry. The guys who put their hands on Maya have been wiped out. Dead men tell no tales."   "Sacrificing Maya alone gave you the perfect excuse to wipe out the rival family and swallow the southern smuggling network, while earning me a high-level promotion. It was a damn good deal."   Amidst tearing, agonizing pain, it felt as if I had been plunged into an ice cliff.   They thought I could never understand this obscure tribal language, so they brazenly feasted on the spoils of victory built upon my very flesh and blood. But what they didn't know was that, to surprise my fiancé during our wedding vows... I had been secretly studying Navajo for an entire year.

My brother Miles blames me for our parents' deaths.
So he chose to adopt the deaf Vivian instead of keeping me.
Later, I met Sullivan.
He gave me a grand confession. He chose me, resolutely.
He also said I hired someone to assault Vivian—that I didn't deserve sympathy.
Five years after being cast out of my family, a dismembered female body was found inside a carnival mascot costume.
Miles, now a police officer, led the investigation. Sullivan, now a forensic pathologist, performed the autopsy.
They saw the bloodstained hearing aid and immediately called Vivian.
"I'm fine. I just saw the news—some big case. Should we tell Sis to be careful too? What if something happens to her?"
They refused, almost in unison.
"The moment she killed our parents, she stopped being my sister."
"She was jealous of you. She did too many terrible things. If she's dead, she had it coming."
My soul hovered in the air, watching them. I laughed until I cried.
But when they found out the victim was me—
Why did they both go mad?

"Valerie, you've been working yourself to death. I booked you a flight to Switzerland—take Leo, go relax for a while." My husband Cedric set an Hermès scarf down on the table. "Early gift for our tenth anniversary."
I was thrilled, twirling in front of the mirror with the scarf, admiring how it looked.
That's when my son came around the corner, iPad in hand. "Mommy, a message just popped up. Daddy said he wants to give Seraphina a real family."
My mind just... blanked out.
I opened the message myself, and there it was—a whole year of secrets I never even knew existed.
So he wants to make things right with his old flame? Fine.
Then I get to take back everything I ever gave him.

“Why is Elara dying on my stream?”

Sienna Vale laughed in front of half a million viewers while my heroine glitched on-screen, wearing the ring I designed and speaking the line I wrote.

Caleb didn’t ask if I was okay. He shoved the emergency laptop toward me and said, “Fix it before the investors panic.”

So I opened the live build.

But instead of saving his launch, I patched one line into the game credits:

Created by Maya Reed.

“You can stand there and deny it all you want,” he said huskily in my ear. “But I know how drenched you were that night. Your tight little p*ssy? It was calling my name, baby.”

“You’re insane! I never wanted you!” I gritted out, hating how weak I sounded. Hating how my arms suddenly didn’t have the strength to push him away.

How there was a part of me that truly wanted him, despite everything.

“Keep denying it,” he murmured, eyes darkening. “It just makes me more eager to bend you over my desk and f*ck that attitude right out of you.”


When executive assistant Alice Rhodes sent her arrogant and insufferable boss, Theodore Linden-Hawthorne, a sext during the company’s New Year’s party, her life turned completely upside down.

She lost everything: her fiancé, her family, and her best friend, all because of one embarrassing mistake. To make matters worse, Theodore seemed incapable of staying away from her, and Alice was horrified to realize that the feeling was slowly starting to become mutual.

But this attraction between them came at a price. Alice and Theodore came from two completely different worlds. Their attraction was forbidden and frowned upon by everyone around them. Would their love survive vengeful exes, juicy scandals, hidden secrets, and unexpected surprises?