1987 Book(s) Related to james patterson 1st to die series order

Because of the strong desire to give her mother the best treatment after her stroke, Samantha was forced to accept the offer to dance for a client, Mr. MC. She is the private sexy dancer of a wealthy man.

She hasn't seen his face, not even once, because he always wears a masquerade mask when she dances in front of him. She needs to give him a good show to warm his night just by dancing.

Just watch, no touch, that's it!

Does she have the right to fight how he feels about him if their agreement ends when the woman he was supposed to marry returns?

Twenty years ago, Clovis Dupond became the most hated man in history.

When an ancient horror escapes the prison he has guarded for twenty years, the truth begins to surface…and so does the daughter he believed he killed.

How do you save the world when the person destined to destroy it is your own child?

Trigger/Content Warning:
This story contains mature themes and explicit content intended for adult audiences(18+). Reader discretion is advised.
It includes elements such as BDSM dynamics, explicit sexual content, toxic family relationships, occasional violence and strong language.
This is not a fluffy romance. It is intense, raw and messy, and explores the darker side of desire.


“Take off your dress, Meadow.”

“Why?”

“Because your ex is watching,” he said, leaning back into his seat. “And I want him to see what he lost.”

••••••••••••*
Meadow Russell was supposed to get married to the love of her life in Vegas. Instead, she walked in on her twin sister riding her fiance.

One drink at the bar turned to ten. One drunken mistake turned into reality. And one stranger’s offer turned into a contract that she signed with shaking hands and a diamond ring.

Alaric Ashford is the devil in a tailored Tom Ford suit. Billionaire CEO, brutal, possessive. A man born into an empire of blood and steel.
He also suffers from a neurological condition—he can’t feel. Not objects, not pain, not even human touch.

Until Meadow touches him, and he feels everything. And now he owns her. On paper and in his bed.
She wants him to ruin her. Take what no one else could have. He wants control, obedience… revenge.
But what starts as a transaction slowly turns into something Meadow never saw coming.

Obsession, secrets that were never meant to surface, and a pain from the past that threatens to break everything.

Alaric doesn’t share what’s his.
Not his company.
Not his wife.
And definitely not his vengeance.

I think I'm dead.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself standing in an abandoned amusement park, and my body was sitting on that slowly turning carousel.

I was only ten years old. I don't know how I died.

Detective Sarah, the blonde officer, promised to find the truth. So I followed her, watching her peel away layer after layer of lies—

In my diary, I wrote down all my fears and all my waiting.

On the phone, Mom sent that video of me laughing.

In the autopsy report, evidence of long-term abuse filled every page.

Mom had been saving money for three years, saying she'd take me away. That afternoon she picked me up from school and said, "We're really leaving this time."

Then what happened? Why did I die at the amusement park? Why was Mom's first reaction after my death not to call the police, but to—

I thought Mom came to save me.

Until I saw the text message she sent...

The day I get diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, I can finally stop selling plasma.

For five years, I thought I was paying for the fire that killed my parents and son, left my brother disabled. Selling plasma, joining drug trials, doing the worst jobs imaginable, all to pay back a debt that wasn't even real.

The doctor says I have a few weeks left. I clutch the diagnosis report and head home to tell them.

The moment I push open the door, I see my parents in the kitchen, the ones who supposedly died in the fire. My brother, who was supposed to be in a wheelchair, stands there raising a glass, laughing with my husband.

My brother shrugs like it's nothing. "The broken leg was fake the whole time. You were the only one hurt in the fire. We just wanted to teach you a lesson, make you appreciate things."

"We were going to tell you eventually." My husband pats my shoulder. "Go apologize to Vanessa. Stop giving her a hard time."

"All the money you gave us went to Vanessa," Dad says. "That's what you get for throwing your bio-daughter status in her face."

I touch the diagnosis in my pocket. Everything was a lie. The only truth is that I'm dying.

After three years of agonizing IVF, I was forced into three abortions. The reason? My mafia in-laws’ pet bird stared at my belly and shrieked, "End it."
Even when I was carrying healthy twins, my own parents held me down and forced abortion pills down my throat. My husband—the man I once took a bullet for—watched coldly. "Listen to the bird. Abort."
Lying in a pool of blood, I finally discovered the horrific truth. There was no "sacred bird." My marriage, my ruined womb, and all the IVF tortures were actually part of a terrifying conspiracy.
On my fourth pregnancy, the bird finally decreed, "Keep it!"
As the whole family treated me like a queen and rejoiced to welcome their precious heir, I quietly walked into the operating room.
Armed with lethal evidence, I crashed their grand succession ceremony.
You want an heir? I’ll send you all to hell instead.

My five-year-old son, Emrys, was poisoned by the deadly "Silver Eclipse." The only cure, Moonbloom Serum, had been seized entirely by my husband, Corvin, to save it for his nine-month-pregnant mistress, Melisande.
He froze all my bank accounts, forcing me to pawn the ring that symbolized my status as Luna and brave the dangerous black market just to secure the antidote.
But by the time I rushed back to the hospital, covered in blood, my child’s organs had already failed. He was gone.
When I threw the death certificate and divorce papers in Corvin’s face in despair, he just looked at me with mockery, accusing me of using our own flesh and blood to put on an act for his attention.
At that moment, all my love for him died completely. I took my son’s ashes, left the Ashmere pack, and decisively severed a mate bond that had tied us together for years...

What? She married a wrong guy? It wasn’t the person who was going to marry her but someone else?
After the death of her boyfriend, her family sold her off, in the name of marriage, to the wealthiest family of the city in order to pay back their debts. The condition was: She has to give birth to the Reynolds’ family’s heir within a year!
Sienna Millar always thought that, she replaced her sister to marry the foster son of the Reynolds’ family. But what she didn’t know was she actually married the real heir of the Reynolds’ family!
Ezekiel Reynolds, the real heir of the Reynolds family, the business emperor and the prince charming of the city, married the daughter of Millar family because his brother didn’t want to do it. After marriage he didn’t even see the woman he married. But what he didn’t know was he actually married the woman he always liked!
Sienna who always thought Ezekiel as his brother-in-law and Ezekiel who always thought Sienna pretended to be married were unknown that they were actually husband and wife!
When Sienna found out the person she married was actually Ezekiel, she was stunned, “I married a wrong guy? Aren’t you my brother-in-law?”
However, Ezekiel pressed her against the wall, saying evilly, “Why? Are you unsatisfied with your mistaken husband?”

Ava Montgomery's perfect wedding crumbles when she catches her fiancé Garry cheating with the Alpha's daughter the night before their wedding. Heartbroken and humiliated, she accepts a shocking proposal from Marcus Stone, Garry's supposedly dead billionaire brother who returns with a thirst for revenge. Their fake marriage for revenge turns real when an unexpected mate bond forms between them during Marcus's challenge for Alpha. But as Marcus's billions merge with pack leadership, dark secrets emerge including hidden murders, a mysterious twin brother, and Ava's own secret heritage that could make her the most powerful Luna in werewolf history. Now Ava must decide if she can trust the dangerous billionaire she married for revenge, especially when their growing love threatens to destroy the empire they're building together.

I died on the second Sunday of May.
Mother’s Day.
My biological mother, the top neurologist in the United States, was standing in front of my corpse.
She looked at the bedsores all over my body, at the ribs that had been stomped broken, and explained coldly to hundreds of cameras:
“Trash from the bottom of society, covered in needle marks like this, doesn’t deserve to dirty my dissection table.”
She didn’t know that the “social garbage” she called a pill-seeking self-harmer was the son she had abandoned ten years ago.
When the cold scalpel cut open my chest, an old photograph stained with black blood slipped out.
The moment she saw it, the woman who had stood above everyone else—
went completely insane…

On the night my grandmother died, my husband Kael came home trailing blood.
His leather motorcycle jacket was soaked dark red, yet he flashed a savage grin: "I wiped the floor with those bastards tonight!"
For three years, he had treated our home as nothing more than a pit stop between reckless street races.
I’d finally had enough. "After the funeral, we're getting a divorce."
Before the words fully left my mouth, my phone rang. It was his riding partner, Lunn, his voice choking with sobs: "Sera... Kael drove off the cliff tonight. They only recovered bloody pieces of his helmet!"
But the "dead man" was standing right in front of me...

For six years, I wore Pack silver. I sold my blood. I scrubbed silver out of Pack den floors. I slept on a basement floor — all to pay off my mate's Pack debt and buy my brother's wolfsbane antidote.
Today, with the receipt finally signed, my brother looked at me and said:
"Seren, I was never poisoned. Our parents aren't dead either. The Rogue raid six years ago — I arranged it. The only wolf hurt that night was you."
My mate stepped up behind him: "I never lost my Pack rank either. I've been at the estate the whole time."
Then my parents — the ones I'd buried seven years ago — walked through the door.
The Pack physician had given me forty-eight hours left to live.
They were going to remember every single one.

My husband often made me suffer for the sake of my younger sister, even divorcing me because of her.
My parents gave all their love to my sister and neglected me.
My husband and parents even had my sister perform surgery on me.
But they didn't know that my sister had no idea how to perform surgery.
It didn't matter though, because I no longer cared.
On Christmas Day, when they were celebrating, they finally remembered me.
But I was already dead.

My parents raised me for twenty-four years. Then they found out I wasn't their biological daughter.

Their real daughter came home. She'd only been back two years. That's all it took to erase twenty-four.

When kidnappers grabbed us, I used my body as a shield. They beat me until something inside me ruptured. I was dying from internal bleeding, but no one could tell.

My parents wouldn't even look at me. "This is your fault! None of this would've happened if it weren't for you!"

"Get downstairs and apologize to your sister. If you can't, pack your things and get out."

They threw her a party at a downtown hotel while I died alone in my room.

I thought they'd be relieved. Maybe even glad. I thought they'd just move on like I never existed.

But when they finally learned the truth, they fell apart.

My best friend Tiffany was obsessed with those novels where a mafia don spoils his woman rotten.

She was convinced she was the type of girl who could make a ruthless boss go soft, so she went after Vincent, the heir of a crime family, and got him.

His bodyguards, his dirty money, even the way he told her not to ask questions and just sit tight. She read all of it as devotion. And of course she had to drag me into it too, always with the same excuse: it was for my own good.

Last time around, her mess got me killed. Vincent's enemies mistook me for one of his people, and I died in a shootout that had nothing to do with me.

The second the blade opened my throat, all I could think about was her holding up a bloody knife, grinning, showing it off to me like a trophy.

"Margot, look. He gave me this. It means we're official now."

I remember feeling disgusted. I never thought that same knife would end up slitting my throat.

Blood pooled across the street while she hid in Vincent's arms, screaming, hands over her eyes. Later I heard her crying to someone, saying it wasn't her fault, that I just had bad luck.

I died inside her little romance fantasy. A nobody side character, wiped off the page without a second thought.

Then I opened my eyes, and I was back. Back to the afternoon it all started.

The day my all-powerful wife personally handed me over to the mob's basement, she was shielding my identical twin brother, furiously accusing me of destroying his ability to carry on the family line.
To compensate for my brother's "trauma," my parents stood by and did nothing. Using her influence, my wife pressured me to take his place at a black-market clinic, testing a lethal drug.
They thought I was just going to suffer some physical hardship, that after enduring these two weeks, everything would be happily resolved.
But they didn't know I had already been poisoned by my brother. I was dying.
I died in agony on the cold operating table. As my body was being gnawed and rotted by rats, they were happily vacationing by the sea.
Only when the lies were exposed did my wife kick down the hidden door. Holding my maggot-infested, decaying flesh, she wept until she vomited blood, then went mad and swallowed a bullet. My parents watched their family shattered and wept on their knees.

My brother Soren is a figure skating prodigy. Every dollar in our house, every hour, every scrap of attention — all his.
Me? I'm the kid who doesn't need to be seen.
The night before Nationals, I told my mom my stomach hurt so bad I could barely stand. She said I was making trouble. Dad told me to take a painkiller and tough it out. Then they loaded up the car and drove two hundred miles to watch Soren skate.
They didn't come home until Sunday night. By then, I'd been dead for over a day.
I called her. Again and again. She had her phone on airplane mode.
Now I'm a ghost, drifting behind their car on the highway home. They're laughing, complaining I didn't even text Soren a congratulations.
I wonder what their faces will look like when they walk through that door.

At four, they shattered both my legs. At six, they ruptured my left eardrum. At seven, they took my right eye—said I'd earn more sympathy begging blind.
After twelve years in hell, my billionaire parents finally found me.
The girl who stole my life grabbed my wrist, nails digging into my skin. "Dare take what's mine, and I'll break whatever's left of your legs."
I smiled, unclipping both prosthetics to show empty pant legs. "I don't have legs left."
She was terrified.

Cara is a talented, humble, and ambitious actress who longs for success and fame in the entertainment world. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she meets Vincent, a handsome werewolf with dark secrets. Fascinated by his mysterious aura and his promise to make all her dreams come true, Cara is tempted to make a deal with the devil to sell her soul. With Vincent's supernatural power, her career takes off, but as she gains fame and fortune, she begins to realize that she has made a deal with devastating consequences. In order to save her soul and break free from Vincent's grasp, Cara must fight against the darkness that surrounds her, facing her worst fears and discovering that there are more important things in life than success and fame.

Plot Twist:
Just when Cara thinks she has found a way to break the pact and free herself from Vincent's control, she discovers that he is not really the leader of the werewolves but merely a pawn in a much larger game. It turns out that there is a Supreme Alpha in their species, who has been manipulating Vincent and others like him to achieve his malicious objectives. Now, Cara finds herself caught in a war among werewolves, where she must decide whether to join the rebel forces seeking to overthrow the Alpha or seek her own revenge against Vincent for deceiving her. In an unexpected turn of events, Cara discovers a hidden power within herself that could change the course of the battle and bring an end to the tyranny of the Supreme Alpha. On her journey for revenge, Cara becomes the last hope for her species and desperately fights to liberate the werewolves from their oppressor and reclaim her own freedom.

I stayed in this city for Dorian, pushed my way into his company, and saved every penny for three years just so we could build a home together.
But an anonymous flash drive shoved a video of him cheating in our bed right into my face. The next day, a promotion announcement handed the position I’d bled for to the very woman who seduced him.
With my dignity crushed to dust, I had only one person left to rely on—my gentle, almost obsessively devoted stepbrother, Ambrose.
He promised to make those scumbags tear each other apart. He promised Dorian would crawl back to my feet like a dog.
He offered me a "secret recipe" with immediate results.
I expected a deeply satisfying revenge. I never imagined what that so-called recipe actually was...

Six days after Alexander lost all contact, I navigated my way alone to the Nightfall Gala to find him.

The guard's expression twisted into something peculiar when he heard my purpose.

"You're saying you are looking for your mate, Prince Alexander? And what is your name?"

"I am Cecilia."

The guard let out a harsh, mocking snort. "Stop causing a scene! A blind beggar trying to pull a scam? Don't think you can just impersonate her just because you know the name of the Prince's mate."

"Everyone knows the Prince just gifted Cecilia the millennia-old Abyssal Night Crystal to celebrate her pregnancy! What the hell are you?"

Just then, the giant LED screen cut to the Gala's live broadcast.

"Allow me to formally introduce my partner, Cecilia. Furthermore, she is expecting. Our family is about to welcome a new heir." It was Alexander's voice.

"Thank you all. This is the greatest gift Alexander and I could ever receive."

The moment that sweet, timid voice echoed through the hall, a string violently snapped in my brain. A sharp ringing pierced my eardrums.

—It was the voice of my twin sister, Elena.

On my due date, my husband Russell locked me in an underground freezer at minus ten degrees.

The Pembroke family's unbreakable rule: the first-born male inherits the entire mafia empire. My sister-in-law Natasha and I were both pregnant, our due dates only one day apart. To ensure his brother's child was born first, Russell made this insane decision.

"My brother and Natasha's baby has to come first—this is what you owe them!" He ignored my desperate pleas and violent contractions, coldly shoving me into the freezer.

But that wasn't enough. They forcibly injected me with labor-delaying drugs. I curled up in agony on the freezing concrete floor, feeling my baby slowly slipping away, tears of despair streaming down my face.

My baby, Mommy is so sorry...

On my birthday, I was dragged up to the attic and assaulted by several men.
I called my parents, brother, and boyfriend for help, but they all thought I was seeking attention and ruining my sister Sophie's celebration.
"Mia, stop it. We're busy preparing for Sophie's party. If you want attention, find another way."
This was the hundredth time they'd let me down.
But there won't be a hundred and first.
Because I'm already dead.

My billionaire lover brought out a bespoke mermaid gown, declaring he would marry whoever could fit into it.
But in my past four lives, every woman who tried it on—whether an ambitious imposter or me, his true love—was brutally tortured and murdered by him.
In my fifth rebirth, the butler knocked on our door with a polite smile, "Mr. Voss says his true love is among you."
Since we four women would die no matter who wore it...
We exchanged a look in the dead silence, turned our heads in perfect unison, and locked our eyes onto the only man in the room.

After Nicholas got engaged, his assistant handed me a plane ticket.

"Leave. Don’t ever show your face in Silverlight City again."

"Otherwise, Mr. Jackson has more than enough ways to ruin you."

All those years I spent by his side, I was admired by everyone, living in the spotlight.

Yet when I finally left, I was reduced to a pitiful, laughable sight.

I said, "Fine."

But that very night, the flight plunged from over thirty thousand feet in the air.

I was nothing but a wolfless omega—a slave in the Mistveil pack, invisible to everyone except as a target for their cruelty. For years, I secretly dreamed of Drary Vesper, the alpha’s son, believing he could be my escape. But when the Moon Goddess revealed he was my fated mate, he didn’t embrace me. He rejected me. Publicly. Brutally. In front of the entire pack and his vicious lover, Gwendolyn.

That night, drowning in pain and my first heat, I stumbled into the one man I should have avoided: Axel Vesper. The ruthless, silver-eyed Alpha who rules with an iron fist and is rumored to have killed his own wife. He’s cold, commanding, and twice my age. He’s also Drary’s father.

One night of vulnerability changed everything. Now, my body is changing in ways I don’t understand, and someone is poisoning me from the shadows. When Gwendolyn tries to burn me alive, my wolf finally awakens—not to save me for Drary, but to deliver me into the hands of a rival pack... and a mysterious man with warm golden eyes who looks at me like I’m something precious.

But Axel hasn’t forgotten me. And in a world where alphas rule and omegas are discarded, the most dangerous monster of all might just be the one who wants to claim me as his.

When the apocalypse struck, my brother Leo didn't hesitate to choose the offshore sanctuary.
In our past life, faced with a choice between a powerful inland warlord commanding a massive army and a leader clinging to a solitary island, Leo snatched up the first option.
But when a zombie horde overran the mainland and defenses collapsed, he fled to my island for refuge.
Jealous of how well I was surviving the end of the world, he and our parents knocked me unconscious in the dead of night and threw me into the ocean to drown.
Now that I've been reborn, Leo immediately took our parents to the maritime base, leaving the "dangerous" mainland to me.
He thinks the ocean is a natural barrier that guarantees his safety, that he can sit back and relax while the world burns.
But there's one thing he doesn't know.
Zombies aren't just static, mindless walking dead—they evolve.
And when they do, that offshore sanctuary will become a floating hell with no way out.

I thought losing my husband was the worst thing fate could do to me.

For over a year, I lived in a pack that never accepted me, holding on because Soren—the Alpha who chose me despite his family's objections—was always by my side.

Then he died.

Our mate bond was shattered.

I thought I had lost the only man I'd ever love.

I was wrong.

Because Soren's best friend had been watching me from the shadows.

Fenric Silvermane.

The most powerful Alpha in the kingdom. The last man I should ever want.

One month after Soren's death, I finally stood beside Fenric at our mating ceremony, ready to choose a future.

Then Soren burst in.

Alive.

My dead husband had just walked into my mating ceremony.

I couldn't breathe.

I thought fate was asking me to choose between the husband I lost and the man I learned to love.

I was wrong.

It wanted all three of us.

One was my husband.

One was the man my wolf chose.

And I had no idea how to survive loving them both.

I thought the scariest thing in school was the jock who harassed me. But then he vanished without a trace, and everyone blamed me.

There is no strong evidence to lock me away, so I walk the school hallways trapped in a living hell. The police watch my every move, the town hates me, and my adoptive parents treat me like an unwanted curse in their home.

Desperate to clear my name, I didn't realize the real danger was living right next door.

Xavi Moreau is the quiet, haunting boy who looks right through me. He doesn't live with his family; he lives alone in his own place. To the world, he is a handsome party guy who drinks, smiles, and blends into the crowd.

But I noticed the truth. His smiles are fake. His laughter never reaches his cold eyes. He is just copying the emotions of others to hide a dark, hollow soul.

When he notices my stares, his obsession shifts entirely to me.

Every single time he approaches me, I push him away. I deny him. I fight his terrifying presence with every ounce of strength I have left. But Xavi doesn't back down. He offers me the one thing I desperately need: a promise to find the truth and clear my name.

I wanted to find a killer to save myself, but the killer has already found me, and he has no intention of letting me go.

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.

irectly in front of me.
Only the night before, she’d been curled up in my arms, her warm fingertips brushing my collarbone, our bodies tangled in tender, loving intimacy.
Yet the toe tag fastened around her ankle was etched with cold, unflinching words: Su Wan, Female, 22. Cause of death: fatal fall from height. Time in morgue custody: 365 days.
She had been dead for an entire year.
Just what in the hell was the woman who’d gasped beneath me night after night, who’d lived beside me day in and day out for six whole months—the woman I’d called my girlfriend?

My husband, Callum, never loved me. On our wedding night, he panted another woman’s name.
For five years, I endured a cold, loveless marriage. The only reason I held on was my daughter, Tessa.
But on the eve of her fourth birthday, Callum went behind my back and personally delivered her to his mistress Seraphina's underground lab.
The moment my daughter was drained of her blood and her heart stopped beating on that operating table, he was drinking champagne with Seraphina to celebrate their success.
From the moment I walked out of the crematorium holding Tessa’s freezing urn, the submissive wife I used to be died.

"No one touches what belongs to Alessandro De Luca. Not his business. Not his empire. And certainly not his woman."
"I'm not your possession."
"Wrong," he murmured. "You're my wife. That makes you both."
She became his wife to repay a debt.
He vowed to destroy her for a past drenched in blood.
At fifteen, Rose's fate was quietly sold by the man she trusted most—her father.
At twenty-two, she's forced into marriage with Alessandro De Luca, the ruthless Italian mafia boss feared across continents. To the world, their union is a cold arrangement. To Alessandro, it's a weapon—his slow-burning punishment for the enemy's daughter.
But what Rose doesn't know is that her father once committed an unforgivable crime—and her mother died keeping the truth buried.
Alessandro vowed to shatter whoever destroyed his family. He never planned to fall for the enemy's daughter.
Trapped between a husband who burns with revenge and a father who thrives on lies, Rose must fight to survive the war ignited in her name.
Because in the mafia… love is just another weapon.
And the most dangerous man she's ever met is her husband.

As the tyrant ruling the underworld, Victor was ruthless and bloodthirsty, showing no mercy to anyone.

Women who tried to climb into his bed usually didn’t even get a whole corpse, yet I was the only one he kept by his side.

I’d taken a poisoned bullet for him, and nearly bled to death on the rotting floor of a safe house giving birth to his son.

He once kissed the bullet scar on my shoulder and promised me that when he sat on the godfather’s throne, I would be his only family matriarch.

But the moment he slipped on that black onyx ring symbolizing power, he carried another woman into the master bedroom of the manor.

I burst for the door, and he ordered his bodyguards to pin me outside, forcing me to listen to their sounds of passion all night long.

I banged on the door like a madwoman, so he slammed my paintbrush-wielding right hand in the heavy oak doorframe and crushed it mercilessly.

I finally caved when he threatened to cut off my mother’s hospital treatment.

My husband's foster sister, Delilah, gets poisoned and ends up paralyzed. My husband, Grayson, the Don of this whole crime family, doesn't even bother checking the security cameras. He just throws me, two months pregnant, into the cistern where they punish traitors.

"Tessa, hand over the antidote, or die."

I kneel in the freezing swamp water and beg him. I didn't poison her.

He answers with a kick to the stomach.

For three straight days, I suffer down there. Leeches tear into my skin. My baby turns into a pool of black blood and dissolves into the filthy water. By the end, my vocal cords tear to shreds, my body goes cold, and I stop breathing.

His men get on their knees and beg him to spare me. He just sneers.

"That woman's always been good at playing the victim. No food, no medicine. Let her keep soaking."

Three days later, he finally walks into the cistern, and it's only to give me an ultimatum.

"Crawl out and apologize to Delilah on your knees. Otherwise I'll strip you of your title and sell you off to a trafficking ring. You'll wish you were dead."

No one answers him.

He has no idea. I already am.

The second the avalanche came down, I called my mate. Karl. Captain of the Pack Guard's First Squad.

He dug me out, carried me onto the helicopter, and told the pilot to take off before the second rescue team even got there.

He didn't know Delilah was buried in the same slide. The girl he'd never gotten over.

By the time they reached her, she'd been under the snow for three hours in twenty below.

Karl stood in the morgue all night.

He came back the next day and just gave me a small smile. "It wasn't your fault. You were carrying our pup. Of course you came first."

For a month after that, he was gentler than he'd ever been. He cleared his schedule to take me to every checkup. Cooked for me himself. Put the crib together, the dresser too. Every single thing in the nursery lined up exactly right.

I thought that avalanche had finally buried Delilah. That it had given him back to me.

Until the day I went into labor.

He sent every doctor and nurse out of the delivery room. There was a silver scalpel in his hand.

The moment he cut me open, I saw the red in his eyes.

Our pup was still crying, small and weak, and he never even looked. He threw us both into the incinerator.

"If it weren't for you, Delilah would still be alive. Your life for hers."

Then I opened my eyes, and I was back at the moment the avalanche hit.

The night before the SAT, I brought homemade pastries from our bakery to share with the whole class.

The next day, over thirty students collapsed at the testing center. The exam was voided.

I became the target of everyone's rage. My family fell apart. I ended up in a detention cell.

The internet tore me apart. My classmate Lainey Prescott went on camera sobbing, saying all she wanted was for me to own up to what I did.

While I was in detention, I found out my mom had a mental breakdown and jumped off the overpass outside of town.

That same night, I went into the river too. The water was freezing.

When I open my eyes, Lainey is right there. She's holding that same sheet of paper with everyone's signatures, smiling like nothing's wrong, eyes just as calculating as I remember.

I'm back.

And this time, I'm not making anything for anyone.

I’m the only person on Earth with a clinically proven antibody capable of neutralizing this rare deadly virus.
I caught the virus when I was six. Its mortality rate was staggeringly high, and everyone thought I’d never pull through. Against all odds, I recovered entirely on my own. By some strange twist of biology, my body made the world’s sole antibody that could fight this virus off.
Once I turned eighteen, I signed up to donate my serum as a volunteer.
For twenty years straight, rain or shine, I showed up to donate free of charge—107 separate donations in total. Each time, I pulled a gravely ill patient back from death’s brink.
I’m no saint living to save the whole world. Every last donation was done for my mother.
Back when I was six, my father’s infidelity drove my mother to take her own life. What happened was cruel beyond measure, completely unforgivable.
A fortune-teller once told me my mom’s lingering resentment ran far too deep. To free her trapped, wandering soul for good, a blood relative of hers had to finish exactly 108 acts of good deeds.
Twenty years in, only one deed remained. Just one more, and my mother’s spirit could finally rest in peace.
But when the hospital sent out an urgent emergency SOS this time around, I did something I’d never done in two decades.
I turned their request down flat.

Three years since I married into the Hawthorne family, I had already lost two children.
And the one who decided whether my babies lived or died wasn't a doctor—it was a potted plant in the manor's living room: the Crimson Orchid.
In this family, if the petals withered and reeked after drinking the pregnancy blood, it was an unbreakable rule: the child had to go.
The first two times, all I could do was lose my children in despair under the anesthetic mask at some underground clinic.
To save my third pregnancy, I secretly went to a top medical center out of state for an amniocentesis.
The diagnosis, there in black and white, proved it: my baby was perfectly healthy and carried the purest family bloodline.
I thought I was safe this time. But when my finger blood dripped into the black soil again, the orchid once more oozed foul-smelling black water.
My in-laws crushed my medical report underfoot without mercy and had their people drag me toward the operating table.
I couldn't understand it: the scientific evidence clearly confirmed my child was healthy and pure-blooded.
Why did they insist on trusting a mutated, stinking flower and killing their own grandchildren over and over again?

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?

In a world where love is a dangerous game, Leila Castor finds herself charmed by the devil himself. Ben Maloney, with his alluring facade and sweet promises, hides an evil truth that threatens Leila's life. When he betrays her, leaving her to choke on her blood, Leila's thirst for revenge knows no bounds.

And luckily fate grants her a second chance, And discovers she has been taken back in time two months before her death! Will she rewrite the wrongs done to her or set out on a path of retribution against those who wronged her?

After losing the baby, I finally gave Silas the one thing he had always craved: a trouble-free marriage.

No more interrogations when he stayed out all night. No more hysterical fits over the presence of his first love.

Even when I was discharged from the hospital, and the nurse asked for my husband's signature, I simply replied with chilling calm, "I don't have a husband."

My love for Silas died right alongside our unborn child.

By the time he finally realized the truth and begged me to come back, it would be far too late.

In my past life, we were camping in the wilderness area of a state park when my best friend handed out "lucky charms" to the whole group. Charms she'd secretly packed full of wildlife attractant.

A wild boar knocked me to the ground outside the cabin door. Its tusks tore into my stomach. I pounded on the wood with both fists, screaming. "Help! Open the door!"

Inside were my boyfriend of two years and the best friend I'd been quietly supporting for just as long. Autumn Warren.

"I'm so sorry, Brynn." Autumn's voice broke into sobs, but her weight stayed pressed hard against the door. "There are boars everywhere. We open that door, we're all dead."

"Just hold on! I'm calling 911!" Wyatt Fletcher's voice rang out with the kind of conviction that cost him absolutely nothing.

I paid for that trip. I'd fallen behind because I'd stopped to pull Autumn along.

And they stood on the other side of that door, my blood soaking into the dirt, and locked me out.

I open my eyes. I'm back. It's the day we left.

That admissions season, Lily — a poor student who couldn't even clear the state university cutoff — insisted on dragging my two childhood friends off to the worst community college in the state, just so she wouldn't have to go alone.

Ethan held an offer from Yale. Ryan had been accepted to Stanford. Yet the two of them, as if under a spell, were ready to throw away those schools just to follow her.

I wore myself out trying to talk them down. All I got back was: You look down on Lily. You're just jealous.

Behind their backs, I contacted counselors, admissions offices, and their parents, and clawed their spots back one by one just before the deadline.

Lily went to that community college alone. Six months later, she jumped from the roof of her dorm.

Ethan and Ryan handled her funeral, then came back and tied me to the roof of a thirty-six-story building.

"If you hadn't stopped us from going with Lily, she never would have been bullied there."

"You're so capable, aren't you? Then go down and keep her company."

They pushed me over the edge without a flicker of hesitation.

When I opened my eyes, I was back at the start of college application season.

This time, I won't save them.

She thought she was human—until she drowned.

She wakes in the body of a missing selkie princess in a hidden island kingdom… and quickly realizes she’ll be executed if anyone discovers the truth.

The only person who knows? Her guard—cold, loyal, and furious she’s taken the place of the woman he was sworn to protect.

When her unstable shifting magic reveals something impossible—both selkie and tideborn blood—he’s forced to keep her secret… because exposing her would destabilize the crown.

Now, bound by duty and necessity, they must secretly search for the real princess—before her magic exposes them both.

BLURB

“I don’t love Selena anymore. All I see is a broken shell…a barren woman.”

Those words, spoken by my husband behind the closed door of his study, were the jagged shards of glass that finally shattered my world.

For years, I endured the physical agony of ten miscarriages and five failed IVFs, believing Franklin was the anchor holding me together. I didn’t know I was actually the anchor dragging him down.

He wants a divorce.

He wants a woman who can give him the family I couldn't.

He wants to be free of the burden of a wife who is falling apart.

But Franklin doesn't know my biggest secret. It isn't just my womb that is failing; it’s my entire body.

I am dying.

Stage four cancer is aggressive, and my time is measured in hours, not years.

I could tell him the truth.

I could watch him stay out of pity, trapped by guilt for the rest of my numbered days, but I love him too much to let him become my martyr.

So, I’ve made him a deal.

I will sign the divorce papers and walk out of his life forever but first, I want twenty-one hours.

One hour for every year we’ve known each other.

One last day to pretend we are still the awkward intern and the protective man who fell in love.

He thinks he’s spending these hours saying goodbye to a woman he no longer wants.

He has no idea he’s actually saying goodbye to a woman who will be dead before the ink on our divorce papers is even dry.

Twenty-one hours of lies.

Twenty-one hours of love.

And then, I’ll let him go.

Forever

Six months ago, a yacht explosion consumed everyone I loved: my husband Leonard, my parents, and my brother.
I escaped only because of stomach pain that kept me from boarding. My adopted sister Claire became the sole survivor.
Since then, I've become an empty shell.
Even after being diagnosed with terminal uterine cancer, even while carrying my late husband's child, I've endured the agony of chemotherapy alone, exhausting what little strength remains to scrape together money for Claire—who hides away in a private care facility, claiming severe PTSD.
Until this winter day, with a blizzard approaching.
Dragging my dying body to my husband's memorial to pay respects, I discovered a credit card statement—charges made three months after his death.
Following the address on that receipt, I pushed open the door of a luxurious suburban villa.
Inside, it was warm as spring. My parents and brother, who should have been at the bottom of the ocean, stood there perfectly alive.
At the center of the room, my husband—the man I'd grieved for day and night—was kissing my adopted sister, his lips tender against hers.
The whole family was celebrating, raising glasses to toast the infant cradled in Claire's arms—barely a month old.
There had never been any disaster at sea.
It was all a meticulously planned hoax—their twisted way to erase me from their lives forever.

When my younger brother got into a top university, the whole family celebrated for him.
I, suffering from a terminal illness, clutched my chest and desperately cried for help, only to be met with a disgusted slap from my mother and the words, "You just can't stand to see your brother doing well!"
She thought I was a spoilsport, so she roughly dragged me back to the room and locked the door from the outside.
She didn't know that those were the last words I ever heard in my life.
The next morning, she opened the door with breakfast in hand, only to find my corpse.