2102 Book(s) Related to to not die ch 1

The day I signed the divorce papers, Ethan Frost lit up the night sky with thousands of drones spelling out, ‘Vivian Moore, I love you.’ The whole city celebrated his new romance.
On our daughter, Sophie’s birthday, he watched coldly as Vivian’s daughter snatched away her favorite Elsa princess cake—and didn’t even blink when I was shoved down the stairs. Bleeding and trembling, I looked up to see him tenderly massaging Vivian’s feet.
But what truly shattered me was the day Sophie struggled in the pool—Ethan held me back, eyes dark, roaring, “What do you want?”
Later, he scrambled to Sophie’s photo on his knees, crying “Where’s Sophie? Bring her out.” While I only felt absurd, I smiled through my tears “you will never see Sophie again—ever.”

My mate—Alpha Jasper—knelt on one knee, proposing to me at my birthday party when Sienna Burrows suddenly appeared.
She was his fated mate once. His first love.
Dressed in the exact same backless red gown I was wearing, she stood there like a queen, regal and untouchable.
She let out a soft, mocking laugh. "Hah. Alpha Jasper, no matter how perfect a copy may be, it will never be me."
Alpha Jasper didn’t even spare her a glance. Instead, he turned to me, gently taking my left hand in his. His voice was deep, filled with emotion.
"Cynthia, will you marry me?"

My name is Michael Carson. On the surface, I'm a small-time analyst in Dallas, but nobody knows that I'm the sole heir to a multi-billion dollar financial empire.

The father's factory was on the verge of bankruptcy, but his wife transferred the money to her mother to open a beauty clinic, saying, "Your dad's lousy factory should have gone out of business long ago."

Her father suffered a heart attack and urgently needed surgery. She then said, "He's over sixty years old, is it worth it?"

I tolerated it. Until she discovered my true identity, she immediately turned on me, threatening divorce and taking half of my assets.

At that moment, I understood—some people don't deserve kindness.

I dialed the family number I hadn't contacted in five years.

They will never forget what happened next.

My husband is an angel on an earthly trial. Every time he feels something for me, he endures divine punishment — like his chest is being ripped open from the inside.

But he told me he'd take that pain gladly, as long as it was for me.

He left a mark on my collarbone. Activate it when you're in danger, he said, and I'll rip through anything to get to you.

I believed him.

Then came a mission where I got grabbed by an armed fugitive gang and held in an abandoned warehouse for three straight days of torture and abuse.

No water. No sleep. The tendons in my hands and feet cut one by one.

Half-dead, I used the last of my strength to activate the mark.

And I heard him talking to his angel companion.

"Beckett, why did you give those people Demi's location? You know what they'll do to her."

He didn't even flinch. "She'll be fine. She's the Chosen One — she can't die. They were going after Macie. I didn't have a choice. Once this mission's over, I can petition to stay on earth. I'll make it up to Demi. She gets it."

So that's the price of being understanding. Dying inside a trap he built for me.

My heart just shatters. And I stop fighting.

Three years ago, billionaire Theodore Chambers handed Victoria Ellis divorce papers with cold eyes and colder words—all for the sake of his first love, Isabella Waters.
Victoria didn't cry. She didn't beg.
She simply signed her name, walked out of that golden cage, and disappeared from the world of the rich.
What the world didn't expect…
Was for the discarded ex-wife to rise from the ashes—not as a socialite, but as the world's most sought-after reconstructive mortician. Behind every high-profile crime scene and closed casket, she was the one restoring dignity to the dead—and building a name powerful enough to shake law enforcement and the elite alike.
Now, at a funeral of all places, their paths cross again.
She stands beside another man, radiant, untouchable.
He watches in disbelief—his ex-wife, no longer his.
"You handle corpses every day. Aren't you afraid of bad luck?" he growls, grabbing her wrist.
She smiles coldly.
"In my heart, the grass over your grave has already grown two meters tall."
But fate has one final card to play.
When Victoria finds Theodore lying in a pool of blood, clutching an old photo of her, everything unravels.
Was it too late after all?
Or is love just another body she's not willing to reconstruct?

"In the toxic halls of Eastview High, Aria Bellwyn has mastered the art of being invisible. But when she's forced to tutor golden boy Knox Hale, she's thrust into a world of danger and desire. As they navigate the treacherous social hierarchy, Aria becomes the target of Knox's manipulative ex, Blaire, and the ruthless queen bee, Sarah. But Knox's secrets run deeper he's trapped in a deadly debt to a local crime lord, and Aria's the only one who can help him take down the corrupt empire controlling the school. As they risk everything to expose the truth, can they survive the betrayal lurking in every corner and find love in the process?

Dive into this heart-pumping, high-stakes romance where the line between invisible and irresistible is about to get blurred."

Victoria discovered that I hadn't submitted any supplemental medical expense claims for two weeks.
She assumed I had finally been disciplined and had given up what she called "the exploitative nature of the lower class."
Little did she know, my backpack held the signed divorce papers and my mother's death certificate.
As I turned to leave, I was still wearing the discounted trench coat she'd casually given me three years ago when we got married.
What she didn't know was that I, a deep-sea geology genius from MIT, willingly endured three years of her humiliation and ridiculous rules, just so my mother could stay in her conglomerate's private hospital to prolong her life.
Now, my mother has died because of unpaid bills , and even her ashes are carried by me in a cheap canvas bag.
Now that my loved one is dead, there's no need for me to continue being her obstructive dog on Wall Street. The lives she owed with those approval forms, I will settle with the collapse of her entire conglomerate empire.

Intro: I'm an S-Class superhuman, but I was locked in a basement for five full years, subjected to inhuman abuse and torment. All they wanted was to drain my blood and energy dry. I once believed that if I could just endure it all, I would see my family again. Until my wife Valen's voice came through the intercom and revealed that it was all a lie. I will turn my fury into strength and tear it all apart with my own hands.

My wife was forced to don a wedding dress to marry my sworn enemy, while my three-year-old daughter was locked in an iron cage suspended above the raging sea.

And I, the dignified Commander-in-Chief of the Blackwater Fleet, was forced to wear a dog collar, kneeling on broken glass and licking up red wine like a crippled stray dog.
All because embedded in their necks were biological bombs, the detonator held in the hands of my enemy.

The elites of the entire island ruthlessly mocked my cowardice, trampling me underfoot in ultimate humiliation.

That was until the climax of the maritime wedding, when my enemy smugly pressed the detonator, only for the collars to flash a safe green light—the full-frequency signal decryption was complete.
Amidst the dead silence of the crowd, I snapped the forged steel chains binding me and slowly stood tall.

The next second, ten nuclear-powered submarines violently breached the ocean surface, and tens of thousands of heavily armored death squads descended from the sky.

Looking at my enemy, now terrified to the point of incontinence and shattering his own knees to frantically kowtow and beg for mercy, I picked up that very dog chain and slipped it around his neck.

After sleeping for a thousand years, I returned to the ancestral castle that was supposed to be mine.
Only to find my throne torn down and turned into an auction block for the black market, my territory carved up clean by traitors.
And my only pureblood descendant in this world was actually being auctioned off like livestock—covered in blood, chained up with a cheap dog collar around his neck.
The entire room of nobles and elites mistook me for the lowest kind of half-blood trash, mocking me as a rat too stupid to know when he was dead.
The usurper, eager to curry favor with the Abyss, shouted that he would drain me dry and offer my blood as a tribute to the three pureblood princes deep within the Abyss.
Then the void split open, and those three supreme princes—the untouchable monsters the world worshiped—truly descended.
Under the horrified gaze of more than a thousand nobles and elites, those three ancient monsters threw themselves at my feet, scrambling and crawling, wailing in terror without even daring to raise their heads:
"Your unworthy descendants... welcome the Ancestor's return!!!"

On the night before my sister's bone marrow transplant, my parents confiscated my EpiPen and locked me in the attic.

Their "genetic consultant" warned them that the medication would contaminate the stem cells meant for my sister.

I had eaten the meal they provided—one secretly laced with lethal traces of nuts.

The resulting anaphylactic swelling was suffocating me completely.

I frantically bashed my head against the door. "My pen... Mom, I can't breathe..."

"Stop putting on a show!" Mom snapped through the wood. "That meal was entirely nut-free! Are you faking an allergic reaction just because you can't stand the thought of your sister finally getting well?"

Her footsteps retreated.

Agonizing pain and oxygen deprivation overtook me as I clawed at the floor until every one of my nails snapped off.

Until my breathing stopped completely.

The world thought I was a broken man after rotting in the Abyss for five years. Even Moretti, the wealthiest mogul in Cold Harbor, dared to point a finger at my nose and demand I kneel.
He razed my estate, seized my daughter, and humiliated my past on a city-wide livestream.
What he didn’t know was that the moment his infrared scanners locked onto me, I had already initiated the sequence for a dormant orbital satellite that had been sleeping above us for five years.
When the skyscraper turns to ash, the man kneeling before me won’t be that arrogant tycoon—only a trembling corpse.
After all, in this city, I don’t believe in reason. I only believe in retribution.

Y

Before the apocalypse hit, my ex-girlfriend called me, laughing like a maniac: "Jack, you pathetic loser—still playing that stupid farming game? Gonna whack zombies with a hoe? Open the door right now, get on your knees, and beg us, and maybe we'll throw you some table scraps."
I listened to the faint scrape of a tactical knife being drawn on the other end of the line, and silently glanced at my computer screen—at the maxed-out Greenfield Manor game, with its gold cap glowing at [999,999,999] .
"You misheard." I dropped my voice, lacing it with just the right amount of embarrassment. "I was checking the weather forecast."
The other end erupted in unrestrained laughter: "Then forecast this—how you're gonna die today!"
I hung up without changing my expression, flipped open the system, and spent a million on the [Absolute Defense Shield] —then brought out a steaming plate of roasted meat.
Forecast?
I forecast that tonight, you'll be gnawed down to bare bones by zombies.

Introduction: Three years ago, to pay for my sister's medical treatment, I willingly took on the role of a servant to the wealthy heiress Daisy, becoming a smuggling criminal and struggling to survive amidst humiliation. Daisy's family, with their cruel hearts, took advantage of the impending apocalyptic cold wave to murder both my sister and me. Reborn, I am determined to rewrite our fate. When hunters who revel in harming unarmed civilians besiege our shelter, I raise my gun—in this apocalyptic cold wave, anyone who dares to harm my sister will die!

Zarelle Feymere—heiress to the most powerful werewolf dynasty in the world—made one mistake: she fell for an Alpha who saw her as nothing more than a rare blood bag.
For three years, she endured the humiliation of a loveless mating, her veins tapped like a commodity to sustain the woman Calden Ashmoor truly loved, Thessaly. His fated mate, who rejected him to marry his brother.
When a web of lies and betrayal is uncovered, Zarelle does the unthinkable: she walks away.
Now, stripped of her disguise as a docile omega, the true daughter of the Missatian Pack returns to claim her birthright—and her revenge.
Calden always thought he’d married a nobody.
He never expected his discarded mate to come back as a queen.

Brooke Mitchell has everything she’s supposed to want: a multimillion-dollar technology company, a powerful family, and a perfect engagement to wealthy heir Cullen Ardner.

Then she discovers what her perfect life was built on.

Hidden financial records connect Cullen’s family to criminal networks, human trafficking, and missing women, and Brooke’s own company has been used to move the money. Worse, her father’s signature is all over the evidence.

Before Brooke can confront him, he’s murdered.

And someone makes sure every piece of evidence points straight at her.

Now Brooke is the primary suspect, her home has been broken into, and someone is hunting for a secret her father left behind. Just as she prepares to run, FBI Special Agent Weston Foxx appears.

He claims he can protect her.

What he doesn’t tell her is that he was sent to capture her.

Weston has already seen the classified intelligence naming Brooke a corporate criminal, traitor, and possible murderer. He believes the case against her, until Brooke starts tearing apart evidence that looks a little too perfect.

Then armed men come to kill her.

Suddenly Weston has a choice: follow his orders or protect the woman he was sent to arrest.

With Brooke’s fiancé hunting them, federal secrets closing in, and neither sure who they can trust, running together may be their only chance to survive.

Falling for each other was never part of the plan.

“This is Virella… my wife.”
Three years.
And that was all Alpha Kaelen gave me.
No welcome.
No touch.
No recognition.
Just another woman at his side—carrying his child.
While I ruled in his absence… I was nothing more than a placeholder.
A Luna he never chose.
So I gave up.
And I left.
One rejection was all it took to break the bond.
When I returned, I wasn’t the Luna he abandoned.
I was untouchable, respected, and feared.
And no longer his to claim.
Now he watches me like a man drowning….
Because the woman he discarded came back as something far beyond his reach.
And this time… I didn’t come alone.
The Alpha of Ebonmoon stands beside me, his presence crushing, and his hand firm on my waist….
“Careful, Kaelen,” his voice drops, dark with warning.
“Rowena isn’t yours anymore.”
His lips brush my temple, possessively.
“She’s mine. If you try to take her…I’ll end you.”

Seven months pregnant, I watched the thugs Vivian hired drag us both into the warehouse.
I didn't fight for that phone. I let Vivian—Sean's ex, the woman he never stopped loving—make the call herself.
Because in my past life, I'd begged desperately for Sean to save me from this carefully orchestrated nightmare.
And he did come. He chose me over her.
Vivian was left behind. Raped. Tortured. Murdered—by the very men she'd paid to stage this.
Afterward, Sean said he didn't blame me. He took care of me through the entire pregnancy. Never missed a single appointment.
Then on the day I went into labor, he handed me over to another pack of monsters.
Everything Vivian endured—the gang rape, the abuse, the humiliation—became mine.
Before burning me alive, he threw our dead baby at my feet, his face twisted with rage:
"You wanted to survive, didn't you? This is the price. I'm going to make you feel everything Vivian felt. Not just you—this bastard that should never have existed."
Those months of tenderness were all an act. Carefully orchestrated torture designed to make my suffering absolute.
When I opened my eyes, I was back in that warehouse—watching Vivian's hired thugs hold up the phone, forcing us to choose who gets saved

During routine rounds, I never gave Linus Crewe a second thought. Nineteen years old, diagnosed with persistent hallucinatory disorder, just another trust fund kid tossed into the psych ward like garbage by his own family.
But that day, he locked eyes with me and claimed that the moment his skin touched someone else's, he could see their deepest, darkest secrets.
I scoffed. As a female doctor who married into money, harbored a thirst for revenge, and kept a secret lover on the side, someone seeing through my facade was my ultimate nightmare.
I thought he was just playing mind games.
Until he recounted, word for word, things even my husband didn't know. He just smiled and said: Then tell me, Dr. Hollister... why is your heart racing when you look at me?

My world began to crumble the day my adopted sister, Opal, forced her way back into my life with a fatherless daughter in her arms.
My eldest son, Finn, was strapped to an operating table and used for live experiments until he was tortured to death. His remains were tossed into Death Valley.
For her, my husband struck me, costing me my second unborn child.
For her, my own brother locked me in a freezing dungeon. And my late father? He had been a slave to her charms long before he died.
While they threw a lavish birthday party for Opal’s daughter in the brightly lit banquet hall, I was pinned down by dungeon guards, my clothes being ripped off, inch by inch...

My Alpha, Ryan, not only cheated but also declared that our marriage was "open" and told me not to interfere with his relationship with Beta Emily. I was both furious and heartbroken. In order to get back at him, I followed the advice of the rogue wolf Luke and made him my "fake boyfriend" to provoke Alpha Ryan. Just then, the young and beautiful Omega Alex stormed into my life like a whirlwind, fervently pursuing me. I’m determined to take back what’s mine and make those who have hurt me realize that I, Julie, am not someone to mess with!

She knelt in the pouring rain, pounding on my glass door, covered in mud, her voice hoarse from shouting. I stood inside, holding Lily's hand. She called my name, over and over, like calling a dead person. I lowered my head and said to Lily, "Come on, Daddy will take you to dinner." Then I turned and closed the door. From beginning to end, I didn't look at her once. Not because I still hated her. It was because she meant nothing to me anymore. And that woman didn't know—three years ago, when she threw me away like trash, I had already learned not to cling to trash.

For fifteen years, Anastasia Stafford lived a life defined by a single, cruel purpose: to serve as a living blood bank for her adopted sister.

She gave everything—her health, her talent, and her dignity—only to be discarded and betrayed by the very family she tried so hard to please.

Her first life ended in tragedy, falling from a building with nothing but regret.

But fate has granted her a second chance.

Waking up on her twenty-third birthday, Anastasia decides she is done being the silent victim.

She steps away from the toxic Stafford Family and turns to the one thing they could never take from her: her extraordinary talent for design.

She catches the eye of Richard Roosevelt , a powerful CEO who offers her a partnership rather than pity.

Anastasia is no longer just surviving;

she is systematically dismantling the family that ruined her ，and hunting for the truth behind her mother’s death.

He was the most dazzling yet tragic golden-tier bodyguard of Apex Sentinel Group. Six years ago, betrayed by Robert, he was shot multiple times and thrown into the sea. On the brink of death, he was saved by the chemist Michael. Now, six years later, he has become the feared "Mr. M," master of Apex Global Enterprises. To repay the debt of his life, he returns to his old grounds, only to find his savior missing and his twin daughters in grave danger. As old enemies, greedy elites, and dark capital intertwine once more, the dormant warrior bares his fangs. This time, with absolute power, he will crush every conspiracy, protect those he holds dear, and make the world remember the terror of being dominated

"Are you out of your mind?"

"The scouts are coming tomorrow, and you want to ditch the regional finals just to take care of her after a botched cosmetic procedure?"

I tipped off the school board to stop him from ruining his life.

Because of me, he won the championship and secured his draft pick. But because he stood her up, his girlfriend dumped him.

Years later, he sat at the top of a billion-dollar sports enterprise, while I was a researcher working for him.

Out of nowhere, he brought a carbon-fiber hockey stick down on my hands, crushing my finger bones to splintered dust

"Maeve, you cold, calculating machine," he spat. "This is your karma."

When I opened my eyes again, the agonizing pain was gone.

I had just been given a second chance.

What is fate? Waking up three days after you rejected your fated mates in front of the entire school, with the memories of your husband's betrayal still burning in your chest? Or finding out that the only way to save your empire is to compete for love on national television—against the man who murdered you?

Make your pick.

Odessa Montgomery died at thirty—cheated on, poisoned, and blown to pieces by the husband she trusted. Then she opened her eyes at twenty-one, three days after the mating gala where she publicly rejected the De Luca triplets. The rejection is still fresh. The whole school is still talking. And Damien Gracias, her charming hockey-star boyfriend, has no idea she remembers every lie he ever told her.

She dumps him. Publicly. Brutally. But freedom comes at a cost. Her grandfather's will is clear: find a mate or lose the Montgomery empire. With Damien out and the De Luca triplets—her humiliated fated mates—lurking in her past, her options are nothing.

Then comes Moonlit Bonds, a televised competition where unmated shifters compete for love and a life-changing prize. Win, and her inheritance is hers. Lose, and lose everything.

There's just one problem. Damien and his true mate, Sarah, have joined the show, hoping to legitimize their bond on camera. And the De Luca triplets are also contestants—three alphas she rejected, two who bullied her, and one who has never stopped watching.

Now Odessa is trapped in a villa with cameras in every corner, a public audience that votes on her fate, and enemies who want her dead.

She came to win.

She might just find revenge.

But falling for the enemy? That was never part of the plan.

My girlfriend told me she was part of a social experiment. Her task was to get close to a target, and if she quit, she’d owe a crushing penalty.

So she kept canceling on me, staying out all night, and letting another man hold her—then came home in tears and said she had no choice.

I believed her for three years.

What she never knew was that I was the hidden heir to a billion-dollar family empire. While we were together, I was under a private family test and forbidden to reveal who I really was.

The day that test ended, I took back my name.

The first thing I did wasn’t return to the boardroom. I went straight to the lab behind her so-called experiment.

The man in charge turned the screen toward me. “We never had any massive penalty. The contract is clear. She could have quit at any time.”

Three years. No forced mission. No trap she couldn’t escape.

Every line she crossed, she chose to cross herself.

I didn’t confront her. I just took my things, ended the relationship, and walked away.

She thought I was just angry.

She had no idea that after reclaiming my identity, the first thing I did was uncover every lie she had ever told me.

Before the zombie outbreak, I was a hardcore doomsday prepper. I hoarded countless supplies, but when the apocalypse actually arrived, I ended up turning into a zombie myself. Just as I was overwhelmed with panic, my girlfriend and the guy she was cheating on me with brought a mob of thugs to smash down my door...

Last life, my girlfriend was trapped in a fire. I ran in, took the burns, and dragged her out alive.
When she woke up, she pointed at me first: “He’s the arsonist.”

Only later did I learn the truth—she’d been sleeping with her boss. They set the fire for an insurance payout and pinned everything on me.
Police investigations, the company cutting ties, the media turning me into a monster—I couldn’t prove a thing. I died in the rain, discarded like trash.

This time, I didn’t expose them. I didn’t call the cops.
On the night of the fire, I left early—then staged a robbery and walked myself into a police station, building the cleanest alibi possible.

They lit the match on schedule, trapped themselves, and waited for me to charge in.
As the flames grew and I never showed, she called—furious—demanding I come now.

I glanced at the officer taking my statement and said into the phone, calmly:
“Sorry. I can’t leave right now.”

As the extreme cold apocalypse arrives, my most trusted protégé conspires with other shareholders to force me from power. Everyone is watching me become a laughingstock.

Just as I reach the brink of desperation and prepare to sign my resignation, countless scrolling comments suddenly cover my vision.

They're frantically displaying information about the future, such as—in three days, the apocalypse will end...

In my past life, my brother-in-law predicted the coming of an extreme cold apocalypse and claimed he would awaken a spatial ability on the day it arrived.
I didn't believe him, but under pressure from my wife's family, I purchased supplies anyway. Then the frozen apocalypse actually came.
I thought we'd survive together as a family, but my brother-in-law had bragged about his spatial ability and massive supplies before awakening. When his ability manifested, the space was pitifully small, and everyone he'd told came to rob us.
When food ran out, my wife's family turned on me, killing and eating me.
Reborn, I've decided to take revenge on my wife's entire family. And it all starts with secretly building my own shelter.

My daughter has been blind since birth. On her eighteenth birthday, she finally received news of a matching cornea donor.
Our whole family was so excited we couldn't sleep that night. My husband and daughter eagerly prepared for the surgery, their hearts filled with hope that she would soon see the light.
But I suddenly slammed my hand on the table and, amidst the family's stunned gazes, proposed a divorce on the spot.
My husband's face turned ashen as he demanded harshly, "You want a divorce just because I'm going through with our daughter's surgery?"
I curled the corner of my mouth and enunciated every word: "That's right. Because you're going through with her surgery—this marriage is over."

Maya finally felt her life was back on track. Being upgraded from a waitress to being a part of a multinational industry was a dream come true. Little did she know, that the best thing has quickly turned into a nightmare when she crashes straight into him. He who destroyed her with a single gaze. He who was Elijah Frost, Owner of the said multinational industry, EJF industries.


He pushed me hard against the wall and lifted my hands above my head, making i hard to move a inch.

He stepped so close, his chest pressed with mine.

"Mr. Frost, I dont..."

"Say my name" He interrupted, whispering in my ear

"Please, let me go" I whispered back breathlessly

"Say my name and I will Maya." He demanded but i knew. I knew the minute i give in. I will be ruined. But that thought didn't seem so bad with him so near me. Smelling his masculine scent, feeling his hand roaming up and down my body.

I wanted to give in. I wanted to feel him. I wanted him. So i gave him what he wanted.

"Elijah, please" i whispered.

The words were nearly out of my mouth when his lips came crashing down to mine giving me what i wanted the moment i first saw him.


What will become of Maya when she is faced with challenge after challenge from her oh so hot boss?

My target should be terrified of me.
Instead, he's smirking like he already knows I'll never pull the trigger.
My heart races in my chest. This isn't me.
I am born to kill. I am born to take orders.
Yet those eyes, they're killing me.

She was born into power.
Now she chooses revenge.

Valentina Santangelo doesn’t belong in the shadows.
She was raised in them.

Daughter of a legacy built on blood, secrets, and ruthless control, Valentina has spent her life watching empires rise… and enemies fall. She knows the rules of this world. She knows how to survive it.

What she didn’t expect…
was to become its most dangerous player.

When betrayal rips through her family and threatens everything her father built, Valentina is done standing on the side-lines. She steps into the game—cold, calculated, and ready to make them pay.

But revenge has a price.

And the man standing in her way?
He’s not just her enemy…
He’s the one man who sees through every wall she’s built.

Dark. Dangerous. Impossible to resist.

As loyalty turns to obsession and desire collides with vengeance, Valentina must decide how far she’s willing to go—
and whether love is worth the risk of losing everything.

Because in her world…
you don’t fall in love.

You survive it.

Six years ago, Marlowe Kestrel drowned in the Duskhaven canals, or at least that is what the obituary said, what the empty coffin implied, and what every ruling House in the city has believed ever since.

In reality she swam two streets over, bribed a mortician with a forged signature, and built herself a new, gloriously unremarkable life as a small time magical forger who fixes other people's problems for coin and never, ever asks about bloodlines. It was a good plan.

It worked for six entire years, which is roughly five years and eleven months longer than anyone expected a Kestrel to survive in hiding. Then Jonas, the only man alive who knew her real name, turns up dead in his own workshop with a mark burned into his palm that Marlowe has spent her whole life trying to forget she carries too, and the only lead worth following belongs to Cassian Draven, heir to the most feared criminal House in the city, a man with a smile like a drawn blade and a family reputation built on making problems disappear as thoroughly as Marlowe once did herself.

Cassian recognizes her in under a minute, does not turn her in, and instead offers a deal she has no good reason to accept and every practical reason to take, pose as his fiancée at the season's summit of ruling Houses, help him smoke out whoever is hunting them both, and maybe, if she is very lucky and very careful, walk away with her second fake death arranged before anyone notices the first one was fake too.

The trouble is, the longer she spends pretending to love a Draven, the harder it gets to remember that hating him was ever supposed to be the easy part.

I’m a retired special forces soldier.

Three months ago, my little brother vanished—and every lead went dead.

I tracked the trail to a private rehab clinic on a tropical island. On the surface, it’s wellness and recovery. Underneath, it’s an organ market.

Following the clinic led me to one person—her. She specializes in luring “donors” through the front door.

To avenge my brother, I got close on purpose and let her become my girlfriend.

She thought I was easy money, a body delivered to her table, and she brought me into that clinic herself.

She didn’t know I’d been waiting for this moment for three months.

On the operating table, the needle hovered three centimeters from my skin.

She thought I was finished.

She didn’t know these hands have held a gun—and snapped more than a few necks.

My wife and in-laws have been acting strange lately.

They've always hated the Texas farm, but now they suddenly care about me and the ranch.

My wife, who used to complain about me spending money on the "doomsday bunker" farmhouse project, is now actually encouraging me to complete it.

They even say I've been working too hard and bought me a plane ticket to Mexico.

Just as I'm about to take the ticket, a barrage comment appears before my eyes—

【Don't go! Your wife has been reborn from the apocalypse—she wants you to die out there!】

At the company's annual client appreciation dinner, I was the one in charge of booking the venue.
To save the company money, I picked my aunt's upscale restaurant with a skyline view. Since we were family, she only charged us at cost. When I posted the details in our Slack channel to confirm with the team, no one had any objections—except for the intern, who slowly tagged me in the chat:
[Arthur, I don't mean anything by it.]
[I just want to ask—how big a kickback did you get for booking your family's restaurant?]
[After all, the money for this dinner is coming out of our bonus pool.]
[So you should return that money to the rest of us, right?]
The other coworkers started liking the message and chiming in to support him.
So I dropped the whole thing on the spot and handed the task over to that intern, who loved talking about "fixing workplace injustice."
Then the night of the dinner came.
From the CEO all the way down to the investors, everyone was pinned on the deck and searched by armed Coast Guard officers.
The most important client contact collapsed from a heart attack on the spot and was airlifted by helicopter straight to the ICU, costing the company a multimillion-dollar enterprise cybersecurity contract.

On my wedding night, I discovered the man in my bed wasn't my husband.
It was his twin brother—the one the family had exiled.
In my previous life, I exposed them in a rage.
My cheating husband came back, smashed my head open, and threw me into the ocean to be fed to the sharks.
But this time, reborn with a second chance, I cupped the face of the man in front of me—the face identical to my husband's—and slowly untied my wedding dress.
"Since he personally delivered you to my bed, then from now on... you're the husband."
This time, I'm going to raise up the loyal stand-in, and take everything from that bastard.

My name is Grace Lawson. In everyone’s eyes, I’m a young, beautiful, and widely renowned hypnotist.
I’m also the girlfriend and cooperative partner of Adrian Carter, a rising star in the business world.
Lovers and partners—we raked in money together, winning big and shining bright.
In just three years—one thousand days and nights—I stood by him from nothing to everything, through every storm.
And yet, even with love and profit working well together, he still wouldn’t bring up marriage.
Until I happened to hear him say:
“A woman like Grace Lawson isn’t suited to be a wife.”
“Who knows if the love I feel for her is just one of her schemes?”
Later, I broke my promise and hypnotized him.
That was when he finally got scared—when he understood my hypnosis could make him willingly do anything.
But I only said softly: “Adrian Carter, close your eyes… Forget me. Forget me completely.”

I hate Beckett Hayes.
I hate his stupidly perfect face.
I hate the arrogant smirk that has sold millions of jerseys.
I hate that half of Chicago seems to worship the ground his skates touch.
But mostly? I hate what he did to my brother.
Eight years ago, Beckett Hayes destroyed my family. I haven't spoken to him since.
So naturally, on the first morning of my dream job with Chicago's hottest professional hockey team, I find him leaning against my office door.
Older. Bigger. Hotter. And wearing the same infuriating smile I remember.
My new job should have nothing to do with Beck. Until another one of the captain's scandals lands him in trouble and management decides I'm exactly the person he needs.
Now I'm traveling with him. Managing him. Arguing with him. Trying very hard not to notice what years of professional hockey have done to his body.
Then a photograph of us nearly kissing goes viral.
Suddenly everyone wants Beckett Hayes and Sloane Mercer together. The team. The sponsors. The fans. Everyone except me.
Because I know exactly who Beck is. At least, I thought I did.
But the closer I get to him, the more the story I've believed for eight years starts falling apart.
Beck didn't destroy my brother. He protected him.
And the man I've spent almost a decade hating? He's spent every one of those years wanting me.

"Evelyn Drake, are you truly set on joining the FBI as an undercover agent?"
The senior officer Garrett stared intently at the elegantly dressed woman before him, his gaze laced with inquiry and faint doubt.
It was his occupational habit, even a special knack, to categorize everyone he met into distinct social ranks—and he was exceptionally good at it, never once misjudging anyone.
In his eyes, Evelyn Drake, with her flawless makeup and platinum-blonde hair all the way down to the roots, was far from cut out to be an agent.
He had seen countless such pampered wealthy wives throwing petty tantrums. Most would make a scene at the front desk, only to be coaxed home meekly by their rich husbands soon after.
If such a delicate lady were admitted into the FBI, he suspected even the Kevlar bulletproof vest alone would chafe her soft skin raw.
Lost in these thoughts, Garrett let out a disdainful chuckle, his tone brimming with scorn. "Are you really sure? You'd give up your lavish lifestyle to become an FBI agent?"
Sensing his contempt, Evelyn took off her expensive wristwatch and slipped it into her handbag, then nodded firmly at him. "I am absolutely certain."

BLURB
"You're the only one who can wake me. Now you'll carry my curse, and my crown."
When Aria Silverthorn's fiancé and stepsister publicly accused her of being Omega-born fraud, stripping her rank and dignity, she lost everything. Cast into the Forsaken Lands to die, she survived three months of hell—and desperation drove her to the forbidden Moonfall Crypt, where Alpha King Kael Nightfang has been entombed for five years.
The Council claims he died heroically. The truth? They poisoned him with wolfsbane silver, trapping him in death-sleep when he discovered their corruption.
When Aria touches his tomb seeking shelter, the impossible happens. He wakes—but only she can anchor him to life. Only her touch keeps him from slipping back into the void. Their bond is immediate, undeniable, and dangerous.
Kael should be dead. The Council made sure of it. For five years, his consciousness has been trapped between life and death, aware of every agonizing moment.
Until Aria.
She's his anchor. His prison. His salvation. And he's not letting her go, not when she's the key to his revenge and reclaiming his throne.
But their bond goes deeper than magic. They're true mates,a connection so rare it hasn't occurred in centuries. A bond the Council will kill to prevent, because true mates can challenge their entire corrupt system.

"We are denying coverage for your father's surgery. You can either pay the $240,000 out of pocket, or wait for him to be paralyzed for the rest of his life."
My father was critically injured, the insurance company denied the claim, and the regional director arrogantly threw the denial letter in my face.
I gave a cold sneer and backhandedly slapped my Juris Doctor (JD) dissertation on his desk.

Seven years ago, my wife and son committed perjury in court, conspiring to send me to a high-security prison, all so they could elope with that fraudster.
Seven years later, I was released.
My ex-wife, with her son, arrogantly tossed a business card onto my faded work clothes:
"Go kowtow to my new husband and apologize, and I'll give you a waiter's job."
Little did she know that just hours later, at a top-tier financial summit across America, her seemingly untouchable new husband was kneeling at my feet like a dog.
And her proud multi-billion dollar empire was nothing more than garbage I could crush with a flick of my finger.