278 Book(s) Related to this time next year

"I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you walk into that biology classroom six years ago."

Cedric froze. He thought he was just an anonymous server in a high-end mafia club, wearing a wire for the police to clear his $500,000 debt. But the man sitting in the VIP booth—Gianni Falcone, the most dangerous crime lord in New York—wasn't a stranger. He was Gus Franco, the quiet kid from high school who used to stare at the back of Cedric's neck.

"I watched you waste yourself on people who didn't deserve you," Falcone whispered, his hand cupping Cedric's jaw with terrifying gentleness. "I orchestrated everything. The debt, the job, the desperation. I burned down your world just to clear a path for you to walk into my arms."

Cedric realized too late: He wasn't here to catch a criminal. He was the prize waiting to be claimed.

Betrayal cuts very deep, but who says revenge can't be sweeter and satisfying?

Married to the one man who once claimed he loved her wholeheartedly, Claire is broken when she finds out about her dear husband’s endless escapades. To make matters worse, he had also been cheating on her with his secretary and had gotten her pregnant, yet he tortured her physically, mentally and emotionally and wasn't remorseful about it.

Determined to take revenge on him for the intentional pain he had caused her over the years, she set out to shatter his world completely. She does the unthinkable, and is about to turn the tables in the most shocking way.

At twenty one, Liyana Whitmore inherits everything—billions, power, and a legacy built to shake the world.
There’s just one problem.
To claim it, she has to live for five years under the guardianship of Matthew Everleigh—her father’s closest friend… and the man she once swore she’d marry(at age seven,by the way).
Now he’s older, colder, and hiding secrets she was never meant to uncover.
And someone out there?
Wants her dead?!

Aurora Baylee, a vampire, is in an illicit relationship with a werewolf. Her father and all the vampires strongly opposed the relationship. She decides to go with her boyfriend Igor. However, the father manages to capture them and punish Aurora to ashes.

Life passed for a thousand years. Aurora returned to life as an ordinary human. She is a company owner engaged in hospitality and she is also a hitman. She goes on a mission and reunites with Igor.

Igor is sure that Aurora is his lover. He struggled to get it back. However, everything he did didn't work out, and Aurora didn't believe everything Igor said. Just when Igor almost made Aurora believe, Marcus came, who was Aurora's father in the past. Marcus intends to finish off Aurora and Igor because of past grudges that destroyed all his people.

Will their thousand-year love have a happy ending? Or did Marcus again manage to finish off Aurora like a thousand years ago?

I've caught my fiancé Henry cheating ninety-nine times. And every single time, I forgave him.

That's because I have this rare condition—short-term memory loss. Every morning, I wake up with no memory of what happened the day before.

But then, out of nowhere, a car accident actually cured me.

I was so excited. I rushed over to tell Henry the good news, but stopped cold when I heard him outside the door, joking around with his friends:

"Didn't Judy get sick because she walked in on you and Kenna having sex?"

“Oh yes, more. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
I arch my body, reaching the height of intimacy—until a sharp gunshot snuffs out all pleasure. This is how I die in Vito’s arms at twenty-three, four years from now.
Reborn at nineteen, I have one goal: save money, escape to Switzerland, and never cross his path again.
Yet fate traps me once more in his bed. I surrender, trying to set boundaries. “Don’t worry, Don. I have a fiancé. I won’t bother you.”
But this life, Vito is crueler and far more possessive. He invades my life, locking me up and taking away all my freedom.
I attempt another escape, only to be hunted down and dragged back. Shattered and enraged, I shout at him, “Don—no, Vito. You’re a monster.”
Onlookers stare in shock as the fearsome mafia king drops to his knees, begging humbly for me.
“Aria, marry me. Please.”
“My little bird… let’s have a baby. Please.”
He strikes a deal with me: three years. If I never fall in love with him by then, he’ll send me to Switzerland and leave me alone forever.
Still, as he touches me gently, a chilling fear consumes me: Will I end up dying in his bed all over again?

I donated a kidney to my adopted sister.

Seven days later, I lay on the cold hospital bed, listening to my fiancé and family laughing down the hall.

They were popping champagne to celebrate my adopted sister's discharge.

No one remembered I had just had surgery. No one remembered my nut allergy.

When someone handed me a plate of almonds, I smiled.

I shoved them into my mouth, handful after handful, and swallowed them down. Then I told them I was done fighting for their love.

My fiancé demanded I postpone our wedding. My brother beat me until I bled and locked me on the rooftop to die.

After being abandoned eighty-eight times, I finally learned how to love myself—by cutting everyone who failed me out of my life.

“When you think that life cannot get better, Blake Pierce comes up with another masterpiece of thriller and mystery! This book is full of twists, and the end brings a surprising revelation. Strongly recommended for the permanent library of any reader who enjoys a very well-written thriller.”--Books and Movie Reviews (re Almost Gone) A MURDER IN PARIS is the debut novel in a charming new cozy mystery series by USA Today bestselling author Blake Pierce, whose #1 bestseller Once Gone has received 1,500 five-star reviews.Diana Hope, 55, is still adjusting to her recent separation when she discovers her ex-husband has just proposed to a woman 30 years younger. Secretly hoping they would reunite, Diana is devastated. She realizes the time has come to reimagine life without him—in fact, to reimagine her life, period.Devoting the last 30 years of her life to being a dutiful wife and mother and to climbing the corporate ladder, Diana has been relentlessly driven, and has not taken a moment to do anything for herself. Now, the time has come.Diana never forgot her first boyfriend, who begged her to join him for a year in Europe after college. She had wanted to go so badly, but it had seemed like a wild, romantic idea, and a gap year, she’d thought, would hinder her resume and career. But now, with her daughters grown, her husband gone, and her career no longer fulfilling, Diana realizes it’s time for herself—and to take that romantic year in Europe she’d always dreamed of.Diana prepares to embark on the year of her life, finally turning to her bucket list, hoping to tour the most beautiful sights and sample the most scrumptious cuisines—and maybe, even, to fall in love again. But a year in Europe may have different plans in store for her. Can A-type Diana learn to go with the flow, to be spontaneous, to let down her guard and to learn to truly enjoy life again?In A MURDER IN PARIS (Book #1), Diana hopes to kick off her journey, and find new love, with an unforgettable night at the Versailles ball. But when the dramatic night takes a harrowing turn she could never expect, Diana realizes she will have to solve the crime—or else have her trip end in disaster.A YEAR IN EUROPE is a charming and laugh-out-loud cozy mystery series, packed with food and travel, with mysteries that will leave you on the edge of your seat, and with experiences that will leave you with a sense of wonder. As Diana embarks on her quixotic quest for love and meaning, you will find yourself falling in love and rooting for her. You will be in shock at the twists and turns her journey takes as she somehow finds herself at the center of a mystery, and must play amateur sleuth to solve it. Fans of books like Eat, Pray, Love and Under the Tuscan Sun have finally found the cozy mystery series they’ve been hoping for!Book #2 (DEATH IN FLORENCE) and book #3 (VENGEANCE IN VIENNA) in the series are now also available!

Three years ago, I exhausted everything I had in the Abyss Game to save my critically ill wife.
Three years later, my wife and her lover became an inseparable pair in the Abyss Game. To save their own lives, they used my only sister as a substitute, sending her to a dangerous situation where she was devoured by ghouls.
They thought I had lost everything and could be humiliated at will.
But when I chose to accept becoming the master of the Abyss Game, why did they suddenly kneel down and beg for mercy?

I'm crouched on this fucking balcony clutching a pregnancy test, hands shaking like a leaf—two blazing red lines staring me in the face. I was such a goddamn fool thinking I'd tell Remy about our baby tonight. What a sick joke!
The banquet hall's roaring below and there's that bastard on stage, arm wrapped around Olivia, shouting "This winery has NO future without her!" Each word slams into me like a sledgehammer. TEN FUCKING YEARS! When he was drowning in debt, I sold every piece of Mom's jewelry to save his ass!
Then the son of a bitch hurls a box of abortion pills at me like I'm garbage: "Kill it, or Olivia's daddy pulls his money."
I'm glaring at that box and it hits me—ten years of my life pissed away on this piece of shit, and now even the innocent baby growing inside me is worth less than his blood money! I gave him everything and he's ready to murder our child for a fucking check!

At the bar, I watched Ethan get publicly dumped and made a crazy proposal fueled by liquid courage—a three-month fake dating contract.

I thought this was my only chance after twenty years of secret crushing. Until his ex showed me the text: "With Mia? Pretty convenient. She's been following me around since we were kids."

So I was just a tool.

The day we broke up, he shouted with red eyes: "I've been crazy about you for twenty years!" I thought he was acting, until his mom handed me a worn journal—

That careless comment I made at thirteen, "I'm never marrying Ethan," he'd remembered for twenty whole years.

Every page of that diary was filled with my name...

My mad mother, in her final moments, pressed a set of Russian nesting dolls into my arms.
"These cost me thirty years of my life. In return, they'll give you three ways out of death."
The first doll told me to go to a bar and bring home the third strange man I met.
The second doll, she said to open on the eve of my wedding. There was no note inside. Only a photograph — my groom, killing a woman wearing the exact same wedding dress as mine.
Three years later, on the eve of another wedding, I opened the last doll. I read the note, smiled, and dropped it in the trash.
It was only later that I understood —
This mad woman saw more clearly than anyone sane in this world.
Mom, I'm sorry.

Seven years ago, I was Velmoor City’s youngest surgeon. A bloodied nursing assistant knelt at my feet, weeping that her thug boyfriend was going to beat her to death. I gave her my guest room.
On her chemo bed, my mother gripped my hand, begging me to kick that woman out. I said she had nowhere else to go.
Later, I caught her wearing my pajamas in my own home. Then, I caught her and my husband naked in his office. Immediately after, a fatal medical error was pinned on me, and my medical license was revoked.
My husband looked at me arrogantly and said: I can liquidate everything I own to settle this for you. On one condition—divorce.
What he didn’t know was that I was pregnant. On the day of the divorce, the judge read out the division of assets: $26.30.
Seven years later, I took a catering gig at a billionaire’s mansion. Less than half an hour into the banquet, his seven-year-old daughter pointed at my seven-year-old daughter. “She stole my ten-million-dollar diamond necklace!”
I looked up and finally recognized him. The billionaire was my "bankrupt" ex-husband. And the woman clinging to his arm, dripping in diamonds, was the nursing assistant who had once knelt at my feet.

It was my fourth time putting on a wedding dress.

To protect myself against my own parents, I hired a ten-man security detail.

I specifically chose the most isolated chapel in the suburbs.

Because at my first three weddings, they acted like absolute maniacs—destroying my rings and making me a complete laughingstock in front of everyone.

I just couldn't understand what kind of parents would do such a thing.

This time, I actually thought I could finally marry Liam in peace.

Until the bridal suite door was kicked open.

And my dad, once again, snatched my diamond ring away.

"Mine," he growled, low and deep.
My entire body wanted to surrender.

"I’m not yours."

He tightened his grip on me.

"You don’t want me to chase you, do you?" His voice sounded almost animal. "Unless…"

"Unless what?"

"There’s another way to settle this."

✽ ✽ ✽

An imposed destiny.
A choice denied.

Promised since childhood, she was raised for one purpose — to become the wolf prince’s wife.

But when the ruthless Alpha King breaks the pact and decides to claim her for himself, Morana realizes that running is no longer an act of rebellion — it is survival.

As the king begins his relentless hunt, she finds refuge among a group of rebel wolves.

She should fear them.

Instead, to be accepted, she must prove her worth while facing the challenge of being the only female living among males ruled by wild instincts and barely restrained desires.

Amid a battle for power and freedom, Morana seeks to uncover the secrets of the past and the mystery of the bond that ties her to the man she should hate.

Torn between an ardent, inexplicable attraction to the wolf prince and a growing passion for the rebel leader, she must decide whether to fight destiny… or surrender to a connection that threatens to suffocate her freedom to choose.

18+ | Explicit Sexual Content

Madeleine has seen spirits since she was a small child. It runs in her family and she has never known any different. But when she goes to her favorite antique shop and notices that the plain silver band she has had her eyes set on for three years is still there, she finally decides to purchase it. As soon as she touches the ring, a spirit of a man, Christian, appears and follows her around the shop. The more she learns of his story, the more she learns about herself until she falls for him. Fate has a mysterious way of working. With one life altering moment, she is faced with the very spirit that has been around her. A model in a coma named, Christian.

Warnings: life altering injuries, sexual content, and violence.

Age Suggestion: 18+

The Unwanted Ring: A Romance that Stood the Test of Time is created by Minette Enfers, an eGlobal Creative Publishing signed author.

After being reborn, my cousin and I swapped mates.
Last life, she married Kaelen Thornfield — the coldest Alpha in the West. Fifty years together and he never marked her. Not once. His childhood "friend," an Omega with a PhD in crying on command, made sure of that. My cousin faded into nothing. Unmarked. Unloved. Invisible.
Me? I married a man who couldn't stand the sound of my voice. Eleven months. Done.
This time, I took the western contract. Drove three days across the country in a beat-up truck, blew a radiator in the middle of nowhere, and rolled into his pack's territory covered in engine grease and smelling like a gas station.
His little Omega took one look at me and wrinkled her nose.
She has no idea what's coming.
I don't do tears. I don't do subtle. And when some girl sobbed at my mating ceremony about how jealous she was of me — I grabbed my Alpha by the collar and sank my teeth into his neck.
In front of the entire pack.
Without asking.

Seven years. Seven bonding ceremonies. Seven times a pack of feral strays charged through the territory on the full moon and tore into me before the marking could take.
I thought the Moon Goddess had cursed us.
Then I woke up in the pack hospital and heard my Alpha whispering to her — the delicate white wolf he called his "sister."
"Next time you let them in, could you tell them to go easier? I'm scared she might actually die."
Seven years of attacks. Every single one orchestrated by the man I loved, designed to break me down until I gave up the Luna title and made room for her.
So I played the recording in front of his grandmother, looked him in the eye, and ended the engagement myself.
He thought that was the worst I could do.
He had no idea what those seven years had already cost me — what was already shutting down inside my body while he stood there worrying about her.
By the time he found out, it was far too late.

I’m Leona, and I’ve hidden a forbidden love under the moonlight of the werewolf world for nine long years—an unspoken bond with my brother’s closest friend, Alpha Nick.
When he looked at me and said, “I’ll find someone better for you,” there was a flicker in his eyes I couldn’t read. But when he turned away, it was to chase after his ex-girlfriend, Selene, crashing through the forest branches like gravity itself answered her call. “His wolf never resonated with ours.” Aris, my wolf, howled inside me.“You’ve spent years trying to spark fire in frozen stone.”
And yet, I was the fool who mistook the instinct for fated love.
In my past life, when I was seven months pregnant and trapped beneath an avalanche during a winter patrol, he was tucked in a border cave listening to Selene sing ballads under moonlit stalactites.
When I was curled in pain from stomach ulcers, he was busy tuning her purification crystals.
Even when I was shoved into the river by Selene, it wasn’t my drowning body he s

Five years after breaking the mate bond, Vincent became one of the youngest Alphas of the North, worth hundreds of billions, with a fiancée who was a perfect match for him — the daughter of Silver Claw Pack’s Alpha.
But I had already disappeared from his world, my name now only whispered in rumors about me being a bar hostess at Midnight Howl Bar, catering to Alphas and nobility.
When someone mentioned my name to him, he simply held his fiancée’s hand with a cold look in his eyes.
"I don't know her."
At his bonding ceremony, everyone congratulated the "perfect match."
But I, floating in the air, watched as Vincent stood beside his dazzling Luna.
What he didn't know...
He was the only Alpha I ever loved.
What he didn’t know...
I had been dead for a year.
Before I died, I was desperately earning money just to get our daughter the treatment she needed.
Then one day...
He found me at the Midnight Howl Bar where I worked in life, catching a faint but familiar scent of me. That moment...
His wolf spirit completely lost control.

The year the gas swallowed the world, I helped design and build Dome City with my own hands, keeping the last survivors alive.

I thought I was protecting hope.

Then I stumbled onto the Council’s secret: the poison outside is fading—but they chose to hide it. Worse, they plan to manufacture and release more gas, locking everyone inside forever, under their rule.

Before I could expose the truth, the person I trusted most struck me from behind.

My girlfriend—Vera Walker.

She took my evidence, stripped my access, and traded me for a higher rank.

When I woke up, I was outside the Dome in toxic fog—my identity erased, my lungs burning, my vision slipping.

They dumped me like trash, certain I wouldn’t last the night.

They forgot one thing.

Dome City is my blueprint, my welds, my pipes—my work.

And I’m back.

Twenty-one times.

I've signed the mate bond with Kael Nightshade, Lord of the Black Panther Clan, twenty-one times.

And dissolved it twenty-one times.

Not because we didn't love each other.

But because every few months, she comes back.

Seraphine. His first love. The angel who shattered her wings saving him, leaving her mind fractured and fragile.

"Seeing the mate mark sends her into psychotic breaks," he'd say, burning the bond from my skin. "I owe her my life."

So I'd erase the mark. Burn the contract. Pretend we were never bound.

The first time, I cried and begged. He backhanded me: "Cut the bullshit. We'll rebond once she's back in the sanatorium."

The thirteenth time, I followed them to a tavern and watched him tenderly kiss the scarred stumps where her wings used to be. When I confronted them, he knocked me down and locked me in enchanted restraints for seven days straight.

Sign. Burn. Erase. An endless cycle I couldn't escape.

Until the twenty-first time.

Fire engulfed the manor. Seraphine and I were trapped in different wings. Kael could only save one of us.

"Kael!" I collapsed at the window, smoke choking my lungs. "I'm pregnant—please—"

He shifted into his panther form and bolted toward her room.

The guards dragged me out thirty minutes later. Third-degree burns across my back, lungs filled with ash, blood pooling beneath me.

No heartbeat.

Kael stood in the safe zone, holding an unscathed Seraphine in his arms. From the moment the flames erupted until they pulled me from the rubble, he never looked back.

Not once.

The twenty-first dissolution was my choice.

There won't be a twenty-second.

I loved Julian for ten years, carving every sweat-stained day into my love for him.
He once said I shined brighter than any gold medal.
Yet in five short minutes, he handed my dream, my glory, and my whole world to a scheming transfer girl.
Betrayed, discarded, and broken on the fencing strip, I lost my first love and everything I fought for.
Until the retired cold Olympic champion stepped out of the dark midnight shadows.
He offered me hellish training and a sharp blade of revenge.
I buried my soft heart, handed over my soul, and vowed to make every traitor pay.

I spent six years working with the dead, earning money to save my son—enduring the stench and loneliness, clinging to hope.
I trusted my family, my husband, my parents, but they turned their backs on me.
They hated the smell of death on me, lied to me, and used my sacrifice for a fake sister.
All my efforts were for nothing; the hope I clung to was just a lie.
I walked away, broken and empty, while they panicked at my absence.
The pain is real, the betrayal is real—and there’s no going back.
But my family, my husband, my own son, even my parents, turned their backs on me.

Seven years ago, my father, the Wolf King, listened to the slander of his new lover and personally brought a bowl of abortion poison to my mother.

My mother fought desperately to turn her head away in resistance, but he forced it down her throat anyway.

In her absolute despair, she let out a harrowing scream, vowing she would never see him again in this lifetime!

Since then, the soul bond between my parents was completely severed.

My father, however, brushed it off, dead certain that my mother was "blocking the bond" to throw a temper tantrum.

Until today, when the vampire army massed at our borders, specifically demanding a royal blood slave.

To protect his new lover's daughter, my father seized me to take her place.

He set fire to my mother's beloved sea of moonflowers, pointing at the soaring flames and roaring: "If you come out and beg me, I'll spare Aria's life!"

But even as the inferno reduced half the courtyard to ashes, the space behind that tightly shut door remained in a state of dead silence.

He didn't know—

The severed bond wasn't a tantrum.

Because of that bowl of poison seven years ago, my mother had drawn her last breath that very night.

Our engagement has gone unfulfilled for ten years.

My parents saved his family in that yacht accident. With their dying breath, they asked his family to look after me. In return, we go to city hall every year, trying to fulfill this obligation.

Ten attempts. Ten failures.

Elevator malfunctions, food poisoning, home invasions, car crashes... Every single time, I get hurt at the worst possible moment while he walks away without a scratch.

This makes ten. A truck slams into the passenger side, my head smashes against the window, and he's already running across the street, pulling that woman into his arms.

On my way to find him after they stitch me up, I hear his assistant's voice in the hospital corridor:

"Mr. Ashford, the truck driver's been taken care of. Money'll hit his account like we agreed... but is this really fair to Miss Bennett? It's been ten years, every single year—"

William's voice comes out low and tired. "I don't have a choice. Her parents saved me, but I'm in love with Emma."

I look down at the diagnosis. ALS. Late stage.

Turns out I've been trying to marry a lie this whole time.

I spent two years quietly building something I thought was worth building.
Full recovery support after birth, someone checking in on meals, leave approved the moment you asked for it. I worked out a deal with the best facility in the city and covered the difference myself, out of my own account. Not a cent of company money.
I did it because I'd watched a good employee disappear from the company the year she got pregnant. No announcement. Her desk just cleared out one day.
Then one of them posted about it.
She called it surveillance. A golden cage. The comment section called me a predator. By morning it was trending.
Here's what none of them knew: not a single dollar of that program belonged to the company.
So I listened to what they wanted and gave them exactly that.
I shut the whole thing down.

After losing control due to alcohol, I slept with the guy next door.
He was an incredibly responsible man. When he sobered up, he proposed to me.
Later, I found out that the woman he loved most had gone abroad that night.
So, I hid my deep love for him and played the role of a perfect, obedient wife in the wealthy family.
In countless quiet nights, we were in perfect sync, yet we kept our distance, never crossing boundaries.
My friends all said I could never leave him. I thought so too.
Until one day, I found his second phone.

I gave birth to three children for my ruthless mafia husband. And every single time, he tore the newborns from my blood-soaked sheets and handed them straight to my barren sister.
For seven years, I endured electroshock therapy and brutal captivity, reduced to nothing but a breeding vessel to complete their "picture-perfect" family.
He thought he had broken my spirit long ago. That’s why, when the assassins struck, he didn't hesitate to shove me into the line of fire as a human shield.
To protect his true love, he threw my bleeding, wounded body into a freezing water cell as their perfect scapegoat.
He thought tossing me a few scraps of mercy would have me crawling back to him, begging like a dog.
But he was dead wrong.
When the bone-chilling water swallowed me, I didn't panic or thrash. I simply smiled, letting the black depths drag me under.
Domenico could never have imagined that the cold, lifeless corpse he personally sent to the morgue was my perfect escape, seven agonizing years in the making.
He stole my babies. He stripped away every last ounce of my dignity.
So now, I’m going to take away everything he holds dear, piece by agonizing piece: his empire, his power, and the love he arrogantly thought he could control forever.

I once thought I’d married the perfect husband, Kael, pouring all my heart and soul into trying to have a baby—until the birth certificate and adoption agreement in the study safe shattered every beautiful lie.
He and my dearest friend, Celeste, had long ago secretly had an illegitimate child,
and even plotted to trick me into being his foster mother, keeping me in the dark for the rest of my life.
What was even crueler was that on the very day I uncovered the truth, the doctor gave me the news—I was pregnant.
Once I faced the harsh truth, I resolutely faked a shipwreck to flee, going into hiding with my unborn child and leaving my old life behind.
He searched the entire world to find me, casting aside all his pride to beg for my forgiveness with a humble heart—but he could never win me back, not ever.

The year is 1924. The air in Willow Lane is thick with the scent of red dirt, old secrets, and a storm that has been brewing for a thousand years.

Cassia Marlowe is a woman of the lens, capturing a world that is slowly fading. But when she meets Evan Cole, a man with a violin that speaks to the moon and a past shrouded in shadow, her quiet life shatters.

What starts as a forbidden romance between a photographer and a mysterious musician quickly unearths a truth buried beneath the roots of the Great Oak. In a valley ruled by the powerful and ruthless Board, a biological curse is waking up. Every secret Cassia solves only peels back the mask of a much larger conspiracy, a bloodline war that stretches back to the dawn of the peaks.

Evan is changing. The woods are watching. And the man Cassia loves may be the very beast she’s been taught to fear.

In a world of silver-plated lies and ancient hunger, can their love survive the turning of the moon? Or will they both become casualties of a war that has waited ten centuries to claim its final prize?

One choice.
One bite.
One thousand years of secrets.

Alpha Geirolf once fought his entire Ulvarr Pack just to mate me.
But Anniken's arrival turned all his sweeping vows to ash.
He let her take over the manor, shatter my mother’s moonstone bracelet, and lock me—burning with a high fever—in the dungeon to be thrown into freezing water.
The biting cold silently stole the baby in my womb. He saw the crimson pooling on the floor, yet turned his back to comfort that woman and her fake tears.
And on the 108th time I handed him the rejection papers, he finally snapped our mate bond...

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.

To everyone in town, I was just a sixty-five-year-old retired man.
I lived in an old house, drove an old car, and showed up at the same diner every night to eat the cheapest meal on the menu in my usual corner.

Then one night, the waitress who always refilled my coffee sat across from me after closing, eyes red, and told me her boyfriend had disappeared.
People were watching her, pressuring her to hand over a “ledger” she had never even seen.

I wanted no part of it.
I had left that kind of life behind a long time ago, and I had sworn never to use my hands for anyone again.

But the next day, she didn’t show up for work.
Her phone was dead. She was gone.

I went into their territory alone.
They thought they were dealing with nothing more than a nosy old man.
By the time I started moving, they realized they had picked the wrong target.

Fourteen years ago, Isabella Winston died.

At least, that's what everyone believed.

One moment, she was trapped inside a sinking car beneath the icy waters of the Hudson River. The next, she woke up in her own bathtub and somehow fourteen years in the future.

Her husband is no longer the warm, easygoing man she remembers.

Her five-year-old son is now a nineteen-year-old stranger who looks at her with suspicion.

Her twins barely remember the mother they lost—one forever chasing affection, the other keeping the entire world at arm's length.

And the family she left behind has become something broken, distant, and unrecognizable.

Now Isabella faces an impossible challenge: rebuilding a family that never truly recovered from losing her.

Fourteen years have left scars on everyone.

Unfortunately for those causing the damage, Isabella Winston has returned to set things right.

“You don’t love me, do you?” Luke whispered, pinning my wrists above my head.

His body pressed mine into the bed, hot, heavy, inescapable. His mouth brushed my ear, gentle enough to feel like a kiss, cruel enough to feel like punishment.

“It’s okay,” he murmured.“Your body is mine.”

I left Luke Morrison unconscious in an ICU eight years ago and rebuilt myself in London—elite auctioneer, an ocean between me and the past.

Then my brother's condition crashed. I'm back in Pennsylvania, standing behind an auction podium at his company's charity gala.

A little boy runs through the crowd and wraps his arms around me: "Mama, you came back."

"Daddy shows me pictures every day," Asher says.

Every. Single. Day. How long has this been going on?

Luke's watching with ice-cold eyes. The bullied boy I left behind? Gone. Replaced by a tech billionaire who makes predators look soft.

"Get in," he says. Not a request.

Then he takes me back to his home.

His penthouse is frozen in time—the art I chose, the books I organized. Our past preserved like he's been waiting.

"You owe me eight years, Mia," he says, showing me the scar. "The girl who watched them destroy me and did nothing. This time, you don't run."

When he fucks me, it's worship and punishment. Making me pay for every day I was gone.

"I've waited eight years for this. Every breath you take belongs to me."

He's not just possessive. He's broken. And Asher is the perfect weapon to keep me trapped.

He made sure he protected her, till she got on her feet again.

When the Whites went bankrupt, Katherine was "sold" by her ex to tycoon Alexander for $1M. He trapped her, took her nightly but ignored her, clung to his childhood sweetheart, and spied on her — until a study diary revealed his 12-year unspoken love behind the cold control.

On the third day of the apocalypse, I was bitten by a zombie while saving a child and was abandoned outside the camp by everyone, left to die.

Three years later, I became the legendary "Masked Monster," secretly protecting those who had betrayed me.

They nailed me to a cross, preparing for a public execution.

Until the Corpse King invaded.

I tore through my chains and charged into certain death, all to protect a girl who still remembered my name.

She raised her gun with tears streaming down her face, aiming at my head.

I died in a rainy day. For twenty-eight years, I clung desperately to my adoptive family, craving nothing but warmth and a home. Yet all my devotion was nothing but a joke.
Everyone in the household loathed me, quick to side with my adoptive sister Isabelle over every lie she spun. I gave my whole heart to my fiancé Damien Sterling, believing he would be my salvation. But when the truth surfaced, he looked at me like I was filth beneath his shoes, his face twisted with contempt.
“You were never more than a distraction,” he snarled. “Isabelle is the only one I love. Can’t you see how tainted you are?”
Those words shattered me more than any injury. Abandoned by everyone I cared about, I had nowhere left to turn before they arranged my death.
But somehow, I’m twenty-two again—returned to that fateful year before all my nightmares unfolded.This time, I’ll burn down everyone who destroyed me.

"We're done, Arthur."

That was how I ended a ten-year relationship with my childhood sweetheart.

He didn't take it seriously. He just smirked and asked, "How many days is this tantrum going to last? Three? A week?"

Then, his phone lit up. It was her—the helpless scholarship student he had been protecting.

"I'm on my way," he promised her softly, turning his back on me without a second thought.

He walked away, assuming I would always be his safety net.

What he didn't realize was that my answer was forever.

Ten years of being his fool, and I was finally cutting the cord.

When my CEO husband threatens divorce for the 99th time, this time trying to force me to hand over a million-dollar project to his assistant Chloe, I finally stop fighting.
I give him the project without a word.
He's thrilled. Thinks I've finally accepted my place. To reward me, he announces we'll throw a grand celebration for our fifth wedding anniversary.
Chloe finds out and falls apart. Locks herself in the supply closet. Can't bear the thought of watching us celebrate five years of marriage.
Arthur panics. Suddenly the anniversary party becomes a "client dinner" he can't reschedule. He'll take Chloe instead—she's been handling that account, after all.
"You understand how business works," he tells me. "We can celebrate privately later."
I see the photo she posts: Chloe in the restaurant he booked for us, wearing the dress he picked out, his hand covering hers across the table.
I tell him I understand.
He's satisfied. Promises we'll do something even better next month.
He doesn't know I've resigned. Doesn't know he signed the divorce papers three days ago when I slipped them into his contract stack.
We don't have a next month.

I spent three years as a "useless son-in-law," humiliated in public by my wife, all to repay a debt of life-saving gratitude.
That night, she handed me a cup of poisoned wine, smiling as she told me to "disappear from this world."
But she didn't know that the wine served to terminate our contract of protection—and unchained my shackles completely.
When the fighter jets of the Northern Command cast their shadows over the entire estate, she finally knelt in the mud, crying out for "Adrian."
But this time, I will not look back.

She has lived hundreds of lives and each one ended horribly.
He, once her companion, cannot forget her beyond time.
She, kidnapped into a world unknown to her, tries everything to get back home. But what are these dreams?

[…] Stones are thrown at dirty mutts… Rats are burned… […]

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