2159 Book(s) Related to to not die chapter 1

We’ve been married for five years. Then, she got pregnant with someone else's child.
In front of everyone, she said: "Ethan doesn't want this baby. You've always wanted one, right? Fine, take it and raise it."
In that moment, I finally understood: she wasn’t incapable of loving someone—she simply never saw me as a human being.
I took off my wedding ring, left it on the tray, and bought a one-way ticket to the North. My family said I wouldn't survive in the frozen North; she said that without her, I was nothing.
Three years later, she tracked me down using the GPS hidden inside that ring. She pushed open the door to my attic room, finding only a note I’d left: "Don't look for me. We're square."

With one week left until the wedding, Henry Jones asked me to reschedule the date—for one simple reason:
“On our wedding day, I’m taking Ann to the hospital for her prenatal checkup.”
Ann is the widow of his brother Ethan. She’s also my half-sister. In that private room, they laughed at me for being “almost thirty and desperate to get married.”
Ann put on an innocent face. “If Rory is really in such a rush… I can reschedule my appointment.”
I wanted to break up, and Henry frowned as he lectured me:
“As her future sister-in-law, why do you have to fight her over this one day?”
I asked him, “Do you even remember what Friday is?”
He coaxed me softly: “One day earlier or later—what’s the difference?” I nodded and said “Fine,” thinking I could still swallow it.
Until I pressed my fingerprint to enter his office and overheard Ann questioning him about inheritance, and Henry answered under his breath, “It won’t come to that—I won’t let Rory get pregnant with my child.”
That was the moment I u

His determined enough not to let her go again. So he take all his courage to say these words to her.

"Why can't it be? Why can't it be the two of us? Why can't we be lovers? Only friends?

Her psychological condition is the main reason.

Her emotion is always splitting.

The young man belongs to a wealthy clan, he is a billionaire who had a dark past unknown to the society where he belongs at present. Only the lady knew his deepest secret, his past. She played the big role in his life long time ago…

When they meet again, the memories of his past comes back to him. Then the billionaire hope that maybe at present time they can be more than just friend but then again the lady wants to say goodbye to him.

Would she stay? Or would she say goodbye?

Will can they be lovers? Or will can't be?

To the police, she’s a rogue agent. To the Mafia, she’s a dead woman walking.

Marilyn Collins took a dead woman’s name to hunt a monster. Instead, she became Lucian Volkov’s obsession. He thinks she’s the ex-lover who broke his heart. She knows he’s the man who might have killed her friends.

In the heat of his bedroom, the interrogation turns into a blood-pumping game of cat and mouse. Every kiss is a lie, and every touch is a sin.

But when the real killer emerges from the shadows of her own precinct, Marilyn must choose: the badge she once wore, or the Mafia King who would burn the world down to keep her. Two enemies, one bed, and a secret that could destroy them both.

The system made me an outcast live-in husband in a werewolf clan for three years. The mission reward: 80 billion dollars. Now there's only half a day left until retirement settlement.

The arrogant pure-blood Alpha wants to force me into a deadly full moon execution array, roaring for me to kneel and die.

I don't even lift an eyelid. Right at quitting time, I directly withdraw my soul, leaving the body to the original owner "Ancestor Wolf Emperor" to handle, while I return to my Manhattan penthouse, sink into the leather sofa, and start a holographic livestream.

"Enjoy your night shift, everyone." I take a light sip of hot coffee, coldly watching the screen as the Wolf Emperor crushes that pure-blood Alpha's spine into mush with one foot, shocking my mission wife and mother-in-law into idiots.

I was dying — and he was loving someone else.
I left.
Now he wants me back… but will I let him?

Three days after I died, the morgue called my husband Sebastian to collect my ashes.
He was kissing another woman when he hit speaker, his voice cold and dismissive: "She's dead? Cremate her. Don't call me again."
And just like that, my body was wheeled into the cremation chamber.
When he finally showed up to collect my remains, he smashed the urn on the floor and ground every fragment of my ashes into the tile with his shoe.
"Playing dead? What a pathetic stunt," he sneered. "Tell her the anniversary of my mother's death is coming up. She'd better show up at the cemetery on her knees, or even if she really is dead, I'll scatter her ashes in the sewer myself."
But he didn't know—I truly was dead.
My soul was bound to him, forced to drift at his side as he planned a lavish wedding with his adopted sister Claire—his mother's true killer.
By the time he discovered the truth and exposed Claire at the altar, I had already vanished.
He lost his mind, racing to the ocean to search for my ashes.
Never knowing that the remains he'd crushed like garbage under his shoe—the "fake ashes" he'd dismissed as part of my act—
Were all that was left of me.

The moment I saw my name on that wedding invitation, I was already dead.

On Highway 23, a steel rebar had pierced straight through my chest. I was two months pregnant.

I called my fiancé Michael seventeen times. The first sixteen, he hung up without a word. On the seventeenth, his voice dripped with impatience: "Marrying Sophia is just for show. Stop making a scene."

The man who once knelt outside my family's estate for three days and nights, swearing to love me for a lifetime—he wouldn't spare me a single second more.

With my last breath, I dialed the funeral home. "I'm calling... for myself."

Flames consumed my body. My soul drifted toward the engagement banquet that should have been mine. When the killer's phone lit up, the name on the screen was Sophia...

When he destroyed my entire family, he never once thought of me.

So now, let me watch with my own eyes as this wedding becomes their funeral.

Ryan loves me deeply—at least that's what everyone says. Seven years together, we look like the perfect couple to outsiders. But only I know he's betrayed me three times.

The first time was three years ago. His brother died saving him, leaving behind his widow Sophia—Ryan's unforgettable first love. He married her behind my back. When I found out, I completely fell apart. I have dignity. I refuse to be the other woman. I wanted to leave, but he begged on his knees. "This is just to take care of my sister-in-law. Once I find the truth about my brother's death, I'll divorce her. Then we can get married."

I believed him. I forgot that a man never lets go of a lost love he's gotten back.

The second time was at last year's company anniversary. In front of everyone, he introduced Sophia as his wife. I watched them on stage, a knife through my heart. That night he explained, "It's just for show. Once everything's over, we can be together."

I believed him again.

The third time was two weeks ago. Surveillance footage showed Ryan with Sophia entering a hotel room. I rushed to confront him, but heard her voice outside his office. "Ryan, I'm pregnant. It's your baby."

Through the crack in the door, I see him hesitate. In that instant I understand.

He's going to keep her.

He spots me and rushes out in a panic. "It was an accident! Let me explain! After she has the baby, I'll give her money and make her leave. She won't be in our lives anymore!"

In that moment, I finally wake up. There will be no future for us.

I was taking six-year-old Arabella to fit her dress for the theater's grand opening.
As we crossed the intersection, a truck suddenly lost control and T-boned our car.
When I opened my eyes again, an agonizing pain ripped through me. I opened my mouth to call out Everett's name, only to hear his hushed voice seeping through the crack in the door—
"Staging an unavoidable accident was the only way to use the emergency room as a cover for the drug trial."
"Now that Ophelia's treatment is a success, there's naturally no need for that little bastard to live."
My Arabella. She was secretly wheeled into the operating room by him, used as a human guinea pig for his mistress Delilah's daughter, who had bone cancer. Her sweet, bell-like vocal cords were cruelly carved out and transplanted into another child's throat.
In that defining moment, I realized he had never loved my daughter.
But what he didn't know—the child he just murdered with his own hands was his one and only flesh and blood.

Three years of marriage. Three pregnancies.

Every time I confirmed I was pregnant, my sister-in-law Ophelia would walk into the chapel behind the manor.

Then my in-laws would drag me to the hospital and force me to abort the healthy baby.

The night after my third miscarriage, I dragged my weakened body to follow her into the chapel.

The moment I pushed open that door, my blood ran cold.

In that instant, I finally understood why my three children had to die.

I was dragged to the stand of the MRI Memory Court by my own flesh and blood.

Their demand? To forcibly extract my kidney to keep their uremic adopted daughter alive.

A guilty verdict meant losing not just my bodily autonomy, but my freedom for the rest of my life.

Bathed in the global spotlight, my parents performed as tragic heroes, while their adopted saint cried a river of deceit.

They thought they had cornered the perfect victim, waiting for the world to send me to the slaughter.

But the moment the memory holograms ignited and reality bled through, the hunters instantly became the hunted.

“Dad… please… help me…” I pleaded, my shattered ribs piercing my lungs, blood soaking the stretcher.
But Richard, the hospital's top surgeon and my biological father, didn't even glance at me. Instead, he rushed to the next bed.
“Don't be afraid, Chloe. I'm here,” he cooed to his stepdaughter, who merely had a tiny scratch on her arm. “Get the best equipment over here now!” he roared.
As the heart monitor flatlined and my soul left my broken body, I realized the chilling truth: in the choice between life and death, my father gladly let me die.

I'm the forgotten eldest son of the Cross family.
My parents see me as a walking blood bag for my brother Colin, while my wife views me as a sinner destined to spend my life atoning for my mistakes.
When Audrey pressured me to donate a kidney, I agreed.
Not only did I agree, but I also liquidated all my assets and transferred them to my lab.
They thought I was foolish, that I was still begging for their love.
In reality, I was just tying up loose ends.
The night before the surgery, I coughed up a pool of blood.
Audrey laughed coldly over the phone: "Stop the act, Evan. You just want to dodge responsibility. You'll go to any lengths for attention."
The surgery was a "success."
Colin got the kidney he'd always dreamed of.
And I died in the recovery room.
My soul floated in the air as I watched Audrey push open the hospital door, wearing a smile that dripped with pity, ready to put on a show of "redemption."
"Evan, I know you've been wronged. Let's start over..."
The only response to her was the white sheet covering my lifeless body.

Three torturous years hauling bodies on the mortuary night shift, and I'd finally scraped together the cash for my brother Charles's heart transplant.
He just waved it off.
"My heart is fine. Mom and Dad didn't die in that gang war, either. I orchestrated the hit. You were the only casualty."
Nearby, my husband, Gerald, casually lit a cigar to deliver his own confession. "I never went bankrupt. 'Laying low' was just my excuse to avoid squeezing into that dingy funeral home dorm with you. I've been at the Long Island estate."
"I was going to punish you for another three years," Charles added, "but the stench of formaldehyde on you is nauseating. We couldn't take it anymore."
I froze, still clutching the credit card. Charles plucked the plastic from my numb fingers and shoved his phone screen in my face. A banking app stared back at me.
Balance: exactly zero.
"My name is still on the joint account," he sneered, tossing the card into the trash. "I drained it this morning. That blood money you made bagging stiffs is being handed out to street junkies as we speak. We'd never touch that filth."
Before the sheer absurdity of it could suffocate me, my parents walked in. Flanked by bodyguards, they kept their distance, eyeing me like a plague rat.
"You thought being the biological daughter gave you the right to ruthlessly bully Violet. We simply wanted to put you in your place."
"Swear you'll never cross Violet again, and you can remain a Falcone," my mother added coolly. "Otherwise, you're dead to us."
In the stifling silence that followed, my phone buzzed. A text from my oncologist.
[Mrs. Castello, the results are back. It's terminal. Do you consent to initiating the hospice and DNR protocols we discussed?]

My adopted sister, Adriana, hit and injured Hadley Brooks—the prized mistress of Hartwell’s mafia boss, Dario Salvatore—and fled the scene.
Don Salvatore gave us exactly three days. And so, my husband and my parents all turned their eyes to me: Go take the fall for her. You always know how to fix things.
I agreed.
What they didn't know was that on that very same day, my doctor had given me my own deadline: I had, at most, three days left to live.

I was dead, and the whole world was celebrating for my sister.

For twenty-two years, I had been the hardest-working but most invisible daughter in the Sterling family, forever living in the shadow of my gymnastics prodigy sister.

Running a high fever, I begged my family to take me to the hospital, only to hear: "Don't you DARE ruin Bella's award ceremony!"

When I was tricked into the abandoned equipment room and used my last breath to call my boyfriend while lying in a pool of blood, all I heard was: "Grace, quit the drama! Bella's accepting her award on stage!"

On stage, thunderous applause erupted as Bella lifted the "Young Gymnast of the Year" trophy.

And I drew my final breath.

When they returned home triumphant, thinking I had run away in a tantrum, they had no idea I was already dead right under their noses.

In their eyes, my wife Emma—an Ivy League tenured professor in biological sciences—is ruthless, rational, and obsessively clean.
For seven years, even when she washed her hands, she would only ever touch the right-side sink—hers.
Until that night at 3 a.m., when I pulled a strand of sandy-golden short curl—hair that belonged to neither of us—out of my men’s shower loofah.
And around the neck of a pre-med student named Lucas, I saw the antique silver cross my dying father left in my hands.
When I confronted her, my always-icy wife protected the little homewrecker, slapped me across the face, and called me a jealous, controlling chauvinist.
She thought I’d swallow it like a coward.
But she forgot: as a top cardiothoracic chief, the thing I do best is cutting out tumors.

When Amelia Pierce finally admits her marriage is a gilded cage, one shattered glass and a chilling vow—I’ll never divorce you—send her straight into the orbit of Bryson Hearst: her new boss, her oldest secret, and the man who quietly bought a ring for her six years ago and locked it in his safe.

In a world of penthouse boardrooms and whispered scandal, Bryson is the kind of dangerous that feels like safety. He moves her into protection, runs her a jasmine-scented bath instead of crossing a line, and promises to destroy her husband in the daylight and worship her in the dark. But Amelia’s freedom has a price: West Coast deals that turn volatile, an ex-assistant with receipts and a grudge, and a powerful family that believes Pierce women never leave.

As a covert investigation exposes more than a cover-up, and a storage unit full of sins, Amelia signs away every claim to her husband’s fortune—she doesn’t want his money, only her life back. The clock is ticking: four weeks to a court date, four weeks of stolen mornings and velvet-box confessions, four weeks for a man who has loved her from afar to prove he can love her up close without touching her until she’s free.

Lush, addictive, and breathless with restraint, More Than I Knew is a high-heat, high-stakes contemporary romance where consent is the sexiest power move, protection reads like possession, and a woman chooses herself—then the man who’s been choosing her all along.

At the Morello family’s Christmas dinner, I stood beside Vincent, waiting for him to announce our engagement.
Instead, in the very next second, he walked in holding a little boy and claimed him as his son.
And the woman he said he was going to marry? Scarlett Morello. The one he had always introduced as his “sister.”
The whole room erupted in applause. I stood there frozen, like a nail hammered into the floor.
Later, in his study, he took my hand and said, “Scarlett is dying. Late-stage breast cancer. She only has six months left. After she’s gone, I’ll marry you.”
But there was no guilt in his eyes. No love, either.
Then he told me to go to his villa that afternoon, to take care of the woman who was supposedly “dying.”
I opened the photo he sent me. Scarlett was lying in a hospital bed, pale-faced, an IV in the back of her hand.
A professional tennis player who had been playing in an exhibition match three weeks ago, and who had dropped three grand at Louis Vuitton on Fifth Avenue just five days ago.
But sure. She was “dying.”
At three in the morning, I was curled up by the front door of my apartment, crying so long I lost track of time.
Then my phone lit up. A text from an unknown number:
[Elena, I’m downstairs. When we were kids, you told me that once I controlled the docks on the East Coast, you’d marry me. The docks are mine now. Does that promise still stand?]
I pulled back the curtain and there he was. Ethan Vitale, my first love, leaning against the door of a black Cadillac, lifting a hand in a lazy wave.
Three years ago, when he left New York, he was only a Capo.
Now, he was the Don of the Vitale family.
He didn’t rush me. Didn’t pressure me to come downstairs.
He came for one reason only, to let me know he was back.
I wiped away my tears and texted back:
[It still stands.]
Because I wanted to see for myself just how long that woman could keep up her act.

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.

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...

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.

For the love of him, I hid my billions and played the invisible wife for three years. Now? The game is over.
For three years, Elena endured a husband who barely acknowledged her, a mother-in-law who treated her like hired help, and a sister-in-law who sneered that she was nothing but a golddigger. All the while, her husband, Damien, pined after his "perfect" ex, like his own wife didn't exist.
The morning after their third anniversary, her mother-in-law delivered the final blow:
"Damien's right. You're not going anywhere. I don't want you bringing shame to my son, not now that he just closed a major deal. Besides, you're not smart enough or strong enough to survive on your own."
"We'll see," Elena said quietly.
She signed the divorce papers, packed a single bag, and vanished.
Damien was certain she'd come crawling back within a week. But the woman they all dismissed? Turns out Elena is a billionaire heiress, the CEO of the very empire Damien has been desperate to partner with and the one now signing his paychecks.
Oops.
Now Damien is spiraling, realizing too late what he lost. But Elena has choices she never had before. Like her childhood best friend, an NFL star who's been in love with her all along.
So who will it be?
The ex-husband who finally woke up?
The best friend who never left?
Or has Elena finally decided she's done with men who don't deserve her?

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’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?

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.