2760 Book(s) Related to things i wanted to say monica murphy

“I, Alpha Damian Blackwood, reject you, Arielle Slyden, as my mate.” You are not my mate, Arielle. You never were, and don't think the night we shared together meant anything to me.” Alpha Damian yelled at me as I stared at him in shock, his forest green eyes had no remorse or emotion in them. My chest pinched at me causing tears to fill my eyes but I refused to let him see how much effect he had on me.


One reckless night of passion on her eighteenth birthday became a curse that would haunt her. When Arielle's mate bond manifested, it cruelly tied her to Alpha Damian—her crush's older brother, and the man who had disappeared without a trace after claiming her innocence.

Arielle is caught between two brothers, one who owns her soul but refuses to be her mate, and the other whose forbidden kiss she craves.

What happens when Arielle discovers the one that had refused to claim her as his mate had marked her to be bound to him forever!!

Arielle gets tangled in a dangerous game of lust, and both brothers' interest in her might run deeper than desire. And their dark secrets might destroy her before she learns the truth.

My little sister and I each bear a Heart-Seed Mark etched into our chests.
Inside each seed grow Heartbeat Petals—currency that can trade for anything under the boughs of The Heart-Root, the ancient devouring tree.
At eight years old, I plucked one petal to cure Mom’s terminal cancer.
At ten, I tore out another to mend my older brother’s shattered bones after his brutal fight.
At twenty-four, I sacrificed my third and final petal to wake my husband’s sister from a car-crash-induced vegetative state.
Now, two disasters struck at once: my father died in a horrific car wreck, and my husband’s mistress lost their unborn baby.
Both sides of my family flocked to The Heart-Root, all fixated on stealing my petals for their own wishes.
I tried to step aside and let my younger sister go first to make the trade, but Mom shoved me hard.
“Every bit of love we’ve poured into you these years, every petal came from us! You’d really hold out and refuse to save your own father? Ungrateful girl!” my mom snapped.
My husband’s mom cut in sharp as a knife: “A good wife knows her place. It’s your duty to bring that baby back for your husband. If only you’d given him a son yourself.”
They tied me tight to the tree trunk. I watched a girl standing nearby get torn apart by black, writhing vines when she had no petals left—her flesh dissolved straight into the tree’s roots to feed it.
But my Heart-Seed didn’t have a single petal left either...

For seventeen years, Chloe was the Whitmores’ hidden spare daughter. They harvested her marrow, liver and cornea, then plotted to take her heart for their beloved adopted daughter. Fleeing death through a storm, she is rescued by ruthless power broker Victoria Kane. A faint crescent scar unearths a secret: Chloe is Victoria’s long-lost birth daughter. Together, they will destroy the greedy family that fed on her

When I was nine months pregnant, my husband, Torin, forced doctors to extract my baby's cord blood to save his ex-wife's son. My baby died of suffocation ten minutes after birth, right before my eyes.
Instigated by his biological mother, my stepson sneaked into my room late at night and poured silver powder all over me. My skin rotted; the scars would last forever.
Later, the hospital ward caught fire, cutting off my escape. On the brink of life and death, Torin glanced back at me, scooped up his ex-wife, and walked into the safe zone without looking back.
Even later, he knelt in the ruins, hands dripping with blood, digging through the rubble brick by brick.
Until his subordinate stepped up behind him and choked out, "Alpha... we found the Luna's body."

Since when is eating a snack before dinner a capital crime? All because of a bag of gummies, my parents beat the hell out of me, and a judge coldly sentenced me to death. I was absolutely convinced the candy was laced! It wasn't until moments before my execution that I accidentally found out the truth: my family... were never actually my family to begin with.

I was once known as "The Divine Hand," the youngest Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery in history.

I didn't just perform surgeries, I invented them. However, after a high-profile operation on my own mentor went tragically wrong, leaving him in a vegetative state, my mother made me swear a blood oath.

“Your hands bring both life and ruin. Never touch a scalpel again, or the guilt will consume you forever.”

I traded my surgical scrubs for a floral apron. I married Lucian, a famous business tycoon my mother had selected.

For five years, I spent my days in the kitchen, meticulously preparing meals that were precisely calibrated medicinal formulas that cured his heart murmur and made him the top-performing executive in the city.

However, on our fifth anniversary, Lucian didn't bring flowers or gifts. Instead, he threw the divorce papers on my face with Leslie, the glamorous "Star Surgeon" of the year, by his side, her hands wrapped around his arms like she owned him.

Lucian sneered, "Lesley operates on kings and CEOs. You? You can't even look at a drop of blood without fainting. You’re a liability to my social standing."

“Sign the papers and I'll give you two hundred dollars every month as your monthly allowance. Considering your lifestyle, that's more than you ever need.” He mocked.

I stared at the divorce papers in my hands. This was what he was paying me for being a submissive wife.

"I’ll sign," I said, "and I’ll let you keep the house and the stocks. But only if Lesley can correctly identify the three hidden toxins I’ve neutralized in your body over the last five years using only the meals you mocked me for cooking.”

“If she’s the 'genius' you claim, surely she can diagnose the man she's sleeping with.”

Becky and I had been best friends since elementary school—inseparable until we both got into this top university and became roommates.
We used to lie in our dorm beds, staring at the ceiling, and swear an oath: when we got married, the gap between our weddings would never exceed one week.
I waited for Steven for four full years.
From freshman year to senior spring, I ghostwrote his papers, nursed his drunk stomach, and endured the rotating cast of girls who always seemed to need him.
Until the night Becky got proposed to—when the whole crowd egged Steven on to drop a knee too, he flung my hand away without a second thought, all because Claire, some sophomore, let out a shriek.
"Not now, Rachel. Claire's hurt. Can you not make this about you for once?"
That was all he left me with before he scooped her up and melted into the crowd.
What he didn't know was that there would never be a "not now" again.
In seven days, I'd be walking down the aisle in a wedding dress, just as promised.
Only the groom—wouldn't be him.

At my ex-wife's century wedding engagement banquet, she pointed at my nose and humiliated me publicly: "A waste of space who lays bricks, get out!"
Her wealthy new lover pressed my face hard into broken glass and forcibly dragged away my desperately crying five-year-old daughter.
I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth, drew the "Ghost Mark," and dialed the Pentagon hotline that had been dormant for five years.
Three seconds later, twelve Black Hawk helicopters shattered the dome, and a special task force descended from the sky. A two-star general, amid the terrified gazes of the assembled elite, saluted me with a thunderous: "Ghost Commander, troops have arrived as ordered!"
My ex-wife, who had been so arrogant just moments ago, instantly collapsed to the ground.

Dante once took three bullets for me, laying the entire New York underworld at my feet just to marry me.
I used to think Dante was the god who had pulled me from the abyss of the orphanage, until I discovered he was secretly planning a grand baptism for his illegitimate son with the princess of a rival family.
It turned out that the absolute devotion he gave me could be effortlessly replicated for another woman.
In that moment, I decided to die.
Of course, the one dying would be the Sera who had loved him.
The one surviving would stand in the shadows, watching him spiral step by step into madness and ruin within the wreckage of this so-called love.

Seven years of deep affection, expectations with a pregnant belly, and all I got was his betrayal in marriage and false promises. I gambled my youth and sincerity, only to end up with an absurd scam. After waking up, we owe each other nothing and will have no more ties.

The night before graduation, a confession post blew up the school forum:
“Daphne, I’m gonna rip up my Harvard offer onstage during commencement to confess to you—my whole college future as my love token.”
The OP bragged nonstop in the comments that he’d locked down the state’s only full-ride Harvard scholarship, his admission was a done deal, and graduation was nothing but a meaningless formality anyway.
The attached photo showed their interlaced hands. That old burn scar on his forearm—the one he’d claimed he got saving me—stared back like a chain that’s trapped me for ten years straight.
I poured every cent, every spare hour and all my academic resource just to get him into Harvard. I even voluntarily stepped down from the scholarship race and passed the spot to him.
This childhood sweetheart who’d sworn we’d go to Harvard together only hours ago threw every promise out the window for a rich transfer student, willing to gamble both our futures just for a dramatic grand gesture.
I shut the forum tab, pulled up my email to the scholarship committee.
I’m formally taking back the scholarship spot I gave up！

Two years ago, my best friend Maddie knelt in front of me, crying as she borrowed $50,000.
The very next day, she vanished off the face of the earth. No explanation, no apology, not even a single text message.
I was left carrying her toxic debt. I lost my fiancé, and I lost my ability to trust anyone.
Until one late night, a call came in from an unknown number originating in an abandoned mining district in West Virginia.
On the other end of the line, Maddie said she was getting married. She had the money ready—every last cent.
The wedding venue was a ruined church deep in the mountains, abandoned for a decade. The time: Friday, midnight.

On the day I gave birth to my daughter, Iris, my husband Hollis pushed open the hospital room door, dragging a four-year-old boy by the arm. Eyes red and welling with tears, he said, "Look who I brought home."
My mother-in-law wept tears of joy. My son, Felix—who supposedly died in the winery fire five months ago—had returned "from the dead."
The whole room was crying over this miracle, but my blood ran cold: since the second he walked through that door, Hollis hadn't spared a single glance at our newborn daughter.
I secretly collected a DNA sample from the boy and sent it for expedited testing. The results confirmed it: this wasn't my son at all. He was Hollis’s illegitimate child with another woman.
That same night, I pulled up the nursery's hidden camera footage and watched with my own eyes as this man injected poison into Iris’s breast milk. Soon after, he brazenly moved his mistress—my personal assistant—into my home.
A towering wave of hatred consumed me. I swore I would make them pay in blood...

My mother only ever made the bedtime tea for me. Never my brother—just me, every night, because I was the gifted one, the daughter she "worried about."
The night before the scholarship exam, my one shot at college, she brought me a cup like always.
The next day I collapsed in the middle of the test. I'd never been sick a day in my life. I failed.
Don't worry, she said. We'll try again next year. And every single night, she kept making me that tea.
Second year, I went down again. Third year, again. Three times I sat that exam, three times my body quit at the worst possible moment.
The whole town started calling me the girl who faints. The genius who cracks. The family joke.
And my brother—who copied my homework and never read a book to the end—somehow walked away with everything.
I never understood why my body fell apart every time it mattered.
This was my last chance. For days I barely ate, terrified it would happen again.
Then, the night before the exam, my mother walked in with a cup of tea…

EXCERPT:

"Rayne stood looking at her reflection in the mirror. Her a pale green ballgown clung to her curves and left little to the imagination. Her jet-black curls are swept up and pinned to her head, leaving her neck exposed. Tonight was the night that most of the unmated wolves in all the North American packs would hopefully find their mates. She was sure all of them were just oozing with excitement.

She was not.

She didn’t want a mate. She didn’t need a mate...."

“...but the sudden scent of jasmine and vanilla hit her nose from somewhere close. That meant only one thing. Her mate was near..."


Rayne met her mate at the Moonlight Ball when she was eighteen, her mate that she never wanted to find, that she never wanted in her life. He showed up out of nowhere. His actions that night unknowingly set her free. She took the freedom he gave her, ran away, and never once looked back.

Now five years later he shows back up in her life after rejecting her five years ago, demanding that she take up her rightful place by his side. He walked away from her after calling her weak. No way was she going to just let him back into her life as if he belonged there. Rayne never wanted a mate, would he being here now change that? Her body and soul beg for him to claim her, yet her heart belongs to another.

Can her mate convince her to give him a chance? Will her lover convince her to stay with him? The Moon Goddess paired her with someone not of her choice, all Rayne has ever wanted was the chance to choose for herself. Who will win? Rayne or the fate that the moon set for her?

For mature readers 18+
Warning for abusive past trauma
Her Returned Mate is Book 1 in the Gathering Shadows Series. Book 2 His Redemption is also available for reading now on Anystories.

"Give birth to my child, then get out."

With those words, Sean’s kiss fell brutally, ripping Susan’s nightgown open.

His fingers pressed against her clitoris. Sean flipped her over, pinning her under him. His swollen, turgid member quickly found her secret path. He thrust in violently.

Susan broke into a cold sweat. Sean nipped her ear. "Does it feel good? Is this what you like? I’ll make you pregnant, but you can’t stay by my side—this position is reserved for Victoria."

——

Years ago, Susan saved Sean and earned the chance to marry him. But she was damaged in that accident and couldn't conceive. She took countless hormone injections, losing her figure and becoming ugly. Finally, she could get pregnant, only to catch Sean cheating with the young, hot Victoria.

"In that case," Susan said, "let’s divorce."

Susan was bloated and had been a housewife for three years with no skills. Yet, she chose to divorce, even though she couldn't take her own child with her...

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Elena was born to lead, but her father strips her of her birthright and gives it to her younger brother. Desperate to get back at her father, she does the unthinkable: she sleeps with her father's greatest enemy, Alpha Axton.

But Axton is more than just a rival, he's her fated mate. And he's been searching for her not for love, but for revenge and a chance to destroy her father's pack. The next morning, Elena rejects him, walking away before he can trap her in his ruthless schemes.

But Axton does not take rejection lightly, and his retaliation is brutal: a leaked video, a ruined reputation, and a family that turns their backs on her drive her to flee the city in disgrace.

But when Elena disappears, she takes something Alpha Axton never planned to lose - his sons. Now, he'll stop at nothing to get them back. He wants his heirs, he wants his mate, and Elena will learn that no one runs from the Alpha.

Five years ago, Elena overheard the ambiguous whispers between her husband Arthur and his first love. In that split second, all her love for him crumbled to dust. She left the country with her pregnant belly, vowing never to have any connection with this man again.​
Five years later, Elena returns to her home country with her twins Liam and Luna—now a world-renowned top doctor. Unexpectedly, she finds herself entangled with Arthur once more. His eyes reddening with emotion, he grabs her abruptly and pleads, "Elena, I was truly wrong. This time, I will never let you get hurt again."

It was funny how being betrayed could change a soul.

They were orphans. They grew up together. They survived together. They killed the tyrant Alpha together.

But when the time came for him to propose his love for her and make her his Luna, all she received was a stab to her stomach.

He betrayed her for another. For the late tyrant’s daughter.

He buried her and thought that she had died. But just like how fate had played a trick on her, it also played a trick on him.

She survived, but was stuck in the den of a ruthless Lycan King, after a mate pull, which was stronger than anyone had ever felt, pulled them together by force.

{She is Demira, and welcome to her story}
…
This book is a dark werewolf romance story that is filled with pure chaotic drama and a little bit of tension and suspense.

So, add to your libraries, because you are in for a ride that will be stuck in your mind for a really long time.

Betrayal has never struck so hard until that day I caught my fiancée and best friend cheating on me.

My world came crashing down beneath my feet, and I felt hopeless.

However, luck was on my side and I ended up having a one-night stand with a mysterious man.

Two months later, he showed up at my house with our marriage agreement and he turned out to be my ex-fiancée’s father.

Heartbroken and enraged with revenge, I acknowledged the marriage, desiring to make my ex-fiancée and my best friend pay for what they did to me.

Luckily, my ex-fiancée and best friend lives in the same house with us and revenge took a tremendous turn.

Thalia has always been in love with Cassian but he never noticed her. She was never the woman Cassian wanted, he wanted someone else.

Drunken and heartbroken, Cassian bumped into Thalia and that one reckless night changed her life forever, binding her to this man who will never chose her.

Forced into marriage and banished from the GoldenMoon Pack, she spends seven years trying to earn the heart of her husband only to discover it has always belonged to another woman; his brother's wife.

No matter the years they’ve shared or the son they’ve raised together. His love remains locked on a forbidden past, and now, he wants out.

But Thalia has a persistent heart and has vowed to win his love over, no matter the consequences.

A week before our wedding, I discovered my girlfriend wearing the wedding dress I bought her, having sex with her step-brother.
I decisively chose to abandon her and instead accepted a marriage proposal from a true wealthy heiress.
But when I married the heiress, my ex-girlfriend knelt on the ground crying and begging me to come back.
What a pity - I no longer want her.

I suffered a head injury when I was little, so I’m a bit slow at everything I do.
My brother is the greatest hero in my heart, so I copy whatever he does—including being a simp.
He simped for a witch, so I did the same for her younger sister. But just as I was being relentlessly humiliated by the sister, and even dragged to the brink of death, my brother quit.

In my last life, the heatwave collapse began with me turning an abandoned warehouse into a safe zone. I stocked it, fortified it, and brought my girlfriend inside. That same night, she slid the bolts open from within and let an armed crew storm the place. They threw me out to die.

I survived the heat, only to learn too late that it was just the warning. The real purge came next, when brutal cold hit overnight and froze me to death in the snow.

Then I opened my eyes and found myself back one month before disaster.

While everyone else rushed to buy water and fans, I was the only one who knew the heat was just the beginning. The deep freeze was what would really wipe people out.

This time, I explained nothing. I poured everything I had into diesel, insulation, winter stoves, generators, and turned that warehouse into a fortress built for the cold.

She came again, just like before. This time, I never let her through the door. So she ran straight to the armed gang and had them surround my warehouse for three full days.

She thought trapping me inside meant she’d already won.

What she didn’t know was that in just a few more days, the freeze would arrive.

And the people outside had no fuel, no winter gear, no way to stay warm.

They weren’t waiting for me to break.

They were waiting for their own deaths.

At the engagement party, Adrian walked in with pregnant Celeste: "Sorry, the engagement is off."

"Why?" I stared at him intently.

"The baby is Adrian's," Celeste sobbed, "I can't let my child grow up without a father..."

"You're just an orphan with no money or connections," Adrian looked at me coldly, "You're not good enough for me."

Just when I was completely humiliated, butler Steven found me. "Miss Hayes, we've been searching for you for twenty-three years. You're the long-lost heiress of Hayes Corporation."

A week later at the family reunion banquet, Adrian knelt before me: "Iris, please give me another chance!"

"You can stay by my side," I looked down at him condescendingly, "but not as my boyfriend—as my servant."

But when Celeste accidentally miscarried, the truth shocked everyone...

After the apocalypse, I joined my girlfriend and her friends as a makeshift team. I cleared infected, scavenged supplies, and stood guard at night so they could sleep.

I thought we were all each other had.

Then, for a single dose of antibiotics, they handed me to the warlord who slaughtered my entire family.

When she said, “Just endure it—I’ll find a way to bring you back,” I didn’t even have the strength to be angry. She knew exactly what stood between me and that warlord, and what would happen once I was taken.

That’s when it hit me: to them, I was always just a tool.

If she chose to deliver me into my enemy’s hands, I’d settle the three-year-old debt right there.

When we met again, she demanded to speak to the warlord chief—hoping to trade for me once more. Because without me, they couldn’t even find food.

What she didn’t know was that by the third day after she traded me away—

the warlord had a new owner.

For my fiancée’s career, I was willing to be the ghost designer behind her for five years.

Until the day of the key bid, she stole the blueprint I had spent two sleepless years perfecting and signed it with the name of her useless first love.

The drawings are gone You can draw them again He needs this project to survive Be sensible she said, impatient when I confronted her

I did not argue My heart went cold I calmly left my engagement ring and my resignation letter and went to Europe

In just three months, without me, she became disgraced and buried in debt While I won Europe’s highest architectural gold award

I watched the once proud her soak in icy water for five hours just to earn a trace of my sympathy

I handed her a basic junior interview form with indifference Want to start over Report to the front desk Start with errands and work your way up

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.

In my past life, my twin Phaedra and I were both married off to the Dragon Clan on the same day.
I was given to the eldest son Magnus, while she went to the second son Drakon.
A year later, Phaedra gave birth to a small white dragon with scales like fresh snow. Meanwhile, I delivered nine children—all of them deformed monsters, bearing not a trace of dragon lineage.
Dragon King Typhon, a tyrant obsessed with bloodline purity and beauty, immediately stripped his eldest son of the inheritance rights and decided to pass the throne to his second son, Drakon.
Consumed by rage and humiliation, my husband Magnus descended into madness.
He ordered my nine children dragged into the Shadow Abyss and thrown into boiling blood pools as sacrificial offerings. Then he bound me tightly to the frozen altar pillar.
As the crimson winds howled from the blood pool, he mercilessly cut open my chest and carved out my nine-tailed heart while I was still breathing. I drew my last breath drowning in endless despair and blood.
When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back in the Dragon Clan's towering hall—at the mate selection ceremony that had sealed our fates.
In my daze, Magnus walked straight past me. His eyes brimmed with disgust as he unhesitatingly reached for Phaedra's hand instead. The same woman who had birthed that perfect white dragon in my past life.
But the fool had no idea my children's deformities had nothing to do with me—they came from his own cursed, rotting bloodline.

I was reborn.
In my past life, for the sake of my childhood sweetheart Chiara, I rushed into a sea of fire to save her lover, but I was disfigured by strong acid. In return, I was rejected and abandoned by her, and ultimately died tragically on the street.
Reborn before the narcotics factory explosion, I coldly turned away from Chiara's pleas for help: "If it's true love, go in and die with her."
This time, I'm not a sycophant anymore; I'm going to make all those who betrayed me pay a bloody price.

As a wolf princess, I gave up my beast core, my dignity, and three years of life for my mate’s throne. I walked willingly into the lion clan’s darkest kennel camp, enduring beastly torture and dog-like degradation. I survived on rot and poison, clinging to false hope. Until I returned and learned the bitter truth: my wolf mate destroyed me with his own hands. The war was fake, and my hell was his deliberate choice.

For four years, I tolerated Grayson’s blatant favoritism. He spoiled my roommate Mia with exquisite breakfasts every day, while leaving me with plain biscuits and bitter black coffee. I swallowed every unfair slight, hoping for true love. Yet he finally humiliated me thoroughly by choosing Mia over me for the elite corporate event, sneering that I was unworthy of high society. Hiding my identity as the university’s secret heiress, I stopped my father from ruining his career on impulse. I will let them attend the glamorous party—not out of mercy, but to deliver my quiet, devastating revenge. Now I only need time to decide my next move, and whether to accept my arranged engagement.

In my previous life, I ran a barbecue restaurant to support my family for ten years, but my parents secretly sold the restaurant to a gang because of my younger brother's vanity in wanting him to study abroad.
An hour later, the apocalypse began, and my little shop became a god-level safe house—
Those with superpowers who enter the store have their abilities automatically copied to the store owner; the store is absolutely safe; the store owner decides who enters and who leaves.
My family ruined my amazing little shop, and they scolded me, saying, "Who told you to be unable to keep the shop?"
I was heartbroken and torn to pieces in the mouth of a zombie.
In this life, I was reborn back to an hour before the shop was taken away.
I must protect my shop!
As for those so-called family members—let them fend for themselves in the apocalypse!

Three months after being reunited with the Harrington family, I won £5 million in the lottery.

Then, they kicked me out of the house.

My father, my mother, and that imposter brother—three swindlers—fabricated an apocalyptic lie and used a so-called "heirloom" to steal my lottery ticket.

They didn't know that the end times really were coming.

Unbeknownst to them, the true power of that wristband was—item duplication.

Little did they know, I was the one who had truly been reborn from the apocalypse.

In my past life, they used me as bait, letting me be torn to pieces by the infected.

In this life, 5 million pounds? Go ahead and squander it.

I want to watch them struggle in despair and die in fear.

And I will have unlimited resources at my disposal, on this wasteland—

On the day the apocalyptic flood swallowed the city, I died on a fractured overpass.

The man who crushed my fingers under his boot was my brother-in-law, the very man I had sacrificed everything to support. And standing safely out of reach, watching coldly as the muddy torrent swallowed me whole, was my supposedly sweet and devoted fiancée. In her arms, she fiercely clutched her "son"—who was hoarding the last of my survival rations.

In the very last second of my life, she nestled into the arms of her ex-boyfriend and left me with a single, contemptuous sneer: "Let's go. Forget about this useless trash."

It turned out that working my fingers to the bone and emptying my life savings had all been a pathetic joke—a long con orchestrated by a pack of bloodsucking parasites.

But when I opened my eyes again, I had returned to exactly one year before the apocalypse began.

My fiancée was standing there, holding a cup of hot coffee and sweetly begging me to invest another million into her brother's business.

I just smiled, gently pushed her hand away, and turned around to liquidate every single asset to my name. With that money, I secretly constructed a state-of-the-art, deep-sea underground fortress.

Later, when the monstrous floodwaters inevitably tore the city apart, they stood on the balcony of their doomed mansion, desperately falling to their knees and begging my icebreaker for salvation.

Sitting inside my perfectly secure command cabin, I took a leisurely sip of hot coffee and softly gave the order:

"Open fire. Don't let this trash dirty my deck."

I pursued Kaelzen, Alpha of the Frostfang Tribe, for four years and was about to marry him, only to expose his deception shortly before the wedding. A serious head injury erased all my memories of him. My family arranged a new marriage with the Duskthorn Tribe heir, and I agreed, planning to leave once the Ash Gate opens in seven days. Unaware of my memory loss, Kaelzen still treats me arrogantly, yet he is just a stranger to me now.

Four years ago, I left my boyfriend when he had nothing.

Now, he's a billionaire. And he's forcing me to marry him—just for revenge.

Every day it's a different girl. Now there's a pregnant influencer he flaunts in my face, destroying what's left of my dignity.

"Kneel and beg her, and I'll give you money." He holds another woman and smirks at me.

I don't cry. I don't scream. I just swallow the blood rising in my throat.

He doesn't know my brain tumor is terminal. I have thirty days left.

I've already signed the organ donation papers. I just want to die in peace.

I stopped loving him a long time ago.

For six years, I sold my body to underground clinics as a human lab rat to cure my son's heart failure and pay off my husband's debts.

Today, my biological brother kicked away the medicine I bought with half my life.

"Lucas was never sick. We faked the medical records to teach you a lesson for upsetting Virginia."

My husband coldly chimed in:

"I never went bankrupt either."

Even the son I bled to birth stabbed my arm, screaming, "A bloody monster like you doesn't deserve to be my mom!"

I finally realized my entire life was a meticulously crafted scam.

With my organs rapidly failing and only ten days left to live, I stepped onto the edge of the balcony.

"You're right," I smiled at my husband and brother, watching the color completely drain from their faces. "Six years of my life isn't enough to apologize to her."

"So I'll pay you with my corpse."

On our tenth anniversary, a doctor told me I had three months left.
I called Graham five times before he picked up. He was at a restaurant downtown, cutting the steak on his ex-girlfriend's plate, and he told me to stop acting like a paranoid wife.
So I never told him.
I folded the diagnosis into my coat pocket, went home, and rinsed the blood out of the sink before he walked in. Then I signed away the house, the cars, every share of the firm I helped him build. I left his ring on the coffee table, canceled the number I'd had for ten years, and checked into a hospice with nobody's name on my emergency contact line.
He thought I was throwing a tantrum. He thought I'd come crawling back the second the money ran out.
He didn't find the diagnosis until it was too late to matter.

This is a world where humans and fantasy races exist side by side. Werewolves move through city streets between glass towers, and every now and then, a pair of massive wings cuts through the clouds overhead. Twenty years ago, to secure the family's standing, the main house signed a contract with the Dragon Clan.

As the least favored daughter of a branch family, I was chosen to be the Dragon King's mate. The terms were spelled out plainly: if I couldn't get married within five years of coming of age, I'd have to go to Dragon territory and go through with the marriage.

For five years, every wedding I've planned has been blown up by my younger sister, Hannah.

This is year five. I'm finally in a wedding dress, about to marry Derek, the boy I grew up with.

What I didn't expect was that one hour before the ceremony, Hannah collapsed in the dressing room coughing up blood. She grabbed Derek's hand, crying, saying she wouldn't make it through the month.

And my parents are on either side of me, hands pressed down hard on my shoulders.

"Just let Hannah have the wedding. She's dying!"

What they don't know is that if I don't get married today, the Dragon envoys will come for me on the spot.

And I won't be coming back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He answers with a kick to the stomach.

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

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

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

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

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

No one answers him.

He has no idea. I already am.

At the scene of the car accident, my parents frantically scooped up my sister—who only had a scraped knee—then kicked me aside as I lay there dying.
"Don't be a burden to your sister. Just wait by the roadside and croak!"
They drove off without a second thought. In that moment, my heart turned to stone.
What they didn't know was that I didn't die. Instead, I got adopted by a top-tier professor and became a math prodigy worth tens of millions.
Two years later, when my birth parents went bankrupt and got on their knees begging me for a handout, I smiled coldly and played the recording of their attempted murder...

My mate, Rhys, brought his dead brother's pregnant widow into our house.
He swore up and down I'd never have to lift a finger for her.
The next morning he stood by the door with a packed bag and a grin.
"Babe. Big news. The pack called me up. Border post out east, two years. I ship out tonight."
He looked at me like he was waiting for me to promise I'd take good care of his brother's widow.
So I pulled my own bag out of the closet, right there in front of him and the woman in the back room.
"Funny. The alliance called me up too. Medic rotation. Two years."
"We can leave together. Lock up on the way out. Colette can rest easy with the whole house to herself."

At sixteen, I took a fatal blow for him. As my wolf soul shattered, he swore with blood-red eyes: "When I become Alpha, I will make you my Luna."
But two years later, when he led the pack to migrate to new territory, he told the butler before departure: "Her broken wolf soul will only drag the group down."
With my bundle, I slipped out. Fate played a cruel joke: I boarded the wrong carriage, replacing a weeping bride, and was delivered to the wedding chamber of Alaric Argent, Alpha of the Sterling Pack.
The tall, steady figure before me sparked an odd sense of calm. The fog of memory wouldn’t let me be sure. Was this mistaken arrival a new beginning… or the continuation of an old shadow?