321 Book(s) Related to breathe maroon 5 lyrics

My daughter's wolf has never woken. Until her first shift, one dose a season is all that keeps it alive. And I brew that dose myself and send it to the supply hall under the healers' guild seal.
This season, my husband's mistress took it from us at the supply hall and fed it to her own daughter in front of forty wolves. Then she pressed my girl's palm onto a silver bar, to prove we were the thieves.
"Save your tears for my man," she said. "Captain Roark Fenn."
That's my husband's name.
Neither of them knows what I did in the war. By moonrise, the whole pack will.

I thought I was driving into my mating ceremony. Instead, Calder's mother met the car with a tray — a silver collar lined with spikes, and a rusty pincer for pulling out my sharpest fang. Blackbriar rules, she said. Every Luna wears one. And Calder, the man who never once raised his voice at me back in the city, just stood there like all of this was perfectly reasonable. So I told the driver to turn around. That's when the logs came down across the road. My phone had no signal. Willa was bleeding. And Calder was crouched on the hood of my car, telling me I could walk into that pack hall on my own, or be carried in. He'd done his homework on me — my money, my bloodline, my dowry. All of it, except one thing. The bone whistle around my neck. And what happens when I blow it.

For years, I believed a rival family had stolen my children. Four of them — two baby boys, then my newborn twins. Every time, my husband wept. He swore revenge. He held me while I screamed myself sick.
Tonight I went down to the basement looking for him. The door was open a crack. He was kissing another woman.
"I threw both incubators off the cliff myself," he laughed. "Didn't even blink."
He killed all four. To clear a path for his mistress's son.
He runs the family now. He thinks grief has broken me — that I'll spend the rest of my life crying in the bed we shared.
He forgot one thing. I'm the old don's daughter. This family was never his.
It's mine.

On my wedding day, my mother walked in and took my gown off the rack. Then she handed it to Coralie — the sister my parents adopted, the one I've given half my magic to every month for five years.
The High Priest says my stars are cursed. So Coralie will marry Roland in my place. My fiancé. The man I nearly died healing.
My father tells me to think of the bigger picture. Roland won't even look at me. Not one of them looks back as they leave me alone in that room.
They think I'll stand here and take it, like I always have.
They don't know about the black whistle in my sleeve — the one a dying man pressed into my hand at the edge of the Abyss. Blow it, he said, and I'll come for you.
I've been good for too long.
I'm done.

In my last life, I was the one who stopped it.
The second I recognized what was in that cup—a cold medicine loaded with compounds that end any pilot's career on contact with a drug screening—I knocked it out of Ivy's hands. Reid shoved me so hard I hit the coffee table. He got his four stripes anyway. Then he publicly destroyed my reputation, stood by while his fans harassed me off the internet, and smiled when I was pushed down a flight of stairs.
I died knowing he never looked back.
This time, I come back as myself: senior aviation medical officer, five years into a relationship with a man I now see clearly. When Ivy holds out that same cup with that same bright smile, I already know exactly what's in it.
I take a step back.
"Drink it while it's hot," I tell him. "Don't leave a drop."
I spent one lifetime being everyone's safety net. Not this time.

My boyfriend faked being broke to test me. Three years of it.
When I turned down his last test, I watched him settle his new girlfriend's family debt in one afternoon. Cash he swore he never had.
Told me he'd been rich the whole time. Said he needed to know if I loved him or his money.
Said I failed.
I didn't argue. I just walked out.
Funny thing is, I wasn't broke either. I was the last pureblood heir to the strongest pack on the continent, and I'd been hiding that the whole time too.
Four years later, we ran into each other again. And this time I wasn't hiding anything.

They called me a hellcat. A she-wolf tyrant. The Luna who made her Alpha husband obey.
I held him together when his father died. Built his dying pack into a powerhouse while he flirted with she-wolves.
Then he brought home his "fated mate."
Everyone waited for me to explode.
Instead, I smiled. "I'll help you prepare the ceremony."
That's when my wolf—dormant for years—began to wake.

I came back to New York for one reason: to meet the man my mother arranged for me to marry.
I never made it to dinner.
His "sister"—the woman he'd been protecting since childhood, the one he clearly loved more than he'd ever love a fiancée he'd never met—snatched a twelve-thousand-dollar dress out of my hands at a Fifth Avenue boutique and had me thrown out. When I called him about it, he told me I should be grateful to be marrying into his family at all. Then he hung up.
An hour later, she accused me of stealing her ring. Had me pinned against the wall. Told his men to strip me down and film it for "evidence."
Nico laughed when I told him the whole Ferrante family would answer for this.
"With what? You?"
My name is Sera Vitti.
That's all I'll say.

Plot

Maureen and her brother Lancelot were the children of the Beta male and female both love each other like every sibling. Suddenly things changed when Lancelot turned eighteen, he began acting strange and wanted his sister to stay away from him which broke his sister's heart. In an angry frenzy, he nearly killed his sister while trying to make her stay away from him.
He had to insist and told his parents he wanted to go to a nearby pack to train further in order to be a good Beta.
While in coma from her brother's attack, Maureen had a strange dream where she was told both her and Lance had a great destiny ahead of them. Lancelot returned years later shortly before his sister's eighteenth birthday. On the day of his sister's eighteenth birthday he called her 'Mate' in the presence of everyone.

It caused a lot of frenzy as they became the talk of the whole pack. The color of Maureen's wolf also became a concern. Her wolf was pure gold, so much that if she stood without moving, she would be taken for a golden statue.

Seeing Lancelot in so much pain, the Beta female and Luna decided to tell both Lancelot and Maureen the truth about Maureen's true birth.

The Luna was raped during one of their many trips by an unknown person who kidnapped her from right under their nose. Because Luna was against abortion, she had to keep the baby against everybody's will.

Knowing the truth that they weren't really siblings, Lancelot and Maureen decided to find Maureen's real root and why she was different from all other wolves.

A lot of other hidden truths were revealed and their true purpose was revealed and achieved but not without a lot of pain.

It was written a long time ago that there would be a great and powerful supernatural being, That his power would be unmatched by all supernatural creatures known to mankind. His sheer dominance would make creatures tremble in their boots, Every alpha known to man would bend to his will. He's the one true Alpha King. Malachi Mercy had no idea what he was or what he's destine for. All he knew was that his power was unmatched by anyone.
Hayden Trop is the next alpha to rule over The Blue Crescent Pack, but there's just one tiny flaw to this situation. Hayden is no leader and couldn't lead the pack into the next era.
Malachi and Hayden are polar-opposite, but like people always say, opposite attracts.

Book 1:- Alpha Hybrid Chronicles.
There's going to be a series of stories stemming from the first book (Alpha hybrid). I will likely be focusing on main characters to continue the Chronicles.

SIDENOTE: This is a GAY story that will contain sexually explicit material suitable for the legal age of 18,
(READ AT YOUR OWN RISK)

He’s ruthless, calculating, and driven by vengeance. She’s warmth, light, and everything he never dared to want.

For years, his only focus has been revenge—love was never in the equation. But when he's tasked with protecting his best friend’s little sister, the walls he’s built begin to crumble.

She finds good in everyone, even the man who warns her to stay away. He’s cold, possessive, and dangerously addictive. Yet, despite every warning, she falls for the one person who could break her beyond repair.

Because when love and obsession collide, the fallout is anything but predictable.

I've married sixteen dead men for a living. My seventeenth husband just opened his eyes.
I was born knowing one thing: the dead can speak one last time — but only to a spouse.
So I marry dead men. Rich families pay me to wed their fresh corpses, carry the last words sealed inside me, and read the testament out before the heirs. Then I burn the marriage certificate, and the marriage ends at the grave. Starting price: six hundred thousand dollars.
This morning, the Crane heir drowned in his own pool. Twenty-eight, obscenely rich, not one word left behind. The family offered five million and a private jet. By my count — my seventeenth husband. By a wide margin, the handsomest.
I said "I do" to a corpse for the seventeenth time. Then I called for his last words.
Silence. Sixteen weddings, sixteen voices. Husband number seventeen had nothing to say.
Because my seventeenth husband just opened his eyes.

Eight times. That's how many boyfriends my best friend Sera has "tested" for me. Eight times she's proven they weren't good enough by stealing them away with her perfect smile and fake concern.
"I'm just looking out for you, Lia," she always says. "If he really loved you, he wouldn't be tempted by me."
But this time is different. This time, it's Ryan—my boss, my almost-something, the first man who's ever made me believe I might be worth loving. When Sera comes back to town asking about my love life, I panic and lie. There's no one, I tell her. Nothing happening at all.
Big mistake.
Now she's got her sights set on him, and I'm watching her work her magic all over again. The late-night texts, the red lace lingerie, the hotel room invitation. I should just accept it like I always do. Let her prove once again that I'm not worth fighting for.
But I'm done being the girl who hands over everything she wants. This time, I'm fighting back.

"Baby, lend me Stella for the movie."
When my fiancé Damon said this, I thought it was the most romantic thing ever. My guide dog starring in his Oscar-worthy film—what a perfect love story.
I'm Aria Sinclair, 26-year-old blind film producer with perfect pitch and endless money, but no eyes. So when he said "The press will go crazy for our story," I stupidly agreed.
Three weeks later, in the editing room:
01:47:23—Dull impact.
01:47:31—Familiar whimper.
01:47:35—Silence.
My perfect pitch never lies. That wasn't CGI—that was real impact. Worse, I knew that whimper. That was Stella, my guide dog, my eyes, my most loyal companion.
They killed her. For a goddamn trophy.
On premiere night, when Damon walked the red carpet with a strange German Shepherd, when I touched her paw and found no white star-shaped mark—
"This is not my dog!"
I broke down in front of hundreds of reporters.
"Honey, you're under too much stress," Damon said gently. "Maybe you need rest."
Whispers from the audience: "Poor blind girl..." "She really needs help..."
Just like that, I became the crazy one.
Abandoned by the world.
Betrayed by the man I loved most.
But they made one fatal mistake—they thought stealing my eyes would silence me.
Now it's time to let them hear what despair sounds like...
[Click to watch me destroy them both...]

"Where is my son?"
My husband wouldn't look at me.
I had just come out of anesthesia. The bassinet next to my hospital bed was empty — except for a stack of cash, a christening card, and a ring pinned to the corner of the card.
The card had another woman's name in the godmother box.
That woman walked in behind my husband. She picked up the ring and slid it onto her own finger.
"He's safe, sweetheart. We've been talking about this for months."
My husband is Damiano Marchetti. He runs the family that runs this city. The woman wearing the ring is his father's young widow.
The baby on that card is my son.
For four years now I have been the woman this house pretends not to see. The wife told to use the servants' entrance. The mother of a boy who calls another woman Mommy.
Last night I asked my husband for a divorce.
He laughed in my face.
He has no idea how much that's going to cost him.

To stop the merfolk from being slaughtered, I went ashore to seduce the boy I grew up with — Lucian Voss, now one of the world's top scientists.
He still had feelings for me. He kept me in his bed for seven days and seven nights, refusing to let go.
I woke from the haze of pleasure to a pair of pliers prying the scales off my back.
Lucian watched me arch in agony, his expression ice-cold.
"Mermaid scales can repair genetic defects. You don't mind sharing a few, do you?"
"After all, what your kind owes me is worth far more than a handful of scales."
Two years. For two years I watched him marry another woman.
He held my kind's lives over my head and forbade me to leave. Every few days, he'd pry the scales from my spine, grind them into powder, and feed them to his new wife Vivienne to strengthen her body.
He shackled my ankles and ordered me to stay up all night washing his bedsheets. I had to kneel outside their bedroom door, motionless, listening to them together until dawn.
When Vivienne got pregnant, she started complaining about the color of the scale powder.
"Honey, these last few have been so dull. Is she running out?"
Lucian glanced at me.
The look on his face — he was counting. Calculating how many scales I had left.
He hated me to the bone, yet every time I nearly passed out from the pain, he was the one who pulled me off the floor. Forced medicine down my throat, fingers clamped around my jaw until I swallowed.
"You're counting on the fact that I still care about you. So tell me — where are my parents?"
I stayed silent and let the contradiction hang there.
It wouldn't matter soon. I wouldn't have to keep that secret much longer.
A mermaid who stays on land for three years without returning to the sea will die. No exceptions.
And I had three days left.

I woke up the morning the contract was due, picked up the pen, and crossed out my own name.
Wrote my sister's instead.
Last time, I packed away every leather jacket I owned and let Stefano Mastroianni's stylist dress me in things that needed dry cleaning. I sat straight at his family dinners and smiled until my face hurt. I let him correct my posture in front of his mother like I was something he hadn't finished training.
I did all of it, and I still ended up in the ground.
So this time I gave him Chiara. Took Pier Nine from my father as the price, and got out.
He thought he was getting his perfect bride.
On the wedding day, he reached for her hands—and felt it immediately. Smooth palms. Not a mark on them. Not the hands of a woman who'd been gripping a steering wheel since she was sixteen.
He pulled the veil up.
Chiara looked back at him, flushed with triumph.
Stefano stripped the Mastroianni ring off her finger in front of every powerful family in the city, kicked over the altar, and put one question through the cathedral walls:
"Where is Tessa."

The night Declan Ashford announces his chosen mate, everyone in the pack expects me to show up and fall apart.
I don't go.
What I do instead: I'm sitting on the floor of Cael Voss's dorm room in a training jacket that isn't mine, asking whether his mattress is filled with rocks. Cael is Declan's packmate at the academy. His equal in rank. His roommate. The last person I had any reason to call tonight.
I called him anyway.
Here's what he doesn't know: I'm not actually Beta. My real rank was sold before I was old enough to understand what that meant. I've been suppressing it for years.
Here's what I don't know: he's had something of mine under his pillow for two years. Something small. Something I spent three days looking for before I gave up.
Neither of us has said anything about it yet.

My roommate put a Blood Binding Curse on me — my own bloodline power, along with every resource I receive, gets automatically rerouted straight to her.
My ex helped her set it up. For six months she lived off my bloodline playing noble princess, him always on her arm, while I walked around hollow. The harder I fought to prove myself, the more I fed her.
Then I died. Came back knowing everything.
Here's what I figured out: the curse reroutes everything I receive.
Including debt.
I went to a guild and borrowed a batch of elixirs. Opened the contract.
The debtor on the line wasn't 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.

I just got out of prison after three years, and my family wants me to go back in.
"It's only three days," they said. "You survived three years—what's three more days?"
What they don't know: I'm dying. The only thing keeping me alive is my mate bond. Three days away from Everett means death.
For three years in prison, someone sent me food every week. No note, no name. I thought it meant my family still loved me.
I was so grateful.
I didn't know it was my twin sister. I didn't know what was inside.

I spent five years loving Beckett Calloway.
When his ex-girlfriend died saving his life, I held him through every nightmare. When he said he "wasn't ready" for marriage, I waited. When he whispered "soon," I believed him.
Then her sister showed up. Crying about some terminal illness. Begging him to take care of her.
He let her move onto our private island—the one he promised would only ever belong to us.
He introduced her at the gala where he was supposed to announce our engagement.
He got her pregnant.
And when I told him she was lying about everything, he looked at me like I was the monster.
Then came our wedding rehearsal. She walked down the aisle in my dress. He slid his ring onto her finger. The chapel caught fire. I collapsed, bleeding.
He scooped her up and ran. Didn't even glance back.
So I burned my vows, deleted every trace of myself, and vanished.
This time, I wasn't coming back.

A hundred years ago, that curse was meant for him. I'm the one who threw myself in front of it.
It cost me my elven heart, shattered on the spot—and a name I could never wash off. Traitor.
I never argued. Because the moment I speak the truth, the curse goes straight back to him.
So I stayed. I became his blood servant and let him drain me, one bottle at a time, to feed the woman he'd waited a century for. I told myself that if I endured long enough, someday he'd see my heart for what it was.
Then the healer told me my heart had thirty days left.
And he walked in, knife in hand, to say his beloved needed more of my blood.
This time, I'm not enduring anything.
I'm going to give him back this heart—at the exact moment he's most sure he's won.

There are no unmated males in our pack.
Every she-wolf in Hollowfen is promised to someone when she turns eighteen. We just don't get to know who until we walk into the Choosing Hall.
Girls go in wearing white. They come out flushed, shaking, barely able to stand. Some laugh. Some cry. None of them talk about what happens inside.
My sister Thessaly turned eighteen this spring. Gran told her she couldn't attend the Choosing.
She went anyway. She came back on shaking legs, with blood between her thighs and a smile she couldn't wipe off her face.

I took a bullet for my husband five years ago. He married me in the ICU before the anesthesia wore off.
Raffaele Santoro—heir to the most powerful mafia family in Italy—told me I was his everything. He bought a castle and named it after me. He reserved a grave beside his parents so we'd lie together for eternity.
While I was pumping my body full of hormones for our fourth round of IVF, he was across town watching his childhood sweetheart give birth to twin boys.
He named one of them Dante—the name I'd chosen for our future son.
The night I found out, I was seven weeks pregnant with his child.
I didn't tell him.
I called my best friend and said: I need everyone to think I'm dead.

The ultrasound photo caught fire slowly, curling at the edges before the flame swallowed it whole.
I watched it burn in front of my mother's grave.
Eight weeks. That was how far along I had been.
Three days ago, on the anniversary of her death, I came here to talk to her. To tell her she was going to be a grandmother.
Instead, I found my husband fucking his ex-girlfriend against the oak tree twenty feet from her headstone.
I lost the baby that night.

My husband never wore condoms with me. Said they ruined it for him. So I swallowed birth control pills for four years until they made me sick.
Then I found a half-empty box in his glove compartment. And a thong under his backseat.
That wasn't even the worst part.
The necklace I'd made from my mother's ashes—the one I'd been grieving over losing for a year—was dangling between his twenty-three-year-old trainee's tits. He stole it from our bedroom and gave it to her.
She caught me staring. She smiled.
When I confronted him, he slapped me. Then drove off with her crying in his passenger seat.
Her friends came to my hospital with a livestream, demanding I apologize for "bullying" her.
I led them straight to the parking garage.
They found her on a stretcher. Legs wrapped around my husband. No condom.
The whole internet watched.

After the wedding, my husband moved his dead fiancée's mother into our guest room. The whole town called it the kindest thing they'd ever seen.
Every morning, Dione made me a green smoothie. Her grandmother's recipe, she said. Good for the nerves.
I never drank a single one. I poured them all into the chicken feed.
In my last life, I drank them. One a day, for thirty days.
Then I started losing time. I would blink at breakfast and come back at dinner. I found notes in my own handwriting that I never wrote.
I begged Julian to take me to a doctor. He held my shoulders and smiled. "You're just tired, baby. Drink your smoothie."
On the thirtieth night, I fell asleep in my own bed, in my own body.
I never woke up. Someone else did.
This time, every glass went to Nugget, the smallest of my backyard hens.
And one night, a hen crowed in my backyard.
Hens don't crow. And we don't have a rooster.

In my last life, my boyfriend's childhood best friend handed out jars of homemade sunscreen on the boat ride to the island. I'm a marine bio major — one sniff and I knew the mix had something in it that could drive the island's feral hogs into a frenzy. I told everyone to throw them out.
They did. But Brynn didn't look at the group. She looked at me. Eyes red, jaw tight. "You just can't stand seeing people appreciate anything I do, can you?" She turned and ran into the woods alone.
We searched for her all night in a storm. By morning we found her body at the bottom of the cliffs.
A week later, at her memorial bonfire on the beach, every person who'd gotten hurt during the search turned on me. My boyfriend ripped off his bandage and showed his stitches. "If you hadn't humiliated Brynn in front of everyone, she'd still be alive."
Someone said I should burn for what I did to her.
Then hands on my back. The fire. I burned alive on the sand while seventeen people watched.
I opened my eyes. Salt air. Engine noise. I was back on the boat — the morning of the trip.

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.

My husband told me our daughter was brain-dead. He put a pen in my hand and told me to sign the organ donation form. He said it was the merciful thing to do.
I signed.
Then I watched her heart get cut out and transplanted into another child — his mistress's son.
He'd been planning it for months. The fake diagnosis, the doctor who happened to be his college girlfriend, the night his mother lured me away from the hospital so they could drug my little girl.
When I found out the truth, he killed me for it.
But somehow, I woke up back at that desk. Same pen. Same form. Same lying face waiting for my signature.
This time, I'm not signing. This time, they pay.

My daughter died on her fifth birthday.
Her first real wish—the first one she was old enough to make herself—was to go to the beach with Daddy.
Gideon promised he would take her.
She waited for him all day. She was still asking for him when she took her last breath.
He never came.
I brought her ashes to the beach she'd always dreamed of. Let her finally see the ocean.
That's when I heard it—a woman's moan, low and breathy, coming from behind the rocks.
Then his voice. Then his name on her lips.
"Between me and Lily, who do you love more?"
"You. Obviously."
He was fucking his mistress on our daughter's dream beach—while I stood there holding her ashes.
When I finally confronted them, I didn't get an apology. I got a slap across the face.
And when his mistress caught my eye and smiled, I realized something.
She knew exactly when my daughter would die.

I was a scholarship student with thirty extra pounds. Del Ashford had two hundred thousand followers and her family's supplement brand on every wall of the athletic center. First week of school, she decided we were going to be best friends.
She said she wanted to help me get in shape. What that actually looked like: I carried her product shipments up three flights of stairs, drafted her emails, and picked up her lunch from the place across campus that didn't deliver.
My roommates started calling me her errand girl behind my back. I let them.
She also introduced me to Beckett Hale. After that, things went the way they went.
She knocked my protein shake over and said I'd burned her. She planted her limited-edition earphones in my bag and told everyone I'd stolen them. The school opened a conduct review. My roommates stopped talking to me.

Beckett said I was the kind of girl who got a little attention and started thinking she deserved more of it.
I couldn't prove any of it. By spring, I was gone.
Some people just aren't built for this, Wren. You know that, right?
Del hadn't even been looking at me when she said it.
Then I opened my eyes and I was back at the party. The night she introduced me to Beckett.

The idea came from Cora.
She ran into the kitchen while I was making dinner, wrapped both arms around my waist, and looked up at me.
"Mommy, can we go to Grandma Ellen's? Just us two? Just us girls?"
"Why?" I asked.
She thought about it, very serious. "Because every time I wake up and you're not home, I miss you. Even when Daddy's there, it's different." A pause. "Grandma Ellen probably misses you just as much as I do."
Reid was leaning in the doorway. He smiled at me—that easy, certain smile—and said, "She's not wrong. You've been running on empty for months. Take the trip. I've got everything covered."
The flights were booked before I finished washing the dishes.
I should have noticed how fast that was.
The call I made the night before we flew home changed everything. I thought I'd hung up.
I hadn't.

In my last life, I fell for every word out of Ryan's mouth.
To save his shot at attending physician, I volunteered to take the fall for his medical malpractice case.
My license was revoked. I went from being a surgeon to being a housewife trapped in his family's home, wasting ten years of my life chained to a kitchen stove.
I thought my sacrifice would earn me his gratitude for the rest of our lives.
Turns out, he'd been sleeping with that doe-eyed little nurse, Lily, for God knows how long.
When years of exhaustion finally caught up with me and my heart gave out, I collapsed on the freezing basement floor.
My husband Ryan was upstairs, arms wrapped around Lily, sleeping in the master bedroom we'd bought with my dowry.
"That bitch is finally kicking the bucket. Once she croaks, this house is ours."

My mate died in a border skirmish with an enemy pack.
The woman he loved, Wren, died with him. She came from the pack we'd hated for a hundred years.
They left me two sons who weren't mine by blood.
Eighteen years passed.
I raised those boys like they were my own. I even got them into the Alpha King's Guard — the kind only a handful of pups make in a whole generation.
But the day they were chosen, my mate, dead all these years, walked back through the door with his forbidden lover.
She smiled at me like we were old friends.
"Thank you for turning our sons into the pride of the Guard."
"We couldn't have stayed hidden all these years without you."
Then my mate said he wanted the bond broken. He wanted her as his mate instead. He wanted his sons back.
I didn't cry. I didn't argue.
I just smiled.
"Okay."

Last time, I was the first student to walk out of the SAT.
A news crew was waiting by the doors. The camera found my face, and I made one bored little joke — the test was too easy, I'd rather be surfing in Miami. By midnight the clip had two million likes, and my whole life had a price tag on it.
An agency came knocking within the week. My parents signed the contract before I understood what I was signing away, and they pulled me out of school. I stopped being a person and became their product.
And Mia — my best friend, the girl who cried at my locker and braided my hair before exams — Mia copied my notes, rode them into Yale, and smiled into the cameras while she told the internet I'd slept my way through high school.
By the time the agency had wrung me dry, I had nothing left. No school. No name worth defending. Not one person who believed a word out of my mouth.
The night it ended, Mia came up to the roof to "talk." She said she would never forgive me for being the lucky one. Then she put both hands flat on my chest and pushed.
The last thing I saw was her face, smiling down at me over the edge.
Then I blinked — and I was back in the testing room.

Five years, I bled for Dario. Took a bullet for him. Cleaned up his dirtiest books. Drank myself into the ER just to keep his bosses sweet.
Then he slid divorce papers across the table and told me to sign. His mistress was pregnant; the family needed a "proper" heir, and I was in the way. So I signed—and let him strip me of everything I'd built.
Three hours later, a rival crew ran his car off the bridge. He survived. But he will never father a child again.
Now he's pouring a fortune he can't spare into his mistress's baby, showing off his "heir" to every boss in New York. He thinks his bloodline is finally safe.
He has no idea whose child he's really raising. And I'm the only one who does.

For two years I was Easton's secret girlfriend. I paid his tuition. I took a beating from the guys who came for him. I gave up my MIT interview so he could chase what he wanted.
Then I heard him behind a half-open door, kissing my best friend.
"Last life she clung to me like a lunatic. This life I'm not making that mistake again."
Last life. They'd both been reborn—come back with every memory of a life I don't even remember living—and somewhere in it, they'd decided I was the desperate girl who ruined everything.
Fine.
I went back to my desk, pulled the MIT acceptance I'd been about to turn down, and signed it.
Easton, I'll let you have her.
He spent two lifetimes sure he was the smart one. He's about to find out which of us was holding back.

My boss and I had one night. A mistake—or so I told myself, right up until I found a file in his office with my photo labeled "Potential Breeder," tucked inside a folder marked Pack Hierarchy. Same night the pregnancy test came back positive.
His eyes were glowing gold when he walked in.
I ran before sunrise. New name, new city, a life built from nothing.
Five years later, my son stops aggressive dogs in midair with his bare hands. He wakes up at 3 AM telling me someone is coming before the car even turns onto our street. His eyes flash gold when he's angry, and his voice makes grown men step back without knowing why.
The most powerful werewolf in the western territories has been looking for us for five years.
He just found our street.

My neighbor Beck Morrow was the best high school point guard this state had seen in years.
The night before the state championship—three college scouts in the stands—he decided to stay home with his girlfriend instead. She wasn't feeling well.
I called his coach.
He played. He got the scholarship. He built a company worth eight figures before he turned thirty, and I spent five years writing every algorithm that company ran on.
He repaid me by throwing a ball at my head during a training session. Then his lawyers sent a letter explaining that I had no legal claim to any intellectual property developed under my employment contract, effective immediately, and that my position was being terminated.
Then I woke up. It was the first week of senior year again.

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…

On our wedding night, my husband wanted to play a game.
Trade secrets. The kind that could destroy you if they ever got out.
He went first.
"I hurt a girl once. At a ski lodge. She shouldn't have been in that room. But she was."
He said it like a parking ticket. Then he took a sip of whiskey and moved on.
My turn.
"I killed someone," I said. "Do you believe me?"
He laughed. He thought I was joking.
He really shouldn't have kissed me after that.

At last season's Grand Olfactory Gala, Vivienne Harrow presented my formula before I could reach the stage.
I confronted her. She asked where my proof was.
I had nothing. The formula had never left my head — no notes, no records, nothing. I didn't know how she'd gotten it.
I died not knowing.
Then I opened my eyes, and she was already reaching for me.
"Not this time."
I stepped back.

Ethan Calloway and I had been together for eight years. Married for three—or so everyone thought.
We had the ceremony. The hospital chapel, the white dress, his boss giving a toast. But we never made it to City Hall to sign the papers. He promised we would. Eighteen times.
Every time, something came up. Or rather, someone came up—his young protégée, Chloe. She needed him at the hospital. She needed him at the conference. She needed him at dinner.
I drank on his behalf at every work function. I wrote the surgical plans he presented as his own. I waited in an empty apartment while he drove her home.
The nineteenth time he tried to reschedule, I didn't argue. I didn't cry. I just booked a one-way ticket to the one city he'd never follow me to.
He made eighteen promises. I only needed to break one.

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.

Ten years ago, my mate faked his death in the war and ran off with his childhood sweetheart.
No goodbye. No contact since.
All he left me were two things — a debt of six hundred and eighty thousand, and a notice declaring him lost, stamped four years later by people who'd never met him.
The bank took our den. I moved into a shared burrow-flat at the edge of the settlement.
Three jobs after hours. Sold blood. Scrubbed latrines. Tested tonics for the healers until my nose stopped working right.
Ten years to pay off the debt. A desk at the Missing and Fallen Registry Office, once the ceasefire finally came.
My first case file was a man the law had already declared dead.
He said he'd been young and reckless. Walked out. Never looked back.
Now his family's land was due a war reparations payout, and he needed his name restored to collect it.
I stared at the name on the form. Recognized it instantly.
Smiled.
"Insufficient documentation. Application denied."

My two best friends killed me over a girl who'd been dead six months.
Lila Bishop never got a single offer. So she cried and clung until Cole and Wes were ready to throw away their full rides and follow her to nowhere. I tried to stop them — they called me jealous and cut me off. So I went over their heads. I called their moms. I fixed their signing papers myself, the night before the deadline.
Six months later Lila was gone, and they blamed me. They dragged me to the roof of our gym and threw me off.
Then I opened my eyes — three months back, the day it all started.
Last time, I broke myself trying to save them.
This time, I'd let them jump.

Sloane Mercer has made it her mission to test every limit Professor Dalton Avery sets. Sharp-tongued, fearless, and irresistibly defiant. She turns his lectures into a battlefield of wit and willpower.

Dalton prides himself on control. Of his classroom, of his reputation, and especially of his desires. But when Sloane pushes one time too many, the tension between them finally ignites.

What begins as a battle for dominance becomes something far more dangerous. An illicit affair burning with passion, power, and the threat of exposure. The closer Dalton gets to losing himself to her, the more he realizes he never had control at all.

On his deathbed, my husband Marcus confessed he'd swapped our baby with his mistress Chloe's seventeen years ago. Staring at his tearful, repentant face, I barely held back a laugh—I'd uncovered this secret sixteen years prior. I'd quietly swapped my real daughter back, sending his bastard to her cruel biological mother. Seventeen years of patience wasn't weakness, but waiting for the perfect moment. Now he's dying, Chloe's panicking, and my half-lifetime revenge? It's only just starting…