2883 Book(s) Related to everything i love is killing me

Alex Lee has spent three months watching Elias Reed from across library aisles and lecture halls, too terrified to speak. When the campus launches an anonymous Valentine’s letter program, Alex finally finds the courage to tell Elias everything he’s been feeling, one unsigned letter at a time.
Elias Reed is weeks away from graduation and convinced he’s better off alone. After a devastating breakup left him feeling like he was too much to love, he’s built walls nobody can climb. Until anonymous letters start arriving in his mailbox, letters that see him in ways nobody else does, letters that make him feel found.
As February unfolds in a blur of snow and roses and secret confessions, Alex and Elias build an intimacy through words that neither has found in person. They pass each other on campus, strangers separated by fear and time and the carefully constructed distance Alex maintains. But the closer they get on paper, the harder it becomes to hide in the safety of anonymous ink.
When Valentine’s Day forces Alex to choose between revealing himself and losing Elias forever, he discovers that the hardest part of love isn’t finding it. It’s being brave enough to let yourself be seen.
A story about the words we write when we’re too afraid to speak. About loving someone from a distance and learning that sometimes the person you’ve been searching for has been watching you all along.

Maya has been secretly in love with Liam Miller, her best friend Chloe's older brother, for years even though she knows he is five years older and completely off-limits. When Liam gives her his hoodie in the rain and tells her she is growing up dangerously fast, Maya's carefully hidden feelings begin to surface. On Liam's twenty-first birthday they are left alone and share a kiss that changes everything, but Liam pulls away saying Maya is too young and this cannot happen. Maya tries to move on by agreeing to attend Spring Formal with Noah, but Liam cannot handle watching her with someone else. When their forbidden relationship explodes into a public scandal, they face backlash and accusations that tear both families apart, Maya and Liam must decide if their love is worth the price or if some lines should never be crossed.

Shantel Leaster is twenty-five and, to put it simply, a mess. She’s clumsy, spoiled, and never on time. Her parents, tired of her careless ways, cut her off and force her to survive on her own. After hopping from one failed job to another, Shantel finds herself desperate, with nothing but her small car, a pile of rejection letters, and a growing sense that life is passing her by.

That’s when she crosses paths with Kelvin Zee. He is everything she’s not: disciplined, powerful, respected, and blind. At first, Shantel doesn’t know how to feel about him. He’s cold and intimidating, but there’s something magnetic about him, something that makes her want to stay. Kelvin offers her a job as his personal chef, and though she doubts herself, she takes it.

“You are going to suck my dick like a good girl.” He commanded, slapping his dick on my already stick out tongue. I wrapped my full lips around him and began bobbing my head up and down.

“I am going to cum but I still need to fuck your little pussy so good.” He pulled out of my mouth and pushed me down onto the bed.

“Fuck, you are so wet and dripping.” He groaned when he pressed his dick to my entrance, rubbing up and down my folds and coating it with the juice leaking out of me.

“Oh my goodness.” I breathed, instantly felt full. He was so damn big.


Evelin was forced into sheltering at the mafia Don safe house when her family was attacked and her father sent to prison under suspicion circumstances. She has to share space with the mafia heir, next Don Anthony Vincenzo. He was known as the Devil himself and pussy hunter.

When she becomes suspicious of the attack on her family, she begins a dangerous road to find answers. But what is more dangerous for her; the mafia Don or the truth someone desperately doesn't want her to find?

I felt my heart tighten in my chest as I watched with horror, my fiancé and my best friend having sex in the hotel. They were so engrossed and couldn’t even care less that they were half naked and anyone who cared, could see them from the glass wall of the building’s fourth floor. Sonia was pressed to the wall while Dennis worked her insides from behind. I couldn’t hear her moans but with every second that I imagined it, my heart sank the more.
Tears flooded my face as I flashed into the last two years of my life when I met Dennis. He was everything I wanted and more. Tall, handsome, broad shoulders and chest, I couldn’t stop drooling as he pulled me into a hug. For a moment there, my heart forgot how to beat, and the moment he smiled and introduced himself, I knew I was going to marry him. I had fallen hard in love with him.
Freya decided to try love again after several heartbreaks, she thought Dennis was different but reality dawned on her when she caught him cheating with her best friend, Sonia, the same person who matchmade them in the first place.
Actually, Dennis wasn’t cheating on her with Sonia, he was cheating on Sonia with her! The two have been dating over five years, and she never knew. She was the third wheel in their relationship…
What will happen now that Freya has found out? Find out in the story!

"Aspen" I hear someone whisper from faraway. I ignore it and just pass it off as the wind since I left my window open last night.

"Aspen" I hear again except it's louder this time. I ignore it again.

A couple of minutes later a sweet smell fills my nostrils. It reminds me of pineapples and vanilla.

"If you don't wake up, I'm going to burn your favorite book" I hear a familiar voice say which causes my eyes to snap open as I jolt up in bed so that I'm facing my best friend

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.

What would a woman do if one day she is waiting for her husband to tell him the news of her pregnancy but he comes home with another woman who is pregnant with his child?
........

Ariadne had a perfect life until her mother died in a car accident and her father remarried, bringing a stepmother and stepsister into her life. Once adored by all, Ariadne became an eyesore to everyone, including her father. Her stepmother and stepsister took everything from her.

However, she lost it when their eyes fell on Xander, the sole heir of the richest family in the country and her childhood love. When rumors of Crystal, her step sister and Xander's dating spread, Ariadne used her everything to force Xander into marrying her.

Despite pouring her heart and soul into the marriage, Ariadne failed to make Xander reciprocate her feelings. Their loveless marriage came to an end when Crystal returned in their lives.

With a broken heart, Ariadne left the city with a secret and rebuilt her life.

Five years later, she returned as a successful interior designer to design her ex-husband's new mansion. But this time, what she saw in Xander's eyes for herself was not hatred. It was something else.

She came face to face with the same people who had wronged her in the past. They still held resentment towards her. But this time Ariadne vowed to strike back at her bullies.

Many secrets were revealed in the process that made Xander regret his past actions. He was determined to win Ariadne back.

BUT Will Ariadne be able to forget their past and get back together with Xander or She will choose someone else?

He may have been her number one fan, but he wasn't just annoying; he was a piece of shit she couldn't stop thinking about...

Bukunmi, a struggling writer, takes her mother's advice and goes in search of a better job, which she immediately regrets after coming in contact with the ever daring, seductive and extravagant Tade, whom she detests being fully aware of his past.

Tade Wellington, a sexy lucrative billionaire that beds anything in skirts, gets to meet the writer he has been following up, but asides being her fan, he knows she's the only witness to a crime he was involved in many years ago.

He will do anything to silence her,

She will do everything to get justice;

But will she really do what is right when love stands in the way???

FROM THE AUTHOR OF "THE CHILD'S FATHER" AND "FEELS LIKE YESTERDAY."

When humanity’s last survivors are forced to fight for a place on the new world, love becomes the most dangerous weapon of all.
Red Harts never asked to be chosen for Savage Glory, a brutal arena designed by AIs to decide who deserves to live on Planet Minerva.
But when she meets Aamon everything changes.
They were never meant to love each other.
She’s the Tank; the shield of humanity.
He’s the Assassin; the blade designed to end her.
Thrown into Savage Glory, a survival arena ruled by machines, Red and Aamon must fight side by side... or against each other. Every heartbeat between them defies the code written in their blood and metal.
But in a world where only one can survive, love becomes a rebellion.
And sometimes, surviving means breaking the system that built you.
Two hearts. One arena.
To love... is to risk everything.

"Kiss it for me, sister…"
I had no idea the milk I drank every night was handmade by my foster brother, Luciano.
After I turned down his confession yet again, I stared at the milk he’d brought me so eagerly and knocked it to the floor in disgust.
The boy who’d always been quiet and obedient suddenly snapped.
He pinned me flat to the ground, his face inches from mine, his breath brushing my ear:"I get it. You want to drink fresher milk, don’t you?"
I never imagined the boy I’d raised all these years could spiral this far out of control with his twisted feelings for me.
So the very next day, I put him behind bars with my own two hands, determined to put an end to this messed-up obsession for good.

Selene thought she'd found true love with Alexander Morrison. She was WRONG—she was just a stand-in for Jessa, the woman he really wanted.

When Alexander and his twin brother Adrian's yacht exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, Alexander came home with Adrian's ashes, claiming to BE Adrian. His goal? To steal Adrian's wife Jessa—the woman he'd always loved.

Selene knew instantly he was lying, but when she told everyone, no one believed her. Alexander called her "crazy from trauma" and locked her away in a mental facility. She was PREGNANT.

They drugged her daily. After she gave birth, Alexander told her the baby died. She broke completely.

Three years later, dying in that white hell, Selene heard Alexander's final confession:

"I always loved Jessa. Adrian just got to her first. YOU? You were just her replacement."

"The kid's alive. I gave him to Jessa. He calls her Mom now."

Selene died full of rage—then woke up reborn, back to the moment Alexander walked in with that urn.

This time, she'd expose his lies and make him PAY.

A childhood engagement, two decades in the making. I crossed an ocean for the sole purpose of marrying the heir to the Russell family.

But they led me to an abandoned construction site—where a blood-soaked man was swinging a steel pipe, fighting off ten attackers at once. This, they told me, was "my fiancé."

Bankrupt. Drowning in debt. Scraping by in underground fighting pits. They said he was living like a dog.

Meanwhile, the real heir had his arm around another woman, sneering at me from across the room. "Some gold-digging country girl thinks she deserves me? Find a nobody with the same last name—that's the best she'll ever get."

They made us into a joke—the washed-up loser paired with the clueless village hick.

What they didn't know was that I held several championship belts.

What they also didn't know was that this little "con" of theirs had already begun to unravel the moment I set foot in this city.

He said, "I don't know you. Mind your own business."

Too bad. I'd already made it mine.

This marriage? I was locking it down.

In a modern city of flights, glass hotels, and surveillance footage, Nora—an artist still recovering from surgery—watches her marriage rot behind polished excuses. As she traces her husband’s affair through airport selfies, joint-account charges, voice recordings, and a staged fall on the stairs, humiliation hardens into precision. Cold, sharp, and deeply satisfying, this is a divorce reckoning lit by rain, evidence files, airport confrontations, and the moment a woman stops begging to be chosen.

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.

Six years of marriage, and I thought that if I tried hard enough, she would see me someday.
Yet she never gave me a hug, never called our son "sweetheart" once, and couldn't even stand him calling her "Mom."
She said I was calculating, that I was shameless.
I laughed. So, in her eyes, my love was a scam from the very beginning.
So, I signed the divorce papers and left town with our son.
I thought it was all over.
But then she said,
"I'm not leaving you."

Warning: This novel have matured contents +18

Me and you. Come on let's play. "She said".

Um, okay, sure," I said, "but what do we do if one of us refuses to answer truth, or do a dare?"

"Then," smiled vicky, "A different truth or dare is given, and that one has to be done, no matter what."

"Ok Deal," I said.

"Truth or Dare?" she asked.

"Truth," I said.

"What's your honest opinion of those pics you saw, of me?" She gave me a look of pure curiosity, which only made me laugh a little.

"They were very hot," I said. "Truth or Dare?"

"Truth," she said, smiling at my comment.

"Is it just me, or are you not wearing panties?" I said, more to tease her about it, than I was curious.

"Yeah, I'm not," she said. "Actually, I'm surprised you noticed. Truth or Dare?"

"Dare," I said.

"I dare you to take off your shirt," she said.

So, thats how it started. I don't know why, but her mission is to find any means to have me for herself not minding what it will result to. Though she later had me and even got pregnant for me., but what happened after that is was you won't expect.

"You have two months to live." The doctor's death sentence was still ringing in my ears when I found the receipt in his pocket.

[Four Seasons Hotel. Romance Suite. Check-in: 3:00 PM.]

3:00 PM. The exact moment I was begging the doctor for painkillers, Alexander was in a hotel bed with another woman.

I looked at him, sleeping soundly beside me. I had loved this man for five years, sold everything to help him succeed. Now, in the final countdown of my life, he gave me the most fatal blow.

"I'm exhausted from meetings," he had lied, smelling of Santal 33 and another woman's sex.

I clenched the receipt until my nails dug into my flesh. I wouldn't tell him about the cancer.

I would use whatever time I had left to make him regret ever being born.

To pay for her daughter’s leukemia treatment, Nora takes every job she can find. But the wedding she’s hired to plan belongs to the one man she never expected to see again.
Five years ago, Xie Yanchen was her first love. Now he’s a powerful CEO… and about to marry another woman. Worse, she must plan their wedding herself.
What he doesn’t know is that she secretly gave birth to his child.
What she doesn’t know is that this reunion will change both their lives forever.
As the truth slowly comes to light, he realizes the woman he once lost has spent five desperate years raising his daughter alone.

Warning: This novel have matured contents +18

"A different truth or dare is given, and that one has to be done, no matter what." Vicky said.

"Ok Deal," I said.

"Truth or Dare?" she asked.

"Truth," I said.

"What's your honest opinion of those pics you saw, of me?" She threw me a look of pure curiosity, which only made me laugh a little.

"I can say they were very hot," I said.

"Truth or Dare?"

"Truth," she answered, smiling at my comment.

"Is it just me, or are you not wearing panties?" I said, more to tease her about it, than I was curious.

"Yeah, I'm not," she said. "Actually, I'm surprised you noticed. Truth or Dare?"

"Dare," I said.

"I dare you to take off your shirt," she said.
.
.
So, thats how it started. I don't know why, but her mission is to find any means to have me for herself not minding what it will result to. Though she later had me and even got pregnant for me., but what happened after that is what you won't expect.

After I found out about the secret admirer he’s been talking to for the past two months the, he throws divorce papers at my face after being married for six months. He claims that his admirer would give him half of the Williamson cooperation. He thinks I’m the naive middle class woman he married but what he doesn’t know is I’m the owner of the Williamson Cooperation, the company I inherited from my father’s as his only child just before he died. Throws out of the house, I decided to reclaim my power and move back to my estate. I hosted a convention where the secret admirer would be handing him the properties and I put everyone in shock when I show up and they find out it’s me. Richard begs at my feet for mercy but I totally ignore him and choose his personal assistant who has always been good to me from the very day I stepped into Richard’s mansion as his wife

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…

Noah Martin is the most handsome physics instructor at his college. Of course, being an ex-model helps a bit in that department. He is engaged to a beautiful and talented designer, Olivia Wilson. They have a newborn daughter, Amelia, and are extremely busy with both of their careers. With the stress of everyday life and their newborn baby… they begin to just live together and not really be together. They skirt around the main issue between them and find excuses to not talk about it. When Noah’s coworker, Lea, and Olivia’s main male model, Adam, show up to tempt them… they are forced to deal with their relationship problems head on.

Warnings: Sexual Content, Cheating, Manipulation.

Suggested Age: 18+

Tell Me it Gets Easier: When a Relationship is Worth Saving is created by Minette Enfers, an eGlobal Creative Publishing signed author.

"Do you enjoy this? Ignoring me like I don't exist? Do you have any idea how humiliating this feels, waiting for you like some fool?" After three years of a cold, loveless marriage, Selene Henderson finally gathers the courage to walk away from her distant billionaire husband, Sebastian Kingsley.
She's ready to file for divorce... until a tragic accident changes everything. When Sebastian wakes up with no memory of the woman he once pushed away, Selene finds herself trapped in a marriage she was desperate to escape—this time with a man who suddenly looks at her like she's his whole world.
But can love born from broken memories survive the truth of their painful past? Or will the secrets she's been hiding destroy them all over again?
"Are you always this shy around your own husband, wife?" his voice dropped into a low, dangerous growl, his hands anchoring me against the wall.
"We didn't... we didn't use to do this," I gasped, trying to look away from his piercing gaze.
He leaned in, his breath hot against my lips. "Then your body has a better memory than my brain. Because right now, it's telling me you belong exactly right here."

"There is no us. There hasn't been for six years."
"You dropped divorce papers at my feet, Aidan. In front of cameras and everyone who mattered. Your mistress called me trash, and you stood there and said nothing."
"He is not yours, Aidan. He has a father. If I had been pregnant with your child back then, I would have gotten rid of it. You don't deserve anything from me."
Six years ago, Evelyn believed she had the perfect marriage.
On the night Aidan Smith celebrated his greatest achievement, she was ready to reveal the happiest news of her life. She was pregnant with his child.
Instead, she was publicly humiliated.
Aidan believed a cruel lie and chose his mistress over the wife who had loved him for years. In front of cameras and high society, he ended their marriage without knowing he was leaving behind a child who would change everything.
Heartbroken, Evelyn disappeared and started over.
Six years later, she returns as Evelyn Cole, a world renowned fashion designer and billionaire CEO. She built an empire, raised her son alone, and became the woman no one can look down on anymore.
Then fate brings her back into Aidan's life.
When the truth finally comes out, Aidan realizes the woman he abandoned was the greatest treasure he ever lost.
He wants his ex wife back.
But Evelyn Cole no longer belongs to him. And this time... he will be the one begging for her love.

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

Fourteen years I gave him.
Every storm I shielded him from.
Every mess I cleaned up for him.
I made him a king of Manhattan.
On my forty-second birthday, he brought my enemy's daughter to my party.
He forged my medical records.
He tried to strip me of my trust.
He thought I was done.
He forgot one thing: I made him.
And I have a son he never knew existed.

I spent seven years being Preston Maddox's personal errand girl.

Did his homework, took his father's belt for him, cut off every friend I had because he said he didn't like me talking to other guys.

I told myself that if I was good enough, patient enough, he'd eventually see me.

Then came the school's centennial gala. In front of everyone, he locked me, a girl with severe aquaphobia, inside a water tank filled to the brim with ice-cold water, so Vanessa Sinclair could have a pretty backdrop for her ballet number.

The audience roared. He watched Vanessa take her bow with this soft, adoring smile on his face. The only time he glanced at me was when he noticed I'd made a mess, and all he did was wrinkle his nose.

The water rose over my head, and something in me finally understood.

To Preston Maddox, I wasn't even worth as much as a dog.

If a dog was drowning, its owner would at least care.

Me? I just disgusted him.

My long-lost twin sister has returned.
The first thing she did was demand to marry my fiancé.
Jayden, murmuring apologies, held her close as they walked into the city hall.
My family urged me to be generous, saying, "After all she’s been through, you owe her this much. You've had a good life all these years—why not let her have this?"
Until the day of their wedding, no one could find me.
But what they didn't know was that my body had been drifting at sea for over ten days.

For three years, the whole school thought I loved privileged golden boy Sebastian Grayson. I covered his mistakes, took his punishments, and single-handedly turned his rebellious self into a Harvard admit, enduring endless mockery for my one-sided devotion.
Yet every obedient act was never love — only a contract deal.
When we reunite at a Harvard banquet two years later, Sebastian craves a second chance.
But he is too late. I will never return.

"Starting price for my wife—one dollar!" James announced, pointing at the dog cage where I lay curled up like a dying animal.

The crowd at the wedding erupted in laughter. "Five dollars!" "Ten!" They threw bids like trash, mocking the woman who used to be Mrs. Windsor. Lillian, wearing my stolen necklace, poked me through the bars with a metal rod. "Look at you, Aurora. You're nothing but filth." I closed my eyes, accepting my fate. My husband had sold me. My dignity was gone.

Suddenly, a cold, authoritative voice cut through the noise.

"Two hundred million."

Silence fell over the hall. Every head turned. Walking through the doors was a man radiating power—Louis Smith, the newly found heir to the Smith empire. The man I had pushed away ten years ago. James turned pale. "Mr. Smith... this is a joke..."

Louis didn't even look at him. He walked straight to the cage, his eyes burning with a terrifying mix of rage and tenderness. He ripped the lock off with his bare hands and pulled me into his arms. James tried to block him. "She's my wife! You can't just take her!"

Louis smirked, his voice dripping with ice. "Your wife? I just bought her. She's mine now."

She rushed home late at night to celebrate her husband's birthday — only to find him with another woman.
"Daddy, when are you and Mommy getting a divorce?" her son asked, innocent and cruel all at once. "I want Auntie to be my new mommy."
She thought of the divorce papers she'd found the day before. Without hesitation, she picked up her phone and dialed her boss.
"I'll join the OriginWorld research program. But I have one condition..."
Months later, she stood at the podium as a national-level AI research consultant, delivering a keynote lecture.
And there, in the audience, sat her ex-husband — staring up at her, utterly stunned.

Jonathan’s way of loving was always paying in silence. After we broke up, he cleared my shopping cart, stocked up enough makeup remover to last me three years, trying his best to make up for it. But during those three years when I willingly waited for him to propose, he never said a word. Until one day, he found a small note I’d written in pencil three years ago in that wedding planning book: “It’s okay, I can wait.” He cried all night staring at that line, and the next day, he bought 17 copies of the same book. On the title page of each one, he wrote neatly: “Wait for me.” It turns out, the stupidest person takes three years just to learn to say “I love you.”

They chose her. They always chose her.
For eighteen years, I was the ghost in my own family while my adopted sister was the star. So when the ransom call came and they had to choose which daughter to save, I knew the answer before they spoke.
"Save her," they told the kidnappers, nodding at my sister. Then they turned to me. "She's strong. She can survive."
They were right. I was strong enough to survive the warehouse. Strong enough to disappear. Strong enough to come back.
Now I’m stepping onto the nation’s most-watched reality show, right alongside the people who left me for dead. They’re here to polish their perfect image for the cameras. I’m here to strip it bare—one live scandal at a time.
The problem? The show’s most powerful investor isn't playing their game. He’s a cold, record-breaking F1 champion​ who shuts down my sister’s tears and backs my play every single time. When my family tries a live ambush, he steps in front of the lens and makes it clear: I’m under his protection.
They called me strong because they thought I was disposable. Strong is the last thing they should have made me.

Humans aren't supposed to survive carrying a vampire's child. The immortal blood drains you dry.

Valentine was a pureblood vampire Duke. I was just a mortal. But I was stupid enough to think love was stronger than biology.

Four years ago, I tore myself apart on the birthing bed to bring a half-blood into this world, only to wake up staring at Valentine’s back.

His late father’s favorite concubine, Cecilia, had already snatched my baby from the cradle. And my husband acquiesced to it all.

"He looks just like me," Cecilia purred, tracing my newborn's cheek. "Thank you for giving birth to my son."

Then she tossed a blood jade onto my sheets, like I was some cheap baby-making machine.

I didn't take the payoff. I grabbed the heavy stone and hurled it straight at Valentine’s face.

For four agonizing years, I fought to get my baby back. I hired mercenaries, rogues, and shadow-smugglers, bleeding myself dry to breach the Duke’s estate. Every single attempt failed.

Until tonight. A terrified servant smuggled out a whisper that stopped my heart: Cecilia had fed my son "diluted holy water"—a twisted sacrament meant to literally burn the human half out of his organs.

I didn't hire anyone this time. I tore through the gates myself. I took a guard’s spear through the shoulder and let cursed brambles shred my arms to the bone, just to drag my dying boy out of a burning greenhouse.

But when the agonizing pain of the holy water woke him, Luke looked at me with pure, unadulterated disgust.

"It’s your fault! It’s your filthy human blood!" My four-year-old son spat the words like venom. "Mother Cecilia says if we just burn out this curse, I can be the true heir! If it weren't for you, Father would have claimed me by now! I hate you!"

I froze.

When I finally spoke, my voice was a raw, inhuman scrape. "Call me Mom one last time, and I'll walk out of your life forever."

Six hundred years into our marriage, I found out my husband had a son.

I had ended my border patrol three days early, wanting to surprise Valerius.

Not far away, Valerius was channeling his exclusive magic, teaching a boy how to weave the darkness.

"Dad! I did it!" The boy looked up. His bright eyes were a near-perfect reflection of Valerius's.

My mind instantly went blank.

Dad?

A woman walked over.

She draped a small cloak over the boy's shoulders, her hand brushing against Valerius's chest with practiced familiarity. "Valeri, the wind is picking up. He'll catch a cold now that he's sweating."

Valerius naturally wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "My fault."

The image of them huddled together like a picture-perfect family was an ice-tipped needle driven straight into my eyes.

The sharp sting made my breath hitch in my throat.

The man who had sworn before the Senate to love me for all eternity—the man bound to me by a Soul Blood Pact—had already betrayed me!

A sudden, agonizing cramp seized my lower abdomen.

It was an old wound from six centuries ago.

When the Sunfire Curse nearly reduced Valerius to ashes, I had offered my high-born pure blood and my womb as a sacrifice to forcibly block the hex for him.

The price was permanent infertility, along with an excruciating backlash of pain I had to endure every single month.

Back then, Valerius had held me, his eyes red and tear-filled. "I don't want any children! I would rather lose my seat in the Senate than ever betray you!"

Yet the scene before me crushed those words into fine dust.

I stumbled backward, my chest feeling as though it had been ripped open by bare hands.

I was terrified I'd lose control and rush over to scream at him.

Worse yet, in the face of this cozy, happy family of three, I was afraid I'd look like a pathetic, unwanted outsider.

Suffocation gripped my throat. I turned and fled.

My adopted sister, Cordelia, conspired with her biological mother to harvest my organs alive, yet she had the audacity to claim I paid thugs to rape her.
My biological parents didn't bother to ask for the truth. They cursed me, calling me a vicious bastard, and threatened to break my legs.
My fiancé, Caspian, coldly announced the cancellation of our engagement, declaring he would marry the very murderer who killed me.
I had been dead for exactly three days. No one cared. My body was rotting back in a moldy storage room.
Through it all, my soul was trapped in the manor, forced to witness this absurd farce.
But what they didn't expect was that when they finally learned of my death—
Everyone went completely insane.

The moment I gave up wasn't when I found out my husband was cheating. It was when I heard my ten-year-old daughter laugh into the phone and say, "Mom's so clueless. She has no idea about Dad and Summer."

Ten years ago, I was a top biomedical researcher, making six figures. I gave it all up for his promotion and our newborn daughter. Ten years later, the perfect marriage I traded my career and youth for turned out to be nothing but an elaborate lie.

He called me his safe haven, then got in our bed with his mistress and discussed how to keep me in the dark.

This time, I'm not going to cry or make a scene. I'm going to quietly gather my evidence and call the lab director I've turned down seven times.

"Blondie..." Judah trailed as if he was thinking real hard about something. "I'm giving you an out," he said finally.

"A what?"

"You don't need to do this with me. This whole... practice kissing thing, too. I think we’ve done enough. This game is getting too out of hand. You should just back out now, while you can. Because this isn't gonna end well for you,"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, what the hell are you talking about?" I scoffed and my voice was seriously high-pitched.

"I told you, you girls always have to attach emotions to everything. I can already feel it coming. So I'm telling you, you better run now or you're gonna end up falling for me, fast and hard," he said.

I snorted a real loud laugh instantly. It was a reflex of some sort.

"Judah, are you high or something?” I paused to gauge his reaction, but he remained serious. “Look, I can assure you, you don't have to worry about that. I'm not even attracted to you in the slightest," my laughter was maniacal and somewhat insulting.

“Oh really?” he asked.

“Yes, really,” I said reassuringly. “I have my feelings in check. So if there’s anyone that’s going to fall, that person won’t be me,”

Judah crossed his arms and let out an irritated laugh. Clearly, he took my words as a challenge as he raised an eyebrow and his lips twitched into a smirk. He stepped off his bike and moved closer to me. I stepped back in response, hitting the red brick wall behind me. My laughter died down instantly as he put both arms next to my face so that I was completely trapped between him and the wall.

"Alright Blondie, if that's how you wanna play it," he said lowly. "Game on,"

I looked up to see his dark amber eyes boring into mine, a predatory glint in his eyes. I suddenly felt weak and helpless, as if I was a little rabbit about to be swallowed whole by a lion. I gulped instinctively as he leaned closer to me.

"Tell your heart I'm gonna steal it," he murmured to my ears.

Caroline Mercer once believed kindness could be proven by sacrifice. She took in two orphaned children, gave them schools, doctors, tutors, rooms beside her daughter's nursery, and a path into the Mercer name.

Years later, those children returned as witnesses against her. Sloane Vale smiled for the cameras while calling Caroline a monster. Nolan Vale handed federal investigators a beautiful stack of forged evidence. Caroline's husband was broken, her company was seized, and her only daughter, Evelyn, died after being traded into a marriage meant to protect everyone else's reputation.

Then Caroline opened her eyes on the morning the Vale children first arrived at her door.

This time, she would feed them. She would house them. She would educate them. She would keep every receipt, every doctor's report, every legal notice.

But she would never again give strangers the keys to her child's future.

I found my husband's vasectomy certificate while sorting medical bills. The procedure was done a year ago. But I was six months pregnant now.

I stared at the date on the paper and my hand just... stopped. I kept checking it again and again, but it was still the same. I was freaking out. I looked down at my bump showing through this baggy sweater, and my hands started shaking.

I got in my car and drove straight to my husband's private club. I needed answers about this, now.