2975 Book(s) Related to river and her royal mate

Madison and her half-sister Zoey are both Beta's daughters, yet their lives are worlds apart. Always overlooked, Madison clings to the hope of her fated mate. But at their engagement party, after her fiancé runs to Zoey, her world shifts when she locks eyes with a stranger later. An profound connection sparks between them that dwarfs what she feels for her fiancé. Betray or confess. What will Madison choose to do?

Brenda Francisco thought her life was on track until a devastating series of events shattered her peace. Struggling to pay for her comatose mother’s hospital bills, Brenda is forced to make the ultimate sacrifice—agreeing to her father’s heinous plan to sell her to the country’s most feared mafia lord, Damian Adams.
Thrown into a life of opulence laced with cruelty, Brenda hopes to survive in her new marriage. But Damian is not a man of mercy. Known for his ruthlessness and disdain for weakness, he sees her as nothing more than a pawn in a twisted deal.
Will Brenda’s quiet strength and determination thaw Damian’s icy heart? Or will she lose herself in the dangerous world she’s entered?

“Run, little omega, but I will always find you… and when I do, I will break your pretty little legs, and you will like it, because you are sick and only I know what exactly to give you to make you feel good,”
⸻
Riven never meant to summon him but one drop of his blood awakens Kael Veyne— the Phantom Alpha.

A predator worshipped like a god, feared like a monster.

Now Riven’s first heat burns out of control. Hunted, pinned, claimed, he learns the truth: resisting Kael might kill him… but surrendering will ruin him.

Because Kael doesn’t want love. He wants ownership. And Riven? He wants more than survival… he wants to bind the Alpha himself.
⸻
Trigger Warning:
Breeding kink, choking, spanking, biting, dub-con/CNC, obsession, stalking, predator/prey dynamics, violence, stalking, fear play, somnophilia, blood, graphic language, explicit sexual content, psychological manipulation, bdsm, obsession and possession.
If you crave soft romance, turn back.
If you crave obsession and ruin, welcome to Kael’s world.

My malicious stepsister threatened me with my brother's life, forcing me to marry a man rumored to be unspeakably ugly. I had no choice but to comply.
However, after the wedding, I discovered that this man was not ugly at all; on the contrary, he was both handsome and charming, and he was also a billionaire!
（I highly recommend a captivating book that I couldn't put down for three days and nights. It's incredibly engaging and a must-read. The title of the book is "After Car Sex with the CEO." You can find it by searching for it in the search bar.）

Katerine, a 24-year-old independent and strong-willed wolf, lives within the heart of the Wolfgang Pack. She has led a solitary life since the age of 16 when her parents were tragically taken from her during a full moon by ruthless poachers. Her close friend Andrea was the sister of a man who unsettled her more than he should have. He was her Alpha, unable to resist any skirt that crossed his path. Katerine vowed to never reveal her feelings, and her secret, safeguarding her heart from potential harm. While she owed him obedience as a member of the Pack, as a female, she sought to distance herself from men who would never be faithful to just one woman. But could she resist her destiny? Or the bond that links them, is stronger than any secret?

A seductive boss and his maid……
Note: This book may contain some steamy scenes…..
When a billionaire falls for his maid, what lengths must he go through, in order to make her his???
Using dubious means to get into her panties, does that make him the antagonist or the protagonist????

Read this interesting boss/maid affair story to find out more …..

On our third wedding anniversary, my husband Hill invited many friends over for a party at the house. Everyone was noisily playing games, and the challenge was to reveal a private secret about someone in the room.
When it was Elsa's turn, she pointed at Hill's lower body. "Hill has a crescent-shaped birthmark. It's in a very private spot."
After saying this, Elsa collapsed onto the sofa laughing. Hill pretended to be angry, jumped up, and pounced on Elsa, smacking her on the butt.
I was frozen in shock. Hill's birthmark really was extremely private—you couldn't even see it without looking closely. I only discovered it myself after being married to him for a year.
Sensing my emotional shift, everyone stopped their roughhousing.
Elsa shrugged nonchalantly. "Zoe, don't overthink it. Before you got married, someone slipped Hill something once. I had no choice but to help him out. But don't worry, I promise he saved his first time for you."
Then she tapped her lips. "I used this place back then. Wore me out, honestly."
I felt my stomach churn violently and nearly threw up. Without thinking, I hurled my wine glass directly at Elsa.
"Sorry. Slipped. Just trying to help you rinse your mouth."

Ugly. Good for nothing. Useless. Disgusting.
These are the words Zara hears every single day.


I was the Alpha's fated mate but my rejection was worse than one thousand needles pierced to my skin.
"I, Weston Bruce Furrow, Alpha of the Shadow Moon Pack reject you, Zara Liam Adolf of the Night Moon Pack. A pathetic runt weakling like you is no match for me."
I could feel my heart breaking, Tuna was howling inside me, and I could feel her pain.
"I, Zara Liam Adolf of the Night Moon Pack, accept your rejection..."


Being the Alpha's daughter doesn't shield Zara from the pack's cruelty. Especially when her own father is her worst tormentor.
Years later, the man she once hated most returns. The same man who rejected her, who humiliated her, and now, she doesn't understand why he's back. Worse still, she's being forced to negotiate with him.
Zara wants nothing more than to forget how he made her feel. But her pack needs protection, and he's the Alpha who can offer it.
Which means she has no choice but to put her pack above her pain.

She thought she was sent away to get better. But really, she was sent into a secret that could destroy her.

After losing the only family she ever had, Cosette Zedler is forced to move to the hidden town of Elwood—a place deep in the forest, far from the busy city she grew up in. At first, Elwood looks quiet, almost forgotten. But Cosette soon learns it’s not normal at all.

The people act strange. The mansion she now lives in has an attic no one dares to enter. And there are whispers, always about him. The Alpha. A man with power, with shadows… and someone Cosette cannot escape.

The more she learns about Elwood, the more her old life falls apart. Each answer only leads to more danger.

In a town where nothing is normal…

Cosette must decide: uncover Elwood’s secrets, or be lost to them forever.

Warnings: Contains strong mature content.
"I'm sorry, master," Star shivered as the vampire slipped his finger into her wet slippery p*ssy.
"It's late for this. You broke a law, Princess. It's time to receive your punishment." He inserted another finger into her wet pink virgin hole.
"Ahh!" her cried out when he added yet another finger. "Please, stop-"
"Take it, whore. This is your punishment." He joined the fourth finger to the ones already inserted.


Who would have thought going on a hunt will bring these many problems for the young Princess?
Headstrong and arrogant, the young Princess was always ready to cause trouble. A headache to her father, and her mother's pride. She thought the world was hers to do as she pleases. But that was until she stepped foot into the forbidden castle, unknowingly awakening a Vampire Lord who was determined to make the feisty Princess, his pet.
What happens when miss arrogant meets an arrogant master? Read to find out!

At the parents' meeting, the daughter's diary was read aloud: "My father is the Grand Duke of the Night."
The room erupted in laughter.
The mentor, disregarding her daughter's dignity, tore up her diary, while the nouveau riche woman advised me , a liar, to "get out of this neighborhood."
I didn't say anything, I just stood up. Then, their knees were all shattered.

‘You want divorce?’
He was shocked to see the divorce papers as a gift for our third anniversary. Even I had never thought my marriage of three years will end like that until that night when I wanted to surprise my husband but was surprised catching him crying for another woman.
That night I knew what I had to do, I couldn’t live a loveless marriage, and it was time to let it go. I took revenge of my humiliation and moved forward to live a happy and peaceful life, I chosed to love myself this time!

“When did HERE allow the disgusting SHIT to come in and beg? She couldn't afford a pair of socks! Don't dirty the air!” A woman looked my clothes up and down and mocked me.
I was the adopted daughter of Redwoods Pack Alpha. Though I was ignored by Apha and Pack, I have a cute boyfriend. And, I just got my medical degree. I feel like there's a great future ahead of me.
When I was excited to contact my boyfriend, I found him fucking a bitch! Ridiculously, he teased me that our relationship was just a bet.
Moreover, My adoptive father arrested me for gibberish from a woman he met for the first time! I have no choice but to run!
At the end of my rope, I was approached by someone who claimed to be my biological mother. And now, I'm being mocked mercilessly. I really regret coming here. I'd rather I was ROGUE!
“She's my daughter, and for her pleasure, she could buy 10,000 of these malls. She could make her name on your face! "
Then she told me I have a powerful Alpha father and four strong, handsome Alpha brothers.
As I followed them home, I happened to run into my SECOND MATE. Only, he seemed to have an ex he couldn't get over...

There's a new Wolf Pack around the Bright Moon Pack. Their Alpha is very powerful, they're called bloodthirsty Wolves, and they're also a Pack of Rouge. This was a threat to Bright Moon, but the wolves sent out many seekers to search for them, but all failed. Ava went undercover as the Wolf doctor to gather intelligence on Blue Moon, but she found out that the Wolf pack was not what the rumor had it. During a pack run, they were attacked. "She is a traitor to the pack!" Edna Shouting. Alpha Aaron's eyes were red and he raised a dagger and stabbed Ava in the shoulder......

Jessica Thomas is thrust into the dark, seductive world of the mob when she gets the eye of David Mack, a powerful crime boss known for his cruelty.

What starts as a risky love quickly turns into a forbidden romance neither of them can refuse. But with deception around every corner and a dangerous enemy determined to keep them apart, Jessica and David must decide if their love is worth risking everything – even their lives.

As Jessica learns to manage this dangerous world, she’ll find the depths of her strength, and David will face a love that might break him or set him free.

Five years of a marriage forced by family convenience end in the cruelest way possible: with a request for divorce on the same day they would celebrate their anniversary. Lilian, devastated by Ethan's rejection—the man she learned to love despite the circumstances—sees her life fall apart. In her darkest hour, when the pain seems unbearable, Lilian is saved by Daniel Spector, a longtime friend and silent confidant who has always loved her. At the hospital, news changes everything: Lilian is two months pregnant. But there is another woman, Joana Mercadante — rich, famous, and supposedly also expecting Ethan's child. With her heart broken and her soul on fire, Lilian decides to leave. She flees to France and, far from the eyes of the world, gives birth to her son and builds an empire. Five years later, she returns as a powerful woman, determined to face her demons... and she finds Ethan again. He never stopped looking for her, never forgot the love he destroyed with his own hands. Now he must fight not only for forgiveness, but for a second chance—with her and with the son he never knew. But will regret be enough to rebuild a love that was betrayed? Especially when Daniel, Ethan's new rival, is ready to build the life Lilian always dreamed of... and is already the father in her son's heart?

For three years, Carol Bright was Edward Dawson's secretary and stepsister by day, and his secret lover by night. To him, she was just a game—disposable, forgettable, never meant to be loved.

When Edward announces his engagement to someone else, he expects drama. Instead, Carol disappears from his life without a word.

Now, she's no longer his. She's the heiress of the powerful Bright family—admired, untouchable, and far beyond his reach.

Then he sees her with another man. She slips behind closed doors. The lights go out—and she never returns.

That's when Edward realizes he's made the biggest mistake of his life.

The woman he once thought he owned is now the one he can never have again.

Elsie Clarke spent three years in a secret marriage, and just as long in cold, silent separation. As their third anniversary approached, she still held on, foolishly hoping her love could melt her husband's frozen heart.

But all she received was a call from his private club. His voice was indifferent. “You wanted to see me? Bring a condom.”

That was the moment everything shattered. The marriage she had clung to was nothing but an empty shell, and she was finally ready to let it go.

But just as she turned away, he began to chase her with reckless desperation. The man who once ignored her now couldn’t bear to let her go.

Five years ago, Rebecca Percy gave up everything to marry into the powerful Spencer Family.

She spent five years as a devoted wife and mother, only for her husband to sacrifice her to a financial tycoon for a business contract, leaving her to be abused and broken. Her heart turned to ash.

"Rebecca, you are nothing but a breeding machine. Without the Spencer Family, you are nobody! You want a divorce? Fine. But don't you dare regret it!"

But outside the Civil Affairs Bureau, the ex-husband who had just threatened her watched in shock.

He saw her holding the divorce certificate, embraced by another man, and felt a burning jealousy—and a sudden, hollow emptiness in his heart.

Rebecca swore that from now on, she would focus only on her career, not love.

Yet, she found herself pinned on a vanity table by the young Master Whitaker.

As he relentlessly claimed her, he demanded:

"So, Rebecca... you think I'm just a fuck buddy, is that it?"

"...I gave your wedding dress to Elise." Julian said.
"What...Did you say?" I asked, just to be sure I didn't hear wrong.
"Elise," he said again, "I gave her the dress."
"And why would you even do that?" I snapped in anger.
"We've been talking, okay?" He rubbed his temples, trying to explain "She told me she wants her last wish to be getting married before she passes to me. So...I thought this, as the right thing to do."
The words exploded out of me like a volcano.
"How could you do something like this without asking me first? That's my dress, Julian! For our wedding, that's in two days!"


For many years I gave up my dreams and my youth to bring Julian back from the edge of death. We were legally bound in a secret ceremony, waiting for the day he could finally stand beside me at the altar.
But on the day of our wedding, the dress I made for myself was on my stepsister, and the man I called my husband was leading her to the priest.
With nothing left but a broken heart, I made a deal with the one man Julian feared, Sebastian Hale.
He is cold, dangerous, and the most powerful billionaire in the city. He offers me protection, wealth, and revenge, but in his world nothing is free.

“Go find one of those perfect little she-wolves lined up to mate you. Play your Alpha card on them. I’m sure they’ll beg to be marked..maybe they’ll even let you f—”

“Seliene!” he snapped, his voice a roar as he grabbed my wrist.

“Stop touching me!” I shoved at his chest, voice rising despite the sting in my throat. “Stop acting like you care when all you've ever done is hate me!”

Tears pricked my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. “There are plenty of men who would take me to bed without second-guessing it. Maybe I should let them. Maybe I should—”

His hand tangled in my hair so fast I gasped, and the next thing I knew, my back was against the wall.

Ronan’s eyes were glowing now—not just anger, but something else. Something deeper. His wolf was there, right under the surface, growling low and dangerous.

“Oh?” I taunted, my body betraying me with a subtle tremble of arousal. “What is this? You don’t want me, but no one else should touch me either?”

His growl deepened, vibrating between us, and then his mouth crashed down on mine.

I moaned before I could stop myself, and that only seemed to provoke him further. He pressed harder, his body pinning mine, every inch of him demanding, claiming.

He groaned into my mouth, his thigh sliding between mine and pressing upward. I gasped, my head hitting the wall as pleasure sparked through me.

“Don’t want to touch you?” he growled against my lips. “I want you with every damn breath.”


Seliene, a fierce half-breed hiding heartbreak behind a defiant tongue, and Ronan, the brooding Alpha who once rejected her, ignite in a moment of raw passion and buried longing. Bound by a mate bond they both try to resist, their chemistry is undeniable, dangerous, explosive, and edged with the pain of a love neither dares to admit.

At first, I thought I was the luckiest woman in the world, at least maybe the sacrifices I had made over the past five years would pay off.
But I was wrong. I was just a replacement for Luna, whom no one ever wanted.
I was abandoned by Alpha, my husband, on our fifth wedding anniversary, for the woman who had left him.
What hurt even more was that the child I had raised with all my heart and soul ran into the arms of her biological mother, as if I had never meant anything to his.
Rejected, discarded, and cast out-all of it destroyed me. It felt as if the whole world had rejected me.
But just when I was about to disappear, fate brought me to the beginning of a resurrection I never imagined.

I kept a list. Ninety-eight times my husband chose another woman over me.

Missed birthdays, ruined anniversaries, broken promises—all for his "patient" Sophia, who seemed to have a medical emergency every time we had plans.

"It's just my job, Emma," he would say. "You understand."

Ryan thought he could have his cake and eat it too. He was wrong.

After an incident, I was determined to leave him, and before I left, I gave him an unforgettable "gift."

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.

My boyfriend hated the new freshman, Lila.
She followed him everywhere from day one, and he’d complain to me nonstop.
“Want me to get her kicked out? My dad can write a check and make it happen.”
I laughed it off. “Cocky much?”
He nudged my shoulder. “You really not scared I’ll get taken?”
Please.
We were childhood sweethearts, bound by family and our upcoming competition duet.
Her cheap, desperate act? I never saw it as a threat.
I had no idea how wrong I was.

Ten years loving Liam Rockefeller cost me everything.

He said the football team jumped him—so I charged in and took the punches. He sobbed that his stepbrother would destroy him at Yale—so I ripped up my acceptance letter. He held me at midnight whispering "I'm so lucky to have you"—and I thought that meant forever.

Three months later, I heard him laughing in the locker room—laughing about me.

"Iris is like a fucking puppy, so easy to fool. Now that the Yale spot's open, Emily can go with me."

The bullying was staged. The tears were fake. Those intimate embraces—just tools to control me while he fucked his side piece.

He thought I'd still stand in front of him even with a broken nose. He thought I'd never wise up.

I wised up.

In his stepbrother Sebastian's bed.

For five years, I had turned Preston Tanner from a broke kid who could barely afford tuition into one of Silicon Valley's hottest young founders.
I thought we would do exactly what we had promised back in that garage—take our AI healthcare startup public, ring the opening bell together, and get married.
Until today.
At the product launch that would determine whether we landed our Series A, Preston stood before the press and credited the core algorithm patent I had spent seventy-two sleepless hours developing to a girl who couldn't even write Python.
"Sloane, you're already my fiancée," he said. "Willow needs this patent to strengthen her green-card application."
Staring at his utterly self-righteous face, I felt sick.
I didn't know when it had happened, but somewhere along the way, he had rotted from the inside out.
And if he was rotten, it was time to throw him away.

Since I was ten, he told me to call him brother. But brothers don't look at you like that.
My life had only Daniel Wilson in it. He was my guardian, my savior, my world.
"Call me brother," he said, but he forbade me from dating anyone else. He kept me in his manor like a bird in a gilded cage. He promised that when I turned twenty-one, the title of "sister" would change to "wife."
I waited. I obeyed. I loved him with a devotion that bordered on obsession.
But on my twenty-first birthday, he brought her home.
"Julie, meet Lena. She's... special to me."
He introduced his childhood crush to me, his "sister," while holding her hand. The way he looked at her was soft, gentle—the way he used to look at me before she arrived.
"You're just a foster sister," he reminded me coldly when I cried. "Don't cross the line."
The line? He blurred the lines for twelve years! He made me dependent on him, made me believe we were destined, only to discard me when the "real" owner of his heart returned.
Fine. If I'm just a sister, then I'll leave.
But why is he chasing me now, begging me to come back, saying he can't sleep without me in the house?
"I'm not your sister anymore, Daniel. And I'm certainly not your wife."

My chosen mate used his Beta authority to give the entire moonbloom compound to his fated mate's daughter.
The healer had said to split it—half for each child. Both would live. He overrode her. Gave the full dose to Rosalie Blackwell.
He wanted a full recovery. Just not for ours.
Three days later, my daughter Wren's organs shut down. She died on her birthday, still asking why Daddy wasn't there. The dress I'd made her—white with little silver wolves along the hem—she never got to put it on.
That same day, his fated's daughter walked out of the healing hall completely cured. He even threw a feast for the whole pack.
I collapsed at the border of Thornecrest territory. The healers told me it was cancer. Late-stage. Nothing left to treat.
Now I sat alone in our empty house with Wren's unworn birthday dress across my lap and drafted the dissolution papers.

I caught my husband sleeping with my sister, so I burned it all down.
The fire burned fierce, swallowing that abandoned cabin in the woods, along with my shattered marriage.
With the stench of gasoline still lingering on my fingertips, I thought I had finally buried the man who betrayed me.
Until the next morning, when he walked through the front door without a single scratch.
My mind reeled.
If he was still alive... then who the hell did I burn to a crisp last night?

The Alpha of Blood Moon Pack needed an heir his chosen mate couldn't give him. So he found me — a rogue Omega with a destroyed pack and a little brother who needed protection — and offered a deal: carry his child, hand it over, walk away.
He never touched me. A physician, a syringe, a sterile room. When it was done, he said: "Thank you for your cooperation."
His mate Serena moved into the main house the week my pregnancy was confirmed. She picked the nursery colors. She chose the baby's name. She told the pack I was just "a relative visiting."
Then I overheard them planning to erase my scent from my baby within forty-eight hours of birth — so it would never know I existed.
I left that night. Six months pregnant, alone, into the snow.

Nora Vale was never supposed to be seen.

For three years, she rebuilt hockey captain Callum Pierce after the injury that nearly ended his career. She tracked his tremors, rewrote his recovery protocol, and carried the private marriage his family refused to make public.

Then he won the championship.

Under the arena lights, Callum lifted the cup and thanked Sloane Mercer, the beautiful sports host the cameras already loved. Backstage, Nora watched her own medical system appear under Sloane's name.

That night, Nora left with the evidence and the child Callum never knew existed.

Three years later, Nora is no longer hiding in the tunnel. She is the chief medical consultant for the rival team, the one woman the league needs when old concussion records begin to surface. Callum wants answers. His father wants control. Sloane wants the public story to stay clean.

Nora wants her name back.

But the fight is no longer only about a stolen system. It is about a son whose medical records could shift a franchise, a trust that could break the Pierce family, and a championship myth built on the woman they erased.

Callum thanked the wrong woman on the night he won.

Now the whole league is about to learn who made him a champion.

They put the calm ones on graveyard. I'm calmer than calm - I can't read a face to save my life, but give me a voice and I'll tell you what you ate for dinner and what you're lying about.

3:07 a.m. A woman calls. A struggle. The line dies.

By sunrise there's no body, no report, and the call I logged has wiped itself clean - like it never rang. The whole city is asleep on it.

But I've never trusted the system. I keep my own copy of every call.

He erased her. I kept the tape. Now he just has to find out the night guy nobody looks at has been listening the whole time.

My husband Eric couldn't speak after a car accident three years ago. Three years of silence. Not one word.

To pay for his rehab, I worked four jobs at once—worked until I was coughing up blood, until I collapsed. Winter nights, Leo and I huddled under one threadbare blanket. When my son spiked a fever and I had no money for medicine, I stayed up all night pressing wet rags to his burning forehead.

Eric? His only communication was cold texts, ordering me around. When Leo reached for a hug, he'd push him away like our son didn't exist.

I endured it all. Because deep down, I believed the accident was my fault.

Until that night.

I was hauling equipment at Selena's concert—Selena, the pop star everyone knew—when a mystery guest in a mask stepped on stage. They sang together, voices blending like they'd done this a thousand times.

That voice. That lightning-shaped scar on his elbow.

My "mute" husband of three years.

I followed him backstage. Through the door, I heard Selena's laugh: "Congrats, Eric. Your mute act is almost over—you won the bet."

Three years of sacrifice.

All of it just a game. A bet with his first love.

Everyone in this city knows that the king of the underworld, my husband Vincent, is crazy about me.

Three years ago, when that bullet tore through my abdomen, it took away my chance of ever being a mother. He held my blood-soaked body and swore to God he'd make the shooter's entire family pay. A month later, that family was wiped off the map in this city. No one dares speak their name anymore.

He sat by my hospital bed, holding my hand. "I don't need kids. I only need you."

I believed him.

Until six months ago, when his brother died in an accident, leaving behind his wife Serena. The family pressure came like a tidal wave. An heir. A bloodline. That's all they cared about. And that woman became everyone's golden ticket to keeping the Caruso name alive.

That's when my husband stopped coming home at night. Every night, I hear them through the wall. Sounds that used to be mine.

But today, the doctor told me my body is healing. The chances are slim, but there's hope.

I clutch the medical report and rush home, imagining Vincent's face when he sees the results. Maybe everything can go back to how it was. Maybe he'll realize he doesn't need her.

Until I stand outside our mansion and hear laughter pouring out.

"Serena's pregnant! Can you believe it? The family finally has an heir!"

"Finally. The family's saved."

The biggest mistake of my life was falling in love with my childhood best friend, Cole Blackwood.

I grew up with Cole. He was my childhood best friend. When my mom died in a car accident in high school, his mother Lillian, my mom's best friend, saw that my stepmother didn't like me and took me in. She arranged our engagement. Cole protected me from bullies in high school. I fell for him. We secretly married at eighteen.

Shortly after the wedding, he was kidnapped. That's when everything fell apart. I threw myself off a cliff to draw the kidnappers away and save him. I was in a coma for three months. But when I came back to him, weak and broken, he thought some woman named Sophia Vanderbilt had saved him instead. He started hating me for "abandoning him" and grew cold. I tried to explain. He only believed what Sophia told him. My words meant nothing. 

Cole wanted to divorce me, but his parents refused to allow it. I refused too. Sophia drugged him to get pregnant and trap him into marriage, but he stumbled into the wrong room. He slept with me instead. I got pregnant. She faked videos to make him think they'd been together. She forged evidence that I'd cheated. He wouldn't listen to a word I said. 

Then we were both kidnapped and held hostage on a rooftop. Cole chose to save Sophia. I fell. I lost the baby. After Sophia was rescued, she went to the hospital for a checkup. They found leukemia. She needed a bone marrow transplant. I was the only match, but after everything, my body was too weak. Cole used the "debt" I owed his family to force me to donate. 

I refused. Sophia "died." Cole locked me in a psychiatric hospital and tortured me until I died. 

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day he demanded my bone marrow. This time, looking at his desperate eyes, I said yes and decided to divorce him and leave him for good.

When they shoved me into the flames, I fought through the blinding pain to call my brother, Ethan Bennett. Fire licked at my skin, twisting my vision, but the call finally went through.

"What is it now?" He sounded distracted, like he was checking off a guest list.

"Ethan, please, help—" My voice was shattered, choked by the searing heat.

"Can't you just give it a rest for one single day?" he snapped, cutting me off. "Selina and I are getting married this weekend. If you pull another stunt, I swear I'll—"

The call died right as the flames swallowed me whole.

Agony consumed every nerve before my eyes closed for good, his unfinished threat still echoing in my ears.

But the good news is, Ethan... you don't have to swear anymore. Because I was dead.

Three years ago, my pairs skating partner and I had a beautiful wedding surrounded by friends and family—but we never actually got around to signing the legal papers.
Over those three years, he has stood me up at City Hall exactly twenty-eight times.
One time, he stole my cab while I was burning up with a fever, leaving me shivering on the curb because his new, pampered protégée had a stomachache from drinking too much champagne.
Another time, he blew off our anniversary to rush to her side for a minor sprain.
Every single time we were supposed to finally make our marriage official, his precious junior skater somehow had a devastating emergency.
After twenty-eight broken promises, I finally stopped waiting. I dropped our partnership, shredded our application, and boarded a one-way flight to Milan.
But the moment I completely vanished from his life, the man who couldn't spare an hour to marry me suddenly lost his mind—chasing me across the globe to a city he swore he’d never return to, begging on his knees outside my door for a twenty-ninth chance.

At my mother's funeral, I stopped outside the lounge.

Through the door, I heard Julian—my fiancé—delivering a cold warning to my father:

"You can stop obsessing over Harper, Richard. She's with me now. Don't bother her anymore."

My father immediately tried to use me to suppress him. "Don't forget you're marrying Sloane next week! If she finds out you're screwing the orphan her mother took in..."

Julian cut him off. "She'll never know. Just like she'll never know her mother didn't actually die of depression. She killed herself because she caught you two together."

Father's counterattack threw me straight into hell:

"What right do you have to judge me?! When Sloane was frantic, calling you for help, what were you doing? If you hadn't been rolling around in a hotel bed with Harper, if you hadn't lied to Sloane that you were 'on your way,' her mother would never have died!"

A violent ringing filled my ears.

I slammed the door open, stormed in, and slapped Julian across the face with every ounce of strength I had left.

The man I was supposed to marry in seven days merely turned his head. It took him exactly one second to suppress his shock.

"Since you heard everything, good. Better to accept reality now, so you don't break down later."

"For the sake of the Vance family heir you're carrying, the wedding next week proceeds as planned."

"But I have responsibilities to Harper, too. That tie won't be severed."

"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.

On our wedding day, Declan sent me out to Long Island. We'd been together seven years.

He said he'd left his grandmother's lucky cufflinks at the family house.

But when my car died in the storm, I opened my bridesmaid's Instagram live.

Declan was sliding my custom diamond ring onto Phoebe's finger—my adopted sister, the one with the bad heart.

My own parents were crying in the front row. My bridesmaids were cheering.

They'd turned my wedding into a dying wish ceremony for Phoebe.

Hours later, alone in the ER, I called forty-seven times.

No one picked up.

Not until after I lost the baby and disappeared from Manhattan.

That's when Declan finally came apart.

On a full moon, every wolf has to be inside a registered shelter before moonrise. That's pack law.
So when my husband's leave finally lined up with a moon, I spent six months and eighty thousand dollars booking his whole family into a top-tier sanctuary on Silverspine Ridge. Then his first love decided she wanted to come.
Instead of telling her no, he gave her my registered bed — and sent me a queue number for the state shelter, a thirty-six-hour line for a bunk in an open ward full of rogues. I looked at his parents, his sister, waiting for one of them to object. Every single one of them took his side.
So fine. I drove the other way, and spent the next three full moons enjoying myself — alone. That's when the whole family started to panic...

My girlfriend told me she was part of a social experiment. Her task was to get close to a target, and if she quit, she’d owe a crushing penalty.

So she kept canceling on me, staying out all night, and letting another man hold her—then came home in tears and said she had no choice.

I believed her for three years.

What she never knew was that I was the hidden heir to a billion-dollar family empire. While we were together, I was under a private family test and forbidden to reveal who I really was.

The day that test ended, I took back my name.

The first thing I did wasn’t return to the boardroom. I went straight to the lab behind her so-called experiment.

The man in charge turned the screen toward me. “We never had any massive penalty. The contract is clear. She could have quit at any time.”

Three years. No forced mission. No trap she couldn’t escape.

Every line she crossed, she chose to cross herself.

I didn’t confront her. I just took my things, ended the relationship, and walked away.

She thought I was just angry.

She had no idea that after reclaiming my identity, the first thing I did was uncover every lie she had ever told me.

I have guarded the Abyss on the Ashen Plains for a thousand years.

My daily routine: chewing rock-hard rye bread, single-handedly crushing the skulls of trespassing demons, wiping their slime off on a ragged surcoat, and leaning against a bronze pillar to catch the wind.

Today, a dying girl stumbled into the wasteland. Her fingers were locked in a death grip around the bloodstained iron crest I had left behind a millennium ago. Up on the ridge, three hundred heavy cavalrymen of the Alliance drew their lances, forming a wall of steel as they closed in.

I stared at the blood on the ground. I didn't make a sound.

I just brushed the biscuit crumbs off my lap and stretched my stiff neck. Turning around, my fingers hooked onto the hilt of a rust-eaten battleaxe resting beneath the bronze pillar. I dragged it along with casual ease.

"Troublesome."

I muttered that single word, and walked alone toward the formation of steel.

My husband, Marco, in his bid for the position of Don, was forced to marry the young widow of the previous Don, Claudia.
Every night, after returning from Claudia’s place, he would hold me and swear, "You’re the only woman I love, Elena. Claudia has the connections I need. Once I have real power and secure my position, I’ll make you my wife in name and in public."
But as I waited for him to rise to power, what started as a political act turned into nights where he simply never came home.
Then, on Christmas, I was dragged to their engagement party—where I was beaten in front of everyone.
Our six-year-old daughter, Sophia, knelt on the floor, crying and begging him, "Godfather, please, let my mommy go..."
But Marco stayed silent.
"It’s okay," I whispered, picking up my wounded daughter. "Mommy’s going to take you somewhere that truly belongs to us."
What Marco never knew was this: I never cared about being the Donna of this small city.
I am the only heir of the Rossi family—the most powerful Mafia family in all of Sicily.

I was falsely accused of killing my sister. My husband personally sent me to prison. Three years later, he picked me up, and that very night he stripped off my clothes and fucked me brutally.

He said, "The child your sister and I had together has a heart condition. You have to give birth to a baby to save him. This is what you owe your sister!"

He married me because I look like her.
For three years, I played the role. I cooked his meals. I warmed his bed. I smiled when he forgot my birthday. I stayed quiet when he left in the middle of the night to hold her hand.
I told myself it was enough. I told myself I didn't need his love.
Then I got pregnant.
He said he hated children. So I didn't tell him. I was going to keep it. Our baby. The only thing that was truly mine.
But my body had other plans.
When I called him from the hospital floor, bleeding out, begging for help—he didn't come. He said I was lying. He was too busy with her.
That night, I lost everything.
The baby. The hope. The lie I'd been living.
Now he's calling me. Again and again.
But the substitute wife? She's not picking up.