490 Book(s) Related to every summer after age rating

Another fight with my boyfriend made me agree to my best friend's crazy idea to party at a nightclub. But then, she spiked my drink and I ended up in the arms of a terrifyingly handsome stranger, Michelangelo.

We spent the night together underneath his sheets, as he took me through wild realms of pleasure. But the next morning, he was gone.

And then I caught my boyfriend with my best friend so my life utterly shattered from that day.

Weeks later, I realized that I was pregnant, and I also got hit by the news of my boyfriend's wedding to my best friend.

Devastated, I moved to a Pack in New York City to start anew with my unborn child, and then three years later, guess who I bumped into? The one and only Michelangelo, the real father of my son.

But then, he lied that night. He didn't give me his full name or his real identity. He didn't tell me that he was the formidable Nico 'Michelangelo' Ferrari, a Mafian Alpha and an insane force to reckon with.

Realizing who he is sends me into a panic attack, but for some reason, he won't stop chasing after me, trying to convince me that he loves me, that he's my fated mate and that he wants to be with me and our son.

What the heck do I do?!

When Iris went to prison for her boyfriend, she discovered that he was about to marry Alpha's daughter.
It turned out that he had been using her all along and then abandoned her...
Iris fell into despair, but unexpectedly, she crossed paths with Marcus, Alpha's son and her former patient.
She became her ex's brother-in-law's wedding companion?! The most notorious playboy in the Pack?

Everything she believed in was a lie.
Keira and Alden were Chosen Mates who built the powerful Stormfang Pack together—until she discovered their Mate Bond was a witch's illusion, and the child she raised was actually his with his true Fated Mate, the Omega Rena.
Broken and ready to leave, a secret letter reveals she is the long-lost daughter of Mooncrest Pack's Alpha, the sole heir to a legacy she never knew.
As her dormant Alpha blood awakens in rage, she vows to reclaim her birthright.
But when Kaelan, the cold and calculating Alpha King, approaches her and claims, "You are my Fated Mate," Keira is thrown into deeper confusion.
Why would he say that? And in a world built on deception, can a bond that begins as strategy ever become real… or is it just another layer of the game?

“He dies to grow stronger. The Tower wants him dead.”

On an ordinary night in Jaipur, the sky splits open and a colossal black tower appears above the city.

Within hours, the same towers rise across the world.

A mysterious voice echoes through every phone, every television, every mind.

“Welcome, players. Enter the Tower and earn power beyond imagination.”

Those who step inside quickly learn the truth.

The Tower is not a game.

It is a brutal trial where monsters roam, alliances break, and death is common.

Millions enter.

Most never return.

Arjun Rathore never planned to become a hero. He was just another engineering student trying to survive in a world that suddenly changed overnight. But on the day he enters the Tower, something impossible happens.

A strange message appears before his eyes.

“Hidden System Detected.”

“Karma Ability Activated.”

Moments later, Arjun is killed by a monster on the first floor.

But instead of dying… he wakes up twenty-four hours earlier.

The same day begins again.

At first, he believes it’s luck.

Then it happens again.

And again.

Every time Arjun dies, time rewinds.

Every mistake becomes knowledge.

Every defeat becomes experience.

But the Tower is watching.

And Arjun soon discovers something terrifying.

He is not supposed to have this power.

Somewhere inside the Tower, something ancient has noticed him.

Something that hunts players who break the rules.

Now Arjun must climb the Tower, uncover its secrets, and survive enemies far stronger than himself.

Because if the Tower discovers what he truly is…

Not even death will save him.

After years of marriage, my husband and son see me as a disgrace.
Time and again, they abandon me to care for another woman, and this time, I finally wake up.
They are not worth my love！
But when I officially ask for a divorce, they suddenly claim that I am the one they truly love.
What is going on?

On the day my son died, I saw my husband out playing with his mistress and her child.
They carelessly destroyed my child's belongings and took over my home.
They even suspected I was lying, treating his death as a joke.
Only when I revealed I had just three months to live did my husband's remorse finally arrive.
But it was too late. I would personally take back everything that belonged to me!

1

I once loved Ryan deeply and helped him become the Alpha, only to be rewarded with chains in a dungeon and the mocking laughter of him and his mistress.

Fate gave me a second chance—I woke up reborn on the morning of the mate selection ceremony. There he was, still ordering me around in front of everyone, expecting me to play the obedient servant.

Everyone tried to convince me that Ryan, the man who killed me, is the "right choice."

Yet I chose Connor—the man feared by the entire clan, the one who will bring ruin to the clan for the sake of his one true love.

This time, I refuse to be the stepping stone on Ryan's climb to power.

I'm going to make everyone see who truly holds the reins.

For the third time, Kael fled before the wedding—this time to deliver medicine to the neighbor girl he grew up with.
As compensation, the pack elders offered me two chests of rare ore and the deed to an island.
Someone, still hopeful, called Kael on speakerphone.
His careless voice echoed through the hall:
“Why bother with compensation? Ella loves me so much; she’ll come around as soon as I go back and sweet-talk her a little.”
“Sophia’s health is what matters now. Once she recovers, I’ll just hold another ceremony for Ella.”
The elders tried to explain, but the surrounding werewolves were all waiting to see the show—waiting to see how much humiliation I would swallow.
Just like the first two times.
But I’d had enough. And I’d lost all interest in Kael.
I kicked over the chest of ore and let my gaze fall on Kael’s uncle.
Then, I smiled.
“I heard the old Alpha left a will: whoever can claim me… becomes the next Alpha.”

My brother Miles blames me for our parents' deaths.
So he chose to adopt the deaf Vivian instead of keeping me.
Later, I met Sullivan.
He gave me a grand confession. He chose me, resolutely.
He also said I hired someone to assault Vivian—that I didn't deserve sympathy.
Five years after being cast out of my family, a dismembered female body was found inside a carnival mascot costume.
Miles, now a police officer, led the investigation. Sullivan, now a forensic pathologist, performed the autopsy.
They saw the bloodstained hearing aid and immediately called Vivian.
"I'm fine. I just saw the news—some big case. Should we tell Sis to be careful too? What if something happens to her?"
They refused, almost in unison.
"The moment she killed our parents, she stopped being my sister."
"She was jealous of you. She did too many terrible things. If she's dead, she had it coming."
My soul hovered in the air, watching them. I laughed until I cried.
But when they found out the victim was me—
Why did they both go mad?

Three years of marriage. Harper gave up her career, cut off her friends, and made herself invisible for Evan.
Then on her birthday, the blow came. Claire showed up pregnant: "Mrs. Morgan's spot will be mine eventually. What's the point of you holding onto it?"
Harper finally woke up. She filed for divorce without looking back.
The day she signed the papers, she smiled calmly at the reporters waiting outside: "The reason for the divorce? Mr. Morgan was simply never able to satisfy me. In that department."
The untouchable CEO became a punchline overnight.
Evan assumed she was getting back at him. He had no idea Harper was no longer the caged bird he remembered.
Her design talent shook the industry. His own business rivals fell for her.
By the time he realized the partner he had been desperately chasing was his ex-wife, it was already too late.
"Harper, can we start over?"
"Mr. Morgan, if something's wrong with you, go see a doctor. Do you need me to pay for the appointment?"

The day the IVF succeeded was when I realized Michael had deceived me all along.
He had only used me as a surrogate for my sister.
When I confronted him, he tested me, forcing me to kill someone. "Afraid to pull the trigger? Doesn't seem like my kind of woman," he sneered.
I tried to run, but he caught me.
He kept me locked away, forced me to eat foods I was allergic to until I needed my stomach pumped, and chained me to the bed while he went off with her.
I cried until I had no tears left—and finally learned how to hold a gun.

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.

They thought that by forcing me to my death, they could devour everything.

My father jumped off a building, and I became a destitute young master whom everyone could bully. To pay off debts, I married into the Hawthorne family and became their sharpest knife.

After my father-in-law died suddenly, my wife immediately brought her childhood sweetheart into the house and forced me to divorce him.

My resistance resulted in a murder plotted by 928 × 213.

When I opened my eyes again, Chloe, who had been watching over me for three days and three nights, was beside me.

She said, "I'll take you away."

Three years later, I returned as a mysterious investor. The first thing I did was to buy the family's bankrupt old factory for 1.5 billion.

My ex-wife and I bumped into each other on the street; it was like seeing a ghost.

I smiled and stuck a 30 million yuan check on her forehead: "This is to repay the divorce fee you gave me back then. Keep the change."

The real revenge has only just begun.

My daughter helped my husband cheat.

My ten-year-old begged me to take her to a summer camp in Italy. My husband looked at her like she hung the moon. Booked the tickets right there.

I thought I was the luckiest mom alive.

Then I checked the pet camera from overseas.

There he was, fucking my daughter's riding instructor on our couch.

But what really killed me? What he said, "Don't worry. Nina wants that horse bad enough, she'll keep her mom in Europe as long as we need."

Back home, my husband dropped a receipt. Two identical limited edition watches.

He froze. My sweet daughter didn't miss a beat, "Dad used the other one to bribe someone so I could get my horse!"

They lied in perfect sync. That's when something in me broke.

They thought I was still that stupid, trusting wife.

What they didn't know?

I'd already signed a contract. Going back to my art career in New York.

Nineteen times. That's how many times Lucas promised to marry me, only to leave me standing alone because of her.
Today was supposed to be our day. But as I stood in the biting cold outside the restaurant, watching him carefully help Selena into his Maybach, the marriage application still tucked in my purse, I finally understood—that "someday" would never come.
"Let's reschedule the registration, okay?" he'd said without even looking at me.
I walked straight to HR and submitted my resignation. Then I accepted the offer from the Morinetti family—his sworn enemies.
As I boarded my flight to the West Coast, my phone exploded with messages.
"We agreed to go to City Hall today. Where are you?"
I glanced at the screen one last time, then powered it off.
"We're done."

My life with alpha Caleb was a never - ending nightmare.

Manipulated by Amara, he became my tormentor.

I endured his infidelity, false accusations, and brutal abuse.

Amara framed me for her miscarriage, and Caleb, without hesitation, believed her lies.

He forced an abortion on me, broke my legs, and stood by as Amara caused the death of my mother.

Every hope I had for our relationship was shattered.

Finally, I found the strength to break free and sever the mate bond.

In Nathaniel, my childhood friend, I discovered true love and support.

Despite Caleb’s desperate attempts to win me back, I refused to return to the darkness...

In the seventh year of being a stay-at-home husband, I discovered the son I cherished as the most precious treasure in my life was actually the illegitimate child of my wife and her male best friend.
To conceal the scandal of her infidelity, my CEO wife, worth millions, joined forces with her male best friend in a grand deception. They single-handedly destroyed my artistic career, transforming me into a free nanny raising their illegitimate child.
Upon learning the truth, I didn't lose my composure.
I calmly presented the divorce papers and the paternity test report proving no biological relation, then turned and walked away without looking back.
Later, that ever-lofty wife, the one who had once publicly doused me with ice water for her male best friend, was utterly consumed by regret and fury.
She kicked the scoundrel to the curb. In front of a crowd, she pressed a switchblade to her own throat, casting aside all dignity to kneel on the ground, crying and begging me to look at her just once more.
I didn't even blink. My voice was as cold as ice. "If you want to die, do it outside. Don't ruin my mood for coffee."

Rae Meadowlark has spent her whole life in a little cabin in the woods, raised by the grandmother who filled her head with old folklore and impossible warnings. "Never step into a fairy ring. Never trust a silent path. Never give your blood to old places." Rae never thought any of it was real. Then her grandmother dies, leaving Rae alone with the cabin, the forest, and all the strange protective things tucked into the corners of her home. As she clears them away and tries to find herself again, one careless step takes her straight through a fairy ring and into a world she was never meant to see.
A world where Cian of Hollow Hill has been waiting in chains.
A fallen fae prince, brutalised by years of captivity, Cian is the last surviving heir of a court long thought destroyed. His enemies want the hidden roads to his people, and they have spent years spilling his blood to force those ancient paths open. Instead, the road answers with Rae.
Now trapped in a realm of buried magic, cruel courts, and old laws written long before humans knew to fear the dark, Rae is forced into the orbit of a man as dangerous as he is broken.


'Little white flowers speckle the green inside the circle, and the grass there looks softer somehow, brighter. Nanna’s voice flitters through my memories again.
“Don’t enter the fairy ring.” I take a few slow steps forward, more amused than anything else.
“You dramatic old woman,” I murmur.'

He came back covered in rain and blood.

Lena Davis thought the nightmare was over when Ethan Martinez returned. The man once feared as Zero had reclaimed his identity, his authority, and the shadows he used to command.

But some ghosts never stay buried.

When explosions ignite the harbor and a dead man begins hunting Ethan through the city, Lena is forced into a deadly conspiracy tied to Black Triangle — a secret network that turns people into weapons and leaves no survivors behind.

Now Ethan must fight his way through assassins, betrayal, and the ruins of his own past while Lena races to keep him alive.

Because this time, the enemy doesn’t just want Ethan dead.

They want Zero back.

It's been ten years now and I've programmed my brain to forget her little did I know that I was deceiving myself.

Things changed when I saw her.
She looked different. She wasn't the same little girl I had fallen in love with. She was now a grown woman.

She was gorgeous.
I needed her beneath me just for one night. I'd get her out of my system and move on.

That was probably a lie.

Months later.

Here I am drowning my sorrow in alcohol on my last night as a single man.
I was getting married to a woman I never truly loved.

Tara gave me a shy smile as she approached the aisle with her father.

Kelsey looked away and ignored me.

I was about to slide the ring on Tara's finger and her father's voice stopped me.

"Stop."

I turned around and faced him.

Tara grabbed his hand angrily.

"Dad what are you doing?!"

Xie Yijin hated me more than anyone in this world.

He called me vicious as a scorpion, said I schemed about everything, stole all that belonged to Lin Wanwan, and destroyed the one he held dearest.

Xie Yijin shielded Lin Wanwan tightly behind him.
The eyes that once looked at me with such tenderness were now frozen over with unmelting ice.
He pointed straight at me, every word cutting like a blade:

"Shen Zhiyi, why don’t you just die?!"

I froze in place, my fingertips ice-cold.
Unconsciously, I still clutched that crumpled, yellowed candy wrapper.

He had given it to me when he was seven years old,
saying that when I grew up, he would marry me
and buy me candies for the rest of my life.

But now…
he only wanted me dead.

"She was MINE before. How could I have known she would find another man so quickly?"
Dresden Wade was pretty sure the goddess was punishing him. Married for half a decade to his childhood sweetheart without a child, he is desperate for a chance to fight his wrongs when he sees her again.
His TRUE mate. The woman he scorned and humiliated all those years ago.
Except that now, she is standing holding hands with another Alpha.
Mara Reid wants nothing to do with the surly, arrogant Alpha that used to be her mate. He had made the earlier parts of her adulthood traumatic to say the least.
So why did meeting him again feel like coming home?
Why did her traitorous heart skip whenever he called her name?

When Carol Bennett caught her long-time boyfriend cheating, she didn't cry or beg. Instead, she exposed the scandal online, turning him into a viral disgrace overnight. Then, without looking back, she agreed to a marriage of convenience with Ethan Mitchell, a powerful billionaire suffering from a terminal illness—her estranged father's carefully arranged match.
On their wedding night, Ethan handed her a cold-hearted prenup and warned her not to expect love, money, or a future. Fine by Carol. She played her role perfectly, calling him "husband" with a sweet smile while keeping her heart locked away.
But the aloof CEO who once wanted nothing to do with her is now the one chasing her. One kiss, one glance, and suddenly he's breaking his own rules.
"Carol, kiss me."
She smirks, her fingers trailing along his collarbone. "Falling for me already, Mr. CEO? Looks like you're the one breaking the contract."
Who would've thought the dying billionaire would end up begging for a second chance?

"You want a divorce?" His voice was ice, sending a chill down her spine. "You'll never get it."
For three years, Bellatrix devoted herself to Cillian Laurent—Miami’s ruthless tycoon and her indifferent husband—hoping to earn his love. But when she’s diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, she realizes the bitter truth: she was never his choice. Just a placeholder for the woman who abandoned him… and has now returned.
Determined to reclaim her life, Bellatrix demands a divorce. But the man who once ignored her now refuses to let her go. As buried secrets unravel, she discovers their twisted marriage was never what it seemed.
Can she break free from a love that was never hers?
Or will his obsession destroy them both?

He was born into extraordinary wealth, admired by all.
Until the woman he loved betrayed him. After years together, they parted ways.
Five years later, their paths crossed again. He sat at a bar with another woman in his arms, but the moment he saw her, rage flashed in his eyes.
"You betrayed me. What gives you the right to show your face here?"
She nodded and walked away.
He lost his mind searching for her.
Only then did he learn why she had really left.
He pulled her close, arms tight around her. "Marry me. Whatever burdens you carry, I'll carry them with you. Whatever tears fall, I'll wipe them away."

After being stood up for the ninety-ninth time while attempting to register for marriage, I sent my fiancé a breakup message. He had allowed me to be let down ninety-nine times, dismissing my asthma as mere pretentiousness and perceiving my sacrifices as acts of greed, all the while lavishing his patience upon another woman. It was only when he had his mistress select a cheap necklace for me and sketched explicit nudes of her that I realized these seven years were not a narrative of profound love, but rather an absurd farce playing out solely in my life. The moment I dispatched the breakup message, I never envisioned that this man, who viewed me as dispensable, would later pursue me with a frenzied obsession.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The agony of dragonfire tearing through my flesh still seared my memory.
But I had been reborn.
I touched my reflection. No scorch marks. No melted skin. My eighteen-year-old face stared back.
The door burst open. Zephyra swept in, her dragonfire pendant gleaming.
"Megan, don't be nervous." Her voice dripped honey-sweet. "Even if you can't sense dragonfire, the Dragon God won't judge you harshly."
My father's legitimate daughter. Pure dragonblood. The family's pride.
And me? The bastard. A half-blood who couldn't even conjure a spark.
"The prophecy bond isn't set in stone." Her hand landed on my shoulder, grip too tight. "If Lord Roran feels overwhelming, bond with a lower-tier knight. I'll support whatever you choose."
Support me? The word tasted like ash.
Roran was the empire's youngest Dragon Knight Commander. In my past life, I'd believed her lies and married him.
I thought it was salvation. Instead, I became his shield while he slept with Zephyra.
At Zephyra's ascension ceremony, when a wyvern lunged for her, he shoved me into the beast's path.
The wyvern's claws tore into my abdomen. My unborn child died inside me.
Then came the dragonfire.
Roran unleashed it to save Zephyra. The flames swallowed everything: the beast, me, and the dragon egg I'd carried for months.
Through the agony, I watched him scoop Zephyra up. "Save Zephyra! The child—"
My child was already ash. He mourned hers.
"If I hadn't been pregnant, Megan wouldn't be so jealous..." Zephyra whispered.
"If there's a next life, I'll make this right." Roran's hollow guilt.
Next life?
Your dragonfire burned my child alive. You let me bleed out. And now you want redemption?
Not a chance.

During a police operation to pursue a serial killer, my father-in-law was taken hostage by the criminals while protecting me, and was dragged behind a vehicle for several kilometers.
I urgently called my husband for help: “Cedric, Dad has been taken hostage by the criminals. Send more people right away!”
My husband was the police department’s top marksman—only his sharpshooting skills could target the enemy and save his father!
But to my surprise, my husband just sneered, “Dahlia, I’ve only been out with Nalisa for an hour. To win my attention, you’ll make up any lie, won’t you?”
Hearing the call end, I was frozen in shock.
Then, I received a message from Nalisa with 99 bed photos of her and my husband.
“Cedric says, if your dad dies, so be it. He has no time for you now—he’d rather die in my arms.”
Anger and sorrow enveloped me. Watching my husband’s father crushed to death by the vehicle, I finally understood:
He must have thought it was my father who was taken hostage.

Ramille, born under a curse in the Moonshadow Pack, was destined to take in a childhood fiancé to counter it.

She chose Mason, who agreed on the condition that his two brothers, Eric and Jefferson, join him. However, Mason favored Alice, believing Ramille was cruel to her.

Alice’s false accusations led Mason and his brothers to mistreat Ramille.

Fed up, Ramille announced her engagement to John, the seemingly disabled Alpha of the Golden Fang pack.

On Ramille and John’s wedding day, Mason realized Alice’s deception but it was too late.

Warning: This book contains a large number of very hot adult scenes!
“Look at the state of you, my little she-wolf,” his voice was low and full of menace, like sandpaper scraping across my nerves. “You got this wet just from that?”
Then he pressed a hard kiss to my knuckles.
Fuck!
His rough tongue slid across my slender finger bones, tasting the salty sweat and fear on my skin.
A violent tremor shot through my whole body.
A moan I couldn’t suppress slipped from between my lips. “Ah… Sebastian…”
I felt my thighs rubbing together on their own, that damn traitorous movement making my pussy clench so tight I nearly came.
Yes, that’s it, you desperate little bitch.
I cursed myself in my mind.
He flipped my hand over, his thumb pressing hard—almost punishingly—into the sensitive skin on the inside of my wrist.
My pulse pounded there beneath his palm like it was going mad.
“This is beating so hard,” he whispered, his breath hot against my skin, “is it beating for me, Seraphina? Tell me.”
Then he took one of my fingers into his damn hot, wet mouth.
Oh God…
His rough tongue swirled, rubbed, scraped along the skin of my finger, warm saliva soaking every inch.
And his eyes never left me—fixing on me like a beast locking onto prey.
He sucked softly at first, then suddenly with force.
That rhythm…
Fuck, he was fucking my finger with his mouth.
“Are you using this to fuck my mouth, Seraphina?”
He let my finger go with a filthy pop, seeing straight through my thoughts.
“Imagine this is my cock. Does it feel good, you filthy little she-wolf?”
My back arched uncontrollably, like the lowest kind of whore silently inviting him.
A broken, shameful whimper escaped my throat.
“Good… so good…”
My scent thickened, wild floral heat and lust filling the air, swallowing the last of my reason.
I could feel the terrifying restraint in his body cracking apart.
He wanted to hear me moan his name as I came.
He wanted to bury himself inside my soaked, empty heat until I could feel nothing except his violent thrusts.
He moved to my middle finger, giving it the same obscene, thorough attention.
His tongue circled wickedly at the base, then pushed deep, sucking hard as if tasting the sweetest honey.
Fuck!
My hips jerked upward without control.
My other hand dug into the carpet, knuckles white, vision dissolving in the storm of desire swallowing me whole.
“I need you… to fill my pussy, Sebastian…”
——
I grew up as a human in a wolf pack, but ironically, I ended up becoming the mate of the pack’s Alpha. I thought I would fit perfectly into the wolves’ world—until the day I caught my Alpha mate tangled with another she-wolf in the back seat of a car.
With trembling hands, I tricked him into signing the divorce papers—silently swearing revenge. But they didn’t stop. His mother sent thugs to destroy me. His mistress tried to erase me. Even my coworkers wanted to use me.
That night, I nearly lost my life.
Until Alpha Sebastian found me—cold, ruthless, unmatched. He said he didn’t need a mate.
But he protected me like a mate. Touched me like a mate. Looked at me like a mate, as if I already belonged to him.
I tried to resist his approach. I didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. Wolves would never accept a human mate.
But whenever he came near me, whenever those scorching hands reached for me, I always hungered for him—wanted more—yet I was done with promises.
Until I discovered that my past was not simple at all—and Sebastian had his own reasons for approaching me—

The night I asked for a divorce, my husband, who claimed to love someone else, lost control.

His slender fingers gripped my slender waist, his breath hot and ragged as he buried his face in my neck and murmured, "Can we not divorce? Who is that man in the painting?"

I tried to push him away, but his fingers slipped into my underwear, teasing me.

"Can he make you feel this good?"

--

Sloane once believed that three years together could warm Jared's cold heart.

But when his ex-girlfriend returned, she, the "legal wife," instantly became an eyesore in the way.

He thought her vicious and forced her to apologize to her scheming ex, never knowing she carried his child.

"After I sign the divorce papers, I'll disappear completely." She turned and left without looking back.

After the divorce, Jared looked at his successful and beautiful ex wife and was filled with regret.

"Let's remarry." He knelt before Sloane with a diamond ring.

But Sloane turned and embraced her childhood savior instead.

This time, can Jared win back Sloane's heart?

"Who is Leo's father?"

I froze.

Calvin Rothschild stared at the little boy beside me. The child's eyes... those eyes looked exactly like his.

Five years ago, I left Calvin with a cruel lie.

"You're too poor. I want someone who can give me security."

I thought I was protecting him.

I thought I could raise our son alone.

But I never knew my "poor boyfriend" was actually the heir to one of the wealthiest old-money families in Europe.

Now he's back—richer, colder, and looking at me with hatred burning in his eyes.

He thinks I abandoned him for money.

He doesn't know I carried his child.

He doesn't know that every night for five years, our son asked me:

"Mommy, where's Daddy?"

Now fate has dragged us together again.

But when Calvin discovers the truth...

Will he forgive me?

Or will he take away the only thing I have left?

In the sixth year of my life as a Scale-Stripper, I finally gathered the hundredth vial of Dragon Breath Essence.

I knelt before the altar, cradling the crystal bottle in both hands. The golden light swirling within it cast a warm glow across my scarred knuckles. Six years — six years of wandering the most dangerous battlefields of the Five Clans and the plague-ridden wastelands, using dragon breath to heal the wounded. For every person I saved, I had peeled away a living scale from my own flesh, baring the raw, bleeding meat beneath.

Seven scales left on my back.

Only seven.

But as long as it saved my brother Lucien, it was worth it.

Six years ago, during the Dragon Slaughter War, our parents had been assassinated by humans. An ancient curse had struck Lucien; his scales were crumbling away, day by day. He told me that only a hundred vials of Dragon Breath Essence could break the curse.

I held the crystal bottle out to him, my voice trembling with barely contained emotion. "Lucien, a hundred vials. We finally have enough."

Lucien took the bottle and glanced at it.

Then he tossed it off the altar without a second thought.

I went rigid.

Lucien stood at the top of the altar.

"I was never cursed," he said.

My hands were still cupped in the shape of holding the bottle, all ten fingers suspended in midair.

"Our parents never died, either."

"The Dragon Slaughter War six years ago, I planned it. The only one left crippled, with broken wings, was you."

Ethan and I grew up together. We were supposed to exchange rings at the altar, make our vows. But on our wedding day, he left me standing there to go save his so-called suicidal ex. Almost killed my parents from the shame.

Four years later, I'm back in Portland with my husband. The city isn't that big, and of course fate decides to throw him in my path again.

He has the nerve to ask me to be his mistress.

I hold up my left hand, the ring catching the light. "Are you blind?"