4629 Book(s) Related to im a stand in puppet for his ex lover novel

Criminal profiler in training (and newlywed) Jessie Hunt, 29, discovers that dark secrets lurk in her new suburban town; when a body turns up dead, she finds herself caught in the crosshairs of her newfound friends, her husband’s secrets, her serial killer caseload—and the secrets of her own dark past.In THE PERFECT WIFE (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book One), Criminal profiler-in-training Jessie Hunt is sure she's finally put the darkness of her childhood behind her. She and her husband, Kyle, just moved from a cramped downtown Los Angeles apartment into a Westport Beach mansion. Kyle's promotion has them swimming in money. And Jessie is on the verge of getting her Master's degree in forensic psychology, the last step in her dream of becoming a criminal profiler. But soon after their arrival, Jessie begins to notice a series of strange developments. The neighbors—and their au pairs—all seem to be hiding secrets. The mysterious yacht club Kyle is desperate to join is rife with cheating spouses, and with troubling rules of its own. And the notorious serial killer being held at the psychiatric hospital where Jessie is completing her degree seems to know more about her life than is normal—or safe. As her world starts to unravel, Jessie begins to question everything around her—including her own sanity. Has she truly uncovered a disturbing conspiracy buried within a sunny, wealthy Southern California beach town? Does the mass murderer she's studying really somehow know the origin of her private nightmares? Or has her tortured past finally come back to claim her?A fast-paced psychological suspense thriller with unforgettable characters and heart-pounding suspense, THE PERFECT WIFE is book #1 in a riveting new series that will leave you turning pages late into the night.

Princess Penelope would rather die than marry the feared Crimson Dragon King.

On the night before the wedding, she throws herself to her death.

At that exact moment, in another world, Joseline Hernandez falls from the rooftop of her school building after someone pushes her. Betrayed and exhausted from a life spent being blamed for her father's death, she dies with only one thought : revenge.

But death was not the end.

Joseline wakes up inside the body of Princess Penelope, the very princess who was supposed to become the bride of the terrifying Crimson Dragon King, Drakarys.

Desperate to return home and uncover who murdered her, Joseline searches for a way back to her world. Yet the deeper she enters the dragon kingdom, the more she realizes something is wrong. The dragons are hiding secrets. The royal court is dangerous and the Crimson King himself is nothing like the monster humans claim him to be.

When no path home appears, Joseline makes a choice :

If she must live as Penelope, then she will survive as the Crimson Dragon King's bride even if it means falling in love with the King she meant to fear.

The day before my engagement to my fiancé, I discovered I was a fake heiress.
And now, the real young lady had returned, and I was being sent away to the poor countryside.
But unlike what they said, my biological parents weren't poor country folk—they were the wealthiest family in the nation!
And I owned top-tier farms, a mysterious jewelry studio, and was a hidden tycoon who could shake up the entire business world.
My fiancé, who had looked down on me, was now crying and begging me to marry him.
He came to me with photos: "Pretending to be greedy, pretending to be ignorant, when you're actually a top-tier mogul? My fiancée, you've deceived me so thoroughly."

Madeleine has seen spirits since she was a small child. It runs in her family and she has never known any different. But when she goes to her favorite antique shop and notices that the plain silver band she has had her eyes set on for three years is still there, she finally decides to purchase it. As soon as she touches the ring, a spirit of a man, Christian, appears and follows her around the shop. The more she learns of his story, the more she learns about herself until she falls for him. Fate has a mysterious way of working. With one life altering moment, she is faced with the very spirit that has been around her. A model in a coma named, Christian.

Warnings: life altering injuries, sexual content, and violence.

Age Suggestion: 18+

The Unwanted Ring: A Romance that Stood the Test of Time is created by Minette Enfers, an eGlobal Creative Publishing signed author.

“A masterpiece of thriller and mystery. Blake Pierce did a magnificent job developing characters with a psychological side so well described that we feel inside their minds, follow their fears and cheer for their success. Full of twists, this book will keep you awake until the turn of the last page.” --Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos (re Once Gone) CUL DE SAC (A Chloe Fine Mystery) is book #3 in a new psychological suspense series by bestselling author Blake Pierce, whose #1 bestseller Once Gone (Book #1) (a free download) has over 1,000 five-star reviews. FBI VICAP Special Agent Chloe Fine, 27, must immerse herself in a suburban world of cliques, gossip and lies, as she races to solve the murder of a seemingly picture-perfect wife and mother on the night of her 20th high school reunion.Old high school friends, now in their late 30s, have returned back to the same suburban town to raise their kids, and have resurrected the same cliques that sustained and divided them 20 years ago. As their 20th high school reunion brings back old memories, resentment, betrayals and secrets, it causes fresh pain a generation later. On the same night, their former queen bee is found murdered in her home.In this seemingly perfect, manicured town, the past haunts the present—and anyone and everyone is a suspect.Can Chloe Fine solve the murder—while wrestling with the demons of her own past, and the potential release from jail of her own father?An emotionally wrought psychological suspense with layered characters, small-town ambiance and heart-pounding suspense, CUL DE SAC is book #3 in a riveting new series that will leave you turning pages late into the night. Book #4 in the CHLOE FINE series will be available soon.

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.

I’m a werewolf.

Three months ago, I got involved in a back-alley “not my problem”—a man held a knife to a woman clutching her child. I rushed him and tore his throat out with my teeth.

Now the police are hunting me. My pack can’t protect me. The only option left is to slip out of the country.

The fixer at the meet hands me a bottle of “calming meds,” says it’ll get me through the checkpoints.

I smell the drugs anyway. I drink it.

When I wake up, my hands are tied behind my back inside a sealed metal cargo truck. Someone beside me is crying. Someone else is shaking.

That’s when I realize I’ve been sold into a trafficking ring. They slap a number tag on me, lock me in a steel cage, and wait for dawn to ship us out.

A guard cracks my face with a rifle stock—sure I’m just another desperate man trying to disappear.

He has no idea a cage can’t hold a werewolf.

Especially not tonight—under a full moon.

Every July, my husband left for a business trip to France—so for seven full years of marriage, we never once got to celebrate our wedding anniversary.
This time, I flew all the way to France to surprise him, and mid-flight, I stumbled across a social media post.
My dream girl finally agreed to be with me. How do I make the frumpy, worn-out wife back home file for divorce on her own?
The OP poured out his grievances in the comment section:
When my dream girl suddenly moved abroad, I married her former best friend to keep me company through the hard times, just so I wouldn’t lose touch with her completely.
Now she’s finally said yes to being with me, and I’ve made enough to give her the lavish, privileged life she deserves.
I want my wife to find out about my affair herself so I can get a clean divorce without a fight, but she’s so painfully oblivious. I’ve come home reeking of my dream girl’s perfume on purpose, and every single July I fly here to France for our private time together, watching the lavender bloom in Provence with her. She never noticed a thing.
Perfume. July. France.
Those matching details made my fingers go numb. A deafening buzz exploded in my skull. A bone-deep chill washed over me, and I prayed with everything I had that it was all just a terrible coincidence.
Until I read the final line.
Just got a spending alert from her supplementary credit card—she bought a flight to France. I’m heading to pick up my dream girl now, might as well keep an eye out for her, just in case.
The plane touched down. When I stepped into the arrivals hall, I lifted my head almost instinctively.
There stood Shen Sinian, the man I hadn’t seen in two weeks, in a crisp, tailored suit, a bouquet of roses in his hand, locked in a passionate kiss with a woman with a stunning, willowy figure, her back to me.
He opened his eyes by chance, and through the crowd of travelers, his gaze locked directly with mine.

Translation

Zombies besieged the city. I fought through the infected zone alone and brought back the vaccine.

All of humanity hailed me as their savior.

But at the medal ceremony, my superior and fiancée Amy shoved me aside. "You're covered in blood. Stand over there. Would it kill you to be more like David?"

"A man who can't even bear to look at violence—that's what a civilized person looks like."

For the sake of being her idea of civilized, I locked away my weapons and spent three years as her errand boy. I took countless bullets meant for her, and still she complained I wasn't gentle enough.

Then the virus mutated. To save David, I crushed a Tyrant's skull with my bare hands.

She threw her arms around the trembling David, slammed the table, and screamed at me: "If you don't get this violent streak under control, you can forget about being the Chief's husband. Apologize to David. Now."

The vaccine I'd risked my life for—she used every last drop of it to win favor with her pretty boy.

I ejected the magazine from my rifle and tossed my medal into the rubble.

"That position of yours? Give it to whoever you want."

Five years after breaking the mate bond, Vincent became one of the youngest Alphas of the North, worth hundreds of billions, with a fiancée who was a perfect match for him — the daughter of Silver Claw Pack’s Alpha.
But I had already disappeared from his world, my name now only whispered in rumors about me being a bar hostess at Midnight Howl Bar, catering to Alphas and nobility.
When someone mentioned my name to him, he simply held his fiancée’s hand with a cold look in his eyes.
"I don't know her."
At his bonding ceremony, everyone congratulated the "perfect match."
But I, floating in the air, watched as Vincent stood beside his dazzling Luna.
What he didn't know...
He was the only Alpha I ever loved.
What he didn’t know...
I had been dead for a year.
Before I died, I was desperately earning money just to get our daughter the treatment she needed.
Then one day...
He found me at the Midnight Howl Bar where I worked in life, catching a faint but familiar scent of me. That moment...
His wolf spirit completely lost control.

The dealership called to inform me that my Rolls-Royce Starlight Headliner had been replaced with a pink one and was ready for pickup.
I was bewildered. I hadn't driven that car in ages—why would anyone change the headliner without my knowledge?
I confronted my husband, who managed our garage, demanding an explanation.
"Honey, maybe they got their wires crossed. I'll swing by the dealership later and sort it out."
I wasn't about to waste my breath. Instead, I called my friend directly—she happened to own the dealership.
"William's having an affair. I'm going to catch him red-handed."

"I need you to find my son. Luna is here...or maybe a doppelganger and is playing dead in my arms and I know it's not true. Gather all the men, lock down the city." I said as there was a sob from the other end of the call.

"Luna's....dead?" My Beta's voice broke on this.

"Stop playing these tricks with me, Thorne..she is not dead. Find my son. She will wake up once she sees him."

"Alpha Xenois, your son is in the morgue..."


Luna has tried her best to make her forced marriage to Xen work for the sake of their child. But with Riley and Sophia- Xen's ex-girlfriend and her son in the picture. She fights a losing battle.
Ollie, Xen's son is neglected by his father for a very long time and he is also suffering from a mysterious sickness that's draining his life force.
When his last wish to have his dad come to his 5th birthday party is dashed by his failure to show up, Ollie dies in an accident after seeing his father celebrate Riley's birthday with Sophia and it's displayed on the big advertising boards that fill the city.
Ollie dies and Luna follows after, unable to bear the grief, dying in her mate's hands cursing him and begging for a second chance to save her son.
Luna gets the opportunity and is woken up in the past, exactly one year to the day Sophia and Riley show up.
But this time around, Luna is willing to get rid of everyone and anyone even her mate if he steps in her way to save her son.

I’m the old man of the group and no matter how much they value me, I will never be a part of them, Knight of the queen or not. I am the expendable one, the one that shouldn’t be here, and the one that shouldn’t be alive. By all accounts, I should have died 13 years ago. A question I always ask myself, every time my eyes open: why am I still alive? Why did the gods let that old priestess find me so many moons ago and bring me back from the dead? Why did they allow me to live?
I still wonder what my role is in this story and believe me there is more to this story than any of us know. I can feel it, see it unfolding, almost taste it. The last three years have just been a prelude to something bigger, something yet unseen and unknown. Lamia and Mathias may be the main characters, but we all had a role, an important part to play. Unfortunately, the script of our lives had been hidden away or maybe it just hasn’t been written yet.


Sent on a quest by his beloved Queen Lamia; Hunji finds himself back at the beginning. The place where his old life ended - left for dead, and where the goddess granted him a second chance.

On the hunt for a witch, Hunji must face his past - A past that left him broken.
When the goddess breathed new life into him, he took an oath to serve her. Now that promise is being tested.
He can survive his past but it's the future that threatens to turn his world upside down.
That and the little witch who he was sent to find, protect and bring home - is hellbent on throwing a curve ball at every plan he had.

Born with magic in her veins, Murphy Davide is a witch hiding in plain sight as a raccoon shifter.

Theodore Williams is a dragon tormented by the violence in his blood. When their paths cross at Arlo University, what begins as a pragmatic alliance—she seeks to develop a dragon transformation stabilizer;

he simply wants to survive to adulthood—slowly blossoms into something neither expected: trust.

But prejudice never sleeps within the academy walls. The Second Squadron marks them as a threat.

The psionic witch Phyllis covets Theodore's bloodline for her own dark purposes. Even Hetty, Murphy's dearest friend, grows distant amid the brewing storms.

Through a critical experiment under the full moon and a life-and-death trial in the botanical gardens, Murphy comes to understand a devastating truth:

true stability was never something a potion could provide. It is found only in the mutual redemption of two lonely souls who dared to choose each other against all odds.

A witch's magic. A dragon's curse. A bond that could save them both—or destroy everything.

My brother chose my enemy, and the man I loved joined forces with her to sell me into a club.
Pregnancy, miscarriage, imprisonment, beatings—every cry for help I made was dismissed as "just an act."
It wasn't until I was truly dead that they lost their minds, dropping to their knees at my grave and sobbing that they were sorry.
But by then, I could no longer hear them.

I retired for three years, restraining my edge, thinking compromise could bring peace.

But what I got in return was my sister's abduction, my family's estate seized, and my benefactor hanged from the city gates!

Even the Council turned a blind eye, mocking me as bottom-tier trash without even a shred of magic.

Since mortal reasoning won't work, then I'll shatter the rules of this world myself!

I’m Leona, and I’ve hidden a forbidden love under the moonlight of the werewolf world for nine long years—an unspoken bond with my brother’s closest friend, Alpha Nick.
When he looked at me and said, “I’ll find someone better for you,” there was a flicker in his eyes I couldn’t read. But when he turned away, it was to chase after his ex-girlfriend, Selene, crashing through the forest branches like gravity itself answered her call. “His wolf never resonated with ours.” Aris, my wolf, howled inside me.“You’ve spent years trying to spark fire in frozen stone.”
And yet, I was the fool who mistook the instinct for fated love.
In my past life, when I was seven months pregnant and trapped beneath an avalanche during a winter patrol, he was tucked in a border cave listening to Selene sing ballads under moonlit stalactites.
When I was curled in pain from stomach ulcers, he was busy tuning her purification crystals.
Even when I was shoved into the river by Selene, it wasn’t my drowning body he s

The craziest thing I've ever done? Agreeing to Mason's idea—sex in the middle of nowhere.
But then his first love called, and he left me stranded out there. Alone. In the dead of night.

I thought I was a powerless human in a school full of witches, heirs, and monsters.
Until a black magician tried to kill me.
Until my blood awakened.
Until the boy with phoenix fire knelt bleeding in my arms—and I brought him back from death.
Now everyone wants my secret.
And someone wants me dead.

Five years into our relationship, a floating panel appeared just above Julian’s head, visible only to me: the [Life Priority Meter].
For the longest time, my name securely held the number one spot. That is, until recently, when it plummeted to second place.
The person who knocked me down to claim first? Harper—my best friend of over a decade.
Staring at the stack of wedding invitations on the table, bearing both our names, I knew it was time to wake up from this five-year long dream.

I'm sixty years old. My husband Marcus just whipped me with his belt — for burning an egg. My face is bruised, my hair is gray, and I gave up a full ride to Stanford for this man over forty years ago.
Then the phone rings.
The voice on the other end is mine — my eighteen-year-old self, calling on her birthday, gushing about how Marcus is out buying her a cake, how they're running away to Nashville together tomorrow.
She asks if I'm happy.
I tell her the truth: her boyfriend is in a cheap motel right now, in bed with her best friend. And those pretty promises about Nashville? He's planning to use her up and throw her away.
She doesn't believe me. Of course she doesn't.
But I know the motel. I know the room number. And I know what's behind that door.
If she walks away from him tonight, everything changes — for both of us.

In this damned wasteland, nobody wants to travel with a burden.
But there were four filthy little ones who stubbornly insisted on following me, refusing to fight back or retaliate.
I looked at them, then at the approaching horde of zombies in the distance, and tossed a loaded pistol in front of them.
"Want to follow me? Fine."
I coldly placed a knife to the neck of the outermost zombie. "Here, if you want me, the lone wolf, to take you along, you'll have to prove you're not trash!"
"Take it and shoot it in the head! That's the only ticket to joining my team!"
The sixteen-year-old girl, tears streaming down her face, gritted her teeth and pulled the trigger.
I knew I could never shake them off again.

Harper spent ten years as Joel's perfect girlfriend... until he dumped her to boost his brand. Now Joel's getting married, and Harper's crashing his wedding on the arm of Crew Lawson, the one player Joel hates most. It's supposed to be fake: three months of PR revenge. But Crew's hiding a dangerous addiction, Harper's hiding real feelings, and Joel's hiding the truth about why he really left. Some fake relationships burn too hot to stay pretending.

The three alpha wolves who bullied me
never knew the truth.

I wasn't the quiet boy they tormented.

I was the girl hiding behind my dead brother's name.

And I was their fated mate.


For a year, I lived under my dead brother’s name, hiding my identity and my power.

But on my eighteenth birthday, everything changed.

My disguise shattered.
My power awakened.

And the broken boy they mocked became a legendary Lunar Shadow Wolf.

Now the three alphas who once humiliated me feel every scar they caused.

They want forgiveness.

Too bad.

Because the wolves who once bullied me?

They belong to me now.

And this time—

they’re the ones who will kneel.

The Percy Family Heir's Scandal Leaks Again!

Cecilia Davis sat curled up in the master bedroom, scrolling through photos of Edward Percy and Jessica Brown.

The photos were taken secretly, but from a sharp angle.

Through a car window — the two of them, going at it hard.

Cecilia let out a cold laugh, tossed the photos into the trash, and felt a wave of deep exhaustion wash over her eyes.

"Do I really have to cut it?"

"Ma'am, this is Mr. Percy's request. Only if you cut your hair as short as Ms. Brown's can we clear up last night's rumors. Of course, you don't have to go — that is, if you never want to see your brother again."

Edward's assistant Leo spoke with a dismissive air, not a trace of respect in his eyes.

As if she, the so-called Mrs. Percy, was nothing more than a joke that nobody needed.

And honestly, that's exactly what she was.

Lydia's POV

"The patient in Bed 7 has been here three months now, right? Not a single family visit."

"Her husband just pays the bills and leaves. Doesn't even look at her. Poor thing."

I lay in the hospital bed, listening to two nurses whispering outside my door. My fingers rested weakly against the edge of the mattress.

Three months ago, I was diagnosed with late-stage cancer.

My husband, Sebastian Carter, came once. He stood in the doorway—didn't step inside—signed the papers with a blank expression, and never came back.

Sebastian was a writer. He locked himself in his study all day, leaving me to spend night after night alone in the living room. We lived under the same roof like strangers from different worlds.

I'd grown used to this hollow marriage. I didn't even bother calling him anymore.

Footsteps echoed outside.

I turned my head toward the door. Sebastian stood there in his familiar charcoal coat, his face expressionless.

"You came." I was surprised. I forced myself to sit up, my body weak and trembling.

Sebastian didn't answer. He walked straight to the bedside and set a document on the nightstand. "Sign it."

I picked it up. The words at the top read: 'Divorce Agreement.'

WARNING …. WARNING…. This isn't your regular werewolf romance. This novel is a bloody werewolf romance with rated scenes that you could find disgusting at any time. In case you do not have the heart to read it, please you can quit it. But at the same time, I'll be glad if y'all could support my first story.

Blurb

When a banished Luna became a slave to the most dangerous Three Alpha brothers. Ashina thought everything that was happening to her was just a mere dream, but little did she know it was never a dream but her reality.

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It all started on the night before her birthday When she suddenly received the doctor's reports that she was pregnant. How? When? Not when her husband, Alpha Ethan is an impotent man who has an extremely low sperm count. Secondly, the arrival of her stepsister, who happens to be her husband's long-awaited mate. Everything happened just the night before her birthday.

Ashina thought she didn't have anything to worry about since her husband had chosen her as his wife and cherished her a lot. She thought it didn't matter that her stepsister was her husband's mate.

While expecting the man to reject her stepsister, Jessica just like he said he would, instead she was the one that got rejected and banished from the pack.

“I, Alpha Ethan, reject you as my wife and banish you from the pack, Ashina!” Those were the words playing in her head when she left the pack and finally crossed the border with her maid.

But little does she know that there's more awaiting her when she finds herself begging for her life in front of the three most ruthless alpha brothers.

Selena stole my sister's talent and became a saint. To appease her, my family threw my sister into a mass grave. The first thing I did after crawling back from purgatory was to crush Selena's knees. She knelt before my sister's grave, never to rise again. As for the Archbishop of the Privy Council? He would kneel before the thorny cross on my chest too.

Seven days before the apocalypse, my vampire parents forced me to hand over three million to buy a house for my baby brother in full.

As an actuary, I knew that order would collapse in seven days and the money would become worthless. So I not only readily agreed, but also used their family's records as collateral to raise millions in high-interest loans, building an impregnable, top-secret fortress.

Seven days later, an unexpected change occurred.

The debt-collecting gangs and the endless horde of zombies drove them to the brink of despair. Meanwhile, I sat in a temperature-controlled safe house, sipping freshly ground coffee, calmly watching the cannibalistic karmic retribution unfold on the security camera.

In the apocalypse, there is no family affection, only the probability of survival.

After the Cosmic Pulse Event, human civilization was wiped off the map.

Some people turned into zombies. Others awakened abilities.

In my previous life, I hadn't awakened anything yet when I made the mistake of letting my uncle's family in — I was too soft-hearted. They thanked me by killing me and my parents.

Given a second chance, I kept that door locked. No matter how much my uncle's family wailed and threatened, I didn't budge.

But when the apocalypse finally broke, I awakened a Farm Ability — while my uncle outside awakened a Killing Blade.

Five years ago, my fiancée and a chaebol heir broke my ribs and threw me into the sewer like trash.

Five years later, they implanted a neurotoxin bomb into the back of my sister's neck, forcing me on all fours to crawl between the security guards' legs into their engagement banquet at a Manhattan penthouse hotel.

My ex-fiancée poured champagne over my wounds, while the chaebol heir ground caviar into the muddy water with his leather shoes, forcing me to lick it clean like a dog.

The room full of Wall Street elites laughed at my humiliation, thinking I was still the same bottom-tier temp worker from back then.

They had no idea that through my micro-earpiece, a heavy armored division was already on standby under the cover of night.

When the confirmation came that the bomb had been defused, I slowly stood up straight.

Outside the window, engines roared. Ten heavy Black Hawk helicopters tore through the curtain of rain, their heavy machine guns instantly shattering the banquet hall's reinforced glass.

Looking down at the chaebol heir who was now slumped in the muddy water, I drew my sidearm: "The debt from five years ago—today, I'm collecting it with your family's lives."

All because I was unaware that Sophia had followed me on the mission, leaving her stranded in the chaotic dockyard.
My husband, Dante, was furious. He ordered his bodyguards to throw me into a seafood transfer warehouse.
“Cool off in the cold storage. Maybe then you’ll understand how helpless Sophia felt trapped in that container.”
It was a refrigeration unit for seafood, kept at a constant zero degrees, the air thick with the smell of fish.
I pounded on the door, pleading for help, but only Dante’s icy voice came through the intercom:
“Stop the act. The temperature in there won’t kill you. Stay inside and reflect until you learn your lesson.”
He cut the internal communication.
The temperature in the cold room kept dropping—someone had switched on the deep-freeze mode!
Shivering uncontrollably, I beat against the door until my nails left bloody scratches on the wall.
In agony, I curled into a ball. My consciousness faded, and my body grew stiff.
On the third day, Dante finally remembered me while celebrating the takeover of new territory.
In a rare show of mercy, he decided to have someone let me out.
But what he didn’t know was that my heart had already stopped beating from hypothermia long before.

The Enforcement Corps hauled me out of my apartment in the middle of the night and dumped me at the Southside Precinct.

The subordinate I'd trained myself had scratch marks all over her neck and collarbone, and she was shaking so hard she could barely stay on her feet.

The second she saw me, she pointed and started screaming that my mate had raped her.

"Director Cordelia, I've always looked up to you. You can't sic your mate on me just because I disagreed with you in a meeting!"

My brain just went blank. Because I don't have a mate.

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

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

“Wendy, are you absolutely sure you want to sign this document?”
The Elder’s voice rang in my ears—cold, distant.
“Once your bond with Alpha John is dissolved, you’ll lose everything tied to the Blackthorn Pack.”
I gripped the pen so hard my knuckles turned white.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
But just as the tip touched the paper—
BANG!
The door was kicked open with a violent crash.
Alpha John stormed in, eyes bloodshot, and wrapped his hand around my throat.
“You dare?!”
Blood slipped from the corner of my lips… but I laughed.
Because I knew—he would never discover the truth.
That his dear uncle, Alpha Vincent, was hiding in my closet at this very moment.
And the fresh bite mark on my lower belly… still burned from last night.
As if fate was mocking me, my sweet little sister Penny sent a message right then:
“Sis, wanna know a secret? That miscarriage you had? John planned it. He made it happen.”
Then the TV flickered to life with a breaking live broadcast—
There she was, Penny, gently stroking h

For the three years since I returned to the Hart family, I had always been the wildly out-of-place “burden.”

Vivienne, the family’s beloved fake heiress, broke a contract on her own and provoked a local gang. She was taken hostage and tortured in an abandoned auto repair shop.

To save his precious sister, my brother, Ryan, did not hesitate to trade me to the gang in exchange for Vivienne.
“She’s a movie star, and you’re just a useless nobody. It’s only natural for you to take her place and suffer a little.”
He looked coldly at the gang members who were eyeing me like hungry wolves, and violently shoved me toward them.
“Tonight, she belongs to you.”

Right before they dragged me away, I managed to call my husband, Alex, begging for help. But he rejected me ruthlessly, acting as if my plea was some cheap scam:
“Stop playing the victim. Why would they ever hurt you? Hurry up and clean up this mess. Don't let a girl like Vivienne face those thugs all by herself.”

Bang.
The heavy iron doors of the gang’s hideout slammed shut.
There were no negotiations. What greeted me was a merciless rain of fists, my clothes brutally torn to shreds, and the blinding flashes of cameras.
Amidst the ultimate degradation, they took photos of me, pinched my jaw, and violated my dignity over and over again.

At 4:00 AM, I was tossed out onto the street in front of my own house like a piece of discarded trash.
Upon dragging myself inside, Vivienne immediately began dropping hints to the family, implying that I was the one who tricked her into signing the illegal gang contract.
My family cursed me, telling me to drop dead.
My heart plummeted into a bottomless abyss of darkness. Numbly swallowing the bloody foam pooling in my mouth, I let out a hoarse, broken laugh.

“Since my return was a mistake from the very beginning…”
“Then why didn’t they just let me die?”

I’m a top assassin.

Three years ago, on a rainy night, I was being hunted when a stranger took a bullet for me. As he lay dying, he grabbed my hand and begged me to protect his son—and to keep living in his place.

To escape my pursuers and keep that promise, I changed my face, took his identity, and stayed by the boy’s side as his father.

His wife was arrogant, cruel, and constantly cheating. For the child—and to protect my cover—I endured all of it.

Until today.

She drugged me.

When I woke up, a doctor was holding a blade over my chest. They were about to take my heart.

Lying on that operating table, I finally learned the truth: her family had been trafficking organs all along.

That man died three years ago because he discovered it, and she arranged the crash that killed him.

She murdered the man who saved me. Now she wants to kill me too.

She still thinks I’m the same weak doctor who gets out of breath after a short run.

She doesn’t know I’m resistant to anesthesia.

And she definitely doesn’t know these hands have held scalpels—and snapped far too many necks.

My wife was forced to don a wedding dress to marry my sworn enemy, while my three-year-old daughter was locked in an iron cage suspended above the raging sea.

And I, the dignified Commander-in-Chief of the Blackwater Fleet, was forced to wear a dog collar, kneeling on broken glass and licking up red wine like a crippled stray dog.
All because embedded in their necks were biological bombs, the detonator held in the hands of my enemy.

The elites of the entire island ruthlessly mocked my cowardice, trampling me underfoot in ultimate humiliation.

That was until the climax of the maritime wedding, when my enemy smugly pressed the detonator, only for the collars to flash a safe green light—the full-frequency signal decryption was complete.
Amidst the dead silence of the crowd, I snapped the forged steel chains binding me and slowly stood tall.

The next second, ten nuclear-powered submarines violently breached the ocean surface, and tens of thousands of heavily armored death squads descended from the sky.

Looking at my enemy, now terrified to the point of incontinence and shattering his own knees to frantically kowtow and beg for mercy, I picked up that very dog chain and slipped it around his neck.

After sleeping for a thousand years, I returned to the ancestral castle that was supposed to be mine.
Only to find my throne torn down and turned into an auction block for the black market, my territory carved up clean by traitors.
And my only pureblood descendant in this world was actually being auctioned off like livestock—covered in blood, chained up with a cheap dog collar around his neck.
The entire room of nobles and elites mistook me for the lowest kind of half-blood trash, mocking me as a rat too stupid to know when he was dead.
The usurper, eager to curry favor with the Abyss, shouted that he would drain me dry and offer my blood as a tribute to the three pureblood princes deep within the Abyss.
Then the void split open, and those three supreme princes—the untouchable monsters the world worshiped—truly descended.
Under the horrified gaze of more than a thousand nobles and elites, those three ancient monsters threw themselves at my feet, scrambling and crawling, wailing in terror without even daring to raise their heads:
"Your unworthy descendants... welcome the Ancestor's return!!!"

The rules were supposed to keep me safe:

Rule #1: Fix my shattered swimming career.
Rule #2: Hide the crippling panic attacks drowning my future.
Rule #3: Never, ever fall for my new coach.

Too bad Liam James is also my best friend’s brother.

After a tragic accident stole my parents, the pool went from my sanctuary to my worst nightmare. Enter Liam: arrogant, devastatingly intense, and brutally demanding. He thinks I’m a lazy, washed-up athlete wasting his time. I think he’s a heartless tyrant.

But every explosive confrontation at the pool edge only fuels a suffocating, forbidden chemistry we can't ignore.

He’s completely off-limits. Breaking the rules means risking my career, his future, and my best friend’s trust. But when the world spins out of control, his arms are the only place I can finally breathe.

Can we survive the forbidden heat, or will our secrets drag us under?

I was frozen for 100 years due to illness.
One hundred years later, the whole world was ravaged by strange phenomena, and humanity was huddled together in a few small places to survive.
I was awakened from my slumber by the investigation team. I thought I would be killed by the monster as soon as I woke up, but I found that the monster here was my good brother from college.
Besides him, the eerie owner of the barbecue restaurant, the matchmaking ghost who likes to harm people through blind dates, the S-class monstrous ghost in the cemetery... they are all my old friends...
The world a hundred years from now feels strangely familiar...

My first love was adopted by our family, and he promised he would always be there for me.
But after my dad passed away in a car accident, I found him with another woman in our bedroom.
He told everyone Caroline was his true love—that he only saw me as a sister—and claimed I was the one who was pestering him.
I was shamed by everyone. The stress gave my mother a stroke, and Caroline even had someone run me over, costing me an eye.
Seven years later, holding flowers, I ran into them outside a convenience store.
Arthur's son looked at me pityingly. "Dad, this lady lost an eye… Is she selling flowers? Should we buy some?"

I'm two months pregnant with Tristan's baby when Brielle, the woman he'd do anything for, shoves me down the stairs.

She calls it an accident. I lose the baby.

I beg my husband to do something about it. Instead, he shields her and turns it around on me.

"Brielle saved my life in that fire. The whole Merrick family owes her. So drop it."

That debt. Always that debt.

Three years. No matter how many times Brielle humiliates me, degrades me, Tristan only ever has one answer: "I owe her my life."

But the truth about that fire? I'm the only one in the world who knows it.

I tried to tell him once. He laughed in my face. "Adeline, you're so desperate for attention you'd make up something like that?"

So I shut my mouth. Buried the truth. Buried whatever was left of my heart along with it.

The man I trusted with my life just handed my child to the woman who killed them, and called it loyalty.

I'm done.

I pull up the number I blocked three years ago and hit call.

"Dad. I'll take over the company. I'll go through with the engagement to Everett. But I have one condition. I want Tristan and Brielle ruined beyond recovery. Nothing and no one left."

Beau and I have been together for three years. I paid for the entire yacht charter out of my own pocket, and he shows up with his childhood best friend Sadie in tow, then goes around telling everyone it was his idea, his grand gesture.

Out on the water, Sadie spots a small octopus drifting near the surface and decides she has to have it. The thing pulses with glowing blue rings.

I'm a certified expert diver. I know exactly what it is the second I see it. I try to stop her.

She bursts into tears and tells Beau I'm going after her.

So Beau, ever the hero where Sadie's concerned, jumps in himself and fishes the thing out.

Sadie plays with it. It bites her. She's on the deck before she even knows what hit her.

Beau grabs me, screaming at me to suck out the venom. I refuse. He calls me a cold, heartless bitch, and in the chaos, shoves me overboard into shark-infested water.

I die out there. Nothing left of me.

They use my phone to fake a suicide note. Depression, they say. Jumped on her own. Then they take my company, my assets, everything.

They post online hinting I tried to push Sadie in and slipped.

My parents, worn down by the online harassment and the grief of losing me, both die of heart attacks.

Then I open my eyes. And I'm back. The morning of the trip.

The wicked mother and the homewrecker caused an accident that killed the girl's father. Because of this accident, the poor girl lost her virginity and even became homeless. A rich and noble young lady suddenly turned into a waitress working in a British restaurant. Thanks to her father's will, she still inherited 30% of the company's shares and always had a mysterious bodyguard to protect her. However, When she got everything ready and planned to go home again, her mother turned out to be giving the company to that homewrecker and letting the girl's sister inherit all the property.