91 Book(s) Related to jacob marlowe

Ravens MC Series: Marlowe & Torin-Book 1 (Bad Boys Collections)
Triggers: dark theme, brief substance use, guns, knives, mature content, 18+

Marlowe Mills, the daughter of the president of the Sons of Morning Star, is unwittingly ensnared by Torin Montero, a member of her father's club, who becomes her fathers rival and her silent protector.
Years after a betrayal, the embers of Marlowe and Torin's love ignites once more. But Marlowe finds herself in the embrace of a Mob boss's son, entangled in a web of obsession and danger. Fate, however, has a twist in store.
When the lines between love and vengeance blur, Marlowe must choose her dance of destiny.

I saw a post on Reddit, "Urgent! How do I convince my wife to donate bone marrow to my mistress?"

I scoffed and typed back, "What a piece of shit."

Right after I hit send, my husband came home. He grasped my hand, his voice shaky: "You have leukemia... but it's okay, we found a donor."

His right eye twitched—he always did that when he lied.

Then I remembered the worst comment on that post, "Trick your wife into thinking she's the patient."

Life imitating the internet, apparently.

He wanted to harvest my bone marrow for someone else.

When I finally saw his mistress's face, my world fell apart.

I never thought his mistress would be her......

After being brought home by my biological parents, I thought I'd finally get the love I'd been missing.

But no matter what I did, they only blamed me for bullying my adopted sister. My husband would just look at me with disgust.

They thought I was cruel and evil. When my adopted sister was diagnosed with leukemia, they forced me to donate bone marrow to her.

I was forced to eat and exercise, gaining twenty pounds in half a month.

My adopted sister suddenly looked at me and said, "Sis, to tell you the truth, I don't have leukemia at all. I'm just playing with you. When you die on the operating table, I'll be with your husband."

I felt so sick I wanted to die.

But I couldn't die.

I had to survive.

I had to crawl out of this hell alive!

Married for seven years, I lived my life like an absolute joke.
For the sake of my brother, my wife personally uprooted the roses I had so painstakingly cultivated. To please her uncle, my daughter pointed at my nose and called me a "bad daddy."
The entire family even held a vote to force me to donate my bone marrow. My wife, Elena, raised her hand without a second thought: "You'll just lose a little bone marrow. Liam will die without you."
In that moment, my heart died.
The surgery was a success.
As the anesthesia wore off, Elena was holding my hand tightly. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her voice trembled with remorse: "Aaron, I was a jerk before. As long as you were willing to save Liam, I will love only you for the rest of my life."
She thought I would be as pathetically grateful as a dog, begging for her affection and humbly forgiving her.
But I merely frowned in disgust and pulled my hand back as if shaking off garbage.
In the dead silence, I looked at this tearful woman before me and asked, politely yet confused:
"Excuse me, ma'am... who are you?"

When the apocalypse came, I became one of the military's failed experiments—defective, useless, a waste of space who only knew how to fix machines.
My so-called brother Kane used the camp leader access I got for him to trade away the comms gear I nearly died to secure for a bottle of whiskey. He drained my bone marrow dry to keep me in the dark, then dumped me out in the wasteland to die.
After that, he pinned every bit of luxury and waste on me—
while my little sister didn't even have the medicine she needed to stay alive.
That night, dragging my crippled body behind me, I reached into the substation.
Kane, do you remember what kind of genes were in those five hundred milliliters of bone marrow?

The rogues cornered you, their scent tempted you. The first of them shifted back to his human form, with a ripped, muscled body. You follow his lead and shifted back into your human form, offering them your beautiful body on a silver platter, ready to be devoured, no longer having the will to fight the heat.He walked over to you and hungrily pulled your body against his. His erection pressed against your skin. The rest of the rogues shifted into their human form, one looking better than the other. You wanted them all. Their hands and mouths were all over your naked body, licking, touching, grabbing. With one of their faces between your legs, you caught a delicious scent. 'My fated mate is among them,' you thought and opened your eyes.Your eyes met a rogue who was still in his wolf form. He must have just joined. 'MATE,' you felt it rip through your soul as your eyes met his wolf's eyes. He growled and the one light in the dark alley flickered before it popped. The men who were devouring your body let you go as if your skin were burning them. They shifted back to their wolf forms, their heads low, before running away, leaving you alone with the rogue that had just scared them off, your fated mate.‘I am fated to a rogue?’ you asked, unable to speak. Your body needed him to take you as if the other men prepared you just for him.He changed into his human form, but you couldn't really see his face because it was too dark. The moment his body touched yours, you knew no matter what, there would be no parting from him.“Mine,” his husky voice said in your ear...

“Did I not make you a promise?”
King Evander asked, ripping her dress off, leaving it hanging around her waist, exposing her full breast.

“I was going to make you my queen, but you are begging to be my bed slave instead,” he said angrily, grabbing a hand full of breasts, squeezing hard, making her flinch.

WARNING This story will contain Strong Sexual Content, and Scenes that may be triggering, Viewer discretion is advised.

“Is this the Senior class?” a pretty teenage girl popped her head into the class, with bright blue eyes, a pearly white smile, and a dashing mob of blond hair.
Dario rolled his eyes. “Yes, Shysie, you guys are late,” he said, annoyed. Dario hoped that the group of Vampires that are in hiding with him would have kept a low profile and behave themselves until the air was cleared with the Higher Council.
A group of 3 students stumbled into the classroom laughing. Ann’s eyes met one, and she started to get a glimpse of flashbacks. She shifted uncomfortably under his eyes, blushing a bit, not sure about the images in her head. She forced her eyes down onto her table. Paris smiled slightly as he knew that Ann was getting flashbacks of a heated session. Even though they did not go all the way, he saw her life when he was drinking her blood from her inner thigh. That night was the wildest she has ever been with a guy. When he drove her home Saturday morning, he compelled her to forget everything and sleep the weekend off. He compelled her to only remember everything when she was near him.

Blake’s arms and legs were wrapped around Xander, passionately holding on to him as if her life depended on it.
Their bodies exploded at the same time. Xander kept himself inside of her, looking into her eyes.
“I Blake Langston, reject you Xander White as my fated mate,” Blake rejected him in a soft tone, looking into his eyes, with him still in her womanhood.
“I Xander White, don’t accept your rejection,” Xander responded wiping hair out of the side of her face before pinning her one hand down next to her and starting to thrust back and forth into her again as he started to feel his heartbreak.

Blake mistakes Xander for her boyfriend, Jnr, and they hit it off. After the deed, she runs into Jnr. Blake un-mates with Xander and goes on a drinking spree where she runs into the hybrid twins that have their way with her.

They might be the wealthiest pack after the royal pack but they have the extreme misfortune of their offspring being wolfless, generation after generation forcing them to pay off other packs for their Luna-blood daughters.

Henriette hadn’t planned on inheriting a castle, least of all one that looked like something out of a forgotten horror movie. The first time she saw it, her only thought was, What a dump. But after losing everything in a rushed marriage and an even faster divorce, she didn’t exactly have options.
The castle smelled like damp stone and regret. Still, she figured if she was going to fix anything first, it had to be the bathroom. That felt like a woman’s instinct — get the one place clean where you could wash the past off.
The only thing she didn’t rip out was the bathtub. A big, worn clawfoot thing that looked like it had survived wars.
That night, Henriette filled the tub with steaming water and slid in. She closed her eyes and tried not to think of him, his smirk, his lies, the way he made her feel.
She sighed and dunked her whole head underwater. She held her breath and imagined staying down there, letting the water press the pain out of her chest. She wished it could take her away, somewhere else. Anywhere.
When she finally came up for air, it was... different. The newly renovated bathroom was different; everything was back to before her revamp, just neat.
Women moved around her like she was someone important. One washed her hair, another dabbed something that smelled like flowers.
Henriette just stared. Her brain couldn’t catch up. Maybe she’d fallen asleep.
By the time she found her voice, someone was already lacing her into a gown.
A long aisle stretched out ahead of her. A man, waiting at the end.
And before she could ask a single question, she realized she was about to be married.

To who?
To what?
She had no idea.

In the wake of her sister's tragic death, Fiona's world shattered, leaving her shunned and despised by her own pack, even her own parents. Wracked with loneliness and longing for solace, she dares to plead to the goddess for a mate to heal her broken heart.
But when fate cruelly reveals her destined mate to be none other than Alpha Elian, her late sister's beloved, Fiona's hopes are dashed against the rocks of bitter reality.As the weight of rejection bears down upon her, Fiona's resolve is tested, and she makes a fateful decision to depart the pack, seeking a new path and purpose.
Yet, as she ventures into the unknown, the truth surrounding Luna Lyanna's untimely demise begins to unravel, exonerating Fiona from the haunting accusations that have plagued her for years.But as the tides of fate shift once more, will Elian find the strength to right the wrongs of the past? Can love truly conquer the shadows of betrayal and mistrust that loom between them, or will Fiona discover a different kind of love?

Alexander Hale built his empire on control — of markets, of people, of himself. Nothing and no one ever rattled him… until Elena Ward walked into his boardroom with a challenge that could destroy everything he’s built.
She’s the one woman he can’t have — brilliant, principled, and bound by rules he helped write. But every argument sparks chemistry, every glance burns hotter than it should, and every secret meeting pushes them closer to the line they swore they’d never cross.
When their forbidden connection ignites into something undeniable, the fallout threatens careers, reputations, and hearts.
To protect her, he’ll risk his empire.
To love him, she’ll risk herself.
In a world where power means everything, can they rewrite the rules — or will love be the one thing they lose?

Coriander Talon Lunaria is not your typical Omega. At twenty-two, she’s sharp-tongued, fiercely independent, and stronger than most Betas, she refuses to bow to anyone even if the world insists she’s weak. But behind her strength lies a secret she’s carried for years—her wolf has never answered her call.

Mavros Warren Grimvile, the ruthless Lycan King, is a man feared by all. Cold, untouchable, and haunted by a past that shattered him, he has no room for weakness—nor for love.

But when a humiliating rejection at the Grand Wolf Gala puts Cori in the spotlight, fate takes an unexpected turn. In front of everyone, the King claims her as his own possession.

Now trapped under the rule of a dangerous king, Cori refuses to submit—and Mavros finds himself drawn to the one woman bold enough to defy him.

The King didn’t choose a pawn, he chose a fire that might just burn him alive.

In a world of power, dominance, and hidden truths, will Cori break under his possession… or will she become the one thing the Lycan King never expected—his equal?​

Alone and broke in Italy Rome responsible for a little sister who urgently has to undergo a very expensive operation- this is the situation Lisa Saunders finds herself in. A accedental ecounter with the blind, arrogant billionaire Allesandro Mancini suddenly offers a way out-
A very strange one, but Lisa accept the proposal. That's how Lisa's life comes apart with the arrogant, unreachable Allesandro and his former fiancée Bianca Lombardi, who is determined to make his marriage fall apart and palm him and his money in.

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

That December night, his first love and I were both rushed to the ER.
Two pregnant women. One operating room.
My doctor husband took three seconds to decide.
"She's an athlete. She can handle it," he told the nurse, then wheeled Sienna into surgery.
Leaving me—eight months pregnant with his baby—bleeding alone in the hallway.
When the nurse called begging him to come back, he said: "I'm at the pharmacy getting supplies for Sienna. Twenty minutes."
Twenty minutes later, I'm still alive.
He wishes I wasn't.

After being reborn, my cousin and I swapped mates.
Last life, she married Kaelen Thornfield — the coldest Alpha in the West. Fifty years together and he never marked her. Not once. His childhood "friend," an Omega with a PhD in crying on command, made sure of that. My cousin faded into nothing. Unmarked. Unloved. Invisible.
Me? I married a man who couldn't stand the sound of my voice. Eleven months. Done.
This time, I took the western contract. Drove three days across the country in a beat-up truck, blew a radiator in the middle of nowhere, and rolled into his pack's territory covered in engine grease and smelling like a gas station.
His little Omega took one look at me and wrinkled her nose.
She has no idea what's coming.
I don't do tears. I don't do subtle. And when some girl sobbed at my mating ceremony about how jealous she was of me — I grabbed my Alpha by the collar and sank my teeth into his neck.
In front of the entire pack.
Without asking.

The Blood Moon Festival ended the night Caelan Voss stood up in front of every faction in Aurevael and announced he only wanted one person.
Her name wasn't mine.
The other consorts took their gold and went home. The Ironpact warriors headed back to their barracks. The Sylvari delegation slipped out before the second toast. The Covenant scholars packed their notes. Reunions. Celebrations. The kind of night the holiday was made for.
I had nowhere to go.
The mark on my inner wrist had always been warm. Just a low, steady pulse—easy to ignore after a few years, like a clock you stop hearing. I pressed my fingers over it out of habit.
Cold.
The contract was over. Twenty-one years, four failed routes, and now this. The ancient binding that had pulled me into this world had made its verdict.
I went to find a rope.

My pack's golden girl—my adopted sister—vanished. On my eighteenth birthday—the day my wolf should have awakened—my parents dragged me to a witch.
"Show us what you did to her."
Fine. Let them look.
Let them see who drugged me the day I came home. Who stole credit while I bled. Who smiled while planning my destruction.
They chose their precious Rosalie over me for three years.
They wanted the truth?
They were about to choke on it.

The new member posted a yacht contract to the club group chat on her first day in. The caption read: Thanks for the birthday present, Dad 🥂
Ten seconds later she deleted it. Breezy apology. Oops, wrong group.
I looked at the photo one more time before it disappeared. I didn't check the numbers. I looked at the name painted across the bow.
It was my mother's name.
The boat was mine. My father had told me about it a week ago.
The chat didn't care. Which family is she from? Ninety-six feet of custom teak. Sienna, you dark horse.
I asked, quietly, if she'd share the registration number. I wanted to hear what she'd say.
My own husband stood up from two desks over and tore into me in front of every member in the room. Told me I was jealous. Told me I was an embarrassment. Told me to know my place.
Later that week, he broke into my safe. Took the diamond my father had given me for my mother — and put it around her neck.
That night my father's encrypted voice memo came in from somewhere at sea. One minute long. The last line was this:
"Find your mother's necklace. I can't wear her myself. I need you to wear her for me."

I waited five years for a heart transplant.
My mother—the Luna of our Pack, the healer everyone worships—gave it to someone else.
An orphan girl she took in. A girl who now calls her "Mom."
Ivy got my heart. She got a wolf. She got a mate and a wedding so grand the whole Pack attended.
Me? I watched from the corner, still dying, while my mother smiled for the cameras and accepted praise for her "selfless sacrifice."
When I finally snapped at the ceremony, she slapped me. Told me to apologize. Said I was embarrassing the family.
I'm her actual daughter. I'm the one who can't shift, can't feel a mate bond, can't survive another six months.
But sure. I'm the problem.
They wanted me to stay quiet and die gracefully.
I chose to make sure everyone sees who their perfect Luna really is.

My husband used my cottage to cheat on me. Fine. I found out, I drove three hours, and I walked into my own house to find his mistress wearing my dead grandmother's sweater.
She told me to leave.
He showed up, kissed her in front of me, then grabbed my arm and shoved me into the door frame.
That's when I had the asthma attack. He's known about my asthma for five years.
My inhaler rolled across the porch floor. His mistress picked it up, held it out, and told me to sign a statement saying I'd caused all of this. Then she'd give it back.
He looked at me on the ground and said: She's performing.
I'm sitting on the floor of my own grandmother's house, gasping, and my husband is telling the neighbors I'm acting.
Nobody thought to ask whose family manages every property on this coastline.

My foster brother Caelan swore he'd only ever marry me. Even though I'm the only human in a pack of wolves, for eighteen years he and his brother Ronan made me feel like I belonged.
Then Mira showed up—and suddenly she was his "fated mate."
I watched him bond with her while I choked on poisoned incense and collapsed. No one caught me. They were too busy wiping her tears.
Within a week, she had my room. My job. Eighteen years of memories—trashed.
They said I could never leave them.
They forgot about the vampire prince who's been waiting at the border for three months.
He never forgot me.

I'm Nora. Size 18. Transferred to my fourth school in four years. And on my very first day, the hottest guy in class leaned over and told me my seat had a weight limit.
That was Ethan Cross. Lacrosse captain, sharp jaw, zero empathy. He made it his personal mission to remind me I was fat — in the hallway, at lunch, in gym class, wherever he could get a laugh.
Then I found his sketchbook.
He'd left it open in the art room. I should've walked away. I didn't. I turned the page, and there I was — my body, my face, my hands — drawn over and over like he couldn't stop.
None of it was a joke. None of it was ugly.
So what the hell am I supposed to do with that?

My ex-husband found me selling hair clips at a flea market. Rosie was asleep in her stroller.
"Come home. She's too young for this."
I said yes.
After that, I stopped checking his phone.
Rosie stopped crying when the other girl took her toys.
He spent the night at Simone's—we didn't call.
We ran into them at the mall—we walked the other way.
We finally became what he always wanted. Easy. Quiet. No drama.
So why is he the one who can't sleep now?
"Why don't you get mad anymore?"
"Rosie, why won't you ask me to stay?"

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 was the only top-tier Healer in the entire pack.
The blind witch in the Black Forest told me that if I hid my true bloodline and used my Healer gift to save one hundred dying wolves — no payment, no recognition — my mother's spirit would break free of the curse and find peace with the Moon Goddess.
For twenty years, I'd kept my bloodline a secret, saving ninety-nine wolves on the brink of death. Just one more, and it would all be over.
Then the call came. A six-year-old boy. The Alpha's only son. Dying from bloodline backlash. I was the only one who could save him.
I said no.
The whole pack turned on me. My fiancé called me a cold-blooded monster. The Alpha threatened me with treason. They offered gold, titles, everything — even got on their knees.
None of them knew why I refused. None of them knew what that Alpha took from me twenty years ago.
Save his precious heir? He should've thought about that before he destroyed everything I loved.

I was four months pregnant when the truck hit my car.
I woke up on a gurney outside the OR, bleeding, half-conscious, thinking my husband was saving my life. Then I heard him through the door.
"The baby's gone. Her right hand is finished—her career's over either way. Just take her kidney now and put it in Mia."
My mother agreed. My father told him to switch my architectural draft to Mia's name before Friday.
Mia. The sister they'd raised for twenty years while I was missing. The sister whose body was failing. The sister my husband had apparently been in love with the whole time I was married to him.
I was supposed to die on that table. I wasn't supposed to hear anything.
But my phone was in my coat pocket, and the voice memo app had never stopped recording.
And now I had a choice to make.

I spent three hundred years winning Varen Ashworth's war. Bled for him. Handed him my army, my secrets, the healing blood from my own chest. He'd be nothing without me.
On his coronation day, he announced his queen—and it wasn't me. It was Elara. Some trembling, doe-eyed girl he'd pulled out of a Demon camp. He told me I could stay on as her handmaid.
I laughed, voided the contract, and walked out.
Because I've lived this life before. Last time, I exposed Elara. Saved his throne. He thanked me—then slaughtered my entire bloodline.
This time, I'm not saving anyone.
This time, I'll watch him figure out exactly what kind of woman he picked over me. And when his whole world comes apart—he'll be on his knees, begging the one person who could've stopped it.
I won't be listening.

My cousin stole thirty thousand dollars from our dying grandmother.
Not for an emergency. Not for bills.
For liposuction.
Then she told everyone I did it. Said I was jealous of her figure — that I'd drained Grandma's cardiac surgery fund because I wanted to look different. And the terrible part is, everyone believed her. My boyfriend. My uncle and aunt. Every single person who'd watched me grow up in that house — eating their leftovers standing at the kitchen counter, wearing my aunt's old coat with the broken zipper through every winter — turned around and decided I was the thief.
I couldn't prove otherwise. I couldn't get anyone to listen.
Last time this happened, I didn't survive it.
Then I opened my eyes. I was back in the hospital corridor. My aunt's hand raised, ready to swing.

Ambushed by a rival syndicate. My mafia husband had to choose — save me, or save his childhood sweetheart.
I was five months pregnant with his heir. She was the love of his life.
He chose me. She died.
He said it was fine. Took time off work. Bought out every baby store in the city. Made me warm milk every night.
I thought I'd finally won his heart.
Until the day our son was born. He carried our baby to her grave.
My son never came back.
"You thought you won? The day she died, you were already dead to me. I just needed the heir first."
Then he had me beaten to death beside her tombstone.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back in that ambush.
This time, I let go of his sleeve.
Go save your sweetheart. I'm done begging.

Married to the head of the Valenti family for five years. Kidnapped on our anniversary. Pregnant a month later.
Five paternity tests said the baby wasn't his. My husband got a vasectomy and swore he'd raise the child as his own.
I believed him.
Then came the therapy. The drugs. Nightmares where I was pinned down by multiple men, so real I could feel their hands hours after waking. I scrubbed my skin raw. Tried to end it six times.
He saved me every time. Held my hand. Told me no one would ever hurt me again.
Until the night I heard him laughing about it in his study.
The kidnapping was staged. The nightmares were chemicals. The DNA reports were forged. All of it — designed by my own husband to protect another woman.
Now I have a recording, a divorce agreement, and a very small box of ashes.
He's marrying her next week. I'll make sure he gets my wedding gift on time.

My husband was a vampire lord, bound by a blood oath to the Elders. Forbidden from ever completing a mate bond.
But he bonded with me anyway. Every time he felt something for me, the oath punished him — ten minutes of agony. He endured it ninety-nine times and told me it was worth it.
To prove it, he carved a mark into my collarbone with his own blood. A promise: if I was ever in danger, he'd come for me. No matter what.
Then the Crimson Blight came — an ancient death curse, meant for another woman. His precious, fragile Elowen. And instead of letting it take her, he transferred it onto me.
I woke up chained in the sealed chamber beneath our own manor, blood core burning from the inside out. When I couldn't take any more, I activated his mark and reached through the bond for help.
I heard his voice. But he wasn't talking to me.
"She's a Blood Hunter. She can take it. She should bear this for me."
He didn't know I was three months pregnant with his child.

Five years ago, I stepped in front of a crossbow bolt for Lucian Vael, and he turned me into a vampire before I had the chance to say no.
He told me I was the first person he'd loved in six hundred years. He bought a castle and named it after me. He reserved a spot for me in his family's crypt so we'd lie there together when the time came—right beside his parents, in the inner ring where only blood and the most beloved go.
While I spent four years bleeding myself dry over ancient rites, trying to carry his child, he was across the city watching another woman do it on her first try. Using my research to get there.
He named one of the twins Soren. That was the name I'd chosen.
The night I found out, I was seven weeks pregnant.
I didn't tell him.
I called Mira and said: I need him to think I'm dead.

I got paid to test-sleep an heiress's fiancé.
One problem: he's my boss.
Bigger problem: I've been catfishing him online for six months—as his fiancée.
Now I'm pregnant. And he just called my real name.

I got paid to test-sleep an heiress's fiancé.
One problem: he's my boss.
Bigger problem: I've been catfishing him online for six months—as his fiancée.
Now I'm pregnant. And he just called my real name.

Three years ago, my fiance Marco Ferrante walked out on our engagement for his mistress Vivienne Salas — and now they're both back, kicking in my door and screaming that my baby isn't his.
He's right. It's not his.
It belongs to the most dangerous man in Verrano.
And Marco just put his boot through the Devil's only heir.

I'm a siren. Every fifty years, I need to eat a heart. Not just any heart—it has to be rotten to the core. The more evil, the better it feeds.
So when Arthur Pendleton, billionaire marine philanthropist and secret trafficking kingpin, spotted a helpless blind girl sitting alone at his charity gala, he thought he'd hit the jackpot.
He took me to his cliffside villa. Cooked me dinner. Drugged my milk.
Cute.
The drugs broke down the second they hit my stomach. His guard found out about the restraints the hard way—right before I snapped his neck.
Now Arthur is steering his yacht into open water, chasing a sunken treasure that doesn't exist, too drunk on greed to notice the strange singing in the fog, or that the blind girl in his passenger seat can see him perfectly fine.
He has no idea what's waiting in the deep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For six years, I wore Pack silver. I sold my blood. I scrubbed silver out of Pack den floors. I slept on a basement floor — all to pay off my mate's Pack debt and buy my brother's wolfsbane antidote.
Today, with the receipt finally signed, my brother looked at me and said:
"Seren, I was never poisoned. Our parents aren't dead either. The Rogue raid six years ago — I arranged it. The only wolf hurt that night was you."
My mate stepped up behind him: "I never lost my Pack rank either. I've been at the estate the whole time."
Then my parents — the ones I'd buried seven years ago — walked through the door.
The Pack physician had given me forty-eight hours left to live.
They were going to remember every single one.

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

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

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