110 Book(s) Related to james maslow

James, who was engaged to Ellen Princeton, was set to inherit the Wane's empire after he finished school. Although they loved each other, he saw everything as an arranged marriage by their both families. During his graduation trip, he fell in love with Alisha Carl. Against his family's wishes, they ran off together and he became a live-in son-in-law in her family house without them knowing his true identity. For three years, he endured hardships and insults as part of the Carl family. On their third anniversary, he discovered Alisha had cheated on him and served him divorce papers. Heartbroken and furious, he signed the papers and returned to the empire he left behind with two things in mind. He must win back Ellen Princeton and the Carl family must face the consequences of how they mistreated him.

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......

"Mason, Mr McGrath is your Father," Dr Ben let out.

Stacey's brows creased, she pursed her lips in response to what she had just heard," You mean to say my boyfriend is my brother, how's that even possible?" She asked in stutters.

When Stacey and her Sister Chelsey move to a new school, little does she know that there's a lot in store for her, secrets, lies and betrayals that had been kept in the dark are brought to light. Falling in love with the school's Golden boy Mason gets her into a situation she never wanted, makes her enemies with the school's most popular girls Scarlett and Camilla, also worsens the already strained relationship she has with her sister Chelsey.

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.

Six months, twenty-nine days, three hours, and fourteen seconds. That's how long bliss lasts before reality rubs its big, fat ugly ass all over your happiness.
Marlowe Mills thought the hard part was surviving the enemies who wanted to destroy her. She was wrong.
The real damage came from the people she loved most. A buried secret. A devastating betrayal. A truth everyone knew except her.
Now the man she loves must prove that protecting someone isn't the same as lying to them, while she struggles to decide whether trust, once shattered, can ever truly be rebuilt. Because love was never the problem. Trust was.

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?

I didn’t expect to see him standing there, by the window, shirt sleeves rolled up, the morning light making his skin glow like it wasn’t meant to belong to someone so dangerous.

Draven Damian.

My sister’s husband. The man I was pretending to love. He turned slowly, his eyes locking onto mine. And just like that, my breath caught.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t speak. He just looked deep and cold, like he saw something in me he hadn’t noticed before.

And maybe that’s when everything changed. Because instead of fear, I felt something else… something warm and terrifying at the same time. He wasn’t supposed to be gentle. He wasn’t supposed to look this human. But at that moment, he did.

Don’t fall, Liora. Don’t be stupid.

I looked away before he could see the truth in my eyes. But I already knew. I was in trouble.


I took my sister’s place to save my family.
Now I’m trapped in a life that could destroy me. I never wanted anything to do with the mafia. But when my twin sister disappeared without a word, I had no choice. I had to become her, the wife of Draven Damian, a dangerous and powerful mafia boss.

His little boy, Dante, looks at me like I’m his mother.
But Draven’s family sees right through me… and they want me gone.

How long can I keep this lie alive?
And what happens when the man I’m pretending to love… starts falling for me

Trigger alert: violent scenes; unsuccessful sexual assault.

Glossary available. Check Table of Contents.

Im not a big believer in romance. Im certainly not the type of woman to get drunk, meet a guy, and run off to Reno to get married.But Dr. Hottie himself, AKA Jack Stratton, changed all that. Too bad it's all a lie.Our relationship is as fake as a bad spray tan. Its all to show up our mutual exes, make them realize how much they miss us. Can I help it if Jack is so ridiculously handsome, simply being near him makes me blush? And when he smiles at meWell, maybe I shouldve nicknamed him Dr. Panty Dropper.And I admit, part of me is falling head-over-heels in love with him. How can I not be when he keeps telling me we have to spend time together? Keep up the charade. Kiss in private so it looks good when we do it for show.When my ex finally gets the message a month after our wedding, he says that he wants me to leave Jack. Start over. I should be happy.Right?

Cynic. F*ck up. Outsider. That's Jameson in a nutshell - not to mention drool-worthy, dreamy, and perfect fantasy object. He's also my older brother's best friend and business partner. I've had a thing for Jameson ever since I was old enough to have dirty dreams. My brother has made it crystal clear that if he catches rough, wrong-side-of-the-tracks Jameson even looking at me, someone will get hurt. That doesn't deter me, though. I want Jameson to be my first. And that's why my brother can never find out what happened. Because Jameson kissed me. No -- not kissed -- he shoved me up against a wall, possessed me, and took my breath away. Then he promptly passed out in my bed, wasted. Now I know that Jameson wants me. I may be off limits because of my brother, but that kiss is branded in my mind. I need another taste of Jameson. I crave his brutal touch. Pinned against the wall, gasping at the feel of his body pressed against mine, crying out in pleasure and pain while he gives me everything I've dreamed about. As long as my brother doesn't catch on, Jameson might just give me exactly what I want… and a whole hell of a lot more. This 50,000-word book is part one of Emma and Jameson's story. It ends with a cliffhanger...

To set a fire, you need a spark. Lily and Cade always had one, but her brother -- Cades best friend -- kept the tinder damp. Besides, Cades a man whore. When a man is that hot, someones always going to get burned. Lily should have learned her lesson the first time she touched fire, when he left town the morning after they finally hooked up.Yet all these years later, the embers still smoldering.She's working at the local bakery, in control of the heat... until he walks back into her life. Fresh from the wildfires of Montana, Cades lost everything he held dear, and the losses left scars. They soon find that more than ever, they are better together. Their love grows, quick and hot.Despite what her brother might say, Cade needs what Lily gives him. But theres no such thing as a controlled burn.And every secret carries the risk of a backdraft.

A Virgin for the Billionaire - Bad Boy Billionaires - Book 1Carter:She's mine. I want her. I need her and I'm tired of waiting.Emma:He's all I think about but I can't wait for him any longer. Tonight's the night. I'm punching my V-card.I might be a f#cking saint waiting for her to be ready for what I want to give her. When I overhear she's going to ditch her virginity with some random bar guy, I decide shes not giving those soft curves and luscious mouth to anyone else.After tonight, shell never doubt who she belongs to again. And when shes screaming my name, shell realize Im prepared to give her a hell of a lot more than just lip service. I want forever.Her Rockstar Billionaire - Bad Boy Billionaires - Book 2You have to understand.I was shy.Eighteen.And so in love I was ready to give up everything.Only he wouldn't let me.He broke my heart.Pushed me away.Now he's back.He's a rock star, a bad boy, a total egomaniac, a tattoo covered rock god with naked women begging for his attention.He has platinum albums, money, fame.Everybody wants a piece of him.Everyone but me.Been there, done that.My heart shattered into a million pieces when he left.I'm still broken on the inside.I loved him.I trusted him.And he ruined me.Only a complete idiot would let him get close.But when he touches me,I melt.My heart races.I crave him.Her Secret Billionaire - Bad Boy Billionaires - Book 3Jack moved to Alaska for a little peace and quiet, but every week temptation arrives in the form of one beautiful but prickly Anna. Just thinking about how well she handles the stick of her float plane has him wondering how well she would handlehim.He needs her out of that plane and in his bed.Anna has a plan...and falling into bed with a sexy, bad boy millionaire hiding out in the woods isn't part of it. She doesn't want to fall in love with a mountain man. She wants out. She's done with the cold, the dark and the lonely nights. Her dream in the lower forty-eight is calling. Her one problem? Jack. When a storm forces her into a dangerous emergency landing, passions flare.Being stranded in the woods with a lumberjack wannabe shouldn't be a problem. It's just one night. Right?Right?A Bargain with the Billionaire - Bad Boy Billionaires - Book 4She thinks Im too young. Shes wrong. I can give her what she wants. A baby.It will be my pleasure. And hers.But only if shell give me the one thing I needHER.

"You're an omega?!" he asks gruffly.

I shake my head quickly, "N-no, sir!"

I don't know how I got here, in this moment. I tremble slightly. Because I can FEEL Mr. Logan's pheromones. I've never felt pheromones before in my life, so don't ask me how I know that that's what this is I'm feeling. But I feel them brush over me like a physical touch. I tremble again.
"Look at you shaking like a leaf in the wind."
"You're responding to my pheromones. If you were a beta, how would that be happening?"
I shake my head again, "No s-sir, I'm a beta! I don't know what's going on; this has never happened before!"
Mr. Logan leans in close, running his nose up my neck. He grips my neck lightly as he says, "Tell me, if you're not an omega, why do you smell so fucking good?"

Liam Payne is an Omega; however, that wasn't something he was aware of. He's lived his life as a beta, but that all changes when he starts to work for Chase Logan. Chase Logan is a rich, powerful, dominant alpha. After just a month working with Chase, the changes in Liam are becoming noticeable. This is problematic because Chase dislikes omegas, does not want them working for him, or even near him. So what will happen when Chase notices the changes? Will he believe Liam when Liam tells him he really didn't know he was an omega?

TW: Attempted SA, R*pe

It's a slow burn story!

In a catastrophic event that ravaged the planet Hatune, King Stage Rager was thrust into a desperate bid for survival. His wife, Queen Sky Rager, made a heart-wrenching decision to safeguard her beloved husband, sending him to the unfamiliar realm of Earth. To protect him from relentless enemies, she erased his memories and shrouded him in a powerful cloaking spell, transforming his appearance and concealing his true identity.

For eighteen years, Stage lived a quiet, unassuming life in the charming town of Golden Lake, surrounded by adoptive family and friends who accepted him without question. However, the tranquility was shattered when his dear friend Jean Adams fell victim to a brutal murder. As Stage joined forces with the determined Sheriff, they unraveled a dark web of secrets lurking in the shadows of Golden Lake.

Their quest for justice ignited a perilous war with the sinister Liner witches, who would stop at nothing to eliminate Stage. As the battle raged on, Stage discovered a shocking truth: his invincibility was a myth, and the very blood that gave him life held the key to his demise. The Liner witches devised a diabolical plan to bring Stage's mother, the Queen of Hatune, to Earth, setting the stage for a climactic showdown.

Will Stage and his allies succeed in thwarting the witches' sinister plot, or will they witness the unthinkable: the downfall of their beloved king? The fate of Golden Lake hangs in the balance, as Stage confronts his destiny and the darkness that has haunted him for so long.

A bad boy rockstar needs a fake girlfriend… Not a girl to fall in love with him when the cameras fall away… When I walked into the party that night, I was worried about my black minidress being too short… I never realized that I was going to meet him. Rhys Grant, lead singer of Misery, one of the hottest bands on the freaking planet. Rhys isn't just any tanned, muscular bad boy dripping with sex appeal. He's so hot he's practically Adonis himself. … and the way he sings… he owns that stage. And he's interested in me. Well, okay, fake interested. He needs a sweet girl on his arm for the cameras, to smile and look like he's settled down. Public Relations 101. I just happen to be in the right place at the right time. Right in the middle of that party, pulling down that mini skirt and feeling so out of place. Of course I said yes! How could I ever say no? But the more I find out about Rhys, the more I see the man behind the microphone and tabloids. I don't want to be one of a thousand screaming fans. When he kisses me, when he touches me... suddenly I want to be his one and only. Paparazzi, crazed band managers, overdoses… Rhys' lifestyle will either drive me away forever or ruin me for all other men. But one thing's for sure… he's going to rock me to my core.

COMPLETED
Rated 21+🔞🔞🔞
Sara, an ordinary college girl, was forced to marry Adrian, the heir to the largest mafia group, in order to pay for her parents' debts and her grandfather's surgery. Adrian's father offered Sara her freedom and the cancellation of her contract if she lived with Adrian for 30 days and neither of them fell in love at the end. Adrian was a handsome, domineering and strange man who set four rules for Sara, and if Sara broke one of them, then Adrian had the right to claim a part of Sara's body and use it. In the process of breaking the rules over and over again, Sara reaped pleasures she had never experienced before.

"She's just a sweet, simple girl. It was never going to last anyway."
Those were the last words Maddison Carter heard before her world fell apart.
On what should've been her perfect graduation day, she was betrayed, humiliated, and left heartbroken.
Then came a voice—deep, commanding, dangerous.
"I can show you a life of a completely different kind."
"You have forty-eight hours. Call the number on that card… and join my company."
Grant Harrison.
The city's most powerful billionaire.
A man whose world is built on secrets, danger, and control.
Maddison never planned to step into his world—but one choice changes everything.
When a scandalous photo threatens to destroy her, Grant does the unthinkable.
His voice is calm and steady as he holds a ring before her.
"Maddison Carter, will you honor me by marrying me?"
Now, Maddison is trapped in a storm of lies, power, and desire.
As enemies close in and her past resurfaces, she must decide—
will she stay the heartbroken girl everyone underestimated,or rise to become the woman powerful enough to rule beside him?
Betrayal. Power. Passion.
She lost everything once.
This time, she's taking it all back.

I sit there staring at him, frozen as if time itself has stalled. Of course, it hasn’t—but it feels that way, as I look at the most breathtaking man I’ve ever laid eyes on. Too bad he’s my professor.

Lottie is in her second year at MIT, getting a degree in bioengineering. She’s never been distracted by anyone on campus. Not once. Not until he walked into her classroom and her world tilted.

The problem is obvious: he’s her professor, and he’s ten years older.
The problem she didn’t expect: the electric tingles that shot up her arm when their hands brushed. The sudden, aching need to be near him. To breathe him in.

The problem she never imagined: discovering he’s her fated mate.

How will she handle a truth that could upend both their lives? Will she choose the path that protects them both—or will fate force her hand?


I stand there staring at him for a moment, trying to make sense of what just happened. In the two years Jordan and I have been friends, I’ve seen his dad more times than I can count.
But this is the first time we’ve touched. And the second our hands meet, something sparks.

Charlie has been Jordan's best friend for two years. He’s been in and out of Jordan’s house so often it feels like a second home.
But it isn’t until one ordinary afternoon, two years after meeting Jordan’s dad, that everything changes. One accidental touch. One jolt of something he can’t explain.

Charlie doesn’t know what’s happening to him yet. But he’s about to find out. And when he does, he’ll have to choose: step into the truth fate has been quietly weaving around him—or try to break free from a bond that may not let go.

This is the room.

The same room where Landon once stood, wide-eyed and silent, as I executed three men without hesitation. Where he watched me maim another—slowly, deliberately—because mercy wasn’t part of the equation, I remember the look on his face then: horror, disbelief, something fragile cracking behind his eyes.

And now he’s back.

Not as a witness.

But as the one in chains.

I follow them inside, my footsteps echoing in the silence. I don’t speak. I don’t touch him. But I watch.

Because this isn’t just punishment.

It’s vengeance.


I’ve run this family for ten years. Untouchable. Cold. Ruthless.
I’ve killed before. I’ll kill again.
Nothing shakes me. Nothing gets under my skin.
Until him.
He walked into my bar like he owned the place—swaggering, cocky, sexy as hell. He strutted that tight body like he knew exactly what it did to people. When he stumbled and landed in my lap, I hesitated. Anyone else would’ve had a blade in their throat for touching me without permission.
But then he looked up at me with those amber eyes, and everything before him felt irrelevant.
Now, nothing matters more than making him mine.

Finding out he’s DEA—sent to take me down—wasn’t part of the plan.


Landon is a Senior Special Agent with the DEA. He volunteered to go undercover against Diego Fuentes, even though the pull he felt toward him started long before they met. Now, after witnessing Diego’s brutality and hearing what he does to traitors, Landon knows he’s in too deep.
Will his betrayal cost him everything—including his life?


TW: Contains explicit scenes of sex and violence.

Three years ago, Ye Chen was the unrivaled genius of the Azure Cloud Sect—until the woman he loved betrayed him, shattered his dantian, and stole his Spiritual Bone to climb higher. Cast into the Spirit Beast Stables as a cripple, he is beaten, starved, and forgotten.

But when his blood awakens an ancient ring, everything changes.

The Supreme Overlord System binds to his soul, repairing his body and granting him heaven-defying power. In mere breaths, he reclaims lost cultivation. In a single night, he crushes his first enemy.

The sect believes he is trash.

They are about to witness the birth of a god.

And Ye Chen has a debt to collect.

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

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

Unravel:Mr. VanceMy eyes raked over her. The temporary bartender brought into my office because shed seen the virgin auction room. I took in her delicious curves and knew I needed to have her. Except, I would never see her again after tonight. But, I always get what I want, I'm the owner of Club V and I will unravel her in ways she's never experienced. I can barely wait to touch and lick every curve of her virgin body.SamaraI assumed the auction room at Club V was just a rumor. Until I walked into the wrong room. I feared being fired but when the guard brought me to Mr. Vance I was instantly a hot mess. He was gorgeous, arrogant, cocky even and I couldn't take my eyes off the very naked woman wearing a diamond collar standing beside him. The look of lust and sex on her face as he played with her and then the way he watched me, teasing. But, Id never have to see him again after tonight. That is until fate changed everything... God help me!Undone:Taylor Dawson spends her days getting down and dirty as a mechanic at her father's garage, rather than with a hot guy. At nineteen, she's so ready to get rid of her v-card but hasn't found the right man yet. Collecting her roommate from her bartending job at Club V, Taylor stumbles across Club Owner, Jake Mesa, giving a lesson in submission. Tay doesn't think she'd ever be able to obey like the collared woman at Jake's mercy and slips away from the room unnoticed.However, Jake's security footage caught the gorgeous voyeur in his room and now she has his full attention. When Taylor's dad admits to a business disaster that could end not only the garage but his life, she doesn't know where to turn. Then Jake makes her an offer... Will she be able to resist or become completely undone?Uncover:When magazine journalist Penny is offered the opportunity to investigate the virgin auctions at Club V, she leaps at the chance. Especially when she realizes the man shell be interviewing is Pete Wilson, the boy who set out to seduce her in University and made her a subject of ridicule. Now theyre both adults and hes the subject. Penny wants revenge. Can she uncover a seedy underworld to Club V for Expose magazine? Or instead is she about to uncover their bodies and their hearts?

He wants into my pants. And I want a baby... I want a baby, and I want it bad. But there's no Mr. Right in sight and I'm tired of waiting around for someone to rock my boat. So I decide that I'm going to have a baby on my own. Then I meet Jett at a party. Tall, dark, and handsome, he is just my type. And when the playboy makes it clear that he's only interested in my body, I don't take offense in the least. Blushing, I ask him to be my sperm donor, the old-fashioned way. And he says yes… as long as I agree to his terms. That means skin-on-skin, lips crushed to lips, him satisfying me until I shout his name to the rooftops. And he's so f*cking good, I can't stand it. Everything is fine, as long as I stick to the rules. No holding hands, no making plans. Simple as that. There aren't any feelings involved, until there are. Rules are made to be broken right? But so are hearts, and that's what I'm afraid of.

I've married sixteen dead men for a living. My seventeenth husband just opened his eyes.
I was born knowing one thing: the dead can speak one last time — but only to a spouse.
So I marry dead men. Rich families pay me to wed their fresh corpses, carry the last words sealed inside me, and read the testament out before the heirs. Then I burn the marriage certificate, and the marriage ends at the grave. Starting price: six hundred thousand dollars.
This morning, the Crane heir drowned in his own pool. Twenty-eight, obscenely rich, not one word left behind. The family offered five million and a private jet. By my count — my seventeenth husband. By a wide margin, the handsomest.
I said "I do" to a corpse for the seventeenth time. Then I called for his last words.
Silence. Sixteen weddings, sixteen voices. Husband number seventeen had nothing to say.
Because my seventeenth husband just opened his eyes.

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.

I took a bullet for my husband five years ago. He married me in the ICU before the anesthesia wore off.
Raffaele Santoro—heir to the most powerful mafia family in Italy—told me I was his everything. He bought a castle and named it after me. He reserved a grave beside his parents so we'd lie together for eternity.
While I was pumping my body full of hormones for our fourth round of IVF, he was across town watching his childhood sweetheart give birth to twin boys.
He named one of them Dante—the name I'd chosen for our future son.
The night I found out, I was seven weeks pregnant with his child.
I didn't tell him.
I called my best friend and said: I need everyone to think I'm dead.

The ultrasound photo caught fire slowly, curling at the edges before the flame swallowed it whole.
I watched it burn in front of my mother's grave.
Eight weeks. That was how far along I had been.
Three days ago, on the anniversary of her death, I came here to talk to her. To tell her she was going to be a grandmother.
Instead, I found my husband fucking his ex-girlfriend against the oak tree twenty feet from her headstone.
I lost the baby that night.

My husband never wore condoms with me. Said they ruined it for him. So I swallowed birth control pills for four years until they made me sick.
Then I found a half-empty box in his glove compartment. And a thong under his backseat.
That wasn't even the worst part.
The necklace I'd made from my mother's ashes—the one I'd been grieving over losing for a year—was dangling between his twenty-three-year-old trainee's tits. He stole it from our bedroom and gave it to her.
She caught me staring. She smiled.
When I confronted him, he slapped me. Then drove off with her crying in his passenger seat.
Her friends came to my hospital with a livestream, demanding I apologize for "bullying" her.
I led them straight to the parking garage.
They found her on a stretcher. Legs wrapped around my husband. No condom.
The whole internet watched.

After the wedding, my husband moved his dead fiancée's mother into our guest room. The whole town called it the kindest thing they'd ever seen.
Every morning, Dione made me a green smoothie. Her grandmother's recipe, she said. Good for the nerves.
I never drank a single one. I poured them all into the chicken feed.
In my last life, I drank them. One a day, for thirty days.
Then I started losing time. I would blink at breakfast and come back at dinner. I found notes in my own handwriting that I never wrote.
I begged Julian to take me to a doctor. He held my shoulders and smiled. "You're just tired, baby. Drink your smoothie."
On the thirtieth night, I fell asleep in my own bed, in my own body.
I never woke up. Someone else did.
This time, every glass went to Nugget, the smallest of my backyard hens.
And one night, a hen crowed in my backyard.
Hens don't crow. And we don't have a rooster.

In my last life, my boyfriend's childhood best friend handed out jars of homemade sunscreen on the boat ride to the island. I'm a marine bio major — one sniff and I knew the mix had something in it that could drive the island's feral hogs into a frenzy. I told everyone to throw them out.
They did. But Brynn didn't look at the group. She looked at me. Eyes red, jaw tight. "You just can't stand seeing people appreciate anything I do, can you?" She turned and ran into the woods alone.
We searched for her all night in a storm. By morning we found her body at the bottom of the cliffs.
A week later, at her memorial bonfire on the beach, every person who'd gotten hurt during the search turned on me. My boyfriend ripped off his bandage and showed his stitches. "If you hadn't humiliated Brynn in front of everyone, she'd still be alive."
Someone said I should burn for what I did to her.
Then hands on my back. The fire. I burned alive on the sand while seventeen people watched.
I opened my eyes. Salt air. Engine noise. I was back on the boat — the morning of the trip.

My brother Soren is a figure skating prodigy. Every dollar in our house, every hour, every scrap of attention — all his.
Me? I'm the kid who doesn't need to be seen.
The night before Nationals, I told my mom my stomach hurt so bad I could barely stand. She said I was making trouble. Dad told me to take a painkiller and tough it out. Then they loaded up the car and drove two hundred miles to watch Soren skate.
They didn't come home until Sunday night. By then, I'd been dead for over a day.
I called her. Again and again. She had her phone on airplane mode.
Now I'm a ghost, drifting behind their car on the highway home. They're laughing, complaining I didn't even text Soren a congratulations.
I wonder what their faces will look like when they walk through that door.

My husband told me our daughter was brain-dead. He put a pen in my hand and told me to sign the organ donation form. He said it was the merciful thing to do.
I signed.
Then I watched her heart get cut out and transplanted into another child — his mistress's son.
He'd been planning it for months. The fake diagnosis, the doctor who happened to be his college girlfriend, the night his mother lured me away from the hospital so they could drug my little girl.
When I found out the truth, he killed me for it.
But somehow, I woke up back at that desk. Same pen. Same form. Same lying face waiting for my signature.
This time, I'm not signing. This time, they pay.

My daughter died on her fifth birthday.
Her first real wish—the first one she was old enough to make herself—was to go to the beach with Daddy.
Gideon promised he would take her.
She waited for him all day. She was still asking for him when she took her last breath.
He never came.
I brought her ashes to the beach she'd always dreamed of. Let her finally see the ocean.
That's when I heard it—a woman's moan, low and breathy, coming from behind the rocks.
Then his voice. Then his name on her lips.
"Between me and Lily, who do you love more?"
"You. Obviously."
He was fucking his mistress on our daughter's dream beach—while I stood there holding her ashes.
When I finally confronted them, I didn't get an apology. I got a slap across the face.
And when his mistress caught my eye and smiled, I realized something.
She knew exactly when my daughter would die.

I was a scholarship student with thirty extra pounds. Del Ashford had two hundred thousand followers and her family's supplement brand on every wall of the athletic center. First week of school, she decided we were going to be best friends.
She said she wanted to help me get in shape. What that actually looked like: I carried her product shipments up three flights of stairs, drafted her emails, and picked up her lunch from the place across campus that didn't deliver.
My roommates started calling me her errand girl behind my back. I let them.
She also introduced me to Beckett Hale. After that, things went the way they went.
She knocked my protein shake over and said I'd burned her. She planted her limited-edition earphones in my bag and told everyone I'd stolen them. The school opened a conduct review. My roommates stopped talking to me.

Beckett said I was the kind of girl who got a little attention and started thinking she deserved more of it.
I couldn't prove any of it. By spring, I was gone.
Some people just aren't built for this, Wren. You know that, right?
Del hadn't even been looking at me when she said it.
Then I opened my eyes and I was back at the party. The night she introduced me to Beckett.

The idea came from Cora.
She ran into the kitchen while I was making dinner, wrapped both arms around my waist, and looked up at me.
"Mommy, can we go to Grandma Ellen's? Just us two? Just us girls?"
"Why?" I asked.
She thought about it, very serious. "Because every time I wake up and you're not home, I miss you. Even when Daddy's there, it's different." A pause. "Grandma Ellen probably misses you just as much as I do."
Reid was leaning in the doorway. He smiled at me—that easy, certain smile—and said, "She's not wrong. You've been running on empty for months. Take the trip. I've got everything covered."
The flights were booked before I finished washing the dishes.
I should have noticed how fast that was.
The call I made the night before we flew home changed everything. I thought I'd hung up.
I hadn't.

In my last life, I fell for every word out of Ryan's mouth.
To save his shot at attending physician, I volunteered to take the fall for his medical malpractice case.
My license was revoked. I went from being a surgeon to being a housewife trapped in his family's home, wasting ten years of my life chained to a kitchen stove.
I thought my sacrifice would earn me his gratitude for the rest of our lives.
Turns out, he'd been sleeping with that doe-eyed little nurse, Lily, for God knows how long.
When years of exhaustion finally caught up with me and my heart gave out, I collapsed on the freezing basement floor.
My husband Ryan was upstairs, arms wrapped around Lily, sleeping in the master bedroom we'd bought with my dowry.
"That bitch is finally kicking the bucket. Once she croaks, this house is ours."

Last time, I was the first student to walk out of the SAT.
A news crew was waiting by the doors. The camera found my face, and I made one bored little joke — the test was too easy, I'd rather be surfing in Miami. By midnight the clip had two million likes, and my whole life had a price tag on it.
An agency came knocking within the week. My parents signed the contract before I understood what I was signing away, and they pulled me out of school. I stopped being a person and became their product.
And Mia — my best friend, the girl who cried at my locker and braided my hair before exams — Mia copied my notes, rode them into Yale, and smiled into the cameras while she told the internet I'd slept my way through high school.
By the time the agency had wrung me dry, I had nothing left. No school. No name worth defending. Not one person who believed a word out of my mouth.
The night it ended, Mia came up to the roof to "talk." She said she would never forgive me for being the lucky one. Then she put both hands flat on my chest and pushed.
The last thing I saw was her face, smiling down at me over the edge.
Then I blinked — and I was back in the testing room.