155 Book(s) Related to junpei

She was scared of being caged up in her home where no one acknowledged her.

April seek for freedom and to be free comes with a great price

Eloping with her lover wasn't the best option but only option and answer to the very thing she desired most, freedom.

Her fears came rushing back in a strange city with no one to run to when the very person she trusted turns out to be a monster

Just when she was about to accept the scary fate staring at her, light came shining on her dark part. Philip, a handsome billionaire fell in love with her and she was ready to hold onto him as her only saving grace, April kept a huge secret from Phil which Louise threaten to expose if she does not do his evil biddings.

April was thrown into a dilemma when Louise gave her few days to meet his demand or she will be exposed and thrown back to the slum where she belongs, unknown to Louise that April was cooking up a plan of her own but if her plans fail she may loose everything including Phil, and that was the very thing she was afraid off.

For six years, I sold my body to underground clinics as a human lab rat to cure my son's heart failure and pay off my husband's debts.

Today, my biological brother kicked away the medicine I bought with half my life.

"Lucas was never sick. We faked the medical records to teach you a lesson for upsetting Virginia."

My husband coldly chimed in:

"I never went bankrupt either."

Even the son I bled to birth stabbed my arm, screaming, "A bloody monster like you doesn't deserve to be my mom!"

I finally realized my entire life was a meticulously crafted scam.

With my organs rapidly failing and only ten days left to live, I stepped onto the edge of the balcony.

"You're right," I smiled at my husband and brother, watching the color completely drain from their faces. "Six years of my life isn't enough to apologize to her."

"So I'll pay you with my corpse."

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

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

Seven scales left on my back.

Only seven.

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

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

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

Lucien took the bottle and glanced at it.

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

I went rigid.

Lucien stood at the top of the altar.

"I was never cursed," he said.

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

"Our parents never died, either."

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

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 day college decisions came out, my parents bought my twin sister a Porsche.
It was my eighteenth birthday too. Nobody brought it up. I stood in the doorway in my diner uniform while the whole room sang her name.
That night the four of them went out to dinner to celebrate her. The car only sat four, so my father handed me a hundred dollars and told me to order myself something at home.
Four days later, six thousand four hundred dollars vanished from my account. Two years of washing dishes, gone to her sorority dues. My mother's name was on the account, so it wasn't even illegal.
I didn't scream and I didn't beg. I went upstairs and clicked Accept on the full ride to MIT that had been sitting in my inbox for three days.
Nobody in that house ever wanted me. So I booked a one-way ticket, cut myself out of the family photo, and left my key on the shoe rack.
I wasn't coming back. Not for graduation. Not for any of them.

I was kidnapped at five. Found at sixteen. Dead at nineteen.
My father is the Alpha of Duskmere. My mother is the best healer in the pack. The night I was murdered, they were at my adopted sister's awakening ceremony—the miracle they'd prayed for. After a lifetime born wolfless, a wolf finally woke in her chest.
That wolf was mine. Torn out of me while I was still breathing.
For three years I lived under their roof with no pack bond and no one saying my name. They slapped me for things she did. They called me selfish for refusing to give her a kidney I'd already lost. And when I went missing, nobody looked. Dad said if I died out there, I had no one to blame but myself.
Then the enforcers found a body with no pack scent, and called in the Alpha and his Luna to examine it.
They stood right over me.
They still don't know.

Presley Duval had a nickname for me all through high school. Two-Twenty.
Because at sixteen I weighed 220 pounds.
Thirteen years later she rented out a private beach in Cabo for our class reunion. One rule. Every woman had to show up in a bikini.
She made a point of sending me one.
By the time I got there her phone was already up on a tripod, live. 370,000 people watching.
"She's actually gonna show?" someone asked.
"Why wouldn't she?" Presley smiled into the camera. "I had the hotel set aside an extra-large changing tent just for her. Wouldn't want her scaring the other guests when she takes her clothes off."
Everyone around her cracked up.
"I got her a gift, too."
She lifted a pink bag off her chair and pulled out a neon pink bikini. It took two people, one on each end, just to hold it stretched out.
"3XL. I called the company. That's the biggest they make. If it still snaps, that's not on me."
A row of phones went up.
"Don't laugh." She hung the bikini over the back of the chair. "Two-Twenty's had it rough. If I hadn't stayed on her about her weight back then, who knows if she'd even be able to walk through that door today."
"Oh, and I invited someone from Meridian." She lifted her chin. "So certain people can see what a real body looks like. Instead of copying models online and embarrassing themselves."
What she didn't know was that the big shot she kept name-dropping worked for me.
I walked down the boardwalk and stopped right in front of her.
"Where's the tent?"

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.

Six months ago, my parents started fostering a girl named Lila Mercer.
Six months ago, Mom repainted the guest room and strung fairy lights over the bed. My room still has the same furniture I've had since I was twelve.
Six months ago, Dad started coming home for Sunday dinner. Not for me. I'd been eating alone at the counter for years by then.
Six months ago, Mom posted a photo of the two of them at the farmers market. Caption: our family is growing. I saw it during third period and locked my phone hard enough to crack the case.
So when I picked up the family iPad tonight and a notification popped up from an app I didn't recognize, I wasn't shocked. Just tired of being right.
The app was called Beacon.

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."

My betrothed, Theron, gave me a unicorn — the highest honor our court could grant a lady.
I had it hitched to a dung cart and sent through the lower city.
Only because I had lived this life before.
Last time, I was proud of that creature. I rode it to every hunt, every procession, and people said no beast so pure had ever chosen a rider. My light was the brightest among the elves. Then, season by season, it went out. I withered, I burned away in my own bed, and everyone wept over how strangely the great Lady Eldraine had aged.
I thought it was some illness. I begged every healer in the realm. None of them found a thing.
I only learned the truth after I died.
My spirit watched a girl climb out of that unicorn's body. Elowen. The pale, dying little thing the whole court called a saint — and the woman Theron had wanted all along. She was wearing my light now — my glow, my color, my stolen years. She was radiant. She was alive. And she was in Theron's arms, where I used to stand.
"The binding held," she whispered to him. "Every time she rode me, I drank a little more. Her light. Her magic. Her life. It's all mine now."
Theron didn't even glance at my body. "She gave you her life," he said. "She should be glad."
So I laughed, when I woke again on the morning he led that unicorn into the hall.

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.

My downstairs neighbor tagged me in the building group chat at ten p.m.
His wife just had a pup, he said. Pups need moonlight, he said. So starting tonight, my private moon terrace belongs to his family.
He'd even pay me rent. Ten dollars a month.
For the terrace of a three-million-dollar penthouse.
When I said no, he reminded me he wasn't just my neighbor. He's my supervisor at the Calloway Group, and my probation review sits in his hands. Hand over the door code, or I'd never survive at that company.
He kept saying it. I can crush you at the Calloway Group.
Funny.
My mother owns the Calloway Group.
I was going to let him dig his own grave quietly. Then his family broke into my home, walked up to the one thing on that terrace worth half a million dollars—
And smashed it.

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 woke up on the same morning I was about to send another payment for my daughter's education.
In my last life, I paid for everything. Every year, without missing a payment.
Tuition. AP tutoring. Summer program deposits. Medical bills. Birthday gifts. The education fund.
Not one payment late. Not one skipped.
I only found out the truth after I died. My daughter wore a blazer that hung off her like a hand-me-down. She glued her shoes back together instead of throwing them out. She got mocked in front of her whole class for owing a two-thousand-dollar activity fee she should never have had to worry about.
She hated me for it.
She said, "You say you love me. So why was there never any money for me?"
I understood the truth only when it was too late to matter. It was never that I hadn't given enough.
It was that my husband had been siphoning it out from under me the whole time, spending it on another woman's family.
This time, I didn't wait to find out.

My dad made me a smoothie every morning for six months. I thought it was love.
It was a muscle relaxant.
He'd been slipping just enough into my drink to make my fingers tremble at full draw — just enough to cost me first place at every major competition. Not enough to kill me. Just enough to let Laurel beat me.
Laurel. His mistress's daughter. The girl he bought custom diamond jewelry while giving me clearance-rack gear for my birthday. The girl he wanted to drop into my family, my home, and my spot on the podium.
I found the proof. Stopped drinking his smoothies. Clawed my way back to number one.
Then, two days before the National Youth Archery Trials — the one competition that decides everything — he picked up a steel rod and swung it at my right arm.
My drawing arm.
The bone cracked. Doctors said three months minimum. My coach couldn't look me in the eye. Every scout, every scholarship, every dream I'd bled for over three years — gone in one swing from the man who was supposed to protect me.
Trials start tomorrow morning. And I can't hold a bow.

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.

Terminal. One month, maybe less.
I folded the report and put it in my bag. The doctor asked if there was family I could call. I told him there wasn't.
My husband rang while I was crouched against the hospital wall, waiting for the pain to pass. I could hear waves behind his voice. He didn't ask what the doctor said. He wanted to know why his money hadn't come through yet. His first love needed it for her art show.
So I sent him all of it. My savings, and the last of what my mother left me. Ten years, settled in one transfer.
Then my legs went, and a pair of freezing hands caught me before I hit the ground.
The pain stopped the second he touched me.
"Your kind calls us reapers. Give me your soul, and I'll keep the pain off you until the end."
Weston took one look at him and decided I'd hired an actor to make him jealous.
He thinks I'm trying to win him back.

The last thing I did before I died was lick dew off a rusted pipe.
Ninety days earlier, my fiancé Bastien promised he'd come back for me. He said three months in the Sahara would teach me not to be jealous of Posey—the girl I'd pulled from a refugee camp and raised as my own sister.
He didn't know the water ran out in the first week. He didn't know bandits broke my bones. He didn't care enough to find out.
While I lay dying on a rotting bed with a shattered leg, he was in Manhattan, sliding a pink diamond onto Posey's finger.
I died alone. But I didn't stay gone.
My soul followed a stolen necklace across the ocean, right back to his penthouse—just in time for the engagement party, the champagne toast, and the moment my body arrived at the door.

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.

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

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.

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.

Seven years. Seven bonding ceremonies. Seven times a pack of feral strays charged through the territory on the full moon and tore into me before the marking could take.
I thought the Moon Goddess had cursed us.
Then I woke up in the pack hospital and heard my Alpha whispering to her — the delicate white wolf he called his "sister."
"Next time you let them in, could you tell them to go easier? I'm scared she might actually die."
Seven years of attacks. Every single one orchestrated by the man I loved, designed to break me down until I gave up the Luna title and made room for her.
So I played the recording in front of his grandmother, looked him in the eye, and ended the engagement myself.
He thought that was the worst I could do.
He had no idea what those seven years had already cost me — what was already shutting down inside my body while he stood there worrying about her.
By the time he found out, it was far too late.

My influencer roommate paid a small fortune to grow a tub of "all-natural" beauty mud in our bathroom.
Ten days later, the thing crawled out of her face — in front of three hundred people at a party.
And I'd known it was coming from the day I first saw what she was growing.

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 was Elara, a wingless half-sprite. The lowest of the low in the Obsidian Court. My job was to clean up the mess left by the dragons.
But right now, the biggest mess was inside my own stomach.
I was pregnant. With the Dragon King's child.
He didn't remember that night. He only remembered waking alone — and swearing to crush whoever had touched him into dust.
So I said nothing. I served him. I hid. And the three little voices only I could hear kept whispering the one thing I couldn't believe: that scary dragon is soft on you, girl.
Then my belly began to leak his golden aura, and his jealous betrothed smelled it first.
When the King learned the truth, he didn't rage. He looked at my stomach and said the child could not stay.
He never told me why.
So while he was away at war, I climbed onto the Sky Bridge over the endless Void — and I jumped. Better to fall than to let them take my baby.
I never expected something down there to catch me.

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 was marrying Boone Ashcroft on a Saturday morning. Before I could step out of the truck, his mother walked up with a rope and pointed at the cattle chute behind the barn.
Her terms: hands and knees through six inches of mud and manure. A metal headgate clamped around my neck at the end. That was the price of walking through her front door.
I said no.
Then forty Ashcrofts surrounded the truck. My phone had zero signal. My family was blocked behind a hay baler a quarter mile back. And the man I'd spent three years with looked me in the eye and said: "You're going through that chute today. Crawling or walking — pick one."
They cornered my best friend. Threw hog blood on the windshield. Thought nobody was coming for me.
They didn't know about the CB radio under the console — or the ten cousins listening on the other end.

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.

I'm just a stay-at-home mom. Old T-shirt, secondhand car, nobody ever looks at me twice.
At the school fundraiser, my husband's mistress put a peanut in my seven-year-old's mouth. He's severely allergic. As he choked on the grass, she crushed my hand under her heel and kicked his EpiPen straight into the lake.
"One worthless little life," she said. "So what if it's gone."
She's wearing my clothes. My jewelry. Spending my money. She calls me trash in front of the whole school and threatens to have my legs broken.
She thinks she's untouchable, because she's the wife of a Wall Street golden boy.
What she doesn't know is that every dollar he has, every thread she's wearing, even the air she's breathing — all of it belongs to me.
I walked away from that world to raise my son in peace.
She just gave me a reason to come back.

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.

My sister climbed out her window the night before her wedding. So my family pinned her veil over my face and sent me in her place.
I'd been her stand-in my whole life — same face, same hair, the daughter they could afford to lose. Nobody looks twice at a bride behind a veil.
The Falcones figured out I was a fake before the vows. They broke my hand for the insult. And the don himself — the man this whole city only says quietly — took one look at the mess they'd made of me and told them to throw me out with the trash.
Then his eyes dropped to the locket my dead mother left me, lying on his marble floor.
And the most feared man in the city went very, very still.
He had no business knowing my mother's name. So why did he say it like a prayer?

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.

I loved Callum Crane for five years. He said I didn't fit. Then he proposed — to my sister.
The same night, his brother called me with the most insane idea I've ever heard: marry him instead. Same day. Same venue. Right across the hall from my ex and my sister's ceremony.
I said yes. Not because I loved Emrys Crane. Because I'd rather set the whole thing on fire than sit in a pew and watch.
Here's the thing about revenge marriages, though. They're supposed to be fake.
Nobody told Emrys.
The man had a wrench set in his truck that only fit my grandmother's machine — bought years before I ever spoke to him. He'd been sneaking looks through my workshop window so often the stone wore down. He fixed my motorcycle three times and never mentioned it. He remembered that I stared at a piece of almond brittle for ten seconds once, and bought it for me weeks later.
Seven years. He'd been in love with me for seven years. Said nothing. Did everything.
And Callum? The man who told me I didn't fit?
He showed up at my orchard with an apology and a folder full of evidence against my sister, begging for a second chance.
I looked him in the eye and said: "Too late. Wrong harvest."
He tried five more times. It only got worse for him.

Nine and a half million followers. Penthouse in LA. More money than I ever dreamed possible.
I built my empire teaching people to transform themselves, to become beautiful despite their scars. What I never told them was why I needed to learn that skill in the first place.
Then she slides into my DMs: "OMG ScarlettGlow! We went to high school together! Your biggest fan here!"
Madison Blackwell. The golden girl who made my teenage years hell.
She has no clue that ScarlettGlow is actually Scarlett Murphy—the "nobody" she tortured until I disappeared senior year. Now she's broke, desperate, and literally begging me for attention.
I'm staring at her across this overpriced Beverly Hills restaurant, watching her panic over an eight-hundred-dollar guest fee while I casually pull out my black Amex.
The girl who once said I'd never amount to anything is now desperately trying to impress me.
Should I tell her who I really am?

I spent ten years following Ashton around like it was my job. He said jump, I jumped. He said he was hungry, I went and made him a sandwich. His homework, his fights, his messes — I handled all of it. I thought that's what being close to someone meant.
Then at the fall pep rally, in front of two thousand people, he strapped me to a platform, blasted me with paint, and let his girlfriend laugh at me through a megaphone.
I was the punchline. I threw up on camera. The video went viral before I even hit the ground.
So I did the one thing nobody expected — I vanished. New school, new city, new number. Every trace of him, gone.
I thought that was the end of it.
But Ashton doesn't let go of what he thinks is his. And what he's willing to do to drag me back? I wasn't even close to ready for that.

At 2:17 AM, six weeks postpartum, new mom Harper thought she was just responding to her baby's crying. Instead, she discovered her husband Kieran and their live-in nanny Anya in the most intimate embrace—right beside her daughter's crib.
In her most vulnerable moment, in what should have been the safest space in her home, the two people she trusted most were betraying everything sacred about motherhood and marriage. Worse yet, they thought she was just another "baby-brained" mom who would never catch on.

They seriously underestimated what a mother is capable of.

When Harper finds that mysterious $300 Victoria's Secret charge on their shared account, when she discovers Kieran's handwritten love notes hidden in Anya's room, when she overhears them mocking her "annoying" middle-of-the-night feedings—she realizes it's time to show them what a real "burning sensation" feels like.

So the next time they tried to sneak around, Harper secretly swapped out their lube for her own special blend.

If you want to play with fire, let me show you what burning really feels like.

Thirteen years. That's how long I loved Reid Holloway.
When he said he was being bullied, I believed him. When he kissed me on that rooftop, I thought he felt the same. When he asked me to transfer schools with him, I said yes without hesitation.
Then I heard him bragging to his friends: "She'd save her first time for me. Hell, she'd still be thinking of me on her wedding night."
The bullying was staged. The kiss meant nothing. He just wanted me gone—so his new girl could feel more comfortable.
He thought I'd beg. He thought I'd cry. He thought I'd never actually leave.
I left the country.
And ran straight into his stepbrother.