
Introduction
A realm of screaming souls and unspeakable horrors. The fae whisper my name to frighten their children into obedience. Be good, or the Princess of Hel will drag you into the dark.
They are wrong, of course. Hel is not a prison. It is a sanctuary. A refuge for every creature the Fae hunted, feared, and tried to erase. Shifters. Wraiths. Dragons. Half-breeds. The forgotten and the broken. We built a kingdom in the shadows, and we are proud of it.
I am proud of it.
But none of that matters to Cardan Oberon Ashryver Windsor.
He is the High King now. The golden ruler of the largest Fae nation on the continent. And he is also the male who has been my betrothed since I was four years old, and has never once laid eyes on me.
Eighteen years. Eighteen bouquets of poisonous flowers. Not a single visit. Not a single letter in his own hand.
I stopped waiting for him when I realized he was never coming for me.
Now his father is dead, the crown is his, and suddenly I am summoned to his glittering court like a forgotten package finally retrieved from storage.
I arrive ready to end this engagement and return to the only home that has ever wanted me. I have a blade of grave-dust steel strapped to my thigh and eighteen years of cold fury burning in my chest.
But the ancient Oath that binds us is merciless. If either of us walks away before the marriage is consummated, the gates of Hel seal forever, trapping my people in eternal darkness. And the Fae? They lose their magic entirely.
There is no escape, only death.
Chapter 1
The realm of Hel did not wake. It never did.
There was no dawn to stir it from slumber, no sun to chase the shadows back into their corners. Hel simply was, a kingdom of never ending sunsets and moonlight, where the sky burned in shades of bruised violet and dying ember, and the only stars were the bioluminescent fungi clinging to the obsidian spires of the city below.
I liked it that way.
I stood on the edge of the Obsidian Balcony, my bare feet cold against the glass-smooth stone, and watched my kingdom breathe. Below me, the city of Nyxara, named after me, a gift from my father on the day of my birth, sprawled in glorious, chaotic beauty. Streets carved from black volcanic rock wound through markets lit by flickering witch-fire. Towers of bone and obsidian clawed at the sky. Bridges woven from spider-silk and shadow connected districts that housed creatures the surface world had long since declared extinct.
Or abominations.
Depending on which Fae historian you asked.
A soft chittering sound drew my attention. I turned my head, a smile already tugging at the corner of my mouth.
"Good morning, Vesper."
My handmaiden, if such a mundane word could possibly describe her magnificence, she scuttled out onto the balcony. Vesper was a Nocturni, her kind bred eons ago from shadow and moth-wing. She stood on two legs but her body was wrapped in a velvet-soft exoskeleton the color of midnight, and great translucent wings folded against her back. Her eyes were compound, multifaceted, and utterly beautiful, each facet reflecting a tiny image of my face back at me.
"Morning is a surface-world concept, my Princess, do not let the surface world corrupt you with their language," she clicked, her voice like wind through dead leaves. "I believe you mean good eternal-darkness."
"Good eternal-darkness, then." I turned back to the city. "What news?"
"Your brother is pacing the throne room. Again."
"Eris or Maz?"
"The Crown Prince. He has been pacing for approximately two hours. The guards are taking bets on when he wears a groove into the floor."
I snorted. Eris Heron Morrigan, Crown Prince of Hel and heir to the Shadow Throne, had been ruling in our father's stead for the past three years. He was brilliant, ruthless when necessary, and utterly incapable of sitting still when something troubled him.
"Tell him I'll be there shortly."
"And your other brother?"
"Maz can wait."
"Prince Maz is already in the throne room. He brought snacks."
I closed my eyes. Of course he did.
---
The Palace of Ten Thousand Shadows was a sprawling, impossible thing. It had been carved into the side of the Abyssal Ridge millennia ago, before the Fae or the humans had even learned to write, before they had declared themselves the "pure" race and begun their purges. The palace's corridors twisted and turned with no apparent logic, staircases leading to rooms that had not existed the day before, doors opening onto memories rather than chambers.
I loved it.
I trailed my fingers along the walls as I walked, feeling the ancient stone hum beneath my touch. The palace recognized me. The shadows leaned toward me as I passed, whispering secrets I was too busy to hear.
Murder, one shadow hissed.
Secrets, another crooned.
The Crown Prince is going to burst a blood vessel, a third added helpfully.
"Thank you," I murmured. "Very informative."
The throne room doors loomed before me, massive things carved from the rib bones of some long-dead leviathan. They swung open without being touched. The shadows knew better than to make me wait.
The throne room was chaos.
Eris was, as promised, pacing. My eldest brother was tall and huge, his shoulders broad but his frame carrying the particular sharpness of someone who had forgotten to eat for the past three days. His hair was the color of raven feathers, tied back in a messy knot, and his eyes, the same violet as mine, the mark of the Morrigan bloodline, were blazing with frustration.
"The trade agreement with the Wraith Courts is falling apart," he announced the moment he saw me. "The Starlight District is petitioning for more territory, the Bone Markets are in an uproar over the new tariffs, and I have seventeen different ambassadors demanding an audience before the next..."
"Good eternal-darkness to you too, brother."
He stopped pacing. Fixed me with a glare. "Nyx."
"Eris." I swept past him, my black silk gown trailing behind me like spilled ink. "You look terrible. Have you slept?"
"I don't have time to sleep."
"Have you eaten?"
"I had some coffea."
"Coffeea is not food."
"Coffee is the lifeblood of the realm, and I will not hear it slandered."
I reached the dais and turned, settling myself onto the smaller throne beside the Shadow Seat. The Shadow Seat itself sat empty, a towering construction of twisted obsidian and ancient magic, reserved for the reigning monarch. My father had sat there once, before the wasting sickness took him three years ago. Now it belonged to Eris, though he refused to sit in it and now it lay empty until he could be forced into a coronation.
"I am Crown Prince," he had said when the council urged him to take the throne. "Not King. Father is dead. I have not yet earned the crown."
That was Eris. Stubborn to the bone.
From the shadows beside the throne, a figure detached itself and sprawled onto the arm of my chair.
"Morning, little sister."
Maz. Prince Mazander Hollin Morrigan, second son of the House of Morrigan, professional nuisance, and my favorite person in the entire realm.
He was lounging with the boneless grace of a cat, a bag of popped corn in one hand. His hair was a wild tangle of silver-white, the only one of us who took after our mother in coloring and his eyes sparkled with barely contained mischief.
"You brought snacks," I observed.
"The Crown Prince is having a crisis. I'm not missing this." He offered me the bag. "Some popped corn?"
"Where did you even get that? Isn't that human food?"
"The Bone Markets have a new vendor. Delightful little wraith. Accepts payment in secrets." He crunched loudly. "Eris is going to ask you to handle the ambassadors."
"I am not..." Eris started.
"You absolutely are," Maz said cheerfully. "You've been working yourself into an early grave, and Nyx is the only one who can charm the spines off a hedge-beast. The ambassadors love her."
"They fear her," Eris corrected.
"Same thing."
I held up a hand, cutting them both off. "Maz, give me the popped corn. Eris, stop pacing and tell me what's actually wrong."
Silence.
Eris and Maz exchanged a look. The kind of look that made my stomach tighten.
"What?" I demanded.
Eris reached into his coat. Pulled out a letter.
It was beautiful, in a sterile sort of way. Cream-colored parchment sealed with golden wax. The wax bore the imprint of a sunburst, the sigil of the Aurelian Court, the largest and most powerful Fae nation on the continent.
The seal was already broken.
"The courier arrived an hour ago," Eris said quietly. "It's from the High King."
I felt something cold settle in my chest. Something that had been sleeping for a very long time.
"Read it," I said. My voice came out steady. Good. I would not let them see anything else.
Eris unfolded the letter.
"To Her Royal Highness, Princess Nyx Andromeda Viveca Morrigan of Hel," he read, his voice flat. "By decree of His Majesty, High King Cardan Oberon Ashryver Windsor, you are hereby summoned to the Aurelian Court. A royal escort will arrive in seven days' time to retrieve you. Your presence is required at the coronation ceremonies and for the formal commencement of the betrothal terms as set forth in the Treaty of the Sundered Gate. No refusal shall be accepted. By order of the Crown."
Silence.
Even the shadows stopped whispering.
Maz had stopped eating. His knuckles were white around the bag.
"'Retrieve you,'" I repeated. "He said retrieve you. Like I'm some sort of package."
"Nyx..." Eris started.
"Eighteen years." I stood. The shadows around the throne stirred, curling toward me like concerned pets. "Eighteen years of nothing. Eighteen years of him sending me poisonous flowers and silence. And now he is king, and suddenly he remembers I exist?"
"The courier said there's more," Maz said quietly. "A second letter. Private. For you."
I snatched the letter from Eris's hand before I could think better of it. My fingers trembled, with rage, I told myself. Only rage.
The second letter was smaller. The handwriting on the front was not the elegant script of a court scribe. It was sharp. Angular. Impatient.
Nyx.
Just my name. No title. No pretense.
I broke the seal.
Princess,
I will not insult you with pleasantries. I do not know you, and you do not know me. But the Oath binds us both, and I have spent eighteen years trying to find a way to break it. I have failed. You will have failed too, or you would not be reading this letter.
The escort arrives in seven days. Do not make this difficult.
—Cardan
I read it twice.
Then I started laughing.
It was not a kind laugh. It was the laugh of a woman who had spent eighteen years being an afterthought, a footnote, a debt that no one wanted to collect. The shadows in the throne room laughed with me, a chorus of cold, dangerous mirth.
"He tried to break the Oath," I said, still laughing. "All this time. He wasn't ignoring me out of arrogance. He was trying to escape me."
"Isn't that supposed to make it better?" Maz demanded.
"No." I crumpled the letter in my fist. "It makes it so much worse."
Eris stepped toward me. His hand closed over my shoulder. "Nyx. You don't have to face this alone. I'll send guards. Ambassadors. A contingent of..."
"No."
"No?"
I lifted my chin. The shadows rose with me, fanning out behind me like wings.
"He wants the Princess of Hel?" I said softly. "He wants the monster under the bed? The wicked creature he was raised to fear?"
The letter crumbled to ash in my grip.
"Then that is exactly what he will get."
-———————————————-
Later, after Eris had been persuaded to eat something, after Maz had made six inappropriate jokes and I had laughed at all of them, after the throne room had emptied and the shadows had settled back into their corners....
I stood alone on the Obsidian Balcony and looked down at my city.
Nyxara. My namesake. The only home I had ever known.
Below me, a shifter child with too many eyes was chasing a ball of witch-fire down the street. An old spider-woman sat on her stoop, weaving silk that glimmered like captured starlight. Somewhere in the Bone Markets, a vendor was selling secrets for popped corn and laughing about it.
This was my kingdom. My people. My sanctuary of monsters and misfits and the beautifully broken.
In seven days, a Fae escort would come to rip me away from it.
In seven days, I would meet the male who had spent eighteen years trying to erase me.
I looked up at the starless sky, at the bruised purple glow that would never be sunlight, and I made a vow.
I will not break. I will not bow. And I will not let a golden king forget that he is shackled to the Princess of Hel. I shall make him suffer for it.
He and his entire court.
A soft chittering behind me. Vesper.
"My Princess? What are you thinking?"
I smiled. It was not a kind smile.
"I'm thinking," I said, "that His Majesty has no idea what he just invited into his court."
Last Chapters
#63 Chapter 63 Northern storm
Last Updated: 6/30/2026#62 Chapter 62 The trip
Last Updated: 6/30/2026#61 Chapter 61 Return of a Princess
Last Updated: 6/30/2026#60 Chapter 60 Homecoming
Last Updated: 6/30/2026#59 Chapter 59 Being Me
Last Updated: 6/30/2026#58 Chapter 58 Mourning After
Last Updated: 6/30/2026#57 Chapter 57 Breaking of the crown
Last Updated: 6/30/2026#56 Chapter 56 A fighter
Last Updated: 6/30/2026#55 Chapter 55 A good gentleman
Last Updated: 6/30/2026#54 Chapter 54 The Dragon Queen
Last Updated: 6/30/2026
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Blinded By His Touch
Bastian Steele doesn’t believe in weakness.
He built Eclipse Distilling Co. from blood, silence, and a past no one is allowed to ask about. In his world, control is survival.... and obsession is a liability.
Then Kaden Winters walks in soaked from the rain, violin on his back and light spilling out of him like he’s never been burned. Bartender. Model. Artist. Beautiful and reckless enough to tease a stranger over a glass of whiskey he doesn’t know that stranger created.
Bastian tells himself it’s only a taste.
Only curiosity.
Only a moment of indulgence.
But darkness recognizes light for what it is. And what begins as interest turns into fixation. What starts as a sip becomes hunger. Because Bastian Steele doesn’t chase....He acquires. And this time, he wants more than the drink.
The Alpha's Stripper Mate
"What?" It was out of my mouth before I could stop it. I did not wait for him to answer me, I walked toward him.
"Dance on my lap."
My head screamed at me to turn around and run. But my whole body responded to his command.
"Yes, Alpha," I pulled my dress over my body, it dropped over my head and fell to the ground behind me. I was left in nothing but my matching bra and thong. My hands covered my chest on reflex.
"Let me see."
My hands dropped to my sides.
I lowered myself into his lap, facing him. His eyes peered into mine, and I could feel his hot breath fan my face. His dick responded to all my moves, hardening against my now-moist vagina. I swallowed hard, allowing my lips to part in a ragged breath. His hands trailed up to my waist.
"No touching."
At the tender age of eleven, JoJo Wyatt was forced to grow up far sooner than she should have. Born to a cruel father and a weak mother, she quickly realized she had to become the breadwinner for herself and her sister. Nothing else mattered to her, not even the hottest men. In fact, she despised them. After one horrific night, she swore never to have any contact with the male species again. That was, until she started working for him as his stripper.
Meanwhile, Alpha Lake Rush, thirty, was the most feared Alpha in the country. Burdened by his own share of life's struggles, he had learned only to be cruel and reckless, rejecting not one but two mates. But what happens when he discovers yet another mate, and she turns out to be his stripper?
The Spy Who Left
"I still can't believe she actually did it. Aria Hart, filing for divorce. Who saw that coming?"
"How long do we think it'll take before she comes crawling back?" Another voice joins the conversation.
"Three days," Victoria declares. "Five at most. She has no money, no skills, no family. Where's she going to go?"
When Aria Chen divorced billionaire Leon Hart, New York's elite sneered, betting she'd crawl back within days. She never did.
Three years later, the world is rocked when Dr. Aria Vale, CEO of a revolutionary cybersecurity empire, steps into the spotlight. The mysterious genius who built a billion-dollar company from nothing is none other than Leon's discarded wife, the woman everyone thought was just a pretty ornament.
Now, every powerful man wants the queen Leon threw away a renowned scientist seeking partnership, a financial titan proposing an empire, and an actor offering devotion. Each sees the brilliance Leon ignored.
Then Leon discovers the truth: Aria's sacrifices, her secret double life, and the daughter she's been raising without him. For the first time, the man who once took her for granted must fight for her love. But can he compete with men who valued her from the beginning?
A story of love, betrayal, and power where the king must kneel before the queen who never needed saving.
Let Them Kneel
Cast out by her pack. Forgotten by the Lycans.
She lived among humans—quiet, invisible, tucked away in a town no one looked at twice.
But when her first heat comes without warning, everything changes.
Her body ignites. Her instincts scream. And something primal stirs beneath her skin—
summoning a big, bad Alpha who knows exactly how to quench her fire.
When he claims her, it’s ecstasy and ruin.
For the first time, she believes she’s been accepted.
Seen.
Chosen.
Until he leaves her the next morning—
like a secret never to be spoken.
But Kaelani is not what they thought.
Not wolfless. Not weak.
There is something ancient inside her. Something powerful. And it’s waking.
And when it does—
they’ll all remember the girl they tried to erase.
Especially him.
She’ll be the dream he keeps chasing… the one thing that ever made him feel alive.
Because secrets never stay buried.
And neither do dreams.
Falling for my boyfriend's Navy brother
"What is wrong with me?
Why does being near him make my skin feel too tight, like I’m wearing a sweater two sizes too small?
It’s just newness, I tell myself firmly.
He’s my boyfirend’s brother.
This is Tyler’s family.
I’m not going to let one cold stare undo that.
**
As a ballet dancer, My life looks perfect—scholarship, starring role, sweet boyfriend Tyler. Until Tyler shows his true colors and his older brother, Asher, comes home.
Asher is a Navy veteran with battle scars and zero patience. He calls me "princess" like it's an insult. I can't stand him.
When My ankle injury forces her to recover at the family lake house, I‘m stuck with both brothers. What starts as mutual hatred slowly turns into something forbidden.
I'm falling for my boyfriend's brother.
**
I hate girls like her.
Entitled.
Delicate.
And still—
Still.
The image of her standing in the doorway, clutching her cardigan tighter around her narrow shoulders, trying to smile through the awkwardness, won’t leave me.
Neither does the memory of Tyler. Leaving her here without a second thought.
I shouldn’t care.
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It’s not my problem if Tyler’s an idiot.
It’s not my business if some spoiled little princess has to walk home in the dark.
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Especially not her.
Especially not someone like her.
She’s not my problem.
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HER ALPHA, HER SAVIOUR
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Around him, lights burst, electronics fry, and something ancient in me awakens.
Kane feels it. His grip tightens, punishments turn brutal, and he hides the truth of what I am.
Trapped between two powerful men, I’m no prey, no pawn—no helpless victim.
Prisons burn. Monsters bleed. As for me? I'm the storm in skin—deadly beyond suspicion.
The Game of Claiming
A drunken bet becomes their private game: win the maid.
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And never, ever let her leave.
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The eldest buys her obedience.
The second steals her breath.
The third corners her in the dark.
The youngest ruins anyone who touches her.
Lila isn’t sure if she’s a player in their game… or the prize they’ll destroy each other to claim
Ruined : You will always be mine.
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I felt him behind me. “Ten Lashes for your disobedience”, he said
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Omega Bound
Thane Knight is the alpha of the Midnight Pack of the La Plata Mountain Range, the largest wolf shifter pack in the world. He is an alpha by day and hunts the shifter trafficking ring with his group of mercenaries by night. His hunt for vengeance leads to one raid that changes his life.
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Touch her and die/Slow burn romance/Fated Mates/Found family twist/Close circle betrayal/Cinnamon roll for only her/Traumatized heroine/Rare wolf/Hidden powers/Knotting/Nesting/Heats/Luna/Attempted assassination












