
Playing Dead for My Vampire Husband
Juniper Marlow · Completed · 5.4k Words
Introduction
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.
Chapter 1
I found out Lucian Vael—the man I took a crossbow bolt for five years ago—had been living a double life behind my back.
I don't know exactly when I blacked out. I remember the archive room floor coming up fast. Then nothing.
When I came to, he was already there.
He was on the phone at the far end of the physician's room, and his voice had an edge I almost never heard from him. Something about the ritual components. Something about whoever had let this happen again. The physician was waiting him out patiently, the way you learn to wait out powerful men.
For a moment I almost believed it. That he was that furious on my behalf.
Then I remembered the crystal. Those two new silver branches. The name carved into one of them.
The physician got through half his update before Lucian ended the call and crossed the room.
"Was it the Accord?" he said, low and tight. "Did someone get to your materials?"
"Nobody got to anything. I just pushed too hard."
He looked at me like he didn't believe it, then looked at the physician like he was deciding whether to find someone to blame anyway.
"Blood loss," the physician said firmly. "Third time in six months. No more rites until she's recovered. Two weeks minimum."
Lucian pulled a chair close and sat. He reached over and put his hand against my face—same angle, same weight as five years ago, the night I first woke up changed, when he'd steadied me because I didn't know how to hold my own head up yet. I wondered if he knew he still did it that way.
"What's wrong?" he said. "Something else."
"I'm tired."
He held my gaze for a second, then leaned in and pressed his mouth to my forehead.
That's when I caught it.
Under the cedar-and-copper that was specifically him: something cold. Old. A pureblood's presence clings to skin and fabric differently than anything else—floral in a way that has nothing to do with flowers, something you can't place until you know what you're looking for. I'd been in the same room as Seraphine Moreau three times. I knew that scent.
And beneath it, so faint I nearly missed it: something sweet and warm and milky.
Infant blood smells different. It's one of the first things you learn.
I pushed him back, said something about needing a moment, and barely made it to the bathroom before I was sick.
He followed. He gathered my hair back with both hands and said nothing, just stayed there, kneeling on the tile floor in a coat that probably cost more than most people's rent. He'd always hated mess. He'd always been worse around illness. He was kneeling on a clinic bathroom floor not caring about either.
I almost told him. I was right on the edge of it—I'm pregnant, seven weeks, I just found out yesterday—and maybe if I had, everything would have gone differently.
Then his phone rang.
He glanced at the screen. Something moved through his face, there and gone. "Clan business," he said. "I'll be right back."
He wasn't back in twenty minutes.
What came instead was a vision—images that pushed into my head uninvited, sharp as memory, except they weren't mine. It happens between two people who've shared blood long enough. Someone can send things through that connection without a phone, without warning.
Soft light. A pale nursery. Lucian leaning over a crib, his mouth to a baby's forehead. Unhurried. Like he'd done it before.
Seraphine in the background. Her hand on his arm. Watching.
One line of text threaded through it after: He moves fast when they need him.
I stayed on the bathroom floor until my hands steadied. Then I called Mira.
"Two days," I said. "I need to be dead in two days."
A beat of silence. Then, carefully: "Corbin's been lying to me too. I found the messages." Her voice was controlled but only just. "I can't stay, Vera. Not anymore."
She was wrong. He'd spent eight months saving for a ring, had her old Hunter insignia worked into the setting, wanted her to know he accepted everything she'd been before. I didn't know that yet.
"Okay," I said. "We go together."
That night I came home to an empty house. Late, his message said. Handling things.
I went straight to the archive room. Four years of notebooks on that shelf, his handwriting in my margins, time that had looked like partnership from where I was standing. I pulled them down one by one and tore them. I'd expected it to feel like something. It didn't.
The gown from my first clan gathering went into a bag without me looking at it too long.
My ring caught the light when I tied the handles shut.
I left it on. The plan needed it.
My phone lit up on the countertop.
Mira: Everything's ready. 48 hours.
Forty-eight hours, and Vera Cross-Vael would be dead.
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**
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.
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I don’t care.
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.
I’m not here to rescue anyone.
Especially not her.
Especially not someone like her.
She’s not my problem.
And I’ll make damn sure she never becomes one.
But when my eyes fell on her lips, I wanted her to be mine.
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What? No—wait… oh Moon Goddess, no.
Please tell me you're joking, Lex.
But she's not. I can feel her excitement bubbling under my skin, while all I feel is dread.
We turn the corner, and the scent hits me like a punch to the chest—cinnamon and something impossibly warm. My eyes scan the room until they land on him. Tall. Commanding. Beautiful.
And then, just as quickly… he sees me.
His expression twists.
"Fuck no."
He turns—and runs.
My mate sees me and runs.
Bonnie has spent her entire life being broken down and abused by the people closest to her including her very own twin sister. Alongside her best friend Lilly who also lives a life of hell, they plan to run away while attending the biggest ball of the year while it's being hosted by another pack, only things don't quite go to plan leaving both girls feeling lost and unsure about their futures.
Alpha Nicholas is 28, mateless, and has no plans to change that. It's his turn to host the annual Blue Moon Ball this year and the last thing he expects is to find his mate. What he expects even less is for his mate to be 10 years younger than him and how his body reacts to her. While he tries to refuse to acknowledge that he has met his mate his world is turned upside down after guards catch two she-wolves running through his lands.
Once they are brought to him he finds himself once again facing his mate and discovers that she's hiding secrets that will make him want to kill more than one person.
Can he overcome his feelings towards having a mate and one that is so much younger than him? Will his mate want him after already feeling the sting of his unofficial rejection? Can they both work on letting go of the past and moving forward together or will fate have different plans and keep them apart?
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I don’t even know what I am. No shifting, no magic tricks, nothing. Just a girl surrounded by people who can fly, conjure fire, or heal with a touch. So I sit through classes pretending I belong, and I listen hard for any clue that might tell me what’s hidden in my blood.
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"Are you sure you don't want me to touch you?" He whispers, untying the knot and slipping a hand inside. "Because I swear to God, that is all I have been wanting to do. Every single day from the moment you stepped in our bar and I smelled your perfect flavor from across the room."
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The Human Among Wolves
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——————————————————
When eigteen-year-old Aurora Wells moves to a sleepy town with her parents, the last thing she expects is to be enrolled in a secret academy for werewolves.
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Including the reason she was brought here at all.
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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.
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Seen.
Chosen.
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Falling For The Biker: The Vice President's Girl
His eyes darken, flicking to my mouth.
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In the chaos of gang wars, mounting debts, and old betrayals, he becomes the one constant. The more she fights him, the harder she falls. And the more he pushes her away, the more lethal his pull becomes.
Because in this world, love isn't sweet.
It's brutal. Bloody.
And it's bound to break them both.
When loyalty is everything and love can cost your life, will Wren risk her heart on the one man she was never meant to love?












