After Death

My husband's foster sister, Delilah, gets poisoned and ends up paralyzed. My husband, Grayson, the Don of this whole crime family, doesn't even bother checking the security cameras. He just throws me, two months pregnant, into the cistern where they punish traitors.

"Tessa, hand over the antidote, or die."

I kneel in the freezing swamp water and beg him. I didn't poison her.

He answers with a k...

They say the dead go where they belong.

But I didn't.

I drift through the cold winds, watching my husband—the detective who once swore to protect me with his life—diligently investigating a dismemberment case.

He doesn't know that the broken body lying in the morgue is his wife.

He doesn't know that the gentle, caring "psychologist" who brings him lunch every day is the one who killed me.

He ...

I'm dead.

Died that rainy night, desperate because I couldn't scrape together five thousand dollars to save my dog.

Liam laughed at me over the phone—my childhood friend told me to quit the sob story. His new girlfriend Sarah said I should get on my knees and beg if I wanted her to toss me some scraps. They had no idea every dollar I owed those loan sharks was to cover up Liam's hit-and-run.

My...

Five years after breaking the mate bond, Vincent became one of the youngest Alphas of the North, worth hundreds of billions, with a fiancée who was a perfect match for him — the daughter of Silver Claw Pack’s Alpha.
But I had already disappeared from his world, my name now only whispered in rumors about me being a bar hostess at Midnight Howl Bar, catering to Alphas and nobility.
When someone ment...

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....

To avenge his beloved, my husband locked me—pregnant—in a dog cage and sank it into the icy lake outside our house.
"Wendy spent ten minutes in the water. You'll stay in there for two days."
I screamed and pleaded, "I'm not lying! I really am pregnant! Please!"
But he towered over me, his eyes full of disgust. "You'll say anything to avoid punishment—even a lie like this?"
As the iron cage sank, t...

I loved Damien for ten years. Ten years, right up until the moment he took the heart that was supposed to save our daughter and gave it to someone else's child.

Lily was only seven. She was terrified of the dark, terrified of pain. She never got that heart. She just faded, right there in that hospital bed.

And Damien was down the hall, celebrating someone else's miracle.

He had no idea what I w...

Once, I was the Golden Dragon Princess, loved by my family and cherished by the man I would have died for. Then one accusation shattered everything. My dragon core was sealed, and I was cast into the frozen abyss to repent for a crime I never committed. Three years later, I died alone beneath the endless snow. My body was brought back on the day he was supposed to marry another woman. He stared at...

On the day I died, Roland was rolling in the sheets with his adopted sister, Lavinia.
When the hospital called with my death notice, he scoffed. It was just drawing some blood, how could anyone die from that? He was certain I was just throwing a tantrum again, desperate for his attention.
The day he received my ashes, he personally smashed the wooden urn to the ground. His expensive leather shoe...

The day my all-powerful wife personally handed me over to the mob's basement, she was shielding my identical twin brother, furiously accusing me of destroying his ability to carry on the family line.
To compensate for my brother's "trauma," my parents stood by and did nothing. Using her influence, my wife pressured me to take his place at a black-market clinic, testing a lethal drug.
They thought ...

My best friend Lily was brutally assaulted and tragically took her own life.
But I fiercely protected the monster who did it.
Lily’s mom knelt down and begged me, but I just closed the door coldly.
When the villagers came with torches to smash my home, I didn't hesitate to unleash my dog to drive them away.
"Ivy, you cold-blooded monster! We treated you like family, and you protected the beast who...

My fiancée, with whom I've been in a relationship for three years, has threatened to break off our engagement for the hundredth time, forcing me to donate a kidney to her adopted brother, who's faking illness and acting like a hypocrite.

My biological parents even threatened to sever ties with me: "You have a healthy body. Ian has nothing but us. You can't even bear to part with a kidney. You're ...

To win back his one true love, my husband sent me, pregnant and vulnerable, straight into the clutches of a rival mob's dungeon.
I was torn apart by vicious dogs, a brutal end for both me and my unborn child.
After death, my spirit drifted back home, only to hear him coldly chuckle, "Let her learn her lesson; she won't come back until she admits she was wrong."
It wasn't until a mangled, rotting b...

"Forty dollars. That's all the inhaler I needed to breathe cost. But in our house, nothing comes easy. 'Fairness first. Roll the dice — highest number wins.' I've rolled my whole life. I've never won. Not once. Tonight, lungs burning, vision blurring, I rolled for my medicine money against my sister. She got a six. I got a two. 'You lost, Hazel. Now go to the attic and think about your selfishness...

On the night before my sister's bone marrow transplant, my parents confiscated my EpiPen and locked me in the attic.

Their "genetic consultant" warned them that the medication would contaminate the stem cells meant for my sister.

I had eaten the meal they provided—one secretly laced with lethal traces of nuts.

The resulting anaphylactic swelling was suffocating me completely.

I fra...

"Olivia, get back here and apologize to Mia RIGHT NOW, or we're through!" My fiancé Arthur screamed into his phone in the ER hallway, his face twisted in disgust.

My parents fussed over their adopted daughter Mia's red eyes. All this drama over a scratch on her finger.

My phone lay shattered in blood at the abandoned chemical plant downtown, screen flickering weakly.

I was already dead. The kid...

They left me to freeze to death in our basement freezer.

The night before prom, my foster sister Leila came crying that I'd burned her Ivy League recommendation letter. My birth parents didn't even listen to one word of explanation—they threw me into that frozen hell in forty-five below.

I beat on that door until my fingers were shredded, screamed until my throat tore apart, but all I could hear...

I was diagnosed with hemophilia when I was ten years old.
At first, my parents were terrified. They watched me closely, rushed me to the hospital over every bruise, every nosebleed. I was the fragile one—the child who needed saving.

Then years passed.
They got used to it.
They got tired.

By the time my twin sister was graduating and my family was finally breathing again, I was about to turn eigh...

I’m in the final stages of stomach cancer. My son just passed away yesterday.
At his funeral, my ex-husband barged in, pointed at our son’s headstone, and accused me of doing anything for attention—even putting on a show like this.
He told me to get lost, to stay far away from the woman he really loves.
So I did exactly as he wanted.
I took my son’s ashes and disappeared into the endless sea.
But ...

After Nicholas got engaged, his assistant handed me a plane ticket.

"Leave. Don’t ever show your face in Silverlight City again."

"Otherwise, Mr. Jackson has more than enough ways to ruin you."

All those years I spent by his side, I was admired by everyone, living in the spotlight.

Yet when I finally left, I was reduced to a pitiful, laughable sight.

I said, "Fine."

But that very night, the ...