Independent

At our engagement party, Eli demands I sign a hundred-thousand-dollar check to bail out his first love, Aila.

I cave, pouring everything I have into paving the way for his future.

But he pays off a nurse to slip me abortion pills, manipulates the training equipment to crush my pelvis, and causes me to hemorrhage and miscarry.

While I lie in the hospital fighting for my life, he spreads ru...

For six years I kept the books nobody wanted to touch.
They called me the help. My husband signed my name to a loan I never saw. His mother told the whole family I was the reason there were no grandchildren.
At the anniversary gala, they planned to retire me quietly — and hand my desk to the woman my husband had been paying out of company accounts.
They forgot one thing.
Before I married into...

Five years ago, I woke up after surgery with my mind completely blank. The doctor said I had been in a training accident, and I was lucky just to be alive. Due to my injuries, after being discharged from the military, I was assigned to the mess hall at Fort Kiernan. Every day, I stood behind the same serving window, dishing out the same beef and potato stew to the same group of new recruits. I tho...

In my past life, I was tricked into a trap by my neighbor, my leg broken, and thrown into acid rain to die. Reborn, I returned to nine months before the acid rain apocalypse. Meteorites struck, radiation contaminated, water sources dried up, and civilization collapsed. I still had one last chance to save myself and reverse the future. When I mortgaged my house, borrowed heavily from loan sharks, a...

We'd been together for eight years when my childhood sweetheart took me to see the ocean.
We were in a terrible car crash.
In my final moments, he used his last strength to hold my hand.
"Thank you. I'm so lucky to have you."
I squeezed back through my tears as he took his final breath, and moments later, I followed.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back in senior year, coding day and night.
All...

Sarah Wishers came to the Hawks for one thing only: work.
A fresh start as a team photographer was supposed to be quiet, professional, and far away from the scandal that followed her breakup with her ex-boyfriend.
What she didn’t plan was Liam Riley.
Liam saw Sarah as a threat to his team and he made it his personal mission to make her life a living hell.
Being forced to work side by side only in...

My brother ripped out my S-Class Sword Bone and shoved it into his own chest, then stuffed his trash-tier talent, [Shepherd], right into mine.

My fiancée cuddled up in his arms, while my biological father expressionlessly threw me into a chaotic spatial anomaly.
They thought I would rot in that alternate dimension. Little did they know, the trash talent [Shepherd] harbored a hidden evolution: [O...

I suffered from a severe congenital heart defect.

And my mother, Jamie, had terminal bone cancer.

My family was not a happy one. It marked the third year since my father, Nelson, had openly and unapologetically betrayed their marriage.

That morning, my mother swallowed a handful of painkillers and forced herself to stand up from her wheelchair.

She asked her best friend, Zoey, who was ...

Seven months pregnant, I watched the thugs Vivian hired drag us both into the warehouse.
I didn't fight for that phone. I let Vivian—Sean's ex, the woman he never stopped loving—make the call herself.
Because in my past life, I'd begged desperately for Sean to save me from this carefully orchestrated nightmare.
And he did come. He chose me over her.
Vivian was left behind. Raped. Tortured. Murdere...

The year Caleb loved me more than anything, he cut all ties with the entire Donovan mafia family, gave up his heir title, and ran away from New York with me to live on the lam out of state.
But one day, after hauling contraband and working three side jobs till his heart flared up and he coughed up blood, I took the six-million-dollar check his mom handed me and watched as his family’s guards dragg...

For six years, I was her driver, her errand boy, and her servant.
On the night of her engagement, she said, "He's just my driver."
Her fiancé ruined my company.
I sold my shares, changed my phone number, and bought a one-way ticket.
She chased me to the airport and asked me why.
I said, "Because I don't want to,"
"Waiting for someone who will never look back at me."

I warned my family and neighbors that the extreme cold would come in a year and a half, but they all thought I was crazy.
I had no choice but to prepare myself a year and a half in advance: renovating houses, building arks, stockpiling supplies...
When the extreme cold arrived, the neighbors who ignored the warnings turned into thugs, yet my brother still wanted to let them into the house; the ban...

I used to be the nation's top lock-picking expert. I saved countless lives.

But I couldn't save my own daughter.

At the dock, two children were strapped to bombs.

The girl had less time—I should've saved her first.

But my husband Damien held a knife to his throat, forcing me to save the other one first.

His illegitimate son.

I compromised.

The moment I opened the lock, the kidnapper ripped ...

My wife brought her first love back to my cloud penthouse for an affair, and even attempted to steal the corporation's core code. Caught red-handed, she showed no remorse, instead scolding me condescendingly: "He is my guest! How dare you touch him?!"

Without even raising an eyelid, I snapped my fingers. Heavy combat robots instantly ripped apart the first love's cybernetic spine, and a beam of e...

I was "Ghost," the undefeated legend of the underground racing circuit. To uncover the truth behind the tragic fall that left my sister, Sylvia, in a coma, I disguised myself as a timid, pathetic scholarship student and infiltrated Spencer Academy—an elite world ruthlessly ruled by old-money families and the hockey dynasty.

I thought my petty revenge was flawless when I slashed a bully's tire wit...

The night Julian Wright orchestrated his "rose ceremony," everyone expected a full meltdown.
They were taking bets—would I show up sobbing, or would I skip straight to the roof? After all, everyone knew I was broke. Without Julian's money, I'd be out on my ass.
But when Julian handed that rose to campus queen Chloe Miller, the ballroom doors never opened. No crying. No scene. The whole party lost ...

My name is Dafu, I am a dog, and I can smell death.

Sweet, cloying spores and a metallic, fishy stench seeped in through the cracks in the door.
The owner's friend was crying and calling for help outside the door , but all I could hear from my nostrils was the gurgling of mucus and the rustling of fungal hyphae climbing—
The person outside had no heartbeat.

The owner ultimately decided to open t...

While I was busy looking for a way to save our son's life, Liam, My husband was busy having dinner with his childhood lover, Anna.

"I'm sorry Mrs. Wright, but we can no longer continue with the treatment procedures." Those were the last words the doctor had said before unplugging the life support from my child.

I had lost my child due to my husband's unavailability and I promise to avenge his de...

I was cruising leisurely down a desert highway when three Harley motorcycles pulled up behind me, claiming one of their crew was injured.

I pulled over to help — and they stole my truck.

I called the police — and the cops arrested me as an accomplice.

Everyone said I’d traded five years of my youth and my unwavering devotion for an engagement that every woman envied.
My fiancé, Felix Smith, seemed to believe it, too. He gave me pearls, promised me a bright future, and wrapped me up in a web of tenderness, layer after layer.
Until that afternoon, when he held me close, yet used a language he thought I didn’t understand to weave the perfect "wedd...