Independent

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...

At the magic academy’s party, I overheard my werewolf boyfriend in the lounge saying he was going to destroy me.

"Alexander, her magic core is merely experiencing a temporary disruption. According to the academy infirmary's suturing protocol, her magical output will fully recover in three days. Why did you lie and tell her the core is necrotic and must be dug out?" the school doctor asked.

My ...

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...

In my first life, Alpha Damon Hawthorne rescued me, made me his mate, and poisoned me.

When I woke in the forest years earlier, I remembered enough to change one thing: this time, I would get my friend Selene to safety, let him find her, and leave.

He chose her. I asked for my freedom.

Then he broke my betrothal to another man and told me I had always been his.

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 ex and I used to live inside a romance movie.

She was the heroine’s best friend. I was the hero’s loyal sidekick. When the leads got their happy ending, we—the two “extras”—ended up together like an afterthought.

Then the credits rolled, and real life didn’t. The heroine died in a car crash, the hero fell apart, and my girlfriend chose that moment to leave me.

She said she was done being a s...

The year the gas swallowed the world, I helped design and build Dome City with my own hands, keeping the last survivors alive.

I thought I was protecting hope.

Then I stumbled onto the Council’s secret: the poison outside is fading—but they chose to hide it. Worse, they plan to manufacture and release more gas, locking everyone inside forever, under their rule.

Before I could expose the truth, ...

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 ...

My boyfriend was pretending to be poor.
I figured it out not long after we started dating. He would throw away body wash bottles the second the pump stopped working, and he dumped out the gray water I’d been saving to flush the toilet. When I caught him, he gave me this perfectly innocent look. "Aren't you just supposed to pour dirty water down the drain?"
We’d pass a street food cart selling tho...

After the apocalypse, I joined my girlfriend and her friends as a makeshift team. I cleared infected, scavenged supplies, and stood guard at night so they could sleep.

I thought we were all each other had.

Then, for a single dose of antibiotics, they handed me to the warlord who slaughtered my entire family.

When she said, “Just endure it—I’ll find a way to bring you back,” I didn’t even have t...

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."

For the three years since I returned to the Hart family, I had always been the wildly out-of-place “burden.”

Vivienne, the family’s beloved fake heiress, broke a contract on her own and provoked a local gang. She was taken hostage and tortured in an abandoned auto repair shop.

To save his precious sister, my brother, Ryan, did not hesitate to trade me to the gang in exchange for Vivienne.
“She’s...

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 thought I was the happiest woman in the city.

My husband would gently help me into my shoes, rest his hand on my belly and whisper to our baby. My father would tie on an apron and cook dinner just for me.

Then a video from an unknown number shattered everything.

Inside a chapel, the four of them stood side by side.

My husband holding the hand of my father's mistress's daughter. My father arm...

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...