Independent

My boyfriend looks at me like I'm trash. Too fat. Too plain. My clothes are ugly. He never misses a chance to tear me down.

I thought he was just mean. Then his "good friend" Sophie spilled coffee all over our ten-thousand-dollar control board.

That board was three months of work. Three months of all-nighters, twice I passed out from low blood sugar. It was our entry for the National Robotics Co...

I was four months pregnant when the truck hit my car.
I woke up on a gurney outside the OR, bleeding, half-conscious, thinking my husband was saving my life. Then I heard him through the door.
"The baby's gone. Her right hand is finished—her career's over either way. Just take her kidney now and put it in Mia."
My mother agreed. My father told him to switch my architectural draft to Mia's name bef...

Our team lost four games in a row. And somehow, that became my fault.
Team captain Reid stood in the locker room and told everyone I'd been giving performance enhancers to my ex on the rival team — that I had a problem with athletes, that I couldn't control myself. The guys laughed. Nobody stopped him.
I went to my supervisor Paige for help. She told me Reid noticing me at all was something I shou...

I loved Julian for ten years, carving every sweat-stained day into my love for him.
He once said I shined brighter than any gold medal.
Yet in five short minutes, he handed my dream, my glory, and my whole world to a scheming transfer girl.
Betrayed, discarded, and broken on the fencing strip, I lost my first love and everything I fought for.
Until the retired cold Olympic champion stepped out of ...

Death should have been the end.

Instead, I wake up choking on warehouse air, a stranger's hand around my throat.

This time, I remember the man who was desperate to kill me.

Victor Sterling.

"Your scream killed my daughter!"
"I'll make you pay double."

In every loop, he finds me and kills me.

Julian pulls the trigger on himself just to turn back time one more time.

This time, I'm not waiti...

Someone posted a love confession to me on the campus board the same week I got nominated for the Outstanding Thesis Award. By that evening, my roommate's boyfriend had already commented—claiming I'd slept with our professor and faked my entire thesis.
My roommate swore she'd handle it.
She didn't.
A used condom appeared at my lab bench. Photos of a woman leaving my advisor's building at 2 a.m. wen...

I was Ethan Blake's perfect mistress for five years, adhering faithfully to his rules of secrecy and obedience.

I knew his coffee preferences, his pre-meeting anxieties, yet it wasn't until his arranged-marriage partner returned that I understood I was merely a replaceable 'item' in his life plan.

When my mother passed and the pressure of medical bills vanished, I realized for the first time — t...

As a regular student, I never expected to fit into the world of trust fund kids. But this real estate heiress reached out to me, said she'd show me how the other half lives, even promised to introduce me to New England's most powerful heir.

I thought she'd be my friend. Thought she actually cared. I even fell for him.

Until she framed me for stealing confidential school files. Until he said, "Ju...

The idea came from Cora.
She ran into the kitchen while I was making dinner, wrapped both arms around my waist, and looked up at me.
"Mommy, can we go to Grandma Ellen's? Just us two? Just us girls?"
"Why?" I asked.
She thought about it, very serious. "Because every time I wake up and you're not home, I miss you. Even when Daddy's there, it's different." A pause. "Grandma Ellen probably misses you...

When the pain started, my mother-in-law called me a monster, then drove off like a madwoman. My doctor slit his own throat in front of me. My husband locked me away "for my safety."
I thought they didn't want my baby. That they were horrified by the child I carried.
But I was wrong.
The thing growing inside me was never my child at all.

My daughter helped my husband cheat.

My ten-year-old begged me to take her to a summer camp in Italy. My husband looked at her like she hung the moon. Booked the tickets right there.

I thought I was the luckiest mom alive.

Then I checked the pet camera from overseas.

There he was, fucking my daughter's riding instructor on our couch.

But what really killed me? What he said, "Don't worry. Nina...

Connor Mitchell and I are the golden couple of our industry. Everyone sees him as the devoted husband, always bringing me soup when I work late into the night.

On our fifth wedding anniversary, he gave me an expensive diamond necklace and posted something sweet on Instagram. The comments were all variations of the same thing: jealousy.

I used to believe it too.

Until I cut my trip to Europe sho...

My husband, Arthur, forced me to take private training sessions with his buddy Marcus, saying my body wasn’t good enough for him to really enjoy himself in bed. But on the very first day, Marcus started getting handsy with me.

“Coach, stop. I’m here to work out, not have an affair,” I bit back a moan, trying to push away the “help” he was giving me with my squats.

What I didn’t expect was for hi...

My cousin stole thirty thousand dollars from our dying grandmother.
Not for an emergency. Not for bills.
For liposuction.
Then she told everyone I did it. Said I was jealous of her figure — that I'd drained Grandma's cardiac surgery fund because I wanted to look different. And the terrible part is, everyone believed her. My boyfriend. My uncle and aunt. Every single person who'd watched me grow up...

Everyone knows that Qin Sicheng is desperately in love with me. To cure my depression, he gave up the opportunity to study abroad and stayed by my side.
But on the day of my birthday banquet, he disappeared.
When I found him in a corner of the back garden, he was pitifully clutching the hem of my best friend Qiao Anran's dress.
That man—usually so devoted and obedient to me—now had red-rimmed eyes...

I was the Sinclair family's lost daughter, missing for fifteen years. The day they found me, I thought I'd finally found the home I'd always dreamed of.

I didn't know they only brought me back to keep their other daughter alive. The one with the rare blood disease.

For three years, they drained my blood over and over. Took my bone marrow once.

My birth parents told me, *"Eloise is fragile. You'...

Five years. That's what I gave Vaelor, Crown Prince of the Dark Elves.
I was already dressed for the betrothal ceremony when I caught his voice through the gap in the council hall door.
"You're really going through with it? The human?"
"Of course. The Alliance has kept a blade at our throats for years. Their leader's apprentice, given to us in marriage—that puts it away."
"But if she suspects—"
"S...

Three months after my miscarriage, at the celebration dinner he hosts for my "recovery," he tells his partners in French, "She's just a trophy wife. Doesn't understand basic business."

"What about that new assistant? The twenty-two-year-old?"

"So much smarter," he laughs. "And in bed? Way more exciting."

They think I don't understand. To everyone here, I'm just the stay-at-home wife who gave up...

Five years ago, I stepped in front of a crossbow bolt for Lucian Vael, and he turned me into a vampire before I had the chance to say no.
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 bloo...

Since marrying into the Sterling family, I've been pregnant three times. Not one of them survived.

Every time the DNA test report arrived, my mother-in-law would drag me to the clinic for an abortion.

They said the fetus had genetic defects. But I secretly went to an outside hospital for tests, and the report clearly stated everything was normal.

After my third miscarriage, I followed my in-law...