Trauma

I spent six years trying to warm an emotionally distant husband and raising a son who learned to copy his coldness. On the day my civil assault case went to trial, they flew to Switzerland to comfort my husband's ex-girlfriend. When my five-year-old admitted he had deleted the strongest video evidence because he didn't want Vanessa to cry, the last bit of love in me went quiet. By the time they re...

I had been Lucan Ferretti's wife for five years. I had also been the woman who took a bullet meant for him.
Four years of fertility treatments. Four years of empty rooms where a nursery should have been. Then, the day I finally get a positive test, I find something else: two secret sons, funded by my husband's money, waiting in a house I was never supposed to find.
Their names? The ones Lucan and ...

I was once the most exquisite rose in New York's underworld.
Leander Castello's wife. The mafia godfather's treasured queen. The woman everyone envied.
I thought he would be my salvation, my forever.
Until he snapped me in half with his own hands and threw me into the filthiest pit like trash.
He said he needed to teach me what betrayal costs.
So I was handed over to the Mexican cartel boss, Carlo...

My father is the youngest chief of cardiac surgery in the country, the ace of his field.
His hands were the best in the business. Yet on the day my mother had a sudden heart attack and needed an emergency transfer, he turned her away, claiming every operating room was full.
Later, someone photographed him on a sunlit lawn at a country club on the edge of town, showering another woman's daughter wi...

"Priest, I'm requesting to transfer my registry to the Forbidden Lands. And I need the materials to forge a Moonshadow Puppet. In three days, it will stand in my place at the mating altar."

I spoke into the communication rune in my palm.

From the other end, the Moon Priest's voice spiked with warning. "Aria, do you have any idea what you're saying? The Forbidden Lands is an abyss of no ret...

Ten years into my marriage, I'd traded my paintbrush for a spatula and turned into Mrs. Holloway.

Ever since my sister Brooke moved in, my husband Bennett and my daughter Lucy had picked up a habit. Anytime Brooke and I disagreed, they put it to a vote.

On my birthday I wanted steak. Two hands went up for the salad bar Brooke liked. When I hadn't slept in weeks and wanted to see a therapist, the...

To celebrate his startup's funding, my boyfriend Liam forced me to eat a cake baked by his female best friend, Mia.

I immediately smelled peanuts. He knew I was deathly allergic, but he pressured me to take a bite anyway.

When the reaction hit—my throat closing, hives burning my skin—I reached for my EpiPen.

Mia snatched it first.

She turned my only lifeline into a party trick, tossing it in t...

I dropped out of Harvard and took on massive debt to save my dying brother.

For five years, I starved. I worked five jobs a day. I let debt collectors break my ribs just so I could afford his "life-saving" meds.

Until I saw him at a VIP club.
No wheelchair. No illness. Just a bespoke suit and a glass of expensive whiskey.

"You've faked this terminal illness for five years," his friend laughe...

Five years after I walked away from Marcus, the Alpha of the Stonecliff Pack, I received an invitation to celebrate the birth of his heir.
Just as the guard reached for my invitation, Marcus's voice sounded behind me.
"Don't bother. Let her in."
He strode past without a backward glance, already heading toward his guests.
I handed the invitation to the guard anyway and waited until he'd checked e...

The night I found out I was pregnant, my seven-year-old son pointed at a little girl in a mommy vlogger's video on his iPad and said, softly:
"That's my sister."
I laughed and flicked his forehead.
The vlogger lived all the way down in New Orleans. He'd never even met them.
"She has a million followers, sweetie. Don't make stuff up."
"If you want a sister that badly, how about Mommy gives you one?...

The morning of our wedding, Dante Russo led the hit that wiped out my family.
Branded a traitor, stripped of my name, I spent three years scrubbing blood from dog kennels at the docks. I lost my hands, my music, and three babies I never got to hold.
Then I learned the truth: there was no hit. My parents and the man I loved staged it all—to teach me a lesson, because my adopted sister Isabella crie...

I got pregnant the year we could barely afford to eat.

My boyfriend, Mason Caldwell, took out an online loan to pay for the abortion. At least, that was what he told me.

While I was recovering, the best thing I ate was a $2 chicken leg from the discount grocery store.

It broke my heart to watch him work construction all day and deliver food all night. So after three days in bed, I took a servin...

Being born a Moretti daughter means one thing: the family owns you.

In my past life, Vivian thought she had what it took. She promised Dad she could handle it, swore up and down she'd make him proud. Six months later, she'd burned through three generations of work and left us with nothing but an empty shell. Our enemies found her eventually. Broke both her legs.

And me? I married Marco Rossi.

E...

I was dead, and the whole world was celebrating for my sister.

For twenty-two years, I had been the hardest-working but most invisible daughter in the Sterling family, forever living in the shadow of my gymnastics prodigy sister.

Running a high fever, I begged my family to take me to the hospital, only to hear: "Don't you DARE ruin Bella's award ceremony!"

When I was tricked into the abandoned ...

My name is Elena Ross, and I’m a sex addict. This is the secret I guard with medication. But right now, the blizzard has sealed the road and cut off my escape. In this narrow car, the man sitting beside me is the one forbidden fruit I absolutely cannot touch—Silas Thorne. He’s not just my boss; he’s my ex-boyfriend’s stepfather.

The day I get diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, I can finally stop selling plasma.

For five years, I thought I was paying for the fire that killed my parents and son, left my brother disabled. Selling plasma, joining drug trials, doing the worst jobs imaginable, all to pay back a debt that wasn't even real.

The doctor says I have a few weeks left. I clutch the diagnosis report and head home...

My best friend murdered me.

Before the team tryouts, Mia handed me a pink energy drink. I didn't know it was laced with sleeping pills.

Thirty feet in the air. Top of the pyramid. My body went limp, collapsing like a puppet with cut strings.

I can still hear my bones shattering.

Mia threw herself into my fiancé Carter's arms, sobbing: "Oh God, I grabbed the wrong bottle! The vitamins and sleep...

I woke up at twenty-seven again, still tied by a sacred mate bond to the most powerful Alpha in the Northwest. We had twin cubs. Everyone said I was lucky.

Before my first life ended, that bond had helped destroy me.

This time, I took the contract that could dissolve it to my mate's first love.

“Ronan's yours,” I told Vanessa. “The cubs, too. Get his Alpha mark on this, and after the bond-break...

I married the same Mafia Don nine times.

And nine times, he divorced me for the woman he believed had saved his life.

Taviano Ruscello ruled one of New York's most feared Mafia families. Yet whenever Isolde Carenza returned, his own Donna had to step aside.

"She risked her life for me, Vespera. I won't let anyone call her a homewrecker."

Nine weddings. Nine divorces.

Every time Isolde came ho...

On our seventh anniversary, my fiancé left me standing outside the courthouse so he could drive another woman to the hospital. It was the ninety-ninth time he'd called off our wedding for her.
That night, he booked the restaurant where we'd had our first date. He wore the tie I'd given him. For a few minutes, I let myself believe he finally understood.
Then he asked me to eat faster. She wanted de...