9748 Book(s) Related to the alpha my sister threw away

At 17, I saved William from the black market.
At 22, he crossed half the globe to marry me with two million dollars.
I built his empire for him, turning him into the biggest arms dealer in the Americas.
Then Karen appeared, and our seven years turned to ashes.
I finally saw the truth:
The roses he gave me were the ones Karen had rejected.
His so-called love was nothing but a hypocritical act for money.
To him, I was just a prop for show, a tool for his business, and a machine for sex.

Six months ago, my parents started fostering a girl named Lila Mercer.
Six months ago, Mom repainted the guest room and strung fairy lights over the bed. My room still has the same furniture I've had since I was twelve.
Six months ago, Dad started coming home for Sunday dinner. Not for me. I'd been eating alone at the counter for years by then.
Six months ago, Mom posted a photo of the two of them at the farmers market. Caption: our family is growing. I saw it during third period and locked my phone hard enough to crack the case.
So when I picked up the family iPad tonight and a notification popped up from an app I didn't recognize, I wasn't shocked. Just tired of being right.
The app was called Beacon.

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 equipment room and used my last breath to call my boyfriend while lying in a pool of blood, all I heard was: "Grace, quit the drama! Bella's accepting her award on stage!"

On stage, thunderous applause erupted as Bella lifted the "Young Gymnast of the Year" trophy.

And I drew my final breath.

When they returned home triumphant, thinking I had run away in a tantrum, they had no idea I was already dead right under their noses.

There are no unmated males in our pack.
Every she-wolf in Hollowfen is promised to someone when she turns eighteen. We just don't get to know who until we walk into the Choosing Hall.
Girls go in wearing white. They come out flushed, shaking, barely able to stand. Some laugh. Some cry. None of them talk about what happens inside.
My sister Thessaly turned eighteen this spring. Gran told her she couldn't attend the Choosing.
She went anyway. She came back on shaking legs, with blood between her thighs and a smile she couldn't wipe off her face.

My stepsister and I tumbled down the stairs together. As someone with a blood clotting disorder, my spleen ruptured—I was bleeding internally, desperate for surgery to stop it.
But my mother—the renowned chief of surgery—pulled every specialist from the ER. To consult on my stepsister's condition.
All she had was a sprained ankle. Not even a scratch. Yet mom insisted on running every test in the book. And me? Left alone on that cold floor, bleeding out, half my body already soaked in blood.
I clutched at her pants, begging her to save me. But she kicked my hand away and looked at me with pure disgust.
"Lily, are you really so desperate for a man's attention that you'd pull a cheap stunt like this? Your sister's foot is swollen—and you have the nerve to fake your death here?"
In the end, I died alone in a corner of that ignored ER.
But when they wheeled my cold body out of the morgue—and they finally learned about my clotting disorder—
That mother who claimed to hate me completely lost her mind.

I am a hero. The saint's husband.
A country boy chosen by the temple.
I fight, I fight, I fight.
All for the saint, for the temple.
But it wasn't until I was drained of blood and dying on the altar that I finally heard clearly what the saint and her childhood sweetheart were saying:
"If you become a hero and marry the saint, you'll have to surrender your soul to the temple. I don't want you to lose your soul."
"Then let's just find some country boy to be the hero. It won't matter if he dies."
Oh, so that's how it is.
You should have said so earlier.
I can defeat the Demon Lord just fine without the saint.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the wedding ceremony.
This time, someone else should be on the altar.

Silver poisoning struck, and my mother's life hung by a thread.
I knelt and begged my partner Selene to use the 100,000 gold coins from our war spoils to purchase Moonlight Holy Water, but she coldly refused with a sneer: "An ordinary silver poison patient isn't worth wasting resources on." She then turned and spent 80,000 coins on a necklace for her male lover.
My mother died in my arms as I ground my teeth and swallowed my tears of blood.
But when the patrol came to collect the body, she finally discovered—the one sent to be buried deep in the mass grave wasn't my mother at all, but her own biological mother.
She had personally buried her own mom!

The chieftainess returned from the poisonous fog with a swollen belly.
She announced that she carried the child of a god—a child who would bring hope to the entire base.
Only I knew that what she bore was no divine offspring, but a demon that would devour every soul in the base.
Because in my previous life, I was the one it had gnawed to death, alive...

Fate chose her.
Power made him refuse.
Ruby was never the Luna Troy wanted.
The girl with silver eyes and no wolf the pack whispered about behind her back. The girl he rejected publicly on the day that was supposed to be their wedding and mating ceremony, choosing pride and power over the bond that tied them together.
Humiliated before the entire pack, Ruby walked away from the man destined to love her.
And when Troy realized too late that rejecting her had been the biggest mistake of his life, Ruby refused to come back.
So on the day Ruby was supposed to marry another and finally start over, he stole her from her own wedding and forced her back into his world—back into a marriage she never wanted.
Now trapped beside the man who broke her heart, Ruby is no longer the weak girl Troy remembers. The years apart changed her. Hardened her. And the power inside her has grown into something the entire werewolf world fears.
A power strong enough to stop wars.
Strong enough to make kings kneel.
Suddenly, everyone wants a piece of her.
The council sees her as a weapon. Rival Alphas see her as a prize. Enemies lurking in the shadows want her power for themselves. And Troy, the man who once shattered her, will burn down the world before he lets anyone take her again.
But forced proximity only reopens old wounds.
Because beneath Ruby’s anger still lingers the bond neither of them escaped. Beneath Troy’s cruelty hides obsession, regret, and a dangerous love that has only grown more possessive with time.
Now caught between revenge and desire, freedom and fate, Ruby must decide if Troy deserves a second chance…
—or if the Alpha who ruined her should finally lose everything.

A short contemporary domestic-drama romance. Clean to sweet. Happily ever after.

My husband's family slid the folder across the table — sign here, family helps family, it's just a signature.

What they didn't know: I had almost three million dollars in an account none of them could find. I silenced the alert before the number could glow.

They think we're the broke ones. For four years they've bled the kindest man I know dry, dressing every demand up as love and cashing it. So I let them keep believing it — and I built a wall they will never see.

They're about to find out what happens when you spend a lifetime underestimating the quiet one.

And this time, I'm not the one who pays.

Three torturous years hauling bodies on the mortuary night shift, and I'd finally scraped together the cash for my brother Charles's heart transplant.
He just waved it off.
"My heart is fine. Mom and Dad didn't die in that gang war, either. I orchestrated the hit. You were the only casualty."
Nearby, my husband, Gerald, casually lit a cigar to deliver his own confession. "I never went bankrupt. 'Laying low' was just my excuse to avoid squeezing into that dingy funeral home dorm with you. I've been at the Long Island estate."
"I was going to punish you for another three years," Charles added, "but the stench of formaldehyde on you is nauseating. We couldn't take it anymore."
I froze, still clutching the credit card. Charles plucked the plastic from my numb fingers and shoved his phone screen in my face. A banking app stared back at me.
Balance: exactly zero.
"My name is still on the joint account," he sneered, tossing the card into the trash. "I drained it this morning. That blood money you made bagging stiffs is being handed out to street junkies as we speak. We'd never touch that filth."
Before the sheer absurdity of it could suffocate me, my parents walked in. Flanked by bodyguards, they kept their distance, eyeing me like a plague rat.
"You thought being the biological daughter gave you the right to ruthlessly bully Violet. We simply wanted to put you in your place."
"Swear you'll never cross Violet again, and you can remain a Falcone," my mother added coolly. "Otherwise, you're dead to us."
In the stifling silence that followed, my phone buzzed. A text from my oncologist.
[Mrs. Castello, the results are back. It's terminal. Do you consent to initiating the hospice and DNR protocols we discussed?]

In a sleek design world split between polished appearances and buried cruelty, Mara Ellison has spent years trapped behind a voice no one wanted to hear. While her family rewrites her illness and her fiancé speaks over her in the name of love, stolen records, public humiliation, and old betrayals force her to reclaim her life. Quiet but cutting, this is a story of emotional abuse, identity theft, and hard-won selfhood—framed by rain-soaked streets, hospital corridors, cold glass conference rooms, and a woman finally stepping into the light with her own voice.

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 from upstairs was their laughter celebrating Leila. Even Justin—the boy I'd loved since we were kids—texted calling me a fucking psycho.

As I drew my last breath, I heard Leila's soft voice outside the door: "Rest in peace, sister."

Now I'm a ghost, watching them lose their minds when the truth comes out.

My parents and twin sister faked their own deaths so she could steal my college acceptance.

I believed it. Sobbed until I couldn't breathe when the cops showed me photos of the burnt yacht. Thought my words—"I hope you all die"—had somehow made it happen.

Two weeks later, I found my sister's backup Instagram: "Finally ditched the boring sister! Bahamas is paradise 🏖"

Something inside me snapped.

Wanna play dead? Stay dead.

I took their death certificates. Canceled their social security numbers. Drained every joint account—every last cent. Sold the house to John, the kind of guy even cops don't mess with.

One month later, they came home tanned and loaded with designer bags, expecting to find me broken on the streets.

What greeted them instead were cold gun barrels pointed at their heads.

“Dad… please… help me…” I pleaded, my shattered ribs piercing my lungs, blood soaking the stretcher.
But Richard, the hospital's top surgeon and my biological father, didn't even glance at me. Instead, he rushed to the next bed.
“Don't be afraid, Chloe. I'm here,” he cooed to his stepdaughter, who merely had a tiny scratch on her arm. “Get the best equipment over here now!” he roared.
As the heart monitor flatlined and my soul left my broken body, I realized the chilling truth: in the choice between life and death, my father gladly let me die.

Not long after I transferred to this school, I became the bullies’ favorite target.
They didn’t like how quiet I was or how pale I looked, so they casually slapped me with a nickname: “vampire.”
It started with shoves in the hallway and jeers in the classroom, escalated to messing with my drink, then stuffing trash into my locker.
They treated my silence as permission and wrapped every provocation in the same excuse: “Just a joke.”
Until that night, when humiliation wasn’t enough. They lured me into a tiny storage room behind the auditorium—locked the door, killed the lights, set up a fixed camera—ready to strap me to a chair and film an “execution” video that would make sure I could never hold my head up at this school again.
What they didn’t know was that the nickname wasn’t a joke. It was the one time they got the truth right.
I really am a vampire.

I once believed that if I was obedient enough, my birth family would finally love me. Instead, they gave everything to Anna, the fake heiress—my competition spot, my reputation, even my kidney.
Then I opened my eyes and returned to the year it all began.
This time, I won’t beg. I won’t yield. My achievements, my dignity, and my life belong to me.
When everyone called me vicious, Damian Sterling draped his jacket over my shoulders and asked in a low voice, “Am I an outsider?”
I leaned into him and smiled. “Of course not.”
But soon I discovered he was being slowly poisoned—and the culprit might be someone closest to him. Worse, the truth behind my death in my previous life may be darker than I ever imagined…

1

The day he proposed, Atticus knelt before me, holding the Hale family's heirloom necklace.
I thought I had finally survived the ordeal.
After eight years of unrequited love, being humiliated by his sister, nitpicked by his mother, and mocked by the city's socialites for being unworthy of the Hales... Until this very moment, when he personally fastened the heirloom around my neck. Everyone saw it. I, Clara, was finally accepted by the Hale family.
Tears in my eyes, I said yes, thinking it was the happiest moment of my life.
But just days after putting on that necklace, bizarre red rashes crawled up my neck. My pale skin rotted away piece by piece, and my internal organs went into irreversible failure.
The most absurd part? The exact same day I started rotting, his dying mother miraculously cured her terminal illness, and his sister's half-destroyed face was restored to flawless perfection.
Disfigured and barely looking human, I threw myself off the Harbour Bridge—
I opened my eyes, and I was back on the day of the proposal.

I used to be the most envied female on the continent. Three mates: werewolf Alpha Kael, vampire lord Dorian, elven ranger Seth. All of them mine.
Then a half-elf drifter named Ayla showed up, and everything I had started belonging to her instead, one piece at a time.
Kael once pulled a fang from his own mouth to make me a necklace. The day it broke, he was too busy licking another female's cut finger to notice.
Dorian spent two weeks brewing me blood wine. Then he handed the cup straight to her, because apparently I "looked healthy enough to go without."
Seth carved me a charm from sacred elven wood. I watched her face take shape under his knife instead of mine.
They kept telling me I needed to grow up. So when a beast's poison was spreading through my body, and I blew the whistle they swore would bring them running no matter what—
No one came.
Three years later, I walked back into their world on a Siren prince's arm.
This time, they're the ones begging for my forgiveness.

It was my second year back in this house.
My name was Evelyn, the biological daughter who got lost in Central Park at seven.
During the ten years I stayed missing, I fed pigs on a remote farm in Eastern Europe. In weather that dropped to dozens below zero, I got beaten for working too slowly.
I did not get brought back until I was seventeen, covered in scars, returned to this so-called “home,” luxurious to the point of being blinding.
To be honest, every time I watched them sit on silk sofas and sip afternoon tea, then thought about the decade I spent crawling through hell, hatred made my teeth ache.
That hatred stood between us and made the house feel like an icebox. We lived under the same roof, yet we were not even as close as strangers.

I'm a folklorist. Folk traditions are my field.
At first, I thought it was just an ordinary rhyme, a scrap of oral history set to a tune.
"A rag doll in the mire, swinging high up to the sky..."
We all thought it was just a prank.
Until the first person drowned in the bog. Then the second fell from a tower crane. Then the third somehow drowned in a bathtub.
I stared at the black symbol surfacing on the back of my hand.
And then I saw the dean—the one who was supposed to be dead—standing outside my dorm window in a long black dress, smiling at me with impossible tenderness...

I almost died giving birth to my daughter. The doctors gave me a thirty percent chance of survival — and I took it, because I thought a child might finally make my husband choose home over her.

I was wrong.

I stood in the hallway and listened to Kael tell his mother that I was "more resilient" — that the risks of childbirth were too serious for the woman he truly loved, so it had to be me. I was not his wife. I was a vessel.

Then my daughter, the child I had bled for, looked me in the eyes and said she wished Ivy were her mother instead.

That was the night I stopped waiting.

I filed for divorce. I walked out. I reclaimed the research career I had abandoned for a man who never saw me. And I told myself I was done.

What I didn't expect was the little boy I pulled back from the edge of suffocation — a child with no parents, a face I couldn't stop feeling I recognized, and a medical robot I had designed with my own hands tucked inside his coat.

Who is he? And why does finding him feel like the beginning of something I'm not ready for?

I spent ten years following Ashton around like it was my job. He said jump, I jumped. He said he was hungry, I went and made him a sandwich. His homework, his fights, his messes — I handled all of it. I thought that's what being close to someone meant.
Then at the fall pep rally, in front of two thousand people, he strapped me to a platform, blasted me with paint, and let his girlfriend laugh at me through a megaphone.
I was the punchline. I threw up on camera. The video went viral before I even hit the ground.
So I did the one thing nobody expected — I vanished. New school, new city, new number. Every trace of him, gone.
I thought that was the end of it.
But Ashton doesn't let go of what he thinks is his. And what he's willing to do to drag me back? I wasn't even close to ready for that.

I gave up MIT for them in my last life.
They paid me back by stealing my lab notes, framing me for misconduct, and choosing her over me when I drowned.
I watched them choose her over me a hundred times
Now I’m 17 again. I block all three and fly to MIT.
They think I’m throwing a tantrum.
Wait till they find out who saved them out of that cave—

On college application day, my two childhood sweethearts, Blaise and Kieran, were completely bewitched by Mari. The manipulative girl talked them into abandoning their prestigious university spots to attend a small community college with her. I tried desperately to stop them, even contacting their parents to prevent them from ruining their futures.
Yet when Mari ended up dead months later, the blind boys blamed everything on me. They tricked me to the cliff and shoved me down brutally, making me pay for a crime I never committed.
Miraculously, I am reborn on this exact day. This time, I will not interfere. I will watch silently and let them bear the consequences of their own foolish choices.

Violet loses her parents as a young child and is brought up by an elderly aunt. As she approaches her 17th birthday her life is turned upside down when her Aunt tells her that the life she has built with her must end - she has to go and learn about the background of her father. Secrets have been kept and those secrets turn Violet's life on it's head!

Not only does she have to accept that her father wasn't who she thought he was, but she too, is something she didn't even realise existed! It seems a whole plan had been in place for if something happened to her parents, including learning of her heritage and all it means.
So, Violet is sent to Autumn Moon Pack, where an elderly relative of her father's still lives to give Violet chance to be surrounded by others like her. In truth, she plans to learn what she needs to learn what she needs to and leave to live alone like her father before her.
But will meeting the handsome Beta, who seems quite taken with her, change her mind? And could there be yet more secrets to be revealed?

For seventeen years, Chloe was the Whitmores’ hidden spare daughter. They harvested her marrow, liver and cornea, then plotted to take her heart for their beloved adopted daughter. Fleeing death through a storm, she is rescued by ruthless power broker Victoria Kane. A faint crescent scar unearths a secret: Chloe is Victoria’s long-lost birth daughter. Together, they will destroy the greedy family that fed on her

After seven sleepless nights, I started seeing the exact probability of someone killing me.
At my birthday banquet, my stepmother smiled warmly, linking her arm through mine. Hovering above her head was 70%.
I had just overheard her plotting to swallow every cent of the inheritance my father left me.
My half-brother leaned in to hand me a drink. Above his head was 55%.
He was planning to sell me to a creep willing to drop seven figures on a woman.
Terrified out of my mind, I threw myself into the arms of my fiancé, Soren.
Above his head was a reassuring 0%, pure and bright as white light.
Then, with the whole room watching, he got down on one knee and pulled out a massive emerald ring.
"Marry me, Greer."
Crying tears of relief, I said yes and offered him my trembling left hand.
But the very second the ring slipped onto my ring finger, his 0% suddenly shattered into a blood-red 100%.

I made 17 calls for help. My sister answered every one—and hung up.

For 48 hours, I lay dying in Pine Ridge Forest, texting desperate pleas to my family. They thought I ran away. The truth? My sister deleted every message while I begged for my life.

Three months dead. Zero funeral. My family didn't even notice I was gone.

Now the police have recovered my phone. Every deleted text. Every ignored call. Every lie my sister told to cover up what she did.

"Please. I can't feel my legs. I'm sorry I exist. Just don't let me die here."

They wanted me invisible. I gave them what they wanted.

Now they'll spend the rest of their lives wishing they'd answered when I called.

On Day 100 of the global heat collapse, surface temperature climbed to a hopeless 70°C.

To keep my girlfriend from being roasted alive, I drove my ice ability past the limit and became her personal human air conditioner.

But when my ability core was on the verge of shattering and I collapsed coughing blood, she stole the last two bottles of water from my pack and climbed into someone else’s temperature-controlled car without looking back.

Before she left, she tossed the life-saving lump of ice I’d condensed with half my life onto the blistering asphalt like garbage.

“Jack, I’m sick of your cooling cutting out any second. I’m not staying here to die with you.”

She didn’t know—

The moment that ice turned into white vapor, the broken ability core in my chest—the one ruined because of her—evolved in the abyss.

In my past life, I stood on the execution platform, watching the entire city—brainwashed by the Saintess—smile as they willingly degenerated into ghouls.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to exactly one month ago.

I smashed the knight's sword that symbolized my honor. Dragging a high-tier ghoul into my basement, I slashed my left wrist open with a heavy blade.

Stripping away all the Holy Light protecting my body, I brutally shoved my bleeding wrist straight into the ghoul's gaping maw.

My bones let out muffled, explosive cracking sounds as they were eroded by the tyrannical ghoul virus. I crushed the reinforced steel bedframe out of shape with my bare hands.

A fire broke out at the fraternity party. I desperately pushed Mia, my brother's girlfriend, out of harm's way, only to get pinned down by a falling beam myself. My brother Liam chose to save Mia first, kicking away my oxygen mask as he left. Mia then locked the door, leaving me to burn alive.

Yet they thought I was throwing a tantrum and playing hide-and-seek. They called me "toxic" and "attention-seeking" on social media, even freezing my credit cards.

When he found out I’d injured my leg and couldn't scrub in to deliver the billionaire's baby tomorrow, my boyfriend’s first reaction wasn't concern. He gritted his teeth and snapped, "Hannah, you did this on purpose, didn't you? Why today of all days? Are you really throwing away your entire career just to spite me?!"
I didn't argue. I just stared at the medical chart labeled Eleanor Whitlock, my fingers trembling.
In my past life, I took this assignment. I was drugged and locked in a supply closet. A few hours later, the mother and baby were dead—and the security footage showed a nurse with my face poisoning them. I died in a damp prison cell, branded a murderer.
Reborn into this life, I just wanted to escape this fatal trap.
But somehow, the security cameras had once again captured "me" walking into that delivery room.

I spent seven years being Preston Maddox's personal errand girl.

Did his homework, took his father's belt for him, cut off every friend I had because he said he didn't like me talking to other guys.

I told myself that if I was good enough, patient enough, he'd eventually see me.

Then came the school's centennial gala. In front of everyone, he locked me, a girl with severe aquaphobia, inside a water tank filled to the brim with ice-cold water, so Vanessa Sinclair could have a pretty backdrop for her ballet number.

The audience roared. He watched Vanessa take her bow with this soft, adoring smile on his face. The only time he glanced at me was when he noticed I'd made a mess, and all he did was wrinkle his nose.

The water rose over my head, and something in me finally understood.

To Preston Maddox, I wasn't even worth as much as a dog.

If a dog was drowning, its owner would at least care.

Me? I just disgusted him.

My younger sister, Freya, was preparing for her advanced training in New York the following week, so she dragged me to the dance studio to help her correct her movements. I put on my dance shoes as usual and stood in the center of the floor, ready to demonstrate a turn.

The moment my foot slipped, I didn't even have time to react.

My body hit the ground hard, and the sharp pain from the back of my head nearly made me lose consciousness. I lay on the cold floor, my throat tight, unable to even cry out for help.

When Mother rushed in, she didn't spare me a glance.

She immediately helped Freya up and took her to the hospital. I missed the critical window for treatment and died on the way to the hospital.

Three years ago, on their way to attend my graduation art exhibition, the cruise ship carrying my fiancé and my family caught fire.

Over the past three years, I downed sleeping pills countless times, desperately wanting to follow them into the afterlife. Every single time, my adopted sister, Serena, saved me, crying hysterically as she shoved her fingers down my throat to make me throw up.

"They are already gone! Harper, you can't keep living in the past. You have to live on for their sake!"

After fainting from yet another high fever and being rushed to the hospital, I was diagnosed with terminal leukemia.

The doctor said I had a month left, at most.

I refused their advice to find a bone marrow match. Clutching my family's belongings, I decided to go back to our old estate in the suburbs for one last look.

While I was walking in a daze, a little boy running wildly crashed hard into my legs.

A male voice that had haunted my dreams for years rang out from behind me. "Alistair, if you keep running off, what will you do if Mommy and Daddy don't want you anymore?"

In an instant, it felt like I had been plunged into freezing water. I froze in place.

My adopted sister, Cordelia, conspired with her biological mother to harvest my organs alive, yet she had the audacity to claim I paid thugs to rape her.
My biological parents didn't bother to ask for the truth. They cursed me, calling me a vicious bastard, and threatened to break my legs.
My fiancé, Caspian, coldly announced the cancellation of our engagement, declaring he would marry the very murderer who killed me.
I had been dead for exactly three days. No one cared. My body was rotting back in a moldy storage room.
Through it all, my soul was trapped in the manor, forced to witness this absurd farce.
But what they didn't expect was that when they finally learned of my death—
Everyone went completely insane.

I was their real daughter.

The lost princess they found, brought home, and promised to protect.

But every time she cried, I was the one punished.

Every time she bled, I was the one accused.

When she disappeared, they said it was my fault. They tore my memories apart to prove it.

Fine , only if they stand where I stood, feel what I felt, will they ever know my pain.

"You were meant to be my death. Instead, you've become my damnation."
Aria Thornwell has spent three years as a healer in her town, attempting to forget the night her former fiancé publically humiliated her by selecting her affluent stepsister instead—taking Aria's family fortune with him. Now, she lives quietly, utilizing her skill to aid the underprivileged while her stepfamily flaunts their stolen fortune.

But on the winter solstice, everything changes. She's chosen as the ceremonial bride for the vampires' holy Winter Feast—a "honor" that guarantees death at daybreak following the Christmas Eve rite. Dragged to the Crimson Vale with five other human tributes, Aria is prepared to meet her fate with dignity.

Until she meets him.

Lord Sebastian Thorne, the ancient vampire who has presided over the Winter Feast for eight centuries, is meant to drain her at dawn following the binding ritual. It's tradition. It's law. It's survival—the ceremonial blood maintains the vampire realm for another year.

But as Sebastian's lips brush her throat in the ceremonial hall, something unbelievable happens. Her blood doesn't simply sustain him—it wakes something in him that's been dead for generations. And in a move that shocks the whole vampire court, he refuses to complete the rite.
"This one is mine," he proclaims, his old strength sweeping the hall. "Anyone who touches her answers to me."

Trapped in the Obsidian Palace as Sebastian's "protected bride," Aria discovers three frightening truths: Sebastian isn't protecting her out of mercy—he's dying from an ancient curse, and her blood is the only thing keeping him alive past Christmas; the vampire court will do anything to kill her and reinstate the ritual; and her "ordinary" healer's gift is actually a rare and dangerous power that vampire nobility has been hunting for generations.

They gave him 24 hours to hand over the girl.
He gave them 30 seconds to regret .

Jack Cole was supposed to be nobody—just another quiet college student.
No records. No past. No trace he ever existed.

But when a powerful family tries to take his cousin as part of a dirty deal…
and a billionaire heiress becomes the target of a professional kill team…

Something buried comes back.

The campus?
Just his cover.

The truth?
He’s a weapon trained for war—
the kind governments deny, and enemies never see coming.

Now the richest family in the city wants him dead.
A private army is moving in.
And a global biotech empire is pulling strings from the shadows.

They think they’re hunting him.

They’re wrong.

Jack isn’t running.
He’s choosing who dies first.

I burn through eighty years of my life raising three dogs that turn around and tear into me.

My vampire husband, Damian, used to be an outcast covered in festering sores, cursed to fear the sun. I cut my wrist and gave up thirty years of my life so he could become the most powerful man among the bloodlines, in control of half the world's wealth. Cold and ruthless to everyone else, he only ever bares his fangs for me.

Knox, the werewolf boy I grew up with, was born with a genetic flaw that kept him from ever shifting. I gave up another twenty years so he could have the strongest bloodline of all. Wild and reckless, he used to swear he'd carry me on his back for the rest of his life.

Julian, my human brother, got burned beyond recognition saving me from a fire. I spent my last thirty years giving him back a face people would pay a fortune for. He used to send crates of his paintings to my room, the kind of work people would kill to own.

Then a woman named Daphne shows up, and all three of them lose their minds over her.

And somehow I become the jealous, vicious wife everyone wants gone.

She cries that I pushed her, so they drive blades of blood straight through my bones.

She says I'm cruel to the staff, so they break my legs in front of a crowd.

And when I'm dying, they drain my blood to keep her alive.

If you're all going to treat the life I gave you like trash, then I'm taking it back. The strength, the face, the life. All of it.

[God, I take it back. I want everything I gave them returned to me.]

Every night when my daughter comes home, she looks different.
On the first night, a little of her hair was gone.
On the second night, she was missing one hand.
On the third night, half of her body had vanished.
I jolted awake in a sudden start, thankful it had only been a nightmare.
Right then, my daughter came back home.
A patch of her hair was missing.

For seven years, Rose Bennett was Ryan Knight’s secret wife.
While all of New York believed Samantha Hikk would become Mrs. Knight, Rose silently endured a cold marriage to a man who never loved her.
Until one night, Samantha is rushed into Rose’s emergency room pregnant… and Ryan is the one protecting her.
That is the night Rose stops loving him.
What Ryan never knew was that Rose had already given birth to his daughter years ago after he rejected both mother and child without hesitation.
So Rose walks away—with only two suitcases, a hidden daughter, and the shattered remains of seven years.
But the woman Ryan abandoned is no ordinary wife.
Rose is the hidden genius behind Aetheris Medical AI, the revolutionary system about to change the entire medical world.
As Rose rises to the top, becoming untouchable, powerful, and impossible to replace, Ryan finally realizes the devastating truth—
He didn’t lose a woman who loved him.
He lost the only woman he would ever love.
And by then, even their daughter no longer calls him father.

In the sixth year of my life as a Scale-Stripper, I finally gathered the hundredth vial of Dragon Breath Essence.

I knelt before the altar, cradling the crystal bottle in both hands. The golden light swirling within it cast a warm glow across my scarred knuckles. Six years — six years of wandering the most dangerous battlefields of the Five Clans and the plague-ridden wastelands, using dragon breath to heal the wounded. For every person I saved, I had peeled away a living scale from my own flesh, baring the raw, bleeding meat beneath.

Seven scales left on my back.

Only seven.

But as long as it saved my brother Lucien, it was worth it.

Six years ago, during the Dragon Slaughter War, our parents had been assassinated by humans. An ancient curse had struck Lucien; his scales were crumbling away, day by day. He told me that only a hundred vials of Dragon Breath Essence could break the curse.

I held the crystal bottle out to him, my voice trembling with barely contained emotion. "Lucien, a hundred vials. We finally have enough."

Lucien took the bottle and glanced at it.

Then he tossed it off the altar without a second thought.

I went rigid.

Lucien stood at the top of the altar.

"I was never cursed," he said.

My hands were still cupped in the shape of holding the bottle, all ten fingers suspended in midair.

"Our parents never died, either."

"The Dragon Slaughter War six years ago, I planned it. The only one left crippled, with broken wings, was you."

I am originally of royal vampire bloodline.
But because of one sentence from my adoptive father, I hid in the human world for decades.
The Church called me a "filthy heretic" because vampire blood flowed in my veins.
Yet they burned a blind girl to death, her crime being that she "couldn't see."
They burned an old blacksmith to death, his crime being that he wanted to learn medicine.
They burned a young mother to death, her crime being that she refused to be violated by the captain of the holy knights.
Bathed in holy light, I realized for the first time—
The demons... are in the light.

The Percy Family Heir's Scandal Leaks Again!

Cecilia Davis sat curled up in the master bedroom, scrolling through photos of Edward Percy and Jessica Brown.

The photos were taken secretly, but from a sharp angle.

Through a car window — the two of them, going at it hard.

Cecilia let out a cold laugh, tossed the photos into the trash, and felt a wave of deep exhaustion wash over her eyes.

"Do I really have to cut it?"

"Ma'am, this is Mr. Percy's request. Only if you cut your hair as short as Ms. Brown's can we clear up last night's rumors. Of course, you don't have to go — that is, if you never want to see your brother again."

Edward's assistant Leo spoke with a dismissive air, not a trace of respect in his eyes.

As if she, the so-called Mrs. Percy, was nothing more than a joke that nobody needed.

And honestly, that's exactly what she was.

Lydia's POV

"The patient in Bed 7 has been here three months now, right? Not a single family visit."

"Her husband just pays the bills and leaves. Doesn't even look at her. Poor thing."

I lay in the hospital bed, listening to two nurses whispering outside my door. My fingers rested weakly against the edge of the mattress.

Three months ago, I was diagnosed with late-stage cancer.

My husband, Sebastian Carter, came once. He stood in the doorway—didn't step inside—signed the papers with a blank expression, and never came back.

Sebastian was a writer. He locked himself in his study all day, leaving me to spend night after night alone in the living room. We lived under the same roof like strangers from different worlds.

I'd grown used to this hollow marriage. I didn't even bother calling him anymore.

Footsteps echoed outside.

I turned my head toward the door. Sebastian stood there in his familiar charcoal coat, his face expressionless.

"You came." I was surprised. I forced myself to sit up, my body weak and trembling.

Sebastian didn't answer. He walked straight to the bedside and set a document on the nightstand. "Sign it."

I picked it up. The words at the top read: 'Divorce Agreement.'