5026 Book(s) Related to caught between my stepbrother and his friends

The room went deadly silent. Christopher, the CEO of Sullivan Group, looked at me with pure disgust. "Get this crazy girl out of here! My grandfather is dying, and you're playing sick games?"

But the old man on the bed... his eyes flew open. He stared at me—not at my young, beautiful face, but into my soul. He saw the sketch in my hand. A secret only a mother and her six-year-old son would know.

"Jimmy," I said softly, using the nickname no one had spoken in decades. "Do you remember the thunderstorms?"

Tears streamed down the old man's wrinkled cheeks. The most powerful man in Boston, reached out his frail hand to grasp mine. "Mama?" he choked out, his voice breaking like a small child's. "You came back?"

Christopher froze. The doctors froze. I climbed onto the bed and pulled my 80-year-old son into my arms. "I'm here, baby. Mommy's home."

Alex has never known peace. Between a sick younger brother, parents whose love curdled into daily war, and a cheating ex who turned violent, she learned early that survival means never trusting too deeply and never hoping too much.
When one night of terror drives her into the path of three dangerous men who look like sin sculpted in flesh, her world shifts in ways she never could have imagined.
Reed, Rhett, and Rhys.
Three brothers with eyes like night and a power that hums in the air around them. They rule Denver's underground, their names whispered with equal parts reverence and fear.
Until Alex collides with their world.
What should have ended in disaster becomes something far worse. When her family is forced to relocate for her grandfather's funeral, Alex uncovers the unthinkable truth. The same three men who saved her, the ones who etched fear and forbidden desire into her mind, are her step-uncles.
Now she is trapped inside their mansion, surrounded by luxury that feels more like a cage than a refuge. The house is thick with tension. Reed's gaze is sharp and challenging. Rhys's words brush too close to danger. Rhett's quiet attention carries a weight she does not want to examine too closely.
They are older, powerful, and each of them carries a darkness that draws her in despite everything she knows she should resist.
Beneath the cold marble walls and glittering wealth lie secrets her father refuses to explain. Secrets about why he left this family years ago and what kind of empire his half-brothers truly built.
The Alcatraz brothers are not just men. They are predators in tailored suits, bound by blood and sin, ruling the underworld and loyal only to each other.

"Harder, Daddy."
That's what I whisper in my sleep. Every night.
To a man whose face I've never seen, whose name I don't know, yet whose touch feels more familiar than anything I've ever known.
For weeks, the mysterious man from my dreams has haunted my nights. I told myself he was nothing more than a fantasy, a secret desire my mind created.
Until he walked into my reality.
My new boss was supposed to be my escape from those impossible dreams. Instead, he turned out to be the man who had been owning my nights.
Powerful. Ruthless. Dangerous.
The kind of man everyone fears, the kind of man I should run from.
"I own this place," he said, his dark eyes locking onto mine. "I own this empire, and I own you too."
I never expected the stranger from my dreams to be the infamous Mafia Boss. I never expected his world to be filled with enemies, betrayal, gunshots, and threats that could destroy everything I know.
But when danger comes for me, he is the only person standing between me and death.
He says I belong to him.
I should hate him for it.
I should fear the darkness that follows him.
But the more I uncover about the man behind the power, the more I realize that my greatest danger may also be the only person who can save me.

"Fuck, you're so tight for me," Ryder growled against my ear, his hips slamming forward in a deep, punishing thrust that made my back arch off the bed.

I gasped, nails digging into his shoulders as he filled me completely, stretching me. "Harder... please..."
He pinned my wrists above my head with one large hand, the other gripping my hip hard enough to bruise. "You want it rough, baby? Then beg for it properly."

My body trembled under him, slick and desperate. The words spilled out before I could stop them. "Please... Daddy... fuck me harder."

A dark, satisfied rumble vibrated through his chest. He leaned down, teeth grazing my neck, voice low and filthy. "Good girl. Come all over Daddy's cock. Show me how much you need this.”


On my wedding day, I caught my fiancé Dylan Voss and my step-sister Helene fucking each other in a room.

Heartbroken and humiliated, I walked away from the altar. That's when Ryder Hawthorne—Dylan's powerful, ruthless stepfather—found me. He carried me to his penthouse, and in a haze of rage and need, I seduced him. We fucked like it was war: rough, and desperate. When Dylan walked in and saw me riding his stepdad—he felt betrayed and stormed out. I felt satisfied and vindicated. It was supposed to be one night. We were never supposed to see each other again.

Until I desperately took a job at Hawthorne Prosperity Group to save my dying grandmother…and discovered Ryder was my new boss. One rough, forbidden encounter in his office, and he offered me to be his personal slut, in return he'd pay Gran's bills. I had no choice and accepted.

Payback became obsession. My ex wants me back, but Ryder refuses to let go. Now I’m caught between revenge and surrender.

"The sooner I leave, the sooner I will return to execute judgment on those who have hurt me and also to take back what is mine," I said to my uncle with a firm and determined tone.
She loved him with all her heart; she gave up everything for him; she left her uncle's company, which she was supposed to inherit after her studies; she became a housewife; all these things in order to please him; but what did she get in return?
A divorce paper was thrown right at her face the same day she gave birth, and as if that wasn't enough, he confiscated her child, sending her away with nothing.
Five years later, he regrets his actions and wants her back, but it's already too late. The lady he divorced five years ago is not the same again; she's now one of the richest billionaires in the country, and now all she wants is to make the man who hurt her pay, make him lose everything he had worked so hard for, and at last reclaim her son.
Will she succeed in her revenge mission, or will she end up falling for him again?

She loved him with all her heart; she gave up everything for him; she left her uncle's company, which she was supposed to inherit after her studies; she became a housewife; all these things in order to please him; but what did she get in return? A divorce paper was thrown right at her face the same day she gave birth, and as if that wasn't enough, he confiscated her child, sending her away with nothing. Five years later, he regrets his actions and wants her back, but it's already too late. The lady he divorced five years ago is not the same again; she's now one of the richest billionaires in the country, and now all she wants is to make the man who hurt her pay, make him lose everything he had worked so hard for, and at last reclaim her son. Will she succeed in her revenge mission, or will she end up falling for him again?

She rushed home late at night to celebrate her husband's birthday — only to find him with another woman.
"Daddy, when are you and Mommy getting a divorce?" her son asked, innocent and cruel all at once. "I want Auntie to be my new mommy."
She thought of the divorce papers she'd found the day before. Without hesitation, she picked up her phone and dialed her boss.
"I'll join the OriginWorld research program. But I have one condition..."
Months later, she stood at the podium as a national-level AI research consultant, delivering a keynote lecture.
And there, in the audience, sat her ex-husband — staring up at her, utterly stunned.

Lilly Browns thought she had finally moved on.

Three years ago, Eric, the boy she loved with all her heart walked away without an explanation, shattering her world.

Just when she begins to rebuild her life at Prestige University, Eric returns as if nothing happened, determined to win her back.

But Lilly refuses to be hurt again.

To make her ex regret leaving her, she kissed Dave Charles, the campus basketball captain, the most popular on campus, and Eric's biggest rival.

Lilly suggest fake dates to Dave and he agreed.

The plan was to pretend to be in love, make Eric jealous and walk away.

Except that nothing goes according to plan.

Because Eric isn't just her ex but he's the Alpha of a powerful rival pack.

Dave isn't just a basketball star but he has secrets dark enough to start a war.

And somewhere between stolen kisses, jealous confrontations, and dangerous pack rivalries, Lilly finds herself caught between two powerful Alphas willing to fight for her.

As old feelings resurface and hidden truths come to light, Lilly must decide who deserves her heart.

Dave or Eric.

But when a deadly pack feud threatens everything she loves, choosing the wrong Alpha could cost her more than her heart.

It could cost her life.

Perfect Luna. Devoted wife. Dead woman walking.

Ciara O'Callahan thought she had it all. A divine mate bond with the powerful Alpha Ronan O'Donoghue, a beautiful daughter, and the respect of her pack. Until the night she discovers her husband's dark secret: he shares more than just blood with his twin brother Ewan. Much more.

But uncovering the truth comes at a deadly price. Betrayed and murdered by her own mother-in-law to protect the brothers' twisted bond, Ciara's last desperate wish echoes through the veil between life and death...

And something answers.

Now seventeen again, blessed with a second chance at life, Ciara faces an impossible choice. Submit to the sacred mate bond that would lead her back to Ronan? Or defy the very foundations of wolf society and forge her own destiny?

This time, she refuses to be a pawn in fate’s cruel game. She will not walk blindly into a future paved with deceit. And when she crosses paths with Darragh Byrne, the mysterious and battle-scarred Alpha of the Moonveil Pack, the gods themselves seem to stir.

Darragh is everything Ronan is not. Calculating, unpredictable, and entirely uninterested in a mate bond. Yet when his sharp golden eyes meet hers, something shifts in the air. A force just as powerful as destiny itself.

Some say you can't fight fate, Ciara’s about to prove them wrong.

“Be my wife for eighteen months, and I’ll save your sister, or I’ll walk out here and let her die! Don’t forget, I am your god on earth".This is not a coincidence. Who still believes in coincidences? Definitely not Sarah, but she has no choice but to taste an unfair share of it.

Sarah’s entire life takes an unexpected twist when she crosses paths with Derrick Duke, which leads to an irresistible night of passion. To her, it was just a means to get what she wanted to save her family, “no strings attached,” but fate and the universe served her a cruel meal

when tragedy began to haunt her family. A tragic accident ties Sarah's destiny back to the powerful Duke family, locking her into a deadly world of powerful secrets and forbidden desires. Little does she know that the man she loves and the devil she unwillingly helped are two opposites of a coin. But to save her family, Sarah agrees to Bobby Duke's ridiculous offer with choking terms and conditions. Now what

happens when she realises she just helped the devil? What happens when things begin to go the opposite way? What happens when she finds out the stranger she had a one-night stand with and fell in love with is the brother of the same devil after her life?

Living in a house with hockey players was supposed to be a temporary fix. Falling for my brother’s best friend? That’s a permanent disaster.
My brother’s golden rule: Stay away from the team. Especially Jaxson Miller, the hotheaded rookie with a slap-shot that breaks glass and a reputation for breaking hearts.
But when my dorm floods and my brother offers me his spare room in the "Hockey House," I’m suddenly living feet away from the one guy I’m not allowed to touch. Jaxson is everything I should avoid—reckless, loud, and constantly in the penalty box. He’s the team’s biggest liability, and I’m his biggest secret. If we get caught, the team falls apart. If we don’t, my heart might be the one taking the hit.

Selene was just eighteen when her life was rewritten.Pregnant, abandoned, and forced into a marriage of convenience, she carried another man's child down the aisle—without the man she married ever knowing the truth.
Years later, her marriage to Tom Harold is a cage of cold words and hollow promises. Doctors insist she's infertile, his obsession with an heir grows, and the woman who once left him now wants her place back.
Then Rowland returns.The only man Selene has ever loved. The father of her child. The one whose touch still ignites a fire she thought she'd buried.
Now, every glance, every touch, every word between them becomes a battle of desire and restraint. Tom's power and possessiveness clash with Rowland's passion and memory of love, and Selene is trapped in a dangerous game where her heart and her daughter's future hang in the balance.
She must choose: protect the secret that shields her child—or risk everything for a love that never truly let her go.In a marriage built on lies, the most dangerous thing isn't betrayal.It's the truth.
"I am happily married, Rowland. I have a family now."

"I know you, Selene, like the back of my hand. Are you really happy? If I hadn't sensed your distress at that party. I would have deleted your contact, and you would have never seen me again."
"It's been years, Rowland. You know nothing about me. I have changed a great deal. I don't know why you came back. But please stay away from me and my family."

"Run, mi amor, run, while I watch."
"I feel his eyes everywhere, always watching!"
Ever heard of a hunter becoming the hunted?
That is what happened to Victoria Alexander.
After years of getting betrayed by her husband and best friend, Victoria returns to the city, stronger and more determined to ruin his seemingly happy home.
But things turns out sour for her as her mission for revenge turns into a game in a serial murder case.
While hunting her ex-husband's happiness and an unknown serial killer, Victoria suddenly becomes the hunted.
The thrilling part is that she isn't hunted by just anyone but a powerful shadow, hidden in the dark, watching. Always watching with nothing but a single phrase that leaves chills in her.

“Divorce? Divorce?” Camilla brokenly asked her husband. She couldn't believe what she heard.

“Yes, I think we should just get a divorce.” Caesar barked.

Camilla Garrison was betrayed by her fiance, by sleeping with her step sister.

That wasn't enough; she was also chased out from the house her maternal grandfather left for her and was tricked by her blood brother and father to sign her company in their name.

Devastated and heartbroken, she left the country with the help of a friend, where she will change her name to Phoenix Gilbert and get married to her ex fiance Trillionaire uncle just to get revenge.

After Camilla had over a quarter of her problem, a found secret would destroy everything.

She also have a lot of enemies to overcome.

Dive into this story and see how Camilla did all this. What would be Caesar's reaction when he found out Camilla had lied about herself?

What would also happen when he found out his wife was his nephew's ex?

Her Ex-fiance also wanted to win her back?

My name is Riley Harper, a girl everyone at school bullies at school because I'm chubby and too quiet. They laugh and call me names in the halls, post mean snaps about me like it's nothing.

And my worst enemy? Easton Caldwell the star quarterback of our school who walks around like a bad boy but has a heart of ice. He used to bully me... until his little sister needed a babysitter, and guess who got the job? Me. Now I live in his fancy house, eat at his table, and see the real him every single day.

He hates me. Or at least, that's what he says. Because he's still in love with his ex-cheerleader girlfriend Cass and wants her to take him back, he helps her spread lies about me and makes my life a living hell.

But living under the same roof changes everything. Late nights encounter when his little sister falls asleep between us. Accidental touches in the kitchen. The more time we spend together, the more his cold stares turn warm... protective and something dangerous.

I started standing up for myself both at school and home. I stop hiding in hoodies. I shine in ways no one expected. And just when Easton finally admits he can't stop thinking about me, someone else from his world steps in—someone who used to bully me too, but now looks at me differently. Like he wants me.
But the biggest secret? The boy who once made my life miserable is now so in love with me that he might break his own heart to protect mine.

They say Caspian Vale has a body count higher than his net worth. I don't care about either.

I only care that my brother's last voicemail spelled his name like a curse.

I didn't apply to Vale Industries for a paycheck. I applied for a funeral.. his.

Then he proposed. Not with a ring but a contract. My mother's hospital wing for my signature on a marriage certificate. I said yes because saying no would've been too easy and dumb.

Here's the thing about monsters okay??
They’re only scary until you see them brush their teeth. Until they hold your hair back. Until they get jealous over a waiter's glance and you realize you like it.

One night and one mistake. Now I'm digging through my brother's past and finding holes I didn't create just because the shooter wasn't Caspian.

The shooter was aiming at me.

But Caspian? He just took the blame like a man who's been waiting to fall.

I came to destroy a king. I didn't expect to find a martyr wearing a crown of thorns and a wedding band I can't take off.

In that case, let the game begin.

Bella Kim travels to the city with one dream: surprise her long-distance boyfriend, Asher Forest, with the news that she’s earned a full-term scholarship to play hockey alongside him.
Instead, she catches him cheating with a figure skater.
Heartbroken and humiliated, Bella impulsively kisses Tyler Brooks, the arrogant captain of her new team.
Five minutes later, their kiss is all over the internet.
With the scandal threatening both their careers, Bella and Tyler are forced into a contract relationship. Their only rule is simple: be the perfect couple whenever the cameras are watching.
But behind closed doors, they can barely stand each other.
Unfortunately, the more they pretend to be in love, the harder it becomes to tell where the act ends and their real feelings begin.

Five years ago, nineteen-year-old Seraphina Vance watched her parents slaughtered in cold blood while three young heirs of the elite Blood Sovereign Syndicate stood silently in the shadow of the velvet curtains. Now she is back, operating under the forged identity of scholarship student Elena Sterling at the prestigious Obsidian Sanctum Academy. Armed with government wiretaps and a heart hardened by grief, her objective is singular: bring down House Vane from the inside and burn their high-society empire to ash.
The fatal flaw in her plan? Seraphina doesn't know she is a dormant Crimson Sovereign; the rarest, most feared werewolf bloodline thought wiped out a century ago. She believes she is entirely human.

I suffered a head injury when I was little, so I’m a bit slow at everything I do.
My brother is the greatest hero in my heart, so I copy whatever he does—including being a simp.
He simped for a witch, so I did the same for her younger sister. But just as I was being relentlessly humiliated by the sister, and even dragged to the brink of death, my brother quit.

When the zombie apocalypse hit, my elder brother shoved me into a horde of the undead. Now, I've been reborn exactly five days before the end of the world, and he's trying to scam me out of my winning lottery ticket with a beat-up old ring. What he doesn't know is that this ring is a genuine pocket dimension artifact. He thinks he's pulling the ultimate con, completely unaware that I'm going to use this very relic to forge my own post-apocalyptic empire. This time, I'm going to make them pay back every last thing they owe me.

In high school, my ex only dated me because she needed a dependable errand boy.

I believed it. I tutored her, fixed her grades, rewrote her papers, and cleaned up every mess she made.

Then I overheard her telling her friend, “He’s good at studying. That’s it. Dating him is already me being generous.”

At graduation, she dumped me without hesitation.

Years later, I became the CEO of a public company.

Her company was collapsing—cooked numbers, broken cash flow, investors pulling out—and she needed one deal to survive.

She didn’t know who I was.

She scraped my car in the garage, then warned me not to cling to her, saying the CEO she came to meet was way out of my league.

Then the boardroom door opened. She looked up and saw me in the seat at the head of the table.

She thought I’d use this to get revenge.

I didn’t. I just opened her file and said, “You may begin.”

After 3 years of bloody battles, the War King returns, only to hear his fiancée Elena “fell to her death”. But he finds she’s alive, pregnant, and imprisoned. He swears to slaughter all enemies and protect his woman and unborn child.

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 thought my life would always be like this. Then one day, a female journalist from the detention cell was escorted over by military police to get her meal. She slid her tray toward me and spoke a word I had never heard before. The ladle slipped right out of my left hand. My right arm dropped to my side, and my fingers curled instinctively into the shape of a gun grip. Who on earth am I?

On my wedding day, my fiancé, Jace Mancini, had his men lock me outside the church gates.

Through the iron bars, I watched him walk his pregnant mistress down the aisle in my place.

He just shrugged at me. "Gianna's carrying a Ferraro heir, Nina. I need that alliance. Give me a year, then I'll divorce her and you'll be my girl again."

Everyone was sure I'd wait for him. I always had.

For eight years, I'd loved him more than my own life. I even walked away from my family for him.

That night, I called my father and got on a private jet to Naples to marry the Don of the Santangelo family.

Then I disappeared from Jace's world without a word.

Four years later, I flew back to Chicago with my husband and our son. Rafe got held up at the last minute, so he had the local families send a car for me.

I never expected the man holding the sign on the tarmac to be my ex.

Jace looked me up and down and smirked. "Look who finally came crawling back. Good timing. Gianna's kid needs a cook. The job's yours."

His mistress's cook?

Me? The Donna every family in the underworld bows to?

My father wanted to hand me over to Adrian Kingsley, the heir everyone in his Manhattan circle was desperate to please. I ran away with my boyfriend instead.
Then my boyfriend was injured in a hit-and-run. We had no money, and Adrian came to our rescue.
We were grateful. So when my father was diagnosed with a serious illness, I worked up the courage to ask Adrian for help again.
He took a drag on his cigarette and watched me through the smoke.
"Spend the night with me."

In my final moments in the ICU, the cruel truth crashed over me. My husband had colluded with a hypocritical single mother to steal everything meant for my daughter. For years, they manipulated and gaslit the girl, and even plotted to bar us from seeing each other one last time. Reborn right before the tragedy unfolded, the very first thing I set out to do is safeguard everything that belongs to my daughter and mend our broken bond. Faced with my husband’s fake display of devotion, all I have for him is…

The multi-million-dollar deal I worked my ass off to win back was handed over by my boss to a clueless new hire who could barely even read the material codes. And that same rookie had the nerve to mock me in public, saying I was nothing but his errand girl.
My boss went even further, tore up every rule in the book, and shoved a termination agreement right at me.
I didn't argue. I didn't make a scene. I took the severance and walked away.
Because I knew one thing better than anyone: without me, they wouldn't even make it through the manufacturers' front doors.
Sure enough, just days after I left, the entire supply chain fell apart, and the company's cash flow completely collapsed.
And when they started scrambling in desperation, running all over New York begging investment executives to save them, they walked straight onto my mother's turf.

irectly in front of me.
Only the night before, she’d been curled up in my arms, her warm fingertips brushing my collarbone, our bodies tangled in tender, loving intimacy.
Yet the toe tag fastened around her ankle was etched with cold, unflinching words: Su Wan, Female, 22. Cause of death: fatal fall from height. Time in morgue custody: 365 days.
She had been dead for an entire year.
Just what in the hell was the woman who’d gasped beneath me night after night, who’d lived beside me day in and day out for six whole months—the woman I’d called my girlfriend?

For five years, my crime boss husband made me take off my wedding ring nine times—all for his precious damsel in distress.

When we first married, he promised me: "From now on, you're my queen, the queen of New Orleans."

But whenever Brianna came crying for help, he'd change his tune: "Mr. Parker saved my life, Claire. I owe his family everything."

And like a fool, I believed him eight times.

Eight times I watched from the shadows as he took another woman to our favorite restaurants.

Eight times I explained to the crew that our "separation" was just giving each other space.

Eight times I watched her move into my bedroom, use my dishes, sleep in my bed.

All for a man who kept making me slip off my ring, then slide it back on, over and over again.

Until the ninth time, when he said he needed to provide sperm for her fertility treatment, and I offered to leave.

He still thinks this is just another temporary break, expecting me to come crawling back in a month like always.

He'll never know I've already booked my ticket out of here.

My sister Vivian dated men the way other people taste champagne — a bright sip, then set the glass down before anyone could ask her to finish it.
Never enough to satisfy anyone. Never long enough to be held responsible for the empty glass.
When those men discovered one another, they did not punish her.
They chose me.
Attention I had never received became flowers, invitations, and late-night calls. For a while, I let myself believe it.
Vivian only smiled. "They must have finally noticed how much kinder you are than me." She said it like a compliment. It wasn't.
Then the floating words appeared in front of my eyes.
[Poor thing. She actually thinks this is about her.]
[They're not courting her. They're using her.]
[Break her, and Vivian will feel it. That's the plan.]
And from the other side of a half-open door, I heard a man say, with perfect calm, "If Vivian hadn't been so cruel to me, I wouldn't have to use her sister."
That was the night I stopped mistaking attention for love.

Introduction: Three years ago, to pay for my sister's medical treatment, I willingly took on the role of a servant to the wealthy heiress Daisy, becoming a smuggling criminal and struggling to survive amidst humiliation. Daisy's family, with their cruel hearts, took advantage of the impending apocalyptic cold wave to murder both my sister and me. Reborn, I am determined to rewrite our fate. When hunters who revel in harming unarmed civilians besiege our shelter, I raise my gun—in this apocalyptic cold wave, anyone who dares to harm my sister will die!

For six years, I sold my body to underground clinics as a human lab rat to cure my son's heart failure and pay off my husband's debts.

Today, my biological brother kicked away the medicine I bought with half my life.

"Lucas was never sick. We faked the medical records to teach you a lesson for upsetting Virginia."

My husband coldly chimed in:

"I never went bankrupt either."

Even the son I bled to birth stabbed my arm, screaming, "A bloody monster like you doesn't deserve to be my mom!"

I finally realized my entire life was a meticulously crafted scam.

With my organs rapidly failing and only ten days left to live, I stepped onto the edge of the balcony.

"You're right," I smiled at my husband and brother, watching the color completely drain from their faces. "Six years of my life isn't enough to apologize to her."

"So I'll pay you with my corpse."

Six hundred years into our marriage, I found out my husband had a son.

I had ended my border patrol three days early, wanting to surprise Valerius.

Not far away, Valerius was channeling his exclusive magic, teaching a boy how to weave the darkness.

"Dad! I did it!" The boy looked up. His bright eyes were a near-perfect reflection of Valerius's.

My mind instantly went blank.

Dad?

A woman walked over.

She draped a small cloak over the boy's shoulders, her hand brushing against Valerius's chest with practiced familiarity. "Valeri, the wind is picking up. He'll catch a cold now that he's sweating."

Valerius naturally wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "My fault."

The image of them huddled together like a picture-perfect family was an ice-tipped needle driven straight into my eyes.

The sharp sting made my breath hitch in my throat.

The man who had sworn before the Senate to love me for all eternity—the man bound to me by a Soul Blood Pact—had already betrayed me!

A sudden, agonizing cramp seized my lower abdomen.

It was an old wound from six centuries ago.

When the Sunfire Curse nearly reduced Valerius to ashes, I had offered my high-born pure blood and my womb as a sacrifice to forcibly block the hex for him.

The price was permanent infertility, along with an excruciating backlash of pain I had to endure every single month.

Back then, Valerius had held me, his eyes red and tear-filled. "I don't want any children! I would rather lose my seat in the Senate than ever betray you!"

Yet the scene before me crushed those words into fine dust.

I stumbled backward, my chest feeling as though it had been ripped open by bare hands.

I was terrified I'd lose control and rush over to scream at him.

Worse yet, in the face of this cozy, happy family of three, I was afraid I'd look like a pathetic, unwanted outsider.

Suffocation gripped my throat. I turned and fled.

As the tyrant ruling the underworld, Victor was ruthless and bloodthirsty, showing no mercy to anyone.

Women who tried to climb into his bed usually didn’t even get a whole corpse, yet I was the only one he kept by his side.

I’d taken a poisoned bullet for him, and nearly bled to death on the rotting floor of a safe house giving birth to his son.

He once kissed the bullet scar on my shoulder and promised me that when he sat on the godfather’s throne, I would be his only family matriarch.

But the moment he slipped on that black onyx ring symbolizing power, he carried another woman into the master bedroom of the manor.

I burst for the door, and he ordered his bodyguards to pin me outside, forcing me to listen to their sounds of passion all night long.

I banged on the door like a madwoman, so he slammed my paintbrush-wielding right hand in the heavy oak doorframe and crushed it mercilessly.

I finally caved when he threatened to cut off my mother’s hospital treatment.

I'm mute, and I got pulled into a horror game where the only way I can talk to the boss is sign language.
He swore up and down that he could read ASL. Go ahead, he said. Say whatever you want.
I told him I needed to look for clues. He asked if I wanted to touch his abs.
I told him I needed to leave. He grabbed a fistful of my shirt and rolled me up in his blankets.
After he'd misread my signing for the eight hundredth time, I lost it and signed some truly filthy things at him.
He lit up. "Baby, stop complimenting me. Any more and I'll float right up to heaven."

On our graduation trip, my boyfriend and I ran into three killers in the middle of nowhere.

I stripped for them. I played nice. I told them whatever they wanted to hear.

That gave my boyfriend the chance to run. He came back with the sheriff’s deputies, and they saved me.

But when we got back to campus, word got out that three men had taken turns with me.

Every single day, strangers tore into me online:

【Three guys at once. Be honest, she liked it.】

【A real woman would’ve fought to the death to keep herself clean. Why’d she throw herself at them like that? No shame at all.】

【If that were me, I’d have deleted myself.】

My boyfriend got colder with me by the day.

Then, right after he got his slot at the state police academy, he broke up with me. His reason:

“I’m sorry.

“Every time I look at you, I can’t stop picturing all those guys on you, and I just…

“You’re dirty.”

Those last two words were the straw that broke me.

In my despair, I walked off the edge of a cliff.

And when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day we ran into the killers.

The moment I gave up wasn't when I found out my husband was cheating. It was when I heard my ten-year-old daughter laugh into the phone and say, "Mom's so clueless. She has no idea about Dad and Summer."

Ten years ago, I was a top biomedical researcher, making six figures. I gave it all up for his promotion and our newborn daughter. Ten years later, the perfect marriage I traded my career and youth for turned out to be nothing but an elaborate lie.

He called me his safe haven, then got in our bed with his mistress and discussed how to keep me in the dark.

This time, I'm not going to cry or make a scene. I'm going to quietly gather my evidence and call the lab director I've turned down seven times.

My sister climbed out her window the night before her wedding. So my family pinned her veil over my face and sent me in her place.
I'd been her stand-in my whole life — same face, same hair, the daughter they could afford to lose. Nobody looks twice at a bride behind a veil.
The Falcones figured out I was a fake before the vows. They broke my hand for the insult. And the don himself — the man this whole city only says quietly — took one look at the mess they'd made of me and told them to throw me out with the trash.
Then his eyes dropped to the locket my dead mother left me, lying on his marble floor.
And the most feared man in the city went very, very still.
He had no business knowing my mother's name. So why did he say it like a prayer?

When the apocalypse arrived, my girlfriend, driven by vanity, exposed my unlimited resource space and incited starving people to kill me and feed me to the zombies, while she herself stepped on my flesh and blood to become the "savior goddess".
But she didn't know that I mutated amidst the pile of corpses and awakened into the only zombie tyrant.
I corrupted the space, cut off food supplies, led a horde of tens of thousands of zombies to besiege the city, and threw a bounty at the starving mob: "Use her flesh and blood to exchange for a bite to eat."
Watching the once-lofty Mother Teresa torn to pieces, kneeling at my feet weeping and begging for mercy, I laughed. Moral blackmail? Sorry, I'm the Zombie King now.

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-laws to the basement I was forbidden to enter.

I held my breath and pressed my eye to the crack in the door.

In that moment, I finally knew why they had to kill my babies.

"I gave Julian Sterling everything: my love, my loyalty, and the child I carried in my womb. In return, he watched my best friend push me down a flight of stairs and did nothing as I lost my baby.

Now, my brother is behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit, and my husband is demanding I sign a lie to protect the woman who shattered my life. He thinks I’m a broken bird with clipped wings. He thinks I have nowhere left to turn.
He’s wrong.

Julian forgot one thing about the woman he married.

I’ve called my father. I’ve set the clock. I have seven days to play the grieving wife before I strip Julian of his fortune, his name, and his freedom.

The countdown to his ruin starts now.

I thought eight years of devotion could warm a frozen heart, but it turned out to be nothing more than a nightmare of being someone’s stand-in.
Jazzy’s poisoned chocolate, the scalding hot water, and Azrael’s gaze that never strayed from his dead wife—each one a blade carving into my soul.
They said I stole her dresses, wore her necklace.
But who saw the nights I stayed awake for the pack, the dangers I took on for Jazzy?
It wasn’t until I was cast out of the territory that I realized—there was never a place for me here.
Then the ruby ring burned against my skin, and the Silverfang wolves came for me.
Only then did I learn the truth my father had hidden all along—
I was never anyone’s shadow.
I am the heir of royal blood.
And those who once hurt me will one day watch as I rise from the ashes—reborn.

Dad was in critical condition and had just been wheeled into the operating room.
My husband—also Dad’s attending surgeon—was nowhere to be found.
I stood in the corridor in my pajamas until past midnight, hands shaking as I kept calling Jason.
When the call finally connected, a sweet, girlish voice spilled through the speaker:
"I’m watching the Eiffel Tower lights with Jason!"
A male voice followed, impatient and familiar—Jason’s:
"Is it her again? Ava, tell her to stop calling. The lights are about to go out. Can she stop making a scene?"
A chill sliced through me. Before I could speak, the line went dead.

Just because I was a cheap Omega, everyone around my Alpha boyfriend treated me like I was dirt beneath their paws.
Even when he had sex with other werewolves right in front of me, I endured it all—silently.
I took care of him for five long years. Maybe it was my devotion, or maybe he just got tired of resistance, but one day, he agreed to my proposal.
But of course, there was a condition.
“I lost my mother’s wolf fang necklace in the forest. Bring it back, and I’ll marry you.”
The forest.
The territory of the rogues.
A place far worse than the lowest slums reserved for Omegas.
But I clenched my teeth and went anyway.
I fought through blood and filth and death and returned—with his precious wolf fang necklace.
He had always believed I was just some Omega obsessed with his Alpha status, someone willing to grovel for his name, his title.
But the moment he saw the wounds on my body, something in him shifted.

My fiancée, with whom I've been in a relationship for three years, has threatened to break off our engagement for the hundredth time, forcing me to donate a kidney to her adopted brother, who's faking illness and acting like a hypocrite.

My biological parents even threatened to sever ties with me: "You have a healthy body. Ian has nothing but us. You can't even bear to part with a kidney. You're so selfish and cold-blooded!"

They don't know that my hands, which I used to play the piano, had already been crushed by gangsters while cleaning up their mess; they also don't know that at this moment, I have a critical illness notice for late-stage bone cancer in my pocket.

Seeing the undisguised disgust and indifference in my fiancée's eyes, I swallowed the taste of blood in my throat and calmly signed the consent form for the live organ removal.

"Okay, I'll donate. I'll give you back my life along with it."

Later, I died like a dog on the rusty operating table of a shady clinic, my bones and marrow completely drained.

But when I was truly reduced to dust and left without even a complete corpse... the truth about my vicious foster brother faking illness was exposed.

The aloof and arrogant female CEO who once treated me like trash went completely mad overnight.

She knelt desperately before my nameless grave, plunged a sharp knife into her abdomen, and collapsed in a pool of blood, pleading for me to see her one more time.

I found out my entire relationship with the golden boy of hockey was just a sick, twisted bet with his ex-girlfriend.

I gave Felix Sawyer my firsts, my heart, and my absolute devotion, only to stand frozen in a parking lot listening to him and his friends laugh at my pathetic existence. "The whole thing with Bethel was just a bet," he had smiled, shattering my world.

Years later, I’m no longer that naive college nerd. I’m playing in the championship finals, and the only thing standing between me and the trophy is the demon who ruined my life.

"Let's make a bet," Felix whispered, cornering me in the locker room before the game, his smug face inches from mine. "If you win, I'll crawl in the snow. But if I win... you belong to me."

I accepted, fueled by pure, unadulterated hate. I was going to crush him on the ice. I was going to make him bleed tears.

But I didn't.

I watched in absolute horror as the final buzzer blew, and the scoreboard mocked my failure. Felix skated toward me, the crowd chanting his name, a dangerous, predatory smirk on his face.

"A bet is still a bet, darling," he mouthed. And tonight, he was coming to collect his prize.

Kayla Faye has spent years waiting for the right moment to tell her childhood best friend how she truly feels. She waited through tenth grade when he started avoiding her. She waited through eleventh grade when he left for college without saying goodbye. She even waited until the day before her graduation, convincing herself she was finally ready.

What she wasn't ready for was finding out Zayn Ponteris had been dead the entire time.

The grief shatters something inside her. And before anyone can stop it, Kayla does something no sorceress should be able to do—she travels back in time.

Suddenly she's fifteen again, standing at their end of year formal, with Zayn alive and right in front of her, completely unaware that in another timeline she watched his parents mourn him.

This time, Kayla is determined to save him. Except nothing goes according to plan.

Zayn has a girlfriend. And the closer Kayla gets to changing his fate, the more she realizes her powers are bigger and more dangerous than she ever imagined.

The supernatural world is closing in. The clock is running out. And the one person standing between Kayla and everything hunting her is the same boy she keeps bending time to protect.

Kayla has no idea what's in store for her.

Because when you bend time, fate bends back.

Before my flight to Chicago took off, I saved an old man from nearly passing out from the heat outside Miami Airport.
The moment he swallowed the water I handed him, he suddenly grabbed my wrist and clung to it with surprising strength.
"Listen to me. Whatever you do, do not get on that plane! There's going to be a Category 5 hurricane today!"
I froze for a second and looked up at the cloudless blue sky over Miami.
Assuming his Alzheimer's had flared up, I smiled and told him I'd already called an ambulance for him.
But his eyes suddenly widened, and all the color drained from his face.
"The storm is coming. Hundreds of planes will be ripped apart in seconds, torn into scraps of metal... Everyone will die..."
I thought he was raving and turned away, dragging my suitcase into the terminal.
Then, just before boarding, I went to the restroom with my suitcase.
When I came out, someone had tightly wrapped a discarded boarding pass around the handle of my silver carry-on.
On the back, in thick red marker, were the words:
[HURRICANE LANDFALL IN 30 MINUTES! DO NOT BOARD!]
A chill ran through me.
Boarding was about to close. If I missed this multimillion-dollar deal, I'd be out of a job tomorrow.
And at home, my four-year-old daughter was waiting for me to pay her expensive daycare bill.
Should I step onto that jet bridge or not?

In a modern city of flights, glass hotels, and surveillance footage, Nora—an artist still recovering from surgery—watches her marriage rot behind polished excuses. As she traces her husband’s affair through airport selfies, joint-account charges, voice recordings, and a staged fall on the stairs, humiliation hardens into precision. Cold, sharp, and deeply satisfying, this is a divorce reckoning lit by rain, evidence files, airport confrontations, and the moment a woman stops begging to be chosen.

At our farewell party, my mate told everyone I'd follow him to Silvercrest. "She gave up her dream for me once. Trust me, she'd follow me anywhere."

That night, his first love sent me photos of him in her bed.

He swore himself into her pack under the full moon and texted me: "You've got until the next full moon. Don't keep me waiting."

Under pack law, mates must belong to the same pack. Once he swore out, our bond was on hold until I made my choice: take the same oath and follow him, or release him in front of my Alpha.

I didn't make him wait. I drove home that same night and released him.

Now he's at my border with a seven-day guest pass, and a wolf who swears out can never swear back in.

"Mare, just give me one minute."