Betrayed By Fiancé, Claimed By His Uncle
Clare Lynch thought she was celebrating her fairy-tale engagement. She happily drank the pink cocktail her best friend, Brianna, handed her.
But the drink was laced with a powerful, burning drug. As Clare's legs gave out, she overheard Brianna whispering outside the door. Her best friend had hired two thugs to assault her on camera and completely ruin her life.
Terrified and gasping for air, Clare hid in the VIP room and called her fiancé, Jaren, for help.
"I feel sick. Something is wrong. Please come get me."
But Jaren just sighed impatiently, busy comforting his mistress in the background.
"Stop throwing tantrums for attention. Grow up."
Jaren hung up the phone. When Clare finally escaped and begged her grandmother to cancel the wedding, the matriarch coldly refused. She told Clare that marriage was just a business transaction, and she had to endure Jaren's cheating because their family needed the Bolton's money.
Betrayed by her best friend, abandoned by her fiancé, and sold out by her own blood. Clare's world completely collapsed. She was nothing but a bargaining chip, thrown to the monsters by the people she loved most. The sheer injustice of it burned her soul to ash.
With her last ounce of strength, Clare made a desperate choice. She called Aurthur Bolton—Jaren's ruthless, terrifying uncle. When the most dangerous man in New York kicked down the door to save her, Clare made a silent vow. She was done playing the perfect victim. She would let the devil claim her, as long as he helped her burn her abusers to the ground.
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Chapter 3
The back of the Maybach was massive, but Clare felt like she was suffocating in a sealed box.
The drug was no longer a slow burn. It was a raging forest fire in her blood.
Her skin felt like it was melting. Her rational mind was crumbling piece by piece. She writhed on the leather seat, her legs kicking out weakly.
She clawed at her own throat. The collar of her dress felt like a noose. She grabbed the lapels of Aurthur's coat and ripped them open, exposing her flushed chest to the cool air of the car.
Aurthur's throat bobbed. He jerked his eyes away from her skin and stared straight ahead.
"Stop moving," he commanded. His voice was harsh.
The cold authority in his tone didn't sober her. It acted like gasoline on the fire.
Driven entirely by the chemical demanding relief, Clare's body sought the only source of cold in the car. Him.
She dragged herself across the seat. She slumped against his side, pressing her burning cheek directly against the crisp, cool cotton of his dress shirt.
Aurthur's entire body turned to stone.
His muscles locked so tight they trembled. Eight years of burying his obsession, eight years of forced distance, were being tested by the heat of her skin through his shirt.
He grabbed her shoulders. His fingers dug into her flesh as he tried to push her away.
"Clare," he ground out, his voice turning ragged. "Wake up."
Clare blinked. Through the haze of the drug, the sharp scent of cedar filled her lungs. It dragged a memory up from the dark. A quiet afternoon in his study. Safety.
She looked up. Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears. She stared at the sharp line of his jaw.
"Why did you leave?" she whispered.
The question was a physical knife twisting in Aurthur's chest. He stared down at her. He couldn't tell her the truth. He couldn't tell her about the threats, the NDA, the Swiss facility.
His silence stretched out, heavy and suffocating.
To Clare, the silence was an answer. It was rejection. It was cruelty.
A sudden, violent wave of grief mixed with the drug's pure lust.
She surged upward. She grabbed the front of his shirt and crashed her lips against his.
It wasn't a romantic kiss. It was a collision. It was desperate, angry, and entirely uncoordinated.
Aurthur's brain short-circuited.
Every wall he had built shattered into dust.
He didn't push her away. He let go of her shoulders and buried his hands in her hair. He took control of the kiss, turning it from a clumsy assault into a brutal, devouring possession. He kissed her with eight years of starved desperation.
Clare gasped against his mouth. The sheer force of his response terrified her. A tiny sliver of reality pierced through the drug.
She shoved her hands against his chest and tore her mouth away.
She fell back against the opposite door, panting heavily. Her chest heaved.
"You bastard," she sobbed, confusion and shame burning her eyes.
She grabbed the door handle, yanking on it wildly. "Stop the car! Let me out! I would rather find a random man on the street than be here with you!"
The air in the car instantly froze.
The invisible string holding Aurthur's sanity together snapped with a loud, violent crack.
A random man.
He had lived in a cage for eight years to keep her pure and safe, and she wanted to give herself to a random man on the street.
He lunged across the seat. He grabbed her wrists, pinning them together with one massive hand. His grip was painful. His eyes were entirely black, devoid of any light.
"You will not," he hissed through his teeth. The words were a lethal threat.
He reached forward and slammed his hand against the intercom button.
"Change the route," Aurthur barked at the driver. The command was absolute.
"Yes, Mr. Bolton," the driver said smoothly.
"Where are we going?" Clare cried out, struggling against his iron grip.
"My penthouse," Aurthur said.
The Maybach took a sharp right turn, abandoning the route to the clinic.
Clare stared at him in pure horror. The drug was pulling her under again, making her limbs heavy and useless. She couldn't fight him. She was trapped in the dark with a predator who had just decided to stop playing by the rules.
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9.0
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She dreams of him every night... without knowing who he is.
Nora is a brilliant editor in a prestigious journalism company - confident, successful... and completely unaware of her past. But night after night, she dreams of a mysterious warrior prince in a realm that feels far too real. When Edward, the enigmatic new CEO of her branch, walks into her life, her world starts to unravel. He's the son of the company's owner, and though they've never met, he's been drawing her face for years.
As their connection deepens, strange events begin to blur the line between reality and fantasy. What neither of them knows is that their souls are bound - not just in this life, but in another.
In a parallel world, Leela is a fearless warrior and spy, sworn to protect her people. Jing, the prince of a war-torn kingdom, trusts her with his life... but must never love her. Their bond is dangerous. Forbidden. And yet, undeniable.
Two women. Two men.
Two worlds on the brink of war... and love that defies fate.
When destiny calls across dimensions, will they choose duty - or the one their soul remembers?
9.7
On the eve of her wedding to a man she doesn't love, Victoria Halstead makes a choice that will change the kingdom forever she runs.
Victoria has spent her entire life being the perfect daughter, the obedient lady, the bride her father selected. But when she discovers her marriage is nothing more than a political transaction to keep her controlled and confined, she does the unthinkable: she escapes into the night with nothing but a hidden trunk and a desperate hope for freedom.
What she doesn't know is that her bodyguard, Rowan, the quiet, brooding man who has been watching over her for months-is not just protecting her. He's been waiting for this moment. Because Victoria's beloved uncle didn't die of natural causes. He was murdered. And the truth he died protecting could shatter the kingdom.
Victoria isn't just a runaway bride. She's the rightful queen of Aveloria.
Her mother was a Keeper one of the legendary bloodline with abilities to sense truth from lies and the last direct descendant of the true royal family. For three generations, the current king's dynasty has ruled on a throne built on murder, lies, and stolen power. And now that Victoria knows the truth, the king will stop at nothing to silence her.
Hunted by her own father, chased by the king's soldiers, and targeted by assassins, Victoria must choose between the safety of obscurity and the dangerous path of reclaiming what was stolen from her family. With Rowan by her side fierce, loyal, and impossibly devoted she begins to gather unlikely allies: a cynical mercenary with a dark past, a former bounty hunter turned believer, and lords who are tired of serving a tyrant.
But claiming a throne requires more than royal blood. It demands strategy, sacrifice, and the willingness to become the leader her people desperately need. As Victoria learns to trust her Keeper abilities, master the art of war, and navigate the deadly politics of rebellion, she discovers that the girl who once feared leaving her room has become a woman capable of leading armies.
Yet danger lurks everywhere. Assassins infiltrate her inner circle. A traitor hides among her most trusted allies. And the dying king's brutal brother waits in the shadows, ready to seize power and drown the kingdom in blood.
With an army marching toward her, time running out, and the weight of a kingdom on her shoulders, Victoria must make an impossible choice: run and save herself, or stand and fight for a crown she never wanted but a kingdom that desperately needs her.
8.7
I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella.
Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark.
But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved.
Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies.
When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel.
While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest.
The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella.
He ordered my father to punish me.
I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth.
That night, the love in my heart finally died.
On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape-the only proof that I was Seven.
Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney.
By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.
9.1
Five years ago, I was a world-renowned concert pianist. Now, I'm an auto mechanic with a mangled right hand, hiding from a past my ex-husband, Carter, dismisses as a "tantrum."
He drags me to a charity gala where his mistress, Alexandrea, puts me on the spot, demanding I play for the city's elite-a cruel, public humiliation she knows I can't perform.
When I refuse, Carter shoves me to the ground in a rage. He still thinks our daughter, Lily, is alive, and he uses her as a weapon.
"Behave," he hisses, "and maybe we can bring Lily back home."
Bring her home? The sheer ignorance is staggering. He has no idea our daughter froze to death in the same car crash that destroyed my hand.
But just before the gala, my best friend uncovered the final, devastating truth. It wasn't an accident. They sabotaged my car and left us for dead.
Tonight, I'm not just attending a party. I'm orchestrating a funeral. Theirs.
9.5
As the fetal monitor screamed in the delivery room, Danae begged the nurses to call her billionaire husband to save their dying baby.
Instead of Adrian, his chief lawyer arrived with a chilling directive: all emergency interventions were explicitly denied.
While security guards pinned her arms to the mattress, Danae was forced to listen to her baby's heartbeat flatline. The lawyer simply dropped divorce papers on her bed and walked out. A sympathetic doctor helped Danae fake her own death to escape the family. Stripped of her assets and kicked out into the freezing rain, she tried to drown herself with her child's ashes, only to be saved by a mysterious benefactor.
Three years later, Danae returned as a top medical researcher. But at a high-profile symposium, she crossed paths with Adrian and his new fiancée—a cheap lookalike of Danae. The woman maliciously staged a bloody miscarriage using a restricted chemical, perfectly framing Danae's lab for the crime.
Adrian pinned Danae against the wall, his eyes black with rage, vowing to make her beg for death. Three years ago, he let their real child die without even answering the phone. Now, he was ready to destroy her over a fake pregnancy.
Just as Adrian's private guards dragged her away to be locked up, the hospital doors were violently kicked open. A rival billionaire stepped in with a team of ruthless lawyers, shielding Danae behind his back and declaring war.
8.4
After raising Dakota for years, the wealthy Walton family mercilessly kicked her out of their mansion.
Her adopted father threw a crisp check for five hundred dollars onto a stripped mattress.
"That is more than enough for a bus ticket back to whatever slum your real parents live in. Do not ever contact us again."
Her adopted sister Cindy tried to violently snatch her faded canvas backpack, smugly bragging that she was already engaged to Dakota's former fiancé. The entire family stood on their grand balcony, sneering in disgust as Dakota left in a broken-down, smoking rental car.
"You are going to die in the gutter!"
They treated her like a contagious disease, truly believing she was nothing more than an ungrateful, bottom-feeding street rat destined to rot in poverty and beg for their charity.
But what the arrogant Waltons didn't know was that on her way "home," Dakota would casually save the dying matriarch of the country's most powerful family using a mythical medical technique. She traded her smoking junk car for a million-dollar reward and a flawless Rolls-Royce Cullinan. And the filthy "slum" she was returning to? It was the palatial estate of the ultra-billionaire Su empire. As her true parents wept with joy and ordered their staff to buy out every luxury brand in the world just to welcome her back, Dakota prepared to show the people who threw her away what real power looked like.