Divine Contract: Marrying My Phantom Prince
Clara was drowning in student debt and barely making rent when she downloaded a fantasy mobile game to escape reality.
Inside the game, an exiled prince named Alex was freezing to death. Pitying him, she spent her last few dollars on microtransactions to fix his shelter and cure his poison.
But the game was far too real.
Every time she paid, the prince reacted. When she complained aloud about going broke, the in-game army suddenly halted, as if the prince had heard her voice.
Then, the terrifying real-world consequences hit.
Clara woke up to find her water glass and a box of Kleenex had vanished from her locked bedroom overnight.
She frantically searched the tiny apartment, her heart pounding in her chest.
She thought she was losing her mind. Had she thrown them out in her sleep? Was there a stalker hiding in her home?
How could physical objects just disappear into thin air behind a deadbolted door?
Until she looked at her nightstand.
Sitting exactly where her missing items used to be was a glowing, weightless crystal cup that defied all logic.
And on her laptop screen, the exiled prince was carefully holding her Kleenex box, offering a mountain of real gold on an altar.
She hadn't just downloaded a mobile game; she had opened a cross-dimensional trade route with a desperate future king.
Chapters
Share
Chapter 4
A week had passed since Clara's interview at the Historical Society gift shop.
Before she could fully settle into her new routine, however, she had another, more pressing appointment to deal with—one that had been looming over her head for weeks. She gripped the steering wheel of her beat-up Honda Civic—her late mother's car, still sputtering along despite its age—her knuckles white. The DMV instructor in the passenger seat was scribbling on a clipboard, his face completely blank.
"Pull over here," the man said.
Clara parallel parked perfectly. She had practiced this a hundred times with Audrey riding shotgun, her friend patient enough to endure Clara's white-knuckled death grip on the wheel.
The instructor looked up, a rare smile touching his lips. "Congratulations, Miss Lynn. You passed."
Clara let out a shriek of joy that made the man wince. "Thank you! Oh my god, thank you!"
An hour later, she was sitting in a bubble tea shop with Audrey, sucking on a mango smoothie with extra boba.
"I can't believe I passed!" Clara said, still buzzing from the adrenaline.
"I can't believe you passed on your first try," Audrey shot back, grinning. "It took me three attempts to get mine. You're a natural!"
"More like naturally terrified of failing," Clara shrugged. "And the interview—oh my god, Audrey, thank you again. I got the job. I start next week. I'm going to be working at an actual historical society gift shop. It's not the internship I wanted, but it's something."
"You are a real adult now," Audrey said, raising her cup. "A real adult who owes me a smoothie for getting her the interview."
Clara laughed. "Fair enough."
By the time Clara got back to her apartment, the sun was setting. She dropped her bag by the door and kicked off her shoes. It had been a perfect day. She wouldn't start the new job until Monday, but today felt like a celebration.
She made a cup of hot cocoa—using the good mix, the one with the mini marshmallows—and settled onto the couch. She opened her laptop and logged into the game.
The map loaded. Alex's little icon was moving north, away from the monastery and toward a mountain pass. The terrain looked treacherous, all jagged lines and snowdrifts.
She opened the in-game store. She had been saving carefully from her coffee shop tips, and after a week of skipping takeout, she had a little extra set aside for emergencies. This felt like an emergency.
A red warning box exploded across the screen, making her jump.
[!!! WARNING: The Mountain's Wrath is stirring! Ancient runes foretell a great collapse in the 'Pass of Laments' within three hours. Your followers are in grave danger!]
Clara stared at the screen. "Are you kidding me?"
Below the warning, two options appeared.
[Option A: Spend $4.99 to receive advanced warning of mountain instability and guide your followers to safety before disaster strikes.]
[Option B: Ignore the warning and hope for the best (Extremely High Risk — your followers may not survive).]
Clara groaned, letting her head fall back against the couch. "Four ninety-nine? I just bought you a roof!"
She looked at the screen. Alex's little icon was inching closer to the red zone. If she didn't pay, he would walk straight into danger. She knew how these games worked. It was a shakedown.
But she couldn't just let him die. She had already invested in him. She had fixed his monastery. He was her responsibility.
"This game is going to make me go broke," she muttered under her breath, reaching for her wallet. "But I can't let him walk into a death trap."
She clicked 'Pay'.
Alex rode at the head of the column, his horse picking its way carefully over the icy rocks. The wind was picking up, howling through the narrow pass ahead.
Silas rode up beside him, shouting over the gale. "Your Highness! The scouts report that this pass is prone to rockfalls in the winter. We should proceed with caution!"
Alex nodded. He was about to reply when a voice echoed in his skull.
It wasn't a sound that entered his ears. It was a thought that wasn't his own, dropped directly into his consciousness. It was a woman's voice, young and distinctly annoyed.
"...this game is going to make me go broke... but I can't let him walk into a death trap."
Alex yanked the reins back so hard his horse reared up, letting out a piercing whinny.
"Your Highness!" Silas grabbed Alex's bridle, steadying the horse.
Alex's heart was pounding in his ears. He looked around wildly. The soldiers were struggling against the wind, oblivious to the voice.
It was Her. The Guardian.
He had asked for a sign. He had asked for communication. And She had answered. But Her words were strange. 'Game'? Was that some divine term for a trial or a test? And 'broke'... the word felt alien, but the emotion behind it was unmistakable: frustration. Resentment. Concern.
She's warning me, Alex realized. She's telling me there's danger ahead—and it's costing her something to warn me.
You may also like
7.2
Betrayed by her sister. Killed by her husband.
Reborn, Sarah returns with one goal-revenge.
This time, she won't be the fool.
And with the Knox, the most dangerous man by her side...
she'll ruin them all, and take back everything that belongs to her.
Promotional line: They killed me once. This time, I'll destroy them first.
7.7
Not only was I drugged, blinded and assaulted. I was deceived into carrying a baby by a stranger I never knew. Then he appeared and took my child away.
I was sent to a militia by the father of my child. I thought I was rescued but I was recruited to be a weapon for killing. Who was manipulating me, I didn't know. The answers were far from what I knew.
Forced to blend into the world that I could never believe I would be to, a place where brutality reigned, kill or be killed was the only language. I have survived but he has to pay for everything he did to me, because I believed every phase of my life was set by him and him alone. Have I really survived?
Who would have thought, he existed twice in the same world? Do I really know who I should take revenge on? Him or the person I would sacrifice everything for?
Was my mother the one who orchestrated everything? What kind of pawn am I?
7.5
I was the adopted daughter of the wealthy Ruiz family, but the moment their true heir appeared, I was thrown away like trash.
Not long after being kicked out, my adoptive father and uncle hired a hitman to stage a fatal car crash on Mulholland Drive.
Pinned under an overturned Porsche with a shattered leg, I watched the hitman point a suppressed pistol between my eyes.
"The Ruiz family sends their regards."
Before this, my reputation had already been completely destroyed by a director, a pop idol, and a reality TV star, leaving me blacklisted and universally hated.
My adoptive family didn't just want me ruined; they wanted me permanently silenced to tie up loose ends.
The hitman pulled the trigger, and the original Alicia died in despair, tasting only rain and blood.
Until her last breath, she didn't understand.
Why did the family she loved treat her like a disposable object? Why did those three men maliciously frame her and turn the world against her?
Opening my eyes again, the fear was gone, replaced by an ancient, cosmic indifference.
I, the Arbiter, had taken over this deceased vessel.
Moving faster than the human eye, I crushed the hitman's steel gun with my bare hand and turned his soul into dust.
Looking at the memories of those who wronged this girl, I signed a contract for the very reality show they were starring in.
Since I borrowed this body, taking out the trash is a required courtesy.
9.2
When Alma's father stood in front of the bulldozers to protest, the energy company's thugs beat him half to death in the mud.
Instead of arresting the attackers, the police handcuffed her bleeding father and threw him into a cruiser.
"Stay back, kid," the officer barked, shoving Alma away.
Her father was denied bail and framed for assaulting an officer. The corrupt mayor just smiled and told her not to cause a scene. Meanwhile, the company mailed her weeping mother a severance check that barely covered a month of groceries.
Alma was forced to watch her family be completely destroyed by men with money and power.
Kneeling in the cold dirt where her father's blood had spilled, she didn't shed a single tear. The panic in her chest died, replaced by a cold, absolute hatred.
She realized that crying wouldn't do anything. In this world, justice didn't exist for the weak.
Years later, Alma stepped onto a prestigious Ivy League campus, her cheap backpack slung over her shoulder.
She was surrounded by the arrogant children of the very executives who ruined her life.
She lowered her head, hiding her dead eyes, and put on the perfect mask of a timid, helpless charity case.
Undergrad was just a training ground, and these elite kids were just her practice dummies. The hunt was officially on.
9.0
Once a pampered princess, Alaina now clutched a deactivated American Express card, staring out at Central Park. Her family’s fortune was gone, her life, over.
Her family's Hamptons estate, a four-generation legacy, was seized by Dyer Capital. The name hit her: Hardin Dyer, the poor boy she’d once scorned, had returned.
Hardin marched in, serving a divorce agreement. He'd orchestrated her family's downfall for revenge, giving her 24 hours to vacate his property. Penniless, her father faced prison, needing $50 million. Her mother forced her to beg Hardin, who sneered, offering the money for her body. Alaina ripped up the contract.
Hours later, her father had a heart attack. Desperate, she became "Lexi," a club girl enduring humiliation. In the Viper Room, Hardin's lackeys demanded she lick whiskey off his shoe for $10,000. Hardin watched. Outside, her brother Ashton's hand was threatened for a $3 million debt. Spirit shattered, Alaina returned, knelt on broken glass, offering to sign. But Hardin declared her family "dead," offering $10 million for her body, commanding her to use her mouth.
In a furious act of defiance, Alaina threw whiskey in his face, snatched the check, and fled. Yet, when he finally took her, a searing, foreign pain and blood on the sheets revealed a shocking truth: he had never touched her three years ago. Why had he let her believe such a monstrous lie?
7.6
Top DEA agent Kaitlynn Bruce woke up to a heavy, chemical lethargy, only to realize she was trapped in the body of a weak, abused war widow.
Before she could even process her new reality, she heard her sister-in-law counting cash, selling her unconscious body to a local thug for a measly two hundred dollars.
The thug dragged her new seven-year-old son, Cason, into the bedroom.
"Mommy!"
When the boy reached out, the man brutally kicked his small body into a wooden doorframe, leaving him gasping and bleeding on the floor.
Memories flooded Kaitlynn's mind. Her predecessor was a pathetic doormat whose husband's military pension had been bled dry by these greedy in-laws, leaving her children to starve and suffer endless abuse.
But as Kaitlynn looked at the bleeding boy's dark, unnervingly alert eyes, a chilling piece of DEA intelligence clicked in her mind.
Cason Richmond.
The name, the town, the abusive aunt—it all matched the classified files of the "Director of the Hive," the most ruthless and feared cartel puppet master in the criminal underworld.
How could this battered, starving child be destined to become the ultimate monster she used to hunt?
The original widow's tragic death was supposed to be the catalyst that pushed this boy into total darkness.
But Kaitlynn Bruce was not a victim.
Adrenaline burning through the drugs, she cracked the thug's neck with a brass lamp and choked the sister-in-law against the wall.
Looking down at the boy who was supposed to become a global nightmare, she made a vow. She was going to rewrite his script, even if she had to burn the whole world down to do it.