My Death Was Just The Start
My wedding was tomorrow. I was a crisis counselor who had finally found peace with my loving fiancé, Dexter, and my best friend, Barbara.
A late-night call about a forced marriage led me to a hotel penthouse, where I found them naked in bed together.
It was all a cruel, three-year "savior game." They were bored heirs, and I was their project. They destroyed my career, caused me to lose our baby, and put my mother in the hospital.
They forced me to be a bridesmaid at their wedding-the one that should have been mine.
In front of hundreds of guests, they exposed my traumatic past and then tried to marry me off to a drunken stranger as a joke.
As I stood there, broken, a text from Barbara arrived.
"Your mother saw the livestream. She had a heart attack. She's not going to make it."
With nothing left, I ran to the 20th-floor window and jumped. They thought they had erased me. But my death was just the beginning.
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Chapter 3
Ella Robles POV
I stormed out of the penthouse, leaving the shattered pieces of my life behind. The hallway, silent moments before, erupted into a cacophony of whispers and camera flashes. The hotel lobby buzzed with guests, their phones pointed upwards, like vultures circling. News crews had arrived, their microphones thrust forward, eager for a scoop.
"It's true! I heard screaming!"
"Someone jumped!"
"No, it was a fight! A love triangle!"
"That woman, the one in white, she was attacking him!"
Barbara, who had followed me out, saw the crowd and froze. Her carefully constructed facade cracked. Her social standing, her image, was everything to her.
"Look, it's her!" A woman in the crowd pointed at me. "The mistress! She broke up their wedding!"
Barbara gasped, her face pale. "No! It's not me!" She clutched Dexter's arm, her eyes wide with panic. "Ella, tell them! Tell them I'm the fiancée! Tell them!"
All eyes turned to me. The cameras zoomed in. The whispers grew louder. "Isn't she that counselor from the non-profit? The one with the messed-up past?"
"I heard she had a rough childhood. Abusive stepfather, severe depression. Maybe she snapped."
"She always seemed a bit off, trying too hard to be normal."
A name surfaced in my mind, unbidden. Jasper. The boy who'd once told me, "If you ever need me, I'll find you." I hadn't thought of him in years.
I remembered Barbara's pleas when she got caught cheating on an exam in college. I took the blame. "Just say you weren't feeling well, Ella. Say you copied my notes by accident. My parents will kill me if I fail." I did it, protected her, always. Now she expected me to lie for her again.
"It's not what you think," I tried to say, my voice weak, overwhelmed by the chaos.
Suddenly, Dexter stepped forward, his arm around Barbara, pulling her close. "This woman," he announced, his voice booming over the crowd, "is Ella Robles. She's been a client at our foundation's crisis center for three years. She's struggling with severe depression and a history of trauma. She's unstable."
My breath hitched. He just exposed my deepest vulnerabilities. My past, my illness, everything I had fought to overcome. He weaponized my pain. The cold, calculated cruelty of it froze me.
I remembered Dexter's soothing words in my darkest moments, his promises to protect my secrets. "Your past won't define you, Ella. I'll always be here for you." Now, those words, once a beacon of hope, twisted into a sharp, poisonous blade, cutting me open for the world to see.
The crowd erupted. Their sympathy for me turned to disgust. "Unstable? She works with vulnerable people!"
"She needs help, not a wedding!"
"She's dangerous!"
Someone threw a crumpled napkin. It hit my face. Then a plastic bottle. It glanced off my shoulder. Barbara, seeing the projectiles, quickly pulled me in front of her, using me as a shield.
A discarded champagne flute flew through the air, hitting my temple. A searing pain shot through my head. Warm blood trickled down my cheek. The crowd gasped, then scattered, shocked by the sudden violence.
In the ensuing chaos, someone shoved me from behind. I stumbled, losing my footing on the grand marble staircase. I tumbled down, hitting each step with sickening thuds. A sharp, unbearable pain ripped through my lower abdomen. I cried out.
"Help me!" I screamed, desperately reaching out toward Dexter and Barbara, who stood at the top of the stairs, watching. Dexter hesitated, a flicker of something, guilt perhaps, in his eyes. But Barbara grabbed his arm, pulling him back. Her expression was triumphant.
The world went black. I passed out, the last thing I felt was the burning pain in my gut, and the bitter taste of betrayal.
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9.7
Luna Elena Frost was never chosen, only assigned.
Bound to Alpha Alaric Ashbourne through a cold contractual marriage, she endures three years as a Luna in name only. He never comes home, never defends her, and never looks at her, while his heart belongs to another woman.
At his grandmother's funeral, Alaric publicly dissolves their marriage, humiliating Elena before the entire pack. In that moment, she finally understands the truth. She was never wanted.
But the Moon has not abandoned her.
A forgotten night resurfaces. Her long-silent wolf begins to awaken. And secrets buried within her bloodline start to surface, drawing danger from every direction.
Cast out by the pack that once used her, Elena must flee, survive, and uncover her true power.
Only then does the Alpha realize his mistake.
By the time he turns back in regret, the Luna he rejected may already be gone forever.
8.3
I was the long-lost Donovan heiress, finally brought home after a childhood in foster care. My parents adored me, my husband cherished me, and the woman who tried to ruin my life, Kiera Reese, was locked away in a mental facility. I was safe. I was loved.
On my birthday, I decided to surprise my husband, Ivan, at his office. But he wasn't there.
I found him at a private art gallery across town. He was with Kiera.
She wasn't in a facility. She was radiant, laughing as she stood beside my husband and their five-year-old son. I watched through the glass as Ivan kissed her, a familiar, loving gesture he’d used with me just that morning.
I crept closer and overheard them. My birthday wish to go to the amusement park had been denied because he’d already promised the entire park to their son—whose birthday was the same day as mine.
"She’s so grateful to have a family, she’d believe anything we tell her," Ivan said, his voice laced with a cruelty that stole my breath. "It's almost sad."
My entire reality—my loving parents who funded this secret life, my devoted husband—was a five-year lie. I was just the fool they kept on stage.
My phone buzzed. It was a text from Ivan, sent while he stood with his real family.
"Just got out of the meeting. So exhausting. I miss you."
The casual lie was the final blow. They thought I was a pathetic, grateful orphan they could control.
They were about to find out just how wrong they were.
7.8
Alexis signed the divorce papers, leaving her with no assets, no alimony, and just the clothes on her back.
To forget her abusive husband Carlos, she got drunk and bought a high-end gigolo for the night with her last 800 dollars.
But the man she slept with wasn't an escort. He was Jarrett Hughes, a ruthless billionaire CEO.
And while she was gone, her ex-husband was busy destroying her entire life.
Carlos framed her with fake photos of her cheating to justify the penniless divorce.
Then came the real nightmare.
Carlos and her own aunt secretly drained her family's corporate accounts, driving her father to jump off a building.
At the hospital, her grieving mother blamed her for the tragedy, violently attacking her in the ER.
To top it off, her cousin Josie—who was secretly sleeping with Carlos—held her father's ashes hostage.
"Crawl on your knees and pick it up, or the ashes go in the river," Josie sneered, throwing cash into the freezing slush.
Stripped of her marriage, her father, and her dignity, Alexis sat bleeding in the snow.
She couldn't understand why the people she loved most had coordinated such a brutal slaughter against her.
But Carlos and Josie made one fatal mistake.
They didn't know the "gigolo" Alexis had accidentally bought was the most powerful man in New York.
Alexis looked at the towering billionaire standing behind her, a vengeful fire burning in her eyes.
"I need you to get my father's ashes back," she said, pulling him into a kiss right in front of her ex-husband. "I don't care what it takes."
7.6
Kaylee's family was drowning in debt, and her stepmother locked her inside a freezing bedroom.
To save their bankrupt company, they decided to sell her off to a sixty-five-year-old man with a disgusting reputation.
They cut off her allowance and confiscated the only precious keepsake her dead mother had ever left her.
"Put on the engagement dress, or I will smash your mother's crystal box into a million pieces."
Terrified of the old man, Kaylee risked her life by jumping out of the second-story window into a violent storm.
She hit the muddy ground hard, twisting her ankle and tearing her skin on rusted iron gates as she escaped into the pitch-black night.
Dragging her bleeding bare feet across the cold sand, her lungs felt like they were filled with broken glass.
She didn't understand why she had to be the sacrifice for their endless greed, or how they could be so cruel as to hold her dead mother's memory hostage.
She had absolutely nowhere to go, and the old man's cars were already pulling into the estate to claim her.
Cornered by the blinding headlights of a motorcade on the beach, she threw herself at the feet of Ernest Blackwell, the most ruthless billionaire in New York.
"Marry me! You need a wife, and I need a husband right now!"
To buy her freedom and crush the family that sold her, she chose to sign a twenty-million-dollar fake marriage contract with the devil himself.
9.7
Eliana Rivera is the firstborn daughter of business tycoon Cassian Rivera. When her father's company falls into debt, he marries her off to the arrogant and ruthless billionaire, Alexander Grayson, as part of a business contract and under the threat of blackmail.
Alexander, the billionaire CEO, never planned to marry, but the pressure of blackmail forces him into a union with a woman he barely knows. Although Eliana doesn't see Alexander as her ideal partner, she agrees to the marriage out of a sense of duty.
Once engaged, however, he barely acknowledges her presence and harbours disdain for her because of her father's actions and their relationship. But as they navigate their newfound relationship, the unexpected desire for each other's touch ignites-a twist neither of them planned, leading them toward an unforeseen love.
9.7
"Sign it. You're no woman if you can't give me an heir."
Niamh gave Marcus two years of her life, her unwavering loyalty, and her silent love. In return, the billionaire CEO served her divorce papers and a one-way ticket to the gutter.
Cast out into a rainy night with nothing but the clothes on her back and twelve dollars, Niamh’s story should have ended there.
Instead, she stumbled on a stranger in the rain.
In an attempt to save him, he kisses her senseless. He is the last Lycan King standing, and a man of terrifying power, yet he is haunted by a seven-century curse.
When the king has a taste of Niamh in the pouring rain, he knew he had to keep her for himself, even though she was human and it was against the laws of their kind not to mingle with humans.
The King needs her essence and Niamh realizes she could use her body to get what she wanted; revenge on Marcus and his mother for humiliating her and making her waste her time.
Now, the woman Marcus discarded is rising as a global conglomerate queen and a Divine Enchantress as assigned by the Moon Goddess.
While her ex-husband’s empire crumbles into bankruptcy and his body rots with a shameful curse, Niamh is learning that being "claimed" by the King is much more than the contract she'd initially made with him.
He wanted to use her as his cure. She wanted to use him for her revenge.
But in the Lumina Realm, the Goddess has other plans.