Reborn From Ashes: The King's Ruthless Queen
The house was a living inferno, the heat devouring the air in my lungs as I clutched my five-year-old daughter to my chest. Emily was dead weight, her skin already cooling even as the room turned into a furnace of orange and black.
Through the stinging smoke, I saw my husband, Kenney, crawling toward the door with a wet handkerchief pressed to his face. He didn't look back at the crib, and he didn't call my name; he was simply leaving us to burn.
I lunged forward and grabbed his ankle, my nightgown catching fire, but he didn't reach down to save me. He recoiled in horror at the sight of my burning hair and our dead child, kicking me back with a panicked shriek.
"Let go!" he shrieked.
I died as a massive, flaming timber snapped from the ceiling and crushed us both into silence. I couldn't believe that the man I loved would leave his family to die just to save his own skin, but the rage I felt was colder than the death that followed.
But then the burning stopped instantly, replaced by a cold so sharp it made my teeth ache. I gasped, jerking upright in my bed to find the velvet duvet cool under my palms and the nursery quiet, with Emily still breathing softly in her crib.
I had returned to the winter morning two years before the fire, the exact day Kenney finalized the deal to sell me to the King for a promotion. As Kenney stepped into the room with a practiced mask of concern, I realized I was no longer the victim of this story.
"A nightmare, my love?" he asked, reaching out to touch my shoulder.
I flinched away, my eyes burning with a hatred he couldn't yet understand. Tonight was the Winter Masquerade, the night he planned to offer me to the King as a prize, but this time, I was going to turn his social ladder into a gallows.
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Chapter 1
The heat wasn't just around her; it was inside her, a living thing devouring the air in her lungs.
She looked down at the bundle in her arms. Emily. Her beautiful, five-year-old Emily. She was heavy, dead weight against her chest, her skin already cooling even as the room turned into an inferno. The smoke stung her eyes, blinding her, but she didn't need to see to know Emily was gone.
A beam crashed down, sending a shower of sparks onto the rug. Through the haze of orange and black, she saw him.
Kenney.
He was crawling toward the door, a wet handkerchief pressed to his face. He hadn't looked back. Not once. He hadn't checked the crib. He hadn't called her name.
"Kenney!" she screamed, but the sound was just a rasp of ash.
She lunged forward. Her legs were burning, her nightgown catching fire, but she didn't feel the pain. She only felt the rage. It was colder than death.
She grabbed his ankle.
He kicked back, wild panic in his eyes as he turned. When he saw her-saw the fire eating her hair, saw the dead child in her arms-he didn't reach for her. He recoiled.
"Let go!" he shrieked.
She clawed her way up his leg, ignoring the flames licking at her back. She reached for his throat. She wanted to take him with her. If she was going to hell, he was driving the carriage.
"See you there," she whispered, her voice cracking. "See you in hell, my love."
The ceiling groaned. A massive timber, wreathed in fire, snapped free directly above them.
Pain. Absolute, white-hot, shattering pain.
And then, silence.
The burning stopped. Instantly.
It was replaced by a cold so sharp it made her teeth ache.
She gasped, her body jerking upright. Her hands flailed in the air, grasping for a throat that wasn't there. Her chest heaved, sucking in greedy gulps of air that tasted of lavender and stale dust, not smoke.
"Emily!" The name tore out of her throat, raw and terrified.
She wasn't in the fire. She was sitting on her bed. The velvet duvet was cool under her sweating palms. The curtains were intact, heavy and blue, blocking out the winter morning light.
The door creaked open. Sophie, her maid, stood there, a basin of water in her hands. Sophie's eyes went wide.
"Madam?" Sophie took a step back, water sloshing over the rim of the basin. "You look... are you ill?"
She didn't answer. She threw the covers off and scrambled out of bed. Her bare feet hit the cold floorboards, and the sensation was so grounding, so real, she almost sobbed.
She grabbed Sophie by the shoulders. Her grip was bruising. "Where is she? Where is Emily?"
"Miss Emily?" Sophie stammered, flinching at her intensity. "She's in the nursery. Asleep. It's barely seven, Madam."
She shoved past her. She didn't run; she stumbled, her legs feeling like jelly, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
She burst into the nursery.
The room was quiet. The rocking horse stood still in the corner. And there, in the crib, was a mound under a pink blanket.
She fell to her knees beside the crib. Her hands were shaking so hard she could barely control them. She reached out, terrified that her touch would turn to ash, and placed a finger under Emily's nose.
Warmth. A tiny, rhythmic puff of air.
Emily shifted in her sleep, her little hand curling into a fist.
A sound escaped her-a broken, animal whimper. She clamped her hand over her mouth, biting down on her knuckles until she tasted copper. Emily was alive. She was warm.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway. Heavy. Confident.
She froze. She knew those footsteps. She had heard them walk away from her while she burned.
Kenney Lloyd appeared in the doorway. He was already dressed in his morning suit, looking crisp and respectable. His face wore a mask of concern that she once would have called love.
"My dear?" He stepped into the room. "Sophie said you were screaming. A nightmare?"
She whipped her head around.
For a second, she couldn't hide it. The pure, unadulterated hatred must have flashed in her eyes, because Kenney paused. He blinked, looking confused, as if he'd seen a ghost.
"Imogene?" He took a step closer, reaching out to touch her shoulder.
Her body reacted before her brain could. She flinched, shrinking away from his hand as if it were a branding iron. Bile rose in her throat.
"Don't," she croaked.
Kenney frowned, his hand hovering in the air. "You're trembling. You're soaked in sweat."
She lowered her head, staring at the floorboards, forcing her lungs to expand and contract slowly. She had to hide it. If he knew what she knew, she lost her advantage.
"Yes," she whispered, her voice trembling. "A nightmare. A terrible one. I... I dreamt of fire."
Kenney's face relaxed. The concern returned, smooth and practiced. "Oh, my poor darling." He moved to the nightstand and poured a glass of water from the pitcher. "Here. Drink."
He handed her the glass. His fingers brushed against hers.
It took every ounce of willpower not to throw the water in his face. She took the glass, gripping it so tightly she thought the crystal might shatter. The water was cool, washing away the phantom taste of smoke.
"You need to calm down," Kenney said, his voice dropping to that soothing, patronizing tone he used when he wanted something. "We have a big night ahead of us. The Winter Masquerade."
Her head snapped up.
The Winter Masquerade.
The date crashed into her mind. It was two years ago. The night it all began. The night he finalized the deal that would lead to their ruin.
"Tonight?" she asked, her voice hollow.
"Yes, tonight." He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "It's crucial for my promotion, Imogene. I need you to be perfect. I need you to charm them."
She looked at him. Really looked at him. She saw the ambition rotting him from the inside out. She saw the man who would leave his wife and child to burn if it meant saving his own skin.
"I will be," she said softly.
Kenney patted her shoulder, satisfied. "Good girl. Sophie is preparing your dress. Try to rest."
He turned and walked out, already thinking about his career, about the people he would impress.
She stayed on the floor for a long time. She watched Emily sleep. The terror of the fire was fading, replaced by a cold, hard resolve.
She stood up and walked to the mirror on the nursery wall.
The woman staring back at her was young. Her skin was unblemished. Her eyes were wide and haunted. But underneath the fear, there was something else. Something sharp.
She wasn't the victim anymore. She was the one who knew the ending of the story.
She practiced a smile. It was stiff at first, a grimace. But she adjusted it. She softened the eyes. She relaxed the jaw.
"Perfect," she whispered to her reflection.
Tonight, she wouldn't just attend the masquerade. She would turn it into a hunting ground.
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9.4
I thought the Burch family gave me a loving home when they took me out of the orphanage.
But when the global deep freeze apocalypse hit, my adoptive parents mercilessly kicked me out of the bunker to freeze to death.
As I lay dying in the snow, covered in horrific purple frostbite, my adoptive sister Kendal walked past me in a pristine designer jacket.
Around her neck was my only childhood possession—an antique gold necklace my adoptive mother had ripped off my neck to give to her.
Kendal gloated, bragging that my pendant held a magical space with infinite supplies and fresh food while the rest of the world starved.
I realized I had spent years emptying my life savings to fund their luxury cars and fake medical emergencies.
They had drained my bank accounts, stolen my bloodline's heirloom, and used my magical lifeline to live like royalty while leaving me to die.
I took my last ragged breath in that blinding blizzard, consumed by a toxic hatred.
Why was I so hopelessly weak? Why did I let them take everything from me?
Opening my eyes again, the painful frostbite scars were gone. My skin was warm.
I grabbed my phone. The screen lit up: November 12.
It was exactly three days before the world ended.
When my adoptive mother called, faking a tearful emergency to demand another thirty thousand dollars, I smiled coldly.
"Just tell me where to send the money, Mom."
This time, I'm taking my space back, and I'm going to drain them dry.
7.1
I was eight months pregnant, waiting on the sofa for my billionaire husband to come home.
But when the heavy oak doors opened, Cayden threw a fake DNA test on the glass table, showing a zero percent probability of paternity.
He accused me of carrying another man's bastard. I cried and begged, swearing I was framed by his childhood friend, Carmella. He didn't listen. Instead, he ordered his massive bodyguards to pin me down while a private doctor forced an abortion pill down my throat.
"The Merritt family does not raise bastards. Get rid of it."
He forced me to sign divorce papers and ordered his men to throw me out into the freezing storm. Before I was dragged away, I desperately told him the truth: I was the anonymous donor who gave him a kidney to save his life three years ago.
He just sneered, saying Carmella had the surgical scar to prove she was the donor, and kicked me out to die.
Lying in the freezing rain, vomiting up the half-dissolved poison to save my baby, I didn't understand how the man I loved could be so completely blind. How could he let that woman steal my kidney, my marriage, and murder his own flesh and blood?
Five years later, I returned to New York not as his pathetic discarded wife, but as a top-tier medical fixer for the global elite.
And my genius five-year-old son has already infiltrated his mansion, ready to tear his empire apart from the inside.
8.1
Pretty Devil
8.1
Maddy worked at an exclusive underground club, always hidden behind a sleek black mask. One night, a wealthy client approached her with a filthy fantasy , he didn't want to just fuck her. He wanted to be her complete slave.
He took her to his luxury penthouse, while she shoved her soaked pussy onto his face and rode his tongue until she came, then mounted his cock and used him mercilessly, slapping and choking him while denying his orgasm until he begged like a broken whore. Even after she quit the club and started a new corporate job, she kept hooking up with him. One day, she walked into the CEO's office... and froze. Her new boss was the same man.
By day, in his luxurious office, he is the dominant, commanding CEO , barking orders, running the company with iron authority, and no one suspects a thing. By night, he becomes her secret pathetic slave: crawling, getting pegged over his own desk, licking her cum off his floor, and having his cock locked in chastity while she laughs at how easily she owns him.
Pretty Devil is a raw, extremely explicit erotic novel packed with intense femdom, heavy BDSM, humiliation, orgasm denial, pegging, face-sitting, and twisted power exchanges that blur the dangerous line between boss and secret slave.
This book is unapologetically nasty and graphic. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
7.6
A jagged spike of agony woke Kiana up in a filthy stone room.
She had transmigrated into the body of a notorious, exiled matriarch in a brutal wasteland.
Before she could even process her new reality, she saw a massive, bloodied man huddled in the corner, trembling in absolute terror.
Foreign memories detonated in her brain: the original Kiana swinging a spiked whip, laughing as she tore his flesh open.
He was her husband, and she was a monster who tortured her own consorts.
The situation was a complete death trap.
Another husband stormed in, throwing down a marriage contract and demanding to sever their ties, which would leave her to be eaten by mutated beasts.
Outside, her third husband lay dying from a toxic wound while the rest of the tribe mocked her, eagerly waiting for her downfall.
Scanning her own body, Kiana discovered her face was covered in ugly purple bruises.
The original host hadn't just been naturally insane; she had been secretly fed a chronic poison by political enemies, destroying her beauty and driving her mad until she was exiled.
As a survivor from a modern apocalypse, the sight of broken, enslaved men made her skin crawl.
She refused to die in this savage wasteland as a pawn in someone else's twisted game.
Kiana tossed the contract back to the furious man.
"Give me three months. I will save him, and I swear I won't touch you."
With her apocalyptic healing powers and a newly awakened Spatial System, she was going to rewrite the rules of this primitive world.
7.2
I woke up in a lavish bedroom, only to find a man built like a god of war chained to my wall, glaring at me with pure, unadulterated hatred.
A glowing apparition appeared and told me I had died in a car crash and transmigrated into the body of Elara, a tyrant Luna. Worse, the chained man was Ryker, one of my six fated mates whom the original Elara had brutally tortured.
Because of her sadistic crimes-starving them, exiling them, and sending two of them on a suicide mission-my affinity with them was at negative five hundred. The apparition delivered my terrifying death sentence.
"In three days, at the Marking Ceremony, you will be killed by your six mates."
No matter what I did-freeing Ryker, sharing my food, or lifting their brother's exile-they viewed every act of kindness as a sick, twisted trap. They were just waiting for the punchline to my cruel joke, ready to expose me and end my life.
I was just a librarian who organized book clubs and paid my taxes. Why did the Goddess throw me into this doomed vessel to pay for a psychopath's blood debts? How was I supposed to survive when the men destined to love me were actively plotting to rip my throat out?
Cornered by their righteous fury, I realized playing defense wouldn't work. I grabbed a dagger, sliced my own palm over the ceremonial stone, and swore a blood oath to bring their missing brothers home-or initiate a soul-shattering Rejection Ceremony myself.
8.5
Sera was the obedient, spoiled Hollywood socialite of the Beaumont family, completely devoted to her fiancé, Ethan.
But her life ended in a freezing Eastern European warehouse, chained to a damp concrete floor.
Right before she died, her captors shoved the transfer documents in her face. Ethan had sold her to human traffickers to cover his massive underground gambling debts.
While she suffered in absolute hell, her adoptive mother went on national television.
She squeezed out fake tears, publicly framing Sera for stealing family funds and eloping with a secret lover.
Sera's reputation was completely destroyed, and she was left to die a miserable, agonizing death in the dark.
She didn't understand why her family treated her like a disposable piece of trash.
She understood even less how the man who promised to marry her could hand her over to monsters without a second thought.
When she opened her eyes again, the biting cold and heavy iron chains were gone.
She was back five years in the past.
She was lying on a hotel bed, her limbs heavy with date-rape drugs, while a predatory Hollywood director hovered inches from her face.
It was the exact "exclusive audition" Ethan had arranged to exploit her for the very first time.
Sera didn't scream. With lethal, practiced precision, she shattered the director's wrist and brought a heavy crystal ashtray down on his skull.
The bleeding man collapsed onto the carpet and whimpered.
"Ethan promised... he said you'd be compliant..."
Staring at his pathetic face, a cold, predatory smile stretched across Sera's lips.
This time, she was going to systematically dismantle their lives.