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 3
The Royal Opera House was a cavern of gold leaf and red velvet, humming with the murmur of London's elite.
Outside, the snow was falling in thick, silent sheets. Inside, the air was hot, perfumed, and heavy with secrets.
She adjusted her mask. It was silver, covering the upper half of her face, leaving her mouth exposed. It felt like a shield.
Kenney gripped her elbow. His fingers were digging in nervously. "Remember," he hissed in her ear. "Smile. Look lively. And if you see anyone of importance... well, the King's men are said to favor simple, dark masks to blend in. Stay sharp."
"I thought the King was incognito," she said dryly.
"People talk, Imogene. Just listen to me."
He steered her toward the edge of the ballroom floor, positioning her like a vase he wanted to show off. The altered dress did its job. She could feel eyes sliding over her exposed shoulders, lingering on the curve of her neck.
"Stay here," Kenney said abruptly. "I see Lord Halloway. I need a word."
He abandoned her. Just like he had two years ago.
She didn't wait. As soon as his back was turned, she moved.
She didn't stay in the light. She headed for the shadows. She knew exactly where to go. The east stairwell. It was drafty, poorly lit, and led to the private boxes. It was where he went when he wanted to escape the suffocating adoration of the court.
She slipped through the heavy velvet curtains and into the quiet of the stairwell.
The noise of the party faded to a dull roar. Here, the air was cooler. A single gas lamp flickered on the wall, casting long, dancing shadows.
She waited. She counted the seconds in her head.
One. Two. Three.
Above her, a door opened. Heavy footsteps descended the stone stairs. The sound of a velvet cape dragging against the floor.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. This was it.
A figure emerged from the gloom above. He was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed entirely in black. He wore a simple black domino mask that did nothing to hide the intensity of his presence.
King Alaric.
He stopped when he saw her.
She stood at the turn of the staircase, the light catching the silver of her mask and the pale expanse of her throat.
He looked annoyed at first. Another sycophant trying to corner him. His jaw tightened.
"I didn't realize this stairwell was occupied," he said. His voice was deep, rougher than she remembered. It vibrated in the stone space.
She didn't curtsy. She didn't speak.
She slowly lifted her head. She turned her face just slightly to the left, angling her chin down.
It was her angle. Adella Lynn's angle. She had practiced it in the mirror until her neck cramped.
Alaric froze.
His hand, which had been reaching for the railing, stopped in mid-air. She saw his pupils dilate behind the mask. The annoyance vanished, replaced by a shock so profound it looked like pain.
He took a step down. Then another. Faster this time.
"Who are you?" he demanded. The command was there, but beneath it was a thread of desperation.
She held his gaze for one heartbeat. Two. She let him see the fear in her eyes-not feigned, but repurposed.
Then, she ran.
She gathered her skirts and bolted down the stairs, past him.
"Wait!" he shouted.
She heard him lunge, but the stairs were narrow. She was smaller, faster. She burst through the curtain back into the ballroom.
The wall of heat and noise hit her. She didn't stop. She wove through the crowd, using the bodies of dancers as a barrier.
She glanced back.
Alaric had stopped at the edge of the curtain. He couldn't chase her. Not here. Not in front of everyone. A King does not run after women in public.
He stood there, a dark monolith against the gold, his chest heaving. His eyes were scanning the crowd, frantic, searching for the silver mask.
He raised a hand and snapped his fingers.
Instantly, a man appeared at his side. Sterling. The King's shadow.
She was far enough away to be safe, but close enough to see Alaric point in her direction. She couldn't hear the words, but she could read the lips.
Find her.
A shiver went down her spine. It wasn't fear. It was the thrill of the gambler who had just bet everything on a single card.
"There you are!"
Kenney grabbed her arm, spinning her around. "I told you to stay put. I've been looking everywhere."
She looked at her husband. He was sweating. He looked small. Pathetic.
"I needed air," she lied smoothly. "It's stifling in here."
"Well, fix your hair," Kenney snapped. "I think the King is leaving early. There's a commotion near the royal box. We missed our chance."
She looked over Kenney's shoulder. Up on the balcony, Alaric was still standing there. He wasn't leaving. He was hunting.
And she was the prey.
"I don't think we missed anything, Kenney," she said softly. "I think the night is just beginning."
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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.