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 4
The carriage ride home was a torture of silence and complaints.
The wheels rattled over the cobblestones, shaking her bones. The interior smelled of Kenney's cigar smoke and his disappointment.
"A waste," Kenney muttered, staring out into the dark, snowy streets. "A complete waste of a new dress. I didn't even get near Sterling."
She leaned her head against the cold glass. The vibration of the carriage triggered a memory, sharp and violent.
Flashback.
The same carriage. Two years ago. She was crying. Shaking.
"He... he forced me, Kenney," she had sobbed, clutching her torn bodice. "The King. He pulled me into the box. I couldn't stop him."
Kenney had pulled her into his arms. He had cried with her. "I know, my love. I know. It's the Crown. We are powerless. If we fight him, he'll destroy us. He'll hurt Emily."
She had believed him. She had wiped her tears and agreed to go back to the King, to protect her husband. To protect her family.
It wasn't until she was dying, until the smoke cleared the lies from her eyes, that she understood. Kenney hadn't been helpless. He had set it up. He had left her in that stairwell on purpose.
End Flashback.
She opened her eyes. The streetlamps blurred into streaks of yellow light.
She looked at Kenney now. He wasn't crying. He was annoyed that his bait hadn't been taken.
"Kenney," she said, her voice cutting through the rattling noise. "If the King had noticed me... what would you have done?"
Kenney blinked, pulled from his sulk. "What?"
"If he wanted me. Not for conversation. But for... himself."
Kenney shifted in his seat. He adjusted his cuffs. He didn't look at her. "I would defend your honor with my life, Imogene. Of course."
Liar.
She laughed. It was a dry, brittle sound. "Of course you would."
She reached up to her neck. She felt the cool, smooth surface of the pearl necklace-the fake one.
She hooked her finger under the string.
"What's so funny?" Kenney asked, frowning.
She pulled. Hard.
The string snapped.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
The fake pearls cascaded down her bodice, bouncing off the seat, rolling onto the floor of the carriage like hail.
"Imogene! What are you doing?" Kenney shouted, scrambling to catch them. "Those are heirlooms!"
"They're glass, Kenney," she said coldly. "Just glass."
She kicked a pearl with the toe of her shoe. It rolled under the seat.
When they arrived home, she didn't wait for him to help her down. She walked straight up the stairs, past the confused servants, and into the nursery.
She sat in the rocking chair next to Emily's crib. This was her fortress. Her sanctuary.
Meanwhile, across the city, the gears of fate were grinding.
In the Royal Study, a fire roared in the hearth. But the room felt cold.
Sterling stood before the desk, a file in his hand. He looked weary.
"Her name is Imogene Lloyd," Sterling said.
King Alaric sat in a high-backed leather chair, staring into the flames. He still wore his black shirt, the collar unbuttoned. He looked like a man possessed.
"Lloyd?" Alaric turned his gaze to Sterling. "The Treasury clerk? Kenney Lloyd?"
"His wife, Your Majesty."
Alaric's hand tightened on the armrest. "Wife."
The word hung in the air. It should have been a deterrent. It should have been a wall. Instead, she knew exactly what it was to him. It was a challenge. It was a transgression.
"Is she happy?" Alaric asked quietly.
"Kenney Lloyd is a man of... moderate ambition and flexible morals," Sterling said diplomatically. "He has been petitioning for the Undersecretary position for months."
Alaric laughed. It was a dark, ugly sound.
"Give it to him," Alaric said.
Sterling paused. "Sir?"
"Give him the position. Give him whatever he wants." Alaric stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the snow that covered London. "And in exchange... I want her."
"She is a married woman, Sire. This could be... complicated."
"Make it simple," Alaric commanded. "Arrange a reading. A private gathering at the Lodge. Invite her. Ensure her husband understands the terms."
"And if she refuses?"
Alaric touched the cold glass of the window. He was seeing a ghost. He was seeing Adella.
"She won't refuse," he whispered. "She ran, Sterling. But she looked back."
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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.