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 5
The next morning, the devil came to knock.
She was upstairs, hovering at the top of the landing. She had sent the maids to the kitchen. The house was quiet enough that voices carried from the study below.
Sterling had arrived at ten o'clock sharp.
She pressed her ear against the banister.
"Mr. Lloyd," Sterling's voice was smooth, professional. "The King has been reviewing the staffing for the Cabinet."
"Yes?" Kenney's voice cracked. She could imagine him leaning forward, greedy and desperate.
"He is impressed with your... dedication. The position of Undersecretary is yours. Pending a probationary period, of course."
"Oh, thank God," Kenney breathed. "Thank you. Please convey my eternal gratitude to His Majesty."
"There is one small matter," Sterling continued. "His Majesty is hosting a literary retreat at the Royal Lodge. A small, private affair. He was quite taken with the... aesthetic of the masquerade. He wishes to invite Mrs. Lloyd to attend."
Silence.
The silence stretched so long she thought the floorboards might snap. Kenney wasn't stupid. He knew exactly what "literary retreat" meant. He knew what the Royal Lodge was. It was where the King kept his mistresses.
"Imogene?" Kenney said, his voice wavering. "She... she is of delicate health. And propriety..."
"The Undersecretary position requires a man who puts the Crown above all else," Sterling said. His tone dropped the temperature in the room by ten degrees. "It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Mr. Lloyd. For both of you."
She heard the scrape of a chair. Kenney was pacing.
"She will be honored," Kenney said finally. The words came out fast, like he wanted to get them over with. "It is an honor for the family."
She closed her eyes. Even knowing it was coming, hearing him sell her for a desk and a title felt like a physical blow to the stomach.
She stood up and walked back to her room. She sat on the sofa and picked up her embroidery hoop. Her hands were steady. Cold, but steady.
Ten minutes later, Kenney came in.
He looked flushed. Excited. But as soon as he saw her, his face crumpled into a mask of tragic despair. He deserved an award for this performance.
"Imogene," he sighed, collapsing onto the ottoman at her feet. "We are undone."
She didn't look up from her needlework. "What is it, Kenney?"
"I have made a terrible mistake at the office. A clerical error. The King... he is furious. He threatens to ruin us. To throw us into the street."
He grabbed her hands. His palms were sweaty.
"There is only one way to save us," he said, tears welling in his eyes. "He has summoned you. To the Lodge. To plead our case."
"Me?" She widened her eyes, feigning shock. "But why me?"
"Because you are charming. You are innocent. If you go, if you read to him, if you entertain him... he might forgive me. For Emily's sake, Imogene. I cannot let our daughter starve."
He was using Emily. Again.
She pulled her hands away, covering her face to hide her expression. He thought she was sobbing. She was trying not to vomit.
"Must I?" she whispered.
"Please," he begged. "I promise, if you do this, I will buy you the real sapphires. I will give you anything."
She lowered her hands. She let him see her red-rimmed eyes.
"Fine," she said. "I will go. For Emily."
Kenney exhaled, a massive rush of relief. He hugged her. She sat rigid in his arms, staring over his shoulder at the wall.
"You are a good wife," he murmured. "The best."
That night, she packed.
Sophie fluttered around the room, nervous. "Madam, the Lodge... people say things. About the King."
"Let them talk, Sophie," she said.
She wasn't packing her modest woolens. She was packing silk. She was packing the dresses that showed skin.
She reached into the false bottom of her sewing box and pulled out a book. It was a biography of Adella Lynn, unauthorized and scandalous. She had sent Sophie to a back-alley bookshop for it just last week, a piece of armor she knew she would need.
She opened it to the illustrations. Adella had a way of tilting her head. A way of holding her hands.
She stood in front of the mirror. She tilted her head. She lowered her eyelids.
She looked like a tragic heroine. She looked like a woman who needed saving.
"From today on," she whispered to the glass, "Imogene Lloyd is dead. Long live the King's nightmare."
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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.