Reborn From The Lake: My Stoic Savior
Bridget, a ruthless twenty-first-century Wall Street analyst, woke up violently coughing up murky lake water in a decaying 1978 slum.
She quickly realized she was trapped in the body of a naive, marginalized teenager who had just committed suicide over a boy's cruel rejection.
The original girl had been mercilessly bullied by a fake rich kid named Kurtis and his cruel followers. They had publicly read her desperate love letters out loud, mocking her as a toad trying to eat swan meat, and simply watched as she threw herself into the freezing water. Now, her impoverished mother was left weeping by the bed, facing catastrophic debt and total social ruin in their small town. Everyone expected the surviving girl to wake up begging and crying for the boy who humiliated her.
Instead, a cold, calculating fury took over Bridget's analytical mind.
"I already died in that lake. That stupid girl is never coming back."
How could anyone throw their life away for a pathetic, vain clown wearing a mass-produced fifty-dollar watch? To Bridget, those uncollected love letters weren't symbols of teenage heartbreak. They were toxic assets. They were reputation landmines left out in the open that threatened her new family's survival.
Locking away the dead girl's weak emotions, Bridget forced her freezing, exhausted body out of the clinic bed. She set a hard three-month deadline to drag this family out of tier-one poverty. But first, she was marching straight to the volunteer camp to liquidate those liabilities and completely destroy the people who drove this body to death.
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Chapter 10
Before Bridget could open her mouth to call out to him, the screen door behind her banged open.
Corda stepped onto the porch, holding a plate of sliced bread. Her eyes instantly locked onto the tall figure on the road.
She shoved the plate onto a small table and yelled, "Mr. Potts!" She practically ran down the wooden steps.
Drake froze in his tracks. He slowly turned around. He pasted on a polite, tight smile that didn't reach his eyes. It was the smile of someone trained in high-society manners but currently miserable.
Corda reached him and grabbed his forearm. She shook it vigorously, her voice loud with gratitude, thanking him again for pulling her baby out of the water.
Drake subtly flexed his arm, smoothly pulling it out of her grip. His voice was flat and devoid of emotion. He said it was nothing, just instinct, and she didn't need to thank him.
He took a half-step backward, physically angling his body to escape down the road.
But Corda was relentless. She stepped into his path. She aggressively insisted that he come inside and eat dinner with them as a proper thank you.
Drake's brow furrowed. He glanced over Corda's shoulder, looking at Bridget on the porch, desperately searching for an excuse to leave.
Bridget leaned against the wooden post. She didn't help him. She held his gaze, a faint, amused smirk playing on her lips. She looked at him like a cat watching a mouse in a trap.
The blatant, unapologetic stare made Drake's stomach tighten with irritation. He misread her confidence as the same obsessive, clingy behavior that drove her into the lake in the first place.
Realizing Corda wasn't going to take no for an answer without causing a scene, Drake clenched his jaw. He gave a stiff, defeated nod.
Corda beamed. She ushered him up the steps. Bridget turned sideways to let him pass. As he brushed by her, the crisp, expensive scent of cedarwood soap hit her senses.
They moved into the cramped dining room. A pot of cheap beef stew and hard crusty bread sat on the table.
Drake was forced into the chair directly across from Bridget. His broad shoulders made the tiny room feel suffocatingly small.
Corda piled his bowl high with meat. Then, she made an excuse about needing a different serving spoon and practically ran into the kitchen, leaving them alone.
From the kitchen, the loud slam of a metal pot hitting the stove echoed. Brenda, the sister-in-law, was intentionally making noise, muttering curses about feeding outsiders.
Drake's eyes flicked toward the kitchen door. He instantly read the toxic financial tension in the house.
Bridget picked up her spoon. She decided to poke the bear. She used a smooth, adult tone, asking him if he was enjoying his community service at the camp.
Drake didn't look up from his bowl. He cut a piece of bread with aggressive force. He gave a single, dismissive grunt. "Fine."
Bridget raised an eyebrow. She wasn't offended. She found his icy walls incredibly interesting.
She rested her chin in her hand. She openly studied the sharp lines of his face and the long, elegant fingers gripping the cheap silverware.
Drake felt her eyes burning into him. He dropped his knife with a clatter. He looked up, his eyes blazing with cold warning. He told her to stop looking at him and to drop whatever delusions she was building in her head.
Bridget blinked, surprised by the venom. She realized he still thought she was a pathetic, love-crazed teenager.
She opened her mouth to put him in his place.
Suddenly, a violent chill ripped through her bones.
The smirk vanished from Bridget's face. She grabbed the edge of the wooden table. Her knuckles turned bone-white.
The freezing temperature of the lake water, combined with the massive adrenaline crash from fighting Julieta and Kurtis, finally caught up with her damaged body.
Drake watched her face drain of all color. He scowled, thinking she was faking an illness to get his attention. His eyes filled with disgust.
Bridget's vision violently tilted. The room spun. She opened her mouth to tell him she wasn't faking, but her vocal cords paralyzed.
A massive wave of darkness swallowed her brain. Her grip on the table failed. She pitched forward, falling face-first toward the hard wood.
In the split second before she lost consciousness, she saw the disgust on Drake's face shatter into pure panic. Drake's reflexes were inhumanly fast. He kicked his chair back violently, his large frame vaulting around the corner of the cramped table in a blur. Just a fraction of a second before her forehead could smash into the hard wood, his strong arms wrapped around her, pulling her safely into his solid chest.
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8.6
I was the youngest Paladin in history, the absolute pride of the Azure Blade.
But after a disastrous mission in the snow, I was falsely accused of slaughtering my own squad.
Grand Master Bernardo Rowe didn't just exile me; he surgically severed my connection to the magic Aether, turning me into a crippled mortal.
Desperate to survive, I tried to climb the Holy Stairs to reclaim my legendary sword, "Rebellion."
Instead of answering my call, my own blade shrieked in absolute rejection and blasted me down the thousand stone steps.
My bones snapped like dry twigs, and I was left in a pool of my own blood.
The pilgrims laughed at me. The guards declared me a lost cause and left me to rot in the dirt.
I should have died there, betrayed by the Order and the holy magic I once served.
But a silent, massive laborer named Cato Sims dragged my mangled body into the shadows.
He healed my shattered skeleton in mere days with impossible skill, yet he allowed lowly servants to spit on him and beat him just to keep my presence hidden.
I didn't understand why my holy sword had abandoned me, and I understood even less why this stranger was protecting a condemned criminal.
When I finally snapped and demanded to know his price for saving my life, he didn't ask for money or my body.
"The mountain does not forget its debts. I am reclaiming what was taken from it."
Staring into his unyielding eyes, I realized my exile wasn't the end, but the beginning of a terrifying truth.
7.2
The Royal Pack’s glowing moonstone token rested in my palm.
Before I could even process the miracle of my rebirth, my half-sister Alyssa snatched it right out of my hand.
"This destiny is mine, little sister. Enjoy your cursed Alpha," she sneered.
My family easily caved to her whining. They forced me to take her place and marry Alpha Kaelen, a man they called an insane, crippled monster with three feral adopted sons. They laughed, expecting his beast to tear me apart before the honeymoon was over.
Alyssa thought she was stealing my crown. She didn't know she had just stolen my death sentence.
In my previous life, that exact token had made me the Alpha King’s Luna. But I was just a convenient, disposable meat shield for his true human mate. I died agonizingly, choking on poison meant for her, while the King didn't even blink.
I lowered my head, forcing my shoulders to tremble as if holding back terrified sobs. I played the part of the pathetic, wolfless Omega they all believed me to be.
But beneath my fake tears, I felt a profound relief.
I remembered the Kaelen from my past life. He wasn't a monster. He was powerful, agonizingly lonely, and slowly destroyed by a dark magic no one understood.
I wisely accepted the marriage pact and walked right into his freezing manor.
I know exactly who cursed him. And this time, I will save him, protect his boys, and make his entire pack mine.
9.8
When I woke up on the muddy bank of the freezing river, I unlocked a brutal, unfiltered preview of my actual future.
For the past six months, I had been the town's ultimate joke, chasing after a city boy who looked at me like a diseased insect. Everyone thought I jumped into the river because he rejected me.
But the nightmare didn't stop there. In the future I foresaw, my entire family was destroyed. My eldest brother was handcuffed and dragged into a squad car. My second brother died in a pool of blood on the asphalt. My parents passed away from sheer grief and humiliation, and our farm was foreclosed.
Meanwhile, Bart Hawkins—my family's sworn enemy, the boy everyone accused of pushing me, but who actually jumped in to save my life—became a billionaire tech mogul. I ended up starving to death in a damp, moldy basement, completely alone.
I finally understood that I was just a pathetic, tragic side character meant to drag my family into hell. My own sister-in-law, Felicie, had been stealing our food and money, laughing at my misery behind my back.
But right now, my mother was still alive, my brothers were safe, and the farm was ours.
When Felicie walked into my bedroom, playing the devoted sister-in-law with a bowl of clear, meatless broth while a stolen roasted chicken thigh leaked grease through her apron pocket, I didn't play along.
"What's in your pocket, Felicie?"
This time, I was going to tear that horrific future apart with my bare hands.
8.1
I died on an apocalyptic battlefield, only to wake up pinned down by a lead-lined blanket of my own fat.
A violent download of memories hit me. I had transmigrated into the body of an exiled, sadistic noblewoman who was three million coins in debt.
The original owner was an absolute monster. She had purchased beastman guards just to torture them for fun. In the corner of the filthy room, a golden retriever boy cowered, his back shredded by her barbed whip. In the basement, a snake guard was frozen and scarred from constant electro-shocks. When the white tiger guard returned from hard labor, he looked at me with pure, murderous hatred, ready to tear me apart to protect the others. Even the local elites kicked down my door to mock my pathetic life and try to steal my men.
I was a decorated commander who bled for humanity. Why was I trapped in this ruined vessel, bearing the sins of a degenerate abuser?
It was all a setup by her sweet-faced cousin, Debera, who stole her royal life and sent her to this outer-rim hellhole to rot.
I gritted my teeth and plunged a military-grade gene repair serum into my arm, letting the agony burn away the black filth and weakness.
"The crazy woman you knew before is dead."
I tossed a medical kit to the trembling guards, loaded my old electromagnetic pistol, and headed for the deadly Demon Hunting Zone to start my revenge.
9.7
Agent Alivia Sanford opened her eyes to the suffocating stench of wild animal musk and raw sex.
She hadn't just transmigrated into a savage beastman world; she had woken up in the body of a 300-pound, diseased, and universally despised woman. Worse, the original owner had just drugged the tribe's strongest warrior, trying to force a mating.
Now, the warrior pinned her to the cave floor with murderous fury.
"You think you can trap me, you disgusting pig?" he snarled, ready to rip her throat out.
After kneeing him and escaping, a "Super Charm AI" bound to her mind demanded she conquer her five designated mates to survive. But these men treated her like a walking plague. They mocked her bloated face, threw bloody raw meat into the mud for her to eat, and publicly announced they would starve her to death. Even her own family looked at her with utter disgust.
In her past life, she was a legendary survivor who could have crushed these arrogant men with her bare hands. Now, she was trapped in a weak shell, threatened with soul erasure by a system if she didn't grovel for their affection. Why should she beg for love from beasts who wanted her dead?
Looking at the five "-100" hostility scores on her system panel, Alivia coldly drew a mental cross over each of their faces. Enduring agonizing pain, she forced her bio-manipulation ability to violently purge the toxins from her fat body. She wasn't going to play their twisted game; she was going to find her own resources and make them pay.
8.5
I spent six months choking down bitter herbs to cure my silver poisoning, just so I could finally bear pups for my mate, Alpha Holden.
But on the day I got my medical clearance, I discovered he was cheating on me with a low-level Omega intern.
Worse, I overheard him and my own brother talking in his office. My four-year marriage was a grotesque trap. My fake sister, Kylie, was the one who hired a rogue to cripple my wolf, and Holden only mated me to protect her from being exiled.
My entire family knew the truth, yet they protected the culprit while treating me like a cursed, wolfless burden.
When my brother violently spilled boiling soup on my stomach at a family dinner, exposing my horrific scars, my parents just rolled their eyes.
"Stop the pity play, Ariana," my mother sneered.
Holden didn't care about my burns either. He abandoned me on a freezing mountain road in the rain the moment his mistress called.
I couldn't understand how my own flesh and blood could sacrifice me for a fake daughter, or how my mate could turn our sacred bond into a sickening lie.
But I didn't shed a single tear. I secretly secured my Pack Identification Papers and gathered ironclad proof of his infidelity. I just needed one month to execute the Rejection ritual and walk away forever.