Reborn To Tame The Insomniac Monster
I thought my best friend Mila and my lover Preston were my only salvation from Essex Langley, the ruthless billionaire who kept me caged in his estate.
I trusted them blindly when they planned my grand escape.
But it was all a cruel setup.
Mila deliberately leaked the plan to Essex's guards to win his favor, and Preston only wanted my family's shares to pay off his massive debts.
When we were caught in the rose garden, Preston shoved me toward the guards and ran for his life.
"You're insane if you think I actually loved a freak like you!"
I was dragged back into the manor, my ribs cracking under heavy boots.
I bled out on the freezing marble floor, staring into Essex’s unhinged, mad eyes as I took my last agonizing breath.
Until the moment I died, I couldn't accept it.
I had ruined my own life, adopting a hideous punk look with fake tattoos and piercings just to make Essex hate me, all for two people who saw me as nothing but a sacrificial lamb.
Why was my blind rebellion rewarded with such a brutal betrayal?
Opening my eyes again, the white-hot pain was gone.
I was back in the freezing bedroom on my eighteenth birthday, the very night Mila would come to orchestrate my ruin.
I looked at the rebellious, smudged stranger in the mirror.
This time, I calmly washed off the black makeup, took out my lip ring, and put on a pristine white dress.
If fighting the devil got me killed, then in this life, I would tame him and make them all pay.
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Chapter 3
The night air was freezing. It cut right through the thin fabric of Clora's silk nightgown, raising goosebumps on her arms. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering as she stood on the damp grass of the garden.
It wasn't an act. She was genuinely cold. But the shivering served a dual purpose. It made her look vulnerable, fragile. Like a lost little girl waiting for a savior.
She glanced up at the second floor of the manor. The study window was a slab of black against the lit hallway. He was up there. She couldn't see him, but she could feel his gaze like a physical weight on the back of her neck. Essex never missed a detail, especially when it came to his possessions.
Good. Let him watch.
She took a step further into the shadows of the rose bushes. This was the exact spot. Seven years ago, she had stood here, her heart pounding with hope, waiting for Preston to rescue her. She had thought he was her knight in shining armor.
Now, the memory just made her sick.
A rustling sound came from the dense hedge to her left. A figure emerged, brushing leaves off his expensive jacket.
Preston Vaughn. He looked exactly as she remembered. Perfectly styled dark hair, a jawline that belonged on a magazine cover, and eyes that always seemed to be calculating the value of whatever they landed on.
"Clora!" He hurried over, his face a mask of desperate concern. He reached out and grabbed her wrist, his grip tight and sweaty. "Thank god you're okay. I got your message. We have to move fast. Come with me right now, I can get you out of here."
Clora looked at his hand on her wrist. His touch made her skin crawl. She didn't pull away, though. Not yet. She needed to play this just right.
She looked up at the dark window again, just for a second. The air around them felt heavy, charged with a violent energy that was pressing down on them from above. Essex's fury was a living thing, building in the dark.
Preston misread her hesitation. He stepped closer, wrapping his arms around her in a suffocating hug. He buried his face in her neck, his voice dropping to a smooth, seductive murmur.
"Don't be scared, Clora. I'm here now. I won't let that tyrant touch you ever again. Just come with me. We'll go back to the city, we'll get married tomorrow. I'll protect you."
Clora stared over his shoulder at the dark hedges. Married. Right. Preston didn't want her. He wanted the Parrish family shares that came with her. He wanted the ego boost of stealing Essex Langley's property. He was a scavenger, picking at the scraps of the powerful.
She felt a wave of disgust so strong it almost choked her. This was the man she had ruined her life for. This pathetic, greedy coward.
She could feel Essex's patience snapping. The tension in the air was like a pulled rubber band, ready to snap back and take someone's head off.
It was time.
Preston leaned in, trying to kiss her. "Just trust me, Clora. We belong together-"
Clora ripped her arm out of his grip. She shoved him back hard, the force of her rejection surprising them both.
Preston stumbled, nearly tripping over a root. He caught his balance and stared at her, his perfect face twisting in confusion. "Clora? What are you doing?"
Clora took a step back, putting a solid five feet of cold night air between them. She looked at him, really looked at him, and let all the contempt she felt show on her face.
Preston's brow furrowed. "What's wrong with you? I'm trying to save you!"
Clora didn't answer him. Instead, she tilted her chin up and looked directly at the dark study window.
"Have you seen enough?" she called out. Her voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the quiet garden like a knife.
Preston froze. The color drained from his face. He slowly turned his head to follow her gaze, staring up at the black window.
For a second, nothing happened. Just the chirping of crickets and the pounding of Preston's visible panic.
Then, a tiny orange glow flared in the darkness. The cherry of a cigar. It illuminated a sliver of a harsh jawline and a pair of eyes that glowed with predatory intent.
Essex Langley stepped forward, visible in the faint moonlight. He stood at the window like a dark god looking down on his domain, his expression unreadable, but the threat in his posture unmistakable.
Preston made a choking sound. He hadn't actually believed Essex would be there. He thought Mila's plan was foolproof. He took a step back, his legs visibly shaking.
Clora watched Preston's terror with a sense of grim satisfaction. The mouse had just realized the cat was in the room.
She crossed her arms over her chest, a cold smile playing on her lips. The stage was set. The spotlight was on. Now it was time to burn the house down.
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8.3
When Eli is forced to enroll at Blackwood Academy, he thinks it is just another remote boarding school. But on his first night, he realizes the terrifying truth.
This school is a prison.
Trapped in endless, deadly time loops, students are forced to complete cruel, supernatural trials. Ghosts, cursed hallways, hidden rules, and unspeakable creatures hunt them after dark. The only way to stay alive is to solve mysteries, earn credits, and obey the academy's twisted commands.
No one remembers how they arrived.
No one has ever graduated.
No one leaves alive.
Eli must team up with other desperate students to uncover the academy's century-old secret. If they fail, they will be trapped in the nightmare forever.
At Blackwood Academy, survival is the only exam.
8.1
She thought patience would earn her love.
She was wrong.
After years of waiting for her best friend to finally see her, she meets the one man she should never want-his older brother. Dark, forbidden, and dangerously perceptive, he sees through every excuse she's ever made for being overlooked.
Now she must choose between a safe fantasy that keeps breaking her heart and a dangerous truth that offers no escape once it begins.
Because the brother who looks at her like that?
He doesn't believe in halfway love.
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.
7.1
The night before her wedding to Wall Street billionaire Everette Baird, Deliah Quinn stood happily in her haute couture gown.
Then, her younger sister Arvilla walked in, handed her a drugged glass of champagne, and slammed an ultrasound on the vanity.
"I'm pregnant with Everette's child," Arvilla sneered.
Before Deliah's paralyzed body could react, Arvilla dragged in a canister of industrial gasoline, soaked the bridal suite, tossed a lighter, and locked the heavy oak doors from the outside.
To escape the roaring inferno, Deliah smashed the glass balcony and threw herself into the freezing, violent waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
For five agonizing years, everyone believed the Quinn heiress was dead.
Deliah returned to New York entirely reborn—a top architectural designer and a single mother, having scrubbed her past clean and forgotten the people who destroyed her.
She only wanted a peaceful life with her five-year-old genius son, Leo.
But she had no idea her son was secretly hacking airport security cameras to find himself a wealthy stepdad.
Leo deliberately bumped into a terrifying, cold-blooded tycoon, spilling scalding coffee on his custom suit to get his attention.
When Deliah frantically rushed over to protect her son and apologize, the air in the terminal vanished.
Everette Baird stared at the exact face he had obsessively mourned for five years, his eyes turning pitch black as he crushed his phone in his bare hand.
7.0
I was the fated mate of Ryker Blackwood, the future Alpha, but my lack of an awakened wolf made me a pathetic joke to his pack.
Instead of protecting me, he publicly rejected me, chose the manipulative Lilith Vane as his Luna, and locked me in a freezing dungeon.
While the entire pack cheered for their final mating ceremony above, I rotted in heavy chains below.
When a rogue attack killed our unborn pups, I reached out to him in agony, but his voice through our fading bond was like splintered ice.
"Our pups are dead. Don't bother me again."
He didn't care at all. The casual dismissal shattered my inner wolf, and I died in that filthy cell, suffocating on my own despair and a hatred so potent it burned through my last breath.
Until my last moment, I couldn't understand why my absolute devotion was met with such cruel betrayal, and why my fated mate let our children die without a second thought.
Opening my eyes again, I wasn't in the dungeon.
I was back in my seventeenth year, choking on the icy water of the lake Lilith had just pushed me into.
Seeing Ryker's arrogant sneer and Lilith's fake concern on the shore, I didn't cry or beg for his attention like I did in my past life.
This time, I would publicly sever our sacred bond, awaken my true Alpha bloodline, and make them pay for every drop of my blood.
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.