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 5
The living room was dark, lit only by a single floor lamp in the corner. The shadows stretched long across the Persian rug, making the space feel smaller, more claustrophobic.
Essex walked over to the bar cart. The crystal decanter clinked against the glass as he poured a generous amount of amber liquid. He didn't offer Clora a drink. He just turned and leaned against the cart, swirling the whiskey in his glass, his eyes never leaving her face.
Clora stood near the doorway. Her hands were clammy, and she wiped them discreetly on her nightgown. The silence was suffocating. She couldn't read him. Was he angry? Amused? Planning her punishment?
He took a slow sip of his drink, his gaze heavy and assessing. Finally, he spoke.
"Interesting performance."
Clora's stomach dropped. He didn't believe her. Of course he didn't. He was too smart for that.
She lowered her eyes, letting her shoulders slump. She had to commit to the bit. "I meant every word," she said softly.
Essex let out a low, humorless laugh. It was a harsh sound that scraped against her nerves. "Every word? That's funny. Just three days ago, you were screaming that I was a monster who deserved to rot in hell. Now you're singing my praises to your ex-lover?"
He set his glass down on the cart with a sharp clink. He pushed off the bar and walked toward her. Each step was deliberate, his heavy footsteps making the floorboards creak.
Clora's instinct screamed at her to back up, but she forced herself to hold her ground. She couldn't show weakness now. Not after what she just said in the garden.
But her body betrayed her. As he got closer, the sheer force of his presence pushed her back. One step. Two steps. Until her back hit the cold, hard plaster of the wall.
Essex didn't stop. He stepped into her personal space, crowding her. He planted one hand flat against the wall beside her head, caging her in. The heat radiating off his body was a stark contrast to the cold wall at her back.
He leaned down, his face inches from hers. His breath was warm, smelling of expensive whiskey and mint. His eyes were dark, bottomless pits that seemed to swallow the light.
"Tell me the truth, Clora," he murmured, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "What game are you playing now?"
Clora looked up at him. She could see the suspicion in his eyes, the hardened edge of a man who trusted no one. Words weren't going to work. He was too used to lies.
She had to do something drastic. Something he would never expect.
Before she could talk herself out of it, Clora reached up. She grabbed the lapels of his suit jacket, pulling herself up on her tiptoes. She closed the distance between them and pressed her lips to his.
It was clumsy. It was desperate. It was the kiss of a woman throwing herself off a cliff and hoping someone would catch her.
Essex went rigid. Every muscle in his body locked up. For a split second, he was completely frozen, shocked into stillness.
Then, the beast woke up.
His free hand snaked around her waist, pulling her flush against his chest. He took control of the kiss, his mouth moving against hers with a brutal, punishing force. It wasn't romantic. It was a claim. He was angry, and he was taking it out on her lips.
Clora's hands gripped his jacket tighter, her knuckles white. It hurt. His grip was bruising, his lips demanding. She felt like she was drowning, unable to catch a breath. But she didn't push him away. She took it. She let him pour all his rage and suspicion into the kiss.
Just when she thought she might actually pass out from lack of air, something changed.
The pressure eased. The brutal force softened into something else. His lips stopped demanding and started... searching. His grip on her waist loosened, his thumb rubbing a slow circle against her spine.
He broke the kiss, but didn't pull away. His breathing was harsh, his forehead resting against hers. His eyes were closed, but she could feel the tension radiating from him, a lifetime of sleepless nights and coiled rage warring with a sudden, profound exhaustion. He looked like a man on the verge of collapsing.
"What... did you do?" he rasped, his voice thick and disoriented. He wasn't accusing her; he sounded genuinely confused, as if his own body had betrayed him.
Before Clora could answer, his knees buckled slightly. He stumbled, his full weight leaning into her. Panicked, she guided his dead weight toward the large leather sofa nearby. He practically fell onto it, pulling her down with him. He landed heavily on the cushions, his head lolling to the side, his eyes fluttering shut. Within seconds, his breathing evened out, deepening into the slow, rhythmic pattern of true sleep.
Clora stared at him in utter disbelief. He hadn't vanished into sleep standing up; he had fought it, confused by the sudden wave of peace, and had only succumbed once he was off his feet. Essex Langley, the insomniac tyrant who barely slept three hours a night and woke up screaming from nightmares, had fallen asleep on the sofa, his head resting mere inches from her lap.
In her last life, she had spent years locked in this house with him. She had known about his insomnia, the pills he took, the doctors who came and went. But she had never seen him sleep like this. Not once.
A crazy, impossible question sparked in her brain. What just happened? Was it the kiss? Was her presence, her touch, somehow the one thing that could shut off his racing mind? She looked down at the dark head resting near her. In this quiet room, with his defenses completely down, he didn't look like a monster. He looked broken.
A slow, calculating smile spread across Clora's face. The thought wasn't fully formed, not yet a weapon, but a seed of an idea. This was more than a survival tactic. This was leverage. And she had just stumbled upon the key.
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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.