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.
Chapters
Share
Chapter 8
The stairs curved down in a graceful sweep, opening up into the grand foyer. The morning sun poured through the skylight, turning the marble floor into a sheet of glittering white.
Clora walked down the steps slowly, her hand trailing lightly along the banister. The white dress seemed to glow in the sunlight. Every step was deliberate, every movement graceful. She felt the change in the air the moment she hit the landing.
The living room was occupied. Essex was sitting on the leather sofa, a cup of black coffee in his hand. Across from him, lounging in the armchair, was a man she knew all too well.
Zane Kessler. Essex's only real friend. A trust-fund baby with a pretty face and a nasty mouth. In her last life, Zane had been a constant thorn in her side, making snide comments about her looks, her clothes, her attitude. He had thought she was an embarrassment to the Langley name.
Zane was in the middle of a story, his hands moving wildly as he talked. "And then the guy actually tried to-"
His voice cut off. Essex had looked up.
Essex's gaze had drifted toward the stairs, a casual movement. But the second his eyes landed on Clora, his hand froze halfway to his mouth. The coffee cup hung in the air. His dark eyes narrowed slightly, a flash of something unreadable crossing his face before it went blank.
Zane noticed his friend's distraction. He twisted in his chair, following Essex's line of sight.
He looked up at the stairs and his jaw literally dropped. The magazine he had been holding slipped out of his fingers and hit the floor with a soft slap.
He saw a girl in a white dress. Her hair was pulled back, showing off a delicate neck and perfect features. She looked like a debutante, a princess, a goddamn angel walking down the stairs. She was stunning. Breathtakingly so.
Zane's brain stuttered. His first thought wasn't that this was a new person, but one of sheer, unadulterated shock. Wait... is that... Parrish? The eyes were the same, that piercing green, and the shape of her face was familiar under all the makeup he was used to. But the transformation was so complete, so staggering, that his mind refused to accept it for a second.
Clora ignored him. She walked past the living room entrance, her eyes straight ahead, heading for the dining room.
Zane watched her go, his eyes wide. Then he let out a low whistle, turning back to Essex with a disbelieving grin. "Damn, Essex. What did you do, hire a fairy godmother? I barely recognized the little punk."
He leaned in, lowering his voice conspiratorially. "Smart move. Seriously, every time I looked at her before, I thought I was at a Halloween party. That black shit around her eyes? Disgusting. You finally got her to clean up her act."
The smile on Zane's face was smug. He thought he was complimenting Essex on taming a wild animal.
Essex's face didn't change. He just slowly lowered his coffee cup to the table. The soft clink of the porcelain was the only sound in the room. He looked at Zane, his eyes flat and cold.
Clora had stopped at the dining room doorway. She didn't turn around, but her voice drifted back, clear and calm.
"Mr. Kessler. Speaking ill of people behind their backs is a terrible habit. Didn't your mother teach you any manners?"
Zane blinked. The voice was familiar. It was smooth, cultured, and icy cold. He sat up straighter, confirming his suspicion.
"Hey, I'm just calling it like I see it," he called out, trying to be charming. "It's a huge improvement."
Clora turned around. She looked at him, her expression blank. "I'm hungry," she said simply.
Then she looked past Zane, directly at Essex. "I'm hungry," she repeated, her tone shifting. It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact, delivered with the expectation that it would be fulfilled.
Zane's smile froze on his face. The voice. The attitude. The way she talked to Essex like she had every right to demand things from him. He stared, finally processing the full picture. The makeup was gone, the ugly clothes were gone, but the defiance was still there, just packaged differently. It was undeniably her.
He pointed a shaking finger at her, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. "It... it really is you... Clora Parrish."
Clora just looked at him, one eyebrow raised. It was a look that said, Are you really that slow?
She didn't bother to answer. She just turned and walked into the dining room, leaving Zane looking like he had just seen a ghost.
Keep Reading
The story is getting intense! Switch to App to
Unlock All Chapters
You may also like
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.
8.4
Seraphina died betrayed. She perished in flames-poisoned by Darius, the fated mate she'd foolishly loved. Her childhood sweetheart, who sacrificed her only to save his mistress.
Reborn five years earlier, Seraphina vows: Never again. No more submissions. No more suffering his cruelty. This time, she'll rewrite her destiny - then she meets Kairos.
The Untamed Alpha King who loathes the mate bond after his own betrayal. Her second-chance mate - a bond that will kill her if she rejects it.
Now, caught between Kairos' relentless pursuit and Darius' desperate attempts to reclaim her, Seraphina faces an impossible choice:
Drown the world in vengeance... or risk her shattered heart on the mate who could either heal her scars or destroy her completely?
9.0
I traded my innocence to my fated mate, the Alpha King, just to get a stalk of Moonlight Grass to save my dying brother.
But after a night of agonizing physical connection, he didn't mark me. Instead, he tossed me a single, useless dried leaf and a credit card, treating our sacred bond like a cheap transaction.
When I refused his insulting offer to be his secret, nameless mistress, he choked me against a wall and banished me from his lands forever. I fled to the human city, only to watch from the shadows a week later as he publicly escorted a pure-blood noble female, preparing to make her his Luna. Meanwhile, I was forced to sell herbs in the lawless black market just to survive, where I was cornered by a gang of violent rogues.
I didn't understand. We were chosen by the Moon Goddess. When our skin touched, the mating sparks nearly blinded us both. Why did he look at me with such cold disgust? Why did he throw me away like trash, only to parade another woman as his queen?
Running for my life from the rogues, I tripped and fell onto the asphalt, right at the feet of a convoy of black SUVs.
The man stepping out was the Alpha King who had sworn to kill me if he ever saw me again.
But as the rogues demanded I be handed over, his eyes darkened with a terrifying, primal fury.
"She's mine."
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.
7.7
I gripped the wheel of my Porsche through a Manhattan downpour, staring at the positive pregnancy test on the passenger seat. Haden's voicemail was my only answer.
A semi swerved into my lane. Brakes failed. I slammed into the guardrail, airbags exploding, pain ripping through my gut.
Headlights pierced the rain. My sister Corrie stepped out under an umbrella, smiling coldly. "Beauvais Fashion is liquidated. Dad's dying." Haden stood beside her, eyes dead, shoving equity papers through the window. "Sign, or no ambulance."
I tore them up. Corrie lit a flare, tossed it onto the gas-soaked seats. Flames whooshed as they walked away.
I woke strapped to an operating table, agony tearing me apart. "No heartbeat," the doctor said. Nurses pinned me down. Instruments invaded. Corrie dropped a death certificate on my chest, then set the room ablaze with alcohol and a cigarette flick.
Smoke choked me. A cabinet blocked the door. I collapsed, burning. Then a man in black burst in, scent of cedar and tobacco, scooping me from the fire.
Five years later, I'd rebuilt myself as Sloane, flawless and cold. I signed a sham marriage to Donavan Mason, nursing his dying grandfather in their estate—the house that swallowed my father's legacy.
Betrayed by my lover and sister, child ripped away, identity erased—how could they do this? Who was the man who saved me?
Now, I infiltrate their world, armed with secrets and scars, ready to burn them all down.
9.4
I was the eldest daughter of the powerful Kirk family, sent away to a Swiss sanatorium to recover from my supposed mental illness.
But my stepmother, Johnie, never intended for me to get better. She sent her personal cleaners to drag me onto a plane back to Washington D.C.
In my past life, I didn't know they were assassins. I was forcefully injected with heavy sedatives and locked in a secret torture chamber inside our luxury estate.
My stepmother and cousin skimmed my inheritance while watching me suffer.
They framed me as a crazy addict, and my own father, a sitting Senator, turned a blind eye to protect his political career.
"Her political value is gone, just get rid of her quietly."
That was the last thing I heard my father say before I was brutally slaughtered by my own family.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand why they hated me so much.
Why did my father let them force those pills down my throat?
Why was my life worth less than my stepmother's public image?
Opening my eyes again, the freezing sensation of lake water filling my lungs vanished.
I was back in the VIP room of the St. Moritz Sanatorium in 2023.
It was the exact morning before the cleaners walked through my door with uncapped syringes.
This time, I wouldn't just survive. I was going to cut the throat of the Kirk family.