Rising From Ashes: The Betrayed Queen Returns
I woke up strapped to a freezing operating table, a gaping hole crudely sutured over my heart.
Joi Rocha, my supposed guardian, stood nearby holding a glowing vial that contained my freshly extracted Phoenix gene sequence.
"Don't blame me, sweetheart. Gayla's body is just too weak. She needs this sequence more than you do."
In my past life, I endured years of illegal biological harvests for this family. My fiancé Brennon watched with cold eyes as they ripped the gene from my chest, while the elite academy students filmed and mocked my bleeding, broken body. They stripped me of my status, drained every drop of my worth, and left me to die in a freezing tomb just so their precious fake daughter could thrive.
Until my dying breath, I didn't understand. I had given them my absolute loyalty, so why was I treated like disposable medical waste? Why did my life mean absolutely nothing to them?
But opening my eyes again, I realized I had returned to the exact day they stole my core.
This time, I didn't cry or beg. I stared dead into Joi's eyes and smiled.
I detonated the residual energy in my chest to incinerate Gayla's stolen sequence, faked my own flatline, and injected myself with a hidden dark matter drive to completely rewrite my DNA.
If they wanted to play God with my life, I was going to burn their entire world to ash.
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Chapter 2
The lab's alloy door shrieked. The yellow warning lights spun wildly before the heavy metal was forcibly overridden and shoved open.
Aislinn instantly killed the glow in her eyes. She let her muscles go slack, slumping against the restraints, mimicking the shallow breathing of a girl seconds away from death.
Clayton Rocha stalked into the room. A cruel, mocking sneer twisted his face.
Right behind him walked Brennon Hart. Brennon wore the immaculate, gold-trimmed uniform of the Academy. His jaw was tight, his hands clenched into rigid fists at his sides. He looked at Aislinn with eyes like crushed ice.
Clayton reached the operating table. He let out a sharp laugh and jabbed his index finger directly into the bloody bandages over Aislinn's heart.
The physical shock of the pain made Aislinn's body violently flinch. Her breath hitched in her throat.
Clayton smirked. He punched a code into the side panel.
The high-polymer straps snapped back.
With nothing holding her up, Aislinn rolled off the slick metal table. She hit the freezing floor hard. The impact jarred her bones and ripped her fresh sutures wide open. Hot blood instantly soaked through the thin fabric of her hospital gown, pooling on the tiles.
Brennon stopped two feet away. He looked down at her bleeding out on the floor.
"This is the price of your selfishness, Aislinn," Brennon said. His voice was completely hollow.
Aislinn lifted her head. Her damp hair clung to her face. She looked up at the man who had claimed to love her in her past life. Her chest tightened, not from heartbreak, but from the sheer, nauseating absurdity of it all.
She didn't waste her breath arguing. She planted her blood-slicked palms flat on the floor and pushed, trying to force her broken body to stand.
Clayton saw her moving. His eyes darkened. He grabbed the collar of her gown and hauled her halfway off the floor, his knuckles digging into her collarbone.
"Stop playing dead," Clayton spat, his saliva hitting her cheek. "Gayla is in the ICU waiting for your final data metrics."
Clayton turned and dragged her toward the door. Aislinn's legs dragged uselessly behind her. Her knees scraped against the metal floor, leaving a thick, dark smear of blood in their wake.
Brennon followed them out. He kept his fists clenched, staring straight ahead, convincing himself this brutality was just protocol.
Clayton dragged her out of the lab and into the Academy's main medical corridor.
The hallway was packed. Dozens of elite students lined the walls, their eyes wide with morbid curiosity and disgust.
A blonde girl in the front row pinched her nose and took a step back.
"Disgusting," the girl announced loudly. "A genetic thief who doesn't even know how to be grateful."
A boy next to her held up his holographic terminal, the blue recording light blinking as he filmed Aislinn's bleeding, broken state.
Aislinn let her head loll to the side. Her dead eyes tracked over their faces. She memorized every sneer. Every laugh.
Clayton stopped dead in the center of the four-way intersection. He shoved Aislinn forward, tossing her onto the white tiles like a bag of medical waste.
Aislinn hit the ground. The impact forced a wet cough from her lungs. She spat a mouthful of blood onto the pristine floor.
Brennon stepped forward. He unclasped his hands and read from his terminal, his voice a mechanical drone.
"Due to Aislinn Conley's selfishness and genetic rejection, which placed student Gayla in critical danger, she is hereby stripped of her elite status."
The crowd erupted. Cheers and vicious boos echoed off the high ceilings. They were judging a monster.
Aislinn kept her head down. Hidden by the curtain of her hair, the corners of her mouth stretched into a wide, unhinged smile.
Beneath her skin, her bio-electricity began to cycle at a terrifying speed. Her pulse roared in her ears. The energy connected directly to the compressed Phoenix core in her chest.
Aislinn slowly pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. She tilted her head back and locked eyes with Brennon.
"You're all about to find out," Aislinn whispered, her voice raspy and wet with blood, "what real danger looks like."
Above them, the corridor's massive energy-sensing lights began to violently flicker as her bio-electric field bled into the air.
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9.1
Waking up with a cold, scaly hand wrapped around my throat wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was realizing I'd transmigrated into the body of Terra Mason—the most despised woman in the entire Enclave. She drugged high-level beast-men and forced them into life-binding bio-contracts. She locked an aquatic warrior in a dry basement until his organs failed. She treated the most lethal males in the city like broken toys.
Zev, the Level 6 serpent who's currently choking me, would rather blow up his own heart than spend another day as my slave. His affection metric? Negative ninety. His trust? Zero.
Then my system activates: the Kore AI. It gives me exactly 500 credits, a medical nano-gel, and a recipe for neutralizing the radioactive poison in mutant meat. Real food. In this world, that's worth more than gold.
I save Rhys, the dying aquatic male everyone left for dead. I season a slab of purple mutant steak until Sam, a battle-scarred grizzly shifter, groans at the taste—and his trust points finally tick above zero. When my backstabbing ex-best friend tries to steal my males and destroy me, I don't scream or throw a tantrum like the old Terra. I dismantle her with the truth.
But earning their trust means more than grilling meat. A scorpion swarm ambushes us at midnight. Sam throws himself between me and a stinger the size of my arm. As he stands over the corpse, fur receding from his claws, he stares at me and whispers, "You were testing me."
Yes. I was. Because in this world, the weak don't survive. And I refuse to be weak again.
Four beast-men. Four contracts. One system. And a whole lot of steak. Let this dystopian wasteland know—I'm not the monster they remember. I'm worse. I'm the one who's going to feed them until they'd kill for me.
7.5
On the morning of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I found a cream-colored document tucked inside my husband's suit pocket.
It was a twenty-million-dollar asset transfer for his former receptionist, Carmen. But what made my blood run cold was the contingent beneficiary: Leo, my newborn son who the hospital claimed was kidnapped twenty-three years ago.
When I confronted Devonte, he didn't even try to explain. He handed me a fake Cartier watch, canceled all my credit cards, and publicly called me delusional.
The next day, he moved Carmen into our mansion and emptied all our joint accounts into offshore trusts.
"If you don't sign these papers and walk away, I will have you committed," he threatened, his mother nodding in agreement.
They had orchestrated the kidnapping of my baby, hiding him with the mistress while I spent half my life sedated and screaming in grief. Now, to keep his secret, Devonte was going to lock me in a psychiatric ward and bury me in debt.
I didn't understand how the man I loved could be such a monster. Why did he steal my child? What else was hidden in that confidential adoption file?
Pushed to the absolute brink, I refused to be his victim.
When his goons came to my temporary apartment to drag me away, I turned to the rugged union electrician who had just fixed my lights.
"If you need a husband to keep you out of a psych ward, I'll marry you," he said, offering himself as my legal shield.
I took his hand. It was time to tear my husband's perfect life apart.
8.0
"IS IT TRUE?" Grayson's voice thundered through the room.
"Yes!" Tessa said softly. "Yes it is!"
"So you've been cheating on me, haven't you?" He spat.
Her hands trembled. "No, I swear, it's not like that."
He grabbed her arm, his grip bruising her wrist as she squealed in pain.
"Then whose baby are you carrying, huh?" His voice was ice cold.
Tessa shivered, tears blurring her vision.
"I don't know."
**********
Pregnant with the powerful Roman Blackwood's child, while engaged to his unstable stepbrother - Tessa Quinn becomes the key to a ruthless inheritance war where love has no place.
As secrets unravel and danger closes in, Tessa must protect her unborn child while trapped between love, vengeance, and men who want to own her fate.
8.1
Samira James has two weeks left.
Two weeks until she turns eighteen.
Two weeks until everything changes.
And a few months left trapped in high school with the boy she hates most.
Calvin Simms has been her enemy for as long as she can remember. Popular, untouchable, and the living reminder of a childhood misunderstanding neither of them ever corrected. Their interactions are sharp, heated, and carefully controlled.
Until they aren't.
As months pass, tension replaces silence.
Jealousy replaces indifference.
And lines blur where hatred once lived.
With rivals watching, secrets resurfacing, and temptation growing harder to ignore, Samira must decide if sticking to her rules is worth denying what her body and her heart are already choosing.
Because some mistakes feel too good to stop.
And sometimes...
you don't fall for the person you want.
You fall for the one you swore to hate.
9.2
My husband, a ruthless mafia Capo, brought his pregnant mistress to our anniversary party. He then ordered me to give her a blood transfusion, knowing my heart condition could kill me. As my life drained away, I knew my nine-year marriage was finally over.
It was my ninth wedding anniversary, and I stood in an expensive gown, watching Dominick Reyes, a feared mafia Capo, celebrate with our guests. But the celebration wasn't for us; Dominick had brought Chastity, his pregnant mistress, and then publicly ordered me out of our master suite. Chastity, who had faked her pregnancy, then framed me for an attack. Dominick forced me to give a blood transfusion to Chastity, knowing my heart condition made it potentially fatal. As my blood drained from my veins, sustaining the woman who had stolen my life, I felt my consciousness fading, hoping I would not wake up.
When I woke, Dominick had already paraded Chastity to a gala. He had drained me, used me, and then abandoned me in a hospital bed, breaking his promise of a divorce. I was nothing more than a debt payment, a pawn in his brutal game. Knowing he would never truly let me go, I calmly called a trusted contact. I would disappear from his world, become someone new, and this time, Dominick Reyes would pay.
7.3
A mafia billionaire single dad romance.
I just discovered the don's darkest secret. Wait 'til he finds out mine...
The Bratva don and I made a deal:
Spare my father. Take me instead.
But Dmitry Tsezar wasn't satisfied with my body.
He wanted everything else, too.
My obedience. My submission.
My heart. My soul.
And when that still wasn't enough, he came to take my life.
But then I found something.
Something twisted. Something wrong.
Something hidden in a locked room of his mansion, in a wing he warned me never, ever to wander near.
When I opened the door and discovered Dmitry's secret...
Everything changed forever.