Sapphyra
Sapphyra used to have it all: a super-genius husband, a superhero career, and a dragon side she actually got along with.
Then everything went to hell.
When the world faced a threat she couldn't punch, Sapphyra tried to sacrifice herself so everyone she loved could escape. But Wyatt, her husband with backup plans for his backup plans, refused to let her die. He trapped her inside a digital coma, planning to wake her when the world settled down.
That was 100 years ago.
Now Sapphyra has ripped herself free and woken to a ruined city, a broken world, and a body she barely recognizes. Her powers are locked away. Her dragon side is caged. And the Class System controlling it all? Wyatt put it inside her.
Because of course he did.
It only gets messier. Guy, the charming golden retriever-energy hero she met inside the coma, is real-and so are his feelings for her. Meanwhile, Wyatt separated his mind from his body, so now his consciousness follows Sapphyra around like a brilliant, possessive bad hangover.
And then there's Rupert Domingo, the madman who escaped her digital nightmare and now rules the ruined city like his personal kingdom. He knows what happened while Sapphyra slept, and he'll give her answers...
If she survives his game first.
To win, Sapphyra has to rebuild her city, untangle her powers, face Wyatt's sins, and decide what scares her more: losing herself to grief, or becoming the dragon Rupert is desperate to wake up.
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Chapter 8
Too many moving parts.
"Guy!" My voice strained as I cried out for him.
He was nowhere in sight but the snake stalled, desperately snapping its jaws. It nearly had Dax–who was content to be a snack for some reason.
"Dammit, Dax!" Using this opportunity, I dashed over and grabbed Dax, throwing him back over my shoulder. The snake followed me with its eyes. That's when I saw what was holding it back.
Guy was holding its tail.
"Move, Cleanup girl!" He screamed at me, gritting his teeth and holding his grip for dear life.
Something was wrong though, he was straining. Guy Dynamo never struggles with anything–he's perfect!
No. He's just as flawed as I am. It's time I started recognizing that.
"Hold on Dax. You've been carrying me around on your bus for years. How bout I give you a ride this time!" My legs pumped as we moved through the streets.
People stared, asking idiotic questions as I moved.
"Isn't she just a janitor?"
My jaw clenched.
"Why is she saving that old man? It's clear he wants to die."
A beast of rage beat against the cage of my heart.
"Man, when it's your time–its your time."
Am I the only one in this city who still cares about human life?
"Hey Sapph, it's hot. When did it get so hot?" Dax murmured over my shoulder.
"Dax, what are you talking about-oh shit!" I dropped him when I smelled something burning. His shirt had caught a flame. It was nowhere near hot enough for spontaneous combustion.
But as I put out the flames, I noticed my hands weren't burning. The heat felt familiar, like a warm hug. I really miss my mom right now.
I shook my head back and forth, trying to wake myself from whatever hellish nightmare I was in.
"Get up Dax." In the background, the snake struggled against Dax–truly on a rampage for Dax.
"Why? It's my time. It's just the way things are." That same blank stare hit his face and made my blood boil.
"Dax, don't–" the words fled from me as I watched what happened next. His face vanished, leaving only a black hole. Yet his voice, his words still came through.
"Dax?" I whispered, blinking several times to try and wake from this nightmare. He stopped talking. The world froze for half a moment. Even the massive snake remained in its place. Everything was still and silent...except for me.
"What the hell?" I glanced around, noticing that each naysayer on the street had turned translucent.
I shouldn't be able to see through people! There might be some superpowers in what I do but this? X-ray vision and time powers?
"I'm just a friggin' janitor. What am I supposed to do with this?!" I exclaimed to no one in particular.
I place Dax down on a chair at a cafe table nearby. When did we get a new cafe?
"Way. Way. Way. Way. It's just the way. Way. way. Things are. Are. Are."
"Dax, shut up! You sound like a glitching robot–" I swallowed the doubts and looked at him–really stared into his abyss of a face. Faintly glowing ones and zeros littered his insides, freaking me the fuck out.
"Are. Are. Are you ready to promote your class?" He asked, turning towards me despite having no eyes.
"Promote my class? Classes don't promote, everybody knows that." But something about the way he asked it. I don't think this is Dax talking to me anymore and if that's the case...who am I talking to?
"Are you ready to promote your class?" He repeated.
"Humoring the creepy face-hole voice, what am I promoting it to?"
No answer.
"Oh no you don't. Don't you go silent on me now! Promote it to what?!"
"Are you ready to promote your class?" for a third time, acting as it didn't hear me.
I sighed.
"Do I really have a choice?"
"There's always a choice, Sapph. I choose to run away with you, as soon as you're ready."
"NO!" I stood up, pointing a finger at not-Dax. "Don't you dare use his voice!"
My hand trembled with rage but I couldn't move, not yet. If I move now, I'll fall apart like a house of cards. I can already feel my soul breaking and it's all I can do to keep it together.
"You're the one...it was always you who wanted to be a superhero, Wyatt. I never wanted that life, damn you!"
I'm yelling at a ghost of ones and zeroes. Tears follow my bitter laugh as I run my hand down my face.
Not-Dax is still waiting.
I lean back in my seat and place my hands on the table, blowing a strand of hair out my face. My brows furrow as I glare into the void, imagining I'm intimidating the hell out of whoever's in there.
"Fine. You want me to upgrade? I'll do it on one fucking condition: stop using his voice. I don't want to hear him in my head. I want–no–i have to move past Wyatt. Because if I can't...if I can't–"
A single tear hit my hand. My throat catches as Dax changes shape. That portly bus driver is gone, replaced in a sudden sunset orange mist by the man himself.
He sits there, a knowing smile on his face.
"Wyatt?" I whisper, reaching out to touch his face. "Are you really here?"
My fingers connect with his cheek, caressing him. He leans into my touch a little too long, eyes closed as we reconnect.
"I don't have much time."
"Wait, no. Are you really here? I'm so confused about what I'm supposed to do!"
I gasp when he places his hand over mine. He opens his eyes, big and brown like almonds.
"Sapphyra. You know what you're supposed to do. You've just been dragging your feet about it for a good long while."
My stomach sank at his words. I could feel something opening behind me but I dared not look, not when he was so close.
A burning sensation in my head started and I doubled over with pain as memories crashed into me like ocean waves.
"Remember, Sapphyra. It was never about me being a hero!"
His voice sounded so far away.
"Gah! My head is..."
I had wings.
They were large and pink and feathery like a bird but also leathery like a bat. In my memories I'm flying. I'm saving people from disasters. My fist connects with a knight riding a black dragon. When my mouth opens, flames spew out, saving trapped victims in a snowstorm.
I'm in a city. No, not The City–Cyran City.
My head snaps up and I see Wyatt–really see him for the first time in a long time.
Not the skeleton. Not the ghost. The man.
"We were part of a team. A team of other superheroes!"
Why does that fill me with joy? Standing side by side with faces I can't quite recall.
He nods, smiling as he holds out his hand towards me. Wyatt always loved to leave me with more questions than answers.
"So, let me ask you one more time. Are you ready to promote your class?"
I clasp his hand and grin as golden energy pours from him to me.
"Lets fucking go!"
[MASTER CUSTODIAN PROMOTION COMPLETE]
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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.
7.1
I was the top commander of a black-ops military program. After slaughtering my way through a hellish mission, I reached the extraction helicopter, trusting my second-in-command to watch my back.
But the moment our hands locked, he didn't pull me up. Instead, he plunged a syringe of lethal neurotoxin directly into my neck.
He aimed his gun at my chest, coldly stating that I was too dangerous to live. My lungs stopped, and I died in a pool of my own blood. But the endless blackness suddenly shattered. My consciousness violently forced its way into a new, broken shell. I woke up in a freezing alley, soaked in muddy rain.
This body belonged to seventeen-year-old Eliza Wyatt. A massive wave of foreign memories crashed into my brain. Her own younger sister had just stood at the top of the stairs with a mocking smile, watching street thugs beat Eliza to death.
"Take good care of the Wyatt family's eldest daughter. Tonight is the night she finally disappears."
The endless humiliation, the cold stares of her family, and the brutal betrayal by her own blood flashed before my eyes. Why was this fragile girl treated like garbage and pushed to her death by the very people who should have protected her?
I looked down at my pale, trembling hands. The top commander was dead, but in this bleeding shell, Eliza Wyatt was very much alive. I picked up a switchblade from the bloody puddle and stood up in the storm. It was time to hunt.
9.5
As a highborn succubus, I somehow managed to starve myself to death-thanks to my obsessive cleanliness and ridiculously picky appetite.
When I opened my eyes again, I had transmigrated into Vivian Hartwell-the long-lost "real" daughter with a tragically cursed fate.
I had barely been taken back into the Hartwell family before they forced me to attend a so-called "death matchmaking" event in Kingsford-on behalf of Natalie Hartwell, the fake heiress-to meet Damian Blackwood, the infamous "living reaper."
Rumor had it Damian was brutal and bloodthirsty-every woman who'd ever been involved with him either ended up dead or driven insane.
At the event, over a hundred socialites were trembling on their knees, silently praying they wouldn't be the one chosen.
Just as Damian let out a cold smirk and reached to pick his unlucky victim, I took a deep breath from the back of the crowd.
The scent emanating from him was a rare, potent masculine essence-something encountered perhaps once in ten millennia.
For a painfully picky succubus like me, this was nothing short of salvation.
I kicked aside the girl blocking my way, my eyes practically glowing as I threw both hands up. "Pick me! Hurry, pick me!"
8.7
I woke up from a coma in the hospital, universally condemned as the vicious daughter who pushed the beloved fake heiress, Georgina, down the stairs.
My ruthless billionaire brother, Angelo, stood over my bed with cold eyes, ready to destroy me for hurting his precious sister.
But as I looked at him, a terrifying prophecy from my coma flooded my brain. Our entire family was doomed.
In the original timeline, Georgina would team up with corporate rivals to bankrupt the company, frame Angelo, and send him to federal prison, while our parents would abandon me to die miserably.
Lying there, I didn't dare speak. I just desperately cursed my idiot brother in my head.
"This stupid brother is still yelling at me for that fake heiress. He doesn't even know he's going to be framed and sent to prison next month!"
I just wanted to stay quiet, let them ruin themselves, and run away from this toxic family.
But strangely, Angelo didn't strangle me. Instead, his attitude took a shocking turn.
He abruptly fired the driver plotting to kill him, destroyed the abusive fiancé of a family ally, and publicly humiliated Georgina at a high-society gala.
He even shielded me from our abusive parents, declaring to the world that I was the only sister he would ever protect.
I was completely terrified and confused. Why was the tyrant brother suddenly acting like a protective beast?
It wasn't until he flawlessly crushed a massive corporate attack using the exact financial secrets I had just complained about in my mind that a horrifying realization hit me.
He could hear my inner thoughts!
7.7
I trusted the wrong people in my past life.
My supposed lover and my sweet sister conspired against me, locking me inside a burning warehouse to die.
But the man I had spent my life hating, my ruthless captor Damien Sterling, rushed straight into that inferno and burned alive just to try and save me.
In my past life, I was utterly blind. I believed Julian's forged documents and Scarlett's fake affection. I even tried to assassinate Damien with a silver dagger they provided, breaking the heart of the only man who truly loved me. I died choking on thick ash, realizing too late who the real monsters were.
Why was I so incredibly foolish? Why did I let their vicious manipulation turn me into a weapon against the one person who would sacrifice absolutely everything for me?
Opening my eyes again, the phantom smell of smoke vanished.
I was sitting in the bloody water of Damien's bathtub, right after my staged suicide attempt.
When my sister sneaked into my penthouse suite and handed me the dagger to kill him again, I didn't hesitate.
I grabbed her hand tightly and plunged the sharp blade directly into my own shoulder.
"Please don't kill me, Scarlett!"
This time, I will ruthlessly ruin them both, and I will never let Damien go.
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.