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 9
I'm not sure what I was expecting. Something flashy? Bright lights? Ribbons? A talking cat perhaps?
None of the above for me. But I did get a shiny new pair of goggles...and pain radiating from my head. I winced, reaching up to rub the spot only to find two inwardly twisted horns hiding amongst my hair.
"What the hell...why do I have horns?"
As I'm fondling myself in public, the shift in the weight of my hips catches me off guard. I wiggle my butt, only to realize it's not my actual butt that's moving.
I have a tail. Long, pink, scaly up top and white down bottom. Its tip had soft feathers that brushed against my face.
"Ah! Don't do that! Tails don't move on their own. Why do I have a tail?" the tail straightened and extended up, then the tip pointed at my face. I move to the left, testing something. Of course it moves with me.
My tail points towards the snake, still stuck in mid-air.
"Okay, Wyatt you're gonna have to explain–" I look back to where he was standing, not surprised to see him gone. Dax, face fully restored, sat in the cafe seat again. Like nothing had changed...except for me.
The smile on my lips reaches my ears as I look up at the sky and whisper.
"Goodbye."
I sigh. I'm not sure if this is all a dream but if it is? It's not that bad. For the first time in 12 years, I feel like I've finally gotten somewhere–like the fog is starting to lift.
My heart rate spiked as time started to resume. The snake moved first,but my tail was faster. It grabbed Dax and tossed him onto the cafe's building.
"Ouch!"
"Sorry!" I called up to him. Hey, at least he's still alive.
"Ha! Take that ya dumb reptile–oh no." Just as I was gloating, finger-pointing and everything-the universe decided to balance my karma. The snake hissed in my direction, snapping its jaws twice. It was gunning for me now?!
"Any chance we could talk this out like reasonable scaled-folk?"I gulped, stepping back slowly.
It hissed once then lunged at me. I had just enough time to grab the cafe table and shove it into the thing's mouth.
"I'll take that as a no!" I grunt, watching it crush the table in two.
Considering how slow I normally am–I never thought I'd get far away from it but I was hoping the class promotion gave me something to work with!
Its jaws opened wide, it rammed towards me–intending to swallow me whole. Its eyes widened as I grabbed the upper jaw and held it at bay with my strength. My tail tapped me on the shoulder just as the strain started.
"What?! I could use a little help here. Wanna tag in?!" I wheeze out, feeling my knees about to buckle. No wonder Guy was having such a problem containing this thing.
Color me shocked when my tail "nodded" and twisted itself like a drill.
"Huh?" Was all I could get out before it began spinning so fast I couldn't keep up. Hurling itself upwards, my tail jammed itself through the snake's mouth and out its eyeball. A mouthful of goop spilled out of the creature and onto my face as my tail withdrew.
"Oh gross! I'm glad my mouth wasn't open at least."
The snake's jaw went slack and I dropped it to the side, stepping away from its corpse.
Another tap on my shoulder. My tail was eye level, and it had split itself into three tips. Of all the weird things today, I'm willing to look past a new appendage doing weird shit like that...but I draw the line at it making emoji faces at me-particularly the angry emoji.
"Don't make that face at me. I didn't do anything wrong here!"
I snickered as it flicked me off to the best of its ability.
"Oh...wait. Sorry, thank you. I quite literally couldn't have done it without you. Happy?"
A smiley face says yes.
"Cleanup girl! How did you do that?" Guy said, coming in for a fast landing next to me. He eyed me closely, looking me over twice.
"No, I have not always had a tail or horns or these adorable goggles...nor have I always had this class." I squeezed in that last part, enjoying the smile on his face. Guy went in for a hug but my tail gently pushed him back.
This was becoming a thing...not sure how I feel about it yet.
"Ouch, okay so no hugs, got it. Did you change to a superhero?"
Shaking my head, I sigh. "Nah. Still a janitor technically but now I've got a fancy title: Master Custodian."
He blinks a few times, scratching his head. "Why would Rupert let you pick that class?"
"He didn't. It was a promotion." Feeling pressure near my hand, I glanced at my tail and smiled, scratching its scales softly. It was odd, being attached to a sentient body part. Odd but not bad, I guess.
"A promotion? Classes don't get promotions. Are you sure Rupert hasn't just–"
I hold up a hand, pausing him.
"I'm sure. In any event, let's go back to the president for a follow-up. I'm sure if anyone has any answers on what to do, he'd be the one to have them."
Guy nodded and held out his arms. I shook my head and wrapped my tail around his waist.
"This is...different. Are you sure you want me to carry you like this?"
"Less talking, more flying please."
"Heh, yes ma'am."
The ride was short but it gave me what I wanted; a reminder of flying once more. The feeling wasn't foreign,the sky was my home and it had been calling for me for years now. How had I missed it?
I quickly wiped my tears as we landed.
"You're back so soon? And with progress worth reporting I see." Rupert smiled, showing off his black gums. His guards were gone. It was just us and him.
"Mr. President, where is your security?"
"I don't believe I need them anymore. Isn't that right, Sapphyra?"
Guy turned to me, confusion in his eyes. "Sapph, what's he talking about?"
"End it all my dear. It's gone on long enough."
Dammit. I hate that he's right.
I'm done crying today.
"Guy. Come here." I held my arms out for him.
"Sapph...you're scaring me a bit but alright."
I leaned into him, confirming my heartbreak. He smelled like nothing. His body was barely there, a shadow of bones and meat. In fact if I pressed too far I'm sure I'd go right through him.
Just like with Wyatt.
"For what it's worth, Guy..." I whispered in his ear, "you were my favorite part of this whole thing."
"Thing? What thing?"
Steeling myself, I squared my shoulders and uttered two words that had always been in the back of my mind. They just didn't want to come out until today.
"End Sanctuary."
The world crumbled into ones and zeroes, then into nothing.
I was all alone.
Again.
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8.9
Just hours after I endured a grueling labor to give Kaelen, my fated mate and the Alpha, two beautiful twins, he walked into the infirmary.
Instead of holding our newborns, his Alpha aura pinned me to the bed as he coldly announced, "I reject you as my mate."
He claimed I reeked of another Alpha. His sister Vanessa threw a stack of photos at my face, showing me at a cafe with a broad-shouldered man. Before I could even explain, Kaelen forced a pen into my trembling hand while I was still bleeding, making me sign away my parental rights. His mother then snatched my newborn son Liam from the crib.
"Take the girl and get out of my territory," Kaelen commanded, leaving me in the freezing room with my severed mate-bond and my crying daughter.
I didn't understand how our sacred bond could be shattered by a single fake photo, or how my fated mate could be so blind and ruthless as to rip my baby from my arms.
Five years later, his precious heir is dying, and Kaelen desperately needs an alliance and a bone marrow donor. But when he finally sees me at a high-society gala, he doesn't find a broken, exiled Omega.
He finds me standing beside that very same "lover"—Dominic, the Alpha of the Silverwood Pack, my older brother. And this time, I am the one holding the blade.
8.4
My mate, Alpha Santino, brought another woman into our home. She was a pregnant Omega, the widow of his fallen Beta, and he swore to protect her above all others.
He gave her my seat of honor, left our bed cold each night to soothe her feigned nightmares, and ignored me completely. I was the Luna of the Blackstone Pack, but I was becoming a ghost in my own life.
The final betrayal happened in my own bedroom. She stood over my vanity and deliberately shattered my mother's sacred moonstone necklace, the last piece of my family I had left.
When Santino burst in, he didn't see my heartbreak. He saw only her fake tears.
"What did you do to her?!" he roared, his voice laced with the Alpha's Command, a sacred power he used to crush my will.
Then, for her, he did the unforgivable. He raised his hand and struck me, his mate.
In that instant, the love I had desperately clung to turned to ice. The man I had sworn my life to had not only betrayed me but had defiled the sacred bond the Goddess herself had blessed.
As the pain of his betrayal ripped through me, something ancient and powerful awakened in my blood. I rose to my feet and spoke the words that would destroy his world and begin mine.
"I, Alessia Bianchi, reject you, Santino Moretti, as my mate."
7.6
I woke up to the suffocating smell of copper and sulfur, my fingers wrapped around a blood-soaked leather whip.
Hanging from an obsidian cross in front of me was a boy with silver hair and dead, golden eyes.
His pale chest was torn open to the bone.
I recognized those eyes immediately. I had spent three years describing them on my laptop.
He was Kamari Monroe, the tragic, overpowered protagonist of my own web novel.
And I wasn't just a bystander. I was Benedict Guerrero, the sadistic academy headmaster. The ultimate villain.
A reel of images flashed in my mind: my original ending. Kamari, fully awakened, skinning me alive and burning my soul in a furnace for forty-nine days.
My loyal attack dog, Gideon, stepped forward with a basin of glowing green liquid.
"Headmaster, let me wake him up with this bone-rot acid so you can resume."
If that acid hit Kamari, his hatred would become permanent. My gruesome death would be sealed.
But if I broke character and apologized, the magical world would sense the shift, and Kamari would just think it was a sicker, more twisted trap.
How was I supposed to survive a death sentence I wrote myself?
I couldn't show weakness. I had to play the monster to survive.
Suppressing my terror, I smashed the acid basin, healed his ruined flesh with agonizing dark magic, and lied straight to his face.
"Someone had to be the monster to push you into the fire."
This time, I will rewrite my own fate.
9.2
Lainey spent her last life destroying herself for Larry, only to become the woman he discarded most cruelly. He never loved her, never wanted her, and made no secret that his first love still owned his heart.
On their wedding day, he abandoned Lainey at the altar for that woman, then later used Lainey as nothing more than a stepping stone for his company's rise. In the end, he even had her kidney ripped from her.
Reborn at the very moment everything began, Lainey called off the wedding without hesitation. But after losing her, Larry begged desperately.
Lainey shot him a cold look, then turned and walked straight into the arms of a powerful, aloof man, who stared down at Larry with pure contempt. "She's my wife now."
7.4
Bridget, a ruthless twenty-first-century Wall Street analyst, woke up violently coughing up murky lake water in a decaying 1978 slum.
She quickly realized she was trapped in the body of a naive, marginalized teenager who had just committed suicide over a boy's cruel rejection.
The original girl had been mercilessly bullied by a fake rich kid named Kurtis and his cruel followers. They had publicly read her desperate love letters out loud, mocking her as a toad trying to eat swan meat, and simply watched as she threw herself into the freezing water. Now, her impoverished mother was left weeping by the bed, facing catastrophic debt and total social ruin in their small town. Everyone expected the surviving girl to wake up begging and crying for the boy who humiliated her.
Instead, a cold, calculating fury took over Bridget's analytical mind.
"I already died in that lake. That stupid girl is never coming back."
How could anyone throw their life away for a pathetic, vain clown wearing a mass-produced fifty-dollar watch? To Bridget, those uncollected love letters weren't symbols of teenage heartbreak. They were toxic assets. They were reputation landmines left out in the open that threatened her new family's survival.
Locking away the dead girl's weak emotions, Bridget forced her freezing, exhausted body out of the clinic bed. She set a hard three-month deadline to drag this family out of tier-one poverty. But first, she was marching straight to the volunteer camp to liquidate those liabilities and completely destroy the people who drove this body to death.
8.6
In my past life, I was the weak Luna everyone despised.
A fake daughter!
A disposable pawn!!
A girl my family happily executed!!!
They forced me to marry my brother to protect the family's reputation. They feared the world will know that their Alpha Son was born Impotent- they made me carry the blame of-
"A HEN THAT CANNOT LAY EGGS!!"
I obeyed them... and it cost me my life!
Their real daughter framed me countless times. My husband who was also my brother and we grew up together never believed me... They called me fake and treated me like a servant. She framed me and made the wolf world see my shame. I died trying to save my life from them.
But I woke up 10 years before my death.
This time, I refused to play their game.
After accepting the marriage to my brother...
I went behind them to meet my mate. The most feared man in our CLAN. His Uncle.
The crippled Lycan lord in disguise who once asked me to marry him.
He thought I had come to reject our bond like my past life but this time. --------I stood before him with a dangerous deal.
"Do you still want to stay the crippled Uncle in the shadows?" I asked, in a serious tone.
He replied. "I don't know what you are saying."
I knelt down placing my hands on his lap."Tomorrow morning they will be here. Do you dare to come claim your mate?"
This Time!!......I' Elena Alvarez, will Light fire to their World.