The Curse of Bones
This is a terrifying memory I'd rather never speak of again.
We were just high school students when the town accidentally unearthed a mass grave.
That night, Keegan Wilkerson, the most popular senior, showed up at a party with a trophy: a finger bone he had stolen from the site.
He passed the bone around. Everyone wanted to touch it, just to prove they had the guts.
A day later, Keegan was bedridden with a raging fever, drifting in and out of consciousness. Then he started counting with his eyes closed. "One... two... three..." He counted endlessly.
Soon, everyone who had touched that bone fell ill, in the exact same order.
The doctors called it a rare infection.
But my grandma said it was a curse, and that Wilkerson was already beyond saving.
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Chapter 4
Jenna Santos's POV:
I left Keegan's house in a complete daze.
Fear gripped my throat like claws. It was a cold, sharp terror, deeper than anything I had ever felt before.
Keegan's terrified face, his endless counting, the scars on his hand—they were all burned permanently into my memory.
I sprinted all the way home. I needed the familiarity and warmth of my house. I needed Nana. Only she would understand me. Only she could guide me.
I burst through the front door. Nana looked up. "Jenna? You're home late. Where have you been?"
I blurted everything out all at once. "Nana, it's Keegan. He's sick. Really sick. And his hand, Nana. There are marks on it. Just like the carvings on the bone." The words spilled out of me in a frantic, rushed panic.
"He's counting, Nana," I continued, my voice trembling. "One, two, three. Over and over. Just like in my dream. Just like that counting man Mr. Mason talked about." I held out my fingers, mimicking Keegan's tapping motion.
Nana went dead pale, her eyes wide with terror. "Stop it!" she hissed, grabbing my arm. Her grip was surprisingly strong. "Don't say such things! Not in this house!"
She was shaking, fear radiating off her in waves.
"You are never to speak of this again," Nana whispered, her voice barely audible, as if terrified someone else might hear. "It's superstition. All lies. He's just a boy with a fever, out of his mind."
She tried to deny it, tried to justify it to herself, but her eyes betrayed her.
"But Nana, the marks," I pressed. "They're just like..."
She cut me off. "Quiet! It's nothing. Just a coincidence. He probably scratched himself."
"Jenna, you have to promise me," she said, her tone desperate. "You cannot tell anyone. Do not breathe a word of this to a soul. Not one word."
I noticed her hands trembling slightly. Her eyes darted around the room. Her usual calm demeanor was completely gone. It was like she was hiding something. She was utterly terrified.
Nana knew. She knew way more than she was letting on. She fully understood the horror of it. I could feel it too. The curse was real. And she knew it.
"Grandma, what about the bone?" I asked softly. "The one Keegan took. What does it actually mean?" I was trying to pry the truth out of her.
She turned away and started fussing with a potted plant on the windowsill. "That bone is nothing. Just an old relic. Let it go." She avoided my gaze.
I retreated to my room and sat on my bed, my mind racing. Nana's fear wasn't for herself; it was for me. She was protecting me, but from what? And why the secrecy?
At dinner, Nana was quiet. She barely touched her food and wouldn't look at me. Her eyes kept drifting toward the window. She seemed to be listening, watching for something.
Outside, the wind howled, rattling the windowpanes like distant, mournful cries, echoing the turmoil inside me. The house felt like a fragile shield against an invisible threat.
"Go to sleep, child," Nana said, her voice raspy. "You look exhausted. You need rest." She just wanted me safely tucked away in my room, far from whatever she feared.
Later, long after I was supposed to be asleep, I heard her moving around. Soft footsteps, the faint rustle of fabric. I tiptoed to my door and peeked out through a crack.
Nana was in the living room. She had lit several candles and set up a small altar. On it sat a crucifix, a statue of the Virgin Mary, and a bowl of water.
She began chanting softly in Spanish. Her voice trembled.
She clutched her rosary, her lips moving rapidly as she crossed herself over and over. Her prayers were devout, but dripping with desperation. Her face was etched with fear, yet illuminated by a fierce resolve. She was fighting against some unseen force.
I remembered the stories she told, her steadfast faith, her "old-school" ways. These weren't just quaint traditions; they were her armor. They were her weapons against things only she seemed to understand.
And I was only just beginning to grasp what those things were.
My heart ached. For Nana, for Keegan, for all of us. I tossed and turned in bed. The air in my room felt thick and heavy, as if saturated with some invisible, crackling energy.
I heard the numbers again. Inside my head. One. Two. Three. Keegan's voice. The Counter's voice.
I drifted into a restless sleep, plagued by fragmented dreams filled with shifting shadows and dark whispers.
I didn't understand Nana's secrets.
She was protecting me. But her denial of the truth was building a wall between us. It left me feeling completely isolated.
My scientific upbringing violently clashed with my grandmother's folk wisdom. I felt torn, unable to reconcile the two. My world felt like it was crumbling.
The worry for Keegan never left me. It was a dull ache that occasionally flared into sharp panic. What would happen tomorrow? What about the others?
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9.5
Rejected by her mate and tortured to death, Valeria wakes up in a new body, right before her wedding vows. In the body of another woman with the same name as hers.
She never thought of being inside the most powerful Luna. The most scandalous and shrewd woman. The moon Goddess blessed her with the perfect cover.
The big twist? The previous owner of the body had an affair with her ex- fiance. Things take a turn when her new husband, the alpha, knows her little secret.
He can see the souls of people through their eyes. Their unexpected attraction blooms. Until his brother returns from the dead to claim his wife, Luna Valeria.
7.1
I was eight months pregnant, waiting on the sofa for my billionaire husband to come home.
But when the heavy oak doors opened, Cayden threw a fake DNA test on the glass table, showing a zero percent probability of paternity.
He accused me of carrying another man's bastard. I cried and begged, swearing I was framed by his childhood friend, Carmella. He didn't listen. Instead, he ordered his massive bodyguards to pin me down while a private doctor forced an abortion pill down my throat.
"The Merritt family does not raise bastards. Get rid of it."
He forced me to sign divorce papers and ordered his men to throw me out into the freezing storm. Before I was dragged away, I desperately told him the truth: I was the anonymous donor who gave him a kidney to save his life three years ago.
He just sneered, saying Carmella had the surgical scar to prove she was the donor, and kicked me out to die.
Lying in the freezing rain, vomiting up the half-dissolved poison to save my baby, I didn't understand how the man I loved could be so completely blind. How could he let that woman steal my kidney, my marriage, and murder his own flesh and blood?
Five years later, I returned to New York not as his pathetic discarded wife, but as a top-tier medical fixer for the global elite.
And my genius five-year-old son has already infiltrated his mansion, ready to tear his empire apart from the inside.
7.9
On Christmas Eve, the snow fell in relentless sheets.
My grandmother and I were cast out into the snow as if we were nothing by my uncle.
My aunt cursed me as a bad luck charm, while my uncle's boot landed fiercely in my chest.
I knelt in the freezing snow, clutching my grandmother's body as it grew cold, my nails digging into my flesh, convinced that death awaited us tonight.
Suddenly, the blinding headlights cut through the night.
A convoy of Rolls-Royce cars, bearing diplomatic plates, silently blocked the entrance to the rundown neighborhood.
The elderly butler strode directly to my grandmother, who had been "blind" for forty years, and knelt on one knee, "Your Highness, forgive us for arriving so late."
8.5
My mate, the Alpha, was planning to replace me. He was terrified of the family curse that took his mother in childbirth, and he decided his human lover, Lila, was a safer bet to carry his heir.
The plan was as cruel as it was calculated. He was throwing me a lavish birthday party, not to celebrate me, but to create a public stage for my rejection. He told his most trusted men he would break our sacred bond and install Lila as his new mate right after.
The humiliation was a constant, public execution. He flaunted Lila at every turn, and for a tiny scrape on her hand, he performed a sacred life-force ritual meant only for a dying mate, a blasphemy that horrified our pack. At a formal dinner, Lila announced she was pregnant, and he fled with her when I demanded the rejection he had planned all along.
Later that night, through the agony of our bond, I felt him kiss her. It was a passionate, claiming kiss that finally shattered my heart. He thought I was too gentle to fight back, a willing sacrifice for the good of the pack.
He was wrong. Using his own rage against him, I twisted the rite and severed our bond myself. The next morning, I signed his papers, took none of his blood money, and walked out of his life forever, leaving him to the future he'd built on a bed of lies.
8.1
Pretty Devil
8.1
Maddy worked at an exclusive underground club, always hidden behind a sleek black mask. One night, a wealthy client approached her with a filthy fantasy , he didn't want to just fuck her. He wanted to be her complete slave.
He took her to his luxury penthouse, while she shoved her soaked pussy onto his face and rode his tongue until she came, then mounted his cock and used him mercilessly, slapping and choking him while denying his orgasm until he begged like a broken whore. Even after she quit the club and started a new corporate job, she kept hooking up with him. One day, she walked into the CEO's office... and froze. Her new boss was the same man.
By day, in his luxurious office, he is the dominant, commanding CEO , barking orders, running the company with iron authority, and no one suspects a thing. By night, he becomes her secret pathetic slave: crawling, getting pegged over his own desk, licking her cum off his floor, and having his cock locked in chastity while she laughs at how easily she owns him.
Pretty Devil is a raw, extremely explicit erotic novel packed with intense femdom, heavy BDSM, humiliation, orgasm denial, pegging, face-sitting, and twisted power exchanges that blur the dangerous line between boss and secret slave.
This book is unapologetically nasty and graphic. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
9.8
I stood at the edge of the freezing pond on the Boone estate, my body trembling with a fear that rattled my bones. Across from me, Amanda Olsen looked immaculate in her cashmere coat, a sharp contrast to the jagged reality I was trying to hold together.
"Why?" I whispered. Amanda just smiled, admitting she killed Grandpa Boone because he actually liked me. She pulled out a thick envelope-divorce papers Cordero had signed that morning. She told me he called me a parasite and was celebrating with her the night I suffered a miscarriage.
Before I could even scream, Amanda lunged and shoved me into the icy water. My heavy wool coat acted like a sponge, dragging me into the artificial abyss. I thrashed and gasped for air, but Amanda just stood on the bank, watching me drown with her hands tucked casually in her pockets.
As my lungs burned and the darkness closed in, I realized I had spent my entire marriage taking their abuse. I was the "foster trash" and the "gold digger" who let them win every single time. I was dying alone, hated by the husband I had tried so hard to love, while my murderer stood victorious on the shore.
I never fought back. I just let them destroy me.
Then, a violent spasm tore through my body. I sat up gasping, sucking in dry, air-conditioned oxygen instead of murky pond water. I wasn't dead. I was back in the opulent master suite, surrounded by red rose petals and wedding decorations.
The digital clock glowed: October 14, 2019. I had gone back five years to the very night my nightmare began.
The bathroom door clicked open, and Cordero stepped out, looking at me with the same cold disgust I remembered. But as I gripped the silk sheets, a new resolve hardened in my chest. This time, I wasn't going to be the victim. This time, the Boone family was going to find out exactly what happens when you push someone too far.