Unraveled (MxM)
Elliot Carter never loses.
Not to his father.
Not to anyone.
And definitely not to the infuriating 'golden' boy who suddenly moves into his house.
When Elliot's father marries Asher Brooks' mother, his already broken world cracks even more. Asher is everything he despises-calm, disciplined, admired by everyone at university. The kind of guy who smiles like he has nothing to prove.
From the moment they meet, it's war.
Elliot thrives on pushing buttons. Asher refuses to be provoked. Their fights are sharp, personal, and relentless, until one night, anger turns physical... and something far more dangerous ignites between them.
A line is crossed that neither of them can uncross.
Asher refuses to feel guilty.
Elliot refuses to admit he wanted it.
Now they're trapped under the same roof, and the more they try to hate each other, the more dangerous the attraction becomes.
Because this isn't just rivalry.
It's obsession.
And when control becomes the weapon of choice, someone is bound to break.
The only question is... Who will break first?
What starts as a power struggle becomes a secret neither of them is willing to name.
Because Asher doesn't regret what happened.
And Elliot hates that he doesn't either.
At school, they glare across crowded hallways like enemies. At home, the tension between them grows heavier, hotter, impossible to ignore. Pride keeps them apart. Desire drags them back together.
But when jealousy, family pressure, and buried wounds threaten to expose everything, Elliot and Asher will have to decide:
Are they destroying each other?
Or are they the only ones who truly see the cracks beneath the surface?
In a house built on second chances, love might be the most dangerous risk of all.
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Chapter 4
ASHER
The house felt different after dinner.
It was like the calm after the storm.
After Elliot's outburst, everyone retreated to their rooms. Of course, dinner could not go on.
It made me feel slightly uncomfortable. I hadn't felt this kind of quiet since five years ago when my father died.
I lay back on my bed, staring at the ceiling, hands folded over my chest.
I hadn't meant to storm into Elliot's room.
The truth was, I had been angry. Angry on my mother's behalf. Angry at the way he'd spoken to her, like her kindness was an insult. Angry that he'd made her cry.
But that wasn't the only reason why I had gone to his room.
If I was being honest, I had gone because the look on his face when his father slapped him didn't look defiant.
It looked... shattered.
I closed my eyes.
When Elliot had told me to leave him alone, there hadn't been venom in his voice. Just exhaustion. Pain stripped bare. And when he'd started crying-
I sat up abruptly.
Don't.
Thinking about it did nothing good. It only made my chest feel tight in a way I didn't like.
Why did I care about what Elliot was feeling anyway? Who cared if he was hurt? It was what he deserved for treating my mother like she was dirt beneath his feet.
A soft knock sounded at my door, pulling me from my thoughts.
"Come in," I said.
Mum stepped inside, closing the door behind her. She looked smaller somehow, like the evening had weighed on her. Her eyes were tired, rimmed red, but she smiled anyway. She always did that. Just smiled like everything could still be okay if she just tried hard enough.
She sat on the edge of my bed, the mattress dipping softly. "Can we talk?"
I sat up. "Of course."
She folded her hands in her lap. "I know what happened at dinner wasn't... ideal but I don't want you getting mad at Elliot. I need you to... be nice to him."
I didn't respond immediately.
I couldn't believe she was asking me this. But that was my mother for you. Always nice to everyone, even if they didn't deserve it.
I dragged a hand through my hair, exhaling slowly. "I'm trying."
And that was the truth. It wasn't my fault Elliot had decided, in his own head, that I was the villain.
She looked at me, like she was searching my face for something. "I know you are. I just don't want you to hate him. He's now your stepbrother."
I let out a humorless laugh. "Why do you want me to be nice to him?" I asked. "He doesn't like you. He disrespects you at every turn. Tonight-" I cut myself off, jaw tightening. "Tonight wasn't the first time."
She sighed, long and weary. "He doesn't hate me. Not really."
She couldn't possibly believe that.
"Mum-"
"He's grieving," she said gently. "Grief makes people cruel. It twists things. He lost his mother. His brother. And now he feels like he's losing his father too."
"That doesn't give him the right to hurt you."
Her shoulders slumped a little at that.
I swung my legs off the bed, leaning forward, elbows on my knees. "I can take it," I said quietly. "All of it. The pranks. The comments. The glares. If he wants to hate me, fine. But hurting you?" I shook my head. "That's where I draw the line."
She reached out, placing her hand over mine. "I don't want this to tear the family apart."
Family. I hated to break it to her but the chances of all of us being a family were very slim. At least where Elliot was concerned. He'd rather burn himself alive than think of us as family.
"I don't want Simon to leave," she continued softly. "I don't want to be a mistake he regrets. I don't want to be another mistake."
I turned to her sharply. "Simon is nothing like that bastard. He loves you. He won't think of you as a mistake."
I didn't think I could hate that bastard that called himself my father anymore than I already did, but somehow I kept surprising myself.
I hated him in a way I'd never hated anyone else. It was a good thing he was rotting away in the ground. Right where he belonged.
Mum shook her head. "You don't know that."
"I do," I said firmly. "He wouldn't have married you if he didn't. He wouldn't be trying-failing, maybe, but trying-if he didn't care. You're a good person, mum. A lovable, caring person. Not a mistake. And Simon is smart enough to see it. Trust me."
She smiled sadly. "You're really a good son. I'm lucky to have you."
This. This was what I strived for. To be the perfect son that made my mother happy. It was the least I could do after making her give up her dreams.
She squeezed my hand, then stood. "Just... try to understand Elliot. That's all I'm asking."
After she left, the room felt too quiet again.
I lay back down, staring at the ceiling, my mind drifting, against my will, to the image of Elliot in his bedroom. Crying. Alone.
I didn't like that I'd seen him like that.
Didn't like that it had felt intimate. Vulnerable. Like we'd shared a moment.
I told myself I was nonchalant. That I didn't care what happened to him.
But nonchalance didn't knot itself in your chest like this.
Didn't follow you into silence.
Didn't make you lie awake wondering if someone was okay.
Didn't make you want to get up and check on said person.
I stared at the ceiling a little harder, trying to blank out my mind.
I was trying.
God help me, I was.
Somehow, I knew this was only the beginning.
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9.6
Areli was the hardest-working medic in the Blackridge Clan, but her efforts only earned her the title of a useless burden.
Her supposed lover, Eugene, and her senior mentor, Gloria, lured her to the edge of the deadly Blackwind Cliff and shoved her straight into the abyss.
She miraculously survived the freefall, only to return and find Gloria standing before the entire clan, wearing a mask of fake sorrow.
"Look! The traitor is back! She eloped with wild males!" Gloria shrieked.
Eugene stepped up, looking heartbroken, and publicly accused her of betraying his love.
The crowd erupted, raining hisses and boos upon her, completely ignoring the horrific, life-threatening bruises that covered her battered body.
They blindly believed the lies, treating her like garbage while Gloria secretly plotted to poison her water and destroy her completely.
Areli felt a chilling sense of betrayal. How could the man who claimed to love her watch her fall with such cold eyes?
To make matters worse, her modern biochemist instincts revealed a terrifying truth: she was unexpectedly pregnant with the child of a savage Warlord she had encountered in the wild.
In this brutal, primitive world, showing any weakness was an absolute death sentence.
But she wasn't going to cower or run away.
Refusing the Warlord's offer to simply rescue her, Areli calmly placed a highly toxic herb on her drying rack and left her tent flap open.
The bait was set. Now, she just had to wait for the screams.
7.4
"You can't escape me, Aurora. You are mine!"
The Alpha King's roar echoed through the palace walls.
But Aurora just tightened her grip on the blade hidden beneath her cloak.
She would never-never-give herself to the monster who murdered her father.
Even if the Moon Goddess cursed her to be his mate.
***
Aurora Regalia once had everything-a loving father, a prosperous pack, and a future that glittered with promise. Her father, the king, even chose her a mate: Logan Charming. Powerful. Charismatic. Cursed.
She thought he was her destiny.
Then she watched him tear her father's head from his shoulders.
One night. One betrayal. Her entire family, slaughtered. Her pack, reduced to ashes.
Aurora jumped off a cliff that night-not to die, but to survive. To become something her enemies would never see coming.
An assassin. A ghost. A blade wrapped in silk.
For years, she trained in the shadows, fueled by one single purpose: revenge. Blood for blood. She would make Logan Charming suffer the way she had suffered. She would carve his heart out and feel nothing.
But fate had a cruel sense of humor.
The Moon Goddess looked down at her shattered daughter and laughed.
Because the man who destroyed her life?
The monster who wore her father's blood on his hands?
He was her fated mate.
Now Aurora stands at a crossroads she never asked for. Every instinct screams for vengeance. Every fiber of her being recoils at the bond pulling her toward him.
But Logan? He doesn't care about her hatred. He doesn't care about her blade.
"You can run, little mate," he whispers, crimson eyes gleaming in the dark. "But I will always find you."
And when he does?
He won't just cage her body.
He'll claim her soul.
9.5
"You shouldn't be here, Fiona," his deep voice rasped against her ear, his hand still pressed against the wall behind her.
"Then tell me to leave," she whispered, her lips trembling inches from his. He didn't move. He didn't breathe. And in that moment, she knew he wanted her just as much as she wanted him.
Fiona Harry has lived her whole life in a golden cage of wealth, reputation, and suffocating rules. University was supposed to be her escape, her first taste of freedom. But nothing could prepare her for the moment she came face-to-face with Professor Jalen Hart, her father's best friend. One reckless night changes everything. A drunken mistake turns into an irresistible obsession, pulling her deeper into Jalen's forbidden world. But secrets don't stay hidden forever. Between Jude, her possessive friend who knows too much, Marian, Jalen's wicked wife, and the dangerous power of desire, Fiona is about to risk not only hers and her family's reputation but her entire future.
And what happens when the truth comes out especially to Marian?
9.1
I stood at the altar in a fifty-thousand-dollar custom lace gown, waiting to marry the boy I had loved since I was five.
But Silas didn't say "I do."
He answered a phone call, turned pale, and bolted toward the exit as if the gates of hell had opened, leaving me to face five hundred of New York's most dangerous criminals alone.
He left me for a waitress named Lola.
The humiliation was suffocating. The elite of the Five Families looked at me with pity, a Genovese princess rejected for trash.
When Silas finally returned, he didn't apologize.
He showed up with hickeys on his neck, clinging to Lola, and had the audacity to suggest I become his mistress.
He even demanded I hand over my dowry—millions in weapons and cash—so he could fund their lifestyle and "redecorate" with her.
He thought I was still the innocent girl who would beg for his scraps.
He didn't realize that in the moment he ran, a shadow had stepped forward to fill the void.
Dante Moretti. The Don. Silas's uncle.
The most feared man in the city looked at me with dark, predatory eyes and offered me a choice: be a victim, or be a Queen.
"Since you are to marry a Moretti," Dante said, extending his scarred hand, "why not marry the head of the table?"
I looked at the door where Silas had disappeared, then at the Reaper standing before me.
"I do," I whispered.
Silas thought he had ruined my life, but he only cleared the way for me to marry the monster who would burn the world down for me.
9.4
I married Alistair Montgomery out of duty, enduring five years of his coldness and his mother stealing my son, hoping my love would eventually warm his heart.
Then, his "dead" first love, Cordelia, returned.
The second he heard her voice on the phone, he ordered me out of his car on a deserted dirt road and left me in the dust to rush to her side.
She faked a suicide attempt and framed me. Alistair didn't even give me a chance to explain.
"If she doesn't survive this, I will destroy you."
He roared those words over the phone, openly declaring he would spend the night guarding her hospital bed.
The very next day, Cordelia's secret son publicly attacked me and my child at the kindergarten gates, pointing at me and screaming that I was a thief who stole his father.
For five years, I swallowed my pride and let his family strip me of my dignity, only to realize I was nothing but a temporary placeholder for a ghost.
He actually thought he could just toss me the empty title of "wife" while giving his heart and his nights to another woman.
I finally woke up from this pathetic joke.
I didn't shed another tear or beg him to look at me.
Instead, I calmly opened my tablet and searched for the most ruthless divorce lawyer in New York.
The war was about to begin.
9.2
Chelsi was down to her last fourteen dollars. After a humiliating job rejection for being "too low-class," the threat of eviction forced her to try live-streaming. Terrified of her exhausted, tear-stained face, she cranked the AR beauty filter to the max, morphing into a bizarre plastic alien.
She was immediately dragged into a forced streaming battle with Kamron, the platform's most arrogant top streamer. Seeing her distorted filter, Kamron sneered, unleashing fifty thousand fans to flood her chat with toxic insults.
Kamron set a ruthless penalty for her inevitable loss.
"You're going to take a bar of soap, scrub your face completely clean, and shove your bare face right into the camera."
Desperate to keep the fifty dollars she had just earned for rent, Chelsi begged for a different punishment, but Kamron coldly refused. With her heart pounding, she walked to the freezing bathroom, her hands shaking as she scrubbed her skin raw, bracing for the cyberbullying.
She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling utterly humiliated by the cruelty of the internet. Why did she have to be stripped of her dignity just to survive? She clicked off the filter, waiting for the tidal wave of disgust to destroy her.
But the insults never came. The high-definition camera revealed a breathtakingly delicate, flawless face that no algorithm could ever replicate. The chat went dead silent, Kamron was so stunned he dropped a ten-thousand-dollar virtual yacht, and a silent war between two mysterious billionaires was about to begin.