When The Moon Chose Me
One night.
One howl.
One kiss that changed everything.
Seventeen-year-old Ethan Cross wakes up with blood on his hands and a wolf in his soul. Marked by an ancient pack and hunted by shadowy enemies, he's thrust into a war he doesn't understand-where every full moon threatens to steal his humanity.
Maya Reed is the only person who can calm the beast inside him.
She's also hiding the truth about who she really is.
As danger closes in and the moon tightens its grip, Ethan must choose between running from the monster he's becoming-or embracing it to protect the girl who makes his heart remember how to be human.
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Chapter 5
The house was burning.
Not with fire-
with sound, movement, fear.
I strained against my uncle's grip as another crash echoed from the hallway. Wood splintered. Someone shouted. The scent of blood flooded the air, hot and sharp, sending the wolf inside me slamming against my ribs.
"Maya's still in there!" I roared.
"I know," my uncle snapped. "And if you go feral now, she dies with everyone else."
That stopped me.
Barely.
My arm burned again-worse this time. I cried out as pain ripped through my skin like something was being carved from the inside. My uncle swore under his breath and yanked up my sleeve.
The mark was there now.
Black and silver lines twisted beneath my skin, forming a symbol that pulsed with a heartbeat that wasn't mine. It looked ancient. Possessive.
Claimed.
"That's their seal," he said grimly. "Black Hollow doesn't mark lightly."
"What does it mean?" I demanded.
"It means they think you belong to them," he replied. "And wolves don't give up what they claim."
A scream cut through the noise.
Maya's scream.
The wolf surged.
My vision fractured into gold and shadow as I ripped free of my uncle's grip. Pain exploded through my spine-but this time, I welcomed it. I ran toward the sound, faster than thought, faster than fear.
I skidded into the living room.
Two men stood there dressed in dark armor, silver weapons raised. One lay bleeding on the floor. And between them-
Maya.
She was pressed against the wall, chest heaving, blood smeared across her knuckles. Her eyes locked onto mine, widening in relief and terror all at once.
"Ethan-don't-"
Too late.
The wolf broke loose.
Bones snapped. Muscles tore and rebuilt. The world sharpened into brutal clarity. I felt *huge*, powerful, unstoppable.
One hunter turned just in time to see me.
He didn't even get to scream.
I slammed into him, sending him flying through the window in a storm of glass and blood. The second raised his weapon-but Maya moved faster.
She threw her pendant.
Silver light exploded in the air, slamming into the hunter and pinning him to the wall like an insect. He screamed as the light burned into his skin.
I stood there, half-shifted, chest heaving, claws dripping red.
Maya stared at me.
Not with fear.
With heartbreak.
"Look at your hands," she whispered.
I did.
Blood soaked my claws. The wolf inside me purred.
I hated it.
I turned away from her instantly, shaking, trying to force the shift back. The mark burned like fire, resisting me.
"Ethan," she said softly, stepping closer. "You came back. That means you're still you."
I wanted to believe her.
She reached out-hesitated-then placed her palm over my heart. The contact sent a shock through me, grounding and unbearable all at once. My form collapsed back into human skin, leaving me gasping on my knees.
She knelt with me.
"You scare me," she admitted, voice breaking. "But losing you scares me more."
I looked up at her, eyes burning. "If I stay near you, I'll destroy you."
"No," she said firmly. "If you leave, you'll become exactly what they want."
Sirens wailed in the distance.
My uncle appeared in the doorway, eyes dark. "We have to disappear. Tonight."
Maya squeezed my hand. "This isn't over."
I looked down at the mark on my arm, still glowing faintly.
No.
This was just the beginning.
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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.
7.2
Elara Vex had everything-a flawless ice core, the title of prodigy, and a place at the pinnacle of the High Tower. But in one brutal night, it was all ripped away. Her mentor tore the core from her chest. Her fiancé drove a sword through her back. Her own sister smiled as she bled out on the cold marble floor.
When Elara wakes, she's years in the past, mere hours before her core is scheduled to be stolen. This time, she won't be anyone's sacrificial lamb. She shatters her own core with forbidden blood magic and forges something far more terrifying in its place-a bottomless, ravenous Chaos Core that devours magic itself.
Now, branded a worthless cripple and cast into the deadly Abyss, Elara is pulled from the darkness by the outcasts of Elysium Academy-a school for heretics, psychopaths, and everything the Tower despises. Under the tutelage of a reclusive principal who knew her murdered mother, Elara will master her forbidden power and uncover the Tower's darkest secrets.
When the Five Academies Ranking Tournament arrives, Seraphina Vex stands in the arena, draped in white saintess robes, ready to claim ultimate glory. She doesn't know that a ghost from her past has clawed her way back from hell. She doesn't know that Elara is coming-and this time, the prodigal sister isn't asking for mercy. She's bringing chaos.
9.8
After three agonizing months, I finally found my fiancé, Barnett Spencer, at a gala at The Plaza. He had vanished without a trace, and I was on the verge of losing my mind.
But when I saw him on stage, my blood turned to ice. He had a strange woman tucked into his arm, and a lawyer announced that a recent accident had erased the last six years of his memory-our entire relationship.
In front of a sea of reporters, Barnett looked right through me with freezing hostility.
"Miss, you have the wrong person."
He then declared that the woman beside him, Joslyn, was not only the person who saved his life but also his new, legal wife. The news hit me like a physical blow, and the camera flashes swallowed me whole as reporters shoved microphones in my face, asking how it felt to be publicly dumped.
The man I had loved for six years had turned me into a national joke, a delusional stranger trying to cling to his wealth.
That night, as I was drowning my humiliation in a martini, his ruthless younger brother, Dixon, found me. He slid a marriage contract across the bar.
"Marry me," he said, his voice a low rumble. "I want his shares. You want his pain. We both get what we want."
Fueled by alcohol and a burning need for revenge, I grabbed his pen and signed my name. I was no longer the abandoned fiancée. I was about to become my ex's worst nightmare: his new sister-in-law.
8.5
They say the devil is the most dangerous evil alive.
Until he met her.
She didn't run from his darkness.
She walked straight into it - and made it hers.
He's ruthless, feared by all, a man who destroys without remorse.
She's cunning, seductive, and far more dangerous than she appears.
Their deal was supposed to be simple.
Power for loyalty.
Protection for obedience.
But desire was never part of the agreement.
Every glance burns.
Every touch feels like a sin.
Every kiss tastes like betrayal.
They hate each other.
They crave each other.
And neither knows who will ruin who first.
Because when two monsters fall in love,
it isn't sweet - it's war.
And in the end,
the devil may lose his throne...
to the woman who stole his heart and his soul.
8.0
My husband, Aiden, brought his mistress to a gala. She was carrying my clutch bag, a gift from him. He was laughing, daring me to make a scene.
But the ultimate cruelty wasn't the affair. It was when he brought up my kidnapping from ten years ago, using my deepest trauma as a weapon to publicly shame me.
His mistress, Ember, piled on, her voice dripping with false pity.
"Oh, Julia, I just can't imagine what you went through. Aiden told me everything. How you were… so damaged."
I suddenly realized who she was: the daughter of the man who had orchestrated my kidnapping. This wasn't just an affair; it was a long-con revenge plot to destroy the company I had sacrificed everything to save.
Aiden, the man who once swore to protect me, was her willing pawn. His cruelty had already cost me our unborn child years ago.
In that moment, the last bit of love I had for him turned to ice. He thought he was breaking me.
He had no idea he was just handing me the keys to his destruction.
7.4
I was only fifteen when my venomous family orchestrated my doom by forcing me into an arranged marriage with mafia heir Javier Velasquez.
On our wedding night, Javier paraded strippers into our suite to show his absolute contempt, turning me into the ultimate joke of the underworld overnight.
But being a joke was a luxury compared to what came next.
Three years later, Javier needed to be a widower to marry into a heavily armed family and secure their backing for a coup.
He didn't grant me the mercy of a bullet.
Instead, he dragged me to an abandoned underground safehouse, locked me in the damp, rotting dark, and told the world I had been assassinated.
For six months, I starved in that dungeon, surviving only on the desperate hope that my family was safe.
Then, on the day of his lavish new wedding, a cruel maid kicked a plate of spoiled food onto my floor and delivered the final, fatal blow.
"Annabel is dead. Pined away and died of a broken heart two weeks ago."
My gentle mother was dead, all because she actually believed his lie about my tragic murder.
Driven by pure agony and an all-consuming hatred, I shattered crates of smuggled chemical solvents and struck a match, letting the roaring inferno turn their bloody wedding into my funeral pyre.
I thought the fire was the end.
But when I opened my eyes, the suffocating smoke vanished, replaced by the biting chill of a Long Island winter.
I was standing in the snow, back on the exact day my descent into hell began.
This time, the terrified girl was dead, and I would use their own ruthless rules to tear their empire apart.