

Three days before the long weekend, the Department of Labor called me. "We got an anonymous complaint saying your company is forcing employees to go on a holiday retreat..." I went still. Then I checked social media. Yep. There it was. An intern who'd started a month ago had shoved me onto the local trending page. [Greedy boss turns holiday weekend into mandatory company retreat. Employees are basically free entertainment.] [They say it's optional. Yeah, right. Who's brave enough to say no?] Thousands of comments rolled in, absolutely roasting me. Except our retreats had always been elite. Fully paid. No cheap corporate nonsense. This time, I was paying out of pocket. Seven days in the Maldives. Everything covered. A $2,000 travel stipend each. Senior employees could bring family. But apparently, a free luxury vacation was oppression now. Cool. I told the labor officer, "We'll fully cooperate." Then I dropped a notice in the company group chat. [Per Department of Labor guidance, the long weekend company retreat is canceled. Everyone should take the holiday off as usual.] [The travel stipends and retreat budget will be moved into this quarter's employee benefits reserve.] The second I hit send, something slammed into a desk outside my office.

Humanity relies on Invokers to defend itself against Felbeasts. Colin Larkin is the only SSS-rank Necro Invoker, but he fails to realize that forming pacts with long-dead creatures is the key to boosting his power. After being betrayed and killed, he is reborn one day earlier. This time, he heads to a museum and forms a pact with the skeleton of a 160-million-year-old T-Rex.

I had been in a secret relationship with my mafia boyfriend, Dante Castellano, for seven years. No public contact. No photos together. No proof I had ever stood by his side. He told me, "Once I'm powerful enough that no one dares touch you, I'll make it official." I believed him. The day before our seventh anniversary, I found a ten-carat diamond ring in his suit jacket. I cried with joy, thinking seven years of hiding were finally over. The next morning, I wore my most expensive dress and sprayed on the only perfume he had ever given me. I practiced my smile in the mirror, the one I would give when he proposed. Then, my phone lit up with a breaking news alert. [Breaking News: Seven-Year Love Story Reaches Perfect Ending—Romance Blogger Alessia Romano Accepts Boyfriend's 100th Proposal!] In the photo, the influencer with eight million followers stood on her tiptoes, kissing a man. His hand rested on the back of her neck. On that hand was a scar I would never mistake. It was the scar Dante got when he took a knife for me.

Having concealed her identity as the empress, Astrid Sinclair visits the Crown Prince's palace just to watch the ceremony of his marrying a consort named Daphne Lowell. But she ends up getting framed by Daphne for allegedly tearing her wedding gown. Alaric Talbot, the Crown Prince, and the Lowell siblings mistake Astrid for a concubine who has lost the emperor's favor, so they start humiliating her and even threaten to torture her. How will Astrid get her revenge?

Elena Vance was supposed to lose everything. Her assistant poisoned her voice. Her boyfriend stole her career. Then they burned her alive. But Elena wakes up on the night it all began, with one chance to change everything. This time, she won't beg, disappear, or let them replace her. With a mysterious fan hiding a world-famous identity by her side, Elena enters America's Next Hit to reclaim the stage, expose her betrayers, and prove one thing: You can silence a woman once. You don't get to do it twice.

College student David Gray is temporarily staying with his cousin, Joseph Gray, in a rural village when he accidentally uncovers a shocking secret between Joseph and his daughter-in-law, Holly Ware. After Holly desperately pleads for his help, the kind-hearted David finds himself torn between family loyalty and doing what's right…

The moment Piper Swift gave birth, her boyfriend Sean Ward abandoned her. For ten years, Will Mack cares for her and her daughter selflessly, asking for nothing in return—only to be mocked as a simp. Will doesn't mind, for he knows his time is short and that he will soon return to his wife and child in the real world. However, once he is gone, Piper and her daughter spiral, realizing too late what they've lost.

Wealthy heiress Claire Gould was raised with seven family-sponsored students. Three years ago, Chloe Parker, the driver’s daughter, arrived. Her persistent slander turned the seven against Claire.Heart-broken after seeing them kneel to confess love to Chloe, Claire cut all ties. At her birthday party a month later, she announced her marriage to Julian Hale, the paralyzed young master of Kenton’s Hale House. The seven were consumed by regret once the truth came out.

On the day Corey Meade's father undergoes heart surgery, his fiancée, Amber Neuman, hosts a welcome dinner for her close friend Eric Auden—and even admits she would reunite with him if she weren't engaged to Corey. Unfazed, Corey calmly proposes calling off the engagement. Expecting him to plead, Amber instead erupts in anger, only to realize too late that he no longer loves her.

For seven years, Kelsey Dale ran a business empire from the shadows and called herself a housewife. She gave up her name, her position, and eventually her health to prop up a husband who needed her more than he admitted, including nursing him through a near-fatal illness with everything she had. On the day their infant son turns one hundred days old, Gaige Hamilton walks through the door with his mistress and their child, backed by his parents, and offers Kelsey a choice: accept them under her roof and keep managing the household, or leave without her son. Seven years. That is what they thought they were owed.