beside the bride

Ten-year-old Louie Barton tumbles into a world of deadly supernatural set in a hospital and accidentally activates Anomaly Kin-Binder System, a power that does exactly one thing: find his relatives. Turns out they are everywhere. The terrifying S-rank head nurse? His aunt.The Crimson Wraith haunting the corridors? Family.The Copper Coffin Bride? Related. The Gloom Sovereign who rules the underworld? Also his kin. While other players tremble and fall, Louie strolls through the most feared dungeons in existence with an ever-growing roster of monstrous relatives clearing the path ahead.Two worlds, countless horrors, one ten-year-old with the most dangerous family reunion in history.

Lorna Grant is brought into the household as a child bride, raised under their roof and worked to the bone by the very family she is meant to belong to. What they intend as submission becomes something else entirely. By accident or by design, they sharpen her. A twist of fate pulls her into an assassin organization where her instincts, honed by years of surviving the wrong people, turn out to be exactly the right currency. She rises quietly and then all at once, becoming the most formidable blade in the guild. The men who once ignored her, dismissed her, looked through her now compete fiercely for her attention. The household that broke her in never imagined it was building a weapon.

The night before his wedding, while decorating the venue, Scott Brawley receives a fire alarm call from their new house. Rushing over, he discovers his fiancee Alison Ritchie in bed with her stepbrother. Alison shamelessly claims it's just "sibling affection" that won't affect tomorrow's wedding. Reflecting on the past,Scott realizes how many times Alison has hurt him for her stepbrother's sake. He always thought marriage would fix things, but seeing the ambiguous kiss marks on Alison's body,Scott finally wakes up. He agrees to his grandfather's arrangement. Tomorrow, he'll marry the arranged bride instead.

Maid Hailey devotes her life to noble lady Natalie from childhood. The pair stand side by side through every hardship.Natalie rises to become empress of the Cafaro Empire, and Hailey becomes a high-ranking concubine who helps her rule the harem. At 60, Hailey suddenly travels to another era and becomes the Smith family's nanny's daughter.To her shock, Natalie Smith here, just brought home from the countryside, looks exactly like the empress she once served. Adopted girl Mila bullies Natalie cruelly, but Natalie cowers in fear, too timid to fight back. Hailey vows to help Natalie, take revenge on Mila and her unfair parents, and walk beside her into a new, bright life.

When Landon Scott gets dropped into a supernatural apocalypse overrun by terrifying female anomalies, everyone else runs. Landon does not run. Red Bride haunting the wedding hall gets kissed before she can scream. Ruby Dreadlord of the Bloody Hospital, fearsome sovereign of the undead, is spoiled so relentlessly she forgets to be terrifying. The spider goddess Lady Arachnid of Silken Inn? His new favorite, naturally. He isn't fighting his way through this cursed world. He's charming it, one horrifying entity at a time, until the most feared anomalies in existence are squabbling over his attention. Everyone calls this the age of the bizarre apocalypse.The anomalies have started to suspect the real danger was him all along.

In her first life, set against the backdrop of 1970s, Josie Cole married a dependable, simple man who rose to become a respected cultural official, and she stood faithfully beside him. Her cousin Gracie Hill, meanwhile, married into wealth, watched it crumble, fell into ruin, and in a fit of bitter envy, ended up murdering Josie. Reborn on the very day the marriages were being arranged, Josie watches Gracie steal her original match. Josie ends up with the one everyone wrote off as a spoiled playboy, but she’s lived a whole life already; she knows how to read people. Josie and Sam Jordan agree to a cold, transactional marriage and leave it at that, until they don’t. She helps him rebuild his family’s fallen fortune; he becomes someone worth keeping. This time, Josie wins, not by fighting for what she had before, but by building something better.

In her first life, set against the backdrop of 1970s, Josie Cole married a dependable, simple man who rose to become a respected cultural official, and she stood faithfully beside him. Her cousin Gracie Hill, meanwhile, married into wealth, watched it crumble, fell into ruin, and in a fit of bitter envy, ended up murdering Josie. Reborn on the very day the marriages were being arranged, Josie watches Gracie steal her original match. Josie ends up with the one everyone wrote off as a spoiled playboy, but she’s lived a whole life already; she knows how to read people. Josie and Sam Jordan agree to a cold, transactional marriage and leave it at that, until they don’t. She helps him rebuild his family’s fallen fortune; he becomes someone worth keeping. This time, Josie wins, not by fighting for what she had before, but by building something better.

Kayla Anson, a top OB-GYN, was just hours away from her wedding when everything fell apart. The night before the ceremony, her adopted sister Elise arrived at the hospital with a ruptured ovary. To Kayla's shock, it was her fiancé, Adrian Fane, who brought Elise in.Relying on her experience, Kayla quickly realized the truth. Adrian and Elise had been having an affair. Without hesitation, she ended the engagement. That same night, she reached out to Rowan Keane, the wealthy heir who had loved her for years, and proposed a flash marriage. Rowan gladly accepted.At the wedding the next day, Kayla stood in front of everyone and announced she would not marry Adrian. As the crowd erupted in confusion, Rowan entered with an extravagant bride price. He exposed Adrian and Elise's betrayal, stood up to Kayla's biased parents, and helped her reclaim her pride in the most unforgettable way.

Anne Cooke is about to get married when she discovers her fiance has been cheating. With her mother gravely ill and five years of love too heavy to just drop, she swallows it, until the sleeplessness becomes unbearable and she wanders into a traditional medicine clinic. There she meets James Young,and something shifts. On impulse she propositions him. Just one night. What she doesn't know is that James already knows exactly who she is, and has quietly decided to help her find her way back to herself. Through carefully prescribed remedies and steadier conversations, he walks beside her as she slowly remembers she has a spine. On her wedding day, she exposes her fiance in front of everyone and walks away with her head up. By then the feelings between Anne and James have long stopped being subtle, and the revelation that he comes from money and that his mother once knew hers feels less like a plot twist and more like something that was always going to happen. He proposes in the same clinic where they first met.

The beastfolk are a powerful race, and to strengthen our family's power, Father arranges marriages for both me and my stepsister, Arya Hearthguard. In our past lives, Arya entered a high-profile marriage into the wealthy, powerful dragon clan, while I was forced to wed into the crumbling lion clan. The clan leader of the dragons—Draken Vorgath—was cold and detached. He cared more for gold than his bride, leaving Arya in a glided cage of loneliness. Overwhelmed by the desolation, she seduced the future leader of the fox clan, who was flirtatious.. And when the scandal exploded, Draken resolutely divorced her. Arya's scandal brought shame upon our family. Despite Father's favoritism, he was compelled by family honor to exile her in disgrace. Clan leader of the lions and King of the Jungle—Kael Hawthorne—was a man of unwavering devotion. Our marriage blossomed, and within a year, I bore him a golden lion cub blessed with the Aetheric Divinity. With the Aetherborn, Kael rose to rule all beastfolk as the chieftain, and I became their most revered chieftess. Consumed by envy, Arya sneaked into my son's first birthday feast and strangled the golden lion cub in his cradle. Then, she set the place ablaze and burned me alive along with it. When I wake up, I am back on the very day of our marriage. This time, Arya volunteers to marry into the lions and leaves me the chance to marry into the dragons. I accept everything meekly with only a tenth of her dowry and marry Draken. Later, she bleeds her dowry dry, propping up the lion clan, only to fail in conceiving a cub. When the elders demand she mate with other males, regret drowns her. As for me, all I want in his new life is an heir and a quiet life among the dragons. But no one warns me about the dragons, least of all that my supposedly cold-hearted husband will relentlessly demand me once awakened. Or that his members came in pairs and ridges!

The beastfolk are a powerful race, and to strengthen our family's power, Father arranges marriages for both me and my stepsister, Arya Hearthguard. In our past lives, Arya entered a high-profile marriage into the wealthy, powerful dragon clan, while I was forced to wed into the crumbling lion clan. The clan leader of the dragons—Draken Vorgath—was cold and detached. He cared more for gold than his bride, leaving Arya in a glided cage of loneliness. Overwhelmed by the desolation, she seduced the future leader of the fox clan, who was flirtatious.. And when the scandal exploded, Draken resolutely divorced her. Arya's scandal brought shame upon our family. Despite Father's favoritism, he was compelled by family honor to exile her in disgrace. Clan leader of the lions and King of the Jungle—Kael Hawthorne—was a man of unwavering devotion. Our marriage blossomed, and within a year, I bore him a golden lion cub blessed with the Aetheric Divinity. With the Aetherborn, Kael rose to rule all beastfolk as the chieftain, and I became their most revered chieftess. Consumed by envy, Arya sneaked into my son's first birthday feast and strangled the golden lion cub in his cradle. Then, she set the place ablaze and burned me alive along with it. When I wake up, I am back on the very day of our marriage. This time, Arya volunteers to marry into the lions and leaves me the chance to marry into the dragons. I accept everything meekly with only a tenth of her dowry and marry Draken. Later, she bleeds her dowry dry, propping up the lion clan, only to fail in conceiving a cub. When the elders demand she mate with other males, regret drowns her. As for me, all I want in his new life is an heir and a quiet life among the dragons. But no one warns me about the dragons, least of all that my supposedly cold-hearted husband will relentlessly demand me once awakened. Or that his members came in pairs and ridges!