

I plan a family trip at my mother Lucia Sweeney's request. While avoiding the danger zones, my sister Linda Harper and I are ambushed by rogues. To protect her, I throw myself in the path of their claws and get driven into a silver mine. As I fall, my back is slashed open to the bone, and shards of silver embed deep into my right leg. The searing silver poison spreads quickly, burning through me and my wolf. My wolf is whimpering—she's close to death. However, as the pack's chief healer, Mom gathers all the healers around Linda to give her a full check-up over a few minor scrapes. I sob and beg her to save me first. "Mom, the poison has almost reached my heart. I can't hold on anymore." She turns around impatiently and yells, "Are you seriously still fighting with Linda now? Do you have any idea how close she came to getting clawed in the face by a silver claw? Our pack doesn't have a wolf as heartless as you!" And in that moment, I hear my wolf's final whimper, saying goodbye. I finally fall asleep in the cold wind, never waking up again.

All because I talked to a girl from school, my parents decided I was too young to date and sent me to a behavioral correction camp over winter break. I spent 14 days there before they came for me. When Mom reached for my backpack, I flinched and dropped to my knees. "Mom, I'm sorry. I'll carry my own things. Please don't touch me. You're the opposite sex." Her expression soured. "I told you to watch out for girls out there, not treat your own mother like one of them." I kept my head down and said nothing, because responding to the opposite sex was also a violation. On the drive home, Dad noticed me sitting rigid and perfectly still. He laughed, pleased. "Look at him. He's so well-behaved now." "It worked even better than I expected. We'll have our family dinner tonight and send him back in the morning. They need to straighten him out for good." I said nothing. I just turned and looked out the window. There would be no tomorrow. Tonight was my farewell gift to them.

Nineteen-year-old college freshman Carl West was entrusted by his mother, who was away on a business trip, to the care of their neighbor Joanna Luca. Joanna, thirty-eight, had a husband who was rarely home and ran a women’s clothing store by herself. She took excellent care of herself, had a full figure, and was easygoing and generous, never shy about walking around in revealing clothes in front of Carl. Carl was deeply drawn to her mature feminine charm, while Joanna also treated him with the closeness of one of her own kids—pulling him into workouts, making videos, and their daily contact steadily intensified the ambiguous tension between them. One night, after helping Joanna carry her handbag back to her door, Carl heard her husband’s furious shouting from inside. Joanna’s husband, Michael Luca, demanded to know whether she was having an affair, punched and kicked Carl, and publicly humiliated Joanna. Carl was completely defenseless. In the course of seeking revenge, Carl was repeatedly beaten and humiliated by Michael and his men. While enduring the humiliation, he secretly investigated and learned that Michael had gotten ahead by sleeping with his boss Lucas’s wife, Sarah. So Carl teamed up with Dick, a former subordinate whom Michael had cuckolded, and set a trap to let Michael’s boss Lucas catch him in the act himself. After Michael was ruined and reduced to a street beggar, Joanna successfully divorced him, and in the end she and Carl started a new life together.

On the day of my mate-bonding ceremony, my parents suddenly brought my mate home and told me the marking ceremony that day would be with someone else. “Your sister was poisoned by wolfsbane. There's no cure, and her dying wish is to become David’s mate.” “You’re her older sister. Can’t you be kind and help her out?” My mate also tried to persuade me. “Don’t worry, it’s just for show. After she dies, we’ll still be each other’s one and only.” Still, I refused. However, my parents forced me to drink a potion that blocked my mind link, tied me up, and threw me into the silver mine behind our villa. “We’ll untie you once the ceremony goes smoothly,” they said. But soon after they left, I was attacked by a vicious rogue wolf. After endless torment, I was killed. It was only when my body started rotting that they remembered I was still bound in the mine.

Someone @'d me on Nextdoor. "Hey, penthouse girl. You're single. What do you need a whole rooftop garden for? My husband's throwing a party. We'll be needing it starting tomorrow." "Don't worry, we'll give you two hundred bucks a month for upkeep. You'll make a couple hundred for doing jack shit. You should be thrilled." I stared at the screen. It was a joke. I was Don Ricci's heir, groomed to run the South Side. But I traded that life for a paintbrush. This apartment was my sanctuary, my quiet place. That rooftop garden wasn't some building perk. It was mine. I'd paid half a million cash for the deed when I bought the place. I turned it into my sunroom studio. And now someone thinks they can have it for two hundred bucks a month? I replied with two words: "Dream on." I didn't expect the building manager and two security guards at my door the next day. Someone had filed a complaint about me "misusing community resources." And now, for the sake of "neighborly harmony," they were demanding my keys. Fine. They wanted to throw civility out the window? They were about to learn what real power felt like.

Honoring her late mother's wish, Alex Clemens, the Dark Queen of Riverdon, entered a flash marriage with her senior, Sylvan Johnson. Shortly after, Sylvan was injured in a car crash and went missing with no memory of their life together. Years later, Alex returned with their daughter and ran into him at the airport.When she learned the truth behind his disappearance, she fought fiercely to protect him. During a setup against her, Sylvan regained his memory and stepped in just in time. Together, they uncovered the conspiracy and finally reunited as a family.

Damon spent six months and $20,000 planning a Northern Territory trip for Chloe and her family. But when Chloe wanted her childhood friend Ethan to come along, she gave Damon’s spot in the safe convoy to him, forcing Damon to cross the Shadow Pack’s territory alone, where wolves had killed and injured travelers just a month earlier.Disappointed beyond words, Damon came home to find Ethan lying in his bed. He decided to sever their mate bond. He canceled the hotels, threw out Chloe’s luggage, and froze the account he had paid for her.When Chloe lied about being pregnant to stop him, a paternity test proved the baby was Ethan’s. Damon recovered the $500,000 they owed him, kicked all four of them out, sold the villa, and left for a new territory to start over.