Stars over Silver Pines

Dark Romance Werewolf Contract Marriage Hate to Love Goodgirl

Ellara has been raised to be the perfect, obedient wife, sold into marriage with Xavier, the heir of a powerful werewolf family. While Ellara follows the rules, Xavier rejects the patriarchal world that shaped her. He believes women deserve more rights, but he struggles to connect with her, creating a cold distance between them. When Ellara discovers that Xavier and his family are werewolves, fear drives them even further apart. As pressure mounts for Ellara to conceive, Xavier is forced to marry a second wife, a woman who flaunts her superiority and torments Ellara. But as Xavier watches his new wife hurt Ellara, he realizes his deep feelings for her. As Ellara begins to break free from the chains of her past, Xavier secretly works to tear down his corrupt family’s empire. With danger closing in, Xavier must make a choice: will he burn everything down for a life with Ellara, or will the weight of their world tear them apart forever? Can love and loyalty survive a battle against family, fear, and fate?

Baca

Chapter: Chapter Eight

There were no flowers. No music. No vows.Just paper.Three sheets of parchment, thick and cream-colored, laid out on the long, carved table in the Valtoris study. The ink smelled sharp. The quill had already been dipped.Xavier stood at one end of the table, hands clenched behind his back. His stomach twisted like it had been wrung out.This was it.This was the moment.Not an altar. Not a kiss. Just signatures. A legal joining, witnessed and recorded. An heir claiming what had been chosen for him.Elara sat across from him, spine straight, hands folded in her lap, eyes fixed on the table. She wore pale ivory, no veil. Her hair had been braided again, tightly, pulled back to expose the shape of her jaw. She looked like something breakable. Not fragile—but tightly wound, like glass just before the fracture.Xavier could feel the weight of the room pressing on the back of his neck.His father stood behind him. Gregor, his grandfather, was seated in the far corner like a statue. Two unc

Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-01-28

Chapter: Chapter Seven

The car slowed as the trees thickened.Elara sat upright in the back seat, hands folded over her knees, posture perfect despite the fatigue crawling along her spine. Her mother had reminded her: First impressions matter most. So she did not slouch. Did not look out the window like a child. Did not fidget.She stared straight ahead.The iron gates loomed up like jaws, black and ancient, set into stone pillars veined with moss. The driver didn’t speak. Just pressed a button. The gates groaned open, reluctantly, like something old and angry was being disturbed.Beyond them, the road narrowed. Trees arched overhead, knotted branches forming a tangled ceiling that blotted out much of the sunlight. The mansion appeared slowly—first its roofline, then the high spires and gargoyle-tipped corners.It looked like something out of a forgotten century.Elara didn’t let her expression change. But her hands had started to sweat.The car curved around the final bend, gravel crackling beneath the tir

Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-01-27

Chapter: Chapter Six

Xavier hadn’t touched a woman in his life.Not once.Not even in secret, in some hidden corner of the estate, like his cousins bragged about after dark. He’d never flirted with a maid. Never stolen a kiss behind a locked door. Never lingered in a hallway for the brush of a hand or the scent of perfume.He hadn’t wanted to.Or maybe he had—but the want was always crushed beneath something larger: the weight of expectation. The shadow of what came after the kiss.In the Valtoris house, intimacy wasn’t affection. It was possession. It was taking, breaking, and branding. And Xavier had never been able to reconcile the two.He stood at the edge of the west balcony now, staring out over the treetops as the sun sank behind the forest. The wind tugged at his collar. The air smelled like pine, stone, and inevitability.She was coming.Elara.Tomorrow.He should’ve been ready. He was the heir. The example. The one who never raised his voice or dropped his gaze or missed a step in the dance of p

Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-06-02

Chapter: Chapter Five

The car was already waiting in the driveway.Sleek, dark, and quiet—its engine a low purr, like a predator at rest. Elara had never ridden in anything like it. Her father called it a courtesy—“the least the Valtoris could do.” She suspected it was more of a message: We’re watching now. She belongs to us.Elara stood on the front steps, dressed in pale blue. The gown was simple, elegant, pressed within an inch of its life. She had spent the morning being combed, powdered, scented, and rehearsed like a product being inspected before shipping. There was nothing personal left on her—not the hairpins she liked, not the bracelet she used to wear when she was alone.She had left her childhood room with a single suitcase. The rest would be sent ahead.It was better this way. Cleaner.“Stand straighter,” her father said from beside her, his voice a sharp whisper. “You’re not a burden. You’re a gift. Act like one.”She obeyed instantly, tilting her chin just slightly upward, eyes lowered. Her m

Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-06-02

Chapter: Chapter Four

Xavier hadn’t planned on asking.He had spent the entire evening telling himself not to. Reminding himself it would raise suspicion, stir tension, open doors best left shut. But by morning, the thought still hadn’t left him, and that was enough to make him act.It wasn’t about curiosity.It was about certainty.He wanted to know if she—Elara—was all right. He didn’t expect her to be happy, or prepared, or even willing. He just needed to know if there was anything left in her. If the silence he’d seen in her eyes was something real… or something reversible.But asking for contact details? That was a line no Valtoris heir had crossed before.He found his father in the east study, as always—early, rigid, already dressed in one of his immaculate three-piece suits despite the hour. The fireplace was lit. The curtains were drawn. The bookshelves loomed like stone around them.“Speak,” Theron said without looking up from the morning reports.Xavier hesitated, then stepped forward. “I’d like

Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-06-02

Chapter: Chapter Three

By the third lesson, Elara had stopped pretending to understand the diagrams.They were detailed—beautiful, even, in that distant, medical way: precise renderings of anatomy drawn in delicate pencil, labeled with looping script. Her mother laid them out on the table like they were precious heirlooms passed down through generations. There were dozens of them. Pages showing womb positions, ovulation charts, illustrations of the most “favorable” positions for conception.She was supposed to memorize them all.By the fifth lesson, she did.“Arch your back,” her mother said calmly, one gloved finger tapping a sketch of a faceless woman folded beneath her husband. “That allows for deeper penetration. Increases the chances.”Elara nodded. She had long learned not to ask questions.The room smelled like lavender and ink and sweat. The fire crackled in the hearth, trying and failing to bring warmth to the space. Two of the senior maids stood to the side, silent as shadows, their faces unreadab

Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-06-02

Oops, I Stole the Second Lead

Comedy Girl Power First-Person POV Independent Contract Marriage

Romance

Lyra was never supposed to be the heroine. In the novel she read in her past life, Lyra was just a placeholder—the adopted daughter of a high-society family who dropped her the second their real daughter returned. Then came the humiliation. The neglect. The death that barely registered in the plot. But this Lyra? She’s not following the script. Reincarnated into the story, Lyra remembers everything. She knows where the plot is headed—and she plans to derail it. Step one: make herself indispensable. Step two: change the fate of Ethan, the second male lead who disappeared without resolution. He was brilliant, guarded, and completely overlooked by the original heroine. Lyra—who adored him as a reader—isn’t about to let history repeat itself. She starts small: a business deal, market predictions, power moves. Somewhere in the chaos, they become something more. And when the real daughter returns, sweet on the surface and toxic underneath, Lyra proposes a marriage contract to survive. No feelings. No strings. Just strategy. But love doesn’t follow rules, and neither does fate. As alliances fracture and danger rises, Lyra must fight to stay in a story that was never meant to keep her. She won’t be discarded. She won’t be erased. This time, the side character is writing her own ending.

Baca

Chapter: Chapter 7

The Carringtons usually don't invite me places.So when Julian knocks on my door mid-morning holding two takeaway coffees and wearing an expression that could best be described as mildly human, I assume I’ve either hallucinated him or he’s about to ask me to help bury a body.“Don’t look so suspicious,” he says, stepping in like he owns the place. Which, to be fair, he kind of does.I sit up slowly, tucking my laptop under a throw pillow. “Are you here to mock my work ethic or confess a felony?”He hands me one of the cups and flops into the armchair by the window. “Neither. I was bored. You looked like you could use caffeine.”I squint at the cup. “You bought me coffee?”Julian shrugs. “I also considered doing shots at ten in the morning, but this seemed marginally less self-destructive.”I take a cautious sip.It’s exactly what I like. Down to the oat milk and the stupid sprinkle of cinnamon I always pretend I don’t want but secretly require like air.“You guessed this?”“Lyra, I’ve