Stars over Silver Pines
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?
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Chapter: Chapter SixXavier 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
Last Updated: 2025-06-02
Chapter: Chapter FiveThe 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
Last Updated: 2025-06-02
Chapter: Chapter FourXavier 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
Last Updated: 2025-06-02
Chapter: Chapter ThreeBy 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
Last Updated: 2025-06-02
Chapter: Chapter TwoThe car moved like a shadow through the trees, gliding over the narrow asphalt strip that wound out of human civilization and into Valtoris territory. Pines lined the road like sentries. The sun had dipped low, casting long bars of golden light across the windshield. Xavier barely noticed.His hands were loose on the wheel. He drove with precision, but without thought. The road was muscle memory, like everything else in his life.The silence in the car wasn’t peace. It was weight.It pressed behind his eyes, inside his skull, in the tightness between his shoulders. He hadn't said a word since the meeting. Neither had anyone else, but that wasn’t new. In the Valtoris family, silence was a sign of discipline. Stillness was strength. And yet, for the first time in a long time, Xavier felt like speaking—just to shake the feeling that had clung to him since he left her house.Her.The girl.No—Elara.He hadn’t meant to learn her name. No one had said it directly. But he’d heard it murmured
Last Updated: 2025-06-02
Chapter: Chapter OneElara sat like a doll someone had forgotten to wind.Spine straight. Ankles crossed at just the right angle. Hands folded with precision in her lap, fingers gently resting one atop the other, as if even her bones had been trained to behave. Her dress—cream, modest, high-collared—was tailored to be flattering without drawing attention. No color bold enough to suggest confidence. No neckline low enough to imply she thought herself worthy of desire.Just soft. Silent. Palatable.The drawing room was no longer hers. Or her mother’s. It had been stripped of personality and filled with the scent of cigar smoke and something sharper—authority, perhaps. The kind of authority that walked like it owned your home and sat like it owned your daughter.She wasn’t supposed to speak. Not even to greet them.“She looks healthy,” one of the men said. His voice was dry and practical, the way a farmer might discuss a calf. “Good bone structure. Hips wide enough.”“For a proper litter,” another added with
Last Updated: 2025-06-02
Oops, I Stole the Second Lead
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.
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Chapter: Chapter 7The 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
Last Updated: 2025-06-03
Chapter: Chapter 6 Okay.So.I didn’t die.I just had coffee with Ethan Quan and didn’t choke, faint, or confess my love while crying into a napkin.That alone is worth a trophy. Or a plaque. Or a full-blown Netflix miniseries titled Girl, Calm Down.As soon as I get back to the Carrington estate, I power-walk to my room like I’ve just shoplifted God and slam the door shut behind me.Ten seconds later, I scream into my pillow.It’s fine. I’m fine.It was just a coffee meeting.But it wasn’t.Because I know what comes next. I’ve read what comes next.In exactly twelve days, Anastasia Carrington returns from her dazzling European tour with her accent, her cello, and her tragic backstory about falling through a frozen lake or something. Everyone adores her immediately. Photographers show up at the gates. The tabloids do a glow-up montage.And me?I get quietly erased.No dramatic showdown. No screaming. Just: “Lyra, darling, you’ve grown so independent—we think it’s time you found your own way.”Translatio
Last Updated: 2025-06-03
Chapter: Chapter 5Chapter Five: The Calm, the Crush, and the CEO in a WheelchairI was going to die.Not dramatically. Just... quietly combust from sheer secondhand embarrassment while sitting in a too-fancy café waiting for Ethan Quan, real-life CEO and fictional heartbreak machine, to show up for coffee.With me.What was I thinking? No, seriously. What kind of deranged logic led me to believe I could sit across from the man I used to sob over in my dorm room and not lose every single brain cell?“Hi, it’s Lyra Carrington,” I had texted, like a normal person. “I know this is unexpected—hope I’m not intruding. I just wanted to say I’ve been thinking about something you said at the gala. Would love to talk more, if you’re open to it.”Why. Did. I. Do. That.The door opened.I didn’t have to look to know it was him. The whole place shifted. Not in a loud way—just a subtle drop in volume, a stillness in the air, like people were suddenly more aware of themselves.Then I looked up.And yeah, there he was.
Last Updated: 2025-06-03
Chapter: Chapter 4 There’s a special kind of awkward that comes from trying to emotionally detach from people who barely notice you exist.That’s where I’m at now.Sitting in the Carrington sunroom—because apparently, rich people need a separate room just for sun—sipping a tea I didn’t ask for and nodding politely at a conversation I’m not part of.Julian’s draped across a chaise lounge scrolling through sports news. Evelyn is flipping through fabric swatches for an upcoming gala like world peace depends on finding the right shade of “champagne blush.” And me?I’m just here. Decorative. Like a houseplant that occasionally clears its throat.I told myself I’d use this time to start distancing myself. Slowly. Strategically. Less dinners. Fewer family events. Stop performing the well-behaved “adopted daughter” role.But it turns out, I don’t have to put in the effort.They’re already doing it for me.“Lyra,” Evelyn says, not looking up from her swatches. “Are you still attending the Ambrose benefit next Fr
Last Updated: 2025-06-03
Chapter: Chapter 3Okay. So it turns out that trying to get a phone number in the upper crust of society is about as simple as hacking into the Pentagon.All I wanted was Ethan Quan’s number.Not to confess my undying love. Not to blow up his phone with memes. Just… to talk. Casually. Maybe invite him for coffee. Maybe ask him about that AI start-up he’s pretending isn’t revolutionary.You know. Normal “Hey, I’m trying to stop you from becoming a tragic love interest” stuff.So I did the obvious thing: I asked my “family.”I waited until breakfast the next morning—same runway-sized table, same weirdly silent vibe, same eggs that tasted like disappointment—and cleared my throat.“Mother,” I said, as politely as I could manage, “do you happen to have Ethan Quan’s number?”A beat of silence.Then she glanced up from her paper, one perfectly arched brow lifting. “Ethan Quan?”“Yes.”A pause.Then: “What for?”I tried to keep my smile casual. Friendly. Harmless. “We spoke at the gala last week. I thought I m
Last Updated: 2025-06-03
Chapter: Chapter 2It turns out rich people don't believe in privacy. Or doors that actually close.I’d barely made it halfway back to my room—sorry, wing—before a maid offered to draw me a bath, another asked if I wanted chamomile tea, and a third gently hinted that my posture was “a little too modern.”I smiled, nodded, and locked myself in my room like a normal, emotionally unstable reincarnated girl trying to avoid a mental breakdown.Once the door clicked shut, I let the mask slip. My shoulders dropped. I kicked off the demon heels that passed for “breakfast appropriate” shoes and flopped face-first onto the enormous bed.God.What the hell am I supposed to do?I’m not delusional—I know I can’t rewrite everything. The book had dozens of plot threads, dramatic twists, romantic betrayals, corporate sabotage, and one decent man who never stood a chance. I can’t stop the Real Daughter from coming back. I can’t magically make the Carringtons like me. I’m not trying to win the original story.I’m trying
Last Updated: 2025-06-03
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