Find Him Where You Left Him Dead

Find Him “Somebody has taken Eli.” … Olivia’s knees buckled. If not for Dean catching her, she would have hit the floor. Nothing was more torturous than the silence left behind by a missing child. Then the phone rang. Two weeks earlier… “Who is your mom?” Dean asked, wondering if he knew the woman. “Her name is Olivia Reed,” replied Eli. Dynamite just exploded in Dean’s head. The woman he once trusted, the woman who betrayed him, the woman he loved and the one he’d never been able to forget.  … Her betrayal had utterly broken him. *** Olivia - POV  She’d never believed until this moment that she could shoot and kill somebody, but she would have no hesitation if it meant saving her son’s life.  *** … he stood in her doorway, shafts of moonlight filling the room. His gaze found her sitting up in bed. “Olivia, what do you need?” he said softly. “Make love to me, just like you used to.” He’d been her only lover. She wanted to completely surrender to him and alleviate the pain and emptiness that threatened to drag her under. She needed… She wanted… Dean. She pulled her nightie over her head and tossed it across the room. In three long strides, he was next to her bed. Slipping between the sheets, leaving his boxers behind, he immediately drew her into his arms. She gasped at the fiery heat and exquisite joy of her naked skin against his. She nipped at his lips with her teeth. He groaned. Her hands explored and caressed the familiar contours of his muscled back. His sweet kisses kept coming. She murmured a low sound filled with desire, and he deepened the kiss, tasting her sweetness and passion as his tongue explored her mouth… ***

I'm eight months pregnant when my Alpha mate abandons me at a hunting ground. He leaves to welcome his ex-girlfriend, who's returned from her travels. From that day on, I disappear without a trace. Initially, my mate doesn't take this to heart. He's even in the mood to make a bet with his subordinates. "She'll be back in three days at most!" Ten days later, he freezes my credit cards and sends me a threatening text. "You can starve to death out there if you still refuse to come back!" A hundred days later, he barges into my best friend's home and forces her to hand me over. "Where have you hidden her? I admit defeat, okay? I've had enough of this hide-and-seek game!" My best friend sneers as she throws photos of my body, which has been pierced through by countless blades, at him. "Wake up, you fool! Your Luna is dead, and you're the one who led a team to dig her body up from the trap! Have you forgotten?"

The day we were meant to be mated, my Alpha, Ford, was ambushed. Silver bullets shredded his car, sending it plunging off a bridge and into the river below. He was pronounced dead. Drowned. I was left pregnant with his heir, shattered by the raw agony of our severed mate bond. Then Ford's twin, Aiden, returned from abroad with his mate, Kyra. His identical face and a scent so similar to my mate's nearly drove me mad. A desperate part of me swore Ford was still alive. I told myself it was just grief. A widow's delusion. Until I overheard a hushed conversation and the horrifying truth slammed into me: the man pretending to be Aiden was Ford. He had faked his death. He'd let his own brother die in his place, all for Kyra—the other woman carrying his child. The grief that had crippled me instantly morphed into a cold, sharp rage. Ford didn't just break our bond; he shattered it. And I would make him pay. I wiped my tears and sent a single message to my brother, Billy, the Alpha of the Winterstone Pack. "Brother, I need a plane crash. He loves faking his death? Fine. Let him feel what it's like to truly lose a mate." Only when the news of my "death" spread did Ford reclaim his name. He knelt for seven days and nights in the ashes of the home we once shared, consumed by a grief of his own making.

My dad collapsed from a sudden heart attack and died. The shock hit my mom like a freight train, and she blacked out cold. By the time I raced home from college, his body had already been reduced to ashes in the crematorium. Grief barely had a chance to sink in before the debt collectors pounded on our door. That was when the ugly truth emerged. My dad had secretly racked up billions in loans, saddling my mom and me. A year later, the relentless harassment from those goons drove my mom to despair. She ended her life, and I was forced to drop out of school, scavenging dumpsters just to scrape by. But fate had a cruel twist in store. I spotted my "dead" dad, alive and thriving, hosting an extravagant birthday bash for his secret son. I stormed in, desperate for answers, only to be hurled out by security. My head cracked against the pavement, and everything went black. When my eyes fluttered open again, I was inexplicably back on that fateful day of my dad's heart attack.

"Get the fuck out of my wedding, Rainer." One sentence. Every lie Jose built his life on, suddenly visible. Camille gave him everything his past never could. Stability. A future. The kind of love that doesn't ask questions. But on the night he finally chose her, his foster brother stood up in the back of the church and called her a murderer. And the grave they buried their youngest brother in three years ago? Empty. Elias isn't dead. He's been hiding. And he came back angrier than any of them are ready for. Now Jose is caught between the wife who built him a life and the brother who reminds him who he was before he let her. Between the story he chose and the truth he buried. Some loves don't save you. They just make sure you can never find your way back to what you were before them.

My brother, Theo Sorento, died in a plane crash on his way back home just to celebrate my birthday. They never found his body—only wreckage. Ever since, my parents forced me to kneel in front of his grave every year on my birthday, demanding that I repent for surviving when he didn’t. Then came my eighteenth birthday. I realized someone was following me. Panicked, I sent a few messages asking for help. Just then, Mom called, not to check on me but to lash out. “I know exactly what you're doing. You’re just making up excuses so you don’t have to kneel in front of your brother’s grave! You’re a liar. Why wasn’t it you who died instead of him? You’re a walking curse!” Before my phone was smashed under a boot, the last thing I heard was the cold click of her hanging up. Then, I was cut up into pieces, and what was left of me was tossed across the city. My father, the lead forensic pathologist on my case, didn’t even recognize me. Later, Theo returned alive with his wife, whom he had eloped with eight years ago. When they found out the pile of rotting flesh was me, they all went insane.