7 Hours

Addy Walker once believed love was supposed to be loud—felt in bedtime stories, laughter in the kitchen, and the warmth of arms that made the world feel safe. That’s how it was before her mother died. Before her father changed. Grief hollowed him out. The man who once teased and protected became a shell—quiet, cold, unreachable. Then came the bottles. The slammed doors. The bruises. Addy, now eighteen, has learned to survive in silence—walking lightly, speaking carefully, hiding her pain beneath long sleeves and polite smiles. She works long hours to keep food on the table while her father sinks deeper into debt and addiction. One night, she comes home to a dark, freezing house—again. The electricity is off. Again. And she knows why. She confronts him, her voice sharper than it’s ever been. He denies it at first, but the truth is already spread across the kitchen counter in final notice bills and losing betting slips. He’d gambled away the electric bill money on a horse. The argument erupts. He screams, she stands her ground. When he slaps her, she doesn’t flinch. Something inside her shifts. She’s done waiting for the man he used to be. Addy packs a bag. She’s leaving—for real this time. No plan. No destination. Just freedom. But as she storms out into the rain, a long, black car pulls up to the curb. A man steps out—tall, broad-shouldered, older. His face is hard, almost frightening in the shadows, but he’s striking. Dangerous. And calm.

I died with my mother's name on my lips and the face of the man who killed her burned into my memory. I woke up two years later in a stranger's body with gentle hands and no past... just a quiet life, a herb garden, and the kind of peace that feels too clean to be real. I did not know who I was. I did not know what I had lost. Not yet. Then I found him bleeding in the forest. And I made the worst decision of my second life... I saved him. His name is Caius. He is the Alpha of Ironblood Pack, the most powerful and feared wolf in three territories. He is cruel in the way that powerful men are cruel... not with raised voices, but with absolute certainty that the world belongs to him. He looked at me with those cold eyes and he saw a healer. A useful thing. He brought me into his pack like a man bringing home a tool he found on the road. What I did not plan for was him. Not the real version of him... the one that shows up at the healer wing at strange hours with small injuries and no good reason to be there. The one who looks at me like I am something he cannot figure out. The one who, for the first time in what I suspect is his entire life, seems to want to be a better man. He is falling for me. And the worst part, the part I will never say out loud, is that I feel it too. My name is Maren. He does not know that yet. But he will.

Gina and I were just ordinary werewolves in the Silver Claw Pack. Our incomes were modest, but we married well. Her mate was the captain of the Silver Claw Pack patrol unit. Mine, the fire squad leader. They grew up together—childhood friends—and were the youngest golden duo in the Werewolf Alliance. On the day we married, our mates each bought us a luxury high-rise apartment on the top floor of the central castle, side by side, with the promise of sharing life and death together. That is, until that fateful night. Rogues broke into the central zone. Chaos reached even the upper levels of our building. The tower caught fire. Amidst the thick smoke, I sent a desperate mind-link to my mate. He blocked it. Turns out, both our mates were busy shielding their shared first love, Lifu. They ignored our calls for help. Gina dragged me as we ran. She was six months pregnant; her pup was already kicking from the panic. Her mate never showed up either. We made it to the stairwell, where we were trapped for five hours. Toxic fumes filled our lungs. I went into labor too early. My pup didn't make it. Gina bled for three days in the hospital. Her pup was gone too. Meanwhile, our mates were digging through the wreckage—twenty-four hours straight—searching for Lifu's lost dog. That was it. Right then and there, Gina and I looked at each other and knew. We were done.

Penelope Davenport—perfect Luna, devoted mate, strategic partner—thinks she is a smart woman who built an unbeatable empire beside her Alpha husband. Until the sex tape message that shatters her and instantly makes her realize that she had only ever been a stepping stone. But her unremorseful alpha husband rejects her when she confronts him, calling her infertile and casts her aside for his mistress—a cruel widow who has hated her all along. By nightfall, Penelope is kidnapped to be used as leverage in a struggle between pack Alphas grasping at power and authority.  When her husband is offered the chance to come and save her, he tells them to kill her and get her off his hands. And so they do, unaware that Penelope had been thrown under the bus. But death is not the end. Penelope wakes two hours before the public proposal that once sealed her fate and this time she refuses to be sacrificed.  She rejects her mate afore the entire elite circle and exposes his affair, claiming that she has already moved on. She kisses a stranger walking into the room on impulse to cement this and he turns out to be Lorcan Callahan—the most powerful young Alpha heir in the country. What no one knows is that Lorcan remembers dying too, and this time, he refuses to lose his mate again. Now bound by a contract marriage and a shared thirst for retribution, Penelope and Lorcan will dismantle empires because revenge is always sweeter the second time around.

I put three hundred million dollars into building a business for my brother's first love. They were finally getting married. But two hours before the wedding, the maid of honor suddenly went AWOL. To keep the wedding on track, I dropped a major international deal, booked the next flight out, and flew back immediately. When I arrived, my brother hugged me gratefully and handed me the wedding ring along with a gift box — inside was a necklace, a token he'd promised Celeste. "Sis, I'm counting on you to take care of Celeste's side. I know it's a lot to ask, but could you step in as maid of honor today?" But the moment I walked into the bridal suite, my brother's bride slapped me across the face. "You've got some nerve showing up here, you homewrecking bitch." "You think you can steal my husband at my own wedding? Are you out of your mind?" "Celeste, I think there's been a misunderstanding. I’m Alexander’s sister…" I tried to explain. "Who the hell are you kidding?! My sister-in-law runs a billion-dollar empire. A tramp like you could never." "You want to steal my husband? Fine. Let's see how tough you really are." And just like that, I was tied up and thrown into a pen with a vicious dog. Celeste Davenport — if that's how you want to play it, then enjoy your one-way ticket to the hell.

He vanished the night our child was born. A year later, he came back to take her from me. I never planned to be a mother. I only wanted to help Anthony Powell, a grieving widower desperate to hold onto a piece of his late wife. I agreed to carry his child with no strings. But when I went into labor, he never showed. Not a call. Not a word. Forty-eight hours passed. The hospital couldn’t reach him. And I was forced to make a choice that would change everything—I took that baby home and raised her as my own. For one perfect year, Nori was mine. Then he returned... Soaked in rain and regret, Anthony stood at my door with a story about a car crash and a coma. He said he never abandoned us. And then he demanded custody of the daughter I’d loved every day since her first breath. I lost everything when the courts sided with him and demanded I hand my baby over. But then...his lawyer came to me with an unthinkable offer: move into his home... and become Nori’s nanny. I said yes, but on my terms. If this “arrangement” fell apart, I wanted joint custody written in stone. Now I’m living under his roof, seeing glimpses of the man he used to be—the kind, broken soul who once only wanted a chance at fatherhood. But I can’t forget his cruelty and what he took from me. And the worst part? I think I’m falling for him all over again.

“I want a divorce, Sera. It’s time we both moved on.” She had heard those words before, rehearsed in the cold space between them, in the silences that stretched too long over dinner, in the way he never quite looked at her anymore. But hearing them out loud was different. Hearing them made it real. Sera Calloway had spent four years being the perfect wife. Quiet when she should have been loud. Patient when she should have been angry. She had loved Elliot with the kind of love that asks for nothing — and received exactly that in return. She thought their marriage was simply struggling. Broken, maybe. But still theirs. Until she found out it was never only theirs to begin with. Another woman. Another home. Another life he had carefully built in the hours she never thought to question. She hadn’t screamed. Hadn’t shattered. She had simply gone still, the way a person does when the ground disappears beneath them and there is nothing left to hold onto. Sera left without a word. No ultimatums. No tears he would ever see. Because some heartbreaks are too deep for noise. Now Elliot is unraveling. The life he thought he could keep — the one he hid behind — is falling apart without the woman he took for granted holding everything together. He never knew what she was. Not really. Not until she was gone. And now the question isn’t whether he still loves her. The question is — did Sera ever stop?

I paid the ultimate price in my last life for being too polite to refuse others. During a summer vacation, four children ended my life. "Talia, we’re already on the way to your place. We should be there in about two hours. No need to prepare anything special. Just keep things the way you normally do. Don’t fuss." I stared blankly as the voice came through my phone. The agony of my skin being scalded raw by boiling-hot stew was still vivid in my mind. When I had struggled and begged for help, those children had dragged me back together. In the chaos, I had fallen from the seventh floor and died with my eyes wide open. I glanced at the calendar on the wall. I had been reborn. In my previous life, my sister-in-law, Vanessa Mercer, had dumped her four kids at my home for the summer and left. I was forced to care for six children alone and was pushed to the brink of collapse. Simply because I wouldn’t let my nephew, Jaxon Mercer, play on his tablet for hours on end, and because I told him not to wander around the house in nothing but his underwear, the conflict escalated until it led to that horrifying death. My whole body trembled at the memory. I rushed into the bedroom, grabbed my identification documents, and fled toward the high-speed rail station with my two daughters, Kaia and Nova Mercer. "Mom, where are we going?" "I'm taking you on a trip. We’re going to have as much fun as we want!"

For eight years, Elara Voss was the perfect ghost. She scrubbed floors, cooked silent meals, and endured the biting scorns of her husband, Ryan, and their eldest daughter, Chloe. To them, she was a boring housewife. A servant. An embarrassment to Ryan’s rising social status. They had no idea that the woman they belittled was Elara Hamilton, the reclusive titan behind Hamilton Global, the world’s most powerful tech empire. She had traded her throne for a marriage she thought was built on love. She was wrong. The breaking point comes at a high-society gala. In front of the city’s elite, Ryan publicly discards her, calling her a worthless weight around his neck. He thinks he is finally free. He doesn't realize he just declared war on the woman who secretly funded his entire life. That night, the housewife vanished. The CEO returns. Within forty-eight hours, Ryan’s world implodes. His contracts are canceled, his bank accounts are drained, and his reputation is in ashes. As the global markets reel from the return of the "Iron Queen," Ryan is forced to face a terrifying truth: he didn't just lose a wife. He lost the only person keeping him relevant. Now, Ryan is a man with nothing, chasing a woman who has everything. From the neon lights of Tokyo to the boardrooms of Manhattan, he must grovel at the feet of the woman he once stepped on. But Elara is no longer the devoted wife who stayed for the sake of the family. She is a queen reclaiming her crown, and this time, Ryan will have to prove he is finally worthy of the woman who no longer needs him to survive.

First day back in the office. I was face down at my desk during lunch when the desk next to mine started rattling under a series of hard knocks. I looked up. It was the firm's new architect, Flora Reeves. "Lunch time ended five minutes ago. You're still asleep at your desk? Don't bother coming in tomorrow. You're fired!" I told her I had just come back from a client meeting. I had been pulling all-nighters on the project for a week. She looked at me like I was something on her shoe. "All you do is take clients out, drink with them, and scribble a few sketches. "You don't even punch in. You're barely in the office. What gives you the right to nap at your desk during work hours?" I almost laughed in her face! I was the firm's chief architect. The bulk of the projects on Walsh & Co.'s books had my name on them. The firm's success was, frankly, carried by me. She saw me out of the office most days. She did not see me in another city, on another job site, talking down another client. And in our industry, most of those clients had hired Walsh & Co. because of my name and reputation. I kept my composure. "You're not in HR. On what authority are you firing me?" She said, "On the authority that my husband is the president of this company." I went still. When did my boyfriend get married?