Atone

During my wedding, which is livestreamed all over the world, my fiancé, Marvin Keller, calls me a shameless woman who's gotten pregnant out of wedlock. Then, he calls off our engagement and marries my father's illegitimate daughter, Delilah Lambert. My mother is so incensed by this that she gets a stroke and ends up bedridden. Amid my despair, my childhood friend, Tristan Wright, proposes. He tells me he's had a crush on me for many years and is willing to treat my child with Marvin as his own. I'm moved by Tristan's promise and accept his proposal. Three years after we get married, I give birth to a stillborn. My mother is still in a coma and doesn't seem like she'll ever wake up. I'm hospitalized after getting into an accident for the eighth time. That's when I overhear Tristan's conversation with a private doctor. Finally, I discover the truth—he's never loved me. "You orchestrated eight accidents just to make sure Delilah would inherit her family's fortune? Are you out of your mind?" "I've done Lethia wrong with this, but I'll use the rest of my life to atone for my sins. She should be satisfied with that."

As a zombie outbreak spreads across the world, my boyfriend insists on delaying our evacuation so his drama-queen childhood sweetheart can catch the last rescue chopper. However, this is the last evacuation after the outbreak, and our team's only chance to survive. When she still doesn't show up, I knock my boyfriend out and haul him onto the helicopter. In the end, his childhood sweetheart is devoured by the surging horde, while I seize the opportunity to escape and start a peaceful, quiet life with him in the safe zone. The night before I am to take command and lead a massive counterattack against the undead, my boyfriend laces my drink with a tranquilizer and dumps me into a swarm of zombies. Thousands of zombies tear me apart, and I die in excruciating pain. He stands on the fortress wall, a cold smile on his lips. "Had you not been so selfish, Esmeralda would've survived. Now, you'll experience her suffering and atone with your life!" Given a second chance at life, I wake up on the day my boyfriend refused to evacuate on time. Since he's so determined to stand by his childhood sweetheart through thick and thin, I'll make sure they both become zombie food!

The day I inherited Grandpa's "Peacemaker," I received a call from myself, ten years in the future. "Sienna, don't give that gun to Lorenzo." I obeyed without question. That night, forced to use his faulty Glock, Lorenzo was beaten into a vegetative state during a duel. Guilt nearly broke me, but my parents nursed me back to health. Or so I thought. "You idiot," my future self sneered. "It was a lie to get you on the operating table. They want your heart for your brother!" Finding a transplant agreement in my father's study, I publicly severed ties with the Morettis. Only later, after Lorenzo died from rejection, did I learn they just needed my rare blood, not my heart. I wanted to return and atone, but the phone rang again. "Your parents will kill you for honor. Don't go back." I waited. But instead of assassins, news arrived: the Morettis had been slaughtered by rivals. I bolted for home, only to be mowed down by a black sedan. As I died, I couldn't understand why my future self had orchestrated my end. Then I opened my eyes. I was back at the ceremony.

My fiancé, Charles, was crippled during a pack skirmish. He lost his wolf, leaving him unable to shift. My stepsister, Quinn, who had always despised me, eagerly offered to take my place in the mating ceremony. Her only condition was my grandmother’s antique necklace. Everyone said I was lucky to escape a life with a broken wolf. Only I knew I had dodged a death sentence. In my previous life, I used my healing gift to restore Charles’s wolf and became the celebrated Luna of the Sterling Pack. But Quinn, searching for a moonstone for Charles in the Forbidden Lands, was captured by a rival pack and tortured to death. Charles never marked me. Instead, he locked me away and starved me to death. "If you had just given Quinn the necklace, she wouldn't have been mauled by rogues," he’d snarled. "You can atone for your sins in hell!" Only then did I realize they had already forged a mate bond. The ceremony with me was nothing but a desperate charade. Reborn, I found myself back before the ceremony, just as Charles proposed the same arrangement to Quinn. But they don’t know. The only one who can heal Charles is me, not some cursed moonstone.

When Adrian and I broke up, he knelt outside my door all night. When I finally agreed to get back together, he lit a bonfire in the main hall, invited the elders to witness it, and swore I would become his Luna. Then, right at the finish line of a racetrack, he hauled a trembling, sobbing blonde girl out of the “trophy,” draped his jacket over her shoulders, and turned gentle like he’d become a different man. He looked back at me and said, “Ann, don’t make a scene. She ended up like this because of us.” The next day, he said I should atone by pack law, kneel inside a vow circle drawn with salt and silver powder, and endure my wolf soul’s backlash under the moonlight. Later, he threw me into the basement she used to live in, forced me to survive the way she did, forced me to lower my head and apologize. What he didn’t know was that there was a little pup in my belly. And I wasn’t going to tell him. I’d wait until he was most off guard, slide the divorce papers in front of him, let him sign them with his own hand, then vanish cleanly and absolutely, with my child.

I used to kill for the joy of it, and she would have killed to stop people like me. I lost my first mate through a wicked twist of fate. Now, I run the risk of losing my second chance mate as fate makes an enemy of me once again. I foolishly believed Adriana was my reward for leaving the life I lived before her behind, my means of coming out of the darkness and embracing a life of light. I was wrong. Among wolves, penitence will never be enough. The only way to atone for the blood I’ve spilled is through more bloodshed, and there are a whole lot of angry Alphas after mine at the moment. Adriana wants to stand by me and fight my battles, but I would rather die than have her fight for my misdeeds. What she deserves is a hero, a morally conscious man who can save the world, but what she got was me instead: a selfish, exiled Alpha who would bleed the world dry to protect her. Even if it means losing my own salvation along the way. ***This is the 3rd book in the Alpha's Guardian Series. Liam and Adriana. This can be read on its own or you can read the first two books to get more history about the Main Characters.

Money. Guns. Revenge. And kisses that taste like sin. ALMA MARTELLI My sister died on her wedding day, and that same night, a ruthless mafia boss kidnapped me and dragged me to his manor. I didn’t even get a chance to grieve before my life was turned upside down. But what terrified me the most was how my body betrayed me when he touched me, how I wanted the monster who ruined everything. What happens when I discover his hidden plans to destroy my family and his wicked plan for me? One I couldn’t escape, even if I wanted to. LAZZARO VISCONTI They say a child shouldn't suffer for her father's sins. I say she should bleed for them. Alma Martelli will suffer. She’ll atone for every wrong her father committed. There’s no way out until I say so. I’d use her, strip her of her innocence, and return her to a fatherless home. That was the plan... until I found myself wanting to keep her longer than intended, and fighting her battles as if they were mine. Now I can’t stop thinking about her mouth. Her fire. Her goddamn eyes. Alma was supposed to be my vengeance. But she might just be my downfall.

I am the woman who stays the longest by the side of mafia Don Jasper Shaw. I believe I hold a unique place in his heart. But when his beloved Rosie Hurley suffers violation and falls pregnant, everything changes. Accused of orchestrating Rosie's downfall, I become the venomous villain in their eyes. To shield Rosie from gossip, Jasper publicly claims her unborn child as his own. Meanwhile, I am branded a depraved woman, defiled and discarded. Desperate, I reveal my own pregnancy to Jasper, pleading for our child’s future. He dismisses it as a ploy for attention. When I confront him, his words cut deep. "This is the sin you must atone for. Rosie has always been raised like a princess, and she can't endure the whispers—not like you." For the first time, I realize I am nothing to Jasper but a tool for his desires. Rosie locks me in a cramped cellar, where I suffocate and die. My body lies undiscovered for a month. When Jasper receives the call to identify my corpse, he brushes it off, prioritizing Rosie's prenatal checkup. "Amara's lies are piling up. So what if she's dead? Cremate her and then talk to me." My body enters the furnace and is reduced to a handful of ashes. Later, the mighty Jasper Shaw kneels and sobs uncontrollably. He begs for just one glimpse of me.

All because I opened a window to air out the room, my husband’s childhood sweetheart, Celine Ashcroft, caught a cold. In a fit of rage, my husband, Ronan Blackwood, had his men bind me and drag me down to the ice cellar despite my being five months pregnant. "Don’t think that just because you’re carrying my child, you can bully Celine. If even a single hair on her head is harmed, I’ll make you repay it a hundredfold!" Shivering violently from the cold, I knelt through tears, begging for forgiveness. I promised that from now on I would serve his precious sweetheart well to atone, that I would never again let her suffer even the slightest harm. He only gave a cold order to seal the cellar, saying I needed to be taught a lesson so it would be burned into my memory. A week later, when Celine finally recovered from her cold, he finally remembered me in the cellar. "Vesper, have you truly realized your mistake? As long as you agree to kneel and apologize to Celine immediately, I’ll spare you." What he didn’t know was that by then, I had already frozen stiff in that ice cellar. And the child he had treasured so dearly no longer showed even the faintest sign of life.

Right after getting reborn, the first thing I do is start a livestream with the equipment I've brought to the main entrance of a bank. There, I humiliate myself on purpose just to attract the viewers' attention. Immediately, tens of thousands of viewers flock to my channel. After that, I take off my high heels on the spot and throw them at the armored truck that's carrying cash with all my might. "Get down! Don't move!" As I listen to the guards' stern warnings and watch as they aim their guns at me, I just spread my arms with a smile on my face. "This is a robbery! Hand over the money!" In my previous life, my business partner, Zachary Leed, and the finance director of my company, Yvette Sanders, had betrayed me. They used the perks that came with their jobs to receive illegal loans while using my company as a collateral asset. In the end, they fled with the cash, leaving me with the shitty aftermath to deal with. I was given a life sentence in jail in order to atone for the crimes Zachary and Yvette had pinned on me. My brother went all over the nation and spent all of his fortune just to seek justice for me, but he ended up dying from depression. When I open my eyes again, I yell loudly to the viewers watching my livestream at the moment. "Everyone, you shall witness the most historic moment ever! Come with me as I rob a bank right in front of your eyes on this livestream!"