Barely Tolerable

After Mom passed, it was just me and Dad, depending on each other. I’ve always had poor health, and people used to taunt me, calling me a “sickly, doomed child.” He kneeled by my bedside, making a promise. “I swear, I’ll get you the best treatment, no matter what. You’ll never suffer again!” Eventually, he became a powerful CEO, going so far as to buy an entire private villa just so I could recover in peace. However, his assistant assumed I was his mistress.  She came in with a group of security guards and surrounded me. “So, you’re the cripple who’s been seducing Mr. Johnson?” “Let’s see if you can still act high and mighty after I’m done with you!” She kicked over my wheelchair, yanked me by the hair, scratched up my face, and finally cut off my hand. Barely clinging to life, I lay there until Dad came back. She held up my severed hand, presenting it to him. “Mr. Johnson, this was a spy sent by a rival company. I took care of her for you.”

---> if you are interested in my work, please check out my novel The Starving Vulture. Available on Amazon, $3.99 for the Ebook and $14.95 for the Paperback https://www.amazon.com/Starving-Vulture-Miguel-Monta%C3%B1a/dp/1951150899<--------- Aster Likaya is a Battle Mage of the Zeraph Republic. Raised in a military family, she was destined for a life on the front. As a Battle Mage she has mastered the art of Controlling. A simple but effective kind of magic that is necessary when one bonds and commands the essential robotic warmachines of her world. The Gearbanes. And now, she is a Captain. But much to her surprise, she is not handed a company but a unit of stoic and silent soldiers that call themselves DragonWolves. Her second in command, is Lieutenant Able Froster, young but grim faced soldier who has seen combat since he was barely a boy. For their first mission, they are given a simple task. Retrieve an agent of the Republic who is lost in the vast swampland known as the Suha Marshes. Little do they know, that they are not the only factions searching for the man. For in the Suha Marshes, hunt the cannibalistic Birchmen and the Kolysian pirates. All eager for the prize the agent carries. This is the world of Likaya and Froster. Dominated by machines powered by magic, weapons ignited by runes and wars fought over ancient relics forged by a forgotten past. Welcome to Likaya's Wolves.

In my last life, I made the dumbest mistake—picked up a Moonlight Ring from the grass. That cursed thing locked me into a mate bond with Silvermoon Pack's Alpha. Too bad his heart already belonged to my sister, Irene. She lived to a hundred, had five pups with her real mate in Ravenshade Pack while I rotted. Every time she got cozy with her mate, Leon tossed me in the basement. "You picked up that ring! I had to watch my true love build a family with someone else!" For eighty years, she lived happily. I barely lived at all. Leon flayed me open, let my skin grow back, then crushed my bones just to watch them heal. Every day felt like dying on repeat. Only when Irene finally kicked the bucket did he let me go. Then boom—I woke up, right back on the day I picked up that damn ring. I wasn't gonna screw it up again. But Irene—always the clean freak—snatched it off the ground before I could stop her.

BLURB "Really?" "Yes, but only on one condition" I stayed silent and waited for him to continue. I'd do anything he asks as long as he's willing to help me. "You marry me," he says finally. "What? Marry you?" "Of course, it's going to be fake. The company shareholders want me to get married to keep my inheritance, something about a will my late father left before he passed on. So, I'll agree to help you if you can pose as my fiancé" he explained. ~~~~ Katie had no other choice than to go to Sean Banks when her mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and has barely a year left to live. Having lost her job the previous months, she was back on bills, with no one else to help, she had to meet her ex, whom she broke his heart with when she ended their relationship abruptly with no reason. Sean is different from the man he used to be, colder and sexier, but agrees to help her under one condition, she poses as his fake fiance to make sure he gets his inheritance check. Will Katrina agree?

Buried deep in the Aster estate was the Heartwood—ancient, sacred, mine. Told my husband, Julian Aster—back when he actually listened—that if it ever fell, I'd die with it. At first, he freaked out. Flew in glacier water, hired a whole squad of plant experts to nurture it 24/7. Then one day, just because his childhood friend—Isabella Duvall—got a scratch from the bark, Julian had the Heartwood ripped out. The second it crashed, I choked on glowing blood—ichor. My power? Gone. Barely standing, I grabbed his arm. "You knew. If the Heartwood dies, I—" He laughed. Straight-up mocked me. "Sera, come on. That fairy tale? Only Grandma still believes that crap. Is that mayo on your mouth? Relax—it's a tree. I'll buy you a forest if you want." Overnight, my hair turned gray. Skin cracked. Eyes dulled. Still, I dragged myself to his grandmother, Henrietta. "I kept your family safe for two hundred years. That's why the Asters thrived. But the Heartwood's gone. Debt's paid. One day left. Whatever happens next? Not my problem."

"And Action!” I slowly lick my lips as I glance across the room at Trevor lying on the bed. His bare chest glows under the spotlights and practically begs to be touched. Can I keep myself under control? What am I thinking? I have to keep myself reined in. I don't want to ruin anything between us. We are good friends and nothing more, but I can't confess to him I've had wet dreams of him almost every night. Tiffany, a struggling up-and-coming actor, finally gets the break she has been wishing for and wins the leading role in a new drama. Her sexy co-star, Trevor, is someone she is familiar with and knows from her initial days of her first drama. They barely had any scenes together during that first drama, but they've developed a friendship and share the same agency and manager. When the fans initially saw them together, they immediately wanted them to be a couple. This new drama provides them exactly that. With her dreams finally coming true, will Tiffany be able to keep her secret hidden? Or will the intimate scenes with her handsome co-star unravel everything she has worked so hard to hide?

I had been with Cameron Stevenson for three years, yet he had never marked me. To win back the Silver Moon Pack's Alpha, I agreed to his ridiculous request of mating in the wild. Cameron snapped a pair of silver handcuffs on me and bound me to a tree. My pants had barely come off when his phone rang. It was that Omega, Rebecca Anderson. "Cameron, the pup is sick!" she cried. He pulled out of me instantly, yanked his pants up, and ran. "Don't worry! I'm coming!" I struggled and shouted after him. "Cameron! The cuffs! Uncuff me first!" He was already several yards away when he turned back with an impatient remark. "Just wait! Rebecca's pup is the hope of the entire pack!" I waited an entire day and night. The cold wind cut like blades. The silver cuffs ate into my wrists until skin and blood mixed. Cameron never came back. 'Cameron… Since you couldn't let go of that low-ranked Omega, I wouldn't mind burying the two of you together. You'll never be apart for the rest of your lives!'

"Lisa?" I croaked, barely able to form words, my voice hoarse and weak. My heart had leapt at the sight of her, a moment of hope flickering through the haze of fear. "What's going on? Why... why are you here?" But the look in her eyes, the cold amusement that twisted her lips into a smirk, had stopped me short. It wasn’t concern. “Why am I here?” she had repeated, laughing softly, as if the very question was absurd. “Oh, Anna, sweet, naive Anna. You still don’t get it, do you?” I had stared, my mind unable to keep up, still too clouded with hunger and exhaustion. “What... what are you talking about?” And then, her voice had changed, hardened. “I’m the reason for all of this. The reason your father’s company collapsed, the reason your family is dead, the reason Josh betrayed you. Me.” After discovering that her best friend, Lisa, isn't the person she thought she was and is the reason for most of the disasters in her life, Anna dies, only to wake up five years in the past. With a second chance, Anna is determined to protect her loved ones and take revenge for the pain Lisa caused.

Sophia’s heart broke every time she saw her husband, Ethan, stealing glances at another woman, the same woman he insisted she donate blood to for the third time that week. Their five-year marriage felt like a lifetime of pain and betrayal. Sophia loved Ethan deeply, but he married her only to inherit his family’s multi-billion-dollar business. Once he gained control, he discarded her like she meant nothing. Despite years of humiliation, Sophia clung to hope that Ethan would someday love her. But when he repeatedly demanded her blood for his mistress’s health, her hope shattered. She endured the cruelty but not the betrayal, not having been cheated on and drained out of blood to the point of death. Sophia filed for divorce, which Ethan accepted without hesitation unaware she was pregnant from a reckless night she barely remembered. *** Left with no family, no money, and no future, Sophia nearly gave up until a mysterious stranger saved her. Years later, she returned with her child, Ethan’s spitting image. “Bro, your ex-wife is here. And that child looks just like you,” Ethan growled, “They’re mine. And I will fight for what belongs to me !”.

"You belong to me, Crystal. And I’m going to remind you of that.” His husky breath fanned her ear. Crystal Lin is drowning in the debt her father left behind, a deadly 10 million dirham IOU to a ruthless Dubai loan shark. With just two months left before her organs become the payment, Crystal juggles two lives: waitress by day, stripper by night. But everything spirals when she unknowingly gives a lap dance to the heir of the Al-Fayad empire. Amir who is a cold, commanding, and dangerously powerful. Amir doesn’t want love. He wants an heir. And he’s offering Crystal a marriage contract worth millions to get it. Desperate to survive, she agrees. But fate has one more cruel twist, Ahmad. Amir’s kind-hearted twin who turns out to be the mysterious stranger who once stirred her heart with a glance. Now he’s her husband’s brother and he's the man she can't stop thinking about. Torn between duty and desire, caught in a billionaire’s twisted game, Crystal must decide. To lose the life she’s barely clinging to, or risk it all for a love that was never part of the deal.