Black-key Bolts Elden Ring

All I ever want was to go back to Woodhill. Where my life started. Where my heart belongs.. I did manage to secretly flee from father, but then got abducted to be fed to a living forest. Just great! And just when I was about to begrudgingly accept my unfortunate fate, my childhood friend saved me.. It was supposed to be a very touching and romantic moment, right!? But all of that delusions crumbled when he rejected me in front of everyone in the middle of his ice hockey game..

By night, She’s the masked temptation he can’t stop dreaming about. By day, she’s the girl he can’t stand. What happens when both of their worlds collide? By day, she’s a brilliant scholarship student at Wexford Institute of Business & Arts. By night, she becomes Spicy, the club’s most wanted stripper masked in seduction, all for the sake of keeping her sick sister, Ami, Alive. And then there is Jace Harrington, the hockey star, who is royalty, arrogant, and heir to a billion-dollar empire. He’s got everything! fame, fortune, and a long line of girls begging for his attention. But the one girl he can’t forget is the one hiding behind a mask… and the one he can’t stand is Sabrina. Too bad they’re the same person! Their worlds were never meant to collide. But secrets have a way of slipping through the cracks. When Jace discovers the girl he craves is the same one he passionately hates, the line between love, desire, and obsession begins to blur. He’s a rising hockey star with everything to lose. She’s a masked dancer living on borrowed time. Sabrina is barely holding it together. Juggling school, a sick sister (Ami), a reckless one (Skye), and a secret that could destroy everything. Falling in love was never part of the plan. He’s never met a girl who could bring him to his knees. She’s never met a boy worth risking it all for. And when the mask comes off... Someone’s going to get hurt.

I'm the Whitefang Pack Alpha's daughter. Thanks to Samzor—Alpha of Nightfang and my so-called betrothed—I got shoved into a mate bond with a limp rogue. He sold out three generations of Nightfang war honors just to make it happen. Dad lost it. He went straight to Nightfang territory, demanding answers. Samzor? He laughed. "Alpha Connor, come on. Nyara's your heir. You'd never let her actually mate a cripple. "I've loved her for seven years. I'd never mistreat her. I just need her to compromise—let Catherine stay with me. "Don't stress. Catherine's obedient. Polite. She'll make a good servant for Nyara." Catherine. A fox-wolf halfblood he dragged in from a border patrol. Scared I'd kick her out the second our bond was sealed, he cooked up this garbage plan to trap me. Only problem? The Alpha King's decree doesn't do take-backs. Mom handled the dowry. I'd go through with the ceremony. Bond to that rogue. After that? Samzor was dead to me.

At the Mafia Alliance Academy, reputation is the only currency—and mine was bankrupt in a single morning. One planted file, one flawless performance, and a few crocodile tears from Elena Rossi, the “fragile” scholarship student, were all it took. Overnight, I fell from the heights of the elite to a pariah branded a cruel bully. The ultimate betrayal? My fiancé, Luca Valenti—the future Don who once swore to be my blade—stood by her side, looking at me with nothing but cold contempt. They called me cruel. Entitled. A rich girl bullying someone who had nothing. What they didn’t know was that I could hear the venom dripping from Elena’s mind. While she played the victim, her thoughts laughed—mocking the Academy’s stupidity, sneering at how easily she had Luca wrapped around her finger. I stayed silent… until the Truth System awakened. Now I can broadcast her twisted thoughts to anyone I choose. And without hesitation, I linked her mind to Luca’s. So while Elena clings to his arm, crying about her “shattered dreams,” Luca hears everything— her plans to destroy his family, her contempt for his protection, and her disgust at being touched by him. The girl he chose is already tearing his world apart.

She is the contract wife of his nephew, who got into his bed after drinking. He is the most powerful billionaire in the city who had no thoughts about any relationship except the strange woman he met that night. One night sex made her lose her virginity and made him addicted to the sweet and soft strange woman. A family reunion drove her to meet her first man again. She tried to hide the ONS memory and avoid his eye contact. But he turned out to be her contracted husband's uncle! When she hides in the upstairs lounge to escape the lively crowd, he was already in the room. The sweet smell and soft skin brought him back to the night. Holding the little woman in his arms, he said, "Divorce my nephew, marry me!"

Richard Franklin has left his Midwestern roots behind to live on the coast of Maine with his family. But in the autumn of the year 2000, he must return to his Illinois birthplace on a sorrowful journey. His wife Michelle has been killed in New England by a hit-and-run driver who is never found, so back home he comes with her cremated remains, to fulfill a final wish and on her birthday scatter her ashes in the park along the river in Blackwater Valley—simply Blackwater Val to locals—the small town where they both grew up and fell in love. With him he brings his six-year-old daughter Katie who still grieves for her lost mother: Katie, who can sometimes guess who’s going to be on the phone before it rings. Who can stop all the clocks in the house, and break up clouds in the sky with her mind, and heal sicknesses, and who sometimes sees things that aren’t there...people who are no longer alive. All gifts she inherited from her mother. Only something isn’t quite right in the Val. Sinkholes are opening up, revealing the plague pits the sleepy hamlet was built over in the 1830s, when malaria and cholera outbreaks ran riot. Mysterious bird and fish die-offs begin to occur, and Katie can see ghosts of the dead gathering all around. But what she can’t see is the charred, centuries-old malevolence which has been waiting for her, and wants her for its very own. Or the pale Sallow Man who haunts the town’s nighttime streets...or the river witch—another Blackwater Val, of sorts—each of whom will be drawn one by one into the nightmarish bloodletting about to take place. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

The Rowan estate has stood for centuries, its walls bearing witness to generations of triumph, tragedy, and a quiet, inescapable weight. Known for influence and misfortune, the Rowans guard a secret: the house is a memory vessel, absorbing the emotions and events of its inhabitants. Only one child per generation—“the one who carries it”—feels its imprint. For Jace Rowan, that child is him. Haunted by flashes of his brother Elias’s mysterious death in the sealed west wing, Jace lives with hallucination-like memories, déjà vu, and a physical sensitivity to the house’s presence. When Ava arrives at the estate, the house takes notice. Her father’s disappearance connects her unknowingly to the Rowans, and her grief fuels an emotional resonance the house cannot ignore. Objects from her past—her father’s watch, sketches of the west wing, and a brass key—materialize mysteriously before her, drawing Ava deeper into the estate’s labyrinth of memory. Jace knows the danger: the west wing reacts to emotion, and Ava’s connection could awaken truths meant to remain buried. As tension mounts, Ava and Jace confront both the house’s power and their own growing fears. The west wing does not seek to harm but to claim understanding—feeding on memory, fear, and revelation. In the shadows, a presence lingers, one that Jace fears is connected to Ava’s father. Bound by fear, curiosity, and an unspoken attraction, Ava and Jace must navigate a house that remembers, reacts, and judges, uncovering secrets about Elias’s death, Ava’s father, and the legacy of the Rowan family itself. In a world where emotion is power and the past is never truly gone, the house holds its breath—and waits to see who will survive its memory.

It was only on our first wedding anniversary that I realized the rubbers I bought before our wedding had long expired. No one would believe that my mafia husband, Andre Garcia, and I had never consummated our marriage. That night, I gathered my courage and bought a suggestive nightgown. After downing three glasses of whisky, I hugged Andre tightly and whispered in his ear, "Darling, let's do it today. I want you..." However, Andre shook my hand off indifferently as if he were handling a gun. "Danielle Lawson, do you have no shame? You've done such shameless things time and time again. If you're really that lonely, I'll order you some toys so you can play with them to your heart's content." My face turned deathly pale as I stood there, stunned. I could not understand why a wife begging for her husband's affection was considered 'shameless' behavior. I curled up on the couch, unable to help but ask on social media. Danielle: [My husband has no dysfunction. Why won't he touch me after marriage?] Someone replied: [Perhaps your husband has someone else.] Like a dagger, that comment pierced me awake. I suddenly realized—maybe the problem was not that I was unattractive but rather that he was never mine. The moment I deleted my account, I also made the decision to leave. Who could have imagined that Andre, who would usually not even glance at me, would frantically search for me after I disappeared? "Danielle, I can't get a hard-on after you left!"

This is the first book in an 8 book series of hockey romances. All 8 books have an underlying theme of ‘life after loss’. My first book is about Natasha, a librarian in her 40s who lost a sibling as a teenager and never healed, preventing her from ever finding/committing to love…and the hockey coach who is twice divorced and has given up his dreams of ever finding his match and having a family-until he meets Natasha…. Will Coach Alex's love (along with his superior skills in the sack) be enough to break down the walls Natasha has held firm for over two decades? The 8 books go through the different players of the team, all having their own versions of loss to overcome, with the captain (Adam) being married to a woman (who happens to be a teacher at Natasha's school) who has a terminal illness and will eventually commit suicide in book 6 and the series ends with Adam's own second chance love story….

What are you supposed to do when you find your Alpha mate and he is much older than you and already has a fiancé'? What would you do when you find out he is trying to juggle both of you? When you confront him at a fancy upscale restaurant in the city and meet your hot new neighbors that just happen to be the rival hockey team captains and twins. After that, the hot twins transfer to your college while one has decided to try to bully you. The other asked you to pretend to be his new girlfriend so he can dump his latest girlfriend and help you get rid of your pestering ex. He thinks it's a win/ win. A total no-brainer. However, things quickly take a turn and get extremely complicated. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living, or dead, is entirely coincidental.