Catching Ghosts

He was busy kissing her. Catching her breath, she took out the dagger and while he’s busy stripping her skirt. Kill. She stabbed his back. He froze as she met his eyes. He growled in pain as she pushed him hard but he grabbed her neck and throw her away. She hold the dagger tightly as she landed on her foot and knee. “You little bitch.” He growled as she raised her dagger, the tip was facing down and the sharp blade was facing him. He could feel the burn on his back as he laughed. “As I expected, you weren’t just a timid girl, Bella.” He watched those blank eyes. Like there’s no soul on it. Kill. There he heard it again as she attacked immediately and he caught her wrist the blade was near on his eyes. He gripped on it and he pinned her down on the floor as he broke her wrist in anger. She growled in pain as she released the dagger. He took it and throw it out. Now with other hand, he reached her right ear and pulled out an earpiece. He crumbled it into pieces as he growled. “Bella!” He growled. “You little traitor.” She whimpered as she tried to kneed him but his knees were on hers, completely holding her down. “Shhh!” He pressed his forehead to hers as he stared right into her eyes. “Bella, Bella. My. Mate.” She froze and stops struggling. He finally let her go as he carried her to bed. He reached her broken wrist and fixed it. Then, he put cloth around it to support it. He pulled out his phone and rang Paxton. Then, he tossed it away. “Mate,” straddled over her and reached her neck.

I stepped out of the shower with just a towel wrapping my body and was startled. It was my first wedding night, and instead of my husband, the ruthless Alpha, Silas, I found a handsome man sitting on the bed shirtless, smirking at me! “Who are you?” “I am your husband!” A few hours ago, I heard that cold voice at the altar. I had expected my husband to be unattractive, but he turned out to be incredibly handsome. So, why did he wear that dreadful mask during our wedding? What shocked me more was when he got up from the bed and walked over to me! Wait, he’s not crippled?! “You couldn’t even recognize your husband! He growled. Seeing him growing ferocious, I walked backward frantically. Just as the towel threatened to slide down, leaving me exposed and naked, he swiftly pulled me into his strong, muscular arms, his hands quickly catching my towel! His face was reigning with lust as he gaped down at me. “Someone is desperate to have her first night!” He inclined his lips to my ear and whispered, “Beware, lady, it wouldn’t be pleasure but pain!” He dropped the towel, and there I stood naked in his arms. He looked at me with lust as if I were his prey. “I will be so hard on you that you won’t forget your husband for eternity!” My heart thumped! I have heard that he is the most ruthless and ferocious Alpha history has ever had! What will he do to me on our first wedding night? ------- I am Bruna Walters, an illegitimate daughter who married my sister’s fiance to save my grandmother. I was scared. What if Silas, my ruthless husband, discovered that I am not Regina but a substitute?

Maya Jenkins has built a life on her own terms. After being abandoned by her father at a young age and betrayed by a man she once loved, Maya has little faith in the concept of true love. But one lonely Saturday night, against her usual instincts, she downloads SoulLink—a new dating app designed to match people based on more than just physical attraction. When she matches with a man named “Ash,” she starts to wonder if she’s been too quick to write off the possibility of something real. Asher Reed is no stranger to living behind a mask. By day, he is the powerful CEO of NovaSpire, the cutting-edge tech company he inherited from his demanding father. By night, he sheds his corporate persona and anonymously tests SoulLink, a product his company has developed. What he doesn’t expect is Maya—a woman who challenges him with her passionate and authentic personality. For the first time in years, he feels seen—not as the CEO or the broken man his ex-fiancée left behind, but as himself. As their connection deepens, so does their vulnerability. Maya’s long-standing trust issues clash with Asher’s secret identity, and their growing bond is threatened by the arrival of past figures— Asher’s manipulative former fiancée. With each revelation, the digital space where they first met becomes a battleground for truth, betrayal, and the complicated pull of their emotions. In a world where identities can be easily manipulated and love is often elusive, Maya and Asher must confront their pasts, their fears, and the choices that will either bind them together or tear them apart. Can they overcome the ghosts of their history and the secrets they’ve kept from each other? Or will their insecurities and unresolved scars lead them down separate paths?

The Clark dynasty had spent five years searching for the perfect match for their son, Edward. Their wait wasn't in vain after an unexpected opportunity came from where they least expected, from the royal family. The Royal family, King Harry and Queen Evelyn who have ruled the kingdom for many years with pride, now found themselves in bankruptcy after making bad financial investments. Very desperate to save their kingdom, they struck a deal with the Clarks, who own a multi-billion dollar networking company, with a deal. Damian Clark, the shrewd patriarch, saw more than just a business deal. This was his chance to raise his family's social status. With a well worked out plan, responded to the royals' offer with an audacious proposal: an arranged marriage between his Son Edward and Princess Vanessa. Edward, once married and deeply in love, had suffered a tragic accident that left him with dissociative amnesia. His past, including his former marriage, was erased from his mind – a convenient circumstance for his parents who had never approved of his previous union. Princess Vanessa, an ambitious young lady seeking for a life outside the palace, found herself captured by duty and circumstances. The love for her people is forcing her to consider a loveless union with a man she barely knows. Edward and Vanessa agreed to the arranged union, despite the storm awaiting them. With Edward's forgotten past threatening to resurface, ready to tear apart the thread binding this union, duty, and  unplanned affection. Will the ghosts of Edward's lost memories destroy any chance of happiness for the couple? Or will Vanessa's selfless love for her kingdom pave the way for an unexpected romance? In this high-stakes game of love, power, and duty, the past and present collide. Can love conquer all?

Willow Grant has spent nearly a decade in Manhattan, building a life of logic, skyscrapers, and safety. She traded the wild air of Redwood Bay for the steady pulse of the city and found a man who offers her a quiet, uncomplicated love. She’s no longer the girl who wept on a cold floor; she is older, watchful, and finally in control. But when a family engagement demands her return to the territory, she discovers that some ghosts don't stay buried—they grow teeth. Seven years ago, he let her run. Now, he’s done waiting. Roman Vale is no longer the boy she once idolized. He is the Alpha of the Vale Clan, a lethal tactician who rules the northern territories with a heart of flint and a gaze of stormy gray. He has spent years in the shadows, expanding his empire and purging anyone who dared touch what belonged to him. He has stayed silent. He has stayed celibate. But he has never let go. From the moment Willow steps back onto his soil, the hunt is on. Roman doesn't want a civil conversation or a polite reunion. He wants the woman who was promised to him in the moonlight. He wants to tear down the walls she built in the city and remind her that no matter whose hand she holds, her wolf only howls for one man. As a dangerous conspiracy threatens the Grant lineage, Willow is forced into Roman’s orbit for protection. But in the corridors of the Vale Compound, the greatest threat isn't the enemies at the gate—it’s the suffocating, magnetic heat of the man who calls her Rosebud while looking at her like prey. The rose has finally bloomed. And this time, the Alpha is playing for keeps.

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

CLAIMING HER A wrong hotel room. A stranger’s arms. A secret she swore to bury. For years, Fiona Mendez endured a loveless marriage built on betrayal and empty promises. She clung to the hope that Aries—the man she once loved—would finally choose her. But fate had other plans. One mistake. One night. One moment of weakness. A wrong hotel room led her to Nagi Fujiwara—a stranger whose touch made her forget her pain. But when morning came, so did the horrifying truth. The man she thought was her husband was someone else. Before she could even process what happened, Aries shattered what was left of their marriage—not because he found out, but because he had someone else. Discarded and humiliated, Fiona fled to Cebu. She was ready to start over—until two pink lines changed everything. She was pregnant. And the father? A man she barely remembered. For two years, she raised her daughter Lizha alone, determined to leave the past behind. But peace never lasts forever. Forced to return to Manila for work, Fiona braces herself for the ghosts of her past. What she doesn’t expect is to come face-to-face with the man she swore she’d never see again. Nagi Fujiwara The father of her child. Her new boss. The ruthless, powerful, and dangerously possessive. A man who always gets what he wants. And this time, he wants her. Fiona may have run from him once, but now that fate has brought her back into his world, there’s no escaping him. And Nagi will stop at nothing to claim what’s rightfully his.

Dr. Sabrina Kane built a medical empire with her brilliance. By thirty-two, she was the youngest recipient of the Helix Vanguard Prize and the scientific force behind Kane Biomedical’s most revolutionary breakthroughs. She healed the impossible. She rewrote genetic fate. The world admired her. Her husband took the credit. Adrian Kane was the face of the empire Sabrina’s mind created—until admiration turned into rivalry and ambition turned into betrayal. When divorce papers arrive without warning, Sabrina loses more than a marriage. She loses her position, her reputation, and the life she thought she understood. But the real devastation begins in the maternity ward. Behind closed doors, a decision is made—one that protects a CEO, shields a scandal, and rewrites a birth record before sunrise. When Sabrina wakes from delivery, something feels wrong. The answers she’s given don’t quite fit. The child in her arms needs her desperately… yet whispers of doubt begin to circle. By the time the truth claws its way to the surface, Sabrina is branded unstable, arrested, and pushed out of the very institute she built. Then Victor Laurent enters the picture. A Powerful and an untouched billionaire investor with his own ghosts and a child whose life hangs by a thread. He needs the best doctor in the world. He needs Sabrina. Working under his roof, fighting to save a dying child, Sabrina begins to sense that fate has woven their lives together long before they ever met. As corporate secrets unravel and paternity questions threaten to destroy empires, one truth becomes clear: Someone stole more than her marriage. They stole her future. And this time, Dr. Sabrina Kane is not going to lose.⸻

His lips crashed into mine like he couldn’t stop himself. Like he had been holding something back for too long and it had finally cracked. I wanted it just as badly as he did. “I tried to ignore this,” he muttered against my lips, voice rough and ragged. “Tried to erase it.” His mouth returned to mine, hotter, hungrier, tongue sliding into mine, tasting me like I was something he needed to survive. “But you’re everywhere,” he breathed, kissing the corner of my mouth, then down to my throat. “In my head, my routine, in my f*cking sleep haunting every dream.” I couldn’t answer. “You’ve broken me,” he whispered into my skin, like a secret he never meant to say out loud. “And I can’t even bring myself to hate it.” My body trembled at the admission. I affected him as much as he affected me and that thought was heavenly. ********* She was the quiet shadow behind his magnificent empire, efficient, obedient, forgettable.He was the billionaire with the Midas touch of gold and power, untouchable, commanding, and always in control. But when Mark Rexona walks into his office and finds his seemingly shy and diligent secretary, Teresa Smith , with her fingers deep in a fantasy that stares something in him, something that destroys his control. Two worlds collide then collided, hers, filled with quiet but intense yearning and hidden heat and his, was ruled by dominance and untamable desire. What starts as one very stupid mistake behind a supposedly locked door spirals into an exciting and intoxicating game of lust, secrets, and power plays. He wants to own her and her pleasure and she is still haunted by the ghosts of her past.

Sarah Miller spent three years as the invisible and neglected wife of Jason Vanguard. The story begins when Jason serves her divorce papers to marry the socialite Elena Vance. believing Sarah is a penniless nobody. However. the divorce triggers the secret Vanguard Pact of 1995. Sarah discovers she is the heiress to a hidden 30-billion-dollar fortune. Supported by her childhood protector. Julian Thorne. Sarah sheds her timid persona and begins a brutal corporate takeover. She systematically dismantles Jason’s empire and humiliates her enemies in public "face-slapping" revelations. As Sarah rises to power. she uncovers a dark family conspiracy. Her father. Arthur. faked her mother’s death to hide his own crimes. and Sarah eventually finds her sister. Lily. who was hidden away for years. The conflict escalates when Sarah discovers her mother. Catherine. is actually alive and is the true villain of the story. Catherine is a cold mastermind who has been pulling the strings of both families from the shadows. She views Sarah as a rival and uses deepfakes. holograms. and identity theft to frame Sarah for global crimes in an attempt to steal the 30 billion dollars. The final battle takes Sarah from Singapore to London. where she survives assassination attempts and psychological warfare. Sarah eventually locates her Aunt Rose. the only person with the legal authority to override Catherine’s control. In a final showdown. Sarah triggers a financial "Poison Pill" that bankrupts her mother and leaves Jason paralyzed and imprisoned. Sarah emerges as the "Glass Queen." an independent titan who turns her corrupt family legacy into a global foundation. She finally finds peace and a true partnership with Julian. having destroyed the ghosts of her past.