Cirque Du Freak Books

I died on the day I won the Global Medical Doctorate Award. Fresh from celebrating the sixteenth birthday of my younger sister, my parents, brother, and my fiancé finally returned home, but it was three hours after my death. My family photos were beaming with happiness on social media, while I laid in the suffocating basement drenched in blood. Before I died, I had struggled to slide my tongue across my phone screen in a desperate attempt to call for help. My parents and brother had blocked my number. Only my fiancé answered my call. The moment his voice came through, he snapped, "Winona, Winnie's sixteenth birthday is important. Stop trying to hijack attention with your pathetic excuses. Enough with the theatrics!" It murdered my last spark of survival. In that electronic death rattle, my heart flatlined. The 100th time they chose her. The 100th time they abandoned me for her. But it was also the last time. They thought I had ran way to get their attention again, and that if they taught me a harsh lesson, I would come crawling back pathetically. But not this time. Because I didn't leave home. I had been lying in the basement of my house.

Seven months pregnant with our heir, I was on the front lines, fighting for my Alpha mate, Ethan. I’d just secured a thirty-million-dollar territory for our pack and rushed home, eager to surprise him with the news. But as I neared the council room, the broken sobs of his adopted sister, Tessa, stopped me cold. "A low-born Silver Wolf like Sophia... she's not worthy of being our pack's Luna." "Ethan, we're the ones who are fated to be together. Mark me... please?" My blood ran cold. I expected Ethan to shove her away, to defend my honor. Instead, he caressed her cheek, his voice a soft, gentle murmur that cut me deeper than any blade. "Just give me a little more time, Tessa. On the next blood moon, I'll sever my bond with Sophia." My world shattered. I fled, only to be cornered and brutally murdered by Tessa. She framed my death as an attack by a rogue wolf before tossing my body from a cliff. It wasn’t until the news of my death reached him that Ethan finally broke. He fell to his knees at the edge of that same cliff, his agonized howl echoing into the night. "Sophia… I was wrong. Please, just come back to me."

After being forced to go to rogue wolf territory to exchange my mate's kidnapped childhood sweetheart while three months pregnant, I was tortured to death. Before my death, my eight-year-old daughter begged her father three times. The first time, my daughter took her father's hand and said, "Daddy, mommy is pregnant with my little brother. She can't go to the rogue territory." The alpha wolf let out a cold laugh: "How dare your mother teach a pup to lie." Then he had his beta guards drive my daughter out of the pack house. The second time, my daughter grabbed his sleeve and told him the rogue wolves were torturing me with silver. The alpha frowned: "These rogues were hired by your mother to kidnap Willow. How could she really be tortured?" The guards stepped forward and once again pulled my daughter out of the room. The third time, my daughter lay on the floor, desperately clutching his pant leg, crying that I was dying in the rogue wolf territory. The alpha finally lost his temper. He slapped her away with force. "I told you, Ava won't die. She's strong. If you come running back here to disturb Willow's rest again, I'll definitely throw both of you out of the pack territory." To save me, my daughter gave her most precious possession to the most powerful warrior in the pack—the healing gemstone I had given her for her birthday. "Please, can you use this to help save my mother? I don't need protection anymore. I just want my mother to live." The warrior took her healing gemstone, but before he could leave to rescue me, Willow stepped in his way. "Sorry, little pup," she smirked. "The warrior needs to stay here to protect my dog. Your father was afraid I would be sad if anything happened to my pet."

I’d just wrapped up a short trip with my daughter, Elara. On the way back, I figured I’d swing by the Hale, our family’s casino, to check in on my son, Cassian. Maybe grab dinner together. I didn’t expect to be mistaken for his latest fling. Correction: not mistaken—accused. Violently. “You think you can just waltz in here like some queen?” she hissed. “I’m the woman Cassian loves! What kind of whore are you? And is this your bastard daughter with him?” She locked us in the basement. No phone. No light. Just concrete walls and the stench of mildew and madness. Then came the fists. She slapped me across the face—again and again—until my skin stung and my ears rang. When that didn’t satisfy her, she pulled a gun and aimed low. The bullet tore through my knee. I bit back a scream, shielding Elara with my body. “You need to die, whore,” she spat. One of her men hesitated, “We should at least tell Mr. Hale first. If we are going to kill these two in his casino.” Lila of course said no. But that man brought Cassian anyway. My son stepped into this dark little room like it was any other Tuesday—until he saw me. His whole body went still. The blood drained from his face. And then, in the smallest, most broken voice I’d ever heard from him, he whispered, “Mom? What are you doing in my basement?”

The first thing I do after being reborn is dump my devoted boyfriend and immediately say yes to the obsessive man's pursuit. In my past life, my so-called best friend, Sarah Cole, bound herself to an app that could transfer all of my boyfriend's love for me to her. My boyfriend was Luke Spencer. The golden roses he prepared for me ended up with her. The hotel he bought for me suddenly had her name on the deed. The way he looked at me shifted from fierce desire to cold disdain, but when he turned to her, his eyes overflowed with the tenderness I once knew so well. When I cried and demanded to know why Luke had changed, he just looked at me with disgust as he spat, "We broke up a long time ago. Leave my girlfriend alone!" On my birthday, Sarah went live online, flaunting how Luke had rented out the entire amusement park for her. Fireworks lit up the sky behind her in a blaze of color. And me? They worked together to have me thrown into a mental hospital. They called me a crazy woman obsessed with someone who never loved me back, and in endless rounds of electroshock therapy and forced medication, I died in despair. When I open my eyes again, I'm reborn. This time, I no longer feel anything real for my ex-boyfriend. Instead, I play along with Ethan Grant. I find it funny when Sarah opens the app again, siphoning away every drop of Ethan's overwhelming love. I really want to know if she can handle it.

Harry Pate fails in his plan to secure a fortune from my family. He tries to drug me, hand me over to his friends, and even film it to control me. Luckily, a kind netizen overhears him plotting with his mistress at a restaurant. The netizen posts a missing person alert online. "Please share widely. Looking for Freya White. Her boyfriend is trying to drug and assault her." I see the post and quietly pour the drug into the pot they are about to drink from.

To save the vampire clan, I slept with my crush, Stefan Ferrano. Stefan had always been cold and distant, but that night, his response was fiery. He ignored the fact that I was inexperienced and took me with wild, unrestrained passion. Everything unraveled when my blood servant, Stella Luciado, brought me fresh blood and Stefan found out. Like a man possessed, he tore off all my clothes and dragged me into the sunlight. “So even the vampire queen is afraid of sunlight? Do you know what sort of torture your kind are enduring right now? But no pain compares to what I felt losing my sister because of you and your kind.” For five years, he held my clan’s safety over my head. He locked me in a sunroom and found new ways every day to torment me in bed. The day I gave birth to his child, he married Stella. Stefan called my child a bastard and forced me to watch him and Stella sleep together. When Stella was unhappy, he bled me so she could bathe in my blood. He even painted with my blood and made me dance undressed in the sun. He tortured me but never let me die, using specially made drugs to keep me alive. A vampire who had offered their ancestral blood but didn't turn a human into a vampire within five years would end up dead. I had five days left to live. Finally, I didn't have to keep my secret anymore.

As the youngest daughter of the powerful mafia family, the Blythes, I was spoiled the moment I was born. I had three older brothers who adored me. When I turned eighteen, our father was killed in a turf fight. The shock sent our mother into a rapid decline, and she passed away less than a week later. To avenge our father, my three brothers waged war against our enemies for three days. Though they emerged victorious, all three were critically wounded. My eldest brother, Damon Blythe, suffered a ruptured liver and was on the brink of death. Matt Blythe, my second brother, had severe kidney damage. Chris Blythe had lost too much blood and went into heart failure. I spent a fortune hiring the world’s top surgeons. They transplanted half of my liver to Damon, a kidney to Matt, and even gave my heart to Chris, replacing mine with a mechanical one. Thanks to the doctors’ skill, all three survived and went on to take over the Blythes’ empire. Five years later, they became infatuated with Sophia Foster, a poor but strong-willed intern. They even forced me to give up my last kidney to her. It was only after I had died on the operating table that they regretted what they had done.

I set fire to my painting in front of the entire academy. Thunderous applause erupts from the crowd as everyone thinks it's some kind of performance art. Unlike them, Willow Laurent is distraught. She rushes up and grabs my hand, questioning in a shrill voice, "Cassidy Seymour, have you gone mad? This is your only chance to prove yourself!" I shake her hand off me coldly. My only chance? No… What she means is that it's her chance. In my past life, I created this masterpiece with all my heart and soul. But she stole it from me and submitted it as her entry first. Whether it was the composition, the colors, or even my original dot-stippling technique… She replicated every detail flawlessly. Then, she won the National Young Artists Gold Award, signed with a top gallery, and became a rising star. And what about me? I was condemned as a shameless plagiarist. Insults and curses gradually drowned me. "You shouldn't be an artist!" "Plagiarists are scum! They should just die!" Her fans stormed into my studio, smashed my art supplies, and broke my right hand. As I saw no end to the hell that I was living in, I jumped down from the top floor of my studio. When I open my eyes again, I'm back to the very day she first accuses me of plagiarism.

School had just dismissed us for the exam-break when my roommate begged me not to leave her alone in the dorm. She said she was scared and wanted to come home with me. Out of kindness, I brought her back with me. I had no idea that the very first night, she would sneak into my brother's room, and by the next morning, she was screaming that he had assaulted her. Because of that, my brother missed the exam, and his reputation was ruined. When the school board found out, they expelled him. No other school would take him in. To keep me from getting involved in this mess at school, my parents had no choice but to let that roommate live with us. After that, she treated our home like her personal hotel: never lifting a finger, demanding that my parents wait on her every night, and even having them wash her feet. My brother dropped out and took up work at an illegal factory just to support her spending. Then one day, a machine crushed him at that factory. My parents, already exhausted and heartbroken, fell gravely ill and passed away soon after. I was consumed by hatred. In the end, I dragged the roommate who destroyed my family down into the flames with me. Even as I died, I still couldn't understand. What kind of bitter grudge did her family have against mine for her to ruin us like that? But when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very day she asked to come home with me…