Romans & histoires Cora Hale

My wife, Ivy Hart, is about to give birth to the baby she conceived with Toby Clayton, her first love. Her parents hire ten bodyguards to stand guard outside the delivery room. Cora Norris, Ivy's mother, takes Ivy's hand and remarks, "Don't worry, Ivy. We'll make sure he can't get within two feet of you! Your dad is standing guard outside with the bodyguards. If he dares to stop you from having the baby, we'll report him to the police!" Ivy nods, her complexion pale, but she instinctively looks toward the door anyway. She doesn't see why I can't be more understanding of her. All she wants to do is help Toby have a child to carry on his family name. The birth proceeds without me showing up to cause a scene. She smiles gladly when she sees the crying baby in the nurse's arms. She thinks to herself that if I visit her tomorrow, she is willing to forget all about our previous fights. She is even willing to let me be the baby's father. What she doesn't know is that I've already submitted my application to the Alliance of Nations. In seven days, I will be leaving the country to become a field doctor for the Frontline Medical Corp, a humanitarian organization. I won't be coming back ever again.

After two years of being neglected in her marriage, Alison Reese finds a spermicidal suppository under the bed in the master bedroom. In that moment, she finally understands that she isn't Erik Hale's wife. She's the third wheel between him and Monique Shore. When her uncle falls gravely ill, all she asks for is a single pill. Erik agrees to help, then tosses the matter to his assistant. The assistant hands Alison a fake. When life and death hang in the balance, an unexpected visitor appears in the hospital room. He's strikingly handsome and gives off an air of effortless privilege. He claims to be Theodore Statham, a friend of Alison's cousin, Noah Reese. But she knows every one of Noah's friends. Every single one—except him. Theodore goes with her on a search for the medicine, so she no longer has to grovel and beg for it. On a hurricane night, when her house is flooding, he carries her out of the water. The first thing he says is, "Don't be scared. I'm here." Every time Theodore talks about the future, he makes sure there's a place for Alison carved out there. She doesn't understand why a man like him, untouchable and divine, is willing to stay by her side like a shadow. One day, Alison asks Theodore, "What is it you want from me?" He raises an eyebrow. "I want you to walk my dog with me every day. No skipping." On the day her divorce is finalized, she walks out of the courthouse to see him standing at the entrance with the dog on a leash, waiting for her. In that instant, a memory surfaces. Every time she looks for Noah in the high school building, she sees an aloof-looking guy in a mask standing in the distance. She thinks he hates her. But now, she knows he just doesn't dare to look at her. He's afraid one look will give him away.

For ten years, I have stayed by Maren Hale's side without her formally acknowledging me as her boyfriend. Thus, I become the oldest kept man in Harborfield. After I turn 30, I have asked her to marry me more than 30 times. Each time, she smiles and kisses me. "Reid, I'll marry you when I'm ready," she says. When I'm 31, a car accident nearly kills me. Still shaken, I propose to Maren. She tells me to wait a little longer. By the time I'm 33, a doctor warns me that my kidney function is declining. I wave the diagnosis report in front of her and press for marriage. Yet, she still tells me to wait. While I wait for her, the sun rises and sets over Mount Carlisle more than 3,600 times. Finally, I think she is ready. Holding back tears, I promise my seriously ill father that he will live to see me get married. What I don't know is that Maren is not opposed to marriage. It's just that the ten years she spends fooling around with me are nothing more than an act of rebellion against her mother, who has driven away her former fiancé. Before the banquet, I see the ring I give Maren inside her handbag. I think she is finally going to accept my proposal. Nervous and hopeful, I wait the entire evening. But just moments ago, during a game of dare, she casually tosses the ring to a male model she has just met. "The kid is turning 20. A pink diamond suits him perfectly. Next time, I'll have an emerald one made for us." The entire room bursts into laughter. I laugh along with them. "Don't bother," I said. "Someone else already has a rock waiting for me, and I said yes."

He was trained to repair failing hearts. She never imagined hers would be the one placed in danger. When Iris Moore steps into Hale Heart Institute as a newly graduated medical trainee, she carries ambition, grief, and hunger beneath her calm exterior. Raised by her grandmother after losing her mother early, Iris chose cardiology to honor love, survival, and sacrifice. Desire was never part of her plan. Until Dr. Nathaniel Hale. Powerful. Controlled. Forbidden. Nathaniel is the hospital’s most respected cardiologist, bound by legacy, family, and expectation. The woman chosen for him has his name, not his heart. Discipline built his world. Iris threatens to burn it down. From their first meeting, tension coils tight and breathless. Training becomes intimate. Touches linger. Hands brush skin too slowly. In quiet labs and shadowed corridors, restraint frays, desire pulses, and every heartbeat feels like a risk. But hospitals whisper. Nurses watch. Jealousy sharpens. And the woman waiting to claim Nathaniel’s future moves to destroy the threat. A complaint is filed. Warning arrives. line is crossed. Iris is targeted, isolated, and tested. Nathaniel is forced to choose between duty and desire, control and craving. Every stolen look costs more. Every step closer invites ruin. Because when forbidden hearts collide, consequences are brutal. And when restraint finally snaps, passion will demand payment. Some loves are dangerous because they feel too right. Some choices shatter everything. In a hospital built to save lives, this love might destroy two. And when secrets surface, survival will require courage, sacrifice, and surrender. Iris must decide whether to run or stay. Nathaniel must risk his name, his family, his future. Because once desire claims the heart, there is no safe way back. This story burns slow, deep, and unforgiving, pulling readers breathless toward scandal, surrender, obsession, desire

"Keep your hands on the fucking desk." His voice is dark, as he presses my palm against the desk bending me over, his c*ck burying deep inside. "You like that?" he whispers against my ear. I whimper and arch my back further, trying to take him deeper despite the pain. I never thought I'd like this sort of thing, never thought I'd even try it. But here's Harlan, opening me up to a world of pleasure and vulgarity that I didn't even know existed, and fuck, it hurts, but it's so fucking good, I can't imagine stopping. "Yes," I breathe. He slaps me harder. His palm lands against the side of my face with an obscene smack that makes me feel sick and delighted and dirty all at once. I moan as he draws me closer to release. “Yes, what?!” he demands, pulling me up by my hair. “Yes, professor.” ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Eden Shaw craves more than straight A's... she hungers for the forbidden gaze of her brooding professor, Harlan. What starts as stolen glances ignites into a dangerous game of dominance and desire, where every lecture hides a secret touch and every grade comes with a price. But when Eden uncovers Harlan's hidden past as Ethan Hale, heir to a fractured legacy, their illicit affair is endangered. In a world of powerplays and buried truths, can Eden submit to the man who owns her body... before he claims her heart? Because Harlan's past is not just painful, it's dangerous, and Eden is about to find out that loving him means entering a world she was never supposed to see. A world full of secrets. A name he no longer claims. And a choice that could destroy them both. ~ She wanted to impress him. Now she may have to save him.

After my mom, Margaret Hale, dies of a heart attack, she starts appearing in my sister Claire Dawson's dreams. In a dream, Mom tells Claire to climb Mount Mistwood before sunrise and burn the entrance ticket for her, or the other ghosts will bully her. Claire doesn't tell me anything. She packs a bag in the middle of the night and forces herself to the summit. While she's gasping her way up that mountain, I'm asleep at home when I suddenly go into cardiac arrest. I wake up in the emergency room with doctors shouting over me. I barely survive before Mom appears in Claire's dreams again. This time, she says skydiving is her last wish. If Claire doesn't do it for her, she won't rest in peace. Claire signs up right away, ignoring everything I say. But then, her parachute refuses to open, and she plummets toward the ground. Luckily, she gets snagged in a tree and walks away without a scratch. Meanwhile, I miss a step going downstairs, tumble to the bottom, end up covered in bruises, and break five ribs. While I'm recovering in the hospital, Mom shows up in Claire's dreams again. Now, she wants Claire to go to the South Pole for her, saying she can finally move on and be reincarnated once Claire completes the trip. Claire doesn't hesitate and books a tour on the spot. While she's taking pictures with penguins, I freeze to death back home during a 104-degree heatwave. Only after I die does it finally hit me that Mom's missions for Claire always end with me on death's doorstep. What I don't understand is how Mom keeps shifting the danger meant for Claire onto me instead. The next time I open my eyes, I'm back on the morning after Mom first appeared in Claire's dream.

Abigail Hale was nothing when billionaire Dominic Blackwood found her. She was broke, and desperate for survival and what began as a quiet arrangement turned into something neither of them expected: a connection so deep it felt fated. Like they were written in the stars, like they were meant to be together. He became her protector, her obsession, the man who made her believe she mattered. Then he betrayed her. To protect his empire and secure a political marriage, Dominic rejected Abigail publicly and framed her as a gold digger, and destroyed her reputation in one calculated move. She lost her job, her home, and her dignity, while he married another woman and pretended she never existed. He didn't go looking for her, no apologies just silence for years. He was wrong about everything. Years later, Abigail returns stronger, colder, and unrecognizable. She works at a mid-level position in a company she doesn't know is part of Dominic's shadow empire. But she's not just surviving anymore she has been planning, watching and waiting for the perfect moment to destroy everything he built because she knows secrets about the Blackwood empire that could burn it to ash. The moment Dominic sees her again, something inside him wakes up and the obsession returns again violent and possessive, the qualities that made her fall when they met. But there's something different about her now, something he can't place. She's not afraid anymore, not the scared waitress he helped out of the slums. She looks him in the eye and speaks with power now and even uses indirect insults. He starts buying everything around her including her apartment building, her workplace and every piece of her new life. He thinks he's trapping her but he doesn't realize she wants to be found.

Accused of stealing recipes from my own sister, Cora, I was ruthlessly cast out from the healing center—by my own fated mate, the Alpha Kellan. So I came home to my grandma's herb farm. Riding my wild horse, Shadow, wherever the hell we want to go. But now the whole pack is scrambling to find me. In my past life, at the Alliance's Grand Potion Competition, my sister always managed to submit the exact same rare potion recipes as me, just a little bit earlier. They all called me a shameless thief, a plagiarist who stole my own sister's work. Even my own parents got on stage to vouch for her. And Kellan... he threw the exile order in my face. His eyes were ice. He stripped me of my title for "dishonoring the pack" and shattered our mate bond right in front of everyone. The agony tore my soul apart. I wanted to die. My family called me a disgrace and cast me out. The betrayal shattered my wolf. I lost my mind. In the end, one of her fanatics shot me dead in the street. A silver bullet laced with wolfsbane. As I died, I still couldn't understand how she could get inside my head and steal my recipes. Then I opened my eyes. I was back. The day before the competition. This time, my mind is filled with nothing but the wild. Let's see what kind of potion my 'genius' sister can come up with now.

On the day I was due to give birth to my twins, I bought up every dose of moonsleep suppressant in the healing den and forced my labor to stop. I endured the pain until the next day, just to watch my Alpha mate, Damien Thorne, stand before the entire Black Moon Pack and declare that Victoria Hale—the tenth mistress he had brought in to bear him an heir—had given birth first. Her child, he announced, would be the future heir of Black Moon. Only then did I finally breathe out and let my own twins come into the world. In my past life, Damien had been told he was unlikely to ever produce an heir of strong blood. Desperate to secure a successor, he brought one she-wolf after another into our pack and declared that whichever woman gave birth first, her child would inherit everything. But he promised me this: if I delivered first, he would send every last mistress away, and my children would be the only heirs of Black Moon. I believed him. So when I found out I was carrying twins, I thought the Moon Goddess had finally shown me mercy. But on the day I went into labor, what greeted me was not joy, but Damien’s rage. To protect Victoria and her pup’s claim, he forced my labor to stop and left my twins to die inside me, little by little. Then he dragged me to kneel before Victoria’s grave and smashed my head against the stone until blood covered my face. “Victoria had nothing,” he snarled. “I only wanted her child to become heir, so no one in this pack would ever dare look down on them.” “But you couldn’t even give her that. She died in labor. Her child died with her. You should pay for both their lives.” I was beaten to death before her grave. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very day my twins were due. This time, I would not fight him. I would give Damien exactly what he wanted—the perfect family of three.

"I didn't do anything wrong," I choked out. "You stuck your nose into my private matters," he hissed. "No one can sentence me without proof," I challenged him. He straightened up. Any traces of a smile abruptly disappeared from his face. "You still don't get it, do you? I own this city. It means that if I say you go to jail, that means you go to jail." He leaned over me again, his stare piercing right through me, "And if I say that I want you, that means you are already mine." My jaw tensed as I resisted an urge to talk back. This wasn't a battle I could win, and this wasn't a man I could win against... How did I get myself into all that mess?! *** My name is Cora Bell, and I'm about to marry Aren Lan, New York's most wanted bachelor. A dream come true? I highly doubt that. The guy is an arrogant, wealthy beyond imagination, asshole. Not to mention that our relationship is based solely on a contract, a contract I was forced to sign when I accidentally ruined this guy's engagement... I used to dream of a simple life. I wanted to graduate from university and work as a software programmer, but my fate chose a different path for me to follow. First, I had to give up on my studies to take care of dear Grandma, and now I'm forced to play the role of a manipulative jerk's loving fiancée! The problem is that my husband-to-be is insanely sexy and enjoys teasing me a bit too much. How the hell am I going to survive being close to him throughout the two years of our fake marriage?!