Cunning Vows Novels & Stories

Cain held there, palm spread over her abdomen, eyes locked on hers. “Say the vow,” he instructed. Ivy swallowed hard. “I stay under your instruction.” “More.” “My evenings are yours. My private body is yours. I don’t take the cord out. I don’t pretend this is temporary.” Cain’s gaze flashed with dark satisfaction. “And if doubt returns?” “I bring it to you.” “Good.” He began to move, deep measured thrusts that made the wet sound of their joining fill the study. “Then take what devotion feels like when it is kept.”

On the night of their fourth wedding anniversary, Raymond Whitmore stood on a Boston stage and unveiled a perfume called Eternal Claire, dedicating it to the woman he swore he would love until his last breath. The world called it the most romantic gesture of the year. Claire called it a cage with a golden lid. Because thirty minutes later, a stranger sent her a video of that same perfume being poured over another woman's naked chest, in a suite two floors below the ballroom, by her husband's very hands. For four years, Claire had traded her PhD, her name, and her silence for a marriage the tabloids envied. In return, she got a mother-in-law who called her barren, a husband who called h

This was all so absurd. “Is that it?” I asked. “Yup,” she said with a shrug. “That’s it. Once the vow is placed, your loyalty is locked in place.” I nodded in consideration. “What was that bit about severance?” “It means that only death, abdication, or exile can break the vow,” she replied seriously. It sounded so intense, but she didn’t seem fazed. Must have been a wolf thing. But I didn’t care about any of that. I only cared about whether I could make Killian trust me or not.

“No secrets.” “Never.” “And our child chooses their own future.” Dante kissed her forehead. “I swear it.” Alessia looked across the city their families had nearly destroyed. Their love had been written in vengeance, sealed through blood and tested by truth. But their future belonged to them. The vow had been kept. And this time, it promised life.

However, I was still unprepared for what came next. For the first time, Dante's fingers touched my cheek as he carefully raised my veil. He moved near my ear after leaning in and kissing me coldly and meaninglessly. His murmur was poisonous. He declared, "I will break you. Forget those vows I made. I'll bring you misery. And every day of your life, I'll make sure you regret what you did.” My heart fell. I became his bride in an instant.

Wasn't marrying him enough proof? Of course Zoe had to show up. She slid in by the door, sugar-coated and perfect-victim. "Aurora, I know you were close with Paolo's grandpa, but you can't keep using that to act out. Paolo's a good man—you just don't appreciate him." "In high society, who doesn't have a few mistresses?" she added, all innocent. "Paolo's already good to you—stop making things harder." Paolo jumped right on that.

Imani whispered, voice low and breathless, fingers tightening around theirs, “I never imagined it could feel like this… all of this.” Zariah leaned closer, cheek brushing along hers, lips tracing the curve of her jaw with slow, teasing warmth. “Neither did I,” she murmured, voice soft, playful, deliberate. “But I wouldn’t change a second of it.” Every word, every brush of her fingers, carried a spark, a thrill, a daring sense of discovery that made Imani’s chest tighten in delicious tension.

Our vows echo in my mind as consciousness slips away mid-air. “I, Eleanor Astrid Clawford, offer my blood to my mate. I vow to walk beside you under every moon, to bear my teeth when you are weak, to fight beside you when the world turns dark. My soul calls to yours—not in submission, but in strength. Bound by fate, not fear.”

Rage burned through me at his arrogance. "And if I refuse?" "Then discuss it with your family. Because our wedding is next week." "What?" . I was a fool for thinking I could convince him to call off this marriage. He had proposed it for his own benefit from the very beginning. And being the manipulative, controlling man he was, he had already planned everything beforehand. I left the building with more worries than I had before meeting that arrogant man. A contract marriage? Seriously? Now I had no idea what to do next.

The priest asks whether we have come freely and wholeheartedly to give ourselves to each other. "Yes," Dorian and I say, in the same flat tone, at exactly the same moment. The sham of it settles in the room alongside the incense and the orchestral music and the cameras, and I file the absurdity of that question, directed at two people whose presence here is the direct product of coercion and family politics, under things I will process later when I am alone. The vows arrive. I gather everything I have. I hold his gaze. I keep my voice firm and I say the two words that seal it. I do not stumble. I do not whisper. I say them as a statement of intention because it is the only version of this I