Dlab Study Guide

I've stood before a priest and sworn my vows to the same man seven times. And for the seventh time, I've signed divorce papers in front of the family lawyer. At our first wedding, the youngest Capo of the Throne family held my hand and promised, "From this day forward, my life is yours and yours alone." But whenever his childhood sweetheart stirred up trouble and needed his protection, Carter's vow to me would conveniently become a sanctuary for her. "Tessa's in trouble again, Maeve. For your own safety, we have to get a divorce for now." The first time I was forced to divorce, I threatened him with the honor of our families' alliance, even vowing to expose his betrayal at a family gathering. His men dragged me out of the manor. The third time I signed the papers, I humbled myself, sneaking into the family's private club just to catch a glimpse of him from afar. By the sixth time, I had learned to quietly pack my few belongings in this house of lies, without putting up a fight. My breakdowns and desperate, undignified attempts to save us were only ever met with Carter's reliable promise to remarry me, just before another round of the divorce game he played for Tessa's sake. Until this time. After hearing Tessa was returning to New York from Italy, I didn't wait for Carter to speak. I placed the signed divorce papers in his study myself. Just like always, he casually set a date for our remarriage. But he didn't know that day was the day I would disappear from his world forever.

In my past life, right before sitting for the college entrance exams, my best friend, Lily Shaw, and I made a pact. We promised that once we got into college, we would study finance and make a fortune. But because my exam went smoothly and I was the first to leave the exam room, I ended up on camera for an interview. Somehow, I blew up overnight. Years later, I became a top celebrity, while Lily was sent to prison for financial fraud. When she got out, I gave her a million dollars to help her get back on her feet. She repaid me by quietly forging lies about me, whipping up a wave of online hate, and doing everything she could to destroy me. I traced the truth and confronted her, but she snapped back at me, "What gives you the right to stare down at me from your lofty throne and throw me scraps, Hannah Linden? I'm prettier than you, and my grades were better than yours. Why did you get the better life?" She laid out a plan to get back at me. She knocked me out and slashed my face. She also gouged out my eyes and cut out my tongue before stuffing me into a freezer, leaving me there to freeze to death. When I open my eyes again, I find myself reborn in my senior-year classroom. There's just over a month left for the college entrance exams. I look at Lily, who sits to my left and whispers to me. I smile at her, my eyes glinting with ice and venom.

"You," he growled, glaring at me with hatred in his eyes even as he pinned me to the wall, obstructing my airflow. "I'm going to enjoy breaking you." "I'd like to see you try, Alpha." I spat at him, my voice filled with defiance. He dropped me to the ground before lifting me up as if I weighed nothing and pinning me against his study table, pushing my legs apart. "Oh, you'll see. And by the time I'm done with you, you'll beg for death." He growled against my ears, filling me with fear of what is to come. ***** In a world of false accusations and vengeful rulers, Evelyn's life takes a harrowing turn. Framed for a crime she didn't commit, she faces the wrath of the alpha king. Instead of death, he condemns her to a fate worse than she could have imagined: becoming his personal slave and breeder. As fear grips her, Evelyn must summon her strength to challenge the tyrant's rule and reclaim her freedom. Will she find a way to defy her captor and seek justice, or will she be forever trapped in a life of darkness and despair? What happens when the moon goddess announces that she is his second chance mate? Will she still try to escape him or will she let their bond bloom? A gripping tale of resilience and defiance unfolds in this thrilling journey of survival, betrayal and love. Trigger Warning: This book explores themes of dark romance, including intense emotions, power dynamics, and challenging relationships. Readers Discretion is advised. Book 1 in the Ruthless Alpha King Series.

I'm Kelly. Everyone calls me Speed. I'm all about control. I'm in control on the racetrack. I'm in control of my car. I'm in control of how I fought to raise my deaf little brother. I live for being in control. Except in my personal life, I have no control and I don't know how to handle it. I don't know where I fit. Should I go with what I have been taught all my life as normal or should I give in to myself and let my true desires come out. I'm Brick. When I first met Speed I could see instantly she needed someone to take control. She needed the Dom in me to help her safely explore her needs and desires. She needed to submit to me and to her true self. She needed me to guide her as she explores who she is and what she wants. She needs a safe place only I can give her to step past what was drilled into her as right and follow her heart. I'm Gretchen. I'm a bunny for the Reckless Renegades. I service the members, most of the time means having sex with them. I was ok with that. Well, I was ok with it until I met Speed. I was drawn to her instantly. I wanted to get to know her but more than that I wanted to be with her. Before I can even make a move she finds out I'm a bunny and won't speak to me anymore. Being a bunny was fine for me but now I want more. I want to help Brick to get Speed to open up. I want to be with her in every way even if that means sharing her with him and giving up my bunny was.

"You're not my mate!" Beta Gavin Marino screams, his anger evident. "I can't accept you. No one will ever accept you after what you did." "I reject you, Gavin Marino!" The words stun me even as I say them. My heart aches, but it's what's best. He hates me. No one will ever love me. I cry silently, but I wipe my tears away. Crying doesn't change anything. I need to leave this pack before I lose myself completely. Gavin accepts my rejection, though he seems to be in pain, even though it's what he wanted. I turn and walk away, heading back to the packhouse where everyone treats me with disdain. A few days later, I feel relentless. I can't bear the pain any longer. On a rainy night, I make my escape. However, I'm brutally attacked on the border of the Sapphire Lycan Royal Pack. Falling in and out of consciousness, I hear a roar that shakes my core and the ground beneath me. "You touched my mate; you'll pay for this!" It can't be—it's the voice of the most powerful man in the realm, the Lycan King, Alpha Nicholas Lavista. I feel sparks and tingles on my arm. "I've got you now." Those words guide me into the darkness. Apphia's life has been brutally harsh. She has faced mistreatment from her pack members and suffered the pain of her mate's brutal rejection. Feeling completely alone, her circumstances take a dramatic turn on a fateful night when she encounters her second-chance mate—the powerful and dangerous lycan Alpha. Little does she know that she is in for the ride of her life. As things become increasingly complicated, Apphia discovers that she is no ordinary wolf. Tormented by threats to her life, she must confront her deepest fears.

Lily Maxwell, a young, bright, beautiful, French girl. She has nothing but works hard to have enough. She won a scholarship to study in the best University in Los Angeles. Thomas Anderson, the only surviving son of a multi-billionaire family in Los Angeles who only has his emotionless but independent mom who wants him to marry a daughter of another multi billionaire family in L.A Fate brought Tommy and Lily together. They fell in love and in the third year, Lily got pregnant which threatened the academic life of both Tommy and Lily. "I'm sure you know me so I'll just go straight to the point. You have just two options" the woman In black said in a limousine with a face showing zero emotion. "You take that money" pointed to the briefcase beside Lily, abort the pregnancy and have it in mind that as of now my son doesn't exist to you or you do what you want and risk your life and that of everyone that has ever come close to you" Mrs. Anderson threatened. "I believe this is Tommy's life. And we both have the right to decide what we want without interference from anyone" Lily defended with confidence. "This is what Tommy wants. Trust me. But if you want proof, you shall have it" Mrs Anderson dialed Tommy's number and.. "She took the money didn't she?...Hope you didn't forget to tell her to abort the Baby to avoid future connection" Tommy said over the phone And that was it. Lily lost it all to love and the Andersons. Her social, love and academic life, all gone. She vowed to come back for the Andersons' downfall when it is VENGEANCE HOUR.

By the third year of my marriage to Daniel Hawthorne, the war had already taken more than it ever returned, and this time it took his younger brother, Thomas Hawthorne. My sister-in-law, Eleanor, collapsed, and in the weeks that followed she tried to follow her husband into death— once with sleeping pills, once by the river beyond the officers’ quarters— only to be dragged back both times, each time clinging to me afterward as though I were the last thing keeping her grounded. I stayed with her, wiped her tears, and whispered that Thomas would want her to live, until the day she received the test results confirming she was three months pregnant, and the grief of losing her husband was slowly softened by the arrival of new life. I smiled too, believing grief had finally loosened its grip. That night, holding my own pregnancy test in my hand and thinking it was finally time to tell Daniel, I passed the study and heard his friend say quietly, “She’s carrying your child. You convinced the doctors to adjust the timeline so everyone would believe the baby belonged to your brother. Aren’t you afraid Margaret will find out?” Daniel didn’t hesitate. “She won’t,” he said calmly. “She loves me. She wouldn’t leave. I won’t let her know.” I didn’t step inside. I didn’t confront him. Instead, I opened the letter I had received weeks earlier— an official deployment order from the international medical corps, assigning me to a frontline war zone— and tapped Accept.

I turn down a dream research program at Hefford University just so I can stay and help my debt-ridden boyfriend run a burger stand. This time, he says he's serious. I give him all the money I've saved up over the years, hoping we can build a better future together. A few hours later, I discover he's forgotten two hundred dollars in the drawer. I grab the money and run out, hoping to catch him. What I catch is a scene straight out of a corny movie. The loan sharks who used to beat and threaten him are now bowing and nodding deferentially. "Sir, I guess we don't need to show up at your house anymore, right?" Kurt Saunders rubs his temples and replies, "Yup. Anna gave up her entire future for me. She even turned down an opportunity to study at Hefford just to help me pay off my debts." Before he even finishes, his childhood friend lets out a giggle. "Kurt, that's still not enough. You'll only know if she really doesn't mind being poor if she sticks around through a year of flipping burgers without any complaints." Kurt looks at her sly expression and lets out a helpless laugh. "Alright, we'll do it your way. One more year of pretending. Anna would never leave me anyway." I stand there, listening to the sound of my own heart shatter. Kurt, you think I'm giving up my future for you, but it's still mine, and I can take it back.

The carnivorous ways of the Aswang leave little room for love - much less a forbidden one between a queen and human girl. Little did Aswang Queen Catarina know, soon, her life would be changed by a plucky American biologist. A blue eyed, blonde adventurer, Rose Smith from California, who would make Catarina question all she knew, and want to make a human Her Aswang Woman King. ___ Catarina Rosales Marquez, 26, is the Aswang Queen of the Domminga Mountains, but she abhors eating humans. She has genetically engineered the fruits of her goddess Ikapati to produce human proteins in order to bring peace to Mindanao - but the Aswang do not trust this revolutionary, peaceful Queen - and are wary of the American biologist she has taken under her wing. Rose Smith is a German-American biologist doing her dissertation on the elusive, endangered Phillippines Eagle. Having studied the Tarsier in her undergraduate semester abroad in Manila, she fell in love with chicken adobo, pandesal - and Filipina women. Eager to be the first American biologist to do a longitudinal study of the Phillipines Eagle, she sets out into the Domminga Mountains on a bus with a one-way ticket - not afraid of the local's warnings of the rabid Iktapati Aswang Clan that eats humans, and roving bands of Tikbalang werehorses that stampede trespassers to death. When Catarina and Rose collide, it is oil and flame. Catarina, expected to marry a King, finds herself questioning the very cosmos of relationships - can she take a Queen, and a feisty American grad student at that? And can Rose come to terms with the elusive, seductive courts of the Vampiric Aswang? When the Iktapati clan rebels, the Tikbalang war, and the wind spirits coquette, Rose and Catarina must team up to save the humans of Mindanao - and the Phillipines eagle!

Tiana Greene arrives on Lycan Isle with nothing but a suitcase, a scarred past, and a desperate need for work. When she is hired as a maid in the sprawling cliff-side mansion of Ross Lycan – the island’s reclusive billionaire – she expects long hours, strict rules, and silence. What she does not expect is the man himself: cold as the steel in his voice, brutally private, and carrying a shadow in his gaze that keeps everyone at arm’s length. Rumours whisper through the island of former staff fleeing in fear, of Ross’s cruelty, and of the mysteriously vanished brother whose memory haunts the mansion halls. Tiana tries to keep her distance, but every forbidden glance and accidental touch tightens the invisible thread pulling them together. When a near-fatal accident on the cliffs pushes Ross into her life more violently than either of them intended, the dynamic shifts. Ross grows protective yet distant, drawn to Tiana in ways he cannot accept – while she fights her own confusion over the man beneath the frost. As the annual island festival approaches, tensions rise. Tiana becomes a target for the island’s elite women, whose humiliation of her sparks a dangerous, possessive reaction in Ross. Social pressure thickens, rumours spread, and the boundaries of employer and servant begin to blur into something darker, deeper, and irresistibly intimate. But everything changes the night Tiana slips into a forbidden study and uncovers the truth about Ross’s past – a past woven with loss, guilt, and secrets buried beneath the island’s stormy surface. Now she must decide. Can she love a man built from shadows? And can Ross love someone brave enough to walk into the darkness he’s spent years trying to hide?