Eight Hundred Grapes

For our college graduation trip, I spent a whole week glued to various travel apps, finally snagging a half-price couples' train package. I was just about to share the good news with my boyfriend and call it a night when his message came through. "Anna's going through a breakup. She needs to get away and clear her head. We're gonna use those tickets." "See if you can grab yourself another single ticket. It's not that much anyway - like five or six hundred bucks." For a moment, I was speechless. Before he received the scholarship my dad’s pack had specifically established for him, five or six hundred dollars used to be his entire monthly allowance. After a moment of silence, I picked up my phone: “Dad, prepare a private jet for me. I want to take a trip alone before graduation.”

When Jax Wilder pins Nova Ellis against a frat house wall on a full moon night, he tells himself it means nothing. By sunrise he proves it — calling her worthless in front of his laughing teammates, banning her from his world like she was something he'd accidentally tracked in from outside. What he doesn't know: she's already carrying his sons. For three years, Nova builds a life out of nothing. Two jobs. A tiny apartment with glow stars on the ceiling. Twin boys with their father's jaw and her unbreakable spine, raised on love and stubbornness and the quiet ferocity of a woman who stopped waiting to be rescued somewhere around month two. She doesn't need Jax Wilder. She doesn't need anyone. She has everything she built and she built it herself. Then the Alpha King walks into her charity gala. Jax has spent three years believing she was dead — dragged away by rogue wolves the night she finally told him the truth, the night he was too cowardly to hear it. He's been carrying that like a wound ever since, ruling the United Packs with everything he has except the one thing that mattered. When he catches her scent across a crowded ballroom and turns to find two little boys wearing his face, looking back at him like they already know who he is — his entire world restructures itself around a single fact. He threw away the wrong woman. Some alphas build thrones. Some women discover, only after losing everything, that they were the foundation the whole time. And some rejections come with a cost — three years of compound interest, two future kings, and a Luna Queen bloodline eight hundred years old that makes his crown look like a recent development.

What do twelve years of captivity make of one? What lines behind the new Laurel Brown?Laurel Brown was only eight when she was snatched.Twelve years passed and the Browns had long moved on when Laurel Brown returns with the truth as well as secrets.

When Matthew Sinclair accused me of selling company secrets, I expected my girlfriend to stand by me. Instead, Selena Oxford told me to apologize. To the man who framed me. That was the moment I understood that trust was not something you pleaded for. You either had it, or you did not. I resigned the same day, cut every tie, left a ring on the table that she would never wear, and walked out of her life without looking back. I believed we would never cross paths again. Eight years later, at a black-tie banquet, Selena spotted me across the crowd. I was dancing with another woman, moving through the room as if I belonged there. In front of everyone, now known as a corporate powerhouse, she met my gaze with red-rimmed eyes and asked, "Was it for her? Is that why you left me eight years ago?"

"You don't simply stop playing a game. Especially when it's mine; you either win. Or loose." Vasili had told her this eight years ago, and eight years later she'd said, "Wrong. Allow me to introduce you to the word 'draw'." *** Emily Moralez was certain the universe was determined to screw her over. She's been caught in a crossfire between two rivaling syndicates, her father's made arrangements for her to get married to a don twice her age--despite knowing she has a boyfriend. And said boyfriend cheated on her the day before their engagement. And it gets worse. Vasili Romanov. The name was feared, revered, respected: hated. Emily knew where she fell. In the percentage that hated him. Vasili Romanov was back for her family. Back to destroy it, her, and everything she held dear with a vengeance that burned as hot as the passion he ignited in her.

They said a wolfless omega like me should be grateful for any mate. They didn't mention he'd reject me in front of three hundred wolves on my twenty-second birthday. For fourteen years, I survived as Silverpine Pack's punching bag, always starved, beaten, and told I was worthless. Tonight was supposed to change everything. My fated mate, Beta Marcus Kane, was supposed to claim me. Instead, he chose my cruel stepsister and condemned me to the silver chamber. So I ran. Straight into rogue territory. Straight into them. Kael, Damon, and Reece Blackthorn: three exiled alpha bikers with reputations as dark as their wolves. Dangerous and deadly. And somehow... all three are my fated mates. They say shared mates only occur in the most powerful bloodlines. They say it's a gift from the moon goddess herself. But I'm nobody. I'm broken. I don't even have a wolf. Except I do. And she's not just any wolf. She's a White Wolf, a bloodline extinct for two centuries. The kind of power that alphas kill for. The kind of power my stepfather has been suppressing with poison and dark magic since I was eight years old. Now my wolf is awakening, the Blackthorn brothers are falling for me despite their blood curse counting down to destruction, and the corrupt Wolf Council wants me dead or controlled before I become unstoppable. The stepfather who tortured me is coming to finish what he started. My ex-mate is dying from our severed bond and is desperate to reclaim me. And three devastatingly possessive alphas have made it clear: anyone who wants me goes through them first. I'm done being the victim. Done being weak. Done apologizing for existing. They wanted a monster? The White Wolf has awakened. She's coming for everyone who tried to break her.

"Two hundred pieces of gold." I whipped my head in the direction of the voice. It was sexy and authoritative. "No. Make it three hundred pieces of gold. I want that woman." The crowd gasped. My eyes frantically looked for that person and came face to face with a man whose hair reminded me of the ashes after burning the wood. His gray eyes bore into mine. 'Mine,' my wolf uttered. "Going once. Twice. Thrice. Sold!" Master Henderson was all smiles. "The item goes to His Majesty King Elio. You will never regret it, Your Majesty." King Elio? I knew that name. The Lycan King was my mate? ------------------------------- Flora was desperate to look for Sabrina, her sister who was suddenly missing five years ago. She believed it had something to do with the Lycan King. 'Cause why not? Their cruel custom of selling or killing unmated she-wolves every five years started because of the Lycan King.

“Five years. Sixty months. One thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven nights! That’s what you owe me, Angela. Did you think I would let you slip away so easily when your debt still binds you to me?” His cold voice dripped with fury and desperation hit her core directly as she let out a tensed gasp but held his gaze with bravery. “You rejected me, remember? I am not that broken girl anymore, Gideon. I don’t belong to you. I’m engaged now.” A low dark chuckle rumbled through his chest. In a swift motion, He pinned her against the icy wall of the underground garage, his presence overwhelming. “Engaged? Your thick arousal is spreading around the cold walls of this underground garage like smoke, little human. Should I remind you whose name your body still whispers? I bet he is not even close to making your heart race the way I do let alone turning you on!” Gideon’s husky voice with his fingers brushing her bare thigh was making her insane. Dammit, why do I feel these tingling sensations from his touch? Born human, Angela Clampitt had endured a lifetime of cruelty before being offered as a substitute bride to the infamous Alpha, Gideon Woodbead, to bear his heir. Twisted lies and family conspiracies made him reject her without mercy. To escape the council’s punishment, she fled the pack to live a normal human life. But fate dragged her back after five years and this time her Alpha husband who wouldn’t let her go. Now secrets threaten to surface, including the child she hid and the truth of her identity. In betrayal, passion, vengeance and awakening power, a forsaken human bride will rise as a destined Queen. Dive into the spicy, intense fated love story.

In my previous life, after my parents divorced, my younger sister Fiona went with my father, Michael, who had a yearly salary of a hundred thousand dollars. Meanwhile, I left with my mother, Jessica, with nothing but the clothes on our backs. However, my father was fired by his company after that. He went bankrupt in an instant and lived in poverty. Meanwhile, my mother started her own business from nothing and ended up being one of the richest in Arman City with a net worth of over a hundred million dollars. Fiona was jealous of me and stabbed me to death the day I was to inherit Jessica's company. When I opened my eyes, I had returned to the day my parents divorced. When I saw Fiona wanting to live with Jessica no matter what, I knew that she had regressed as well. That was fine, though. I never wanted to experience that kind of lowly existence a second time.

Lyra’s POV: “I don’t like her the way you think I do.” If you hear the love of your life tell this to another person, what will you do? Well, I left for eight years and returned with my fiancé. The last thing I would ever do is to sneak around with an Alpha who does not love me. Kade’s POV: “I don’t like her the way you think I do.” This was what I told her brother. I had to. I made a promise to stay away from his sister. My biggest mistake, because I would always choose Lyra over anybody. I won’t choose even myself over Lyra. I don’t know how to not love and want her. Eight years later and staying away still feels like driving a sword through my chest.