Novel & Cerita Exquisite Corpse

On the seventh day after my dad's passing, I head over to the funeral home to wrap up the aftermath of the funeral as well as pack up my dad's personal effects. That's when an employee stops me and demands that I cough up an additional 100 thousand dollars for the storage and preservation of my dad's corpse. I'm stunned, to say the least. Dad has already gotten cremated and buried a long time ago. His ashes are already deposited inside the graveyard, as we speak. So, how is his body getting stored and preserved throughout the week? I use facts and logic to argue with the employee. But he has the gall to threaten me with an impatient scowl on his face. "Stop yapping already! The system shows that your father's body is still inside the cold storage! It's been seven days, so you must pay 100 thousand dollars, no matter what! If you refuse to settle the payment, you can forget about taking your father's personal effects with you! "When the time comes, you have to cough up the additional charges as well! If not, I shall see you at court!" As I stare at the hostile employee, I can feel rage simmering in my blood. Still, I call every family member and relative I have to borrow 100 thousand dollars from them just so I can make the payment. With the receipt in hand, I walk into the police station right away. "Officer, my dad was cremated and buried seven days ago. But the funeral home decided to charge me 100 thousand dollars' worth of storage and preservation fees for no reason! I suspect that they didn't send my father off the proper way!" When the police show up at the funeral home, the same employee who threatened me looks alarmed. He quickly gets his manager, Mr. Lawson, to deal with the situation. Impatience is etched all over Mr. Lawson's face as he snaps at me, "Your father has already gone through the cremation process seven days ago. The procedure and all the receipts are intact. Don't you dare kick up a fuss irrationally now!" I let out a cold chuckle in return before showing Mr. Lawson the receipt. "I'm being irrational, you say? I've just paid for the storage fees of my father's corpse, and here's the receipt to prove the validity of the transaction! You must return my father to me today!" I thought the funeral home insisted on charging me earlier. Now, they'd better fulfill their side of the bargain by returning my dad's corpse to me without a single hair out of place!

Isabelle couldn’t stop drinking as the music pounded through the club. She was trying to drown out the image of her best friend, Aurora, who was pregnant with her fiancé’s child, on what should have been Isabelle’s engagement night. But fate had other plans. When an employee calls in sick, Isabelle volunteers to fill in, unaware she is about to walk straight into the arms of Don Miller—the club’s most powerful and dangerous client. He was ruthless, commanding, and known for treating women as playthings. Don doesn’t believe in love… until Isabelle. One glance, one reckless touch, and something shifts. She stirs a hunger in him he thought he’d buried forever. And when he learns what broke her, Don makes Isabelle an indecent offer: He promises to mend her shattered heart and destroy everyone who betrayed her—if she surrenders to him completely. Two broken souls. One dark deal. Isabelle is about to learn that submission might just be the sweetest form of revenge. What begins as a dangerous bargain soon spirals into something deeper, darker, and far more intoxicating than either expected. Maybe love isn’t always gentle. Sometimes it’s an obsession. Sometimes it’s surrender. And sometimes… it’s the most exquisite kind of ruin.

“I have failed you as a mate and as your leader, Anna.” He cried out in pain, his wolf restlessly wailing, reaching the surface, and running back once realizing that nothing had changed. “But this worthless husband of yours swear by this day to avenge your death in the most brutal way possible. And after that, I’ll come meet you wherever you may be.” ~ After brutally losing his mate in a planned rogue attack, Hunter, the Alpha, and controller of one of the most powerful Packs in all of the East and West becomes the terror he promised the corpse of his late mate to be. Things keep going as planned and he is very close to attaining the werewolf king position that would enable him wipe out everyone that contributed to his mate’s death, when by the engineering of the Moon Goddess, he meets orphaned and abused Annable who is surprisingly the exact replica of his late mate, the worse fact is that she is in love with someone else. Now, his well-calculated plan is suddenly bundled with uncertainty, jealousy, a love triangle, and the desire to live and love.

I knew perfectly well that open flames were forbidden at a gas-leak scene, yet as a firefighter, I still backed my girlfriend's childhood friend when he insisted on lighting a cigarette "to calm his nerves." In my previous life, a sudden gas leak erupted during a gathering. Her childhood friend insisted on smoking to steady himself. I slapped the lighter out of his hand and yelled at him for trying to get us all killed. Humiliated, he ignored everyone's attempts to stop him and stormed outside—only to be crushed by an advertising board blown loose by the explosion's shockwave. Later, when I saved a child who had fallen from a building and was left hanging in midair myself, my girlfriend—my second-in-command—maliciously cut my safety rope. She stared at my corpse and said, "If you hadn't humiliated George in front of everyone, he wouldn't have died." When I opened my eyes again, I was back in that room thick with the stench of leaking gas.

My name is Mark Thompson. Not long after I became a mortician, I came down with a strange condition. The moment I touch a corpse, I see their final memories play out before my eyes. It's not that I enjoy sticking my nose into other people's business. Those visions just force their way into my head. The first body my mentor ever had me restore belonged to a wealthy young man who'd been mangled in a car crash. The second I touched his shattered neck, I couldn't stop myself from saying something to the grieving family beside me. "His car didn't malfunction. The brake line was cut. "The cutters are still hidden beneath the spare tire in his wife's trunk." The crying stopped instantly, and everyone turned to stare at the woman who had been pretending to mourn. Two weeks later, she was arrested. She had hired someone to kill her husband and staged the murder as a traffic accident. After that, people from both sides of the law started lining up outside the funeral home in the middle of the night.

As my body was pulled from the desolate marsh, Kian, the Alpha I had been mated to for ten years, was in the middle of his Mating Ceremony with his Beta, Sienna. My rotting corpse was mangled beyond recognition by layers of different wolfsbane poisons, my very bones stained black by the toxin's deep penetration. Even the pack's eldest healer retched at the sight of it. But, Kian, seemingly unfazed by the gruesome discovery, exchanged vows with Sienna before the Moon Altar. They received the blessings of the entire pack, while no one remembered me, even though I had only been missing for three months. It wasn't until my brother Ronan, the pack's Head Enforcer, began his investigation and found a shattered moonstone deep within my skeletal remains. "Ronan... if anyone can hear this... the Rogue Alpha has infiltrated..." The fragmented, static-laced voice that emanated from it made my brother freeze. When the truth was finally revealed, I was proven to be not the traitor who eloped with a Rogue Alpha, but the hero who died protecting the pack. And as for that Alpha who always looked down on me? He completely lost his mind.

My world fell apart on the day of my Luna ceremony. My mother and older brother approached me with bad news. My younger sister, Lilith, was cursed and did not have long to live. They wanted me to fulfill her only wish before death. She wanted to replace me as my Alpha, Fenris', mate. That included giving her my Luna ceremony. I was shocked and angry. I looked at Fenris as I expected him to reject this ridiculous suggestion as well. However, he nodded. "Don't worry, Selene," he said to me. He sounded so sincere. "This is only temporary. Once we've fulfilled Lilith's last wish, you'll be my mate forever." I was adamant about rejecting that suggestion. It was too crazy! However, my 'beloved' brother, Damian, forcefully dragged me off into the Dark Forest, where it was rampant with wild beasts. That was also when I realized I was pregnant with Fenris' child. My pregnancy weakened my strength tremendously, and I was mauled by the wild beasts while still alive. By the time everyone remembered me, all that was left of me was a rotting corpse lying in the forest.

Three years after I landed on the wanted list, all 88 pieces of my dismembered corpse were thrown in front of the police station. After the forensics team put my body together, they identified my body as Julian Colt, the fiancé of the Organized Crime Department, Captain Kyra Schneider. Everyone, from elders in their eighties to young children, wanted me to see justice because not only had I betrayed Kyra and her team, but I had also publicly joined the criminal organization and become the lover of its leader. I was fired from the police force and hated by my loved ones. Kyra hated me the most, and she used the most cruel method of retrieving my memories to be broadcast to the world. On judgment day, the city square was filled with spectators, but when my memories were retrieved, along with the huge word 'innocent' splashed on it, everyone went crazy. "Traitor! A man like him should have been executed." "The evidence clearly points to his guilt. How is he innocent? Everyone knows how he helped the criminal organization to kill numerous police officers!" "Don't be tricked by him! He must have altered those memories!"

In order to save Alpha Varkon Stormclaw, who was poisoned with wolfsbane, I've used my life force to trade for the antidote with the witch. After the transaction, I become unusually weak. My wolf sinks into a deep slumber as well. Because of that, the elders have cast me out of the Moon Goddess Church. Nyla Ironcrest, the newly-appointed Luna, locks me up in a silver cage that's filled with wolfsbane. "How could a lowly and filthy defective she-wolf like you be a good match for the prestigious Alpha?" Varkon, who has once loved me with all his heart, gets tricked by Nyla into thinking that she's his savior. Not only does he sever our mate bond from me, but he also turns a deaf ear on my pleas for help. Defeated and devastated, I breathe my last breath in the silver cage. However, Varkon kneels before my corpse later on. He's struck with so much pain in the chest that he goes crazy. At the same time, he keeps spitting out blood. But I can never hear his confession of atonement ever again.

When I was born, my father left me to die beside my mother's corpse in the fields. Why? Because I looked like a ghost—white hair, white eyes—and the chaos that followed my birth terrified him. He didn’t even give me a name. Twenty years later, I’m still wolfless. Still the family punching bag. Still hated by the entire pack. And when the Alpha’s son, my mate and my step-sister framed me, I was sentenced to death by hanging. But death never came. Instead, I was claimed by another mate. The devil himself. Primus Alexander of the Theriakon Pack. The most feared, merciless creature to ever walk the earth. His goal? Find or mold a strong mate and produce an heir. My goal? Find peace, maybe even freedom. Easy enough. Or so I thought. But what happens when friends, loyal subjects and even family try every means to kill me? Because the deeper we fall, the more I uncover the terrifying truth—about his need for a child… and worse what he really is.