Garden Of Poison

My younger sister, Lydia Miller, and I are unexpectedly reborn into a beastman tribe, where the Beast God gives us a choice of identity. The first option is to become a beast woman with tremendous strength and a tall, imposing physique. The second option is to become a saintess with the ability to reproduce across species and an alluring, graceful figure. In our previous life, Lydia became a beast woman to survive, while I became the frail saintess. She ended up scorned by the tribe's beastmen for not being feminine enough. Meanwhile, I captured the hearts of the three strongest and most handsome beastmen in the tribe with my delicate frame. I became their most cherished beloved. Eventually, they rose to rule the primeval forest, and I basked in endless glory as their saintess. Driven mad with jealousy, Lydia pushed me into a poison swamp when no one was looking. With my last bit of strength, I plunged a poisonous thorn into her body, and we died together. When I open my eyes again, we're back at the moment when the Beast God asks us to make our choice. This time, Lydia rushes to claim the saintess identity first. "Ella, this time I'll be the saintess. Since I pity you so much, I'll let you have those three defective, impotent beastmen." I bite back the wild joy flooding through me. What's so great about serving as a breeding tool anyway? In a primitive society, strength is everything.

Then, with deliberate slowness, he reached for a small black bottle. “I thought you would prefer the gentle way,” he murmured. “Guess I was wrong.” The poison burned down my throat—Deadly Nightshade. It was once my favorite. I had used it to end others. Now, he was using it on me. “Sometimes,” he whispered, “the person you once loved is the one who finally kills you.” ~~~~~ Brinda Virginia’s life has always been a battle—against fate, against her own fire, and against a heart that beats too weakly to match the storm inside her. Abandoned as a child and raised by the only woman who ever truly loved her, she’s now facing her biggest loss yet. Her stepmother is dying. And the clock is ticking—seventy-two hours. That’s all the time she has to save her. But then he returns. Francesco Dante. Her past. Her ruin. A man cloaked in shadows, bearing a twisted bargain—submit to him, body and soul, or lose everything. To save the only family she has left, Brinda must surrender. But submitting, in a world ruled by power, lust, and betrayal, is never truly submission. Because this man doesn’t just want to own her—he wants to unmake her, unravel her, and turn her fire to ash. And the most devastating part? She might just let him. And love, in this kind of story, always draws blood.

Alpha Kaelan, my fated mate, despised me. He blamed me for the death of his childhood sweetheart, Lila. He hated our fated bond. He hated my power. He hated that the Elders forced him to mark me. He hated that our mating drove Lila to her death. So for twenty years, we were trapped in a cage of hatred, each wishing the other would drop dead. Until the day I was poisoned and dying. The moment I felt the poison, I knew. Kaelan did this. My wolf howled, fighting to keep me alive until he came home. I killed him with a silver dagger. But then, as he lay dying, I heard him whisper to his second-in-command. "Don't you dare kill her. The antidote I got from the witch… give it to Selene. And she can never know it was from me..." "And... you have to find out... who's been poisoning her all this time." After he died, a searing pain tore through my chest. Tears streamed down my face. I refused the antidote. I wanted this whole mistake to end. But when I opened my eyes again, I was back. Back before he marked me. I took a deal with the Supernatural Council and left the continent behind. This time, I rejected our bond. I would give him and his precious Lila the happy ending they deserved.

On my way home from the night shift, a patient who held a grudge against my husband, the hospital director, forced half a bottle of pesticide down my throat. Terrified, I called my husband, Jasper Flint, for help. He rushed over and saved me. I survived by sheer luck. But tragically, his first love, Ruby Gray, died in a car accident on her way home that same night. After Ruby's funeral, Jasper carried on as if nothing had happened. I thought he had finally let her go. But on New Year's Eve, he poisoned our food, tied up my parents and me, and took us hostage. Through tears, I begged him to spare my parents. He killed them right in front of me. Their blood splashed across my face. "If you hadn't been so jealous of Ruby, if you hadn't pretended to drink pesticide just to lure me away, she never would've driven off like that. She'd still be alive!" he snarled. "How does it feel to watch your parents die? When Ruby died, what I felt was a thousand times worse than this! Since you like drinking pesticides so much, go ahead. Drink up!" Jasper forced my mouth open and poured the poison down my throat. I died in agony beside my parents' bodies. And then I opened my eyes—only to find myself reborn alongside Jasper. This time, Jasper chose to save his first love.

He came to steal her heart. She stole his first. Julian Vane is dying. His curse burns through him like molten fire, a biological mistake that destroys his bloodline by age 25. He has five months left to live unless he finds the Aethel Stone, a gem fused with human blood that can save him. The stone is embedded in one girl’s chest. Elara Vance doesn’t know she’s a walking death sentence. All she knows is that her father’s botanical gardens are dying, her family is bankrupt, and a mysterious drifter with dark eyes and calloused hands just showed up offering to save the only thing she loves. She hires him. She trusts him. She doesn’t realize he’s the billionaire who destroyed her father’s business or that extracting the stone from her heart will kill her in the exact way her father died. Then everything changes. When feral werewolves attack her family, Julian is forced to shift revealing what he truly is. In that moment, as his beast form towers over her in the rain, Elara discovers the terrible truth: the man she’s beginning to fall for is a predator. And she’s his prey. But Julian is facing an impossible choice. The stone is keeping Elara alive. Taking it means killing her. Leaving it means watching himself burn out from the inside while she dies anyway. His family demands the stone. His curse demands her death. And his heart that cursed, failing heart demands he save her. In a dying garden where nothing should survive, Julian and Elara are bound by a werewolf contract neither fully understands. As danger closes in from all sides, they discover that the most dangerous thing isn’t the curse.

For ten years, Alpha Ryker was my mate. And for ten years, he slept with other she-wolves. Every time he touched another woman, the mate bond burned through me like a brand. Still, I played the part of the dutiful Luna. I stood by his side. His excuse? The pack needed a strong heir. A past injury had broken my wolf, leaving me barren. He claimed any pup I conceived would be too weak to survive. But when he brought home his 100th conquest, a she-wolf named Lorelei, I finally broke. I saw the love in his eyes for her. I felt his wolf stir. It was different. He hurt me, abandoned me for her, again and again. He even destroyed my ten-year-old moonflower garden because of her. I couldn't take the nightly agony anymore. I asked him to sever our bond. The first time I asked for a rejection ceremony, he panicked. He begged me with red-rimmed eyes not to leave. I tearfully agreed, still clinging to him. But then he left my side to comfort Lorelei after she had a nightmare. I asked ten, twenty, thirty more times. He grew numb. By the fiftieth time, he just sneered. "Enough, Carys. You're a she-wolf with a dormant inner wolf. Being my Luna is the best you'll ever get. You can't leave me." But he didn't know. He had already signed our rejection papers. In three days, our mate bond would be gone for good. And my phone held an ultrasound of twin pups, along with another message. "The full moon is in three days. We'll have our mating ceremony then."

So it appeared that she was to start paying her way on her back with this absolutely massive, broad-shouldered, tattooed, aptly-named wild warrior. Gideon was a large man, but this modern viking put him to serious physical shame; if Gideon’s dick had split her in half in agony, Iris could only imagine what this monster’s cock would do to her. She just hoped that he left her able to walk… and able to fuck the rest of the boys downstairs, because of course they’d be close behind. She knew there would be blood soaking and staining her thighs before things were done, long before they decided that they’d used her up. Stopping her jumbled thoughts, Iris slowly lowered herself to her knees. **** Liam “Viking” Callahan thought the job was done. Evidence buried. Debt paid to The Road Devils MC. Then he drives out of the Utah mountains with a secret in the back of his van: a terrified woman running for her life. Iris has spent six months planning her escape from Gideon and the Garden of Divine Light. She’s barefoot, freezing, and desperate enough to gamble on a stranger who looks dangerous... but still safer than the hell she left behind. So she hides. And prays. When the Road Devils discover Iris, the truth unravels: a cult, a tyrant, and a woman who fled into a winter night wearing nothing but a nightgown and borrowed boots. She’s broken, but not defeated. Iris wants her life back... her body, her choices, her fearlessness. The only man she feels safe with is the towering, gentle Viking. As trust turns into desire, neither of them sees the danger closing in. Gideon wants his “property” returned... and he won’t stop until he gets it.

My new husband always acted like a child. Before our son turned two, he would grab the boy’s food bowls every single day and refuse to let go. When our son turned four, he had developed an obsession with planting seeds and watering the little garden in our backyard. When our son turned five, I ran into my Christian ex-boyfriend after six years apart at a business event. He looked the same as before and narrowed his eyes at me with cold disdain. “Didn’t we agree never to see each other again after the breakup? “How are you still this pathetic after six years? You chased me all the way here?” In an instant, everyone turned to watch and whispered among themselves, wondering whether I would shamelessly beg him to get back together with me. After all, back then, I had used every trick I had just to win over William. It was how I had managed to get hold of a man who seemed aloof and almost otherworldly. No one knew that every time William slept with me, he would go to church and repent in secret before a photo of his foster sister. He even kicked me out of the Wells family for her sake. He forced me to donate over a quart of blood to his foster sister when I was hospitalized after a miscarriage. From that moment on, my heart was numb. I returned to my hometown and married my devoted husband. I never expected that six years later, I would see him again. William watched me in silence, then pulled an old diamond ring from his pocket and tossed it at my feet. “Pick it up, and put it on. I’ll marry you.”

On the night my dad kicked me out, I drank too much and slept with my “brother” It was a one night mistake. Yet, he proposed and claimed me as his mate, his luna. When I woke up, my mom's body was cold. The color was drained from her half-opened eyes, and I could see no signs of life. My father told me that she purposely drank poison to kill herself. But that was a lie. My mother would never kill herself; she would never leave me. That night imprisoned me. - “It wasn’t a mistake,” “What are you talking about, Jonathan?” I asked him. “Arina, you are my mate. You were born to be my luna,” he said. His face showed no signs of humor. “I wasn’t born to be anybody’s luna,” I shot back. “Arina, I love you…” he spoke softly, still staring into my eyes. I could feel the wolf in me stirring; something that I had never felt before. She was awakening; the fire that burned so deep inside of me was beginning to flare. “Love?” I heard myself saying. “There’s no such thing as love…” After everything I knew about “love”, what my mother went through when she married my father, love didn’t exist. “Give me a chance to prove you wrong. Marry me.”

**He was her dream. Now he’s her nightmare.** Madeleine never forgot the man from the gardens. Five years ago, Dom was her fleeting escape. A quiet, thoughtful soul who saw her as more than just a girl in a convent. They whispered dreams under the moonlight, shared stolen moments that meant nothing and everything. Then he vanished, leaving her questioning everything. Now, trapped in the world she swore she’d never belong to, she comes face-to-face with the man who once made her believe in something pure. But Dom doesn’t exist. In his place stands Rafael Andoletti. A ruthless mafia don who rules with fear. A man whispered about in the darkest corners of the city. The man who just forced her to drink poison in a room full of criminals. At first, she’s just another threat to him. A would-be assassin. Then he remembers her, and he spares her life. Rafael never wanted this life. He was forced into this world of darkness, but seeing Madeleine ignites one undeniable truth. He’ll never let her go. She’s horrified by the monster he became. He’s consumed by the woman who gives him a glimpse of the man he could have been. She wants to run. He won’t allow it. Because she was always meant to be his… and Rafael is ready to burn the world down to keep her.