Garden Of Poison

“Do you know what it cost me to stay away for five years, my Coral?” Clyde’s breaths fan against my cheek as his hand slides under my jaw, tilting my face up until I’m forced to meet his eyes. "W-what are you doing?" I whisper, heart hammering against my ribs. "It's nothing more than a temporary solution, as per the contract-" “To hell with the contract.” His scent of rain fills my senses. He drags his nose along the line of my throat, stubble grazing my skin. “I’m helping you because I’ve spent every night since that garden, imagining you exactly where you are now... breathless, trembling, and finally mine.” *** Coralina Jasper gave five years of her life to the Silver Azure Pack, building an empire for the man she loved. But to Alpha Maximus, she was just a placeholder for his dying "true love", Brielle Montrela. When Maximus shoves a pregnant Coralina into a freezing pool to save Brielle from a minor splash, Coralina loses everything: including her unborn son. While she lies in a hospital bed undergoing induced labor alone, Maximus is busy pampering Brielle and planning her birthday. Empty-handed and broken-hearted, Coralina realizes her marriage was a lie. She asks Maximus to reject her, but he laughs at her. Because Alpha Maximus thinks she’s a weak omega with nowhere to go, whom he can easily starve into submission. He doesn't even know how wrong he is! After Coralina finds herself penniless and hunted by her own pack's laws, she crosses the border into the territory of the "Shadow Alpha". The one man who can dismantle Maximus’s world: Alpha Clyde Everest. Coralina was just looking for a place to hide... But deep in the shadows of enemy territory, she finds herself again.

As a low-income student who's specifically recruited by the elite college this year, I can still feel my hands trembling as I clutch the letter that tells me I get to study for free. Not only are my tuition and miscellaneous fees waived, but I also get to receive 30 thousand dollars' worth of student grant per year. I even get to have free access to the leather seats inside the library, the equipment inside the gym, as well as the aerial garden on the roof. The best surprise for me has to be the cafeteria. All low-income students get a 50% discount on their meals, but the quality of their food doesn't decrease at all. Best beef is used in the steak dinners offered by the cafeteria, whereas a seafood platter showcases the entire huge lobster. Even the most basic mac and cheese meal has different types of freshly grated cheese baked into it. As I sit in the brightly lit classroom and look at the rich students around me, who wear custom-made uniforms and have branded watches latched around their wrists, all I have is one thought. I must be on good terms with them. But my seatmate, who's also a low-income student, isn't as thrilled as me. In fact, she just looks at the people around her with disdain in her eyes. After the first lesson, a rich student arrives at our table. He might not sound polite at all, but at least he's not putting on airs. "Do any of you have time to head over to the cafeteria and buy me breakfast?" I'm about to respond to him when a shrill voice booms out next to me. "You're so annoying! What, you think you rule the campus since you're rich? Had I known that this classroom is filled with useless scions like you who just waste their lives away on nothing, I wouldn't have enrolled in this college in the first place!"

The day my birth parents found me, the reunion banquet they threw turned into their funeral. My parents and their adopted daughter, Leila, died of food poisoning that night. The only one who survived was my older brother, Alpha Kian. He didn’t like sweets, so he never touched the cake. The cake that I handed to them myself. “So you want to take Leila’s place. “You’re just jealous because she got all our love! “She was the only one who ever accepted you, and you still killed her!” Those were Kian’s exact words as he shouted at me right outside the hospital room. From that day on, I became a sinner. To make up for it, I barely slept four hours a night and worked five jobs just to buy back the villa the rival pack seized during the chaos. However, the day I finally saved up enough, I saw my dead parents throwing a birthday party for Leila in that very villa. Kian stood among them, looking at her with a warmth I didn’t recognize. My mother said, “Isn’t today also Lily’s birthday? It’s been eight years. Maybe it’s time to forgive her.” However, Kian didn’t hesitate to refuse. “No. Even though Leila sniffed out the wolfsbane and saved you, we agreed that Lily gets ten years. “We can’t risk her ever trying to poison Leila again. Not even a day less.” I clutched the diagnosis paper from the clinic tightly and laughed through my tears. I knew I wouldn’t get to ten years. I was already dying.

In my previous life, at the mate selection ceremony held by our pack, the Silvermoon pack, I saved a wolf that had suffered a crushing defeat in a territorial war. He turned out to be the Alpha heir of the Sunfire pack, Julian Sterling. To repay me for saving his life, after Julian returned to his pack, he immediately announced that I would be his future Luna. Within a year, I gave birth to a pure-blood Alpha, which was extremely rare in the Sunfire pack. Julian was overjoyed, and he named me his Luna after his father passed on the leadership to him. I not only had a mate who was outwardly loyal to me, but I also held an unparalleled position. As for my sister, Rosalie Ashford, she chose Jacob Blackwell, the courageous Alpha heir of the Stoneridge pack, to be her mate. However, she suffered because of her betrayal, and in the end, she was sent back to the Silvermoon pack. The pack believed that Rosalie had tarnished the glory of the pack, so they banished her. I took pity on her loneliness, so I brought her to the Sunfire pack's territory. However, she grew jealous of me. She killed me with silver-infused poison, and she even threw our pup off a tower, killing him. When I open my eyes again, I have returned to the day of the mate selection ceremony. I watch as Roselia runs without hesitation toward the dying wolf in the woods, Julian. Hence, I know that she is reborn as well. However, she has no idea that while it may be easy to save an Alpha, it's exceedingly difficult to bear his pure-blood descendant. Being the Luna of the Sunfire pack is anything but easy!

"Mo*n louder, Raphael—let the whole palace hear who you belong to." "I hate you. *h—Xavier!" "If you hate me, then why are you drip*i*g all over my c*ck, little prince?" He’s my stepbrother. My enemy. The man I swore to ruin. I wear my pride like armor, and my hatred like a crown. He killed my mother. Stole my dreams. Took the throne I was born for. And yet, on the night I was to marry another… Xavier found me drugged and trembling—and buried himself so deep inside me, I shattered. "You were supposed to belong to him," he growled, thrusting until I sobbed, "but this h*le was made for me." I clawed at his back, cursed him, begged for more. My body? A traitor. "H*rd*r… F*ck, Xavier—d**per—" "You’ll ta*e every inch and thank me." I lied. Told the world he r***d me. Watched the king whip him bloody. It hurt to see. But revenge tasted sweeter. Later, I seduced his enemy. Let another man put a baby inside me—just to break him. But Xavier—cold, ruthless, and proud—still shields me from the shadows, even as he spits hate. And when he f*cks me, it’s war. "You want my hate?" he snarled, balls slapping against me, "Then take it. Take every inch until you forget how to lie." We are poison—dripping obsession, burning pride. And we’ll burn down heaven if it means one more night like this.

There was a fire in my house. After I risked my life to save my parents, who were the richest people in the country, multiple media outlets wanted to interview me. Faced with the journalists' questions, my parents said that they would fulfill any of my wishes. Their adopted daughter, Lily Jackson, thought that I would use this chance to drive her away, and her eyes had begun to turn red. But I just looked at the camera and said coldly, "I want to sever all ties with the Jackson family, and I want all of you to be witnesses of my decision." The crowd went into an uproar. My parents were infuriated. The journalists wanted to ask some more questions, but I just started packing my luggage. Only I was aware that I was reborn. During my previous life, I took the chance of this interview to drive Lily out of the family. Not long after she was taken away by her biological parents, they sold her to a man, and she died a terrible death within her husband's house. My parents pretended like they didn't care and said to me that it was Lily's fate, but in truth, they secretly started poisoning my food. After the poison killed me, they placed my body in front of Lily's grave in a position as if I was on my knees and apologizing to her. They made me pay for Lily's death with my life. "If you hadn't driven Lily away, Lily wouldn't have met such a terrible fate! You should pay for what happened to her with your life!" That was the last thing I heard, and I became completely disappointed with them. But when I opened my eyes again, I realized I was reborn and went back to the day of the fire.

While exploring the wilderness, my younger sister—Charlotte Forrester—and I accidentally stumble onto the territory of supernatural beings. She grabs the hand of the noble, elegant male elf, her posture coy and intimate. Before I can react, a wolfman with a scar on his face wraps his arm around my waist and leads me away. Charlotte, who judges others by appearance, is unaware that the male elf—Elwin Duskwood—belongs to a tribe of half-elves. Half-elves are beautiful but possess no real capabilities. They are considered a marginalized group among elves and struggle to make ends meet every day. On the other hand, the wolfman—Morgan Nightshade—is a mid-tier wolf tribe's Highlord. After giving birth to an extremely rare silver wolf for him, I have become the Highlady of the tribe. I'm respected by everyone in the tribe and feast on delicacies every day. Meanwhile, Charlotte becomes emaciated after suffering from starvation for several months. When she sees how plump I am, she goes insane from jealousy. While the wolf tribe is entertaining guests at a banquet, she uses poison to kill me. The next time I open my eyes, Charlotte and I are back at the moment we first entered the supernatural beings' territory by mistake. Charlotte immediately hugs Morgan by the waist and kisses him. She showers him with flattery about his strength, calling him the man of her dreams. I can't help but laugh out loud. Silly Charlotte. As a wolfman, Morgan is ill-tempered, and he easily loses control of his emotions. He also becomes even more bloodthirsty after transforming. It's not all sunshine and rainbows being his mate. But I never imagined the elves could be so… in that regard.

On the day I receive my Distinguished Service Medal, I also receive word that my grandma has passed away. My superior grants me special leave to return to my hometown to mourn her death, so I rush to my ancestral home at once. But when I reach the ancestral graveyard behind the hill, I witness something that makes my blood boil. The graves of my deceased family members have been razed to the ground. Even my parents' graves have been brutally dug up. Their urns are now placed under flower pots filled with blooming red roses. Grandma's coffin has been pried open as well.Her body now lies strewn on the ground and has started to rot. I also see Lucy Stewart, my autistic younger sister. Melissa Abbott, my wife's assistant, orders Lucy around like a maid, forcing her to move heavy construction materials around. Enraged, I grab Melissa by the throat and throw her to the ground. "How dare you destroy my family's ancestral cemetery and make my sister do hard labor! Do you want to end up buried here too?" Melissa coughs up blood before crawling back onto her feet, her expression vicious and scornful. "I'm simply carrying out Ms. Fuller's instructions. She says that your ancestral cemetery is located in a good spot. It's also the perfect size to be turned into a private horse ranch and a garden for her future husband. "Ms. Fuller calls the shots here in Joverton City. Who the hell do you think you are, huh?" Resisting the urge to put an end to her life, I call up Eva Fuller, my wife. "I heard you call the shots here in Joverton City. Well, I shall put that to the test today!"

After I was reborn, when Blake's childhood sweetheart Catherine cut a lock of my hair during a party dare — again — I didn't do what I did in my past life. I didn't shear off all her hair in front of everyone and turn her into a bald wolf. I didn't lose control and storm into the Council of Elders when Blake defended her, threatening to sever our mate bond. Instead, I calmly removed the Luna's crown from my head and placed it on Catherine's. "The crown's hers now. Have fun with her." I put on my coat and walked out of the estate without looking back. It wasn't that I wanted to bow to Catherine. But in my past life, after I severed the bond with Blake, things went horribly wrong. He threw me into a cell made of pure silver, like I was some irredeemable criminal, and left me there while the metal scorched my skin day and night. When I finally escaped, I was poisoned by a witch from a rival pack. Dying from the pain, I abandoned every shred of my dignity and crawled to the doors of the Temple of the Moon Goddess, begging him to let the witch give me the antidote. He was kissing Catherine. He didn't even tell his guards to let me in. I died from the poison — one day before my father, the Alpha King, came to find me. I refused to meet that fate again. So I was done with Blake.

Maeve Sinclair learned the hard way that love can be the cruelest of prisons. After years of running from her traumatic past and the three men who never stopped loving her, she is kidnapped and wakes up tied up in a presidential suite on a luxurious cruise ship at sea. Her captors? The same ones she tried to forget: Zion Brooks — the famous singer with a seductive voice and explosive temper, who hides a dark side, part of the mafia underworld. Luka Rhodes — the brilliant music producer who hides a dangerous life in the Irish mafia alongside Declan Callahan. Elias Voss — the ex-military man and boxer, silent, lethal, and obsessively protective. Trapped together for seven nights in the middle of the Caribbean, the three are willing to do anything to break down the walls Maeve has built around her heart. They feed her, protect her, tease her… and tie her up when necessary. Because for them, Maeve had always belonged to them — from that unforgettable night on the beach, from the conception of Matthew, the eleven-year-old son she raised alone while hiding secrets capable of destroying them all. Between luxury, forbidden desire, and suffocating possessiveness, Maeve fights against her own body and against the unhealthy love she feels for them. But the more she resists, the closer the three get to truths she swore to take to the grave: the abuse from her father that still haunts her, the depression that almost destroyed her as a mother, and the paralyzing fear that her love is poison to everyone around her. On a cruise where there is no escape, Maeve discovers that the real prison was never the silk ropes… It was their love.