I Paused My Game.to Be Here Novels & Stories

"Ssshh. You made me cum twice already. I’m not leaving you untouched. I want to taste you, suck you, feel every inch of you deep inside me.” “Fuck,” Valtor growled, a deep velvety rumble that sent a pulse of heat throbbing through my core. “Who the hell taught you to talk like that?” No one. I never dirty-talked with Kallias. These words came purely after the fire Valtor ignited in me. ----- I was the happiest woman alive until my husband and my maid betrayed me in one night. Now I am no longer the good Luna they once expected me to be, but a wounded woman burning with vengeance. I am willing to give anything, do anything, even if it means striking a dangerous bargain with Valtor North, the handsome Rogue King whose reputation makes every Alpha tremble in fear. But fate made its twist again. An unexpected mad attraction rose between me and the man I should hate, the sworn enemy of my kind. The Rogue King. Torn between duty and desire, I face the ultimate battle. Can I survive the storm or will it consume me whole?

Rowan Nightshade slapped me in front of his friends, his guards, and the girl he had been protecting for months. The room went dead silent. Then someone whispered, “She deserved it.” For nine years, I had loved Rowan like he was my fate. I endured his coldness, his broken promises, and every time he left me standing alone because another girl needed him more. I kept telling myself it would get better. Rowan was my promised mate. Sooner or later, he would choose me first. But when his palm landed across my face, something inside me finally broke. Rowan thought I would cry, apologize, and forgive him like I always did. Instead, I walked out of the hall, deleted every way to contact him, and told both our packs the promised-mate agreement was over before sunrise. No one believed I would really leave. Until Rowan came to my dorm that night, his eyes red and his voice shaking. “Why, Serena? Just because of one slap?” I looked at the boy I had loved since childhood. Then I smiled. “Yes,” I said. “Because of that slap.”

To everyone else, I'm the wife of Stefano Pace, the man who runs this city's underworld. To others, I am living the kind of luxury every woman in town envies. But what no one knows is that in three days, I'm leaving my husband for good. It started when I took Stefano's car to wash and spotted a black stocking that wasn't mine wedged in the passenger seat cushions. It was balled up and still reeked of sickly sweet perfume. The sight of it was like a knife to the heart. I knew that perfume. It is Isla Torelli's. She's Stefano's underboss, the only woman besides me who's ever taken the passenger seat. My hand trembled as I gripped the stocking, but I kept my cool. I thought back to our wedding seven years ago, when Stefano stood in front of the whole family and vowed, "If I ever betray you, then betray me a hundredfold!" He probably did not think those words would come true.

Today is the sixth time my girlfriend, Shirley Lake, is supposed to meet my parents. My parents and I wait at the restaurant for four whole hours. I call her over and over again, but she never picks up. Just as I'm about to try one last time, I see Shirley's childhood sweetheart, Joshua Solomon, post a picture on his Instagram, with the location tagged at a suburban hotel. The picture shows a woman's pale back, one shoulder bare, with a striking red spider lily tattoo visible on her skin. Underneath the picture was the caption, "We'll make it from 18 to 80." A mutual friend comments, "First-love couples are the sweetest!" I silently hit the like button, then comment, "Make sure to get buried together when you die. And don't come back to haunt anyone else."

In the seventh year of my marriage to Simon Heath, I finally walk away from him after his 32nd mistress shows up at my door. I join a classified government program and disappear from his world. Now he's falling apart and calling me non-stop. "Lily, I was wrong. Please come back." In the past, a single word of apology from him would have been enough to make me stay. But not this time. This time, he's bound to be disappointed.

I was the stand-in who looked most like my husband's first love. He put me through countless plastic surgeries, both major and minor ones, until I became her exact likeness. But then, she came back from the dead. All it took was her saying, "I don't like anyone looking like me," and he sent me right back to the operating table once more. I begged him, telling him that my body couldn't handle it anymore. Alas, he only looked at me with irritation. "Seeing that cheap imitation of her face just disgusts me," he sneered. "No matter how close you come, you'll never be her." In the end, I died on that operating table. Yet, he went mad, trying desperately to recall what I once looked like.

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 falling head over heels for Joe Smith for three years, I finally got the proposal I had been waiting for. However, on the day of our wedding, he did not show up until the wee hours of the morning. When I found him, Joe was drinking happily with a young girl in his arms. “I’m already tired of her clinginess. She’s a joke. Who else would want her?” Much later, he made me a wedding ring and proposed with my favorite jasmine flowers. But a muscular man opened the door instead. The man had two scratch marks on his neck and smirked at the disheveled Joe. “Isn’t it a bit too shameless of you to propose to a married woman?”

In my first life, I believed love was salvation. I tore my future apart for two men who had grown up beside me—Marcus Black and Damian Knight. I chose one of them, only to be abandoned on my wedding day for Elena Rivers. My grandmother died that same day, shattered by grief. When I was at my lowest, the other man took my hand and promised he would never betray me. I believed him. I married him. And slowly, my world went cold. I thought his distance was regret. I thought my failing health was fate. Until the night I was dying, and I watched him run past me—to save Elena, whose injuries were nothing more than a scratch. That was when I understood. My life had never been a love story. It was a carefully scripted game. After my death, I learned the truth: Marcus and Damian had already written their wills, leaving everything to Elena Rivers. They had sabotaged my education, manipulated my career, and even fabricated a chronic illness to keep me weak, dependent, and easy to control. They never wanted me to succeed. They only wanted me quiet—so Elena could shine. But fate gave me another chance. This time, I tore up my admission letter to Harvard. This time, I rejected their confessions before they could cage me again. In this life, I will not be the woman they use, betray, or discard. I will live for myself. And I will never walk the same path twice.

I dated Jacob, my Alpha, for five years. Yet on the day of our marking ceremony, he marked another she-wolf behind my back. “Molly is pregnant with my pup, your new heir!” Jacob proudly announced the news. Everyone cheered for them. I stood in the crowd and ignored the challenging look Molly gave me. When the ceremony was about to end, I turned around numbly. I knew that I was unnecessary here, so I went back to the house I shared with Jacob and packed up to leave. I had joined Jacob’s pack because I loved him. Since he no longer felt the same, it was time for me to leave.