I Was Born As The Second Daughter

Terrance Burgess slapped me in front of the entire company, all because I accidentally knocked over his assistant's vase. My five-year-old son, Claude Burgess, stood off to the side, clapping like it was something worth cheering for. Afterward, the assistant walked up to me while holding the bouquet the father and son had given her, showing it off right in my face. "So what if you're the wife? The one who isn't loved is the real outsider." I looked at her calmly. "Then you'd better watch yourself. If he can have you on the side, he can just as easily find someone else after you." I used to think I had a happy, complete family. Until Terrance's assistant came along and made me realize it had all been in my head. The love from that father and son had already moved on to someone else. That was the moment something in me went completely still. I called a number I hadn't contacted in years. "Dad, I want to come home and take over the family business."

In her first life, Saera was a kind-hearted woman who inherited a massive fortune from her grandfather—a gift that quickly turned into a nightmare. Driven by greed, the people she wanted to treat her as family pushed her into a cold, dark void just to steal her money. As she fell toward the jagged rocks, she didn’t beg for her life. Instead, she made a terrifying promise: "I will come back as a witch to punish you all." ​However, fate had an even bigger plan for her. ​Saera wakes up reborn as the Alpha Luna—the most powerful queen in the world of werewolves. Now, she possesses the fierce strength of a wolf leader and the ancient magic of a witch. She is more dangerous than anyone could have imagined. ​Her chance for revenge comes sooner than she thought. She discovers that the people who killed her have also been reborn... as wolves. They are now the enemies of her new husband, Kilian, and are plotting to steal his throne. They think they are just fighting for power, but they have no idea who she really is. They have walked straight into her trap, and this time, Saera has the claws and the magic to make them pay for everything they did.

My daughter, Tina, locked herself in her room, crying so hard her body shook. I pried the door open and saw that she was clutching a test paper that was torn to shreds and pieced back together. It was a math Olympiad selection test. She should have gotten a perfect score, but was given a score of zero instead. "Mom," she sobbed, "the teacher said 3x5 is not equal to 5x3; that it's taking shortcuts. She tore my paper up in front of everyone, revoked my eligibility for the competition, and told the whole class not to talk to me…" I looked at the deep red scratch marks on my daughter's wrist and immediately picked up the phone to call the principal. "What good does it do for your school's reputation to drive a kid who loves math to their breaking point?"

Tessa takes a chance with her career path and learns the joys and horrors of our adoption system. She learns her heart has to be open and ready for love or heartbreak, she must take chances. Along the way her triumphs are tested, her beliefs are destroyed and her desires grow strong.

The last thing Valentina Serra sees before she dies is the crack in the ceiling above her bed. She is 45 years old. She is not unhappy. That, she realizes in the last seconds of her first life, is the most devastating thing she could say about it. She opens her eyes in a university lecture hall in Barcelona. She is 20 years old. Her notebook is open, her pen is in her hand, and she can feel — with the precision of someone who has lived an entire life — exactly how much she is about to waste if she does nothing. She does something. Armed with 25 years of memory, Valentina sets out to close every loop she left open: the military commission she dismissed, the marketing career she let others architect for her, the relationship she stayed in long past its expiry date, and the mother she visited but never truly knew. One by one, she reaches for the life she talked herself out of the first time around. But the two people closest to her — the friends who have always been there, always supportive, always first to suggest the safer, smaller option — are watching. And when Valentina begins exceeding the quiet ceiling that they built for her, Isabel and David begin to coordinate. Then there is Ethan Cole. Washington D.C. Investment sector. Five years younger, which bothered her the first time. He will walk into her life again in Barcelona, and this time Valentina already knows what the long dinner and the careful conversation and the late-night walk along the Passeig de Gràcia will mean — if she doesn't talk herself out of it. She is not going to talk herself out of it.

The events begin with the kidnapping of Selene, who until that moment was living a normal, monotonous life as a human being, until she later discovers, after her kidnapping by the vampire king, Kaiden, that she is a creature with supernatural destructive powers and very dangerous to all creatures of the earth and on it; she is the daughter of the sent sun. To earth as an instrument of forgiveness for the fallen who were exiled to it, cursed is the curse of blood and darkness, so I called them the creatures of darkness, or vampires, and I also sent as an instrument of punishment to Sirana the amphibious creatures who were born from the offspring of Zein, the Great Satan who has been trying to procreate. A disgusting, voracious, disgusting character. Will Celine cooperate with Kayden, who kidnapped her to prevent her from falling into the hands of his enemy? Or will you rebel against it?

I spent five years taking the blame for a truth that could have destroyed my Alpha. In Blackthorn Pack, everyone mocked me as the wolfless Omega who couldn’t bear an heir. They said I was unfit to be Luna. They said Adrian Hale should cast me aside for a stronger woman. What none of them knew was that Adrian was the infertile one. I burned the report myself and let the whole pack shame me for his weakness. I gave up my studies, my pride, and everything I loved to protect him. Then his mistress got pregnant. And I heard the truth with my own ears. “She has no wolf, no pack, no one to stand up for her. Even if she makes a scene, the Elders’ Council won’t take her side.” That was the moment I understood. For power, for bloodline, for status, Adrian had already chosen Lydia Ashcroft, the Alpha’s daughter carrying a child he couldn’t possibly have fathered. So I severed our mate bond. I took nothing from him except the look on his face when he opened the medical report I left behind. Patient: Adrian Hale. Diagnosis: congenital azoospermia. Infertile. What Adrian never knew was that I was never wolfless. I was the lost daughter of a Lycan King. And in my bloodline, a wolf does not awaken until her family calls her home. The one who could never have children was never me. It was the man who begged the world to believe otherwise.

To transfer my sister, Suri Voss, who was 13 years younger than I was, to a new school district, I took 7 days of annual leave and went back to my hometown. I pulled strings, delivered gifts, called in favors, and finally forced a spot for her in the best middle school in the city. At last, when I could pause long enough to catch my breath, I told Mom, who was heading out to buy groceries, that I wanted grilled pork ribs for dinner. Suri walked over with a cold expression, then threw a full glass of icy water straight onto my head and pointed at my face as she exploded. "You country leech, mooching off our family for years, eating our food and living in our house whenever you feel like it. I let all that slide. Now you want to steal my mom too? Do you have any shame at all?! "Listen carefully, Mom only has one child. She will only ever love me!" I stood there, stunned. Suri had no idea I was Mom’s biological daughter, too. All this time, she had treated me as some freeloading relative. I looked toward the doorway, where Mom was changing her shoes to go out. She seemed not to have heard a single word of Suri’s disrespect. She merely said casually, "Suri doesn’t like ribs. Let’s have grilled shrimp instead." She had forgotten that I’ve been severely allergic to seafood since childhood. I lowered my head and let out a quiet, self-mocking laugh. Unbeknownst to them, if I could secure Suri a place in that school, I could just as easily make sure she lost it.

When Aria Summersault got banished from her pack for making a grievous offense— her life turned upside down. Going rogue with an uncertain future, she engages in a battle and encounters Nicholas Sainthood, the Alpha of the Red Moon Pack, who happens to be her mate. Despite being spared from her ill-fated existence, another dilemma arises. A shadow from her parents' past hunts her, as do a series of secrets. What if the bond she shares with Nicholas is rooted in revenge? Will love be able to bridge the past into a bright future, or will it bring further ruins? *** "You have fooled me from the very beginning, Nicholas. Is everything you showed me a lie?" I faintly asked, my heart breaking into million pieces, and it doubled when he nodded his head, agreeing. "Yes, Aria."

Evans is in love with Alex, his father's caretaker while being engaged to Madison. He is rude and aggressive but will Alex kindness melt his heart?