Karma Tower

"You do know what your scent does to me?" Stefanos whispered, his voice brushing against Xenia’s skin like a dark promise. "W-what?" she stammered, heart pounding as the towering wolf closed in. "It drives me wild." —★— A cursed Alpha. A runaway Omega. A fate bound by an impossible bloom. Cast out by his own family, Alpha Stefanos dwells in a lonely tower, his only companion a fearsome dragon. To soothe his solitude, he cultivates a garden of rare flowers—until a bold little thief dares to steal them. Furious, Stefanos vows to punish the culprit. But when he discovers the thief is a fragile Omega with secrets of her own, something within him stirs. Her presence thaws the ice in his heart, awakening desires long buried. Yet destiny has bound them to an impossible task—to make a cursed flower bloom. Can he bloom a flower that can't be bloomed, in a dream that can't come true? ----- Inspired from the BTS song, The Truth Untold.

My husband, Chandler Rotterdam worked as a researcher developing a new serum. Driven to find a cure for my cancer, he poured himself entirely into the project.  However, on the day of the injection, it wasn’t him who administered the treatment—it was his childhood friend, Pauline Hemsworth.  She had injected an unregulated dose, and I could do nothing but watch as my life slipped away. Even the child growing inside me was not spared.  Meanwhile, Chandler remained by her side.  “If this research succeeds, all the credit goes to you!” Chandler assured Pauline. “She would never blame you if anything happens. She’d be grateful to be the first to receive the drug.”  But the experiment failed. After discovering my death, Chandler lost his mind.

At one of the exclusive private casino parties, my eyes landed on a diamond tiara. The catch? It was the prize for a high-stakes blackjack game. Luckily, poker happens to be one of my many sins. A girl named Elara—whom I once pitied enough to introduce to Throne, hoping she’d land a job—has now declared she wants the tiara too. Naïve. Probably thought beginner’s luck was a real thing. I figured, fine. Let the cards decide. If I win, I walk away with the tiara. If I lose, I’ll find another way to soothe my pride. Easy enough. Thorne, my ever-watchful husband, leaned in and murmured, “Go easy on her.” I didn’t. I won. Beat the dealer faster than her and won the tiara. That girl cried at the table. Thorne didn’t look impressed for once. He rather seemed... irritated. I thought it was for Elara’s sake. Turns out, it was for mine. A year later, same party, different stakes. The grand prize? My own sex video. While holding Elara in his arms, my husband said to me, voice almost amusing, “Don’t you like winning prizes? Then go on. Win our sex tape back.”

The yacht I'm steering crashes into a huge wave, scaring my husband's junior, who has a heart condition. So, my husband orders someone to tie me up and dangle me in the ocean by a rope. He even tells the captain to head straight into the waves. "You know Wren has a heart condition, yet you still scared her! How can you be so evil?" I beg him to let me go and tell him that I was following a charted path; I didn't mean for anything to happen. However, he just mocks me. "You've been a yacht driver for so long. Haven't you experienced anything like this before? I'll make you go through what Wren did! Let's see whether you'll pull this again!" After a day and night of this torment, he relents and decides to pull me back up. It's too bad he doesn't know that the waves have already torn me to shreds.

I've been caught in a relationship with a divorced man for eight years. We've broken up and reconciled too many times to count. In the end, I tallied ninety-four breakups and five divorces between us. One more would make it an even hundred, but I'm too exhausted to continue this cycle. The first breakup happened when I was giving him my virginity. Halfway through, his ex-wife called asking him to pick up some bread, and he simply left. The fifth breakup occurred when he abandoned me, newly pregnant, on the highway to comfort his ex-wife who was having complications with her own pregnancy. I ended up in a car accident and miscarried. He arrived at the hospital with his clothes disheveled. Despite all the pain he caused me, I could never bring myself to truly leave him. Our most recent divorce happened for an equally absurd reason. His ex-wife and their child were participating in a family reality TV show that required them to appear as a complete family unit. To protect his ex-wife's public image, he divorced me yet again. When filming wrapped, he called to discuss remarrying. This time I refused, because I'm going to marry someone else.

Word on the street in the city of Hereshire was that Roy Chester had a penchant for eighteen-year-old girls. Yet, Willow Croyton was twenty-one when they started dating, and she stuck by him for nearly three years. She was a well-known simp to Roy, her only merit being her docility and good behavior. Later, when Willow left, Roy was spotted multiple times near her apartment block, his eyes teary. 

After having a crush on someone for 10 years, out of love, my father drugged his friend and placed him on my bed. When he woke at dawn the next morning, his eyes were ice-cold. But he still accept our engagement. However, life after marriage wasn’t as good as I thought. Mike Ashton would frequently fly abroad and stay there for a long time. I gave birth to our daughter on my own as I waited for him to return home. After four years, when I heard that he was returning home, I postponed everything and went to the airport expectantly with our daughter in my arms. Our daughter reached out her little hand and was hoping for a hug from him. He just looked at me indifferently and said in a cold voice, “I’m sorry, but I’m a neat freak.” From then on, my daughter and I would wash our hands at least three times every day and the house would be spotless. However, he still rarely came home and never gave our daughter a warm hug. That was until when I accidentally saw a video with Mike in it. “Mike, what do you think is the happiest thing in the world?” He answered casually, “I think it’s when I tucked Oliver into bed and dragged Jennifer into the bathroom when I was abroad last week.” The people around him all laughed, but my heart felt ice-cold. Jennifer Bundred was Mike’s ex-girlfriend who he still had an entanglement with and Oliver was her son. It seemed that he had been living with them during the time that he was abroad for the past four years. This fact finally made me give up all illusions. I left a divorce agreement for him, gave up my and our daughter’s identities, and went abroad to start a new life.

The day my husband, Reece Malcolm, reached the pole for his polar expedition, his childhood sweetheart who was sent away reappeared in his bedroom. Everyone had kept it from me. Erica Lowell had been by his side day and night. Though Reece said he didn't want her there, he still allowed her to stay by his side for four years as his assistant. "You have to believe me, Lucy. There's nothing between Erica and me," he used to say. Always so sure. Always so convincing. But when he returned, it was with Erica in his arms—heavily pregnant. "She threatened to kill herself, Lucy. I didn't have a choice," he said. "The baby's coming. I need you to raise it. You know you're the only one I've ever loved." Four years. Four years of silence, of waiting alone in a house that never felt like home. Now, the lawyer is hired. The assets are tallied. The divorce papers are signed and sealed. I'm done.

On the night of our anniversary, I had prepared a new set of lingerie for my Mafia husband Joey, but he had prepared divorce papers for me instead. A Cuban cigar was clamped between his teeth, a look of pure entitlement on his face. "Adriana, we need to divorce. Vivian's father is a capo. If I marry her, my future's set." "Look, sweetheart, you're just a broken family's leftover daughter. You should be grateful I kept you around this long." "Once I have the family ring, maybe I'll throw you a few scraps, let you be my little side piece." Everyone expected the daughter of a fallen family to step aside for his ambition, to be the loyal dog I'd been for the past seven years. But that night, I made a deal with the devil. I accepted a match arranged by my family and married the true king of New York's underworld. I vanished from Joey's world completely. Three years later, I returned to New York on my husband's arm. We were there on family business. Dante was called away for something urgent, leaving me to wait for him at his private club. I never expected to run into Joey, the man I hadn't seen in three years. "That's enough, Adriana. Stop with the childish tantrums." "Our son Angelo's almost six. He needs care. I'm being generous, offering you a position as his nanny." I laughed. What was this idiot talking about? He was calling the most feared and revered Donna in all of New York a nanny?

In the two years after Bradley Vaughn's so-called "memory loss," we divorced seven times—all to keep his childhood crush Vivian Monroe happy. Number eight? Because she got pregnant. "You can't have kids anyway. Once Vivian has the baby, we'll get back together. You can raise the kid." That was his usual ice-cold line as he slid the papers across the table. That night, he kicked me out—said Vivian got nauseous just seeing me. I moved into another house. Alone. In the rain. Even after I landed in the ER from a near assault, he didn't bother asking if I was okay. Then one day, I spotted him at a clinic with Vivian. He rubbed her belly and laughed, "So what if she finds out I faked the amnesia? She can't live without me. Toss her a bone, she'll come crawling." I looked away, steady. Then my phone buzzed. [How did your checkup go?]