Liquid Death Dead Billionaire Name Change

On the day the true heiress and I swapped places, my childhood sweetheart, bound to me by a promise made in youth, gripped my hand before our families and declared, "I chose you, not your title." Anna Pedersen, tears brimming in her eyes, enveloped me in a trembling embrace. "Joanne, we'll always be family. I'd never take what's rightfully yours." Everyone assumed I'd turned misfortune into fortune. Though I lost my status as the Pedersen heiress, I gained a steadfast lover and a selfless sister. But three years after fate corrected itself, photos of Calvin Thomas escorting Anna to a prenatal checkup flooded the internet. When I confronted him, he exhaled a plume of smoke and said coolly, "Anna is my true betrothed. This is just setting things right. Why are you so worked up?" He seized my wrist and dragged our engraved engagement ring across the back of my hand, leaving a bloody gash. "This scar will remind you of the twenty years of life you stole. Your life and I belong to their rightful owner."

I should step back. But I don’t. His hand slides to my waist, firm, deliberate. Not asking. Claiming. My stomach tightens, heat curling low, and I feel every inch of him before I even see him. He’s behind me, close enough that I can feel his breath at my neck. My pulse stutters as his fingers trace slow, unhurried circles up my back, and I know I should pull away… but I can’t. His lips brush my neck. Not a kiss yet, just the promise of it. My head tilts back before I can stop myself, back arching like my body is betraying me. Then he speaks. Low, calm, in control “Don’t make a sound.” A shiver runs through me. Not from fear. Not exactly. From… him. He’s in control. I can’t fight it. I don’t want to. And somewhere deep inside, I realize the terrifying truth: I’m letting him have me.

Everyone in southern Italy knew that Lorenzo Moretti loved me like a madman. And yet he had been keeping a much younger woman in Naples. They said she looked just like I had years ago. He told people she was only a reminder of the woman he had once loved most. He also gave strict orders that no one was to let me hear about her. Until the day I found out I was pregnant. I went to his office to tell him the news myself, only to stop outside the door when I heard a young woman’s voice from inside. “Lorenzo… am I only here because I remind you of her?” The door was slightly ajar. Through the gap, I saw a young woman who looked too much like me, wrapped in his jacket and holding his glass. I stood there, barely breathing. Then I heard him answer. “Don’t compare yourself to her.” “She could never be what you are.” I turned and walked away without making a sound. That night, I called my mother. “Mother, I’ve made up my mind.” She was silent for a moment. “I want a fire,” I said. “Something no one survives. By the time it’s over, Sophia Moretti needs to be dead to the world.”

The day we were meant to be mated, my Alpha, Ford, was ambushed. Silver bullets shredded his car, sending it plunging off a bridge and into the river below. He was pronounced dead. Drowned. I was left pregnant with his heir, shattered by the raw agony of our severed mate bond. Then Ford's twin, Aiden, returned from abroad with his mate, Kyra. His identical face and a scent so similar to my mate's nearly drove me mad. A desperate part of me swore Ford was still alive. I told myself it was just grief. A widow's delusion. Until I overheard a hushed conversation and the horrifying truth slammed into me: the man pretending to be Aiden was Ford. He had faked his death. He'd let his own brother die in his place, all for Kyra—the other woman carrying his child. The grief that had crippled me instantly morphed into a cold, sharp rage. Ford didn't just break our bond; he shattered it. And I would make him pay. I wiped my tears and sent a single message to my brother, Billy, the Alpha of the Winterstone Pack. "Brother, I need a plane crash. He loves faking his death? Fine. Let him feel what it's like to truly lose a mate." Only when the news of my "death" spread did Ford reclaim his name. He knelt for seven days and nights in the ashes of the home we once shared, consumed by a grief of his own making.

My wife was a surgeon. She saved plenty of lives in her career. However, the only person she failed to save was me. When I was involved in an accident with her long-time crush, she immediately saved him instead. I had been dead for three months, and that was when she realized the person who had been messaging her during this time was not me and started to panic.

June died the night her husband betrayed her. She came home pregnant to find him in bed with her stepbrother. Hours later, a bullet tore through her in a random shooting. She felt her baby slip away. She should have died. Instead, she woke up in someone else’s body. The face in the mirror wasn’t hers. Everyone called her Chloe. And the man who shot her? Nikolai, who was cold and ruthless. Their marriage was a business transaction. He used her body without tenderness, spoke to her with cruelty, and made it clear she meant nothing. He was still mourning his dead fiancée. He had no idea his wife wasn’t Chloe at all. Trapped in a stranger’s life, June had to survive in a world of wealth and secrets. She had to find her real body. She had to pretend. But things got complicated. Because secrets don’t stay buried, allies become lovers, and the man who destroyed her life is about to discover exactly who’s been sleeping in his bed.

As Jastrelle's golden girl, I draw lots to pick my groom, and fate finally hands me Felix Ledger, the childhood sweetheart I've wanted forever. During the impromptu wedding, a funeral convoy belonging to a scion of a rich family in Jastrelle passes right outside. I hate the omen. Felix laughs, pulls me into his arms, and places the veil over my head himself. "I'll take it as a good omen. With you, I'm covered from first breath to last," he says. His adoptive sister, Winnie Ledger, hears him, bursts into tears, and bolts outside. The funeral convoy runs her down, and she dies. Felix barely reacts. Three years later, Dad is framed, driven into bankruptcy, and falls gravely ill. He dies, and I lose everything. At the funeral, Felix sends everyone off, shoves me into the open grave, and buries me alive. He spits, "You rigged everything to get me. You left Winnie ruined. She bolted outside, and that funeral convoy ran her down. For three years, remorse has eaten me alive. I want you torn apart! "With your last protector gone, I can finally make you suffer a hundredfold the pain Winnie felt and ease my hatred!" When I open my eyes, I'm back at the groom-selection ceremony. Dad smiles as he hands me the lots. I shake my head, look out the window, and point at the funeral convoy passing outside. "I'm not choosing anyone. I'll marry that dead man!"

There are monsters in this world. And they used to be us. Now it's time to euthanize to survive in a hospice where Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. Post-infection Chicago. Christmas. Inside The Hospice, Emily and her fellow nurses do their rounds. Here, men and women live out their final days in comfort, segregated from society, and are then humanely terminated before fate turns them into marrow-craving monsters known as ‘Smilers.’ Outside these imposing walls, rabid protesters swarm with signs, caught up in the heat of their hatred. Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. But in a world where mortality means nothing, where guns are drawn in fear and nobody seems safe anymore – at what cost will this pursuit come? And through it all, the soon to be dead remain silent, ever smiling. Such is their curse. It won't be long before that snow-speckled ground will be salted by blood. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

I'm betrothed to Hylton Miller from the moment I'm born. For as long as I can remember, he protects and loves me like I'm already his wife. Even if I get a tiny splinter on my hand, he holds it carefully as he gently clips it away. That is, until the young woman his family sponsors offends a client and is about to be sent to Zubania. He drugs me with a glass of wine. When I wake up, I'm in a foreign country and trapped in an illegal factory. Here, I endure inhuman abuse, torment, even humiliation... At my lowest, when despair almost swallows me whole, that sponsored young woman appears before me in a pristine, custom-made white gown. She smiles sweetly and presses the play button on a voice recording. And from the speaker comes the voice I long for every day and night. "It's fine. Alina's the young lady of the Winslet family—they won't do anything to her. But Priscilla? She's different. Worst case, I'll make it up to Alina when she gets back…" In that moment, it feels like someone tears my heart open with their bare hands.

They told me an alpha’s daughter must choose a man to take the rank and position of Alpha of her pack. Why? They said I was too fierce, too headstrong, that this was my father's last wish. Was it? They picked out potential partners and pushed their top choice forward.They said he's the best man for the job. Was he? Lies. In this labyrinth of deceit and manipulation, a twisted game of power and betrayal is at play. They think I have nothing but they're wrong. I have two men ready to stand by my side. Julian Knight, my bodyguard. A man they don't realise is ready to d!e for me. And Quade Steele, the Lycan King. A man as dangerously powerful as he is handsome, offers me his partnership. I know he has his own agenda, but what is it? I'll pay any price for revenge because I am the very storm that will destroy them all. I’ll reclaim what’s mine, turn the world on its axis, and become the ultimate master of the very game created to ruin me. My name is Layla Blackwell and I'm nobody's b!tch.