Quietly Hostile

SECOND CHANCES AT SUNRISE Years ago, Yara and Jamal were young, in love, and certain about forever—until life pulled them apart. Their relationship didn’t end in chaos, but in painful silence. Jamal, determined to build an empire, chose ambition when fear whispered that love would slow him down. Yara, brilliant and proud, walked away without demanding the closure her heart quietly begged for. Now, Jamal Adeyemi is a confident and charismatic CEO—one who commands industries, decisions, and attention. Success follows him everywhere, yet something essential has always felt missing. Yara, now a celebrated designer, has built her own creative world with warmth, resilience, and independence. Her heart didn’t turn cold—it simply learned caution. Fate reunites them over cinnamon-flushed coffee in Lagos. The spark remains, but neither believes that old love guarantees a new beginning. This time, Jamal does not rush or assume. He shows up—with patience, sincerity, steady action, and emotional wisdom he once lacked. Lunch dates lead to long conversations, honest moments, and a healing coastal getaway where past wounds finally find voice. But second chances demand more than nostalgia—they require trust rebuilt, fears confronted, and love proven through presence and honesty. In rediscovering each other, Jamal and Yara learn that the safest kind of forever isn’t loud—it arrives like sunrise: Soft. Steady. Certain. Earned.

I was born with a strange, painful condition. Women are strongly drawn to me, yet after I got married, I became allergic to my own wife, Quinn Rowan. Every attempt at intimacy left me covered in burning red welts, struggling to breathe. More than once, I nearly went into shock. Nevertheless, my desire to have a child was overwhelming. So one night, gambling with my life, I quietly slipped into the bedroom. Strangely, nothing happened to me that night. Soon, Quinn became pregnant. I naively believed everything would finally return to normal. Then, eight months into her pregnancy, a single accidental touch sent me into another violent allergic reaction, and I was rushed to the hospital. When I finally came to, Quinn was nowhere to be found. At the end of the corridor, I heard her whispering with her girlfriends, "Look how ridiculous he looked, all swollen and gasping. Pathetic." Quinn dangled the special tonic she had always claimed was meant to help me, her voice dripping with disdain, "I engineered this formula myself. I made sure he’d break out in hives the moment he touched me. That way, he’d never come near me. "But since he was so desperate for a kid, I decided to let him raise the baby Miles and I conceived together. It’s charity, really." My blood froze. The child I longed for, the baby I treasured, was never mine.

After fleeing an abusive ex, Holland Williams starts over at Smith Automotive and is warned to avoid its young owner, Remy Smith. One touch ignites impossible “sparks”; Remy, Alpha of the Sage Moon pack, recognizes her as his mate, but Holland rejects the werewolf truth—until her ex, Robbie, tracks her down and Remy is forced to shift to protect her. While Holland slowly trusts Remy and the pack (with Gamma Todd quietly building her safety net), Robbie sobers up, learns the town’s secret, and undergoes a brutal, forbidden ritual to become a “defective” wolf. Remy courts Holland carefully; she moves into the pack house just as Angel—Remy’s elegant ex—returns claiming to be his true mate. A staged misunderstanding drives Holland away, and Robbie kidnaps her. Angel manipulates Remy into thinking Holland ran; days later, shame and a witch’s locator spell (Mallory) send him on the hunt. In an abandoned house, Holland survives Robbie by stabbing him with dull silver; Remy arrives, kills Robbie, and must turn Holland to save her life. Against all expectations, she doesn’t become defective; healers can’t explain it. Remy marks her; they complete the mating ceremony and marry. Soon after, Holland is pregnant with their first pup. In the epilogue, Angel—revealed as the architect of the kidnapping—flees to raise an army of defective rogue wolves, vowing to destroy Sage Moon if she can’t claim it.

The day I go into labor, my husband's student, Yasmin Holden, storms off in a rage. She climbs the mountains alone while heavily pregnant. For the next three days and nights, my husband disappears to look for her. Meanwhile, I suffer a difficult labor and hemorrhage badly. I'm rushed into the ICU. When I finally wake up, the doctor hands my husband a critical condition notice. He hands me divorce papers. "Yasmin is my most promising student. I can't let her do anything foolish. You're about to be a mother, so you need to be strong!" In my last life, I refused to sign. As soon as I left the maternity ward, I reported their affair to the university. Yasmin lost her graduate school recommendation and was torn apart by public scandal. In front of me, she slit her own throat. By the time my husband arrived, Yasmin was already gone—along with the baby. He quietly handled her funeral and said nothing. Then, he returned to me as if nothing had happened. I thought that meant I was finally going to have a happy ending. But one day, he drove our car off a cliff with me and our daughter inside. That day was Yasmin's death anniversary. When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the day I give birth.

After completing my mission, I married the man I had been trying to win over. On our wedding night, I told him that the system had given me ninety-nine regret pills. Whenever he did something that hurt me, I would take one. Once all the pills were gone, I would completely leave his life. He held me close and promised he would never give me a reason to regret being with him. Three months into our marriage, his childhood sweetheart came back from abroad. The first time he stayed out all night, he realized that I would quietly take a pill after just crying once. After that, he began to act without any restraint. Ten years later, on our anniversary, his childhood sweetheart threatened to kill herself again. He left me without hesitation to handle the situation. The next day, he returned with his neck covered in love bites and begged for my forgiveness. I did not cry. I looked at him calmly and asked, “Can I take one of the regret pills?” He shrugged as if it did not matter. “Go ahead. There are plenty left.” I smiled and let him bring her into our home. He did not know that there were only three pills left in the box. Once they were gone, I would leave him for good.

The night before my wedding, I was in a terrible car accident. I fell into a coma, and my body was broken and bruised. While I lay unconscious, my fiancé called off the engagement and married his childhood sweetheart instead. My mother went to demand justice on my behalf—but never made it back. She died in a sudden, brutal accident along the way. In that moment of chaos, it was my childhood friend who stepped in. He knelt on one knee outside the hospital with a wedding gift of a hundred thousand dollars and quietly handled my mother's funeral. I was wheeled into surgery. I lived, but was left with a permanent disability. And still, he promised to stay by my side, for life. I was deeply moved. We got married. But five years later, I overheard him talking to his secretary. "Mr. Davidson, you arranged for someone to hit your wife with a car, just so Lucy could marry the one she loved. Aren't you afraid she'll find out?" "For Lucy, there's nothing I wouldn't do. I've already given Ruby the rest of my life. Isn't that enough?" I covered my mouth, holding back a sob. Only then did I realize—the marriage I believed in had been a lie all along. So be it. I'll disappear and let him be with the woman he truly loves.

Seven years after getting engaged to Leander Beaumont, he inherits everything that once belonged to his late brother—including his brother's wife, Dinah Fowler. Every time Leander sleeps with Dinah, he holds me afterward and whispers, "Jenny, just wait a little longer. We can finally have our wedding once Dinah gets pregnant." It's the only condition the Beaumont family, Westrael’s most powerful mafia clan, sets for Leander to become the next Don. In just half a year after returning home, Leander visits Dinah's room 59 times. He starts from once a month... to nearly every single day. Finally, after the 60th time I watch him leave Dinah's room, the "good news" comes. Dinah is pregnant. And along with it, an announcement—the Beaumont family declares Leander and Dinah are getting married. "Mamma, is someone getting married?" my young son asks, staring at the house now lavishly decorated by a wedding company. I quietly gather him into my arms, my voice cold as I say, "Yes, sweetheart. Your father is marrying the woman he loves. It's time for us to leave." What Leander doesn't know is that the Bellini family, my family, has risen to become a mafia power strong enough to rival the Beaumonts. And me? I'm Jenny Bellini, the most beloved daughter of the Bellini family. I will never be trapped by marriage again.

When Professor Adrian Hale walks into his first seminar of the semester, he expects the usual—half-awake students, predictable questions, and the comfortable distance that has kept his life quiet and controlled for years. He does not expect her. Eden Marlowe, twenty-two, sharp-minded, quietly bold, and entirely uninterested in hiding the way she looks at him. She’s the kind of student who asks dangerous questions, the kind that sees right through a person’s façade. And Adrian feels himself unravel a little more every time their eyes meet. He knows the rules. He wrote half of them. And Eden is the one person he has no business wanting. But the pull between them is immediate—magnetic, unnerving, impossible to ignore. What begins as lingering glances and charged silences quickly spirals into something neither of them can pretend is innocent. Eden isn’t shy about testing boundaries, and Adrian isn’t nearly as composed as he pretends to be. As lectures blur into tension-filled encounters and office hours turn into moments he can’t forget, the line between professional and forbidden thins… then threatens to disappear entirely. The more Adrian tries to distance himself, the deeper he falls into the gravity of her presence. The more Eden pushes, teases, and challenges him, the faster his restraint cracks. In a world where reputation matters and consequences are real, they have to decide: Is this obsession worth the risk? Or will crossing the line cost them both more than they ever expected?

Commander Samson Gardner was my fiance. In his family was an iron-clad rule—no divorces. Before my brother died, his last wish was for Samson to marry me. So, even after falling in love with his childhood sweetheart, Samson still decided to marry me as promised. However, everything changed the day said childhood sweetheart destroyed the only watch my brother left me. When Samson sided with her again, I didn't argue. I simply reached out to my mentor overseas and started preparing to become a foreign correspondent. Before leaving, I gave myself ten days to put things in order. On the first day, I quietly hid the marriage application I was supposed to submit. On the third day, I turned in my resignation to the military. The day I was to leave, Samson finally remembered the watch and promised to take me to buy a new one on his next day off. Right after that, he ordered me, "Celia is inviting friends over for dinner tonight. Make sure the food is ready before you go." I agreed with a smile—and then never showed up in his world again. Afterward, Samson would stare blankly at the marriage application inside his drawer every time he saw my name in the news. There, within his drawer, were the memories of an autumn not yet fully arrived, the lover he could never win back, and the watch he could never give...

"Traitor! Slave forever!" Today is my 18th birthday, the day I've been looking forward to. But now, I am being beaten, judged, humiliated and vilified... All because my brother, Benjamin, had quietly eloped with the Alpha King's fiancée. I, on the other hand, was left here, a target of the crowd, bearing all the guilt for them... *** Fortunately, I was not killed by those people, and even Alpha King interrogated me personally. "Is that you?" A low, sexy voice came from above me. When I looked up, I saw a magnificent creature walking towards my direction with his head up high and his Phoenix eyes were coldly looking at me. "MATE!!!" There's no doubt about it. He's my mate! Is he here to save me?!! It has to be! I knew my mate would save me. Hearing my enthusiastic voice, he stared at me for a moment and then approached my cell. I could feel my heart pounding the moment he drew closer and walked inside of the cell until he was close enough to me. I trembled from eagerness when his hand reached out and touched my face. But to my surprise, I felt his hand wrapped tightly around my neck. “You are not.” He coldly remarked as the hand that wrapped around my neck tightened, making my face pale as I looked at him in disbelief. He doesn't want me, my mate wants to kill me!