Stop Messing Around

As I turn to march out of the room, my feet stop and my breath hitches. "Bryanna. Why…” I whip back around and glare at them. "You aren't to use that name in public. Only when we are in private and alone.” Jacob flashes me a crooked smile. His eyes sparkle as he waves his finger around in the air. “We are alone. It is only us three in here.” He rests his arm on the table and gives me a cheesy grin, almost daring me to slap it off him. His t-shirt stretches tight against his muscular chest and accents his well-defined muscles. He has a true alpha body. The sparkle in his light brown eyes shimmers as he leans forward. In a deep, husky voice, he adds, “We know all your secrets. Plus, we can see your true self. The one nobody else can see because of the magic spell. Should I go on?” My heartbeat echoes in my ears as I stumble forward. How could he act like this? Bryanna, the heir to her pack, is forced into a contract relationship right before her eighteenth birthday which her father claims to be the best for both her and the pack. However, as she gets older, she soon realizes the contract relationship may not be the best choice for her, but it was a great choice for her father. When Bryanna and the contract are on the verge of falling apart, she faces a choice only she can make. Does she fight for the mate she can't detect at the risk of her secret coming out? Or does she sacrifice her happiness for the pack and her father's wishes while also keeping her secret buried?

The full moon hangs high in the night sky at 1:00 am. My mate, Alpha Chris Dalton of the Southern Gray Wolf pack has just returned from a patrol around the border. It has been three days since he last slept. He still smells of blood and rust from the times he had fought against packs of Rogues. When we're about to rest, Chris hears Emily Gibson's cries coming from his mind-link. "Alpha Chris, I think I smell a Rogue near my house. I'm so scared…" Chris shifts into a huge wolf and dashes out of our home without hesitation. He only returns the next day at dawnbreak, his exhaustion evident on his face. "Emily suffered from a fright last night, so I had to keep her company the whole night." When Chris notices the way I sit on the edge of the bed quietly without moving in to kiss him as usual, he approaches me in exasperation. Then, he wraps an arm around my shoulders before nuzzling his head against my neck affectionately, as though he were a huge dog who had made a mistake. "Emily is the mate of a Beta who has sacrificed himself for the pack, Selena. Not to mention, she's with pup at the moment. As the pack's Alpha, I'm obligated to take care of her. But I promise that I'll reduce the visitation times in the future, so please stop being unhappy with me, okay?" With red-rimmed eyes, I push Chris' arm away. "Alpha Chris, let's sever our mate bond."

Maya Reyes is twenty-six, quietly resilient, and out of options. When she takes a live-in nanny position for a Manhattan billionaire, she expects a difficult employer and a lonely child. She gets both, but she also gets Ethan Cole. Ethan lost his wife eighteen months ago and has been managing the grief the only way he knows how: by controlling everything around him. His apartment is spotless, his rules are laminated, his daughter Lily is the only crack in the armour he has built around his life, and it is through Lily that Maya begins to see the man underneath. What follows is not a dramatic love story, it is a quiet one. He carries her to her room when she falls asleep on the floor, he heats her soup when she hasn't eaten. He holds her hand in a dark car and lets go like it never happened. She cooks for him, confronts him, tells him truths no one else will, and slowly without either of them naming it, they become the most important person in each other's lives. But grief doesn't move in straight lines. When Ethan's fear gets the better of him, he tries to restore the distance, and nearly loses the one thing that has made him want to come back to life. It will take a four-year-old's unfiltered honesty, a letter Maya writes from the floor of her room, and a man finally choosing to stop running, for both of them to find their way to the other side of it. When Winter Blooms is a story about what love looks like before anyone admits it exists, and what it costs to let it.

Three years… That is how long Eunice Tsui spent in a coma after the car accident five years ago. Now that she is awake, the perpetrator must settle his debts. She's returning to the country that never gave her a warm home, and this time, she's taking matters into her own hands. She will track down every rat hiding in the sewer and eliminate them herself. No more being pushed around or feeling unwelcome—she's taking control of the situation. However, her well-thought-out revenge compromises when Jullian Lopez keeps appearing before her. What will be his role in the stage she built for the culprits to gather around? EXCERPT: “Mommy, I missed you!” A four-year-old boy rushes to her side and gives her a loud kiss on the cheek. “How’s my baby?” With an unusually delicate smile on her lips, Eunice asked softly. “Mommy, don’t embarrass me!” Eunice raised a brow and chuckled. “And why is that? You will always be my baby. Besides, we’re the only people here. Why would you feel embarrassed if I called you my baby?” Jillian pouted, folding his arms as he looked past his mom and pointed at the man who emerged from her bathroom only wrapped in a bath towel, barely covering anything. “Eunice Tsui! Why does that child look so much like me?” the man inquired. Eunice rolled her eyes and retorted, “Jullian Lopez, stop assuming. We never sleep together!” Astounded, Jillian shifted his gaze from the two adults to the bedroom, which looked like a super hurricane had passed because of how messed up the bed and every corner of the room were.

There was a time when the famous young actor Andrew Cortez dominated the movie screens, commercials and model runways in the Philippines. He was in his peak of career, enjoying the free life and fooling around uptown girls. When all he thought he'll be playing around rich girls then he met Pia Drew Barcenilla, an heiress like the ones Andrew dated. However, Pia Drew, unlike all the other rich girls who were demure and soft-spoken, was blunt and emotionless. Pia Drew's cold treatment towards Andrew landed her the job she definitely hated. As they finally got along, Andrew and Pia Drew fell in love but their romance did not sail even with power and money. After Pia Drew's short exposure to the limelight, they both went back to their own separate lives. Years later, fate brought them back together. Pia Drew sketched Andrew's dream house and soon they started building it together. They were in love and living in the moment when they met an accident. Pia Drew laid in coma and Andrew has to live his life alone, unsure of tomorrow. Five years later, Pia Drew woke up and remembered nothing. It was then that Andrew realized money and power don't stop anyone from suffering. Now, Andrew stood in front of his unfinished house he had been building for the last five years. He found it hard to decide on how he would continue building it when the one he had built it for and with for years couldn't even remember they were building it together after all. Andrew has to spend his lifetime understanding the fact that Pia Drew's memory is never coming back.

Born to the leaders of a powerful coven, Elly was born with an important destiny. But when her parents are betrayed by their own coven they discover the great destiny that was in store for their beloved child is to be a sacrifice. Instead, they give their lives to keep her safe and entrust their only child with people they hope will protect her. Instead, they keep her hidden and use her for every drop of magic she can produce. Elly spends her life on the run and in hiding. Her magic tells her she needs to find someone or something. But what? When she runs out of places to hide she gets stuck between the family that has spent her life abusing her for her powers, the coven of witches that want to sacrifice her in order to attain power and enslave the creatures around them, and the creatures that want her dead to stop that from happening. After his father made a foolish deal with a coven of witches, Rowan was left to clean up the mess. They gave the pack the power to win a bloody war at the cost of the pack’s freedom and Rowan’s future mate. Now must find a way to free his people from being the witches’ slaves and save his future mate.

“You can still walk away,” he said, his voice lower now. I shook my head. “I don’t want to.” Something in his expression softened, just slightly. Then he stepped closer. Close enough that I could feel the warmth of his body, the steady rhythm of his breathing. For a second, neither of us moved. Like we were both waiting, deciding. His hand lifted, hesitating just slightly before brushing against my jaw, tilting my face up to his. “Last chance,” he murmured. I didn’t answer, I didn’t need to. I closed the distance instead. The kiss wasn’t soft. It was searching, deliberate. Like he was testing something, me. And I responded before I could stop myself. Before I could think. My fingers curled into his shirt, pulling him closer as the world around us slipped further out of reach. The hesitation was gone now. Replaced by something heavier, something I didn’t want to question. And this time, I didn’t think.

She married him through a contract—no love, no promises, no expectations. To him, she was nothing more than an arrangement, a quiet wife meant to keep appearances intact while his heart belonged to another woman. Tired of being invisible, she decides to stop waiting, stop hoping, and stop loving. But when she finally walks away emotionally, the cold CEO begins to realize the truth— He may have lost the only woman who ever truly belonged to him.

I kept on running with Kay as we manoeuvred our way through the messy crowd. Kay pulled me through and we finally got out of the club. We couldn't take the main entrance because Yoshim's men were there. We were running through the dark alley, panting and gasping for air. Relief washed over me when I realised that I finally left that hell hole. We kept on running when I heard a gunshot. I immediately halted and felt a warm liquid trickling down my arm. I looked around and saw no wound, I glanced at Kay and my eyes widened. I immediately brought my hand to my mouth trying to suppress the scream that wanted to come out. Kay held his arm as he bled profusely, he groaned in pain and fell on his knees. “Oh my God, Kay are you alright? Ugh, what am I going to do.” I said while hyperventilating. I heard footsteps and looked up only to be met by those same devilish eyes. He wore a grin on his face. And to his left was Gail who clung to him like a barnacle. How did he even know I escaped? “Haha, I overheard your little conversation with the guard, so I told Yoshim.” She smiled while talking. “Gail, what the is wrong with you?” I said with anger and tears in my eyes. She shrugged her shoulders and her mouth curved into a smile. I pressed my hand on Kay's wound to stop the bleeding, he groaned in pain and I couldn't stop my tears. “I should've gotten rid of you a long time ago.” Yoshim said while pointing a gun to my head. I closed my eyes and waited for him to pull the trigger.

THE NECROMANCY VAMPIRESS (Searching for preys) Tiara is a beautiful lady with an outstanding physique, but unfortunately, she is a vampiress. A vampiress sent to the human world in search of preys, because her mate in the vampire world must survive. She needs seven human types of blood, male blood to be precise. Six of the men will be used to restore her mate's life while the seventh one will be used to restore his lost power. She was given seven months to finish her mission in the human world. Which means one month for each prey, as expected of her, she successful sacrifice six men for her mate in the vampire world. But the seventh men is the only one that stands as a thorn in her flesh, she was unable to hunt him down as she did to other preys. This always made her wonder who the man was, why can't she hunt him down? why can't she just suck him dry? she turned from human being to a wolf, a bat and even the vampiress she is, but unfortunately for her, she couldn't do anything. At the Vampires world, they have been waiting for her to sacrifice the seventh prey but there was no sign of her, the seventh month reached and exceeded yet there was no sign of her, this made her mate got infuriated and decided to come for her. He came to the human world in search of her, but he ends up messing things up for himself and his mate.