The Mysterious Eighth

I had proposed seven times, but Winnie Smith continued refusing to marry me. This was because the Smith family had a special test. To marry their daughters, their sons-in-law had to refrain from sleeping with their fiancees after being drugged. I tried seven times. However, every time after I regained consciousness, Winnie would be sleeping naked next to me. She would cry and throw herself into my arms. “It’s fine. We can try again. I trust you.” It was not until the eighth time that I overheard her instructing the butler, “Switch the aphrodisiac to sleeping pills, and make sure it’s a high dosage. “After he falls asleep, I’ll take it from there as usual.” While I kept my eyes shut tight, I could hear her taking off her long dress. Then, she came over to unbutton my shirt. I heard her sigh. “I’m sorry, Benjamin Lowe. Joe Anderson’s been diagnosed with cancer, and his last wish is to be with me. “Don’t worry, though. After he passes, I’ll marry you immediately.” Right then, I realized that her family’s test had been a lie she told just to marry her childhood best friend. The next day, my parents pressured me again to leave the country and inherit the family business. So, I agreed to their request. Since she wanted to marry Joe, I would wish the couple well.

This is no ordinary werewolf tale. Romance and fantasy collide with a curse spun from prophecy and obsession. This is a story of torment and resilience. Of wolves and gods. Of a woman broken again and again, only to rise stronger each time. And at the heart of it all… is a love fated by the Moon. If you’re the kind of reader who thrives on slow-burning tension, this tale will consume you. But tread carefully: the deeper you go, the darker it gets. -------------- Alinta Ull, a bookish, headstrong, and haunted werewolf. Since her eighteenth birthday, tragedy has stalked her in a cruel pattern. Every three years, it brings death, rejection, or abandonment. She believes the Moon has cursed her, and… maybe it has. Desperate to escape her fate, she and her fierce wolf, Angela, travel to the rumoured resting place of the Rogue Deity, a mythical werewolf prophesied to rise beneath the eighth crimson moon. Coincidentally, on Alinta’s thirtieth birthday. But fate is a cruel thing. Something, or someone is watching. A wolf obsessed. A monster in disguise. One who has waited years to possess her, and now has no intention of letting go. In a world where devotion becomes delusion, and love becomes a weapon, one truth remains: Some mates are chosen by the Moon. Others are stolen by monsters. -------------- Content Warning: This novel contains dark and mature themes, including sexual assault, emotional and psychological abuse, trauma, captivity, and manipulation. While it ultimately becomes a tale of hope, rebirth, and true love, the road is long, raw, and often tragic. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

The Luther Pack believed that the mate bond between twin sisters and twin Alphas was the greatest blessing from the Moon Goddess. Up until I was seven months pregnant, I never doubted that belief. Everything changed when I was kidnapped by the Cassa Pack, the Luther Pack’s sworn enemy. Meanwhile, my mate was busy performing a blessing ritual for the pup of his puphood sweetheart. He ignored my eighth attempt at mindlinking him and severed the connection entirely by the ninth. Kaden’s actions enraged the Cassa Pack’s Alpha, who fired rounds of silver-coated bullets into my belly. My wolf howled in agony while my unborn pup was killed instantly. The silver poison destroyed my ability to heal, and the loss of my pup drained me of all will to live. At the brink of death, my sister, Lucia, found me. In a desperate bid to save me, she crashed into my abductors and perished with them in the resulting explosion. I had no time to grieve, nor did I reach out to our mates. Silently, I erased all traces of our existence within the pack and built a grave for Lucia and me in the Dark Forest. I was dying. Once I completed this final task, I could join my sister. Even after my death, our mates assumed we were merely acting out of jealousy. They had no idea that their mates and pup were already six feet underground.

After eight years of marriage, I finally get pregnant with Claude Frey's child. It's my sixth round of IVF, and my last chance. The doctor says I can't put my body through it again. I'm overjoyed, ready to share the good news with him. But a week before our anniversary, I received an anonymous photo in the mail. In it, he was bending down to kiss another woman's pregnant belly. That woman is his childhood sweetheart, the one his family watched grow up. She's gentle and well-mannered, and the kind of daughter-in-law every parent dreams of. The funniest part is that his entire family knows about her pregnancy, except me. I'm just the punchline in their joke. It turns out that the marriage I've been holding together despite all my wounds is nothing but a carefully crafted lie. Fine. I don't want Claude anymore, and I'll never let my child be born into a world built on lies. I book my ticket to leave on our eighth anniversary. It's also the very day he's supposed to take me to see the sea of roses. Before we got married, he promised me a sea of flowers all my own. But instead, I find him in front of the rose garden, kissing his pregnant childhood sweetheart. After I leave, he starts searching for me everywhere. "Don't go, please?" he begs. "I was wrong. Don't leave." He finally remembers the promise he'd made to me and plants the most beautiful roses in the world in that garden. But I don't need it anymore.

I first met Kai Valentine at the basketball court when I was ten years old. Kai was taller, louder, and faster than me. And from that day on, Kai became my best friend, my safe place. But then my parents passed away, and my family went bankrupt. After that, we weren't best friends anymore. We were just two strangers living in completely different worlds. Then, Kai starts "stealing" from me. He manages to steal every single girlfriend I've ever had. The day he steals my eighth girlfriend, I finally break. That's when I decide to fight back and get myself a boyfriend instead. That's right; I'm going to pretend to be gay! Let's see how he plans to steal this one. However, I never thought that my actions would make Kai go absolutely berserk. That night, Kai presses me against a dim corner in the stairwell. His fists slam into the concrete wall, his breath hot against my cheek. "If even he can be your boyfriend," he grits out, "then why can't I?" I laugh. "Are you out of your mind?" Kai just keeps pressing closer, his scorching gaze burning into me as his lips inch closer until he is just a breath away. "Do you still not get it?" Something hot and erect presses up against me. He then growls softly in my ear. "I never wanted to steal any of your girlfriends. The only person I ever wanted was you, Aiden Winston!"

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐢𝐧𝐝 In which a mysterious disappearance of a girl forces a group of individuals, friends and foes, to come together and untangle her mysterious disappearance.

A painter, artist, and an engineer single father named Mike living with his Mom Rose, He was been single father since Alice died in giving birth to Augustine, years later he worked as an engineer contracted three years of bridge project with his co-engineer Angel and they became close till years passed by where their project will end. Angel confesses in a letter to Mike that she likes him, and he was willing because he also likes Angel as their relationship went through, A test result came in that he has a liver cancer stage one only his Mother know this. He desired not to tell this to Angel instead he gave her a small box for the birthday with nine letters inside it but all is ten as he instructs every year on her birthday she will open one letter and if all nine will do, he will give the tenth letter which he designates the very important one. But eight years later Mike died in the eighth letter Angel had only one, The nine and it came to the point where she need to get the tenth letter but don't know. Instead she visits Mike grave as she there, un-expectedly a voice of a child calling her name as Angel turns around she saw a child amused walking to her holding the tenth letter she doesn't even know who's this child but the woman who followed back, is Mike's mother Rose as the child reach in front of her, He hand the tenth letter to her. Minutes of reading heavy tears appear and she knees down to the child and hugs him then Angel whispered "he's resting forever but no worries Augustine father is always okay promise I'm always here for you Son" And she heavily cried.

Shortly after we said "I do," the Family sent my husband, Dario, down to the Mexican border. He told me it was a meat grinder down there—cartel territory. where guys were zipped into body bags every day. He said he had to go—to expand the territory, for the glory of the Family. He claimed it was too dangerous and that his enemies would paint a target on my back, so he wouldn't take me with him. I believed him. I stayed behind in his old, rot-infested house in New Jersey, taking care of his bitter, spiteful parents. I spent my days and nights in the Family's moldy laundromat, washing bills stained with blood. He told me he sent every dime he made down there to the widow of a brother who took a bullet for him. He asked me to be understanding. I never complained. Day after day, I pressed expensive suits in that humid laundromat, waiting for him to come home. It wasn't until the eighth year that a mobster came back drunk. When I asked about Dario, he froze, then sneered at me through a haze of alcohol. "Dario? Are you kidding? He’s been a King in Manhattan for years. He’s the youngest Underboss of the Corleone family." I stood frozen, the iron in my hand burning a hole right through a shirt. "And he got married seven years ago. Biggest cathedral in New Jersey. Half the mob was there to toast the groom..." He pulled a crumpled photo from his leather jacket. Snuggled up against my husband was a woman in a high-end couture gown—the very same "poor, widowed sister-in-law" he had told me about. The next day, I contacted a fixer who specialized in fake IDs. On the application for a one-way ticket to Europe—a ticket to vanish off the face of the earth—I filled in the fake name I had prepared long ago. He trapped me for seven years with a sham marriage. From now on, I’d be done with this damn loyalty.

In the eighth year of helping Keith Hunter pay off his debts, I was diagnosed with stomach cancer. I tested the waters and asked him, half joking, "If I got cancer, would you save me?" He laughed, saying I was overthinking it. Then he added firmly, "If it ever came to that, I would sell my blood to pay for your treatment." I lay awake all night, tossing and turning, still feeling like I couldn't drag him down with me. Before taking a sleeping pill, a notification popped up on my phone about a social media post. [How do I dump an older woman who paid off my debts for eight years without too much drama?] The profile picture looked eerily like Keith's silhouette from behind. He wrote, [Eight years ago, my family went bankrupt. She stuck with me, living off dry toast and squeezing into a rented apartment. She helped me pay back over 600 thousand dollars in debt. [Back then, I thought she was innocent and cute. Now, I feel like she's just a materialistic woman putting on an act. [Last month, she even asked whether I would save her if she got cancer. How does someone even ask that? [Obviously, she was trying to get money out of me. Good thing I didn't tell her that my family recovered three years ago. [Now, my family has arranged a fiancée for me. She's the daughter of a publicly listed company. [I want to cut things off with my girlfriend, but I'm afraid she'll cling to me. After all, she wasted a lot of her youth on me.] By the time I finished reading, I had crushed the stomach cancer diagnosis in my hand into a wrinkled mess.

Tired living in the old society, Alex, together with his classmates were transported into another world after the mysterious poisoning of their classroom. A world full of natural beauty and fresh air, they considered it a dream. Only to find out, that mysterious monsters that they haven't seen before have been living in it where they treated humans as alienated beings. Alex, with his classmates, fought the monsters and noticed that upon death, they found a mysterious syringe that when injected, will transform themselves into one. Embarking in a dangerous but mystical journey, Alex and his classmates set their foot on acquiring powers from the monsters in the new world, in order for them to survive.