Romans & histoires The Signal And The Noise

As the quality control supervisor of an import company, I need to finish up the storage of the final batch of king crabs before the holiday. Just after entering the subzero freezer, the door is immediately locked shut. The alarm system also fails. When I realize I'm starting to lose body heat, I immediately take out the hand warmers from the emergency kit. However, the moment I apply them, a chilling sensation makes me instantly realize something is wrong. I scream from the cold, and the walkie-talkie transmits the boisterous laughter of my fiance, Martin Clay. "We're live-streaming the challenge of locking the company's 'Ice Queen' in the freezer. Let's see how long she lasts!" The flirty voice of his female colleague, Lilian Saunders, also comes through, "Sierra, smile for the folks in the live stream! The number one donor wants to see it!" I instantly understand that they're live-streaming a prank on me. Not only do they lock me in the freezer, but they've also replaced my life-saving hand warmers with cooling patches meant for fevers! I grit my teeth, trying hard to stay calm as I call out to them for help. "The spare… spare hand warmers… Give them to me!" My fiance's voice rings out from the walkie-talkie, sounding unconcerned, "Oops! Lily gets cold easily, and it's her time of the month. The spares are all being used to keep her belly warm! "You're so healthy that you can just jump around a little and you'll warm up! You might even get some tips from the number one donor!" I stop arguing with them. With frozen hands, I pull out the signal flare gun and aim it at the most valuable and mysterious cargo in the freezer—a tube of frozen sperm worth 200 million dollars.

I was engineered to kill men with a kiss. When my pleasure‑kill protocol glitches on a Bratva king and binds my system to his, he gives me a choice: become his contract wife… or be handed back to the monsters who built me I was trained to destroy men without leaving a mark. The Siren Protocol turned my body into a weapon—every nerve engineered to dismantle loyalty, erase secrets, and turn power into submission. One kiss, and I can crash a neural implant like a virus. Hidden behind a luxury cover identity, I’m waiting for my next directive when my door explodes inward and Kael Petrov walks in—Bratva heir, tech billionaire, and the most controlled man in the city. He thinks he’s here to extract a traitor using his accounts to leak Siren data. He doesn’t know the “escort” in front of him is the Siren asset he’s hunting. So, I do what I was built for. I kiss him. My pleasure‑kill protocol should drop him in eight seconds. Instead, his high‑grade implant bites back. My signal loops through his system and straight into mine, fusing us in a feedback circuit of raw, addictive sensation that neither of us can control. Instead of killing him, I bind myself to him. Now I’m collared in his tower, my systems synced to his, and he’s staring at me like I’m the most interesting problem he’s ever seen. To keep me out of Bratva torture cells but still under his eye, Kael gives me a brutal ultimatum: Marry him and live as his contract wife, or be handed to the men who will take me apart for parts. I was meant to end him. Falling for him was never part of the directive.

During the long holiday, to accommodate the travel plans of my hospital director wife, I—someone who hadn't taken a single day off all year—begged and groveled, burning through every last bit of goodwill in my department just to scrape together seven days of comp time so I could go with her. But I waited at the airport from morning until night. After a hundred ignored calls, she finally rang me back, her voice totally casual. "The signal's a nightmare out at the scenic area. I forgot to mention—Julian booked the tickets a day early by accident, so we're already at Tamoe Mount! Since you missed your flight anyway, just go back to the hospital and cover some shifts. It's the hospital's busiest time. Didn't you say everyone in your department was upset about you taking time off? Go make it up to them." On the other end of the line, the wind was howling. Her young colleague, laughing brightly, jumped in. "Hey, Rita, I had no problem switching my shifts. I guess he just slacks off too much—no wonder nobody likes him." Not only did she not stand up for me, she actually agreed. "You hear that, Kevin? Learn to play nicer with your coworkers. Stop obsessing over fun all the time. Then later, it'll be easier for me to push through your raise and promotion." I didn't argue or make a scene. I just said "Got it," hung up, and walked straight to the hospital run by her biggest competitor. "Are you still looking for a vice director? I work hard, I don't need weekends off, and as long as I get normal comp time, I'm good."

As my due date approached, a massive discrepancy surfaced in the Galante family's arms accounts. The leadership made a swift decision. They sent me, Sophia Vitale, the Don's wife, the woman everyone claimed had nothing better to do, to personally inspect the armory and verify the inventory. I believed it was a routine check. I never imagined my husband's godsister, Monica Leone, would use it as cover to blow up the entire armory. The explosion was deafening. Fire ripped through the sky. Concrete collapsed around me, crushing my body as a searing pain tore through my abdomen. I did not call my husband on his highest-priority private line. Instead, I sent a distress signal to my father. In my previous life, the moment the explosion occurred, I had used that same priority channel to call my husband. The child had survived. Monica had been obliterated in the blast. My husband had claimed he did not blame me. He had said Monica was an outsider and that an heir mattered more. He had spared no expense, hiring elite obstetric specialists to monitor me day and night. He had told me to stay calm and wait for delivery. Then, on the day I went into labor, he personally locked me and the baby inside an abandoned warehouse drenched in gasoline and burned us alive. "If you hadn't deliberately delayed, she wouldn't have died. Do you really think playing the innocent victim could fool me? Dream on," he said. "You like playing with fire so much? Fine. I'll let you experience her despair yourself." When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the armory, at the exact moment of the explosion.

Mara Ashfield has been strong for everyone else her entire life. Raising her younger sister, juggling two jobs, keeping everything afloat on her own — she doesn’t have a moment for fate, and she certainly doesn’t believe in it. But fate doesn't consider your timetable. When her car breaks down on a dark rural road, and she inadvertently wanders into the wrong woods while looking for phone signal, she encounters Damien Voss — tall, cold, disturbingly intense, and not fully human. He’s the Alpha of the Coldridge Pack, a man who hasn’t let anyone close in three years. The last thing he needs is a mortal female walking into his domain reeking of rain and something that makes every buried instinct he owns wake up at once. What begins as a warning about something dangerous in the forest becomes something neither of them could have expected and can outrun. Because the danger isn't random — it had come after Mara in particular. And the why of that goes back twenty-three years to a father she never met, to a secret he died protecting, and to a wolf pack so powerful, and ruthless, that they would do anything to make certain that secret stayed buried for all eternity. Damien has been telling himself for three years that he doesn’t need anyone. Mara has spent her life telling herself the same thing. But then he looks at her across a room full of wolves and says she’s mine like it’s already written in blood. Claimed by a Cold Alpha is a slow burn werewolf romance about two stubborn, wounded people falling into something bigger than both of them – full with tension, danger, loyalty, and the kind of love that doesn’t ask permission.

Gosh! Those eyes! They were screaming cute! His masculine beauty was out of this world and he is the kind of man I’d love. The only problem I saw in him was the big tattoo on his arm that extended to his wrists. Being a typical church girl, I couldn’t end up with such a man unless I wanted to be disowned by my father. “I’d have a glass of martini, extra dirty and tacos.” He said in a dreamy gusty voice. “Coming right up” I said taking the menu list and flashed a timid smile at him. I felt my cheeks burning and if there was a mirror around here, I’d have checked how embarrassing I must be looking. My face must have definitely turned pink. I watched him as he ate gracefully without looking elsewhere, his eyes were fixed on his phone. His short brown hair was to die for, I instantly wished I could run my fingers through them. Too bad, I might not be the kind of woman he wants; it wouldn't hurt to have sinful fantasies. He suddenly looked towards me, maybe he must have noticed I had my eyes on him all along. Immediately he locked eyes with mine, I looked elsewhere pretending to looking for something that wasn’t missing. I could tell he gave a faint smile but kept sipping his drink slowly, as he was gazing at his phone. He gave a signal to come and get his bill and I walked gracefully to him. God! I wish he could just take me to bed. Oops! I’m a church girl and shouldn’t be thinking of things like that. “You should take a picture of me, it will last longer.” He said in a baritone voice.

Giorgo Romero, the Don of the Romero family, gets ambushed by a suicidal madman who has bombs strapped to him. When that happens, my husband, Fabio Lopez, and his troops have already gone to a fashion show with his childhood sweetheart, Reina Digiorno, so that they can protect her there. Instead of pressing the signal button on my ring, I launch myself at Giorgo despite being heavily pregnant. Just like that, I'm able to protect him from the explosion with my body. In my previous life, I had pressed the button. Fabio had ditched Reina in favor of hurrying back to the scene to save Giorgo's life. Because of his contribution, he gets elevated to the position of Underboss. But Reina got mad at Fabio for leaving her in advance, resulting in her crossing the highway out of pure spite. That was how she got hit by a car and died. While Fabio didn't say anything, he chose to send me to an underground auction house on the day I went into labor. "The Don had so many soldati protecting him! Why did you force me to come back in the first place? Isn't it because you just want the glory of being the Underboss's wife? "If it wasn't for you, Reina wouldn't have died! You must go through a thousand times the suffering she did!" I could only watch as the guests bid for my organs one by one. Not even my newborn's umbilical cord could be spared from the auction. In the end, I died from an infection that had occurred while my organs were being removed. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day Giorgo gets ambushed.

'God, I'm late again!' Jane thought as she hurried through the streets. 'Mr. Smith is going to be so mad!' She decided to take a shortcut through some back alleys that she would normally rather avoid. Suddenly, she heard a series of whimpers, thumps, and yelps coming from another alley nearby. It sounded like a dog in pain, being beaten by something heavy 'Maybe if I make a noise, whatever is attacking that dog will get scared and run.' She stopped. She had just peaked her head around the corner and saw not one but two . . . men? . . . standing at the other end of a dead-end alley and overlooking a very large, furry pile of animals that seemed to be twitching. Normally, Jane would have been filled with terror at that moment, but terror was normally reserved for those with something to lose. There was a part of Jane, however, that still clung to the charade that was her life. Her hands began to tremble and her lungs released a scarcely audible gasp. Then the two standing figures turned and faced the end of the alley where Jane was hiding. "I'm going to call the police!" she shouted, lacking anything better to say. One of the figures shook his head and smiled. All his teeth seemed to be far too pointy. "That would be a very . . . terrible . . . mistake," he hissed, his words escaping his mouth like dead air from a pharaoh's tomb. And then both of them headed towards her at an inhuman pace. "No," one of them rasped. "Finish it. I'll get the girl." The other one stopped and snarled some kind of response.

"Behold!" The Priestess yelled above the noise of the crowd. It became deathly silent. She could feel the malevolent eyes of the crowd on her and she didn't know why. "The Fox!" Cassidy let out a yip of horror that echoed in the silent village. A Fox Shifter. Cassidy was a Fox. Terror coursed through her smaller body. In all her pleading with the Moon Goddess, she had never thought she would be so terribly cursed. She would be torn limb from limb by the crowd. Shifting to the Fox was a death sentence. Neither prey nor an apex predator, the Fox was an outlier in Shifter society. The crowd roared as one as the High Priestess lifted her. "Run Cassidy, no-clan, and know that pain is only temporary." She whispered softly, before tossing Cassidy into the waiting crowd. All Cassidy had ever wanted was to survive her first Shift. If she didn't end up as prey, all the better. As the illegitimate child of the aging Alpha, and daughter of a rabbit shifter drudge, Cassidy knew the world was an unfair place for those who were not born predator. No one expected Cassidy to be a fox, least of all her. Reviled and feared by predator and prey alike, fox shifters were cast out from home and clan, into the wilderness. If they were lucky. And Cassidy had never been all that acquainted with luck. Rejected by her clan, beaten and broken, left for dead...Cassidy welcomed the darkness. But death will have to wait for her just a little longer. The Lycan King has need of a new assassin, and Cassidy is forced into his world of intrigue, politics, and romance.

Without my knowledge, Aileen—the daughter of Carlson Green’s first love—secretly lured my five-year-old daughter, Lena, deep into the Wolfsbane Forest. She told Lena there was treasure hidden in the forest. When a distress signal came from the forest, I rushed there with Carlson and the rescue team. The wolfsbane's poison spread silently, making it harder for Lena to breathe. She lay weak in the grass, her face pale, her heartbeat slowing down. Aileen, meanwhile, was sprawled on the path beside the wolfsbane. She only had a few scratches on her knees, but she was crying loudly. "Help me! It hurts so much!" I thought Carlson, the Alpha of the Moonshadow Pack and Lena’s father, would run into the forest to check on his own daughter. But he didn’t. Instead, he bent down, scooped Aileen into his arms, comforting her with care. His eyes were full of worry. "It’s okay now, Daddy’s here." I ran forward, my voice shaking. "Carlson! Lena is still in the wolfsbane grass! I can feel her breathing fading! Come with me to find her!" He only said calmly, "Lena is wearing my Moonstone Crystal. It protects her from wolfsbane. She will be fine. Aileen needs care and treatment more." The rescue vehicle left, taking Aileen and Carlson with it. I ran into the wolfsbane field and found Lena. She weakly tugged my hand. "Mom, don’t cry. It doesn’t hurt at all." "Daddy will come save me after he saves Aileen." Then she closed her eyes. And never breathed again. Even on the day of her funeral, Lena never got to see her father come to save her. Carlson Green, a life for a life. You, Aileen, and her mother will pay back everything you did to Lena—I’ll make you repay it a thousand times over.