The Summer Solstice By Nick Joaquin

Birthdays were never Summer’s favorite. She particularly despised them when her best friend gifted her a tarot card reading. Skeptical of the warnings about encountering a dangerous wolf who would alter her life, she couldn't help but laugh out of it. Romance was the furthest thing from her mind. Yet, the young woman’s prediction turned out to be eerily accurate. Julian Wolf radiated an aura of danger and allure. With his suave demeanor and distant charm, his gaze seemed to pierce through to Summer’s very core, igniting a fire within her.

He slid a paper across the table, his eyes cold. " Sign it." She blinked, confused. "Why?" "It’s our marriage certificate." He spoke as if discussing the weather. "I’ve already signed it. Your turn." Siya froze. **Marriage?** To a man like him? Her? A whore. Pregnant. She looked up at him, pleading. "I-I can be your maid. Do anything. Just… don’t hurt my baby." Her voice trembled, careful, trying to bargain with the devil himself. But Abhimanyu’s gaze was relentless, unmoved. His tone cut like ice. "I want you to sign it right now." Her heart hammered in her chest. "But… how… why me?" She stuttered, breaking. "I don’t want to marry you." She stood, defiance shaking her body. The word **marriage** tasted like ash, reminding her of someone she loathed beyond reason. Abhimanyu leaned in, his smile devoid of warmth. "You **will** marry me. Or…" The room fell silent, thick with the unspoken threat. **The world knows** what he is capable of. "Plea.se," she whispered. Her voice was barely a breath. Siya’s legs screamed to run. But there was nowhere to go. His voice low, lethal. "Listen to me, TweetyBird. If I can save you, I can ruin you too.' His eyes darkened. "Sign it. And you’ll be mine." "Why me?" Her voice broke. ************ Siya laid on the bed on her fours, her hands tied together with a handcuff as Abhimanyu thrusted slowly from her back. He changed their position making her completely under his mercy. As the sun rose in the sky, he uncuffed her. "Scream my name!" He groaned going faster than before. But his pace didn’t slacken at all. He had turned into a needy beast, who was ruining every ounce of sanity left in Siya. *********** ***********

On her eighteenth birthday, Aria Hale finally feels her wolf stir… just in time to attend the mating ceremony where the Moon Goddess will reveal her destined mate. She has spent her whole life as the pack’s weakest link—her wolf sealed, her power mocked, her future uncertain. But one touch will change everything. When her eyes meet those of Liam Blackwood, the cruel, golden future Alpha of Nightfall Pack, the bond snaps into place. He is her fated mate. Her miracle. Her salvation. And he rejects her on the spot. Humiliated, heartbroken, and banished, Aria thinks her story ends there… until a black car stops on the edge of the territory and the man inside offers her a choice. Damien Blackwood. Liam’s older brother. Cold. Untouchable. A billionaire who left the pack years ago—and the only wolf Liam has ever feared. “Come with me,” Damien says. “I’ll give you a home, protection… and a chance to become strong enough that they will all kneel.” Under his roof, Aria’s “weak” wolf begins to awaken. Dark secrets unravel. And the truth emerges: she is not just any wolf. She is a hidden Omega Queen. When danger threatens the pack that rejected her, Liam comes crawling back, begging for a second chance. But Aria is no longer the powerless girl he threw away. She must choose: the mate who broke her or the brother who rebuilt her—and the throne the Moon Goddess always meant for her to claim.

"You are not her!" Alaric hisses darkly, his fingers enclosing around my exposed throat, claws grazing my skin. A little pressure... just a little, and I would be dead. "No... I am not..." I admit with difficulty. I only look similar to the deceased Luna supreme, I can never truly replace her. But if I am going to have any chances of survival, I need Alaric's claim... and I am hell bent on getting it. "Yet..." Alaric whispers, his husky voice trailing off. I smell his arousal, thick in the air... attesting to everything he would not admit. That despite knowing I am just a doppelganger, he still craves me... "Yet...?" I question slowly but I barely get the words out when a hand cups me between my thighs. I gasp in a mix of surprise and burning desire. "F*ck!" Alaric hissed at the feel of my arousal. "The only words you will say in my presence Kyra...is the chanting of my name." Alaric clarifies. "You wish to see me go mad, woman? I shall abide." He whispers. ~~~~~~~~~~ On the very night Kyra discovers Alpha Mikos is her mate, her heart shatters as she watches him bond with her cousin and bestow the title of Luna to another woman. The reason is simple, Kyra is a weak wolf born without an element. Or so everyone thought... On that same night, in a bid to protect her chastity, Kyra manifests an element many years too late, but it is not just any element...it is the rare fire element. Kyra's sudden and out of control discovery of her element leads to the death of Mikos's father, terrified for her life and Mikos's wrath, Kyra escapes pack lands only to be captured by unknown wolves led by a terrifying monster.

Ava Woods, after getting heartbroken by her fiance, Ryan Blake, disappeared completely with her pregnancy. She returned after five years as the most powerful business mogul in the city with twins. While Ryan is willing to do everything to have her back, all she wants is revenge against those that humiliated her.

In the shadowed opulence of New York, where power is currency and secrets bind tighter than chains, fallen heir Aiden Blackwood auctions his body at The Gilded Cage to rescue his brother from financial ruin. Blindfolded in a velvet-dark room, he kneels before an anonymous bidder, gloved fingers gripping his jaw, forcing his lips apart. A thick, veined cock slides deep into his throat, making him gag and choke, tears streaming as the man thrusts relentlessly, mixing humiliation with a forbidden rush of arousal. Pinned against the icy wall, Aiden’s ass is stretched wide by probing fingers, then filled raw by the stranger’s pounding length, his cries echoing in ecstasy and pain until hot cum floods him, marking him as owned. The lights reveal Silas Vane, the once-bullied outcast now a vengeful tech billionaire with stormy eyes and a lethal edge. Silas’s feelings are a tangled storm of revenge laced with unresolved obsession, pulling Aiden into a web of corporate intrigue and hidden desires. As enemies entangled in a slow-burn romance, Aiden emerges not as mere prey but a fierce secret lover, challenging Silas’s control while accompanying him on high-stakes deals. Power imbalances shift amid family loyalties and undercover plots; Silas’s protection turns possessive, testing trust. In this erotic enemies-to-lovers tale, every brutal fuck is a battle for dominance will Aiden shatter the leash or forge it into mutual surrender?

To protect my boyfriend, Nico, the illegitimate son of our allies, the Moretti family, from their internal power struggles, I agreed to leave New York with him. But on the eve of my adoptive father, the Don of the Falcone family, signing our transfer orders, he backed out. Through the hidden door of the cigar lounge, I heard his right-hand man tease him: "So you really kept up that act for three months just to get rid of the princess?" "But she's your childhood sweetheart. You really have the heart to some miserable fishing village in the Baltics all by herself?" Nico's voice was nonchalant. "It's just an outpost across the pond. How far can it be?" "Scarlett is too controlling. If I don't get her out of the picture, how am I supposed to get any breathing room? Besides, I need to put Chloe at ease." I stood behind that hidden door for a long time that night, my grip on the doorknob tightening until my knuckles were white, before I finally let go. I turned and walked away, pulling out my tablet to change my flight plan. I changed the destination from the official plan of that desolate Baltic outpost to a seat at the High Table in Sicily, which is the absolute center of old-world Mafia power. Everyone seemed to have forgotten. I am the princess of the Falcone family. And he is nothing but filth from the gutter. We were never a match.

Four months pregnant. I was alone when a rival family came for me.. A searing pain tore through my stomach. I couldn't reach my husband, Don Lorenzo. His phone was off. I woke up in a sterile hospital bed. Three days had passed. And the baby... was gone. That’s when I heard the nurses gossiping. “Heard Don Lorenzo cleared out a block of Fifth Avenue for his mistress three days ago. Had his phone off so they wouldn't be disturbed.” Tears rolled down my cheeks, but my heart was empty. I gave up my career, my whole life, for him. The Don who promised me forever… he shattered that promise just days before our fifth anniversary. Back home, I dug out an old phone and made a call. A number I hadn't touched in five years. "The European tour you mentioned…" I said, my voice hollow. "I'm in. I can be ready in a week."

I was born with a strange condition. I couldn't recognize faces and could only identify people by their clothes. Vincent Lancaster, my boyfriend, never minded. He said it didn't change the way he loved me. That was, until our wedding day. He answered a phone call. His childhood friend, Grace Langley, was in labor, life hanging by a thread, and she demanded he come immediately. My voice shook with despair. "Vincent! If you drive away now, we'll never be husband and wife!" But he left anyway, not looking back. Grace had always loved seeing him in white, so he threw aside the black suit I had sewn for him with my own hands and changed into white. A year later, Vincent returned. By then, my belly was swollen with life, and I was holding onto another man while hosting a baby shower. And the man wore the black suit Vincent had thrown away. Vincent went mad, claiming he was my husband, but no one believed him.

Olivia’s POV The moment Armando left, the dam broke. I sobbed into the silence, my chest heaving with the weight of everything I’d pushed down for so long. I wanted to hold him tight. To kiss him and to tell him how much I loved him and how much I wanted his protection but I just couldn’t because I didn’t trust anyone else and because I never wanted anything to do with love after James. I hated myself for pushing him away. But more than that, I hated that I felt anything for him at all. I sat there, drowning in the storm of my own heart, knowing that love was a battlefield I might never cross again, and yet, for the first time, I wished I had the courage to try. Armando’s POV Back in my study, I poured myself a glass of whiskey, my hand trembling as I lit a cigarette. The tears came slowly at first, hot and unfamiliar against my skin. I hadn’t cried since I was ten years old. But tonight, I wept. For her. For me. For everything we could never be.