Vivid Imagination

Après la grande guerre entre les humains, les vampires, les loups-garous et les elfes, un accord a été conclu : les descendants hybrides gouverneraient le monde. Chaque siècle, des alliances matrimoniales entre les humains et ces trois clans désigneraient le prochain souverain. Celle qui donnerait naissance au premier enfant hybride obtiendrait le pouvoir pour sa lignée. Dans ma vie précédente, j'avais choisi d'épouser Jax, le fils aîné de la tribu des loups-garous, connu pour sa loyauté féroce. Je lui avais donné un fils hybride, un louveteau à la fourrure blanche que nous avions nommé Zeal. Notre enfant était devenu le prochain souverain du monde, et Jax avait acquis un immense pouvoir. Ma sœur, attirée par la beauté des elfes, avait épousé le prince de leur clan. Mais le prince elfe couchait avec toutes les femelles de la forêt. À la fin, ma sœur avait contracté une maladie qui l'avait rendue stérile. Rongée par la jalousie et l'amertume, elle avait allumé un incendie dans lequel mon jeune louveteau et moi avions péri brûlés vifs. Quand j'ai rouvert les yeux, j'étais de retour au jour des alliances matrimoniales. Ma sœur avait déjà couché avec Jax la première. Je savais qu'elle aussi avait revécu. Mais elle ignorait que Jax était extrêmement cruel envers ses compagnes, ayant déchiré d'innombrables louves dans son lit pendant ses ruts.

To find the missing fake heiress, my family forced me to undergo a memory extraction. They were convinced that I had bullied her for the past three years and driven her to run away. I gave a bitter smile and let them continue. As the memories surfaced one after another, the truth became clear. I was the one who had been bullied all along. My parents, overcome with guilt, clutched my hands so tightly they nearly fainted. My brother’s eyes were bloodshot, his teeth grinding until he drew blood. In their arms, I looked up in confusion and asked softly, “Who are you?”

In my last life, my sister, Raven Webster, and I rescued two eggs. Her egg hatched into Snowviper, while mine became Blazewing. But Raven stole Blazewing from me. None of us could have imagined the world would end in a brutal heatwave apocalypse. Raven died from heat stroke in that inferno. And before she died, she tricked my husband, Snowviper, into strangling me with his own tail. Somehow, we were both reborn on the very day those eggs hatched. This time, Raven snatched up Snowviper. She thought having him would keep her safe through the heatwave apocalypse. What she didn't know was that Snowviper's powers could only be fueled by drinking fresh human blood every single day.

I was the second princess of the Phoenix Court. And I fell in love with a lowly black serpent. In my past life, just to be with him, I purposely picked that black serpent during the Sacred Bonding ceremony when we each chose our companion beasts. After that, we spent every night together. I didn't care what the whole clan thought. I was determined to marry him. But on our wedding day, that same serpent I'd given my heart to drove an arrow straight through me, killing me while I was three months pregnant. As I lay dying, I heard him hiss bitterly in my ear, "If it weren't for you, I'd have been with Seraphine by now. You should've died a long time ago." That's when I finally got it. All he cared about was power. And he'd been in love with my older sister all along—the sister who was next in line for the Phoenix throne. When I opened my eyes again, we were back at that same moment—the Sacred Bonding ceremony. Before everyone, he dropped to his knees and confessed he loved my sister. He begged not to be bound to me. The whole clan looked at me with pity. But I only smiled and pointed to a small white serpent resting quietly off to the side. That black serpent thought clinging to my sister would make him powerful. What he didn't realize was that only the one I chose would become the true heir to the Phoenix Court.

After I got pulled into the horror game, my nearsightedness made everything blurry. I ended up treating the creepy girl in the blood-stained dress like my own daughter, the final boss like my husband, and the old creepy ghosts like my loving parents. The first time I met the boss, I grabbed his abs and said, “Nice body. Shame you’re kind of short.” He actually laughed in anger, picked up the severed head in his hand, put it back on his neck, and ground out, “I’m six-foot-one. Still think I’m short now?”

The day I marry Navy Captain Dean Aldridge, I hear his stepsister Shirley Pierce's inner voice. "Diane is so beautiful and graceful. I wish I could be like her, but I'm nothing more than an unwanted burden in this family… "I really adore her, though. I saved up my allowance to buy her a bracelet as a wedding gift, but I'm afraid she'll think it's unlucky and refuse it." In my last life, those words had filled my heart with pity. I'd accepted the bracelet and even taken Shirley under my wing, teaching her to read and write. But not long after my wedding, my health began to deteriorate for no reason. It wasn't until I lay dying that I discovered the truth—the bracelet Shirley had given me was cursed, and she'd deliberately made me hear her inner voice. She'd long been in love with Dean and was determined to make the Aldridge family hers one day. Now, when I open my eyes again, I find myself back on my wedding day.

Billionaire Ethan Gibson, determined to break the family's curse of ending without an heir, spent a fortune recruiting ten "candidate mothers" and placed them together on his private island. On the day they arrived, Ethan announced publicly: Whoever delivers his first heir will become the future mistress of the Gibson family. Greed grew faster than desire. Within just a few months, several women announced their pregnancies with great pride. However, they and their unborn children were thrown into the ocean and fed to sharks. The reason was simple: they had been found to be involved with other men. Every night, the screams coming from the harbor kept me awake. I was terrified, because I had also had a single accidental encounter with Ethan, and I was now pregnant. When the day finally came and I saw what I had delivered, everything went dark before my eyes. Those mistresses who were fed to the sharks had at least carried human babies. I had given birth to three tiny puppies.

My entire family could hear my thoughts. In my previous life, I was switched at birth with Victoria Harrington. I was reunited with my family 18 years later. It was the early 1920s, when owning a bicycle or a radio was still rare for most families. I had always dreamed of having one of those precious things. However, after I came home, Victoria would constantly brag right in front of me. "Mom told me that I'm the only one who deserves this fancy watch," she said with a sweet smile. "And look at this gorgeous bicycle Dad got me for my birthday! Oh, and when I mentioned wanting a radio, Daniel bought it for me immediately." Then came the real knife twist. "I know you're their biological daughter, Bernice, but let's be honest. When it comes to love, I'm their real daughter. Daniel definitely prefers me as his little sister too." Her words ate at me. I could not stop the bitter thoughts that flooded my mind about my parents and brother. The problem was that my family could hear every single one of those thoughts. Slowly, they began to resent me. Eventually, they threw me out into the cold, and I died alone in the winter streets while Victoria lived happily within the warmth of their love. When I opened my eyes again, I realized that I had been reborn. As I watched Victoria putting on her usual show, my thoughts took a delicious turn. 'Victoria thinks that Mom is such a cheapskate for only buying her a cheap watch instead of something expensive. She even calls Dad stingy behind his back because he didn't get her a pricier bicycle.' 'And she constantly complains about how ugly and crude Daniel is, saying that he embarrasses her. I wonder if I should share these thoughts with my family?'

After discovering that my sworn enemy was an incubus, I threatened him. "Marty, as long as you let me touch your tail, I'll keep your secret." Marty was both ashamed and furious, but in the end, with his face burning red, he still shoved his tail into my hand. Biting his lip in reluctant humiliation, he said, "We agreed—only once a day. Not a single touch more." But later, the very man who had insisted on "only once a day" knelt on the floor, crying as he begged me to touch it again, just one more time.

In my previous life, my parents doted on my frail, sickly younger sister. For her sake, they chose a hawk beastman willing to settle in a human city as her husband. Me? They cast me into the deep sea, marrying me off to a giant shark beastman. When the apocalypse came and torrential rains drowned every human city, my parents and sister were left clinging to a rotting plank, adrift on the endless ocean. I couldn't bear to watch them die. With my giant shark husband, I dragged them down into the deep sea to safety. But resentment festered. Seeing me live comfortably while my shark beastman hunted day after day, my parents grew furious that my sister's life paled in comparison to mine. In their jealousy, they laced the fish we ate with poison and killed me. Now, given another chance at life, they've decided my sister should marry the giant shark beastman instead. My biased parents believe she will finally enjoy the blessings they once denied her. But what they don't know is this: after the cataclysm, fish become scarce. And a giant shark… does not survive on scraps. He needs flesh.