A Second Chance With Mr. Blackwood

I found out my husband of three years had cheated on me and his mistress is the one who told me-because he didn't have the balls to do it himself. I move out and get a new apartment, a job as a bartender, and try to move on with a broken heart. I wonder where it all went wrong, if I hadn't been enough for him, if I'd been stupid for marrying him in the first place. I'm at work one night when he walks inside-the most beautiful man I've ever seen. He sits at the bar and a forest fire burns between us. I was depressed the moment before he entered, but the second I look at his blue eyes, I forget the dumpster fire that my life has become. I invite him back to my place and it's the most passionate night of my life. I expect to never see him again. I just want him as an anti-depressant-but he wants me all to himself. I just got my heart ripped out of my chest so I want something easy and no-strings-attached, but he wants all the strings because he's hooked. I don't get much of a say in the matter, and that's not surprising when I learn why-because he's the Butcher. The crime lord of all crime lords, the boss that overshadows all of Paris, that makes everyone abide by his rules-or pay. And now I'm his.

Areli was the hardest-working medic in the Blackridge Clan, but her efforts only earned her the title of a useless burden. Her supposed lover, Eugene, and her senior mentor, Gloria, lured her to the edge of the deadly Blackwind Cliff and shoved her straight into the abyss. She miraculously survived the freefall, only to return and find Gloria standing before the entire clan, wearing a mask of fake sorrow. "Look! The traitor is back! She eloped with wild males!" Gloria shrieked. Eugene stepped up, looking heartbroken, and publicly accused her of betraying his love. The crowd erupted, raining hisses and boos upon her, completely ignoring the horrific, life-threatening bruises that covered her battered body. They blindly believed the lies, treating her like garbage while Gloria secretly plotted to poison her water and destroy her completely. Areli felt a chilling sense of betrayal. How could the man who claimed to love her watch her fall with such cold eyes? To make matters worse, her modern biochemist instincts revealed a terrifying truth: she was unexpectedly pregnant with the child of a savage Warlord she had encountered in the wild. In this brutal, primitive world, showing any weakness was an absolute death sentence. But she wasn't going to cower or run away. Refusing the Warlord's offer to simply rescue her, Areli calmly placed a highly toxic herb on her drying rack and left her tent flap open. The bait was set. Now, she just had to wait for the screams.

I was eight months pregnant, waiting on the sofa for my billionaire husband to come home. But when the heavy oak doors opened, Cayden threw a fake DNA test on the glass table, showing a zero percent probability of paternity. He accused me of carrying another man's bastard. I cried and begged, swearing I was framed by his childhood friend, Carmella. He didn't listen. Instead, he ordered his massive bodyguards to pin me down while a private doctor forced an abortion pill down my throat. "The Merritt family does not raise bastards. Get rid of it." He forced me to sign divorce papers and ordered his men to throw me out into the freezing storm. Before I was dragged away, I desperately told him the truth: I was the anonymous donor who gave him a kidney to save his life three years ago. He just sneered, saying Carmella had the surgical scar to prove she was the donor, and kicked me out to die. Lying in the freezing rain, vomiting up the half-dissolved poison to save my baby, I didn't understand how the man I loved could be so completely blind. How could he let that woman steal my kidney, my marriage, and murder his own flesh and blood? Five years later, I returned to New York not as his pathetic discarded wife, but as a top-tier medical fixer for the global elite. And my genius five-year-old son has already infiltrated his mansion, ready to tear his empire apart from the inside.

"You can't escape me, Aurora. You are mine!" The Alpha King's roar echoed through the palace walls. But Aurora just tightened her grip on the blade hidden beneath her cloak. She would never-never-give herself to the monster who murdered her father. Even if the Moon Goddess cursed her to be his mate. *** Aurora Regalia once had everything-a loving father, a prosperous pack, and a future that glittered with promise. Her father, the king, even chose her a mate: Logan Charming. Powerful. Charismatic. Cursed. She thought he was her destiny. Then she watched him tear her father's head from his shoulders. One night. One betrayal. Her entire family, slaughtered. Her pack, reduced to ashes. Aurora jumped off a cliff that night-not to die, but to survive. To become something her enemies would never see coming. An assassin. A ghost. A blade wrapped in silk. For years, she trained in the shadows, fueled by one single purpose: revenge. Blood for blood. She would make Logan Charming suffer the way she had suffered. She would carve his heart out and feel nothing. But fate had a cruel sense of humor. The Moon Goddess looked down at her shattered daughter and laughed. Because the man who destroyed her life? The monster who wore her father's blood on his hands? He was her fated mate. Now Aurora stands at a crossroads she never asked for. Every instinct screams for vengeance. Every fiber of her being recoils at the bond pulling her toward him. But Logan? He doesn't care about her hatred. He doesn't care about her blade. "You can run, little mate," he whispers, crimson eyes gleaming in the dark. "But I will always find you." And when he does? He won't just cage her body. He'll claim her soul.

On the eve of my glamorous Waldorf Astoria wedding, I went to the penthouse to surprise my fiancé, Hugh, wearing my late mother's heirloom pearls. Instead, I heard my stepsister's familiar laugh and caught them tangled together on the sofa. Through the cracked door, I heard Hugh slur that he was only marrying me for my family's financial backing. "As soon as I secure my inheritance, she's the first thing I'm getting rid of," he promised her. Floy giggled and asked for my mother's pearl necklace, my only legacy. Hugh agreed without hesitation, mocking my dead mother's naivety and my desperate dreams of building a family. Every sweet word he had ever said was a lie, a knife he had been patiently sliding between my ribs for years. They planned to strip me of everything the moment I signed the prenup. I didn't cry or scream. The crushing weight of their betrayal hollowed me out, leaving behind a terrifying, absolute calm. Why should I be the one to lose everything while they stole my future and insulted my mother's memory? I calmly walked down the hall, set the prenuptial agreement on fire, and vanished into the rainy night. If Hugh wanted to play dirty for the Maxwell empire, I would play for keeps. Using a forgotten, century-old family covenant, I was going to marry Hugh's uncle-the comatose, paralyzed war hero, Fleet Maxwell. I would return not as a naive bride, but as their worst nightmare: his aunt, and the new lady of the house.

Years ago, when I was very small, we lived in a great house in a long, straight, brown-coloured street, in the east end of London. It was a noisy, crowded street in the daytime; but a silent, lonesome street at night, when the gas-lights, few and far between, partook of the character of lighthouses rather than of illuminants, and the tramp, tramp of the policeman on his long beat seemed to be ever drawing nearer, or fading away, except for brief moments when the footsteps ceased, as he paused to rattle a door or window, or to flash his lantern into some dark passage leading down towards the river.