"He Chose Her... Then Came Back to Me"
"You don't get to hurt me and then make me responsible for how guilty you feel about it."
"Friends don't stand next to you, learn everything about you, and then use it to get close to the one person they know matters."
Aria thought she knew two things for certain: she was going to graduate with her best friend, Iris, by her side, and she was in love with her boyfriend, Liam.
One kiss changed everything. But as the secrets of their "before" come to light, Aria realizes the betrayal didn't start at a party or in a moment of weakness. It started weeks ago, in the conversations she wasn't part of and the moments she wasn't invited to.
Now, Aria has to decide if she can find herself again in the wreckage of the people she trusted most-or if some bridges are meant to be burned
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Chapter 3
Aria didn't go looking for answers the next day
She went to class.
She sat where she always sat. Took notes when the lecturer spoke. Nodded at the right moments. Even answered a question once, her voice steady enough that no one looked twice.
From the outside, nothing had changed.
That was the point.
Her phone stayed buried in her bag, on silent. She didn't need to check it to know what was there. Liam. Iris. Jace .
Missed calls. Messages. Explanations she hadn't asked for. She ignored all of it.
It wasn't anger holding her together.
Anger was loud. Unpredictable.
What she felt was quieter than that. Colder. Precise. It didn't shake her, It sharpened her.
By the time her last class ended, the campus had thinned out. Students moved in clusters, laughing, arguing about assignments, making plans for the evening like nothing in the world had shifted.
Aria stepped outside, adjusting her bag on her shoulder, and headed toward the gate. "Aria."
She stopped .
Not because she wanted,but because she recognised the voice.
For a moment, she considered walking anyway. Pretending she hadn't heard him.
But that would mean he still had the power to make her avoid things. She turned.
Liam stood a few feet away, like he hadn't been sure she would.
He looked different. Not put-together. Not controlled. There were shadows under his eyes.
Good, she thought.
"You've been avoiding me," he said.
Aria held his gaze. "That implies I owe you access."
He blinked, thrown off by how even her voice was. "I've been trying to talk to you." "I know."
"And you're just... ignoring it?" "Yes."
The word landed cleanly between them.
Liam exhaled, dragging a hand through his hair. "Aria, what you saw "
"I'm not confused about what I saw."
"That's not what I meant."
"Then say what you mean."
A couple of students passed by, glancing at them briefly. Aria didn't look away from him.
Liam stepped closer, lowering his voice like this was something private. Like it deserved to be handled carefully.
"It wasn't planned," he said. "It just... happened."
Aria studied him for a second. Not his words him. "That's your explanation?"
"No, I'm just-"
"Because if it is," she cut in, "it's weak."
His jaw tightened. "It wasn't supposed to get to that point." "Then why did it?"
He didn't answer.
And that hesitation small, almost invisible told her everything she needed.
"You didn't stop it," she said.
"I tried-" "No," Aria said quietly. "You didn't."
Silence stretched. Not awkward. Not uncertain.
She shifted her weight slightly, folding her arms. "I'm not interested in half-truths, Liam. So let's make this simple."
He swallowed, but didn't speak.
"Did you want to kiss her?"
There it was.
No room to twist it. No room to soften it.
Liam looked at her, and for a second just a second he hesitated. That was enough.
Aria nodded once. "Okay." "Aria-"
"No, it's fine," she said. "It actually helps."
"Helps?" His voice edged with frustration.
"Helps how?"
She let out a small breath, like she was organizing something in her head. "Because now I don't have to sit there wondering if it was a mistake.". He frowned "It was-"
"It wasn't," she said, cutting him off again. "And you know that." "That's not fair."
She almost smiled at that.
"Fair?" she repeated. "You don't get to use that word right now."
He stepped closer again, his voice lower, more urgent. "I care about you. That hasn't changed."
Aria didn't react. Not even a flicker.
"Then you have a strange way of showing it."
"It's not that simple, It is."
He shook his head, frustration breaking through now. "You're shutting me out without even trying to understand."
Aria looked at him for a long moment. Not angry.
Not emotional. Just... certain.
"I understand that you kissed my best friend," she said.
He opened his mouth, but she didn't stop.
"I understand that she kissed you back."
His expression shifted.
"And I understand that neither of you told me."
Her voice stayed calm. Controlled. That was what made it worse.
"What exactly do you think I'm missing?"
Liam didn't answer. "Right," Aria said softly.
She turned slightly, ready to walk away.
"Aria, wait." She stopped again.
This time, she didn't turn around.
"There's something you don't know," he said.
She closed her eyes briefly.
There it was.
The complication. The justification. The part where he tried to make it sound like there was more to it than what she saw.
"There always is," she said.
"This isn't just about Iris," he continued. "It's about-" Don't... "Don't try to twist my head"
The word was sharp enough to cut through whatever he was about to say.
Liam went quiet.
Aria turned back, her eyes locking onto his.
"Don't do that," she said. "Don't try to turn this into something bigger so it feels less like what it is. I'm not."
"You are," she said. "You're trying to make it complicated so you don't have to say the simple version out loud."
"And what's the simple version?" he asked, his voice tight.
Aria didn't hesitate. "You wanted her."
The words landed clean. No emotion attached. No accusation.Just truth.
Liam flinched barely but she saw it.
"And maybe," she added, quieter now, "you wanted me too."
That hit harder.
She watched it happen.
Watched the realization settle in his expression.
"But you don't get both," she said.
For a second, it almost felt like everything had stopped around them.
"For what it's worth," Liam said finally, his voice strained, "you're not as unaffected as you're pretending to be."
Aria held his gaze.
"You're right."
That surprised him.
She let that sit there for a moment just enough.
Just enough for him to think he'd gotten through.
"But the difference is," she continued, "I'm not the one who has to live with what I did."
That landed. Deeper than anything else she'd said, She saw it in his face. The way it stayed with him.
She turned and walked away.
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9.1
Waking up with a cold, scaly hand wrapped around my throat wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was realizing I'd transmigrated into the body of Terra Mason—the most despised woman in the entire Enclave. She drugged high-level beast-men and forced them into life-binding bio-contracts. She locked an aquatic warrior in a dry basement until his organs failed. She treated the most lethal males in the city like broken toys.
Zev, the Level 6 serpent who's currently choking me, would rather blow up his own heart than spend another day as my slave. His affection metric? Negative ninety. His trust? Zero.
Then my system activates: the Kore AI. It gives me exactly 500 credits, a medical nano-gel, and a recipe for neutralizing the radioactive poison in mutant meat. Real food. In this world, that's worth more than gold.
I save Rhys, the dying aquatic male everyone left for dead. I season a slab of purple mutant steak until Sam, a battle-scarred grizzly shifter, groans at the taste—and his trust points finally tick above zero. When my backstabbing ex-best friend tries to steal my males and destroy me, I don't scream or throw a tantrum like the old Terra. I dismantle her with the truth.
But earning their trust means more than grilling meat. A scorpion swarm ambushes us at midnight. Sam throws himself between me and a stinger the size of my arm. As he stands over the corpse, fur receding from his claws, he stares at me and whispers, "You were testing me."
Yes. I was. Because in this world, the weak don't survive. And I refuse to be weak again.
Four beast-men. Four contracts. One system. And a whole lot of steak. Let this dystopian wasteland know—I'm not the monster they remember. I'm worse. I'm the one who's going to feed them until they'd kill for me.
9.0
Ashlyn was supposed to be just a fragile college student, selling her rare blood to a vicious crime syndicate enforcer to keep his dying sister alive.
But the dynamic shattered when Alex returned from a two-month disappearance. He stepped into the penthouse covered in dirt and blood, sporting a horrific, jagged knife wound slashed completely across his face.
Knowing exactly how to exploit his insecurities, Ashlyn played the role of the terrified victim to perfection. She screamed, pushed against his chest, and called him a terrifying monster. Humiliated and enraged by her blatant disgust, Alex violently smashed a marble table and kicked her out. He forced her out into a freezing, torrential rainstorm without a coat, vowing to kill her if she ever showed her face again.
What the ruthless enforcer didn't know was that her pathetic, trembling tears were a flawless, calculated lie. She wasn't a helpless, greedy girl. She was a cold-blooded corporate mastermind hiding from a family of elite assassins. She desperately needed his impenetrable penthouse fortress to stay alive, and she knew the only way to secure her place wasn't to ask for it, but to make him beg for her return.
Three days later, his sister's organs began to fail, and the hospital's blood bank ran dry.
"I'll pay you whatever you want. Just get here."
Listening to the desperate, broken voice of the monster over her burner phone, Ashlyn smiled coldly in the dark. The trap had snapped shut, and he had just handed her all the power.
8.6
I was the untouchable Mafia Queen, but my reign ended in the blood-soaked depths of a damp dungeon.
My half-sister, Kelsey, drove a rusted, sharpened spoon into my chest, screaming about the unfairness of fate.
In my past life, my father sold me to the ruthless Don Dante Blackwell as collateral to pay off his debts.
To survive, I took a black-market fertility drug, birthed his heir, and clawed my way to the throne through sheer ruthlessness.
But in the mafia world, a pregnant woman isn't a queen; she's a walking target.
I survived countless bombings and poisonings, only to be betrayed and slaughtered by my own family.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand. I had sacrificed everything to secure our survival in the empire. Why did my blood and tears only earn me a rusted spoon to the heart?
Opening my eyes again, I am seventeen, sitting in my father's drawing room.
Two black velvet boxes sit on the mahogany table.
Kelsey greedily snatches the box containing the fertility drug, her eyes gleaming with feverish triumph.
"I'll take this one, Papa."
She thinks she is stealing my golden ticket to the crown, completely unaware that she just chose a death sentence.
I lower my gaze, letting my eyelashes mask the cold, lethal amusement pooling in my eyes as I take the remaining box.
Inside is the detailed psychological profile of the Don's dead fiancée.
This time, I won't be a breeding mare fighting off assassins. I will dissect the devil himself.
8.5
"And that is the reason why I said those words. I like your fear, not because it is a normal thing. I love it because deep down you are a monster like me, schiava. You fear me on a primal level, you can feel my power and dominance, and you know you aren't the strongest here. So you don't fear Renzo Valentino the human, you fear the monster that lurks inside."
My life changed the night of my birthday. What started as a funny dare ended with blood and having a price on my head.
I thought Renzo was the hero who saved me that night, but he was the devil who owned me forever.
I, Misha Yakov, princess of the Russian mafia became Renzo Valentino's slave.
He broke me, tortured me, and molded me into something new, something I hated and craved at the same time.
I, Misha Yakov became my master's pet.
7.1
For seven years, I was the architect of my fiancé's criminal empire and the strategist behind his every move. I was Dante Gallo’s unofficial Consigliere, his partner in everything but name. Tomorrow, I was finally supposed to marry him and take my place as the queen to his throne.
But on the eve of our wedding, a single text message sent by mistake detonated my life. It was a photo from Dante, showing a platinum wedding band on his hand. The message read: “Married this morning. She’s safe now.”
My gaze fell to the engagement ring on my own finger. It was the identical band, just smaller. The engraved initials ‘D.I.’ didn’t stand for Dante and I. They stood for Dante and Isabella—his childhood sweetheart. My entire relationship was a lie; I was just a shield to protect his one true love.
He dismissed my discovery as a "tantrum." Then, his new bride began taunting me, sending a picture of them tangled in bedsheets with the caption: "Loser." They expected me to break. They thought I would shatter.
They were about to find out just how wrong they were. I forwarded the picture to Isabella’s fiancé, a man far more dangerous than Dante. "Your fiancée is in Suite 8808 at the Grand Hyatt," I told him. "I'll meet you downstairs. We're going to crash their party."
8.7
I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella.
Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark.
But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved.
Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies.
When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel.
While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest.
The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella.
He ordered my father to punish me.
I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth.
That night, the love in my heart finally died.
On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape-the only proof that I was Seven.
Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney.
By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.