I AM THE LUNA QUEEN
went to sleep a nobody. I woke up a Queen.
One night I was just a broke, exhausted college girl. The next, I opened my eyes in silk sheets, with strangers bowing and calling me Luna Queen. The face in the mirror is mine. The body is mine. But the life isn't. The bruises on my wrists tell a story I don't remember, and the King I'm bound to doesn't love me-he loathes me.
They whisper that his mistress rules the palace. They say the Queen was weak. Silent. Broken. But that was before me.
Now I must survive a palace that wants me dead, a King whose touch burns as much as it scars, and a kingdom waiting for me to fail. The old Luna Queen bowed to cruelty.
I am not her.
And if this King thinks I'll kneel, he's about to learn what a true Queen is made of.
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Chapter 5
Hazel's POV
For a full five seconds, my brain refused to process what I was seeing.
No. No way. That couldn't be him.
I blinked once. Twice. My eyes didn't lie.
Standing before me-half-naked, skin lit by candlelight, muscles shifting under smooth golden skin-was my psychology professor.
"Professor Nicholas?" I whispered again, my voice barely a breath.
He turned fully now, blue eyes piercing into mine with a look so sharp it felt like a blade. But it wasn't the gentle, kind professor who used to smile when I answered a question in class. This man's gaze was cold. Hard. The same eyes, but with something cruel swimming behind them.
My knees wobbled. "What the hell..." I muttered, staring at him. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
Nothing made sense. My heart pounded so fast it almost hurt. The man I'd secretly crushed on for a year-the one who told me once that I "had potential"-was standing here, shirtless, in a king's chamber, looking like sin and damnation rolled into one.
His lips curved slightly, but it wasn't a smile. It was mockery. "Let's get this over with," he said flatly, taking a step toward me.
My breath hitched. "Get... this over with?"
And then it hit me.
The look in his eyes. The palace. The women preparing me.
No.
This wasn't Professor Nicholas.
This was the King.
The Alpha King I was supposed to-oh, God.
I threw my hands up. "Hold your horses!"
He stopped, brows furrowing slightly as if I'd spoken another language.
"What now?" His tone dripped irritation. "Isn't this what you wanted?"
I blinked. "Excuse me?"
His eyes darkened, voice low and cruel. "You tried to kill yourself to get my attention. You wanted me to touch you, didn't you? You wanted to bear my child."
I stared at him, speechless for a moment. Then the shock burned away-and anger took its place.
"What I want," I snapped, "is for you to stop being a jerk and keep your fucking hands to yourself."
The King froze.
For a heartbeat, his expression was pure disbelief. Then, just as quickly, it vanished-buried under that same cold mask.
I could tell he wasn't used to being spoken to like that. Maybe the real queen never dared.
He stepped closer, eyes narrowing. "What game are you playing now, Hazel?"
My stomach dropped.
Hazel.
That's my name. I don't remember telling anyone my name here.
For a second, my brain short-circuited. Wait-the real queen's name was Hazel too? What the hell kind of twisted joke was this?
I didn't even have time to think because the next thing I knew, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward him.
I crashed into his chest.
Hard.
The air whooshed out of my lungs as I stared up at him-his jaw tense, his eyes inches from mine. His skin was hot, muscles hard beneath my palms. The scent of him-smoke, forest, and something darker-wrapped around me, dizzying.
For a terrifying second, I forgot everything. The anger. The fear. The reason I was here.
I just... stared.
His eyes flickered down to my lips, then back to my face. "The sooner we do this," he said coldly, "the sooner you can get the hell out of my sight."
And just like that, the spell shattered.
Right. He wasn't my professor. He was a jerk. A King who hated his queen.
I shoved against him, hard enough that he stumbled back a step.
"What makes you think you deserve me?" I demanded, my voice shaking but loud. "What makes you think you deserve to touch me?"
His jaw clenched.
I didn't stop. "Why don't you go to your mistress instead?"
The air in the room changed.
His blue eyes turned to ice. A muscle in his jaw twitched as he stared at me, like he couldn't believe I'd just said that.
"Don't test me," he said, voice dropping an octave, low and dangerous.
I tilted my head, smiling sweetly. "Oh, I'm not testing you."
He blinked.
I let my eyes roam over him slowly-from his sharp jaw to his sculpted chest, down to the V line that disappeared under the waistband of his pants. Then I looked back up and said, "I'm just saying it's such a pity. You've got a handsome face and a nice body-but absolutely no brain. What a shame."
For a moment, the room went silent.
Then his expression turned murderous.
The look on his face could have frozen lava. Good thing I wasn't lava.
His voice came out like thunder. "How dare you interrupt me when I speak to you-"
I cut him off, smirking. "Did you forget? I'm your queen. Which means I'm your equal."
The shock on his face was almost funny.
Almost.
He looked at me like I'd just grown a second head. Like he was trying to figure out who the hell was standing in front of him.
"When," he asked slowly, his voice dripping suspicion, "did you get so bold?"
I shrugged. "The moment I realized the King would rather protect his mistress than his Queen."
That hit him. I could see it in the flicker of his eyes.
He scoffed, stepping closer again. The heat coming off his body was unbearable. "I don't care what rubbish is going through your head," he said coldly. "But we're going to consummate this marriage whether you like it or not."
I smiled. It wasn't a kind smile. "I'd like to see you try."
Something in his expression shifted-just slightly. His jaw tightened, and the vein in his neck pulsed.
He took another step forward. His voice dropped, darker now. "Get on the fucking bed, Hazel."
I didn't move.
I looked him straight in the eyes.
And then, slowly, deliberately, I said;
"In your dreams."
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7.3
I was tracing the gold paint on my own tombstone when a hand tapped me on the shoulder.
It was Clayton.
The same man who, five years ago, had left me bleeding out in a ditch because he didn't want to be late for my sister's engagement party.
"Die quietly, Ivy," he had said over the phone before hanging up.
Now, standing over my grave, he dropped his cheap plastic flowers in shock.
"Ivy? You're... we buried you."
They hadn't buried me.
They had buried an empty box to save face, mourning a "troubled" daughter they had actually discarded like broken trash the moment I became a liability.
Clayton's shock quickly turned to that familiar, arrogant anger.
He accused me of faking my death for attention.
He told me I was sick for putting the family through such pain.
He even reached out to grab my arm, intending to drag me back to my father to apologize.
"You're coming with me," he spat. "You owe us an explanation."
But he made a fatal mistake.
He thought he was talking to Ivy Dillard, the soft girl who cried when she skinned her knees.
He didn't notice the town car waiting at the curb, or the man stepping out of it.
Before Clayton's fingers could graze my coat, a hand made of steel caught his wrist.
Collin Richardson, the most feared Capo in Chicago, stepped between us.
"Touch my wife again," Collin whispered, his voice promising violence. "And you lose the hand."
I smiled at the terror draining the color from Clayton's face.
I didn't come back from the dead to explain myself.
I came back to bury them.
7.5
I was the adopted daughter of the wealthy Ruiz family, but the moment their true heir appeared, I was thrown away like trash.
Not long after being kicked out, my adoptive father and uncle hired a hitman to stage a fatal car crash on Mulholland Drive.
Pinned under an overturned Porsche with a shattered leg, I watched the hitman point a suppressed pistol between my eyes.
"The Ruiz family sends their regards."
Before this, my reputation had already been completely destroyed by a director, a pop idol, and a reality TV star, leaving me blacklisted and universally hated.
My adoptive family didn't just want me ruined; they wanted me permanently silenced to tie up loose ends.
The hitman pulled the trigger, and the original Alicia died in despair, tasting only rain and blood.
Until her last breath, she didn't understand.
Why did the family she loved treat her like a disposable object? Why did those three men maliciously frame her and turn the world against her?
Opening my eyes again, the fear was gone, replaced by an ancient, cosmic indifference.
I, the Arbiter, had taken over this deceased vessel.
Moving faster than the human eye, I crushed the hitman's steel gun with my bare hand and turned his soul into dust.
Looking at the memories of those who wronged this girl, I signed a contract for the very reality show they were starring in.
Since I borrowed this body, taking out the trash is a required courtesy.
8.2
At my ten-week ultrasound, I was supposed to be celebrating the future of the Falcone family. I was Isabella Falcone, wife to the most powerful Don in the south.
But when the nurse called my name, the man who stood up beside his pregnant mistress was my husband.
In the sterile silence of that waiting room, he chose her. He later confessed he was being blackmailed by her family-a weakness that was a death sentence in our world. That night, he moved his mistress into our home, into my bedroom, and locked me away like a prisoner in the staff quarters. He wasn't imprisoning his wife; he was guarding an asset. He needed the legitimate heir I carried to save his crumbling empire.
His betrayal was absolute when his own mother and my adoptive parents arrived while he was away. They forced me to sign divorce papers, then told me they were taking me to a clinic. His mother pulled out a gun and pointed not at my head, but at my stomach.
"We're terminating this complication," she said coldly.
As they dragged me from the house, my world went dark. But through the haze, I saw a fleet of black cars blocking the gate. An army of men poured out, led by a face I had only ever seen in a photograph. Days earlier, locked in my room, I made a single phone call to the only man more powerful than my husband: my biological father, the head of the Chicago Outfit. And he had come to collect his daughter.
8.5
"You are getting married, huh?" A shrill voice asked me from behind. "You don't look happy.'
"It's a complicated situati..." He cut me off.
"I can make you happy."
My eyes darted between his lips and eyes, he noticed my indecision and locked his lips with mine.
While battling with betrayal, Iris melts into a mafia's touch without knowing who he is. Now she must bear all the consequences that follow.
7.4
I was only fifteen when my venomous family orchestrated my doom by forcing me into an arranged marriage with mafia heir Javier Velasquez.
On our wedding night, Javier paraded strippers into our suite to show his absolute contempt, turning me into the ultimate joke of the underworld overnight.
But being a joke was a luxury compared to what came next.
Three years later, Javier needed to be a widower to marry into a heavily armed family and secure their backing for a coup.
He didn't grant me the mercy of a bullet.
Instead, he dragged me to an abandoned underground safehouse, locked me in the damp, rotting dark, and told the world I had been assassinated.
For six months, I starved in that dungeon, surviving only on the desperate hope that my family was safe.
Then, on the day of his lavish new wedding, a cruel maid kicked a plate of spoiled food onto my floor and delivered the final, fatal blow.
"Annabel is dead. Pined away and died of a broken heart two weeks ago."
My gentle mother was dead, all because she actually believed his lie about my tragic murder.
Driven by pure agony and an all-consuming hatred, I shattered crates of smuggled chemical solvents and struck a match, letting the roaring inferno turn their bloody wedding into my funeral pyre.
I thought the fire was the end.
But when I opened my eyes, the suffocating smoke vanished, replaced by the biting chill of a Long Island winter.
I was standing in the snow, back on the exact day my descent into hell began.
This time, the terrified girl was dead, and I would use their own ruthless rules to tear their empire apart.
9.8
Three women, three brothers, a single, crumpled dollar bill.
Alina's world shatters the moment she's auctioned off-and claimed by the powerful Hawthorne brothers.
Thrown into Adrian Hawthorne's cold, dangerous world, she becomes his to control... his to protect... and, terrifyingly, his to desire. He's ruthless, possessive, and hiding secrets that could destroy them both. But the deeper she falls into his world, the harder it becomes to tell if she's his prisoner-or something far more dangerous.
Because the Hawthorne brothers don't just take.
They keep.
Viviane has spent her life surviving, so when Julian Hawthorne "buys" her freedom, she knows better than to trust it. Men like him don't save people-they collect them. But Julian isn't as simple as he pretends to be, and the deeper she's pulled into his world, the more dangerous it becomes to walk away.
Especially when she realizes she might be the only thing he's ever been willing to fight for.
Lena doesn't belong to anyone-and she intends to keep it that way. Brilliant, guarded, and hiding more than anyone suspects, she enters Lucien Hawthorne's world on her own terms. But Lucien doesn't play fair, and he doesn't let go.
When her past comes crashing back, Lena is forced to face the one thing she's been running from: trusting someone who could destroy her... or save her.
Three women. Three choices.Stay. Fight.
Or burn it all down.
Because being sold was only the beginning.