Taming My Time-Traveling Lover in My Bed: The Savage King
I bought an antique four-poster bed at Sotheby's, said to be the final resting place of a long-dead European king.
A week later, I woke up to the thick smell of blood, only to find a massive, heavily wounded man in my bed holding a forged steel sword to my throat.
He was dressed in ruined velvet and gold, bleeding out from a massive abdominal gash. When I tried to save him with modern medicine, he called it sorcery and nearly choked me to death. He destroyed my expensive appliances, treating my home like a witch's lair. I thought he was a lunatic cosplayer who broke in, until he tossed me a massive ruby ring as a down payment for my help. I looked it up online. It was the lost coronation ring of King Cain the Cruel, valued at thirty million dollars.
I was terrified of this savage who could snap my neck in an instant. I couldn't comprehend how a tyrant who had been dead for 135 years was breathing in my attic, until he lay back down on the antique mattress and literally vanished into thin air before my eyes.
The bed was a time portal.
The police would lock him in a psych ward and confiscate the priceless artifact, leaving me with nothing but bloodstained sheets and trauma.
"I can give you more wealth than you can imagine."
So, when he reappeared and offered me the lost Fabergé eggs of his fallen empire in exchange for modern shelter, I didn't call 911. I took his hand and became the 21st-century gatekeeper for a time-traveling king.
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Chapter 1
The smell hit her first.
It wasn't the usual mustiness of her bedroom or the faint lavender of the sachets she kept in the linen closet. It was thick, metallic, and raw. It coated the back of her throat, pulling her up from the depths of a dreamless sleep.
Katherine opened her eyes, blinking against the darkness. The air conditioning hummed its steady rhythm, but a strange chill crept over her skin. She shivered, pulling the duvet tighter.
Her hand slid across the sheet to adjust her position, and her fingers brushed against something wet.
She froze.
It was cold. Sticky. It soaked into the fabric under her palm, clinging to her skin. A sickening slide of liquid against her knuckles.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. She snatched her hand back, sitting bolt upright in the bed. The movement made the liquid squelch beneath her.
She stared into the dark, her breath coming in short, shallow puffs. She reached out blindly, her fingers finding the brass lamp on the nightstand. She fumbled for the switch, her hands shaking so badly she nearly knocked it over.
Click.
Yellow light flooded the space, stinging her eyes. She looked down at her hand.
Red. Dark, wet, sticky red.
Blood.
A gasp tore from her throat. She scrambled backward, her spine pressing against the headboard of the massive four-poster bed. It was the bed she had bought just last week at Sotheby's—the supposed final resting place of some long-dead European king—and it dominated the attic-turned-master-suite she had renovated two years ago, the centerpiece of her private sanctuary. Now, it was a crime scene.
Her eyes drifted to the left.
A man lay beside her.
He was enormous, taking up more than half the mattress. He was dressed in what looked like a costume—dark velvet coat, gold embroidery, heavy fabrics that belonged in a museum. But the velvet was torn, and the gold thread was stained black with blood.
A low, ragged groan escaped his lips.
Panic seized her chest like a vice. Her throat closed up, choking off the scream that desperately wanted to come out. She couldn't make a sound. She could only stare as the man shifted, his face twisting in pain even in his unconscious state.
He was dying. Right there, in her bed.
She had to get out. She had to call the police.
She slid toward the edge of the mattress, moving inch by inch. Her feet touched the cold hardwood floor. She stood up, her legs trembling beneath her.
Her heel caught on the leg of a standing mirror.
Crash.
The mirror tipped over, the wood smacking against the floor with a deafening thud.
The man's eyes flew open.
They were a pale, piercing blue, the color of winter ice. And they were instantly alert, instantly violent.
Before Katherine could even draw a breath, his hand shot out. He grabbed something from the mattress beside him.
Steel flashed in the lamplight.
He struggled to sit up, hissing in pain as he propped himself against the headboard, ignoring the wound in his abdomen that immediately started gushing fresh blood. He raised a short, ornate sword, the blade gleaming with a deadly edge.
He pointed it directly at her throat.
"Who are you?" His voice was a coarse whisper, but the authority in it was absolute. It was a command, not a question.
Katherine pressed her back against the wall. The tip of the sword was less than an inch from her skin. She could feel the cold radiating from the steel.
Her mind raced, trying to process the impossible. A cosplayer? A lunatic escapee from a psych ward? A burglar who got hurt and broke into her house?
She looked at his clothes. The fabric was real velvet. The gold thread was actual gold. The sword wasn't plastic; it was forged steel. This wasn't a cheap Halloween costume.
His icy eyes swept the room, taking in the lamp, the air purifier humming in the corner, the electric outlets. Confusion and hostility warred in his gaze.
"What is this place?" he demanded, the sword inching closer. "A witch's lair?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Katherine choked out, her voice barely a whisper. "This is my home. I don't know how you got in."
His arm trembled. The loss of blood was taking its toll. His face was ashen, his lips tinged blue. But his grip on the sword didn't waver.
He was going to kill her, or he was going to die trying.
Her mind screamed at her to run, to call the police, but another, colder thought cut through the panic. The tabloids. "Davenport Heiress in Bloody Bedroom Brawl." Her family's name, her name, dragged through the mud. The scandal would be a stain she could never wash out. That thought, the terror of public humiliation, was a strange and powerful anchor in the storm of fear. She had to survive this, but she also had to control it.
She forced herself to meet his icy stare. She raised her hands slowly, showing him her palms.
"You're bleeding out," she said, her voice steadier than she felt. "You're going to die if you don't let someone help you."
His eyes narrowed, but he didn't strike.
"Maybe," she continued, taking a tiny risk, "maybe I can help you."
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8.3
When Eli is forced to enroll at Blackwood Academy, he thinks it is just another remote boarding school. But on his first night, he realizes the terrifying truth.
This school is a prison.
Trapped in endless, deadly time loops, students are forced to complete cruel, supernatural trials. Ghosts, cursed hallways, hidden rules, and unspeakable creatures hunt them after dark. The only way to stay alive is to solve mysteries, earn credits, and obey the academy's twisted commands.
No one remembers how they arrived.
No one has ever graduated.
No one leaves alive.
Eli must team up with other desperate students to uncover the academy's century-old secret. If they fail, they will be trapped in the nightmare forever.
At Blackwood Academy, survival is the only exam.
7.4
The house was a living inferno, the heat devouring the air in my lungs as I clutched my five-year-old daughter to my chest. Emily was dead weight, her skin already cooling even as the room turned into a furnace of orange and black.
Through the stinging smoke, I saw my husband, Kenney, crawling toward the door with a wet handkerchief pressed to his face. He didn't look back at the crib, and he didn't call my name; he was simply leaving us to burn.
I lunged forward and grabbed his ankle, my nightgown catching fire, but he didn't reach down to save me. He recoiled in horror at the sight of my burning hair and our dead child, kicking me back with a panicked shriek.
"Let go!" he shrieked.
I died as a massive, flaming timber snapped from the ceiling and crushed us both into silence. I couldn't believe that the man I loved would leave his family to die just to save his own skin, but the rage I felt was colder than the death that followed.
But then the burning stopped instantly, replaced by a cold so sharp it made my teeth ache. I gasped, jerking upright in my bed to find the velvet duvet cool under my palms and the nursery quiet, with Emily still breathing softly in her crib.
I had returned to the winter morning two years before the fire, the exact day Kenney finalized the deal to sell me to the King for a promotion. As Kenney stepped into the room with a practiced mask of concern, I realized I was no longer the victim of this story.
"A nightmare, my love?" he asked, reaching out to touch my shoulder.
I flinched away, my eyes burning with a hatred he couldn't yet understand. Tonight was the Winter Masquerade, the night he planned to offer me to the King as a prize, but this time, I was going to turn his social ladder into a gallows.
7.5
Five years ago, Alisson Ford's adoptive family drugged her and offered her to a repulsive old investor to save their failing company.
She escaped the trap, only to accidentally stumble into the bed of Jake Yates, the most terrifying and powerful billionaire in the city.
Months later, while she was painfully giving birth to triplets in a freezing basement, her adoptive sister Bella tracked her down. Bella violently snatched Alisson's firstborn son to pass off as her own ticket into the Yates family. Then, Bella smiled as her men poured gasoline over the mattress and set the room on fire, leaving Alisson and her two remaining newborns to burn alive.
Shielding her fragile babies with her own blistering skin in the roaring inferno, Alisson's despair turned into absolute, blood-soaked hatred. She couldn't fathom how the family she had trusted for years could steal her flesh and blood and condemn her to such a horrific death.
Five years later, Alisson returns to the city as a powerful trauma specialist. She steps right into Jake and Bella's grand engagement banquet, watching coldly as her five-year-old daughter runs straight up to the untouchable billionaire and hugs his leg.
"You are a bad daddy! You abandoned Mommy and us, and now you are going to marry an ugly old witch!"
8.8
Alaia Dudley spent her life playing the devoted partner, completely unaware that her fiancé Austen was sleeping with another woman.
She thought the worst he could do was break her heart, until she found herself pinned to a cold operating table.
Austen held her down with a cruel smirk while a scalpel sliced through her sternum.
They cracked her chest open while she was still fully conscious.
The agonizing pain of her heart being cut out burned into her nerve endings.
She realized then that to him, she was never a lover—just a spare organ, a boring piece of wood to be discarded the second his true love needed it.
She died in excruciating agony, choking on her own blood while the man she loved walked away with her heart.
Until her last breath, she didn't understand why she had to suffer so brutally.
Why did she waste her life begging for a monster's attention? Why did they get a happy ending while she was carved up like an animal?
But then, ice-cold water flooded her lungs, and Alaia violently broke the surface of her bathwater.
Her trembling fingers touched her smooth, flawless chest. No scars. Her heart was still beating.
The date on her phone glared back at her: it was exactly five years ago.
Tonight was the exact night Austen first took his mistress to a hotel room.
This time, she wouldn't just expose them. She would use Wall Street's most terrifying tyrant as her personal weapon to strip them of everything they had.
9.4
I was lying in a sterile hospital room, dying of cancer, with only a fake infertility report to keep me company.
Right before my heart monitor flatlined, a stranger walked in and handed me a medical file.
He told me that my fiancé, Garret, had zero sperm viability. The baby my adoptive sister, Beryl, was carrying wasn't his.
When Beryl got pregnant years ago, my adoptive parents forced me to break my engagement and take the blame for being barren.
I was discarded by Garret, mocked by Beryl's triumphant smiles, and kicked out of the house.
I was left to rot alone in a hospital bed while they lived the perfect life stolen from me.
My entire existence had been a cage built on a single, disgusting lie.
The anger burned away my despair. Why was I the only one who didn't know?
Why did I let them use me as a maid and a shield for their filthy secrets?
As the darkness swallowed me, I prayed for just one more chance.
I opened my eyes to the sound of my adoptive mother yelling my name.
The calendar on the wall read March 15, 2019—the exact day they forced me to give up Garret.
This time, I didn't cry or beg.
"You want Beryl to have Garret? Fine," I told my shocked adoptive parents. "But I want a cash buyout, and we are legally severing this adoption."
Then, I set my sights on Douglass Ward—the stranger from the hospital room.
7.1
The powerful white wolf promised to return but no one could predict how subtle and humble her return would be. They expect a great appearance and ignore a quiet and unpredictable arrival and it's a legendary fact that whoever mates with her, becomes the most powerful Lycan to ever exist. Many Alphas and Lycans await the return of the Legendary white wolf and when Alpha Kasper of the Cliffwood pack discovered that his destined mate from the moon goddess for him was the wolfless Omega Amelia, daughter of the Pack's Beta, he tortured her and rejected her. And just when he thought she wouldn't survive his rejection, a twist followed, he realised that his rejected mate was the long awaited White wolf, his world came crashing and a curse was left behind....