Xi Yue

Angel was slammed onto the freezing stone slabs of the central square, surrounded by the deafening, mocking laughter of her clan. Her own sister, Jasmine, stood over her with a look of pure malice, loudly and falsely accusing Angel of sneaking into the Chief's tent to seduce him. Then, Al Stein, the man who had sworn to be her mate, stepped out of the crowd with a twisted face of disgust. "You're a genetic reject. You can't give me children. You're useless." He threw their bone mate ring hard at her face, cutting her cheek, as the crowd roared for her blood. Without a trial, the High Oracle stripped her of her citizenship and sentenced her to eternal exile in the deadly wasteland. To make her punishment a complete joke, the guards dragged out a comatose, dying outcast named Kain, slicing Angel's finger to force a mate bond between the two defects. They were tossed out into the raging blizzard like discarded corpses, the heavy steel gates slamming shut behind them, cutting off all light and warmth. Angel crawled through the snow, her vision blurring from extreme starvation and the biting wind, suffocating under the weight of their lies. Why did her own blood frame her? Why did her mate throw her away to die in the ice? Just as the freezing shadow of death wrapped around her, a sharp, mechanical voice exploded in her mind. [Genetic Evolution Codex activated. Host Status: Legendary Kitsune Prime.] The despair evaporated from her chest, replaced by a burning vow to survive and make every single one of them pay.

For twelve years, I was King Damien's secret blade and his most loyal shadow. I took silver daggers to my chest and shed my blood to clear his path to the throne, all for the promise that I would one day be his Luna. But at his victory feast, the man I loved held the hand of a highborn noblewoman and announced her as his fated mate. In front of the entire laughing court, Damien looked at me with absolute coldness. He publicly stripped me of my rank as his personal protector. "You are demoted to the Northern Wall." He threw a cheap iron guard's badge at my feet like I was a stray dog. Later that night, he kicked down my door, pinned me against the wall, and threatened to make me regret ever defying him with my silent obedience. He wanted me to cry, to beg, to show him I was still his pathetic, devoted pawn. It turned out that while I was suffering in the dark for him, he had been secretly spending his winters courting her. My twelve years of life-and-death sacrifices were nothing but a joke, a convenient stepping stone he was now desperate to throw away. I didn't shed a single tear. Instead, I crushed his family crest in my bleeding hand, packed my dagger, and climbed out the window into the night. I was done being his weapon. But just as I slipped into the shadows of the royal garden to escape the Citadel forever, a cold, commanding voice cut through the darkness. "Who's there?"

Elizbeth married the wealthy heir Carlton Wilkinson to save her grandfather's life's work. But on their wedding night, instead of a loving husband, she faced a cold tyrant. He forced her to sign a brutal prenup, stripped her of all family rights, and banished her to a dingy guest room. He was convinced she was just a pathetic, gold-digging liar. When a catastrophic pain attack drove Carlton to smash his own head against the wall, Elizbeth rushed in to save him using her specialized acupuncture. She risked her life to calm his spasming nerves. But the moment he woke up, he nearly choked her to death. He threw her against the wall, bleeding and bruised, accusing her of using cheap parlor tricks to poison him. The next morning, his greedy relatives openly mocked her cheap clothes, waiting like vultures for Carlton to drop dead so they could steal his fortune. Elizbeth was humiliated and terrified, but she soon discovered a classified secret. Carlton was a former Delta Force operator slowly going mad from an undetectable weaponized biotoxin. The poison made him paranoid and violent. He would rather die in agony than accept help from a woman he despised. Begged by his desperate grandfather, Elizbeth knew she had to cure him in the shadows. At 1:00 AM, she slipped a heavy, odorless sedative into his water and sneaked into his pitch-black bedroom to begin the detox. But as her silver needle hovered over his skin, a massive hand shot out and pinned her violently to the mattress. "How much did they pay you to poison me?" he hissed in the dark, his eyes wide awake and blazing with murderous fury.

The harsh glare of the spotlight hit Harper's custom wedding dress as she smiled at her groom. But a single phone call from his mistress, Lila, made Chase violently shove his way down the aisle and sprint out of the hotel. He left Harper to face the flashing cameras and the mockery of hundreds of guests. Her mother-in-law dragged her into a hallway and slapped her hard across the face. "You cannot even keep your own man in the room. You are making a mockery of this family." When Harper rushed to the hospital, Chase blamed her for Lila's theatrical, fake miscarriage. He threatened to pull every cent of capital from Harper's investment firm if she dared to walk away. The Young family then used the media to frame Harper, turning her into a public pariah who viciously "killed" an unborn child. Mobbed by ruthless paparazzi, Harper was pushed into the freezing rain, her knees bleeding on the concrete. She couldn't accept that her entire life and career were being destroyed by a mistress's pathetic lie. When Chase later tried to buy her silence with a pink diamond—the exact same one he had just gifted Lila—her remaining love turned to absolute ice. But fate intervened when she was rescued from the mob by Antoni Donovan, the most ruthless billionaire on Wall Street and her biggest corporate rival. Discovering that Antoni was actually her best friend's older brother, a dangerous smile spread across Harper's face. She picked up his gold-lettered business card. She was done being the victim; she was going to use the wolf of Wall Street to crush her ex-husband.

Aria Mcgee was the unwanted second daughter of a decaying Long Island family. To save their bankrupt corporation, her father and older sister drugged her. They shoved her into a town car and delivered her to a ruthless Wall Street billionaire's bed like a piece of meat. They expected her to be the perfect sacrifice. The original Aria had no access to her own trust fund and was forced to live in a windowless broom closet. Even worse, a cold, synthetic System voice echoed in her skull, demanding she play the tragic, helpless female lead. It ordered her to endure her family's abuse and suffer the billionaire's humiliation to force a pathetic romance plotline. "Host must follow the tragic trajectory and achieve the ultimate painful romance." But the soul that woke up in that bed wasn't a weak, frightened girl. She was a dead Hollywood Oscar-winning actress. Why would a top-tier professional ever agree to play the weeping victim in such a garbage, B-list script? Instead of trembling in fear as the System commanded, Aria looked at the billionaire and smiled. Using her flawless acting skills, she shattered his ego, extracted a hundred thousand dollars, and walked right out the door. Now, she was heading back to the Mcgee estate, ready to rip her money from her father's greedy hands and burn her sister's life to the ground.

I was accused of pushing my sister down the stairs, facing a highly publicized second-degree murder charge. My billionaire husband, Lachlan, insisted on a private psychiatric evaluation. I thought he was trying to build a medical defense to save me. But through a cracked door, I overheard the psychiatrist talking to Lachlan's crisis PR team. Lachlan had bribed the doctor to officially diagnose me with severe paranoid schizophrenia. The plan was flawless. They were going to involuntarily lock me in an asylum and strip me of my voting rights to steal my trust fund. Worse, Lachlan's team leaked my clinic photos to the press, using my "violent mental breakdown" to perfectly cover up his midnight hotel rendezvous with a Hollywood starlet. I was forced to swallow heavy sedatives while the entire world labeled me a crazy, toxic wife. As the chemical fog dragged me into terrifying nightmares, I realized this family had always used me as their scapegoat, just like my adoptive mother did when I was a child. They thought the drugs, the public ruin, and the isolation would break me into quiet submission. But I secretly recorded the doctor's corrupt phone call. I went home, uploaded my million-dollar custom wedding dress to an auction site for exactly one dollar, and prepared to expose the Langley family's deadliest, bloodiest secret.

I took the fall for my sister and endured three years of torment in prison. My knee was shattered, my body covered in scars, and I almost lost my life in that "accident". On the day I was released, clinging to the last shred of hope, I ran toward my fiancé Ford’s Maybach—only to hear his cold voice: "Your existence is just a nuisance."​ It turned out that the beatings and cigarette burns in prison were all arranged by him, paid for with his money. It turned out that the sister I had protected with all my heart had long been switching my medicine behind my back, hoping I would be completely crippled.​ At the family gala, they joined hands to strip me bare in front of the flashing camera lights. My father slapped me hard across the face and roared: "Why didn’t you just die in prison?"​ I smiled and tore apart my tattered dress, then dialed the number I had hidden in my heart for three years—the man who only understood blood for blood, his voice hoarse and alluring: "Turn around."​ This time, I will no longer be a toy to be manipulated. I will tear off their masks and burn the Willis family to the ground.​ By the way, I will take back everything that belongs to me—including him, the one hiding in the shadows.

My father didn’t look at me like a daughter; he looked at me like a bad loan he needed to settle. After five years of being nothing but a monthly expense on his ledger, I was shoved back into the Quinn mansion, smelling the expensive lavender that masked the rot beneath the floorboards. He slammed a prenuptial agreement onto the mahogany table and gave me a heartless ultimatum. "Sign it and marry Harrison Sterling, or I call the care facility in ten minutes and tell them to pull the plug on your mother's life support." My stepmother Lydia told me I should be grateful for this "future," while my stepsister Tiffany kicked a bag with her old, hideous wedding dress at my feet. They told me I was born for nothing but to pay off their debts. I was shipped off in the rain to the Sterling estate, a stone fortress where the housekeeper treated me like a servant and locked me in a pitch-black room. Inside, my new husband—a man rumored to be a blind, unstable monster—hurled a crystal glass at my head and tried to strangle me with his bare hands. I could feel the tremors in his grip and the sickly-sweet smell of neurotoxins on his breath. I realized then that Harrison wasn't the master of this house; he was a specimen in a jar, being systematically poisoned by his own family while cameras watched his every move. My own father had sold me into a death trap, thinking I was just a desperate girl with nowhere else to go. But they didn't know I had been living a double life as a medical prodigy who graduated from Johns Hopkins at nineteen. I pinned my "monster" husband to the floor, pulled a set of silver acupuncture needles from the hem of my dress, and made him a deal. "I’ll give you your eyes back, and in exchange, you help me burn both our families to the ground."

I stood in the shadows of the hospital, watching my wife kiss another man while my grandmother lay dying upstairs. Just minutes ago, Erlene had snapped at me over the phone, calling me a "needy child" and claiming she was stuck at a business meeting across town. Now, she was stepping out of a red Porsche in a designer dress, wrapped in the arms of Andrew Hanson, the man who was supposed to be her "sick friend." "I'm not going up," Erlene said coldly when I confronted her in the rain. "I don't like watching people die. It's depressing. Tell her I came by." She looked at my soaked, cheap hoodie and my scuffed sneakers with pure disgust before turning her back on me to return to her lover’s side. I had to go back to the ICU alone and lie to my grandmother with her final breath, telling her Erlene was waiting just outside the door. As the heart monitor flatlined at 2:14 AM, my phone buzzed with a call from my mother-in-law, who screamed that I was a "worthless loser" and demanded I sign divorce papers immediately so her daughter could finally be with a "real man." For three years, I lived as a ghost, a poor driver who endured their insults and hid my true identity just to have a simple life with the woman I loved. I sacrificed my future for a family that treated me like a stray dog, only for them to spit on me while I held my grandmother’s cold hand. Why did I stay in the shadows for so long? Why did I let these people believe they could crush me under their expensive heels? I walked out of that hospital and threw my thick, black glasses onto the wet asphalt, watching a delivery truck grind them into dust. I didn't need the disguise anymore. I drove my rusted Honda to the towering iron gates of the George Estate, where the security team dropped their batons and snapped into a terrified salute. My father was waiting on the marble steps, but I wasn't there for a peaceful reunion. I was there to reclaim my inheritance and make sure Erlene realized exactly what she had thrown away.

The last thing I remembered from that life was the metallic taste of blood. Mark' s fists felt like concrete blocks, crushing my ribs with every blow. Through the haze of pain, I saw Sarah by the warehouse door, holding her son. She watched me die, her beautiful face blank, her eyes cold and empty. She had chosen him, the gangster, the man now beating me to death, over me. After twenty years of trying to save her, sacrificing everything, her betrayal was the final, most painful blow. Then, nothing, until a phone started ringing. I snapped awake in my childhood bedroom not aching, not broken. My old flip phone flashed a familiar name: Sarah' s Mom. I knew this call. This was the night Sarah got into trouble with Mark. The night her parents begged me to use my college savings to bail her out. Last time, I' d said yes, draining my account and giving up my dream school. This time, I took a steadying breath. "No." The line went silent. "What? Alex, what do you mean, no? This is Sarah we' re talking about." "She made her choices. She needs to face the consequences. I' m not getting involved." A weight I didn' t know I was carrying for two decades lifted. "I have my own life to think about. I' m sorry." I hung up, staring at my unbroken hands, the hands of an eighteen-year-old with a future I was taking back.

The crystal chandeliers of the Grand Ballroom reflected in the champagne, but the light felt cold. My husband, Mark, was across the room, his eyes fixed on Lily, the young intern who had become his entire world. I walked towards them, the whispers of the crowd following me. He handed me a pre-prepared divorce settlement. "I\'m going to marry Lily," he said, loud enough for those nearby to hear. Then, with a cruel twist of his lips, he added, "Consider our partnership terminated. Effective immediately." In the weeks that followed, Mark systematically dismantled my family' s business. He orchestrated a public scandal, leaking fabricated documents that implicated my father in fraud. My father had a heart attack. My mother aged a decade overnight. I sat by my father' s hospital bed, watching the news report on Mark and Lily' s engagement. That' s when I truly broke. Then, a blinding flash of light. A gut-wrenching pull. I gasped, my eyes flying open. The date on my phone was October 12th. The day I found Lily' s photo on his computer. The day the nightmare began. I was back. The memory of my parents' ruined faces, of my father in that hospital bed, was burned into my mind. It was not a dream. It was a warning. I had a second chance. Not for revenge. Not to win him back. For survival.

The searing pain was the last thing I knew. A sharp, cold metal plunging into my belly, again and again. My best friend, Tara, was screaming, a twisted rage on her face I' d never seen before, "Why couldn't it have been you? You have everything!" Her husband, Brian, held the knife, his eyes empty. I watched my own blood pool on my marble floor as they staged a home invasion, taking over my life, my home, my wealth. I watched my husband, shattered by grief, take his own life. My baby, my husband, me – all of it, gone. I died, clutching to the injustice of it all, wondering how the people I loved most could betray me so absolutely. Why did they hate me so much just for having what they wanted? Then I woke up, alive, in my Silicon Valley home, my hand resting on my still-pregnant belly. And the front door opened, revealing Tara and Brian, suitcases in hand, their smiles dripping with false sweetness.

I had just closed a nine-figure deal, the kind that sets your family up for generations. But when I got home, exhausted and suffering a heart attack, my wife and daughter were too busy recording TikToks and live streams to even notice. As I collapsed, gasping for breath, my wife told me my "negative energy was messing with her aura." I had to dial 911 myself, my family completely oblivious, leaving me to die on the floor. Waking up alone in the hospital, I found not concerned calls, but credit card alerts for lavish shopping sprees. They weren't worried; they were celebrating. Then, at Malibu, I saw my wife with her "life coach" lover as she handed me divorce papers, and my daughter told me he was more of a father than I ever was. My world shattered, I saw the truth: every sacrifice for them had been a lie. I had given my life, my fortune, all of it, to people who only saw me as an ATM. But the real shock came with a sealed envelope: 0.00% paternity. The daughter I had raised for seventeen years wasn't mine. The pain burned away the old me, leaving behind a cold, calculating resolve. I froze their accounts, repossessed their luxuries, and hired a PI to expose the "life coach" as a low-level con artist with massive gambling debts. When they came begging, I showed them the paternity test and his criminal record, then I called 911 on him for kidnapping them-his desperate attempt for ransom money. I set up a small trust for Molly, enough only for community college, sealing off my past. Then, I sold my company, bought a muscle car, and drove cross-country, ready to finally live for myself. I didn't seek revenge; I orchestrated justice.

The day of my SATs, my first step toward freedom, began with a slap. Our Texas ranch was a river of mud, and the testing center was twenty miles away. My father, a self-made oil tycoon, didn' t even look up as I begged for fifty dollars. "Fifty dollars? Do you think money grows on trees, Gabrielle?" he sneered. Then came the slap, hard and fast, echoing through our cavernous living room. "Lazy and entitled," he spat, stealing the seventeen dollars I' d painstakingly saved. He kicked me out into the storm, telling me not to return until I'd learned the value of a dollar. My brother, Andrew, stood by, his face a mask of indifference. My mother was upstairs, oblivious, probably admiring a new diamond. As I trudged through the mud, a news report on our giant billboard flashed. It showed my family smiling on a stage, celebrating a one-million-dollar donation to an arts program in honor of my adopted sister, Molly. Her achievement? A C+ in art. They had just slapped me and thrown me out for a fifty-dollar ride to the most important exam of my life. The image of their smiling faces burned into my mind, washing away the tears I didn' t even realize I was crying. Defeated, I reached the testing center, only to find the doors locked. I tore my soggy admission ticket into tiny pieces, letting the rain carry them away. Something inside me broke. Or maybe, it finally healed.

Ethan Miller always felt like a ghost, invisible in his own home. He yearned for his biological parents' love, but their affection, their very sight, was reserved for his adopted brother, Kyle – the golden boy who perfectly filled the void Ethan had left. Then, terror struck. He was kidnapped, brutally tormented. A desperate call reached his FBI profiler father, who, in Ethan' s darkest hour, dismissed him as a mere nuisance: "Your brother's debate is what matters today!" Days later, Ethan's body was found, brutally murdered. His own parents-an FBI agent and a medical examiner-worked the scene, professionally examining the unrecognizable remains. They handled his personal effects, his ruined clothing, utterly blind to the son they held in their hands, prioritizing another' s success over his very life. How could they not see him? How could he be so utterly erased, dismissed even in death, by the people who gave him life? The gut-wrenching irony was an agony even for a ghost. But the truth couldn't stay buried forever. A small receipt and security footage would shatter their denial, forcing them to confront the unrecognizable horror. And when the kidnapper' s chilling confession revealed Kyle' s calculated betrayal as the mastermind, their perfect family would finally, explosively, unravel before the world.

It was Valentine's Day, also my daughter Lily's fifth birthday, and our San Francisco house buzzed with her party. Her innocent wish, spoken in perfect French, shattered my world: "I wish Mommy and Daddy would divorce, and Uncle Julian could be my new daddy." My wife Izzy confirmed her chilling desire, and the subsequent divorce papers, the mere fifty-million-dollar check, and pervasive public humiliation felt like the final blows. Every person I cared for-my wife, my daughter, my very own parents-echoed the same brutal sentiment: I was nothing but a convenience, easily discarded. Years of devotion, of caring for Izzy during her coma and raising Lily, yielded only cold dismissals and public scorn. My heart, already weakened by a secret chronic illness, shattered repeatedly, leaving me hollowed out and completely unvalued. Was my loyalty a curse? Had I truly been nothing but a 'placeholder'? With nothing left but bitter pain, a mysterious entity offered an 'exit'-a chance to leave this life behind. But death, it seemed, was merely a new beginning. I awoke to a reality where I was reborn, the highly respected screenwriter Ethan Cole, cured of my past ailments. Until a ghost from my previous life, my ex-wife and daughter, appeared, ready to 'reconquer' me. This time, the game was on my terms.

Molly's marriage with Eric was not made out of love—it was merely an arrangement. It all stemmed from her beauty that held an uncanny resemblance to his late sister. He never gave much thought to her until she found out that she was seducing his brother. Enraged, he made it a point to make her everyday life miserable. However, something he was not prepared for happened—he fell head over heels in love with her. The once domineering CEO became vulnerable, dedicating his time to adoring her, spoiling her, and loving her.

Lillian woke in a werecreature universe as a total loser. Good news was that women ruled here and could take multiple mates, yet she still ended up as the one everyone looked down on. Compared to her talented sister at every turn, she watched her first match get stolen and her next four mates reject her without mercy. The first mate was the King of Succubine himself. On their very first meeting, he warned Lillian that he was only staying long enough to recover from his injuries-and that there could never be anything between them. The second mate was a merman. He took one look at her and said he had no interest in a loser like her, tossing her some cash so she could break off their bond herself. The third mate was the progenitor vampire-over a thousand years old. He admitted to admiring her sister instead and made it clear he had no interest in a layabout like Lillian. Lillian cut every bond and chose her own path instead. But as she rose higher and higher, those same men returned, full of regret and begging her to look at them again. The fourth mate was a werewolf Lillian had rescued from an underground fighting ring. She thought he might actually stay-until he revealed himself as royalty. And of course, he wanted to break their bond for more power.

I woke up to the stench of rust and rotting flesh, no longer a master botanist who commanded life itself, but a D-class exile dumped on a wasteland planet. Memories that weren't mine flooded in. I was framed by my stepsister, betrayed by my fiancé, and banished by my own family to the Ashfall Peninsula to die. The original girl actually starved to death in despair. The moment I opened my eyes, a scavenger tried to smash my skull with a rusty pipe just to eat me. After I killed him to survive, I discovered a harsher truth: in this universe, plant seeds are classified as A-level strategic resources, completely monopolized by the Imperium. But the universe had a sick sense of humor. A mandatory background scan suddenly triggered a galactic broadcast: I, the exiled trash, was a perfect genetic match for the Imperium's top war hero, General Alexander Orr. The family that ruthlessly erased my existence instantly saw me as a golden ticket. My cheating ex-fiancé was dispatched to drag me back, furious that his "property" was matched with someone else. They all thought I was still that weak, naive girl they could manipulate. But as I held the pure, glowing Life Source Crystals I had secretly extracted from the scrap heap, a cold smile crept onto my face. "I didn't come here to die. I came here to build an empire." I turned my back on the galactic broadcast and stepped into the deadly wilderness.

My engagement to Kile, the heir of House Golden, was witnessed by the Duke himself. I thought my days as a helpless orphan were over. But right before our wedding, he coldly informed me that my status was being revoked. I was to enter his family as a lesser consort. The title of primary wife was being given to his lover, Journey. She hid behind Kile, wearing a spotless white dress and trembling like a fragile lotus. "Cassie, please don't blame him, I can live without a title," she cried, playing the perfect victim. Kile shielded her, glaring at me with pure disgust, shouting that I was being completely unreasonable. The next day, the entire Elder Council cornered me in their grand hall. They told me that as a "Dragonless" nobody, I should be immensely grateful for any scrap they threw my way. They all stared at me, waiting for me to swallow my pride and accept a lifetime of humiliation. They thought I was entirely broken. They thought I had no backing and no choice but to bow down to their cruelty. Instead, I looked straight at the Chief Elder and smiled. "I refuse to be a lesser consort," I announced clearly, watching Kile's smug expression freeze. "But to preserve our families' dignity, I will fulfill the contract." I looked right into Kile's shocked eyes. "I will marry your dead older brother, Lord Ayden."

I took a blood-binding curse to save my younger sister Danae, ruining my magic affinity forever. Instead of gratitude, she stole our mother's token and convinced our father to dump me at a school for magical rejects. In my past life, I actually believed her sweet lies. I thought she was shielding me from the cruel aristocratic academies. I went to that unfashionable boarding school, only to be ground into dust by rogue curses and treated like garbage. Meanwhile, she lived in a palace, surrounded by devoted admirers and endless luxury. When I was finally dragged to the execution pyre, my own father and sister stood in the high stands, watching me burn alive with cold satisfaction. I died screaming in agony, clawing at my scorched skin, utterly betrayed by the family I had bled for. Until the flames consumed me, I didn't understand. Why did the sister I sacrificed everything for want me dead? Why was my devotion rewarded with a fiery grave? Opening my eyes again, I was back on the very morning of my departure to that trash magic school. Danae walked into my room with a warm mug of milk, a razor-thin smear of satisfaction flashing across her lips. She thought she was the only one who had returned to the past. "Sister, you look terrible. Did you have that nightmare again?" This time, I will gladly take the train to the school of rejects. Not to hide in shame, but to build an altar of bone and ruin out of everyone who burned me alive.

To save her husband from his berserk agony, Lyra braved a deadly radiation storm to deliver a rare soothing crystal. In return, she watched him deploy his highest-tier energy shield to protect a hypocritical white lotus and Lyra's own ungrateful daughter, leaving Lyra to rot in the toxic mud. "A useless E-class piece of trash who can't even protect herself. Stop embarrassing me." The high-and-mighty Commander sneered, ruthlessly crushing her hard-won crystal under his heavy boot. Even the daughter she had drained her life force to save looked at her with pure disgust: "Auntie Sylvia is ten thousand times better than you. You're just garbage!" In that moment, Lyra's heart went completely dead. Without shedding a single tear, she decisively signed the Mate Contract Termination and walked away. Everyone thought that without the Commander's protection, this E-class weakling wouldn't survive three days. However, the near-death agony of severing the soul bond unexpectedly shattered her genetic shackles! Blinding divine light tore through the galaxy as the universe's only SSS-class "Ultimate Adapter" terrifyingly awakened! Absolute stellar defense, soul remolding, supreme beast subjugation... With a mere thought, her will made billions of stars tremble and grind to a halt, turning the galaxy's most brutal S-class Pirate Lord into a fanatic, groveling hound at her feet! When her arrogant ex-husband finally learns the truth-kneeling in the mud like a stray dog, vomiting blood as he is ruthlessly crushed by her universe-shattering divine pressure-he will realize exactly what he destroyed with his own hands. He didn't throw away a parasite; he discarded the sole true God of the entire universe!

She died in the apocalypse-betrayed, abandoned, and torn apart by the infected. Then she woke up. Two months before the end of the world. Twenty-two years old again. And on her wrist, a wooden bracelet that her mother had left behind. The bracelet came with a system. A system that eats gold. With enough gold, she can unlock infinite storage for food, water, weapons-anything she needs to survive. The super-hurricane, the floods, the insect plagues, the volcanic winter, the scorching heat... she knows exactly what's coming. While the world sleeps, Joanna shops. She drains her aunt's bank account, maxes out every loan she can find, and buys out half the city. The apocalypse is coming. She'll be ready. But when the chaos begins, the wolves come crawling back-relatives who sold her, friends who betrayed her, a father who abandoned her. They want her food. Her water. Her mercy. Joanna has a different plan. "Why don't you decide who dies first?"

On my wedding day, I caught my fiancé in my stepsister's arms. She was pregnant with his child. And instead of begging for forgiveness, Damian Harrison laughed in my face. He admitted he had always planned to marry me, dump me in some forgotten country estate, and keep my stepsister as the woman he truly loved. So I burned my wedding veil in front of the entire Harrison family and walked away. That should have been the end of it. Instead, Damian's mother sent armed men after me. Why? Because I was a Dragonless nobody from the borderlands, and in her eyes, humiliating a Harrison was a crime worse than her son's betrayal. I had no dragon blood. No powerful family willing to protect me. Not even my own father would risk offending the Harrisons for my sake. If I wanted to survive, I needed someone they feared more than they hated me. So I returned to the Harrison estate and made an outrageous demand. I would marry Damian's uncle. Gideon Harrison-the legendary Dragon Lord, the kingdom's greatest war hero... and a man everyone believed was dead. Perfect. As his widow, I would outrank the man who betrayed me, become his aunt by marriage, and gain enough power to make every Harrison who humiliated me regret it. I signed the marriage pact without hesitation. Then a knight burst into the ancestral hall with impossible news. Gideon Harrison was alive. My dead husband wasn't dead. He was being brought home.

The darkness of the Yale archaeological dig site swallowed Eleanor whole, dropping her straight into a lethal, prehistoric jungle. Before she could even process the bizarre time jump, a massive prehistoric wolf attacked her, only for her to be saved-and immediately claimed-by Jace, a towering, blood-soaked savage chief who marked her as his mate. Dragged back to his primitive camp, her nightmare only escalated. When she used her modern first-aid kit to save a dying hunter whose stomach had been ripped open, the tribe didn't thank her. Instead, a jealous tribeswoman named Greta and a ruthless Shaman incited a violent, torch-wielding mob. "Burn the witch before we all die!" They marched on the Chief's cave, demanding Eleanor be burned alive, claiming her life-saving stitches and antibiotics were dark magic that would curse them all. Eleanor was terrified and furious. She had just pulled a man back from the brink of death using basic medical science, yet she was about to be slaughtered by a mindless mob simply because they couldn't understand her language. Was she really going to be burned at the stake for an act of pure salvation? But when the hunter's fever broke and he walked out alive, the angry mob dropped to their knees in absolute reverence. Looking at her dying lighter and finite supplies, Eleanor realized that fear wouldn't keep her alive in this brutal world. She pulled out her tactical pen, deciding to drag this savage tribe out of the dark ages herself.

I gave Kaelen Sterling everything. My fortune. My family's trust. Even the military secrets that should never have left my father's hands. He swore he loved me. Then he used me to destroy my entire family. My father was beheaded for treason. My brothers died on the battlefield. My sick mother coughed up blood until her final breath. And the fortune my mother had saved for me became the stepping stone Kaelen and his precious "savior," Jacqueline Byrd, used to climb into the highest circles of the kingdom. When there was nothing left to steal, Kaelen locked me inside an abandoned manor and set it on fire. Through the flames, I saw him holding Jacqueline in his arms. She was pregnant with his child. And she was wearing silk bought with my mother's dowry. "Burn it all," Kaelen said coldly. "Leave no trace." I died screaming his name. Then I opened my eyes. I was twenty again. Kaelen had just returned from the battlefield after being declared dead for two years—and standing beside him was Jacqueline, looking fragile and innocent as ever. "She saved my life," he told me. "You will accept her." In my last life, I did. This time, I slapped him across the face. Then I burned our marriage contract. They all thought grief had driven me mad. They had no idea I remembered everything. Every betrayal. Every secret. Every scandal that had not happened yet. I knew which noble houses would fall. I knew which princes would rise. I knew the hidden weaknesses of the people who would one day control the Dragon Court. And they had forgotten something else. I was never just a wealthy heiress. I knew herbs. I knew alchemy. I knew how to survive a royal court where one wrong move could cost an entire family its head. Kaelen wanted my fortune. Jacqueline wanted my place. My stepmother wanted my mother's power. And the men above them wanted to use House Croft as another piece on their board. Let them try. I died once as their pawn. This life, I will take back my family, my fortune, and every drop of blood they owe me. And when I am finished, I won't just survive the Dragon Court. I will rule it.

Jolie transmigrated into a high-tech universe ruled by beast-shifting Primals, only to wake up in the body of a "defective" female. With a Genetic Compatibility Index of zero, she was publicly discarded by her mandated military partner. Before she could even adapt, her stepmother drugged her with an illegal aphrodisiac and locked her in a pitch-black suite with that same ex-fiancé-now a feral, maddened beast. The family wanted her torn apart to permanently erase their embarrassment. But instead of dying, Jolie awakened a rare plant-manipulation power. She bound the raging General, drained his energy, robbed him blind, and fled to a remote farming planet. Just as she thought she was free, the Commonwealth system flashed a new mandate. They assigned her a new husband: Keanu Robertson, a psychotic assassin who had murdered his last three wives. The system wasn't giving her a partner; it was handing her a death warrant. Keanu despised females, especially a "useless" zero-GCI burden. He tracked her forged alias across the galaxy, descending upon her barren farm in the dead of night with pure murderous intent. How could a discarded, defective girl survive the most feared apex predator in the Shadow Sector? But as the legendary assassin stepped onto her property to finish the job, a mutated, neurotoxic vine whipped out and completely paralyzed him. Watching the massive killer crash face-first into the dirt, Jolie lowered her rifle and smiled. "Welcome home, husband."