COMPLETED✔️ What follows is a violent clash of worlds, where elegance is destroyed by brutality and innocence is trapped by a darkness far deeper and more dangerous than anything she imagined. Her dream of becoming the greatest ballerina, praised by her parents and supported by a loving friend was once the perfect vision of her life. But fate with its cold indifference doesn't follow the paths we choose. Instead it controls our lives. In one sudden turn her world is flipped upside down and she meets a man who is nothing like the one she dreamed of. He is ruthless, consumed by his own ego, a mystery to all who encounter him. His abilities are beyond comparison, his morals fractured and ambiguous, and his true intentions buried beneath a veil of darkness. Where once she believed her life was guided by passion and elegance, she now finds herself thrust into a world governed by dominance and brutality, where survival no longer hinges on talent or grace but on submission to a far more unforgiving force.

If someone offers to pay off your student loans in exchange for signing a non-disclosure agreement and moving into the middle of nowhere, you should probably ask more questions. I didn't. I was a broke grad student desperate for a lifeline, and the contract offered by the elusive billionaire was too good to pass up. My job was simple: live in a sprawling, heavily fortified glass mansion in the mountains, teach his eight-year-old daughter French and mathematics, and never, ever go into the West Wing of the house. I thought my new boss was just an eccentric, reclusive tech genius. He is devastatingly handsome, entirely silent, and moves through the mansion like a predatory ghost. He watches me with cold, pale eyes that make my pulse race for all the wrong reasons, but he is a devoted father, and the paychecks clear every week. I thought I was safe in his snowbound sanctuary. Until the night I accidentally wake up, walk into the wrong room, and see my quiet, eccentric boss standing over a man bleeding out on a plastic tarp, holding a suppressed pistol with the casual grace of a reaper. He isn't a tech genius. He is the head of the most ruthless Russo-American syndicate on the continent, and I have just seen exactly what he does in the dark. I know too much. I am a liability. I should be dead. But as the Don of the syndicate wipes the blood from his hands and locks the heavy steel doors of the mansion, trapping me inside with him, I realize that dying might have been the easier option. Because he doesn't want to silence me. He wants to keep me.

2025 WATTY'S SHORTLIST Syerin Cayde has spent her life in the shadows, a deadly assassin who knows how to survive in a world that shows no mercy. But everything changes when a cursed mark - the Bloodmark - burns itself into her skin during a mission gone wrong. It's a symbol of power, of destiny, and of death - a mark that hasn't been seen in centuries. A curse that if found by anyone would end with her death. There have been legends, rumours, that the Bloodmark was the mark of the Goddess of Blood and if one bear the mark, they would have one of the god's power. However, it is also said that the power is enough to make one explode, die. Now hunted by forces she doesn't understand, Syerin is dragged to Ironspire, a fortress where the Ascension Trials unfolds. The prize? The crown of Velthar - and unimaginable power. The cost? Everything. Forced into a deadly competition alongside warriors, heirs, and monsters, Syerin must fight to keep her secret hidden. But as the mark begins to awaken, whispering of the ancient gods imprisoned beneath Ironspire, Syerin realises the tournament is a game far more dangerous than anyone knows. And then there's the matter of the Knox Brothers. Three brothers. The royals. The heirs to the throne. The oldest one in particular. She knows something is off about him. That there is something coursing in his veins that isn't just blood. Drawn to him in a way, Syerin can't understand, will the trials be her end? Or will the war that she fights against her feelings do it for her? Allies become enemies, love and betrayal blur into one, and the mark's power begins to consume her. To survive, Syerin must decide: Will she embrace the curse that could save Velthar or destroy it?

"The weak don't survive here." At Arclight Academy, your worth is measured by the creature you bond with. For Serenya Vale, a scholarship student born with a chronic, progressive illness, surviving the brutal training seems impossible. She expects to fail. She expects to die. What she doesn't expect is Kairen Draxen. Lethal, silent, and wrapped in living darkness, Kairen is the only rider in centuries to bond with a shadow dragon. To survive his bond, he had to stop feeling entirely, turning himself into a cold, unyielding void. No one can break his control. Until Serenya walks through the iron gates. Suddenly, Kairen's shadows are acting on their own-escaping his command to pool at Serenya's feet and ease her pain. As the lethal academy trials begin, the two are forced into an impossible proximity. Bound by a cosmic soul connection that demands his darkness surrender to her light, Kairen is terrified of losing control, and Serenya is just trying to stay alive. Featuring: > 🖤 Hurt/Comfort & Underdog Heroine 🖤 Grumpy x Sunshine (Dark Romantasy edition) 🖤 "Touch her and you die" energy 🖤 Forced Proximity & Fated Soulbonds

Finding out that your parents, the people that raised you your whole life, weren't your actual parents was hard. Being told at the ripe ol' age of eighteen that you're the last living member from an Ancient Shifter line, the one responsible for creating the First Shifters, was inconceivable. Especially when a group of assassins were on their way to exterminate me simply for just existing. Kidnapped from my bed by three extremely stunning and grumpy Alphas, and forced to attend a special Shifter University located in the middle of nowhere, I have to navigate an unfamiliar and unknown secreted world while simultaneously trying avoiding those who want to use my lineage to enact an age-old curse. Join Nova Nyx as she's dragged into a world full of Shifters, Secrets, and Startling Surprises. ~~~ "Mates?" I repeated owlishly, blinking rapidly at the one worded bomb they just dropped on me "What are Mates?" Instead of answering my question, they just stared back at me in silence, arms crossed over their broad chests. I ignored their silence, choosing to focus on second part of their sentence. "And you're telling me I have three of them?" I gawked "How many are you supposed to get? I can barely handle myself and my life at this point and you want me to worry about three other people?" Of course the most annoying man I've ever met smirked at my bafflement. "I don't think it'll be such a hardship for you" he said, arrogance lacing his tone "After all, I hear these three Mates of yours are very self-sufficient." "Don't forget extremely gorgeous" his Buffon of a friend chimed in, winking at me "That's a plus for you Princess." "One," the third one growled out at me, finally speaking up and adding subsistence to the conversation, startling the banter from the other two "You're only supposed to be blessed with one Mate in your entire lifetime."

A fragile and smart girl ends up in a dangerous beast world where even simple things can hurt her. She struggles to survive until a cold and distant white wolf starts helping and protecting her little by little. At first, he finds her troublesome, but he slowly becomes deeply attached to her and spoils her a lot. As they grow closer, hidden feelings appear, turning their strange relationship into something more serious and emotional.

"Eyes on us, Mouth shut, Legs open." Dominic and Dimitri, two deadly twins running the most powerful mafia in New York, known as Slaughters. They had everything they ever wanted except one person. Sofia, an epitome of innocence and clumsiness never thought she would grab the attention of someone she should stay away from. Secrets revealed, love turned into betrayals yet there's one thing that never changed, The Obsession. The Addiction.

He wasn't just my best friend. He was my architect. Ela Miller is "clumsy." She's the girl who loses her keys, fails her bio-labs, and relies on her genius best friend, Liam Vance, to keep her world upright. When their parents leave them alone for a month during a record-breaking storm, Liam offers to teach her the "lessons" she's missed out on-how to kiss, how to touch, how to know a man. But as the rain pours, the "puppy-eyed" boy-next-door starts to slip. Every touch is too practiced. Every "accidental" encounter feels like a trap. And the security cameras in the house? They aren't for her protection. They're for his viewing. Ela thinks she's the teacher. She has no idea she's the prey. By the time the sun comes out, Liam doesn't just want her heart. He wants her name, her future, and every breath she takes. He's been planning this for twenty-one years. And he's tired of playing nice. He didn't become obsessed because he didn't understand love-he became obsessed because he thought he understood it too well. Growing up, he saw a kind of love that felt safe, constant, and complete, and somewhere along the way, he started believing that this was the only way life could feel whole. So when he met her, he didn't just see a person-he saw the possibility of recreating that same world. And slowly, without even realizing it, his love turned into something heavier... something that needed to hold on too tightly, just to feel secure. She wasn't unaware-she was just never taught to trust herself. Growing up, every decision was made for her, every mistake corrected, every thought quietly replaced by someone else's "better" way. So when he stepped in to guide her, it didn't feel like control... it felt familiar. He didn't take her independence away-she had never really learned to hold onto it in the first place. And when care starts to look like control, it becomes almost impossible to tell the difference.

Silas Rowan is a man of ice, discipline, and shadows. As the feared Headmaster of Rowan Academy, his word is law-until he sees Elara Winslow. With bruises hidden under her skirt and a fire in her eyes, she is the only thing capable of cracking his steel heart. He adopted her to protect her. He hired her as his Library Keeper to keep her close. But moving her into his private wing was his first mistake. Now, the lines between guardian and predator are blurring. Silas is vibrating with a feral, protective rage that scares him, and Elara is tired of being his "charity case." When the "Who did this to you?" turns into "Who do you think you belong to?", Silas will have to choose: remain the Academy's savior, or become the monster who claims her for himself. "I didn't save you to give you away, Elara. I saved you so you could be mine."

Maybe I loved him when I saw him, or when he hugged me after my mothers death. Or maybe I was slowly falling into his arms unknowingly, growing to like him more than I should. I didn't know exactly but I knew I wanted my step-father. Lines got crossed, right and wrong blurred. It's so wrong, but it felt so good. All Rights Reserved ©solxr28 ©asj_28 August 2020