Sam needed a wife. I needed a stable for my horses. We agreed to a marriage of convenience, but it seemed to be more. For a while. Until my distant cousin, who was Sam's ex, showed up on our doorstep. And I was no longer convenient.

Liam and Lexi fall in love before they ever meet. When they see each other, the bond between them doesn't hesitate. It snaps into place-unmistakable, permanent, and consuming. A mating bond neither of them can deny. Their connection solidifies in pieces-voices in the dark, shared confessions, laughter that feels intimate. Liam chooses Lexi openly. He builds a life beside her, shares a bed, a home, a future that feels real in his hands. He loves her with devotion, with tenderness, with the certainty of someone who knows she is his. And still-Knox is always there. Knox is Liam's best friend, his brother in everything but blood, the one he has protected since childhood. For a long time, Knox's pain is loud and needy, and even as he begins to heal, Liam doesn't know how to stop making room for him. So he keeps inviting him in. Into their home. Into their routines. Into the quiet spaces where Lexi thought it would finally be just the two of them. Liam never sees it as choosing Knox over Lexi. To him, it's loyalty. Habit. Love that existed first. To Lexi, it feels like being mated-yet never fully alone with her mate. This is a story about a bond that is unbreakable-and a boundary that keeps being crossed. About loving someone who means well, but doesn't realize that presence can be a kind of betrayal. About learning that choosing your mate isn't a single decision-it's something you have to do every day, especially when the past keeps knocking at the door.

Rory Hayes was born a gang princess - raised to be protected, promised to a future that was never really hers. After her best friend's death, danger begins circling closer, and the last thing she wants is protection. Especially not from Alexander Cross, the man who appears out of nowhere with a dangerous smile and an interest in her she can't quite resist. He makes her feel safe. Seen. Wanted. Until she discovers everything between them was built on a lie. Now someone is hunting her, the truth about the past refuses to stay buried, and the only man she can't trust might be the only one who can keep her alive. But in a world built on loyalty and blood, betrayal always comes at a price. And this time, it might cost her everything. __________________________ My submission for ONC 2026 using the Prompt #78 - You begin to realise everything is not what it seems. This will be uploaded irregularly but as its a submission for ONC it will be completed by the end of April for judging.

Once, we were the closest thing to love I'd ever known. Then two pretty little vipers slithered into our circle, and they turned on me too. I left with no plans on ever looking back. Thing's didn't really work out the way I wanted them to. Now I'm stuck in the city that raised me on secrets and hardened me with lies, and the boys I once trusted aren't boys anymore. Zayd Ahmad is a strategist with a diamond-cut mind and a habit of speaking in threats disguised as warnings. Beau Kovach-the golden boy turned executioner-goes by The Butcher now, and the nickname isn't metaphor. Ronan Crosse is feral loyalty wrapped in ink and bone, the kind of man who follows you like a prayer or a curse. And Domenic Kovach, the final heir to a criminal dynasty, looks at me like I'm the throne he was promised and the war he intends to start. They want answers. They want forgiveness. They want the ledger too, the one people keep dying for and assuming I have. But mostly, they want me. Unfortunately, I didn't come home to be theirs again. Not even if the ledger ties our fates together. Or if their obsession looks a lot like devotion. Not even if the Carnage Society wants me crowned. They may want their queen back. Too bad I came to burn the kingdom. ************************************************************** This is a reverse harem dark romance following a sharp-tongued, vulgar-mouthed crime princess and the four men who would do anything to keep (or destroy) her. Read at your own risk. These men don't share well, except when it comes to her.

They took my family, my freedom, and my future-but they left me grieving, unstable, and alive with nothing but time. That was their biggest mistake. Prison didn't change who I am. It clarified it. I learned how to move slowly, speak less, and to let people underestimate me while I memorized their weaknesses. I stopped believing in mercy and started believing in my own sense of balance. It was behind those steel bars that Onyx Alastor came back-like a ghost I never quite exorcised. He's the man I loved before I learned what loving him would cost me. The man I left when I realized devotion didn't stop him from betraying me-it just taught him how to hide it better. Now he brings the truth about what destroyed my family. He brings leverage, and with it, an offer to right wrongs and recoup what was stolen from me. I don't want him back. But I have no problem using him to get what I want. Includes: Second chance between H and h• betrayal & grovel • ruthless FMC • vigilante justice • grief & obsession • messy OW drama • dark romance themes

I met my angel on the worst night of my life. It turned out to be the best. I was barefoot, soaked in blood, running from something that had already taken too much from me. He didn't ask where I came from. He didn't look at me like I was broken-or like I needed saving. He just took me along for the ride and changed the trajectory of my life, as if women like me climbed into his car every night. Bunny liked him instantly. Bunny likes very few people. Now I'm hidden. Alive. Obsessed. My angel doesn't smile much. He doesn't touch unless he has to. He treats me like something fragile and volatile all at once-like I might shatter or explode depending on the day. I fall for him anyway. Hard and fast. I don't believe in happy endings. But I believe in him. Even if he doesn't realize he's already mine. Includes: Extra sweet but feral FMC • Quiet, lethal MMC • Protector romance • Obsession at first sight • Imaginary friend • Moral grayness • Touch-averse hero • Her second-chance love, his only

Elio Moretti's world was bleak. Grey. Dark. When the woman he loved, Alina Romanov, died in his arms, she took all the light with her. He drifted through the years like a ghost, tethered to duty, a life waiting for the end to claim him, but no matter how recklessly he walked the edge --- it never did. Then came Hanna Park. Sharp. Clever. Enigmatic. Disarming without trying. What began as a no-strings-attached arrangement, a fleeting connection, began to fracture, reshape, and bleed into something deeper. Grief, however, does not loosen its roots so easily. And Hanna, she had never meant to fall for a man whose heart still beat in the rhythm of someone gone. Yet the closer she got, the less she could resist. When loss hollows you to the bone, can anything grow in the emptiness? And when love promises to burn you alive, do you flee --- or let it quietly consume you? ------------------------ *Afterlight is a standalone set after The Lies We Rehearsed; reading TLWR first is recommended.*

The Inheritance Duet - Book One Luna is young, kind, and believes people mean well. Julian is powerful, controlled, and used to getting what he wants. When Luna steps into Julian's world, she thinks she's been given an opportunity. What she doesn't realize is that kindness can be dangerous when placed in the wrong hands. Boundaries blur. Feelings deepen. Power tilts. And mercy-once given freely-becomes the very thing used against her. By the time Luna understands the truth, it's already too late. Because some people don't break hearts. They break lives.

I thought we were heartbroken together, grieving as one. But the night my mother passed away, was the same moment all my childhood illusions came crashing down around me. My role model, the person I looked up to the most, my own father was not who he claimed to be. As time moved on, more secrets unravelled and I couldn't help but wish he died instead of her. I turned into a monster, born out of the sharpest betrayal, determined to claim revenge and become utterly merciless.