A Resonance of Stillness
By @john1208
Mirina Novastra, a cartographer renowned for her brilliant mind and profound laziness, wants nothing more than a quiet life of naps and well-funded expeditions. Her plans derail when her vivacious twin sister flees an arranged marriage, forcing Mirina to take her place. Her new husband is Lord Gavril Saros, the 'Beast of the Still-Glass Spire,' a man so tormented by the trauma of his parents' murder that his grief has crystallized into a deadly, silent blight known as the 'Stillness,' a phenomenon that petrifies all life it touches. Trapped in Gavril's silent, crystalline fortress, Mirina finds her new husband is not a monster, but a rival intellect trapped in a prison of his own making. Tasked with mapping the blight and finding a cure before it consumes them both, she begins to see the vulnerable man behind the cold facade. As she uncovers the secrets of his past and the true nature of the Stillness, Mirina realizes that saving him from his grief might mean confronting the very person responsible for it - and questioning whether the heart she's trying to heal is the only one in danger.
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Our Last Woven Verse
By @john1208
Ibai Ezkerro has always preferred the company of ancient texts to people. As a junior ritualist for the Lumin Cordis order, he is tasked with cleansing restless spirits, a duty he performs with quiet diligence. His latest assignment takes him to the isolated Aizkorri Cottage, a place now silent save for the whispers of a lingering ghost. His orders are simple: perform the Rite of Severance and banish the spirit. But when his initial ritual reveals not a vengeful phantom but the gentle, sad soul of Lide, a weaver sacrificed and bound to her loom, Ibai’s stubborn heart rebels. Defying his order, he uses the intricate, forbidden rituals of communion to perceive her, sharing stories and slowly uncovering the mystery of her death. Together, they delve into Lide’s fragmented memories, only to discover her sacrifice was part of a larger, desperate ritual. With a zealous rival from his order closing in and Lide’s spiritual essence fraying with every revelation, can Ibai unravel the truth and fulfill her last regret before he loses her forever?
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A Vow of Pristine Deception
By @john1208
Junia Bresson’s ordinary morning was supposed to end with feeding her geriatric rescue pug, Barnaby, and quietly manning the front desk of Rohe Industries. Instead, a spilled latte and a horrific case of mistaken identity result in her being violently zipped into a couture wedding gown and shoved down the aisle to marry her terrifying, touch-averse boss, Thayer Rohe. The goal? To merge two rival luxury doomsday bunker corporations. Thayer immediately recognizes his tragically polite receptionist beneath the veil, but desperate to bypass a strict morality clause, he binds her to a one-year fake marriage. Told in alternating perspectives, their farcical arrangement takes a sharp turn when Junia's boundless, apologetic empathy accidentally guilt-trips a rival board of directors into signing a doomed, massive deal. Thayer, a tyrant who sanitizes his own pens, is stunned to realize Junia's skin is the only thing that doesn’t trigger his severe aversions. Yet a bittersweet divide remains: Junia believes he only tolerates her for the merger, while Thayer is convinced she merely pities his sterilized existence. As the contract dwindles and Junia reluctantly accepts a blind date, will Thayer finally shatter his own pristine rules out of raw, irrational jealousy?
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My Dearest Disaster-in-Law
By @john1208
Lali Vashadze is many things: a gifted mimic, a shameless flirt, and a survivor. What she is not is her sister, Nana - the soul of kindness who just fled her own arranged marriage. When Nana's jilted fiancé, the monstrously scarred and notoriously reclusive Kordian Sturua, demands a substitute, Lali has no choice but to step into her sister's ridiculously sensible shoes. Her mission: play the part of a sweet, doting fiancée long enough to secure her younger brother's future. Kordian, a brilliant Artificer haunted by a catastrophic failure that cost hundreds their lives, wants nothing more than to be left alone in his grim, clockwork manor. He sees this marriage as a tedious obligation, and Lali's saccharine 'sunshine' routine as an unbearable irritation. But as Lali's cheeky, irrepressible true self keeps slipping through the cracks of her performance, she uncovers a man buried not in monstrosity, but in grief. As they're forced to work together against a new threat born from his past failure, Lali's carefully constructed act begins to crumble. Can she pull off the con of a lifetime without losing her own heart in the process?
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Hostile Incubation
By @john1208
I don’t do charity, and I certainly don't do motherhood. But when my idiot best friend got himself blackmailed by the Undercity Syndicate, I needed three million credits in twenty-four hours. Enter Garreth Hyle: Tessera’s most insufferable architectural magnate, my fiercest business rival, and currently in desperate need of a surrogate because his fiancée demands an heir. The deal we struck in his sterile boardroom was simple: I carry the biological asset, he pays the ransom, and we go back to sabotaging each other's blueprints. I even brought Brick, my genetically modified gargoyle-pug, to terrorize his pristine penthouse. But I didn't factor in Garreth’s psychotic shift in behavior. The man who once tried to bury my company in cement is now aggressively monitoring my REM sleep, threatening assassins who look at my bump, and maintaining terrifying eye contact while eating peanut butter and pickles with me at 3 AM. Worse, another rival CEO is trying to kidnap my uterus. Between dodging corporate espionage and navigating my enemy’s suffocating coddling, I have to ask - is it still a hostile takeover if he's the one surrendering?
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The Cipher of Shattered Vows
By @john1208
Jasker Varla is a prodigy, a Cipher of the Iron Circle, whose coded messages determine the fate of armies. But when his younger sister dies in a sabotaged airship flight, Jasker's world shatters, and all evidence points to one culprit: Runa Volgatis, a rival cipher with a reputation for reckless genius and a cheeky disregard for authority. Consumed by grief, Jasker enacts a cruel revenge. He publicly humiliates Runa and forces her into a marriage of servitude, binding her skill to his cause in the escalating war. Trapped in his estate, cut off from the world, Runa must endure his cold fury while deciphering enemy transmissions under his watchful eye. She maintains her innocence with a defiant smirk, chipping away at his certainty with her brilliance and unexpected loyalty. As Jasker's obsession with revenge deepens, he finds himself drawn to the sharp mind and resilient spirit of the woman he swore to break. But the real traitor is still at large, and a forgotten photograph holds the key. Can Jasker unravel the true plot before his quest for vengeance destroys the one person who can save their nation?
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The Mirehollow Arrangement
By @john1208
Kezia Corbel stands over her beloved mentor's fresh grave, her dream of attending the elite Hargrove Medical College shattered by lack of funds. Enter Vossik Rhent, the glacial CEO of a medical tech dynasty, who makes a stunning offer: full tuition in exchange for her acting as his surrogate. Guided by a psychic’s bizarre prophecy that only Kezia’s specific biology can carry his cursed bloodline to term, Vossik moves her and her three-legged rescue dog, Chert, into his brutalist, high-security mansion. What begins as a cold, clinical transaction shifts drastically as forced proximity and the biological imperative take hold. Vossik’s icy demeanor shatters into a suffocating, obsessive need to protect her - from ruthlessly vetting her med-school study schedules to grimacing his way through her late-night pickle-and-peanut-butter cravings so she won't eat alone. But as Bramwell Croy, a ruthless rival CEO, plots to kidnap the unborn heir, Kezia realizes her life is in grave danger. As she digs deeper, she uncovers a terrifying truth: the mysterious disease that killed her mentor and the curse plaguing Vossik's bloodline are the exact same conspiracy. Can she expose the truth before Croy steals her child?
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Oops, I'm My Rival's Surrogate!
By @john1208
Pimla's morning goes from bad to worse when her toaster explodes, her little brother's school calls, and a team of men in suits kicks down her apartment door. They aren't the dangerous loan sharks she owes; they're the elite retrieval squad for Kaldor Vancour, the icy CEO of Vancour Synthetics. Kaldor's image-obsessed fiancée demands a child without the bodily ruin, and the company's algorithm miraculously matched Kaldor with an anonymous surrogate. Surprise: the surrogate is Pimla, his most hated former industry rival. Forced to move into Kaldor's high-security penthouse to keep the pregnancy safe, Pimla expects a nightmare of cold glares. Instead, the sterile CEO becomes absurdly overprotective, threatening a hostile corporate takeover of a closed dumpling restaurant at 3 AM just to satisfy her pregnancy cravings. But as Kaldor's obsession shifts from the baby to the woman carrying it, a hilarious and terrifying secret emerges: Pimla's forgotten, pre-amnesia self intentionally hacked the genetic registry to orchestrate this exact scenario. What happens when the fiercely protective CEO realizes he was trapped by a master plan?
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The Somberbloom Pact
By @john1208
Dr. Anja Rostova, a brilliant but reserved psychotherapist, lives a quiet life haunted by her own past. Her routine shatters when a cryptic, embossed letter offers her an unprecedented contract: a live-in position at the secluded Voronoi Estate to treat its infamous master, Stellan Voronov. Once a titan of industry, Stellan is now a recluse, disfigured by the fire he survived - a catastrophe of his own making that claimed the lives of his partners. He is a beast of a man, caged by guilt and rage. Confined within the estate's oppressive luxury, Anja's stubborn defiance clashes with Stellan's cold hostility. Yet, her simple acts of kindness begin to penetrate the armor around his heart, forging a fragile, unspoken bond. As Stellan slowly thaws, showing her a vulnerability no one else has ever seen, Anja starts to feel something more than professional duty. But the estate holds secrets, and the wise old woman who hired her watches with knowing eyes. Anja believes she is saving him, but what if healing Stellan's mind is the very act that will seal her own fate?
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The Midnight Heir
By @john1208
Danica Morvath’s pride is as fragile and sharp as the centuries-old glass her family creates. To save the ancestral Morvath Atelier from being sold to developers, she strikes a desperate midnight deal with Julian Kestner, the city’s coldest industrial magnate. The terms slide across the marble table: live in his secluded penthouse, carry his heir, and leave the moment the child is born. But the sprawling fortress soon feels like a velvet trap. Forced into agonizing proximity, Julian’s icy demeanor violently shifts. Soon, he is ripping the steel shutters off a closed bakery at 3 AM just to satisfy her craving for cherry pastries, treating her diet and sleep as matters of national security. Danica tries to protect her heart from the bittersweet, unspoken tension between them, convinced she is nothing but a temporary incubator. But she completely misunderstood the rules of her own contract. Julian doesn't just want a child - he needs her. As an obsessed ex-boyfriend returns to stalk her, Julian's protective instincts reach terrifying heights. If her temporary contract was a lie, what is Julian's true endgame?
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The mistake of life time
By @Khawla El alaouy
Eight years ago, Clara Vance made the mistake of a lifetime: she abandoned her penniless, sickly high school sweetheart, Arthur Pendelton, accepting a massive buyout from his elitist family to fund her mother’s life-saving surgery. She let Arthur hate her, cementing herself as his life's greatest villain. Now, Clara is a struggling freelance archivist, while Arthur has returned as the ruthless, billionaire CEO of Pendelton Industries - and he has just bought her employer. Arthur is determined to ruin her, orchestrating a cruel game of forced proximity by making her his personal assistant. To survive his wrath, Clara must hide the truth of her past sacrifice and her lingering, suffocating love for him. But as Arthur pushes her to her absolute breaking point, the burning tension between resentment and unresolved passion threatens to consume them both. In this high-stakes game of emotional warfare, Clara's secret is a ticking time bomb that could either destroy Arthur's empire or heal their shattered souls.
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The Honeypot Husband
By @john1208
I hate my boss, Bramson Klerk. The man is a walking spreadsheet with the emotional depth of a puddle, and we’ve spent three years screaming at each other over server budgets. So when a courier hands me a live, snapping Venus flytrap with a diamond ring and a marriage contract attached to its teeth, I assume it’s a threat. Instead, my terrifying rival needs a wife to unlock a multibillion-dollar inheritance left by his eccentric father. The rules? Live together, pretend to be in love, and absolutely no catching feelings. I only sign because I want a cut of the cash to fund my own tech startup. But moving into Bramson's glass penthouse reveals two massive problems. One, the inheritance isn't a gift; it's a digital honeypot designed to trigger a hostile takeover, forcing me to use my secret hacking skills to dismantle his own family's trap. Two, my icy boss hasn't slept a full night in years - unless I'm sitting right next to him. As accidental naps turn into sharing a bed, his cold boundaries melt into a fierce, suffocating jealousy. But when he catches me crying over our contract's expiration date, will he let me go, or burn down his own empire to keep me?
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The Name on Her Breath
By @john1208
Detective Kirian Volkov lives for one reason: to protect his younger sister, Polina. His career is a means to that end, and his latest assignment - a cold case at the infamous Sobol Estate - is just another job. That is, until he steps inside and a voice blossoms in his mind: clear, insistent, and belonging to Nadya Sobol, the spirit bound to the house she died in. Nadya, a guardian tethered to her ancestral home, sees Kirian as a threat, another outsider poking at wounds better left alone. Their mental proximity becomes a battleground of whispered arguments and conflicting goals. Yet, as Kirian’s innate kindness chips away at her ghostly defenses, a fragile trust forms, blossoming into an impossible love. But as they piece together the clues of Nadya’s murder, they uncover a terrifying truth about an identity swap that protected the true target of a malevolent entity. Now, the ghost Kirian loves is not who he thinks she is, and the real Nadya is still alive, still in danger. Can Kirian solve a murder for a woman who never died to save the one he can never touch?
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Snoozing Through My Surrogacy Trap
By @john1208
I just wanted a quiet morning and a cup of cheap instant coffee. Instead, my vile uncle decided today was the day to sell my wardship to a sweatshop, forcing me to dive out the fire escape in my pajamas and crash directly onto the hood of Daxen Vexlan's luxury hover-limo. Daxen is the glacial, untouchable CEO of Vexlan Innovations. He wants an heir, but absolutely refuses to ever fall in love. I want ten million credits to permanently buy my legal emancipation. It was supposed to be a simple, emotionless surrogacy arrangement. But then the pregnancy cravings hit, and this terrifyingly cold man buys an entire agricultural quadrant just so I can have fresh strawberries. Worse, his elitist mother is trying to bribe me to leave, my best friend is hiding a chaotic secret, and Daxen's routine monitoring has escalated to violently threatening anyone who interrupts my fourteen-hour naps. And the worst part? My massive payout is locked in a trust I can only access while living under his roof. Now I'm trapped with a micromanager who thinks my laziness is a medical emergency. Will I ever get to sleep in peace, or is this icy CEO about to ruin my ultimate lazy life?
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What the Water Gave the Mire
By @john1208
I, Rhys Llewellyn, was once the best detective in the rain-slicked city of Aberddu, until a case gone wrong left me disgraced and my partner dead. Now, I'm stuck with the dregs: cold cases nobody wants. That’s how I found her - Ffion, a sharp-witted ghost bound to the crumbling riverside manor where she was murdered a decade ago. She can’t remember her killer’s face, only that she trusted them. The catch? I can only see her in reflections - a fleeting image in a windowpane, a shimmer on a puddle, a glimpse in my own weary eyes in the mirror. She is my only witness, and I am her only link to the living world. As we piece together the puzzle of her last days, a fragile, unspoken love blossoms in the space between our worlds. We dream of finding a way to bring her back, but the city’s strange magic has a price. What if solving her murder isn't enough, and the very connection that allows us to meet is also the one that's pulling her apart, reflection by reflection?
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A Colder Kind of Vow
By @john1208
Every morning at eight, Linnea Rostova pours Stellan's coffee. She knows his brutal boardroom glare and his absolute rule against personal attachments. But when an ordinary Tuesday is derailed by a stray terrier breaking into the building and a lobby swarming with scandal-seeking, gold-digging exes, Stellan makes a desperate move to save his stock price: he puts a ring on his assistant's finger. It is purely transactional. Yet, confined to his rain-lashed penthouse, the boundaries blur. Through alternating perspectives, we see Linnea discovering the cracks in his ice - especially during thunderstorms, when the terrifying CEO is paralyzed by childhood trauma and clings to her for comfort. Meanwhile, a second drama unfolds: Stellan is hunting 'The Peregrine', an anonymous, legendary mediator needed to salvage a doomed corporate merger. He has no idea his introverted fake wife is the mastermind he is searching for. As Stellan’s fierce, irrational jealousy flares whenever rival executives approach her, the contract frays. But when Linnea catches a severe fever and collapses, Stellan's cold logic shatters entirely. Will he realize his empire means nothing without her before the revelation of her secret identity destroys their fragile trust?
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The Blueprint of Her Heart
By @Ina Ina
Dr. Elara Vance, a brilliant, emotionally guarded architect, specializes in restoring historical estates. Her meticulous designs are blueprints for order, mirroring her life - precisely structured to avoid the chaotic vulnerability of love. She believes emotional attachment is a weakness, a lesson brutally learned from a childhood steeped in abandonment. When a high-profile project demands she collaborate with Liam Thorne, an eccentric, free-spirited interior designer whose vision clashes wildly with her own, her carefully constructed world begins to fray. Restoring the ancient Blackwood Manor, steeped in centuries of forgotten love stories, forces Elara into unexpected proximity with Liam. As they unearth the manor’s secrets, Elara finds her own guarded heart under siege. Can she dismantle the walls she’s built, risking everything for a love that could either destroy her or become her greatest masterpiece? The stakes aren't just her career, but her very soul, as she confronts the painful truth that a life unlived is the greatest ruin of all.
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