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romance

Reborn as the Psycho Villainess Who Ate Her Slave Beasts’ Contracts

At twenty‑nine, she was the youngest CEO in the tech industry—NetVault Security had gone from small startup to Fortune 500 in just six years. The media called her a prodigy. Her board called her unstoppable. Her therapist called her alexithymic. Unable to understand or describe her own emotions. The elevator chimed. Elara didn’t look up. Only one person had after‑hours access. “You’re late,” she said. “The investor meeting is in twelve hours. Did you review the—” “I’m not here about the meeting.” … “Ugh.” Elara lost her life that day at the hands of her mentor and adoptive father. By the next morning, the same people who once called her a genius and praised her to the sky were calling her a coward who killed herself to escape scandal. Then Elara woke up. Not in her office. Not in a hospital. In a different world. In a different body. She was now Elara, the Fourth Princess of this so‑called great kingdom—only to find that this princess was an utter pushover, completely useless in everyone’s eyes. No one feared her. No one respected her. Even her own palace was full of other people’s spies. How is Elara supposed to survive this palace battle, when seven princesses fight in the shadows and she’s known as the weakest one? And can she ever escape this place… or will she decide to win instead? … … “Your Highness, please… ugh…” The leash of light around Mahir’s neck—the head of the knights—tightened with a soft pull. His face flushed red, and not from pain. “Princess, here.” Ken, the strongest beast knight, knelt closer and held out a small pill between his fingers, guiding it gently to Elara’s lips. “Swallow it,” he said quietly. “You used too much power today.” On the floor below the bed, three beastmen knelt in a row, broad shoulders tense, ears twitching, their eyes fixed on her with dazed focus. Thin, glowing leashes of magic ran from their collars to the bands at Elara’s wrists. “Please…” Ken’s voice dropped, rough and a little hoarse. “Put your foot here.” He touched his gloved hand to his chest. “On me.” Elara sighed, half annoyed, half amused, and rested her foot lightly on his armored chest. All three of them drew in a sharp breath at the same time, faces turning even redder as the magic between them flared. Their eyes—gold, amber, and deep brown—looked up at her with the same lost, devoted gaze.
K1ERA · 175.3k Views

The Study Contract

Ryan Kane is mixed-race, poor, and worst still, in a university where everything screams "silver and gold". He thinks his scholarship and education are his only way to a future better than his present. But this guy's grades aren't helping matters as he keeps juggling between lectures, attendance, and part-time jobs. The lower his grades get, the closer he is to withdrawing, going back to his deadbeat of a father, and having a life with nothing. Well, he absolutely doesn't want a reality like that, and to avert that, his only option was getting a tutor. Ryan’s desperate enough to ask Adrian Val. On campus and to everyone, Adrian is the perfect, well-behaved, brilliant heir to a top conglomerate family. While in private, he is a possessive, manipulative jerk who does a lot of unimaginable things. When Ryan proposes tutoring to him, Adrian offers that he pay with his body instead. To him, Ryan can't afford his time and knowledge with just his measly bucks. Ryan says yes to the offer, and along the line, he falls heavily for Adrian. But even when Adrian rejects his confession and treats him like a toy way worse than before, Ryan doesn't leave. He wants the tutoring, the intimacy, the sex, his persistent feelings for Adrian, and the tiny hope that Adrian's heart may steer towards him. It gets even messier when Adrian’s friend Liam enters the picture. Liam is calm, kind, and actually cares about Ryan, but he holds back his feelings to keep the peace. Then there is also Chase, a rich troublemaker who openly flirts with Ryan. Trapped in a dirty cycle of sex, love, and heartbreak, everything Ryan had and held dear to him came tumbling gradually. And by the time he realizes the depth of it, it is too late. Too late to even hold onto anything. And only caught between three powerful men who all want a piece of him for different reasons.
cucubumbleey · 4.4k Views

The Codex of Starfall (Unlocking Great Power)

"You're F-Rank, Lyra. You shouldn't even be here. You're a waste of space and resources." Those words came from Kael Vantris—her childhood best friend, the boy she'd loved since they were kids—right before he and her stepsister Celeste publicly humiliated her at the Academy's Ranking Ceremony, revealing that her admission was a "charity case" bought by her adoptive family to make themselves look benevolent. In the world of Celestian Academy, your magical rank is everything. It determines your classes, your resources, your future, your worth. Lyra Ashford, an F-Rank mage with barely enough power to light a candle, has spent three years being the academy's punching bag—bullied, isolated, and watching the boy she loved fall for her perfect stepsister. When Celeste and Kael frame Lyra for stealing a professor's research (research they actually stole to sell to a rival faction), Lyra is hours away from expulsion and arrest. With nothing left to lose, she breaks into the forbidden Echoing Library—a place students whisper about, where ancient magic and alien technology intertwine, where those who enter never return. Desperate for anything that might prove her innocence, Lyra accidentally triggers a hidden chamber and discovers a mysterious holographic map—The Codex of Starfall—an ancient artifact left by the Starborn civilization. But she's not alone. The map activates only in the presence of multiple "resonance signatures," pulling in four other students who were in the library at the wrong (or right) time. Among them: Zain Korathi, the academy's ice-cold SSS-Rank prodigy, a devastatingly powerful mage with a tragic past who's never looked at anyone twice—until now. He's the one person who doesn't dismiss her, and for some reason the Codex identifies her F-Rank signature as "Primary Keybearer—Starborn Heir." The map reveals something world-shattering: the Starborn didn't go extinct. They're sleeping, waiting for the right people to wake them and restore balance to a galaxy where magic and technology have been deliberately separated by those in power. The journey will require the group to travel through ancient portals, face trials that force them to level up their abilities, and uncover a conspiracy that goes straight to the top of the academy—and beyond. But as the team ventures deeper into the mystery, Lyra discovers the truth: she's not F-Rank at all. Her power was artificially suppressed as a child because she carries Starborn DNA—a bloodline the galactic council has been hunting and eliminating for centuries. They wanted her weak, controllable, forgotten. And Zain, the genius prodigy everyone fears? He's been searching for the Codex his entire life because his family was destroyed by the same conspiracy. As he watches Lyra's true power awaken—brilliant, fierce, and absolutely breathtaking—the boy who never let anyone close finds himself falling for the girl everyone called worthless. They tried to keep her powerless. Now she'll show them what happens when you awaken a sleeping star.
Panther_Pablo · 111 Views