AmJiyeon

"Pack your bags and get out." "Not a chance, Captain. I paid for this room, and I'm not leaving." Rose Murphy just walked into her worst nightmare: a double-booked apartment with Drake Morvane, Toronto's star hockey captain, resident golden boy, and the most frustratingly handsome man she has ever laid eyes on. Drake is a man of rules, ice, and absolute focus. He doesn't do roommates. He definitely doesn't do distractions. But with no other housing options available, they are forced to strike a deal: live together, stay out of each other's way, and never-under any circumstances-cross the line. It sounds simple enough. Until shared keys turn into late-night kitchen run-ins, and a fake truce turns into very real, scorching-hot tension. Can the grumpy captain protect his heart, or will the one girl he never saw coming completely melt his ice?

Valerie Ashford, a girl who had just turned twenty-one, was introduced by her father to his business associates at a grand party, where she met a frightening, cold-blooded man. That man was none other than her father's business partner, the CEO of a major corporation. He was taken with Valerie and had wanted her from the moment he first laid eyes on her. For Rovano Morvane, whatever he desired was absolute and he had to have it, even by the worst means possible. That night Valerie vanished without a trace and Rovano became the prime suspect, yet the Ashford family could not prove their allegations. "P-please, I don't want to die, sir..." Valerie whispered so softly that Rovano had to bend down even lower. "Didn't you just say you didn't care whether you were kidnapped or not? So shut your mouth." Rovano ordered. Cold, Valerie felt the other side of the folding knife pressed against her cheek. Rovano was going to mark Valerie. It felt like something was missing if Rovano didn't take out his psychopathic urges on someone. And this time, for the first time, he wanted a girl: Valerie Ashford. Would Valerie's life end here?

I thought having one reckless night of revenge sex with a gorgeous stranger seemed like the perfect way for me to break out of my "good girl" mold. I was wrong. ​I ran before he could even know my name, promising myself it would stay a secret. A mistake buried so deep that neither my overprotective brother nor my boyfriend would ever find out. Then I walked onto campus for my first day of college... and came face to face with the last person I ever wanted to see. The stranger wasn't a stranger after all. He was the star captain of the hockey team and My brother's best friend. In other words...I was fucked. Literally.

Eighteen days after giving up on Brendan Maynard, Jayde Rosario cut off her waist-length hair and called her father, announcing her decision to move to California and attend UC Berkeley. Her father, surprised, asked about the sudden change, reminding her how she' d always insisted on staying with Brendan. Jayde forced a laugh, revealing the painful truth: Brendan was getting married, and she, his stepsister, could no longer cling to him. That night, she tried to tell Brendan about her college acceptance, but his fiancée, Chloie Ellis, interrupted with a bubbly call, and Brendan' s tender words to Chloie twisted a knife in Jayde' s heart. She remembered how his tenderness used to be hers alone, how he had protected her, and how she had poured out her heart to him in a diary and a love letter, only for him to explode, tearing the letter and yelling, "I'm your brother!" He had stormed out, leaving her to painstakingly tape the shredded pieces back together. Her love, however, didn't die, not even when he brought Chloie home and told her to call her "sister-in-law." Now, she understood. She had to put that fire out herself. She had to dig Brendan out of her heart.

"What do you think people would say if they found out you don't have a dick?" Christian asked, his voice low and dripping with seduction. His hand pressed firmly against my crotch, fingers exploring the flat, unfamiliar emptiness there. A devilish smirk curved his lips. "Or if they discovered these voluptuous breasts you've been hiding so well?" A strangled moan slipped from my throat as his hand slid under my shirt, his fingers brushing over my hardened nipples, teasing them with slow, deliberate strokes. "Which do you think they'd call you?" he murmured, eyes gleaming. "A boy with tits... or a dickless little fraud?" I stared into his hungry blue eyes, words failing me. "The term you're looking for is 'girl,'" came Xavier's smooth voice from the bathroom doorway. He stepped inside, closing the door behind him with a soft click, his gaze raking over me with open interest. "So tell me, little girl... what the hell is someone like you doing in an all-boys dorm?" Christian's smirk widened. "She wants to be devoured by boys like us." His fingers gave my nipple one last firm pinch before he leaned in closer, breath hot against my ear. "And I'll be more than happy to give her a taste."

My eyes snapped open to the blare of my alarm, October 17th. Senior year. Mock SAT Day. A familiar, suffocating nightmare. For a second, I didn' t know where I was, then the cold dread washed over me: I was back. Back to that exact day. The beginning of the end. I remembered it all: the accusations, Tiffany Hayes' smug face, Chad' s betrayal, my mother' s tears and worsening cough, the crushing weight of a ruined future, my own descent into despair that had culminated in unspeakable suffering. I had meticulously sabotaged myself this time, purposely failing the mock SAT to avoid repeating history. But when the scores were posted, Tiffany Hayes had a near-perfect score of 1580. Even more terrifying, she had replicated my unique, deliberately flawed math solutions-down to a random doodle I' d made. How? How was she inside my head? This wasn't just cheating; it was invasive, a violation of my very thoughts. No more. This time, armed with my father' s secret tech empire and a former military intelligence expert Mr. K, I wouldn't be the victim. I was going to expose her, reclaim my life, and save my family from the nightmare she' d already put us through once.

I woke up gasping, sunlight stabbing my eyes. My old room, posters of bands from twenty years ago still on the wall. My hands were smooth and young. I was seventeen again, a high school senior, and the State University scholarship was arriving today. In my first life, this was the pivotal moment, the day it all went wrong. My mother, Brenda, a human boa constrictor, would begin her "episodes." She'd clutch her chest, wail about her weak heart, demanding I stay. Her "love" was a saccharine poison, justifying every dream she crushed. I gave up my scholarship, my military aspirations, and even Olivia, the love of my life, all for her. My youth curdled into a bitter, joyless middle age. I worked dead-end jobs, a ghost haunted by what-ifs. Brenda sneered, calling me a "disappointment," a "failure," despite my sacrifices. At 35, my heart physically failed, but I knew it was despair that truly killed me. The searing injustice of it – a life stolen by a mother who saw me only as a possession, a slave to her manufactured frailty. Why had I let her weaponize her 'love' and destroy me? To what twisted end had I sacrificed everything for someone who thanked me with contempt? But now, I am seventeen again, all the painful knowledge of the past a burning weapon. The scholarship letter is in the mail. This time, things will be different. I will not let her break me, and I will save my younger sister, Chloe, too. I am alive, and this time, I am going to fight.

The ninety-ninth time Jax Little broke my heart was the last time. We were the golden couple of Northgate High, our future perfectly mapped out for UCLA. But in our senior year, he fell for a new girl, Catalina, and our love story became a sick, exhausting dance of his betrayals and my empty threats to leave. At a graduation party, Catalina "accidentally" pulled me into the pool with her. Jax dove in without a second's hesitation. He swam right past me as I struggled, wrapped his arms around Catalina, and pulled her to safety. As he helped her out to the cheers of his friends, he glanced back at me, my body shivering and my mascara running in black rivers. "Your life isn't my problem anymore," he said, his voice as cold as the water I was drowning in. That night, something inside me finally shattered. I went home, opened my laptop, and clicked the button that confirmed my admission. Not to UCLA with him, but to NYU, an entire country away.

It is not to be understood that all statements here made are either ascertained facts or universally admitted conjectures. The introduction is intended merely to put those who are not scholars, and probably have not books of reference at hand, in a position to approach the translation at as little disadvantage as may be. Accordingly, we give the account that commends itself to us, without discussion or reference to authorities. Those who would like a more complete idea of Lucian should read Croiset's Essai sur la vie et les oeuvres de Lucien, on which the first two sections of this introduction are very largely based. The only objections to the book (if they are objections) are that it is in French, and of 400 octavo pages. It is eminently readable. With the exception of a very small number of statements, of which the truth is by no means certain, all that we know of Lucian is derived from his own writings. And any reader who prefers to have his facts at first rather than at second hand can consequently get them by reading certain of his pieces, and making the natural deductions from them. Those that contain biographical matter are, in the order corresponding to the periods of his life on which they throw light, The Vision, Demosthenes, Nigrinus, The Portrait-study and Defence (in which Lucian is Lycinus), The Way to write History, The double ndictment (in which he is The Syrian), The Fisher (Parrhesiades), Swans and Amber, Alexander, Hermotimus_ (Lycinus), Menippus and Icaromenippus (in which Menippus represents him), A literary Prometheus, Herodotus, Zeuxis, Harmonides, The Scythian, The Death of Peregrine, The Book-fancier, Demonax, The Rhetorician's Vade mecum, Dionysus, Heracles, A Slip of the Tongue, Apology for 'The dependent Scholar.'_ Of these The Vision is a direct piece of autobiography; there is intentional but veiled autobiography in several of the other pieces; in others again conclusions can be drawn from comparison of his statements with facts known from external sources. Lucian lived from about 125 to about 200 A.D., under the Roman Emperors Antoninus Pius, M. Aurelius and Lucius Verus, Commodus, and perhaps Pertinax. He was a Syrian, born at Samosata on the Euphrates, of parents to whom it was of importance that he should earn his living without spending much time or money on education. His maternal uncle being a statuary, he was apprenticed to him, having shown an aptitude for modelling in the wax that he surreptitiously scraped from his school writing-tablets. The apprenticeship lasted one day. It is clear that he was impulsive all through life; and when his uncle corrected him with a stick for breaking a piece of marble, he ran off home, disposed already to think he had had enough of statuary. His mother took his part, and he made up his mind by the aid of a vision that came to him the same night.

Kaida thought forever was the deal with her boyfriend, Liam, the captain of the Runners Hockey Team, until he broke up with her and reunited with his childhood lover, who had returned after several years of being away. Heartbroken and angry, Kaida decided to make her ex-boyfriend jealous by kissing her best friend's older brother, Maverick. Unfortunately, she reignited the flame he'd been trying to quench for years. Now, there was no turning back and no quenching the obsessive flame burning inside Maverick for her. After some time, Liam realized he truly loved Kaida and wanted her back, but Maverick wasn't letting her go. Kaida was his now, and he would go to the end of the earth for her sake. What began as revenge against her ex turned into something twisted and dark: something beyond words and certainly beyond obsession.

Thanksgiving weekend was just around the corner, and as an intern ranger, I was preparing for what my supervisor, Mark Thorne, called a "mandatory exploratory survey" to Devil's Gulch. But this seemingly routine assignment was a meticulously planned death trap, set by the man I worked for and the sister I loved. The rock bit into my back, a sharp pain, then nothing as my climbing rope went slack, sabotaged, as I plummeted into the cold darkness of the crevasse. Mark's chilling, empty smile was the last thing I saw above me on the narrow ledge, my sister Emily looking away, silent, complicit, as I fought for air. Killed. By my own supervisor and the only family I had left, betrayed for reasons I couldn't comprehend as my life vanished in an instant. Then I jolted awake, not in a freezing abyss, but in my familiar bunk, the comforting scent of pine from my cheap park-issued mattress filling the air. My heart hammered against my ribs as I touched my face, my arms, realizing there were no broken bones, no blood. The calendar on the wall screamed at me: three days before that fateful Thanksgiving trip to Devil's Gulch. I was alive. It was a memory, vivid, terrifying, but now it was also a warning. A second chance. This time, I wouldn't be the naive one; I would protect myself first, and if I could, protect my sister from him and from herself. I could still stop this. And I would.

My deskmate, Elara Vance, was a walking contradiction: weaving grand tales of designer clothes and exotic family trips to Zurich, yet she dressed in rags and carried the undeniable scent of neglect. I' d silently endured her outlandish fantasies and the awkward pity they stirred, until one tension-filled day, my patience completely snapped, and I brutally screamed across the crowded school hallway, "What is it, Elara? Are your parents dead or something?" The raw grief that instantly crumpled her face, followed by the shock of her fist connecting with my jaw, silenced the entire room, but the real storm was yet to come. Weeks later, news tore through our high school: Elara Vance, the girl everyone mocked, had mysteriously secured a full-ride scholarship to Yale, a feat that struck everyone, especially the popular clique, as utterly impossible. The internet exploded, fueled by vicious social media posts from school bullies, rapidly branding her a "Yale Scammer" and launching a horrifying campaign of doxxing and vile harassment that escalated far beyond high school cruelty, becoming a public digital execution. But as the online mob screamed for her digital demise, I was haunted by the memory of her tear-streaked face and that primal, anguished cry that day in the hallway: "They're heroes!" That desperate, defiant plea didn't fit the narrative of the pathetic liar I believed her to be, leaving me with a chilling, unsettling confusion. A sickening wave of guilt began to consume me, the realization hitting hard that I had played a part in unleashing this brutal, unprovoked attack on her. I knew then, with a desperate urgency that superseded everything else, that I had to find Elara Vance and finally unearth the true, devastating story behind her lies and the mysterious heroism of her parents.