Shearwater

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.

For three years, Amber played the perfect wife in a contract marriage with billionaire Donavan Carlisle to pay for her brother's life-saving medical care. But the moment his true love returned, Donavan threw divorce papers in Amber's face and ruthlessly cut off her brother's hospital funding. To force her out, he orchestrated a living hell. When his lover faked a fall, Donavan publicly threatened to destroy Amber's family. He dragged Amber into a freezing bath, stripped her of her dignity, and banished her to a cold, dark room. The final blow came when a staged video surfaced, showing the other woman tied up and crying, claiming Amber had kidnapped her. "If anything happens to her, I will kill you with my own hands!" Without waiting for an explanation, Donavan choked Amber until she nearly passed out and called the police to arrest her. As she lay gasping on the cold floor, she couldn't understand how the man she once loved could be so blindly cruel. Listening to the approaching police sirens, the last beat of her heart for him completely died. It was time to stop playing the helpless Hayes girl, unearth the buried secret of the Swiss Alps, and show them what happened when a true Beaumont finally fought back.

Five years ago, Colette Orr was drugged and hunted by her own stepsister and fiancé. To survive the night, she hid in a dark hotel suite and accidentally gave herself to a dangerous, wounded stranger. Now a struggling single mother working as a hotel manager, her nightmare returned. Her stepsister Chelsey was hosting her lavish wedding at Colette's hotel. They lured Colette into a trap, violently forced her into a shredded, filthy wedding dress, and dragged her onto the main stage. Under the blinding spotlight, Chelsey publicly humiliated Colette, weeping fake tears while framing her as a deranged stalker and a corporate spy. The elite crowd sneered with disgust, demanding she be arrested, while the groom's mother pointed at Colette's five-year-old son and viciously called him a fatherless bastard. Clutching her little boy, Leo, Colette trembled with a mix of absolute despair and raw rage. She had already given up her inheritance and her past to escape their venom. Why wouldn't they just let her and her son live in peace? Suddenly, the grand ballroom doors crashed open. Julian Heath IV, the ruthless Wall Street billionaire—and the stranger from that dark room five years ago—strode in with an army of guards. Before Colette could run, her genius son launched himself at the terrifying titan's leg. "Daddy!" Leo shouted to the silent room. Julian's cold eyes locked onto Colette, and with a terrifyingly calm voice, he ordered his men to seal every exit.

For six years, I played the pathetic, wolfless Omega to honor the dying wish of the late Alpha who protected me. But on our sixth anniversary, my fated mate, Alpha Kian, was photographed looking tenderly at his mistress. When he finally stormed into our penthouse, he didn't apologize. Instead, he threw a fifty-million-dollar check onto the bed. "Take the money and accept my rejection obediently, or I'll show you what happens when you defy an Alpha." To force my compliance, he terminated all trade agreements with my best friend's pack, pushing them to the brink of bankruptcy. He accused me of blackmailing his grandfather into our marriage, entirely blind to the fact that his beloved mistress was actually a banished, feral Rogue. I had spent six years swallowing my pride, drinking toxic herbs to suppress my true White Wolf scent, and enduring his absolute disgust just to keep his pack safe. Why did I bleed for a man who despised my very existence? I looked at the blood money, and the suffocating sorrow in my chest was instantly replaced by white-hot fury. I didn't take a single cent. Instead, I submitted the rejection papers myself, dropped my pathetic disguise, and walked out into the freezing rain. A towering warrior with a black umbrella dropped to one knee before me in the mud. It was time to stop hiding and return home as the billionaire heir of the legendary Silvermoon Pack.

I was the anomaly. The Glover heiress who never shifted. To my fated mate, Alpha Bryant, I was lower than an Omega—I was his servant. When his mistress, Kalia, pushed me into the freezing lake, I screamed for him. I felt the mate bond pull, begging him to save me. But Bryant looked right at my flailing body, turned his back, and swam to save the woman who had pushed me. He didn't stop there. To "teach me submission," he locked me in a silver-coated cell that burned my skin like acid, all because Kalia lied about a stomach ache. He watched her burn my dead mother's journals. He let her slap me until I bled. He told me I was a genetic dead end, a defect that needed to be erased. I lay in the dark, my bones broken and my heart shattered, wondering why the Moon Goddess hated me. But she didn't hate me. She was preparing me. Bryant thought he had broken me. He didn't know that the man who pulled me from the water wasn't a rogue, but the Lycan King. And he certainly didn't expect me to walk into his gala, hand in hand with the King, and unleash the power of the White Wolf to burn his entire dynasty to the ground.

I traced the floral patterns on the silver candlestick, my fingertips numb from the cold of the penthouse. It was our fifth anniversary, and the Wellington steak I’d spent four hours preparing sat soggy and defeated under the dim chandelier. Fielding finally walked in at 1:00 AM, smelling of scotch and tuberose—a scent I didn't own. When I tried to touch him, he recoiled as if my fingers were acid, then disappeared into the bathroom where I heard him moan his ex-girlfriend's name with a desperate, guttural longing. The betrayal didn't end there. The next day, I found him at a luxury restaurant, watching him slide a massive pink diamond onto Corinna’s finger—the same ring he’d told me was a "business investment." I stood hidden behind a frosted glass partition as his friends laughed, calling me a "lame duck" and a "depressed millstone" around his neck. Fielding didn't defend me; he calmly told them our marriage was just a "debt" he had to pay because I’d saved his life in the crash that ended my ballet career. "She's a millstone, Fielding. How long are you going to play nursemaid?" "I owe her. It's a debt. I pay my debts." When I finally confronted him, he didn't show remorse. Instead, he threatened to use his power to declare me mentally unstable and freeze my grandmother’s trust fund so I’d be left "crippled and penniless" on the street. I realized then that Fielding didn't want a wife; he wanted a martyr to ease his survivor's guilt, as long as I stayed broken and dependent. He thought he’d clipped my wings for good, but he didn't know I’d been secretly studying for the Sorbonne while he was out with his mistress. As I put on my designer gown for the charity gala, I wasn't preparing for a party. I was liquidating my jewelry for untraceable cash and planning the ultimate exit. He thinks I’m his prisoner, but the countdown to my final act has already begun.

I was four months pregnant, weighing over two hundred pounds, and my heart was failing from experimental treatments forced on me as a child. My doctor looked at me with clinical detachment and told me I was in a death sentence: if I kept the baby, I would die, and if I tried to remove it, I would die. Desperate for a lifeline, I called my father, Francis Acosta, to tell him I was sick and pregnant. I expected a father's love, but all I got was a cold, sharp blade of a voice. "Then do it quietly," he said. "Don't embarrass Candi. Her debutante ball is coming up." He didn't just reject me; he erased me. My trust fund was frozen, and I was told I was no longer an Acosta. My fiancé, Auston, had already discarded me, calling me a "bloated whale" while he looked for a thinner, wealthier replacement. I left New York on a Greyhound bus, weeping into a bag of chips, a broken woman the world considered a mistake. I couldn't understand how my own father could tell me to die "quietly" just to save face for a party. I didn't know why I had been a lab rat for my family’s pharmaceutical ambitions, or how they could sleep at night while I was left to rot in the gray drizzle of the city. Five years later, the doors of JFK International Airport slid open. I stepped onto the marble floor in red-soled stilettos, my body lean, lethal, and carved from years of blood and sweat. I wasn't the "whale" anymore; I was a ghost coming back to haunt them. With my daughter by my side and a medical reputation that terrified the global elite, I was ready to dismantle the Acosta empire piece by piece. "Tell Francis to wash his neck," I whispered to the skyline. "I'm home."

For a year, I played the part of the perfect, long-suffering wife, enduring my husband' s public affair. I did it all for one reason: to win full custody of our son, Colton. But when Colton was arrested, he didn't turn to me for help. He looked at me with disgust and spat that our family's problems were all my fault. Later that night, my husband, Jackson, demanded I apologize to his mistress. When I refused, he shoved me into the freezing lake. As I drowned, I saw him and my son comforting her on the dock, a perfect family silhouetted against the moonlight. They were watching me die. The last of my love for them turned to ash. They forgot one thing. I wasn't just a housewife. I was a Morgan. My fingers found the emergency beacon my billionaire father gave me. And I pressed it.

My husband, Mike, was a hero: a National Guard Sergeant, beloved teacher, and football coach. I was his proud, supportive wife, a registered nurse at the VA, and I believed our life was built on his service to our country. But on a charity delivery for Gold Star families, I drove to a quiet town expecting to help a grieving sister. Instead, I saw my "hero" husband in a backyard, laughing with a woman and a little boy who called him "Daddy." My world tilted, the air left my lungs as I watched them, a perfect family portrait under the sun. He came home days later, full of lies about the Nevada desert, his smiles not reaching his eyes. When I confronted him about Mill Creek, Brianna, and Cody, his facade cracked, but he spun a tale of noble duty to a fallen comrade' s family. But I knew the truth: Cody's age didn't add up to a "one-time mistake." The silence hung heavy, confirming not just one betrayal, but two – Brianna was pregnant again. The next morning, he shoved insurance forms at me, printed for Cody, demanding I sign them to pay for his illegitimate son' s medical needs with my federal benefits. When I refused, "No" became a rock, and he grabbed my arm, shoved me against the counter, hurting my hip. "You owe me this," he hissed, the hero stripped away, revealing a monster. Then, with vindictive cruelty, he exposed my sister Olivia' s husband, Mike' s best friend, as also having had an affair, tying our pain together. I was attacked, our sacred family bonds shattered by his cold, calculated malice. How could I have been so blind? How dared he weaponize my sister's pain to control me? That was the moment. The fear became cold, righteous anger. This wasn't just about my broken marriage; it was about two sisters betrayed, their lives upended by a manipulator. We would not just leave; we would fight back. With every rule he broke, every lie he told, we would systematically dismantle the hero he pretended to be.

Aunt Paige couldn't stand that our family was doing better than hers. She schemed to take everything from us. I was accepted into a prestigious university, while her son Grayson didn't even meet the requirements for a community college. On the day of my graduation party, a child in the village fell into the water. Aunt Paige pushed me into the water. "Jun Jun, you're a student at a prestigious university; you can't embarrass the school, go save that child!" I struggled to lift the child, but I drowned instead. After my death, my grandfather and mother also passed away one after the other. Grayson, hailed as a hero, was accepted into a university. Aunt Paige took the relocation compensation for our family's 200-acre orchard. From being destitute, she became incredibly wealthy, the richest person in the village. After being reborn, when I saw that child fall into the water again, before Aunt Paige could say anything, I kicked her into the water.

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.

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.

"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.

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.