Object Substitute
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The Hockey Prince's Secret Ice Queen
All I wanted was to find a computer genius to process the non-linear dynamic equations for my ecological model. Instead, I found myself cornered by Julian Andrews, the university's hockey prince, trading a public, staged kiss for his academic support. To finalize our "deal," I was dragged to the campus ice rink. The cheerleaders and puck bunnies immediately swarmed him, mocking my plain clothes and treating me like a pathetic joke. Brooke, the head cheerleader, even set up a figure skating competition with a date with Julian as the grand prize. She performed a basic spin, blew him a kiss, and smugly waited for me to fall flat on my face and humiliate myself. His hockey teammates laughed from the sidelines, watching me try to support Julian as he stumbled around the ice like a newborn giraffe. But as I held his warm hand to keep him from falling, I couldn't help but feel something was terribly wrong. Why was a top-tier athlete faking such awful balance? And why did his ice-blue eyes stare at me with such knowing anticipation, as if he already knew about the professional figure skating past I had spent years trying to bury? "Just let go and skate." He whispered, slowly releasing my hand. I took a deep breath, glided to the center of the rink, and landed a flawless double Axel. As the entire rink fell into a dead, shocked silence, I realized I had just exposed not only my own hidden past, but also the biggest secret of the campus god.
Chapter 1 No.1
Sage POV:
"Let me kiss you."
The request was a low, hurried murmur—warm, quiet, and laced with the faintest edge of mortification.
Stunned, I snapped my head up toward the sound.
Julian Andrews filled my vision. He easily towered a head over me, his lean, athletic frame silhouetted against the bright morning glare, casting a long shadow across the cobblestones. Briar University's star forward. Team captain. The athletic department's untouchable golden boy.
Campus rumor had it that Julian was notoriously indifferent, never sparing anyone a second glance.
Behind him, a solid wall of navy-and-gold varsity jackets blocked the brick path. His teammates were whistling, shoving each other, and effectively cutting off my only exit.
The sudden commotion immediately bottlenecked the morning foot traffic. Whispers rippled through the crowd, and within seconds, a dozen students reached into their pockets out of sheer muscle memory, black camera lenses catching the light as they aimed squarely at us.
Julian's sharp eyes tracked the movement, his jaw tightening into a hard, irritated line.
Before I could take a single defensive step back, he closed the distance between us. Leaning down into my space, his broad shoulders shifted in a subtle, fluid maneuver—throwing up an impenetrable physical wall that completely shielded my face from the intrusive glare of the cameras.
His sharp, striking face hovered breathtakingly close. His deep baritone brushed against my ear, lost to the autumn wind, meant for me alone:
"Sorry to drop this on you," he whispered, his pale blue eyes disarmingly earnest, holding a quiet heat that sent a tremor straight down my spine. "The guys backed me into a locker-room dare... but I'm not here to use you as a joke. We can fake it. Angle it so it looks real—whatever you're comfortable with. Just help me get them off my back, and I owe you one."
It was only then that my brain finally rebooted.
What on earth? He's actually trying to kiss me?
A sharp flare of pure absurdity hit me, and my gaze dropped to my reflection in the dark glass door of the adjacent building: an oversized, faded gray hoodie that swallowed my frame whole, soft, thin jeans worn at the knees, bare-faced dark circles carved beneath my eyes from forty-eight hours of non-stop coding, my dark hair hastily twisted into a cheap plastic claw clip, and a pair of oversized, thick black-rimmed glasses sitting heavy on the bridge of my nose, completely hiding my face.
I looked like a refugee from an all-night disaster. How had Briar's golden prince ended up in front of me?
When I looked back up, my breath trapped in my throat anyway. He was too close, his clean scent of winter mint and cedar wrapping around my senses. Having those pale blue eyes staring straight down at me made my chest tighten in a way I really didn't want to acknowledge.
"Clock's ticking, Cap!" Landon howled from the sidelines, hands cupped around his mouth as the rest of the players lost their minds laughing. "Plant one on her, or enjoy the five-AM bag skate!"
A raucous chorus of barks and chest-thumping went up from the team.
A few yards away, two girls heading toward the dining hall froze in their tracks, pointing their phones.
"Wait, who the hell is that?" one of them laughed loudly, zooming her camera in on my face. "She looks like she just crawled out of a dumpster. There's no way Julian's actually kissing her. Post it on Sidechat right now—this is going straight to number one."
The cruel words hit like a splash of ice water, snapping me out of my daze and instantly killing the stupid flutter in my chest.
I hated the attention.
Four years ago, after my family and my former training partner framed me and destroyed my competitive skating career, I swore I would never be public entertainment again. I buried my name, switched majors, and hid behind oversized fleece and thick glasses just to live an invisible life. If I ended up on the campus forums with Julian Andrews, the internet vultures would dox me before noon—and drag up the toxic scandal I had bled to walk away from.
My research was already on the verge of falling apart. I didn't have time for this circus.
I locked my grip around my heavy binders, my knuckles straining white.
"Find someone else for your dare, Andrews," I said coldly, taking a step back to put distance between us, my voice tight with adrenaline. "I'm not interested in being part of your game. Move."
I kept my head down, attempting to brush past him.
"You're Sage Kelley, right?"
The sound of my name brought my boots to an immediate halt.
I blinked up at him, caught completely off guard.
"Professor Beaumont's senior research student," Julian straightened up slightly, his cadence measured and even, carrying an intellectual sharpness that seemed impossible beneath a varsity jacket. "I saw your Havenwood Creek senior capstone proposal sitting on his desk over Sunday dinner."
My heart gave a hard, hollow thud. Professor Beaumont was my academic advisor—and the guardian of the final research endowment my late father had left behind.
Julian leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a near-whisper against the whistle of the wind. "I spent an hour going over your codebase."
My lips parted. "You... read my proposal?"
"Your simulation keeps crashing because your core fluid algorithm strategy is flawed," Julian murmured, his pale blue eyes deadly sharp. "And Uncle Des mentioned that if you don't deliver a working version by this Friday, the department is pulling your grant—which means you don't clear your senior thesis, and you don't graduate in May."
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
Friday was the deadline. If the funding was pulled, the project died, my senior capstone failed, and I would be forced to stay another semester without my degree. Worse, my father's final ecological legacy would be reduced to scrap paper.
I had been panicking over that exact deadline for two days straight, and Julian had just laid it out like it was nothing.
Worse, I couldn't even brush him off. I had heard the rumors about Beaumont's nephew—the CS prodigy everyone in the department talked about. I just had never realized it was him.
"I know how to fix your algorithm," Julian stated plainly, laying his cards on the table, his gaze locking onto mine with an unshakeable, quiet certainty. "Help me get through this bet. In return, I'll rewrite your boundary calculations tonight. Deal?"
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Substitute Bride, Substitute Love
"You're so cheap. And you don't even have a basic sense of shame." "I am not cheap at all. You are my first man. But for her, you aren't." He cupped my neck with his hand directly and asked word by word, "What did you say?" I reached out and pinched his waist gently with my fingers, pretending to be
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Substitute Illusion
I followed Tristan for three years. Relying on this face to become his substitute for the moonlight. People all say that I am just a canary trapped in a cage. But who knows, all of this is voluntary? Because the heart beating in Tristan's chest. Originally belonged to my lover...
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Substitute bride
In a twist of fate, Selena Vance steps into a wedding gown meant for her sister, sealing a pact with Aiden Evans, a billionaire bound by debt rather than desire. As secrets and lies weave a tangled web around her, Selena must choose between the chains of duty and the whispers of a forbidden love.
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Beloved Substitute
"One rainy night: Morris Shaw was chased and killed, accidentally hit Aria Rice, so, Aria took him home, escaped the robbery. Seeing him covered in blood, she thought he was a murderer, so she avoided him after that. MK Multinational Group: Without wealthy-family background, Aria was often bullied b
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Substitute Bride
He married her to punish her. He didn't expect to fall for the girl he swore to destroy. She was supposed to be his revenge. Instead, she became his obsession. Chloe Adams was forced to marry billionaire Liam Reigns. Not for love. For debt. For the death of his sister Rose. The girl Chlo
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Substitute Wife, Destined Lover
"I'm in desperate need of money to pay Grandmother's medical fee. I will marry Charles instead of Yvonne as soon as I get the money." When her sister Yvonne ran away from the wedding, Autumn was forced to pretend to be Yvonne and marry Charles. Her only wish was to get a divorce after a year. Cha
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Her Substitute Husband
Hate is a vivid emotion in this book of twists and turns. Charmaine Sham, daughter to a failing political mogul, finds herself in an arranged marriage with Ammitel Aetheris, New York's god of business and politics, despite being betrothed to another. However, a night before the scheduled wedding
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My Substitute Wife
In order to seal a $ 1 billion contract deal with the affluent family, the Fanny’s, Brian goes out of his way to fall in love with a girl, whose family’s horrible past shouldn’t be toiled with. Later Kate is heartbroken as she discovers Brian has a wife and four children and has deceived her all alo
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MR WALLACE'S SUBSTITUTE BRIDE.
Anastasia Moore has spent four years being the perfect secretary to the brilliant and demanding Travis Wallace. Quiet, efficient, and easy to overlook, she never imagined her handsome employer would truly notice her. But after heartbreak changes Anastasia forever and Travis's glamorous love affair f
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The Substitute Wife's Revenge
"I' m sorry, Ms. Davies, but there seems to be a problem." The government clerk's words hit me like a physical blow. Liam and I were so excited, registering our baby' s birth early, making it all feel real. Then she said it: "Mr. Liam O' Connell is already married. His marriage to a Ms. Sienna Ree
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No Substitute For Love
Amelia was a substitute bride. Her husband Oscar was originally in love with some other woman named Cassie, but Cassie put up a front on the day of their wedding and ran away. Four years later, she returned to the city and asked Amelia to step aside so that she could reunite with her lover. Was it g
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The SUBSTITUTE WIFE RETURNS
Ariana Hale was the ailing twin that nobody ever gave a thought, until her sister vanished one day before the wedding. Being compelled to substitute her at the altar, Ariana was a wife in front of people and a replacement behind the closed doors. Ariana was sent away and paid to keep the swap a se
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Beyond A Substitute
After Beth, the love of Kingsley's life, left him, his world fell apart. Drowning in heartbreak, he vanished into obscurity... until Katherine found him and helped him heal. Her familiar aqua-blue eyes brought him peace and, eventually, love but secrets, lies, and the return of his ex-fiancée, Beth,
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The Substitute Twin Bride
"I will pay for your mother's surgery, but you must agree to my terms, Rose." A devilish grin played on Romilda's lips. "Mom is your mother, too!" "Business is business, Rose. Do you want my help or not? Don't get carried away with me, all right?" "What exactly do you want, Romilda?" "Give your virg
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The Alpha's Substitute Mate
Amelia, an 18-year-old omega, has been suffering physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her family members for her inability to shift into a wolf. When her step sister, Linda, who was initially betrothed to the ruthless and cunning werewolf lord, Alpha Adrian, becomes unavailable, Amelia is
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The Alpha Substitute Bride
After both of her parents' disappearances, Scarlet Marigold, daughter of an alpha, is forced to live as a servant in the house of her stepmother, who was speculated to have been the cause of her parents' death. As beautiful as she is, Scarlet is regarded as useless and worthless because she is a hum
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The Billionaire's Substitute Bride
Karen reflects on her crush for Bryan and decides to go along with her family's plan as she didn't want to disappoint them in any way. She has been someone who cares so much about her family's reputation and didn't see anything wrong in being a substitute bride in place of her twin sister. Karen
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The Beast’s Substitute Bride
For over a hundred years, the human town has provided the next mate for the reigning beasts and this year, a bride is required. Paisley and Nevaeh are from the family mandated to provide the next bride for the reigning beast. Nevaeh has been selected as the eldest daughter while Paisley is engaged
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The Vampire's substitute bride
Ella happens to meet a charming and handsome man and she can't stop thinking about him. When a new transfer student arrives at school, Ella discovers that he is the very man she has been yearning for. Meanwhile, the handsome man's allure catches the attention of all the girls in school, especially S
