How Does The Second Sleep End?

"I do trust you. I don't trust anyone else though. I can't even trust my own brother with you! Let alone my friends, pack or Alpha." he growled. 'I knew this was a bad idea. I should just go back to the forest!" I yelled back. Craig suddenly had me pinned against the seat. He straddled me and had me caged in his arms. 'You aren't leaving me ever! You are mine and I am yours. We are meant to be by each other's side. I will not allow you to leave!" Kitty was 15 when the world changed. Now her life is a living nightmare as she tries to survive in the woods without being discovered by one of the roving packs of supernatural beings. A secret about her and some lost friends may change everything but with it be for the better? Will her old friend become her new love? Can she trust the alpha to keep her safe? Kitty is thrust in a world of werewolves and vampires. Where no one is who she once thought they were.

A plane crash tore my husband and his twin brother apart. One survived. One did not. When I rushed to the hospital, I saw my brother-in-law, who had just survived the crash, locked in a passionate kiss with his wife. My husband? He lay lifeless in the morgue. Blinded by grief, I stumbled down the stairs…and lost the child I had spent three years longing for. Three years passed. Just as I was finally learning to breathe without him, I overheard a conversation between his closest friend and my brother-in-law: "How long do you plan to keep pretending to be your brother? Alicia is your legal wife." He adjusted his glasses, voice icy and distant. "I swore to my brother I'd protect Emily for the rest of my life. I am him now. As for Alicia… let her be the debt I carry into my next life." That's when I learned the truth. It was the brother-in-law who died in the crash. My husband, the man I had mourned all those years, had taken on his brother's identity to stay by Emily's side, the unattainable woman he had always secretly loved. So then what about me? The woman clinging to old memories, living in torture for three years. What was I to him?

Eidolon Avenue: Where the secretly guilty go to die. One building. Five floors. Five doors per floor. Twenty-five nightmares feeding the hunger lurking between the bricks and waiting beneath the boards. The sequel to Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast (“a great read...powerful and jarring” - Cemetery Dance) returns to the voracious Eidolon as it savors The Second Feast. A narcoleptic man in apartment 2A battles a vengeful past determined to rob him of everything as he runs from the barbaric disaster of a delusional love. A woman in 2B, reinventing herself to please a callous boyfriend, discovers the horrors that wait in the shadows of her self-renovation. The man in 2C, a teacher at the nearby Catholic girl’s school, collapses beneath the brutal consequences of his lecherous desires. An older woman in 2D, after decades dedicated to the church, is cornered at last by the grisly carnage beating at the hollow center of her faith. And a college student in 2E, hungry to escape an ignored life of invisible anonymity, finds herself captured between the pages of a ravenous book. All thrown into their own private hell as every cruel choice, every drop of spilled blood, every silent, complicit moment of cowardice is remembered, resurrected and relived to feed the ancient evil that lives on Eidolon Avenue. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

The last thing Valentina Serra sees before she dies is the crack in the ceiling above her bed. She is 45 years old. She is not unhappy. That, she realizes in the last seconds of her first life, is the most devastating thing she could say about it. She opens her eyes in a university lecture hall in Barcelona. She is 20 years old. Her notebook is open, her pen is in her hand, and she can feel — with the precision of someone who has lived an entire life — exactly how much she is about to waste if she does nothing. She does something. Armed with 25 years of memory, Valentina sets out to close every loop she left open: the military commission she dismissed, the marketing career she let others architect for her, the relationship she stayed in long past its expiry date, and the mother she visited but never truly knew. One by one, she reaches for the life she talked herself out of the first time around. But the two people closest to her — the friends who have always been there, always supportive, always first to suggest the safer, smaller option — are watching. And when Valentina begins exceeding the quiet ceiling that they built for her, Isabel and David begin to coordinate. Then there is Ethan Cole. Washington D.C. Investment sector. Five years younger, which bothered her the first time. He will walk into her life again in Barcelona, and this time Valentina already knows what the long dinner and the careful conversation and the late-night walk along the Passeig de Gràcia will mean — if she doesn't talk herself out of it. She is not going to talk herself out of it.

After catching her boyfriend in bed with two women, struggling horror writer Winona Hart thinks the universe has officially hit rock bottom. Then a mysterious invitation changes everything. The Midnight Project promises fame, money, and the opportunity of a lifetime: an exclusive fully-paid reality experience for selected rising creators. Writers, actors, gamers, influencers—only a handful are invited to the luxurious Midnight Hotel hidden deep within the mountains. At first, it feels like the perfect distraction from her ruined relationship. Until the first contestant dies. Then comes the terrifying truth: nobody can leave the hotel, every floor hides a deadly game, and when midnight strikes, time resets all over again. Trapped inside endless lethal loops with a group of dangerously attractive strangers, Winona must survive horrifying creatures, twisted rules, and betrayals that grow darker with every reset. But the deeper she falls into the hotel’s secrets, the more she realizes one thing... The Midnight Hotel did not choose its guests randomly. And the calm, mysterious man who keeps saving her may know exactly why she was invited.

I had spent my whole life living in the shadow of my sister, Juliana, the woman everyone in the mafia's heir circle adored and protected. She had no idea that I had been reborn. Just like in my previous life, she smiled sweetly and gently, insisting that I pick my fiancé first, pretending to be thoughtful and gracious. However, this time, I refused. In my previous life, I naïvely believed she meant well. I married the man she recommended, Chester Kane, an heir who was said to have been paralyzed after an ambush. I gave up my right to inherit the family, becoming his caretaker, his crutch, the medicine he used to fight loneliness. However, no matter how much warmth I gave him, his heart remained frozen. The truth only came out during my sister's pregnancy celebration. When an assassin from a rival family raised his gun toward her belly, the man who had not stood in years suddenly rose to his feet. He shoved me toward the muzzle of the gun. All seven bullets tore into my womb. As I collapsed, I saw him pull my sister into his arms, shielding her with his own body and taking the final shot for her. Only then did I understand. He had never been paralyzed. His family had never abandoned him. He pretended to be sick because Juliana's heart belonged to another man, and he refused to be tied to me. "I'm sorry, Tania," he said. "I lied to you. However, I couldn't let Juliana lose the heir she's carrying. I'll repay what I owe you in our next life." When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day my father asked us to choose our marriage partners. This time, I chose no one. Yet back then, they were the ones who begged for my love.