Dinner For One: How Cooking In Paris Saved Me

'What's that from?' Daniel says, lifting my sleeve a little more to reveal the obvious bruise. Shit I forgot about that one, 'I bumped into my counter last night. You know me, I'm clumsy'. Daniel looks at me knowingly. I have to get to class, but I'll meet you at lunch. My treat.' I say, run off to class. That was a close one. She was compelled to work from a young age in order to support her parents' vices and her own education. She was the neglected child of alcoholic parents. Daily bruising was a reality. She went through a lot of suffering before she found the man who would save her.

I ran into my boss when I was complaining to my best friend about how he actively made the workplace hostile for me. He fired off a barrage of questions, "Where's the annual report? Where's the script for the speech? I can't believe you have the gall to enjoy a meal when you have a mountain of work to do!" That was it. I slammed the table. "It's due tomorrow! What's the rush? Are you going to hold a funeral for yourself tomorrow?" My boss stormed off in a huff. I asked for the bill, but the waiter came with two. My table came up to 60 dollars, but the other ran up to 3,750. "Your boyfriend said you're paying for both. Cash or credit, miss?" Shawn Goodall put that impossible bill on my tab and called himself my boyfriend? Unbelievable! I called him, utterly incensed. Yet, he had the gall to say, "Get the receipt and claim it from finance." Then, he hung up. The waiter was going to call the cops if I didn't pay up, so I had no choice but to accept this bitter defeat. I was trying to claim the money the next day, but the cops arrested me instead. "Shawn Goodall died at midnight and was found in his house. You're his girlfriend and the last person he met. You're coming with us."

Margot Keys was one of many she-wolves who were publicly claimed by their mate. For years, she was mated to a man who thought that women should do as they were told and their only value was to create an heir. In her first mate bond, she suffered horrible abuse, unable to escape the horrors of her mate. However, she refused to give him a child. She never wanted any child of hers to be raised by a man who didn’t value her as a mate, a Luna, or a woman. Ezra Hart is an Alpha who publicly claimed his first mate, as was expected for all ranked members. His mate, unable to live with the embarrassment of the public claim, killed herself and their unborn child, leaving Ezra alone and destitute. When Margot recognizes Ezra as her second chance mate, she is ready to reject him, unwilling to subject herself to another mate bond. But Ezra lost one mate and he isn’t willing to lose another. Thanks to his previous brother-in-law, Hunter, Ezra has seen that the public claimings are detrimental to all she-wolves. Now, the Moon Goddess has given him a second chance to make things right and be the kind of mate that he’s always wanted to be. However, when Margot killed her previous mate, willing to give her life in the process, Ezra does the only thing he can to save her. He marks her without her consent. When she wakes, Margot is furious but also surprised to find that Ezra isn’t forcing her to immediately accept him. Can Ezra convince Margot that he is different than her first mate? Can Margot let go of her past and find true love again?

While I was traveling overseas with my family, a sudden flood hit. My fiancé slung my sister Joan over his back because her legs were weak, and ran for safety. My parents didn't have time for me, but they still remembered to grab the parrot they had just bought for Joan. All of them flew home overnight and even posted in the family group chat about how lucky everyone was to survive. But… They forgot something. I was still trapped in the flood, alone and helpless. When I woke up, I called my mentor without hesitation. "Dr. Jackson, I've decided to go with you and join Doctors Without Borders. I'm never coming back."

When my husband and I drop by his childhood home for Christmas dinner, my mother-in-law, Melissa Potter, is the only one busying away in the kitchen. Everyone else is on their phones. I've just taken a seat when Melissa begins to lecture me. "What, are you just going to sit your ass down and wait for food to come? Don't you know when to lend a helping hand? Am I supposed to exhaust myself for your sake?" From time to time, she keeps rattling the pots and pans loudly. "I can't believe those with healthy bodies want a 70-year-old like me to serve them! Does anyone here have any conscience?" Feeling a little uneasy, I gave my husband a tiny nudge. "Why don't you help Mom out?" After Melissa hears my suggestion, she gets even more pissed off. Thinking that this is my first Christmas with my in-laws, I don't really want to cause a scene here, so I get up to my feet and help her out. But the moment I enter the kitchen, Melissa delegates all the tasks to me. I endure my fury as much as I can while finishing the Christmas dinner preparations. When I'm about to head back to the dining table and dig in, Melissa suddenly speaks up. "Hold up. We got scores to settle before dinner."

Maya's marriage to Leo is a silent, polite tomb. Once passionate artists of their own lives, they are now buried under the mountains of parenthood, two ghosts co-managing a household. Desperate to resurrect the man she loves and the woman she lost, Maya makes a radical choice. She doesn't want just a date night-she wants an adventurous detonation. She orchestrates a forbidden fantasy: a single, explosive night with a captivating stranger. The experience is a mirror, reflecting back their boldest, most alive selves. For a glorious moment, it works. But the adventurous high crashes into a brutal dawn. Misunderstandings poison their paradise. Maya's possessive fears twist every glance into a betrayal, while Leo's possessive longing feels like a sentence. The very fantasy meant to unite them becomes the weapon that drives them further apart than ever before. Facing total collapse, they must confront the raw truth: the fantasy didn't break them-it exposed the fractures they'd long ignored. To save their marriage, they must embark on a more perilous adventure than any night of passion: navigating the wreckage of their trust, where every misunderstanding dismantled is a step toward a new foundation, and where possessive love must evolve into a chosen, fiercely protective partnership. This is a raw, intimate story about the wild in lengths we go to save what we love, proving that sometimes, to find each other again, you must first get completely lost.