Loud

Sorevia City, Darmoria One of my wife's so-called friends practically shouted across the table, "So, you got knocked up by your side piece. What's the game plan?" Vanessa Joplin calmly set a plate of steak in front of me. "We always said if one of us cheated, we'd vanish from each other's lives for good," she said, all sugar-sweet. "I'm not letting that happen. So yeah—I've been careful. Once the baby's here, the only dad anyone'll see is Glen." After that, she signed that she'd love me forever—totally missing the red burn around my eyes. She didn't know I'd gotten my hearing back a week ago. Didn't know I already knew about the guy on the side. And she definitely didn't know I'd bought a ticket north. Seven days. Once the paperwork cleared, I'd be gone. No noise. No goodbye. Just erased.

Ayanna Cambor, the crush of my childhood friend, Dorian Harmon, makes fun of me for being a mute. She purposefully pours melted dark chocolate into my thermos. Then, she howls at the top of her lungs. "As a mute, you can't complain even when you swallow something bitter." Later on, Ayanna takes advantage of the situation by forcing me to stick my tongue out. She insists on making me show everyone whether or not a mute's tongue is different from a regular person's tongue. I look at Dorian instinctively. After all, he has promised me that as long as he's around, he won't let anyone bully me. But he merely shoots me a cold glance. "Just stick your tongue out and show it to Ayanna. It's not anything major to cry over." I can only hold my tears back as I quietly conceal the school transfer application that I've just received. It's true that transferring schools is no big deal. In that case, there's no need for Dorian to know about it.

My roommate sets me up. She deliberately forces me into a death-trap survival game. As I shut my eyes and wait for death to take me, I realize that the game's bosses can read my mind. "Look at the blood spurting from this baby doll's neck. It's like a fountain of pee." The baby doll is baffled. It's about to launch its ultimate move, but it falters. "Man, look at how this guy is still sweeping the streets when he's so old. Does he not have a pension?" The old man is about to swallow me whole, but he suddenly gets a heart attack. An ambulance takes him away. "Oh, so this is the amusement park's owner. Oh, dear god, he's handsome, albeit a little skinny. I can send him flying with a kick!" The handsome owner's expression darkens. He instantly takes off his shirt to reveal his washboard abs. "Do you still think I'm skinny?"

For six years Selene Marlow loved her husband. For six years he was sleeping with another woman. She found out the morning of her first ultrasound, when his mistress sent her a video of them together from the night before. By that afternoon her husband had asked for a divorce and by evening she had lost the baby from the shock. She went home to her parents' house broken and bleeding and her father met her at the door with a man in a black suit and a contract in his hand. Her father had lost again. This time the only thing he had left to bet was her. The buyer was the most feared man on the continent. The Alpha King, forty-six years old. A widower, war criminal in the eyes of some packs, god in the eyes of others. He was also her ex-husband's father. Everyone in the kingdom assumed she would be used and discarded within a month. Instead, on the night he bought her, the Alpha King looked at her bruised wrists, her hollow eyes, her shaking hands and offered her something no one had ever offered her before. A crown. A throne. And the heads of every single person who had ever hurt her. The only condition? Become his wife.

Richard's parents died in a car accident when he was eight years old. Life has not been easy for him and his two sisters because no one was willing to help them. His older sister decided to sacrifice everything she had to see that Richard and his younger sister have the best of life. At age of 18, Richard happened to find himself in a university as a result of his sister's effort. She warned him seriously not to get involve in trouble. But his trouble began when he fell in love with one of his professor's daughter which resulted in him leaving school. Will he be able to face his sister after making all her efforts go in vain? Or will he find a way to succeed without obtaining a degree in an effort to make up for his mistake? Meanwhile Rebecca is very naughty highschool student that was terrible at mathematics and physics and has never been in love. Her mother hired Richard to teach her mathematics because he had the best result in his faculty. But Rebecca hated him so much that she could anything to make him stop teaching her. One day, Richard stood up for her while she was being humiliated at school. That made her to start seeing the good in him. Just as things were about to get interesting between them, a very tragic incident happened to Richard causing him to leave school. Rebecca did not see Richard again until after five years and he wasn't like she used know him. Will she fall for him again like before? Or will she turn a blind eye and pretend he doesn't exist?

Winona Warren never imagined that on her birthday, her son would hand her a walnut cake that could kill her. As her consciousness began to blur, she heard Asher Rhodes' furious voice. "Carter, don't you know your mother is allergic to walnuts?" Carter Rhodes' childish voice rang out with startling clarity. "I do. But I want Ella to be my mom instead. Dad, you want that too, don't you? Even if I..." A crushing wave of suffocation overwhelmed Winona before she could hear the rest of Asher's answer. In the second before she completely lost consciousness, Winona had only one thought. If she woke up, she would never be Asher's wife or Carter's mother again.