Trust Exercise 소설 & 이야기

Claimed as the Wrong Bride: Tripicity Book One Octavia Maddox is a grey zone artist living rough in Tripicity, selling her work to survive. When mob boss Bastien Leclair arranges a contract marriage with Olivia Maddox to secure a political alliance against his rival Corporal, Olivia refuses and doesn't show up. A gallery mix-up, possibly deliberate, puts Occy in the wrong room at the right moment. She signs a contract she doesn't fully understand in exchange for a number that covers the warehouse she's been saving for. Bastien comes to collect. What follows is a chase through the grey zone, a count system of punishments for running, a fever that lands her in hospital, and a slow negotiation of trust between two people who don't trust easily. He moves her to the Alderton, his building, his world, and builds her a studio with north-facing light. She migrates to his bed without deciding to. They fall into something neither of them names. Meanwhile Corporal, operating as Mrs. Santoro, has been watching Occy through a hacked security feed and commissions a painting from her. The three-way power structure of the city tightens around Occy without her knowing it. The Meridian overstep begins destabilising the grey zone she built her life in. Bastien's attempt to secure her position legally through a Maddox family adoption explodes when he tells her without asking her first. She walks out. He sits in the room she left. Coming: the grey zone war, the Maddox meeting with Occy, Corporal's escalation, the truth about who engineered the signing, and whether Occy chooses to stay. Not because she has to, but because she wants to.

In the glittering coastal city of Lumine Bay, where wealth hides corruption and power is protected by shadows, Elara Moretti appears to have the perfect life as the wife of billionaire Damon Moretti. But behind the luxury, her marriage is cold, controlled, and full of locked rooms she has never been allowed to enter. Her world fractures the night she returns from a charity gala to find a threat note waiting in her car: “Your husband built an empire of enemies. You’ll be the first to fall.” By morning, Damon had vanished. His phone is off, his safe has been opened, and the mansion’s security system shuts down in a mysterious lockdown. The Moretti estate, an ultra-modern fortress, becomes a cage. Then a stranger enters through the darkness. Kai Valez, a disciplined, unreadable operative, arrives claiming to have Damon’s clearance and strict orders to protect her. Elara doesn’t trust him… but the attacks closing in leave her no choice. As danger intensifies, she uncovers alarming secrets hidden within Damon’s world: classified files, coded messages, surveillance footage of herself, and a mission tied directly to her past. The deeper she digs, the clearer it becomes, Damon didn’t disappear. He planned everything. Now Elara must navigate a web of lies involving her husband, his powerful family, and the man suddenly risking his life for her. Loyalties blur. Enemies multiply. And the line between protector and threat becomes terrifyingly thin. Just when Elara finds the strength to fight back, she receives a final message: A video. Damon is alive. Staring straight into the camera. “Elara… don’t trust the man beside you.” And the mission truly begins.

Ruby Sinclair has spent eleven years as a servant in the Gallagher pack, hiding her true identity as the last survivor of a slaughtered Alpha bloodline. Orphaned at seven when rogues destroyed her pack, she's endured relentless torment from the Gallagher quintuplets—five Alpha heirs who've made her life a living hell. To survive, Ruby has suppressed both her wolf and her deadly secret: she's a seer, the very ability that painted a target on her family. On the eve of her eighteenth birthday, Ruby's carefully controlled world shatters. Her first shift triggers early, and all five brothers simultaneously recognise her as their fated mate. But years of abuse have left deep scars, and Ruby wants nothing more than to escape the men who tormented her—mate bonds be damned. When Dr Reeves, the pack's trusted physician, attempts to drug and deliver her to the rogues who murdered her parents, Ruby's dormant powers explode. She kills him with a thought and teleports away, terrified of what she's becoming. As the quintuplets discover recordings proving they were systematically drugged for eleven years to hate their own mate, they must somehow earn back the trust of a woman who has every reason to reject them all. But a carved symbol on a dead rogue reveals the true threat: the Shadow Alpha, an ancient corrupted Guardian who has hunted Ruby's kind for millennia. A mystical wolf spirit reveals Ruby's destiny: she's a cosmic Guardian, and her five mates are meant to be her anchors. Now Ruby must decide whether to trust the men who destroyed her, or face an unstoppable evil alone.

In the heart of New York City, the NYPD never sleeps—and neither do its secrets. Detective Jocelynn Sanchez is all sharp edges and silence. Closed off, cold, and constantly on guard, she’s built walls few have dared to climb. Her time at the academy left her scarred, thanks to a group of recruits who made it their mission to break her spirit. Now, years later, she’s forced to join a new unit—led by none other than Andrei Smirnov, friends with the men who put her through hell. Andrei has always wanted to work with Jocelynn, though she has no idea. Unlike his friends, he saw her strength back then—and admired it. Her arrival on his team feels like fate. But earning her trust proves harder than expected. She barely speaks, avoids everyone except her one friend, and seems to carry a past she’ll never share. Still, Andrei is patient. An open book with a big family and an even bigger heart, he slowly begins to break through Jocelynn's defenses. And in doing so, he discovers the truth: she’s not cold—she’s protecting herself. Jocelynn sees that Andrei isn’t like the men who hurt her. He’s kind, steady, and genuinely wants to understand her. But there are secrets she won’t risk exposing—not even to him. Like the fact that her godfather is their precinct captain, or the real reason she cut ties with her family. As cases grow more dangerous and their bond deepens, Jocelynn must decide if she can finally let someone in. Shadows in Blue is a slow-burn detective romance about trauma and trust, told from both perspectives.

At a time of war and hate, Alpha Diego put his life and that of his pack in danger when he abducted and eventually fell in love with the Luna of a rival pack: the Blackfur pack. Without a thought of the consequences, Diego makes Kyra his Luna after gruesomely murdering her mate and Alpha of the Blackfur pack. Kyra, encumbered with grief for her dead mate decides to redeem her defeated pack, but she was only human and without any special abilities. Knowing how much Diego loved her, Kyra decides to use it to her advantage; making him completely trust her. Diego fell without a doubt, stubbornly kicking off his Beta, Zayr's disagreement concerning his sudden faith in her. It took only a short time for Kyra to get Diego to tell her the secret of his Pack's continuous victory. The Syria sword. A death gift from his father was the secret of the abrupt steady victory of the crystal red moon pack. One reckless trust led to betrayal and the brutal destruction of the crystal Redmoon pack, with the Syria sword thrust into the chest of Alpha Diego by the one he trusts, instantly placing a sacred curse on him. Due to the curse, Diego evolved into a demon Alpha. His strength; limitless, His heart; icy and dark, and his only intention; to get rid of the one who betrayed him. Only then, will he succumb willingly to the nothingness that threateningly accompanied him, ogling for his life. For more than twenty years, with the blade still buried under his skin, Diego fiercely sought Kyra, to kill her in the cruelest way possible; notwithstanding, she was his first love. Now, his hatred for her was thicker than the love he once had for her, or so he thought. ...

"Please trust, I really do love you! I’ll do anything, please forgive me!" He pleaded, desperately hanging on to my hand. It was too late, I looked down on him as tears formed in his eyes. I was already too hurt to trust those eyes. Everything was a lie, I was a fool for giving him everything. How could I have been so stupid to have been fooled by him. I gave him everything. My throat felt dry, I was too tired and hurt to even muster words up for him. I couldn't believe what had just happened. I closed my eyes, my cheeks starting to feel the trail of tearing falling on them. "You’ve finally been ex… ex-exposed!" My voice finds itself by the end. --------- Melissa, a 17 year old girl, who grew up in the same house all her life with her mum Martha, and her sister Barbie. Right when Melissa feels like life is going her way, her mum gets transferred to the home company in California as a secretary. Melissa was in no way ready for a new environment, but still packs her bags to go to California with her family. Having to start a new high school where Melissa struggles to fit in, even making an enemy along the way. Crushing on Steve, the boy who's in love with Bethany, her enemy, school is anything but enjoyable. In a chostic turn of events, Melissa falls head over heels in-love unaware of the secrets that could change her relationship forever. Did Melissa make the right decision? Exposed

On the one evening following her mating ceremony, Ada caught her supposed mate and his own sister in an incestuous relationship with each other. He coldly and dispassionately murdered her before she could get away. Being blinded by the illusion of bond and manipulation, the betrayal was not expected by her. But the Moon Goddess granted her another occasion. Born a year before death, Ada recalls everything. This time it is blood she wants. When secrets come undone, she finds out that the man who killed her was never meant to be her match; he was merely a cheat who had cast a spell to inherit her powers. And the one she thought her foe? He turns out to be her true destined mate who was marked by the Moon Goddess. It is now up to Ada to pursue a course of vengeance or to accept the relationship that she never realized she was destined to ever have. ______________________________________________ "I died believing in the wrong man," Ada sneered. He bent in, eyes aglow. "Then this time trust the right one. Trust me. Give me a chance." She squinted. "Do you want to take vengeance for what they did to you? Then I swear that I will give you their hearts and tender them to you myself." "I can deal with this, myself, she snapped. "I don't want you involve in this." "I know you are," he said, moving in closer, voice gruff. "But it is my duty to keep you safe, so I am getting involved." She was about to protest when he interrupted her-- “I have lost you before, Ada, to those monsters. I am not going to allow them to take you from me again."

The first sign wasn’t the bodies. It was the birds. When flocks begin falling lifeless from the sky and people start collapsing without warning, Dr. Naomi Sinclair is thrust into a medical nightmare no science can explain. Victims bleed from every orifice before dying within minutes, hospitals are overwhelmed, and every answer only leads to more impossible questions. Then the air begins to change. As oxygen becomes humanity’s most valuable resource, governments ration every breath and erect massive atmospheric domes that keep cities alive for only one precious hour before shutting down. Beyond those walls, survival becomes a race against an invisible enemy. Amid the chaos, Naomi begins receiving anonymous messages that always seem to arrive moments before the next horrifying discovery. Someone knows what’s happening. Someone wants her to uncover the truth. But every scientist who gets too close to the answers disappears. Determined to stop the catastrophe, Naomi forms a small team to unravel a conspiracy buried beneath decades of secrets. Along the way, she finds an unexpected ally in Aiden Vale—a brilliant, compassionate man whose unwavering support becomes her only constant in a world that is rapidly falling apart. As trust turns into love, Naomi finally begins to believe that even in the darkest moments, hope is still worth holding onto. Until one discovery changes everything. Now, with humanity gasping for its final breath, Naomi must decide who to trust, what to sacrifice, and whether the truth is worth the price it demands. Because if the person she loves has been lying to her from the very beginning… How do you save the world when the only man who can help you might also be the one destroying it?

When Jolaade's world is shattered by heartbreak and loss, she never expects to find love again. But then she meets Zach, a charismatic and successful billionaire actor who sweeps her off her feet. As they embark on a whirlwind romance, Jolaade must confront her dark past and learn to trust again. But Zach has secrets of his own and so does she, and their love is put to the test when their secrets and pasts threaten to tear them apart. Will Jolaade and Zach fight for their love, or will the shadows of their pasts destroy their chance at happiness? Dive into this emotional rollercoaster of a romance to find out. Get ready for a heart-stopping, pulse-pounding ride into the depths of love, lust, and redemption.

Emily Cortez, heiress of the powerful Cortez Pack, has always believed she could balance duty and desire—until her betrothed, Ricardo Marino, rejects her publicly with no explanation. Humiliated and vulnerable, she turns to her childhood friend, Rudy, and proposes a contract relationship to reclaim control of her life. But the world she thought she knew is full of lies. A man claiming to be Ralph Othon appears, offering stability and influence, while secrets about loyalty, power, and identity threaten to destroy everything. Emily must navigate mafia politics, pack rivalries, and deception while deciding who she can trust—and who she is willing to risk her heart for.