His Broken Angel's Dying Secret

I was a ghost haunting the halls of Port Sterling High, pretending to be alive. My only goal was to live like a normal teenager, even as the cancer eating me from the inside was a secret I guarded with my life. Then the school's resident psycho, Bishop Dalton, decided I was his to protect. He mistook my chemo-induced weakness for fragility and my nausea for nerves. He fought my battles, took detention for me, and glared at anyone who looked at me wrong, ready to tear the world apart for me. He was trying to save me from the monsters he understood, never guessing the real monster was in my own blood. Then one day, he saw it: the horrific, black-and-purple bruise on my arm from a blown IV. The fury in his eyes was terrifying. He was ready to kill whoever had dared to touch me. He grabbed my wrist, his voice shaking as he demanded a name. "Who did this to you?" I couldn't tell him the truth. The pity would have been a sentence worse than death. So I looked that beautiful, broken boy in the eye and gave him a lie far more cruel. "I did it to myself," I whispered, letting the tears fall. I watched the fire in his soul die out, replaced by a devastating pity. I had saved my secret, but in doing so, I had just become the tragedy he would try to fix.

Chapters

Chapter 6

A harsh beam of white light sliced through the dusk, hitting Bishop's bloodied face.

"Nobody move!" a furious voice shouted.

Vice Principal Alistair Prynne marched around the corner of the shed, holding a heavy black flashlight. He was breathing heavily, his face red with anger.

Bishop reacted instantly.

He stepped sideways, using his broad shoulders to completely block Claire from Prynne's line of sight.

"Get out of here," Bishop whispered harshly over his shoulder. "Run."

Claire didn't move. She knew Prynne had been looking for an excuse to expel Bishop all year. If she ran, Bishop was finished.

Prynne stopped a few feet away. He shined the light directly into Bishop's eyes and smiled a nasty, triumphant smile.

"Fighting again, Dalton?" Prynne sneered. "I caught you red-handed. The school board is going to love this."

Bishop's jaw tightened. He stood up straighter, preparing to take the full blame. "I was just-"

A small, freezing cold hand grabbed the back of Bishop's leather jacket and pulled hard.

Claire stepped out from behind him.

She widened her eyes and let her bottom lip tremble, perfectly faking absolute terror.

Prynne's mouth dropped open. He lowered the flashlight. "Miss Hansen? What are you doing out here?"

"It was an accident, Mr. Prynne," Claire said. She forced a tear to well up in her eye. "Bishop wasn't fighting."

Bishop slowly turned his head. He stared at her, completely stunned.

Claire pointed a shaking finger at the rusted metal pipe lying in the dirt.

"I was trying to take a shortcut," Claire lied smoothly. "I tripped over that pipe. I almost fell into that pile of rusted metal."

She took a deep breath. "Bishop was walking by. He grabbed me to stop me from falling, but he lost his balance and hit his face on the brick wall."

To sell the lie, Claire carefully pulled up the left sleeve of her oversized sweater just enough to expose the inside of her wrist, deliberately keeping the fabric gathered over the telltale needle mark in the center of her vein. She exposed the edge of the massive, dark purple bruise that covered her pale skin. It was the fresh hematoma from the chemotherapy IV she had received hours ago. She silently prayed that Prynne, a privileged administrator who rarely looked closely at anything, wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a medical hematoma and a blunt-force injury.

"He saved me from getting hurt worse," Claire whispered.

Prynne stared at the ugly, dark bruise on the honor student's wrist. He looked at her pale, sickly face. He believed every word.

Prynne frowned and looked at Bishop. "Is this true, Dalton?"

Bishop's eyes were glued to the purple bruise on Claire's wrist.

His chest stopped moving. His eyes darkened with a sudden, intense emotion. He swallowed hard.

"Yeah," Bishop grunted.

Prynne sighed, clearly disappointed he couldn't expel Bishop today. "Fine. But stay out of this area, both of you."

Prynne turned and walked away, his flashlight beam bouncing off the grass.

The second Prynne was out of sight, Bishop moved.

He reached out and grabbed Claire's left wrist. His grip was tight, almost painful.

Claire gasped.

Bishop pulled her arm up, forcing her to look at the dark purple bruise.

"What the hell is this?" Bishop demanded. His voice was a low, dangerous growl. "You didn't get this from falling."

Claire's heart hammered against her ribs. She tried to yank her arm back, but his grip was like iron.

"I bruise easily," Claire said, her voice shaking slightly. "Let me go."

Bishop stepped closer. He backed her up until her shoulders hit the chain-link fence. He towered over her.

"Why did you lie for me?" he asked, his eyes searching her face for the truth.

Claire looked up into his dark, angry eyes.

"Because you're a good person," she said softly.

Bishop flinched. He looked at her like she had just slapped him.

A bitter, self-mocking laugh escaped his lips. The anger in his eyes turned into something cold and broken.

He dropped her wrist. He took a large step back, putting distance between them.

"Stay away from me, Claire," Bishop said coldly. "Don't play these games with me."

He turned and walked away into the dark, his shoulders tense and rigid.

Claire watched him go. Her legs finally gave out.

She slid down the chain-link fence and sat in the dirt, gasping for air.

She looked at the needle mark hidden in the center of the bruise. Her secret was safe for another day.

Continue to next part

Two years after my death, I was a ghost trapped beside my grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer's. She still thought I was alive, still trying to contact my ex-boyfriend, Liam. "Do you regret it, Chloe?" Liam's voice was biting and cold. "It's useless. Even if you got down on your knees and begged me, I would never give you another chance." He thought I was still alive. He thought I was manipulating my grandmother to get to him. But I was a ghost, and nothing more. I had left this world a long time ago. Liam was supposed to hate me forever, right up until someone told him the truth. "She's dead! She's been dead for two years. And you killed her." Liam's world shattered. He came looking for me in the most extreme way possible.

Billionaire Horror Modern

8.6

A Substitute No More, A Queen Returns

8.6

For five years, I was Jameson Blair's fiancée. For five years, my brothers finally treated me like a sister they loved. Then my twin, Haleigh-the one who left him at the altar-returned with a fake cancer story. In five minutes, he married her. They believed her every lie. When she tried to poison me with a venomous spider, they called me dramatic. When she framed me for ruining her party, my brothers whipped me until I bled. They called me a worthless substitute, a placeholder with her face. The final straw came when they tied me to a rope and left me dangling over a cliff to die. But I didn't die. I climbed back up, faked my death, and disappeared. They wanted a ghost. I decided to give them one.

Horror Mystery Romance

9.3

Bound To The Exiled S-Class Monster

9.3

Halie woke up to a sharp pain and a terrifying reality. She was in a new body, her face covered in a hideous web of scars, and her spiritual power reduced to a pathetic D-Class. Before she could even process the memories of being framed, her bedroom doors were violently kicked open. Her sister Seraphina sauntered in with a venomous sneer, followed closely by Halie's S-Class fiancé, Jett. "Look at the disgrace of the Avila family. What a waste," Seraphina mocked, throwing a mirror at her bed. "I can't be tied to a cripple. As an S-Class, I have to break our engagement," Jett added, his gaze full of disgust. The nightmare didn't stop there. Her father called, screaming about how she had shamed the family name. He officially stripped her of her inheritance, froze all her accounts, and exiled her to the decaying Southern District to rot. To make matters worse, a cold, mechanical voice suddenly echoed in her skull, warning her of an impending genetic collapse. Without an immediate energy infusion, she would face total organ failure in thirty days. A ruined face, a treacherous family, a world that wanted her dead, and a literal death clock ticking in her brain. The original owner had died in absolute despair, a tragic victim of sheer cruelty. But if they thought she would just sit there and die, they were severely mistaken. Armed with a mysterious system and her brilliant scientist mind from her past life, Halie packed her bags. She chose the craziest survival quest: head to the slums, find the exiled, sterile S-Class "madman" Coleman, and cure him to harvest his life energy. It was time to start her counterattack.

Adventure Horror LitRPG Modern Sci-Fi

8.9

Claimed By The Husband's Ruthless Uncle

8.9

Audrey Fletcher was forced to marry the notorious playboy Julian Sterling to save her family's sinking company after her sister ran away. On their wedding night, her new husband threw a $100,000 check at her face, told her they would be strangers in private, and abandoned her in the bridal suite. She thought being trapped in a loveless, transactional marriage was the worst fate possible. She was wrong. To protect herself, Audrey hung a pair of men's boxer shorts on her balcony to fake a lover's presence. Instead of deterring her husband, the ridiculous ruse brought Alistair Sterling—Julian's terrifying, powerful uncle and the true puppet master of the family. He stormed into her apartment with a legal team to catch her cheating, and later even offered her ten million dollars to divorce his nephew. When she refused out of fear of her own family's ruin, the situation escalated. Forced to attend a charity gala, Audrey was tricked by staff into wearing a scandalous, backless gown and sent to a dark penthouse suite to beg her husband for peace. But the man waiting in the shadows wasn't Julian. It was Alistair. "Does the thought of seducing your husband's uncle give you a special kind of thrill?" He didn't listen to her desperate explanations. Instead, he pinned her arms behind her back and crushed his mouth against hers in a brutal, punishing kiss. Trembling with terror and revulsion, Audrey bit his lip until she tasted blood, shoved the billionaire away, and ran for her life. She couldn't understand why this powerful man was so dangerously obsessed with destroying her sham marriage. But as she fled into the cold city night, she realized the terrifying truth: the real game was just beginning.

Horror Modern Romance

7.6

Delicious Reptilian Meat

7.6

Have you ever eaten "Reptilian" meat? My grandfather said he had. Creatures that looked exactly like us on the outside, but were fundamentally different on the inside. Extremely dangerous, yet incredibly delicious. Before he died, my grandfather left behind a notebook. The first page read: "Reptilian look exactly like humans, but human instinct can tell them apart." The moment my cousin Braden returned for my grandfather's funeral, my gut told me: he wasn't human!

Action Horror Modern Sci-Fi

7.6

He Broke My Spirit, I Soared

7.6

I was the fiancée of the Chicago Outfit’s heir, a bond sealed by blood and eighteen years of history. But when his mistress pushed me into the freezing pool at our engagement gala, Jax didn’t swim toward me. He swam past me. He scooped up the girl who pushed me, cradling her like fragile glass, while I struggled against the weight of my gown in the murky water. When I finally dragged myself out, shivering and humiliated before the entire underworld, Jax didn’t offer a hand. He offered a scowl. "You’re making a scene, Eliana. Go home." Later, when that same mistress shoved me down the stairs, shattering my knee and my dance career, Jax stepped over my broken body to comfort her. I overheard him telling his friends, "I’m just breaking her spirit. She needs to learn she’s property, not a partner. Once she’s desperate enough, she’ll be the perfect obedient wife." He thought I was a dog that would always return to its master. He thought he could starve me of affection until I begged for scraps. He was wrong. While he was busy playing protector to his mistress, I wasn't crying in my room. I was packing his ring into a cardboard box. I cancelled my transfer to UCLA and enrolled at NYU instead. By the time Jax realized his "property" was missing, I was already in New York, standing next to a man who looked at me like a queen, not a possession.

Horror Modern Romance

His Broken Angel's Dying Secret

Chapter 6

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