Dustin's Gamble by J.J. Ranger

Have you ever wanted the one person you were never supposed to look at twice because wanting them could cost you everything? Morgan has learned how to survive by staying quiet, by shrinking herself, by enduring cruelty dressed up as family loyalty. Bruised by years of punishment and humiliation, she knows her place in the hierarchy-and it is far beneath everyone else's. Then the enemy arrives. A dangerous Alpha bound by duty, promised to another woman to secure peace. His gaze lingers where it shouldn't. Her body betrays her before her heart dares to follow. And suddenly, being invisible is no longer an option. He is everything she should avoid: powerful, dominant, untouchable. She is everything he should never want: broken, unclaimed, forbidden. Yet proximity turns glances into tension, tension into secrets, and secrets into desires that refuse to stay buried. Forced into his orbit under the guise of politics and obedience, she is trapped between fear and a pull she doesn't understand. While another woman claims his name and status, Morgan is left navigating stolen moments, unwanted attention, and the dangerous reality of being desired in a world that has always taught her she is worthless.

Lottie Webb has a problem. After her boyfriend dumps her-calling her cold, broken, incapable of feeling anything-she's forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: she's never had an orgasm. Not with him. Not with anyone. She's starting to believe she's simply wired wrong. Her best friend Gemma has a solution: a former gigolo named Oliver who specializes in helping women like her. One meeting. No expectations. What's the worst that could happen? Meanwhile, Lottie's mother drops a bombshell: she's getting married in a week to Richard Crawford, an old family friend. Lottie remembers Richard from childhood visits-and she remembers his son. A cruel boy who tormented her, hid her toys, and locked her in cupboards while he laughed at her tears. She hasn't seen either of them in fifteen years. One date with a stranger who makes her feel things she never thought possible. One week with a family she's been dreading. Lottie is about to discover that the universe has a wicked sense of humor-and some complications can't be undone.

Melany Refoy is twenty-five, broke, and raising a five-year-old son who looks nothing like her. Cameron has ocean-blue eyes, sharp features, and the kind of face strangers stop to photograph on the street. He is the spitting image of a man Melany never saw clearly - a stranger she mistook for a gigolo in a dark club room six years ago. She left him $100 and disappeared before dawn. Now she is back in the city she fled, desperate for work. Her new employer is Randy O'Harrow - billionaire CEO, the coldest man in every room he enters, and the father her son has never met. He recognizes her instantly, but not as the mother of his child. As the woman he believes destroyed his business. Randy wants her gone. Melany needs the job. Between them - a son who dreams of meeting his dad, a younger brother everyone assumes is the real father, and a wall of suspicion neither of them is willing to tear down first.

She lost everything in one night, her fiance, her sister, her pack, and her mother's necklace. The only thing a stranger at a bar left her with was a scent she can't forget and three children she's raising alone. Six years later, Theia Whitmore is broke, packless, and out of options. When her father falls critically ill, she's forced back to the territory that destroyed her, and into a job at Ashfeld Corp, run by the Alpha's family. Nico Ashfeld is warm, charming, and the first man in years who treats her like she matters. His older brother Kael is the opposite - controlled, distant and engaged to another woman. But every time he's near, Theia's wolf reacts in ways she can't explain, and his scent stirs a memory she buried six years ago. Someone in the building knows who she is. Someone returned the necklace she lost that night. And someone is watching her children with eyes that match her son's. The stranger never left. He's been here all along.

When her ex-fiance vanished and left her drowning in debt, Crystal Le Grand had two rules: survive, and never let a man close again. Love was off the table. All she wanted was to feel something physical and forget everything emotional.So when a mysterious job listing promised great pay for "working with exotic creatures" on a remote facility in Saint-Barthelemy - no questions asked - she signed the contract without reading the fine print.She should have read the fine print.Behind seven sealed doors live creatures she once thought were myths. Some look almost human. Some definitely don't. And the one with tentacles, a razor-sharp tongue, and eyes like black water? He told her to run the moment she walked in.Renard despises humans. He has every reason to. But something about Crystal pulls at him in ways he can't explain and his goddess won't let him ignore.Ironically, this place could give Crystal exactly what she wanted - raw, no-strings, unforgettable. But what she signed up for goes far deeper than she knows. And the price is one she never agreed to pay.

Evelynn was supposed to be heir. The dragon egg she found in the mountain caves was supposed to be hers. Her fiance was supposed to stand beside her. Instead, she watches her family give everything-her title, her dragon, her future-to her younger sister. When she discovers the betrayal runs deeper than public humiliation, and that her own blood wants her dead before sunrise, Evelynn has no choice but to run. With nothing but the clothes on her back and a secret she'll protect with her life, she flees into the night-toward lands ruled by her family's greatest enemy.

For nine years, Colette Moreau has lived as if she had no father. Because her father is Remy Lacroix, one of Detroit's most dangerous crime bosses. At eighteen, she left with one suitcase, changed her name, and built an honest life in PR. After a disastrous blind date leaves her stranded on an empty road at night, a biker called Saint offers her a ride to Wild Jo, Detroit's most exclusive motorcycle club. Colette is sure he bought his way in, and tells him so. By night's end, she learns Saint is Gabriel Calloway, CEO of the motorcycle empire born from that very club. Their attraction ignites instantly. But the Calloways have spent three generations escaping the "gang" label, and Gabriel never forgives a lie. When Remy's men show up at her door, Colette lies to him for the first time. Now her heart, his company, and a truth that could destroy them both are on the line.

Skyler is wolfless, shunned, and raising twins alone-the only proof that one perfect night with a stranger six years ago was real. He called himself Silas, made her a ring out of wire, and vanished by morning. The name was fake. She never found him. The pregnancy only made her pack's cruelty worse. Now her stepsister Kailani-her worst bully, her father's golden child-is marrying the most powerful Alpha on the continent. Skyler is ordered to scrub the floors and stay invisible for his arrival. Then Alpha Leon Warren steps out of the convoy, and the amber eyes looking back at her are the same ones she's been seeing in her son's face for six years. The father of her children just arrived to marry her sister. And he has no idea what he left behind.

Maeve Vale has been in love with Alpha Ryan Ashford since she was fifteen. She has never said it out loud. He is twenty-five, her brother's best friend, and the most powerful wolf in Silvercrest. She is the orphaned Beta's daughter who trains alone because nobody thinks she's worth the time. The night she turns eighteen, her wolf wakes up white - pure, glowing, the first in generations. A prophecy wolf. And the mate bond pulls her straight to Ryan. He is her fated mate. He was also planning to reject her before she ever walked down those stairs. Maeve heard every word. She is not the girl who cries in her room and waits. She is the girl who walks into his study at one in the morning and tells him she'll reject him first - publicly, at the Moon Ceremony, in front of every wolf in the pack. But when a rival Alpha arrives with an ancient claiming law and his eyes on the white wolf, rejection stops being a power move and starts being a trap. Her brother picks Ryan's side. Her best friend offers to lie for her. And the boy she's loved since fifteen is looking at her like he's seeing her for the first time.

Kelly Wilkins has three rules for her training year at Iron Peak. Work hard. Don't embarrass the family. Stay far away from the Alpha. Rule three is getting difficult. Asher Strom is six-foot-three, famously cold, and already marked to a Luna the entire pack adores. He's also her fated mate, which is extremely inconvenient for both of them. He says the bond changes nothing. He says it while standing too close in the pack house kitchen. He says it with his wolf growling every time another male looks at her. Kelly has a year to finish and a mother waiting for her to fail. She has a birthday that's still three months away, and a silver wolf that clearly didn't get the memo. And the Alpha who rejected her can't seem to stop finding reasons to be in the same room.

Evelyn Parker turns twenty-one tomorrow, and she is still the only wolfless she-wolf in her pack. Three years ago, rogues stormed the Sterling & Parker anniversary gala on the night of her first shift. Her parents never left the ballroom. Her wolf never came. Now she sorts pack disputes in the legal wing of her father's company twice a week. Half the pack talks to her in that careful voice. Her white dress still hangs in its dry-cleaning bag. She can't wear it, and she can't throw it away. Dominic Sterling is the Alpha. He is the billionaire at the head of the boardroom and her brother's best friend. She has loved him quietly for as long as she can remember. He has never looked at her twice. The company has gone three years without a Luna, and the investors want one polished and ready by spring. So what happens if her wolf finally comes, and the Goddess and the Alpha disagree about who deserves him?

I grew up with a mother who called me the family curse, so when she threw me out pregnant at eighteen, I built a life in Rio with nothing but a sewing needle and my son. I was ready to work double shifts, sew other women's wedding dresses, and tell my boy his father lived in space. Who knew that one night with a stranger in Paraty would come back nine years later in a wedding suit. A seamstress and a billionaire groom she's dressing for another woman don't exactly belong in the same story. We both had everything to lose. Then he stepped onto my fitting platform: Theo Lima, heir to a hotel empire and the man who never told me his last name. And the son he doesn't know about is the one thing that could destroy his wedding and my whole life.

Renee Pasquier is the ghostwriter of her own life, the hidden genius behind a global wine empire while her abusive husband steals the spotlight and her achievements. When a public betrayal leaves her birthright in the hands of a rival, Renee stages a daring escape, seeking refuge at the one place her husband would never look: the struggling estate of Estienne Cote. He was the boy who captured her heart during a single formative summer twenty years ago, before a bitter family feud tore them apart. As an undeniable connection sparks between them, Renee must navigate a treacherous path of redemption and risk: can she reclaim her legacy without destroying the only man who truly sees her, or will her past with the Pasquiers poison their chance at a new vintage?

Vivien Winthrope found Jasper when she was eleven years old - half-starved, feral, eating from her family's rubbish heap - and she did what any sensible lord's daughter would absolutely not do: she kept him. Named him. Handed him a life with both hands and never once asked for anything back, because wanting something that badly from someone who had nothing felt like theft. For years, they circled each other at the edges of what was allowed - her, the girl who owned a piece of him she had no right to claim; him, the boy who would have given it freely if she'd only asked. But she didn't ask. And then he left to become a knight, and the letters never came, and then one grey morning a rider arrives with a royal seal and news that unmakes her entirely - Jasper is gone, and she never told him he was hers. Except grief, it turns out, is not the only thing waiting for her in the ruins of what they were. A king is coming to collect his bride. And the past, it seems, is not quite finished with Vivien yet.

At ten years old, Layla lost everything - her parents, her name, her memory. The world was told no one survived that crash. But Layla did. Her uncle made sure no one would ever know. He erased her past, destroyed every trace of who she was, and raised her as a servant in his own house. The night she finally runs, she collapses on the grounds of the most powerful estate in the country. The family that takes her in once had deep ties to the dynasty she was born into - they just don't know it yet. Neither does she. Their son Seth was betrothed to someone as a child. A girl who supposedly died eight years ago. He buried that grief, locked it away, and swore he'd never let anyone close again. So when this broken, silent stranger starts triggering memories he thought he'd killed - he pushes her away. She doesn't remember him. He can't forget her. And the man who stole her life will do anything to keep the truth buried.