Tales Of The World Devouring Serpent - Chapter 34: Surrounded

Iona, the knight who was the loyal dog of the tyrant Emperor, gave her life for him. But her lord, whom she trusted, abandoned her in the end, and the person who stood by her side in her death was no other than her husband.“I want to kiss you one last time.” Iona demanded on the verge of death.“I’m telling you in advance… Just in case… You won’t die and this won’t be our last kiss.”Satisfied with her non-lonely death, she closed her eyes.When Iona woke up again, she realized that she had returned to the past and her husband was again chosen to be her partner.Though her past wasn’t good, one thing she also didn’t want to change was her husband, the only success in her life. If so, she should at least turn this marriage into a ‘successful marriage’, she decided.“Lord Leroy, I will formally propose to you; Please marry me. I will definitely make you happy.”Iona was determined to repay her husband for his generosity. Just the way she wanted.

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.

My name was Yuan Junyao, a name my grandmother gave me, meaning “beautiful jade”, although I was not beautiful at all. Actually I was ugly.

I was told that I grew tumours on my face since I wasn’t even 3 months old. My parents had me examined in hospital and the doctor said it was a fibroma and it was benign. It couldn’t kill me but I couldn’t get rid of it because if I did, it may develop to be fatal. My father divorced my mother for this, and not long after, my mother died.

To make a living, I had to do three jobs.

One day I messed with the wrong people and they had my younger brother have a car accident and become a vegetable, and I also lost all my jobs because of it.

I tried to find a new job and happened to know about live streaming. I clicked on it and a man was live streaming in an old ghost-haunted house. The ambience was terrifying.

I followed him online and he didn’t see a real ghost even by the end of the stream. But the ambience was so real it spooked the audience. So he had many watchers who sent him lots of gifts while they watched. I was a little inspired by the idea. Nobody wanted to see the face of the host of a ghost live streaming, which suited me very well…

- Description from Novelupdates

“Do you want to know how this works?” he whispered.“Yes!” I gasped in response to his tug on my hair. “I want to know.”“Yes, what?” he asked, causing my mind to swirl with the realization of what he was into.“Yes, sir. I can be a good girl.”****For Becca, going to Miami brought up old childhood memories with her best friend, Tally. She needed the break after a rough year attending Yale and a break-up with her boyfriend, Chad. She didn’t expect for her summer of fun to include sleeping with James, the Italian Stallion–Tally’s father.Knowing it’s wrong, she allows James to pull her into a vortex of pleasure that has her breaching the surface of reality and grasping for survival. Can Becca endure this pleasure without Tally finding out?Or will her secrets cause her world to crash around her?Submitting to My Best Friend’s Dad is created by Scarlett Rossi, an eGlobal Creative Publishing signed author.