Betrayed Spotlight - Chapter 26: Hostage

“Block him.”“He's technically still my boss.”“Then block him with dignity.”The call ended again.And then started again.I let out a sound somewhere between a growl and a sob, then finally answered with the enthusiasm of a snail crawling through salt.“Yes, Mr. Walton?”“Have you changed your mind yet?”I collapsed onto the towel and gazed at the sky as though it might consume me entirely if I pleaded sweetly enough.“Do you ever take a break?” I asked, shielding my eyes with one hand.“You're avoiding the question.”“Because it's a dumb question.”He exhaled, the sound sharp and irritated even over phone. “It's not a dumb question. It's a business offer.”“It's a weird offer-one that I already said no to.”There was a brief pause, and I could practically hear him clenching his jaw through the speaker.“You are acting unreasonably.”“ Unreasonable?” I sat up. “I'm not the one drafting fake girlfriend contracts like it's a normal Tuesday.”“Isabella-”“Certainly not, Mr. Walton.” I mimicked his tone perfectly. “I told you I'm not doing it. You need to find someone else to play pretend with.”SYNOPSISIsabella Miller thought saying no to her boss’s fake dating offer was the end of the story.But Adrien Walton doesn’t take no—especially not when he’s convinced she’s a gold digger.Suddenly, her student loans are piling up, her father’s vet clinic is on the brink of eviction and her brother is about to be kicked out of college. Coincidence? She thinks not.Adrien Walton is calm, calculating—and he's just pulled every string to corner Isabella into the perfect position.Now she’s stuck choosing between pride and survival.So she agrees to his offer: be his fake girlfriend.No feelings attached. No drama. Just business.Or so she thought.“Conference Room B. Fifteen minutes,” he said, passing by without a glance.The folder he pushed across the table landed with a thud.I opened it. The contract. All of it.---Enemies to lovers? Check.Slow burn? Hmmnyea.Banter so sharp it might file your nails? Yes.Delicious workplace tension? Of course.Tension that could melt steel?Absolutely.Smut?? Wanna find out?Welcome to corporate romance warfare. There’s no escaping this contract.

Reborn as a sword, he lived for hundreds of years, and then he occupied the body of a 15-year-old prince.

Chang An, capital of Tang, the most powerful empire in the continent. A heaven wrecking massacre shook the city to its core. Amidst the incident, a young boy named Ning Que managed to get away, dug out from a pile of corpses along with a little girl called Sang Sang. Years passed, and since that day the two of them lived together. Together with Sang Sang they both entered the military, with plausible military achievements, they were recommended into the Scholar School, which began their miraculous journey.

Jadis has no idea how she died. One minute she's living her life as a young college student in Pennsylvania, the next she's hurtling through the unimaginable, incomprehensible void of the space between realities as a lost and detached soul. Luckily for her, the bored, and slightly deranged, god D finds her soul before it is mulched by the incomprehensible cosmos. After offering her a cookie to calm down from her existential nightmare, he explains that not only are gods and their respective afterlives real, but her disbelief in gods while living also means she doesn’t qualify to enter any god’s afterlife upon death. However, since D is in the mood for some mischief, he strikes a deal with her. Life in a fantasy world with RPG elements, along with a body built to match Jadis' slightly perverted wishes. Additionally, she gets a guaranteed spot in his afterlife. All that for the low price of spicing up the stagnant cyclical nature of a never-ending war between two stubborn gods and their respective followers on said magic-filled world. What disembodied soul could turn down an offer like that?Except, once Jadis takes the deal, she finds that she has been transported to the middle of nowhere and the lazy jerk of a god forgot to check if any of his followers were around to greet Jadis. Now freshly reincarnated as a Nephilim, Jadis is all alone and all but naked in an abandoned dwarven village located firmly in demon infested territory. Not planning on dying again anytime soon, she is forced to take the only non-perverted class option given to her and unexpectedly receives a second body for it. How is Jadis going to explain that when she gets back to civilization? From there, the now pluralized Jadis tries to survive long enough to understand her new system and skills, looking forward to the day she finds civilization, hot baths, and hotter elves.[I have already posted 300+ chapters on Scribble Hub. Updates there are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with double chapters posted every Friday. I plan on posting an increased number of chapters on Royal Road until this site has caught up and then post here on the same schedule. Rebirth of the Nephilim contains sexually explicit material, so for Royal Road I will be censoring the more explicit chapters. If you want to read the lewd chapters in their entirety, they will remain uncensored on Scribble Hub.]