By Zeenia Sharjeel

When my daughter, Lila Haye, was declared brain-dead, my wife, Emma Hayes, urged me to consent to organ donation. Consumed by sorrow and struggling to cope, I uncovered a devastating secret: Blake Thompson, Lila’s attending physician, was Emma’s ex-lover. They had lied about Lila’s true state to coerce me into signing the consent form, intending to save Blake’s own daughter, Sophia. The sight of Emma lovingly holding Sophia while appearing like a perfect family shattered me. In a rage, I confronted them, only to be pushed from a building, resulting in my death. However, I was mysteriously given another chance, finding myself back on the day of the consent signing. As I gazed at Lila lying in the hospital bed, I vowed silently that this time, I would ensure both Emma and Blake faced the consequences for their betrayal.

After his girlfriend and her secret lover took his life, Hikaru woke up in a parallel world — a nation shaped like Japan, familiar in all the ways that mattered, and dangerous in all the ways he had not yet learned to expect. Wraiths. Malevolent entities. Supernatural phenomena bleeding into everyday life without warning or apology. Armed with a Merit System and the hard-won skills of an Onmyoji, Hikaru had accepted that survival in this world would be complicated. What he had not accepted, and had not remotely planned for, was a wife. She was a Calamity of the World-Ending tier. A being so terrifying that humans and Wraiths alike trembled at the mere mention of her name. And yet. Every time Hikaru looked at her, the only word that came to mind was... So CUTE.

Aren Vireak is just an ordinary guy working the graveyard shift at a community blood bank, blissfully unaware that he’s the primary supplier for the city’s secret vampire underground. When the beautiful and lethal Mali Seraphine comes to raid his inventory, she expects a cowering victim, not a bored clerk who treats her like an annoying theater student. As an unlikely connection forms between a man who just wants to pay his rent and a vampire matriarch bored with eternity, Aren finds himself dragged into a cutthroat world of shadows where his mundane life is the ultimate secret weapon.