Vivian shows up at her boyfriend Ryan's birthday party the night she officially becomes a forensic pathologist, only to overhear him telling a friend she reeks of the morgue and that he'd only marry her if she quit. Three years of his silence finally makes sense. She breaks up with him on the spot, not knowing her next marriage will pull her straight into his family.
In a school where everyone is ranked, hockey captain Damon Vance stands at the very top, while Aria, who only stays on a scholarship, has been bullied by Daisy and her clique for two whole years. When she's drenched and humiliated in public and mocked that she'll be listed online with a price tag, Damon takes her away and makes an offer: he'll make her homecoming queen instead of Daisy and pay her tuition, and the price is unconditional obedience. After Aria refuses, her scholarship is revoked and her grandmother falls critically ill. With nowhere else to turn, she has to go back to him.
He wakes up remembering a night with a powerful woman he calls a goddess, unsure what it means. By day he is just a D-rank laborer, one of the powerless people who move supply crates while awakened fighters handle real threats. But the encounter has left something behind, and his ordinary life is about to end.
To buy her father's life, eighteen-year-old Aria is forced to become an offering to Ronan, the Merman King. Rumor says the king of the sea is cold and bloodthirsty — none of his seven previous brides survived — and he has always despised human weakness. Yet something indefinable about Aria holds his gaze from the first moment, and he chooses her as his bride on the spot. Tonight the blood tide rises, and he declares he will claim her, untouched by any living creature. First, she has to find a way to survive the sacrifice.
Alpha Ironfist arrives to marry his chosen bride, Lila, but that night Lila disappears without a word. The marriage pact cannot be delayed, the family falls into chaos, and all their anger lands on the sister left behind. To protect her family, she puts on the wedding gown meant for her younger sister and marries an ice-cold wolf chief she has never met. In this marriage of convenience she must hide that she is a stand-in bride while finding her footing in an unfamiliar pack — and an unexpected bond of fate is quietly winding around them both.
Her father sells her at a mafia auction to settle his debts. Damon Vos, New York's most feared crime boss, pays one million dollars and takes her home. She wakes in his world with no way back, and no idea what he plans to do with her.
A girl busks on the street with her mother's old violin, trying to earn money for her mother's hospital bills. A rich woman's car nearly runs them down, and in the chaos the violin is smashed. Only then does anyone realize it is the Moonstring Violin, the one Hawk Smith, the richest man in Sealand, has been searching for for years.
Fashion designer Evelyn Blackwell wins an award for her work, but a crowd mobs her over her weight, accusing her of buying the prize. Cornered and humiliated, she strikes a bargain to trade her fame and fortune for one more life, vowing never again to be reduced to her body. She wakes up back at the start, and this time the rules are different.
On Green Island every Pava is born bonded to a beast, except Chloe Stark. When dragons attack, her father Andrew rides out to fight and orders her to stay behind with the supplies. Refusing to be sidelined, Chloe runs into the wild alone, determined to tame a beast of her own and prove she belongs on the battlefield.
Lyra is dragged in on a theft charge and bailed out by her grandfather, who shows her no mercy. Her sister mocks her in front of the family, calling her unfit to be the Kensington heiress, while her grandfather orders her exiled to Tea Country by morning, forbidding her return without his word. As the household reels, a hidden power struggle over the mysterious Dark Link surfaces.
Christine Taylor is a top doctor who thinks she is walking into a routine exam, only to find Sicilian mafia boss Damon Voss waiting in the room. He has already gone through her medical records and wants her perfect genes and exceptional intelligence: she is to donate her eggs so the family has an heir before his father dies. But an old grudge over her mother stands between her and Damon, and she refuses to become anyone's breeding tool. She decides to play him on her own terms.
At a press conference, reporters press Newsome about Project Sleeping Star, a program named for his little sister that has drawn no volunteers. A girl three days shy of eighteen begs to take part, knowing the treatment means thirty years of unconsciousness with no guarantee of waking. Flashbacks reveal she was once the Newsome brothers' adored little sister, until at sixteen that happiness ended and her birth father resurfaces.
Before she dies, Sarah's mother makes her promise to hide that she is a dragon and to marry a man who loves her. A year later, Sarah quietly rules the pack in her mate's absence, feeding her own blood into the hearth fire each night to keep Lady Cordelia alive. Today he finally comes home.
Julie Smart rushes happily to the marriage registry, only to catch her fiancé cheating moments before they sign, turning her wedding day into a joke. Heartbroken, she turns to a stranger at the same registry who has also been stood up and proposes they simply marry each other instead, divorcing after a year once each has what they need. He warns her that marrying him will come at a high price, but she is sure anything beats marrying a cheater. What she doesn't know is that her stand-in husband is staggeringly rich — and has no intention of letting go when the year is up.
A father has his two daughters choose husbands from a single photograph: one will marry into elf nobility, the other a poor herder. Her older sister Vivian secretly rigs the choice, and Naya loses the noble match that should have been hers, forced instead into a betrothal with the herder Revan. Before she has even left home, a man sent by Vivian turns up, vowing to ruin her before the wedding. And this seemingly penniless herder carries a secret even she doesn't know.
The day her mother was buried, Eliza's father and stepmother sent her to an asylum. Ten years later she walks out trained by masters — and is pushed into marrying, in her sister's place, a business emperor whose last four wives died or went mad.
To be allowed to stay, she marries an honest plumber on the spot. What she doesn't know: he runs one of the world's largest business empires, and his young son is busy finding his dad a wife.
On a trip with her boyfriend she is kidnapped and sold into the beasts' paradise, where human girls are trampled at will. Then the Supreme Alpha Wolf, Cameron, who never looks at women, takes an interest in her.
Emma Winston is the only daughter of the Winston family, with doting parents and a fiancé, Joshua. Then, at her birthday party, Sheila arrives with proof that she is the family's real daughter. Sheila doesn't want the fortune. Instead she adds up Emma's twenty years of private school, riding, piano and designer labels into five million, with interest charged by the day: until it's paid off, Emma belongs to her. With parents who feel guilty and trust Sheila, Emma can't say a word about what's happening, and behind Joshua's attentiveness hides a gambling debt he can't repay.
Agent Martina Hayes single-handedly takes down a gang hideout to complete her final mission. On the very day she officially retires, she learns her daughter Claire and son-in-law Kane have both been killed in the line of duty. She turns down the agency's request to come back and take on the Silver Gun gang, wanting only a quiet life with her granddaughter Daisy. But when Daisy publicly rejects Jax Harrington, son of the mayor-to-be, he makes her his target. When Jax bullies Daisy at school and shows nothing but contempt for her grandmother too, Martina decides to reveal who she really is.
Her hideous face came from the Chaos power sealed inside her. Her father humiliated her, her half-sister despised her, her fiancé broke the engagement in public, and her mother lost an arm to save her. Now she returns with unrivaled beauty and power.
Forced onto a blind date by his mother, Vance Group CEO Alexander shows up in a wheelchair to test the woman. The rich girl sneers and pushes her poor cousin Morgan forward instead — and Morgan actually talks to him.
Peanuts in a bowl of porridge nearly kill Eva, and her husband — mafia Don Christian — kills over it. Pregnant, she goes home to her parents for a while, where the family still thinks she married a nobody.
After Ethan's accident, his fiancée is already in another man's bed and calls off the engagement. He has scared off almost a hundred housekeepers when Chloe, the new caregiver, arrives — his brother bets she won't last three days.