Cherreads

WHERE TEMPTATION BITES

Lucky_Damsel
Ravencrest High looks like a prestigious boarding school, but the truth is far from that. Hidden from humans, it is a training ground for young vampires to master self-control. Humans are enrolled alongside them, because they think it’s just an elite academic program. In reality, their presence keeps the vampires in check, providing occasional feeding opportunities under strict supervision. With the humans completely unaware. Lyra Hale is a new transfer student, hoping for nothing more than a fresh start. She expected a normal school environment. Instead, she finds herself surrounded by students who are weird and secretive. Kieran Black is everything Ravencrest warns against. A high-ranking vampire from one of the oldest bloodlines, he doesn’t believe in the rules meant to keep vampires in line. He sees the humans not as protected guests, but as tempting puzzles, and he can’t resist the effect Lyra has on him from the first moment he notices her. Lyra doesn’t know the truth about the school, the vampires, or Kieran. While she tries to survive in the school, Kieran is drawn to her in ways he can’t fully control. With the school having so much unbendable rules, even the authority can’t be trusted. And the most dangerous person on campus might also be the only one willing to protect her. At Ravencrest, temptation is constant, and love may be the most dangerous mistake of all. `•`•`•|`•`•`•|`•`•`•|`•`•`• [Excerpt] Lyra was halfway down the east corridor, Ravencrest always felt different at night. She hugged her books closer to her chest and stopped when she turned a corner, someone stood at the end of the hall. One foot was propped up behind him, hands in his pockets, head slightly tilted. His eyes locked onto hers, dark and intense, like he had been waiting for her. The hallway suddenly felt smaller and tighter. “Kieran.” “You’re really good at pretending I don’t exist.” “Maybe because you keep showing up where you’re not supposed to be.” His eyes dropped to her lips for half a second before going back to her face. She took a step back as he stepped closer and she froze the second his hand closed over her wrist. Then just as her heart threatened to leap out of her chest, his thumb brushed against the delicate skin of her wrist. His touch sent a shock of warmth through her, a feeling she couldn’t quite figure out no matter how hard she tried. She tried to pull back, but before she could, he tugged her closer and suddenly, the space between them disappeared. Every instinct screamed to push him away, to step back, but she couldn’t. He was just too close. “Kieran…” she whispered, voice trembling. The faintest smirk tugging at the corner of his lips, and those enticing grey eyes that she felt drawn in every second she look at him, like gravity itself had shifted. The way he held her wrist and the way his thumb brushed against them, it was everything but safe. "What are you doing?" "I could kiss you." ***** Cover art is not mine. Full credit goes to the original creator.
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I Leash Emperors: The Dead Shout. I Smile

The dead scream for justice. They have been screaming for centuries. In my office on the 88th floor, the sound is indistinguishable from the hum of the paper shredder. I have twelve of history's most dangerous minds in my vault—Caesar, Cleopatra, Napoleon, Wu Zetian, and eight others whose names are synonymous with the word empire. I stripped them of their crowns and their divinity and left them with the only two things that survive death intact: greed, and memory. Then I put them to work. The boardroom is their new battlefield. Stocks are their arrows. Hostile takeovers are their sieges. The First Emperor runs my supply chains with the same draconian efficiency that built the Great Wall. The Queen of the Nile runs my PR division and calls it beneath her. Caesar rewrites the legal architecture of an entire financial district before breakfast and considers it a light morning. The rules are simple. The Emperor with the highest ROI earns twenty-four hours of full sensory restoration—taste, warmth, the burn of real alcohol, everything the synthetic body cannot feel. The Emperor at the bottom earns something else: a Hell Start. Reincarnation as a beggar, a eunuch, a sacrificial lamb in the next cycle. They know this. It keeps them focused. Every full moon, the tavern opens. The millions they killed in their lifetimes gather as my Jury—compressed into a medium that runs on pure hatred, sustained by a spite so concentrated it has proven, against all known physics, to be a measurable energy source. They vote. They decide which of their tormentors leads the next charge, and which of the most venomous among them earns a temporary body to return to the waking world. Wu Zetian shed her imperial robes to kneel at my feet and beg for a private review of her HR directorship. Arsinoe—murdered by her own sister two thousand years ago—spent six weeks haunting Cleopatra's servers and built a perfect weapon before she ever asked me for the body to deliver it. Cleopatra herself believes her beauty is a currency I will eventually accept. She has not yet understood that in this building, the only currency is performance. I do not need loyalty. I need sharp blades. I do not trade in mercy. I trade in ROI. They believe this is my game. They do not ask why I need to win it. Rules? I am the rule. Harem? The highest-tier spoils of a game they don't know the stakes of. Every arc is a different world. Every world is a wound that needs closing. The Emperors do not know this. They never do. Perhaps the last thing standing between their world and oblivion is a man who stopped caring about it long ago. Let the dead shout. I smile. I have to. Tags: #InfiniteFlow #DarkFantasy #HighStakesPolitics #DivineAutocracy #GrimDark #RuthlessMC #HistoricalFigures #DarkHarem Content Advisory: Heavy power dynamics, sensory manipulation, historical figures in morally compromised positions. MC is an unapologetic autocrat. No redemption arcs.
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