Game of the World Tree - Chapter 269

He’s her stepbrother, her sin and her biggest mistake waiting to happen.Catherine Brown thought moving in with her mother’s new husband couldn’t be harder until she met the cold, arrogant and sinfully attractive Julian Vaughn, her stepbrother.He hates her, teases her and gets under her skin everyday. He’s everything she should stay away from, off-limits and untouchable.But when his anger turns into something darker and hungrier, when he looks at her like he wants to ruin her innocence, Catherine realizes danger has a new name.And no matter how hard she tries, she can’t stop wanting the one man she’s not supposed to have.When hate turns to desire, who’s really in control?EXCERPT✨“You’ve never had sex before?” Julian asked, disbelief flickering in his eyes.Catherine hesitated, then nodded, staring at the floor instead of him.He bit his lower lip, trying to rein in the thoughts crowding his mind. Goodness, she was too innocent for her own good.“So all you did with your previous boyfriends were just kisses and smooches?”She immediately stood, her cheeks flushed. “There are no boyfriends,” she blurted. “I’ve never even been kissed. Please don’t laugh at me.”Laugh? Hell no. Julian wasn’t laughing. He was fighting the urge to pull her close. Knowing she’d never been touched only made his hunger worse.She didn’t realize he’d moved until his breath brushed her ear, his voice dropping low and dangerous.“Catherine, just say the word and I’ll show you what it means to be touched by a man.”Her heart stuttered in her chest and he could hear every beat.

The first time they met they had battled fiercely, just for a mere bunch of herbs. She needed it to save people, and he wanted to use it to save his own life.

“Let go of it, or you will die.” The man’s violet eyes were cold and sinister as he said in a low voice.

She held on tightly to the base of the herb and pulled its roots right out of the ground, before she turned her eyes back with a crafty smile. “It’s mine now. Snatch it from me if you can.”

When they met several years later they were no longer on opposing sides in hostility. In order to repay the debt for having stolen the herb back then, she went on to miraculously cure his body’s condition, relieving him of the inhumane torment that wrecked at his body day and night. He was amazed by the godly skills in Medicine she possessed and his heart went on to fall irrecoverably head over heels in love.

- Description from novelupdates

Five years ago, she was forced to marry into the Quinton Family. Her mother-in-law disliked her, her husband didn't love her, and she suffered cold treatment and various torments.Five years later, she strongly divorced him, but accidentally overheard a shocking piece of news; it turned out that the one who spent a night with her back then was not her ex-husband.The little lady adored by everyone in the Quinton Family was actually her child.She was determined to win back her child but ended up provoking the Quinton Family's most formidable man. With a cold face, he took her back home...

Reincarnated into the muddy guts of a cursed swamp as a tsetse fly, former office worker and master-level cynic Buzz Windbreaker quickly discovers that survival is both absurd and magnificent. The air is thick with poison, the predators are many-limbed and spell-woven, and the prey? Just as desperate as he is.Yet with every drop of blood he drains from beast, beastkin, or unlucky mortal, Buzz unlocks fragments of an ancient arcane lattice that spirals beneath the skin of the world itself—a system of runes, incantation spirals, and primordial energy flows forgotten by even the highborn mages.His evolution isn't just physical: it is architectural. Each new form is built like a spell—symmetrical, efficient, cruel. Wings shimmer with sigil arrays. Proboscises become siphons of mana and memory. Legs are sharpened to runic blades. Jokes sting. Death stings harder.Soon, Buzz isn't just hunting. He is ascending.