Irwin's Journey - The Cardsmith - Chapter 12: The Linchpin

Follow Benjamin Joyce, an elderly man with a passion for blacksmithing who spent his life travelling the world and learning new things. Now, after helping out the developers of the first ever real VRMMO game, he gets the chance to play said game earlier than the majority of other people.

{MATURE— DARK ROMANCE, MENTION OF SA ON AND OFF SCREEN, BULLY, ABUSE}Read the warning before clicking to read, thank you.In a world ruled by wolves, I am the mistake that breathes.Well, my name is Lisa and I’m twenty one years old.I am the girl with no wolf. No rank. No name worth remembering. Just a human girl trapped in a pack that never wanted me. Scrubbing floors, serving tables, surviving insults , I’ve learned to stay invisible. Until the night of the coronation.Until them.Three brothers. Three Alphas. Fated by blood. Feared by all.And somehow, fated… to me?I didn’t ask for the bond. I didn’t ask for the fire in their eyes when they looked at me, or the hate that followed. I was never meant to belong to anyone, much less them. But fate is cruel, and the Moon has secrets she’s just begun to whisper.You think I will still be alive to tell the story

Shoved into the backseat of his father's car right after graduation, Riley Hale ended up marching toward a company building with a bagged lunch and a pen.Still in his toga, the fresh graduate never thought he’d land in the office of the continent’s top lizard, err, dragon, as his aide.And that would’ve driven any person wishing for a corporate career to tears. After all, who wouldn’t want to serve the fastest ticket up the corporate ladder: Kael Dravaryn, the infamously elegant, unhinged, and extremely overpowered Dragon Lord of the continent?Well, that would be Riley.The same Riley who didn’t expect to spend his days dodging fireballs, dressing his boss in robes more complicated than dark magic, and serving as a literal target during morning sparring.Now trapped in a job he never truly agreed to, the hardworking aide decided to hold out until it was time for his glorious resignation. But leaving a dragon’s clutches could never be easy, especially one with elemental mastery and a finger worth a private army.Yet, as Riley, who longs to quit, attempts to navigate ancient politics, wyvern threats, and other accidents (many of which are definitely not his fault), he might just hallucinate himself into seeing something beneath his boss’s arrogance and molten glares.Maybe he’d actually care if Riley got turned to ash.

To care for her ailing sweetheart, college student Lu Chenchen gave up her white-collar office job and chose the higher-paying caretaker profession instead. Going around in circles, she ended up at the Mao family’s home.

The Mao family background was complicated. Old Madam Mao was not her son Yanning’s birth mom, but his young aunt. His wife was Old Madam Mao’s first love’s daughter, spoiled and pampered. Despite over ten years of marriage, husband and wife were distant.

To repay Old Madam Mao’s kindness in raising him, and for the sake of his three children, Mao Yanning endured again and again – not just a loveless but outright destructive marriage.

Lu Chenchen walked on eggshells among these people – carefully serving young and old, currying favor with the lady of the house without offending the man of the house, while also worrying about his sweetheart’s illness and missing “his” elders and children back home. Her heart was like a cookie flattened between the pages of life, living a difficult and cautious existence.

However, as the saying goes, “You reap what you sow.” A life that has been polished will eventually shine with a brilliance that ordinary years cannot compare.