They Want Her
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The Hockey Prince's Secret Ice Queen
All I wanted was to find a computer genius to process the non-linear dynamic equations for my ecological model. Instead, I found myself cornered by Julian Andrews, the university's hockey prince, trading a public, staged kiss for his academic support. To finalize our "deal," I was dragged to the campus ice rink. The cheerleaders and puck bunnies immediately swarmed him, mocking my plain clothes and treating me like a pathetic joke. Brooke, the head cheerleader, even set up a figure skating competition with a date with Julian as the grand prize. She performed a basic spin, blew him a kiss, and smugly waited for me to fall flat on my face and humiliate myself. His hockey teammates laughed from the sidelines, watching me try to support Julian as he stumbled around the ice like a newborn giraffe. But as I held his warm hand to keep him from falling, I couldn't help but feel something was terribly wrong. Why was a top-tier athlete faking such awful balance? And why did his ice-blue eyes stare at me with such knowing anticipation, as if he already knew about the professional figure skating past I had spent years trying to bury? "Just let go and skate." He whispered, slowly releasing my hand. I took a deep breath, glided to the center of the rink, and landed a flawless double Axel. As the entire rink fell into a dead, shocked silence, I realized I had just exposed not only my own hidden past, but also the biggest secret of the campus god.
Chapter 1 No.1
Sage POV:
"Let me kiss you."
The request was a low, hurried murmur—warm, quiet, and laced with the faintest edge of mortification.
Stunned, I snapped my head up toward the sound.
Julian Andrews filled my vision. He easily towered a head over me, his lean, athletic frame silhouetted against the bright morning glare, casting a long shadow across the cobblestones. Briar University's star forward. Team captain. The athletic department's untouchable golden boy.
Campus rumor had it that Julian was notoriously indifferent, never sparing anyone a second glance.
Behind him, a solid wall of navy-and-gold varsity jackets blocked the brick path. His teammates were whistling, shoving each other, and effectively cutting off my only exit.
The sudden commotion immediately bottlenecked the morning foot traffic. Whispers rippled through the crowd, and within seconds, a dozen students reached into their pockets out of sheer muscle memory, black camera lenses catching the light as they aimed squarely at us.
Julian's sharp eyes tracked the movement, his jaw tightening into a hard, irritated line.
Before I could take a single defensive step back, he closed the distance between us. Leaning down into my space, his broad shoulders shifted in a subtle, fluid maneuver—throwing up an impenetrable physical wall that completely shielded my face from the intrusive glare of the cameras.
His sharp, striking face hovered breathtakingly close. His deep baritone brushed against my ear, lost to the autumn wind, meant for me alone:
"Sorry to drop this on you," he whispered, his pale blue eyes disarmingly earnest, holding a quiet heat that sent a tremor straight down my spine. "The guys backed me into a locker-room dare... but I'm not here to use you as a joke. We can fake it. Angle it so it looks real—whatever you're comfortable with. Just help me get them off my back, and I owe you one."
It was only then that my brain finally rebooted.
What on earth? He's actually trying to kiss me?
A sharp flare of pure absurdity hit me, and my gaze dropped to my reflection in the dark glass door of the adjacent building: an oversized, faded gray hoodie that swallowed my frame whole, soft, thin jeans worn at the knees, bare-faced dark circles carved beneath my eyes from forty-eight hours of non-stop coding, my dark hair hastily twisted into a cheap plastic claw clip, and a pair of oversized, thick black-rimmed glasses sitting heavy on the bridge of my nose, completely hiding my face.
I looked like a refugee from an all-night disaster. How had Briar's golden prince ended up in front of me?
When I looked back up, my breath trapped in my throat anyway. He was too close, his clean scent of winter mint and cedar wrapping around my senses. Having those pale blue eyes staring straight down at me made my chest tighten in a way I really didn't want to acknowledge.
"Clock's ticking, Cap!" Landon howled from the sidelines, hands cupped around his mouth as the rest of the players lost their minds laughing. "Plant one on her, or enjoy the five-AM bag skate!"
A raucous chorus of barks and chest-thumping went up from the team.
A few yards away, two girls heading toward the dining hall froze in their tracks, pointing their phones.
"Wait, who the hell is that?" one of them laughed loudly, zooming her camera in on my face. "She looks like she just crawled out of a dumpster. There's no way Julian's actually kissing her. Post it on Sidechat right now—this is going straight to number one."
The cruel words hit like a splash of ice water, snapping me out of my daze and instantly killing the stupid flutter in my chest.
I hated the attention.
Four years ago, after my family and my former training partner framed me and destroyed my competitive skating career, I swore I would never be public entertainment again. I buried my name, switched majors, and hid behind oversized fleece and thick glasses just to live an invisible life. If I ended up on the campus forums with Julian Andrews, the internet vultures would dox me before noon—and drag up the toxic scandal I had bled to walk away from.
My research was already on the verge of falling apart. I didn't have time for this circus.
I locked my grip around my heavy binders, my knuckles straining white.
"Find someone else for your dare, Andrews," I said coldly, taking a step back to put distance between us, my voice tight with adrenaline. "I'm not interested in being part of your game. Move."
I kept my head down, attempting to brush past him.
"You're Sage Kelley, right?"
The sound of my name brought my boots to an immediate halt.
I blinked up at him, caught completely off guard.
"Professor Beaumont's senior research student," Julian straightened up slightly, his cadence measured and even, carrying an intellectual sharpness that seemed impossible beneath a varsity jacket. "I saw your Havenwood Creek senior capstone proposal sitting on his desk over Sunday dinner."
My heart gave a hard, hollow thud. Professor Beaumont was my academic advisor—and the guardian of the final research endowment my late father had left behind.
Julian leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a near-whisper against the whistle of the wind. "I spent an hour going over your codebase."
My lips parted. "You... read my proposal?"
"Your simulation keeps crashing because your core fluid algorithm strategy is flawed," Julian murmured, his pale blue eyes deadly sharp. "And Uncle Des mentioned that if you don't deliver a working version by this Friday, the department is pulling your grant—which means you don't clear your senior thesis, and you don't graduate in May."
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
Friday was the deadline. If the funding was pulled, the project died, my senior capstone failed, and I would be forced to stay another semester without my degree. Worse, my father's final ecological legacy would be reduced to scrap paper.
I had been panicking over that exact deadline for two days straight, and Julian had just laid it out like it was nothing.
Worse, I couldn't even brush him off. I had heard the rumors about Beaumont's nephew—the CS prodigy everyone in the department talked about. I just had never realized it was him.
"I know how to fix your algorithm," Julian stated plainly, laying his cards on the table, his gaze locking onto mine with an unshakeable, quiet certainty. "Help me get through this bet. In return, I'll rewrite your boundary calculations tonight. Deal?"
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The betrayed Luna they want
with one last look at the mansion, I turned around and walked away leaving everything behind. My life, my husband, my title as the Luna and everything i have ever worked for because my alpha husband decided to bring his ex girlfriend back into our lives and he threw me out But what he didn't know wa
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MIT's Secret: The Billionaire's Daughter They Didn't Want
I was just a grease-stained mechanic, happily working with my adoptive dad in rural Nevada, on the cusp of starting my engineering journey at MIT on a full scholarship. Then, a sleek black Mercedes pulled up, and out stepped a woman claiming to be my biological mother, Eleanor Vance, revealing an 1
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The Grave They Dug For Her
I lay broken in a hospital bed after a brutal car crash, but my family never came. My father and brother were too busy preparing for my manipulative half-sister Ainsley's wedding. The groom was my fiancé, Clayton. While I fought for my life, his last words to me over the phone were a cold command.
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THEY NEVER WANTED HER - NOW SHE'S UNAVOIDABLE
Anna wasn't supposed to exist. Abandoned, unprotected, and surrounded by secrets, she quickly learns the rules of staying unseen. But danger has a way of finding those who hide. Left in the care of Paul, a man who observes everything and trusts no one, Anna discovers that survival isn't just about h
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They Broke Her, I Broke Them
My twin sister, Olivia, lay terrifyingly still in a hospital bed, her pale face a stark contrast to the sterile white sheets. An IV dripped fluid into her arm, and chillingly, thick bandages covered her wrists, a silent testament to her desperate act. She had tried to end her life, driven to the b
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They Broke Me, Now They Beg
For ten years, Eleonora devoted herself to Julian Sterling, waiting for the day she would finally become his wife. But at the grand ball, just three months before their wedding, Julian walked in with her cousin Isabella on his arm. In front of the entire high society, he publicly broke their engag
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I want a princess
Stuck in a fake relationship and real hate for each other, with time will these two eventually have feelings or will their relationship result to a never happy after.
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I want you
Prince Haad was the youngest son of the king of an eastern state in the seventeenth century. He became a werewolf accidentally due to the bite of a werewolf. He tried to hide his secret and succeed but after four centuries, this secret leaked out, but it was a mystery how he survived for four centur
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Stepfather, I want you!
Since he married my mother, I've been watching for him, for three years, I've been fantasizing about him, now that I'm 18, I'm going on the attack, he'll be mine, come rain or shine. 'it's snowing, this man will be mine. Sorry mom.
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Still want you
Elena Rivera is a successful art restorer who has left a turbulent past behind. Six years ago, she fled a relationship that deeply affected her, never imagining that the man she once loved would become one of the country's most influential magnates. When she receives a mysterious commission to rest
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If You Want Me
She is drunk by her sister who is jealous of everything she owns. She accidentally goes into his room, where they have a one-night affair. She has an unexpected baby of them. Unable to resist great pressure from her family and his threatening, she chooses to marry him. Faced with many obstacles, she
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I want You Back
Isabella's world crumbled when her marriage to Liam took a heartbreaking turn during their second anniversary. She was further hurt when she discovered that he was having an affair with his ex-lover. Soon, she discovered she was pregnant and decided to pack up and leave for another state. Five years
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Scar they took her name she came back for theirs
"we will play a game wrong answer and you learn to breathe under water"scar said coldly, Cindy gulped down deep breath in fear,as she stared at the cold unforgiving water in the bathtub. "What was your role that night,and wait a minute why are you getting married to my fiance" Cindy shivered her han
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The Ex-wife they Claimed: Their Heat, Her Fire
Selene Vale spent five years trapped in a loveless marriage to Billionaire heir Adrian Laurent - a man who never stopped loving his first love. Humiliated, betrayed, and treated like nothing more than a convenient obligation, Selene gave Adrian everything while secretly helping build the empire he
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The Wife They Buried: Now Watch Her Rise
My experimental cure for a degenerative neurological disease had a bizarre requirement: "positive emotional resonance." Love was a luxury my family never afforded me. My twin Jessica, my parents David and Linda, and even my husband Mark, bled me dry, taking credit for my genius. The Phoenix Found
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HIM (I WANT HIM)
Blessing met himself in a situation where he had to choose between two ladies; A lady who was adopted by his grandparents at his request, who became his step-sister, and whom he fell in love with becoming his first love. Someone who changed his world and everything about him. Someone who made him r
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I want Sophia
I would choose you in every lifetime, in every version of this world." Jonathan's voice was a whisper against Sophia's skin as they stood on the penthouse balcony. "No amount of power, no wealth, nothing in this world could mean more to me than you." Across the city, Selan sat in the ruins of his
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What We Want
"Faya.." hearing his soft voice from behind made me feel a tinge of guilt. Is he an asshole or what? I looked at him like he was nothing where I stood. "Do you remember what happened before the accident?" He now sat beside me. I gulped a glass of wine. "Of course I do.." I giggled. "It's fucked up"
