[MATURE CONTENT WARNING: 18+ ONLY. Contains explicit smut, omegaverse, knotting, and mpreg.]


"Fuck, still so tight."

That's the first thing I hear after dying.

Not a heavenly choir, not a wise guide explaining the mechanics of reincarnation, just a voice like dark honey and broken glass, breath scorching hot against my neck, and a body that absolutely isn't mine rolling its hips back like it has no objections whatsoever to what's happening to it.

I have objections, so many objections.

My body has apparently decided to hold a separate meeting without me.

I was twenty-eight, overworked to the point of literal death, and had never so much as kissed anyone seriously. None of that seems to matter to the omega body I've just woken up in.. currently making desperate, broken sounds into expensive silk sheets, trembling around a knot that shouldn't feel this good, this full, this.. right, while my actual mind is still standing in the corner going what the fuck, WHAT THE FUCK???

By the time I finally see his face, it's far too late for dignity. Gray eyes cold as a winter storm, features sharp enough to cut, the kind of beautiful that doesn't ask permission before it ruins you.

It gets so much worse when I learn his name.

Wuchen Bael, my sister's fiance, the man who looked me dead in the eye afterward and said, without blinking..  

"Round two?"

And I haven't even gotten to the part where I find out I'm pregnant.

She's been gone maybe twenty minutes and I'm still sitting here.


The tea on the table has gone cold. The maids haven't moved from their spots near the wall, standing like quiet statues. Outside, the afternoon light is shifting slowly without asking anyone's permission, moving across the floorboards. 


I find myself holding the pendant at my throat, the diamonds cool against my fingertips. I'm not thinking about anything in particular, which really means I am thinking about everything.


The way she walked into the room. The way her eyes found the photographs on the table without me watching for it… though who am I kidding? I *was* watching for it. 


I'd been watching for everything, cataloguing every tiny flicker of expression on her face the way I always do when I'm nervous and trying hard not to look nervous. 


Chapter 173 - Chapter 173: You Win