Page 65 of Sweet Venom

The officialBlackthorn Publishingaccount had tagged me in a post—my name in bold blue letters, impossible to miss.

Please welcome Poe James, our newest author.

I stared at the screen, unmoving.

The caption below included a short bio, a few quotes from my writing—my writing—and a congratulatory message that felt so surreal I half expected it to disappear if I blinked.

But it didn’t.

My name was still there. My words. My face.

And then the rest of it hit me.

The post went on to say I’d officially signed with Blackthorn. That my books—the ones I wrote late at night when I didn’t believe in myself, the ones I’d buried in silence—werebeing published.

Published.

And they weren’t just being posted quietly or slipped into a dusty catalog. They wereeverywhere. Social media, reading platforms, forums. People were already talking. Alreadyreading. The comments were flooding in—readers raving about the prose, the characters, the rawness of it all.

My pulse thundered in my ears.

But it didn’t stop there.

Because someone—somehow—had gotten their hands on my old manuscripts.

The ones I never finished.

The ones I was too afraid to share.

The ones I’d buried in the dark corners of my laptop, certain no one would ever want them.

Those stories weren’t shiny or trendy. They weren’t the kind of romances that followed the rules. They were messy. Intimate. Sharp-edged and aching.

I’d convinced myself they weren’t good enough. That I wasn’t good enough.

And now those stories— my book babies were out there. Published. Not just on some random site but on the biggest platforms. Everywhere. They were being shared. Reviewed. Raved about. The comments flooded in: “God, I love her writing so much. I can feel what the characters do.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t know about this author sooner.”

“Best book I’ve read all year.”

“Running to add to my TBR.”

“I knew she would make it. I’ve followed her for years. I’m glad she’s exploring new things. So excited for more!”

I swallowed hard. I’m so confused. What was going on? How? How is this happening?

I turned to Azariel, but he didn’t seem fazed. He was still staring ahead, looking as uninterested as ever.

“D-Did you do all this?” I asked, my voice shaking slightly as reality started to hit me. “Did you... publish my books?”

He glanced at me, that same bored expression still there. “Yes,” he said simply like it was nothing.

I blinked, still trying to process all that was happening. “You did all this?” I hold up my phone and let him hear all the notification sounds popping up like crazy.

“Yes,” he repeated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. He—Azariel—had somehow found and taken my unpublished, forgotten manuscripts and turned them into a viral sensation. And now, somehow, I amgrowing everywhere. More people were following me on all my author platforms. In a day he turned me into a sensation with a real deal. A traditional publishingdeal.

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