"Ugh…"
Seraphina Bennette felt like she was drowning. Her chest was tight, her body heavy, every breath slipping away from her.
Weird. She clearly remembered getting hit by a car. Why did it feel like she was suffocating?
She forced her eyes open, but everything was pitch‑black. She couldn’t see a thing—only felt warm breaths brushing across her face.
What?
There was a man on top of her.
And they were kissing.
That couldn’t be right—she’d jumped out to save Tangtang and got sent flying by a car. How on earth did that turn into kissing some guy in bed?
Oh god, she couldn’t breathe.
She lifted a shaky hand and pushed at the man pressing her down.
And froze.
Her fingers touched firm, sculpted muscle—the kind she’d only seen in those short videos online.
Every time she saw bodies like that, she’d leave comments begging the universe to give her a boyfriend that fit.
No way… was heaven giving her a bonus round for doing a good deed before she died?
If that was the case, she wasn’t about to play shy.
The man hissed softly and pulled back from her mouth, letting her finally gulp in air.
But the very next second, he dipped his head and bit down on her neck.
"Ah—!" She yelped in pain.
He didn’t stop—just switched from biting to kissing, trailing lower and lower like he couldn’t get enough.
Seraphina’s hands kept roaming, too. If this was her first and last time, she was going to make sure she didn’t waste it.
Anyway, chances like this don’t come twice. If she didn’t take advantage now, the door would slam shut for good.
Just as she was getting into it, a sharp, tearing pain shot through her, freezing her whole body.
Before she could even let out a cry, scorching lips crashed down on hers and swallowed the sound.
She tried to punch the man on top of her, but he caught both her wrists and pinned them tight above her head.
Seraphina Bennette felt like a tiny boat tossed around on open water…
Every time she thought, This is it, I’m done, I’m seriously going to die—somehow her breath would stumble back again.
She sobbed and shouted for him to stop, yet the man on her body was like some wound‑up machine, running out of control, coming at her again and again.
Right before she blacked out completely, Seraphina squeezed out one desperate line:
"Seriously… who the hell is the one enjoying this?"
……
"Analise Angelis, you ruined my daughter’s life! You need to marry her and give us an explanation! If you don’t, I’ll go report you and have you locked up!"
"Catherine Atkins, have you no shame? Analise is my brother. He came to my wedding to be my best man. You and that shameless daughter of yours waited till he was dead drunk and fed him the stuff my dad uses on livestock, and you still dare say Analise took advantage?"
"Everyone knows it was your girl who climbed into his bed!"
"Marcus Reynolds, how can you talk to your mother like that?"
"She’s not my mother."
"Who drugged who? Did you see it? Got proof? Analise was drunk and he bullied my daughter, that’s the truth!"
Sore all over, Seraphina stood inside the room listening to their shouting match, and finally accepted it—she really had fallen into the story.
No doubt about it. She had transmigrated and become the cannon‑fodder ex‑wife of the male lead in Eighties Hot Stepmom.
In the book, the male lead met the heroine while serving in the army. They hit it off quickly and planned to make things official when he came home on leave.
But then the cannon‑fodder supporting girl barged in. When the male lead came home, he attended his good buddy Marcus Reynolds’s wedding as best man. He drank too much, stayed over at Marcus’s house, and that girl fed him livestock breeding drugs and got things done.
Then she and her mother dragged the relatives who hadn’t left yet to the bedside, yelling so loudly they practically summoned the whole neighborhood, making sure the entire village knew.
Forcing the male lead to marry her, then the moment the wedding was over, he turned right around and went back to the army, leaving her alone in the countryside.
Not long after, she ended up pregnant—four babies at once. Her belly got so big it scared people, and the whole village started whispering behind her back, saying the kids couldn’t possibly be his, that she’d made the man take the blame for someone else.
Ten months later, the babies were born, and the cannon‑fodder wife died from the difficult labor. Only then were those rumors cleared.
Once she was dead, the male and female leads patched things up, and the stepmother‑heroine stepped right into her comfortable life—raising kids, doting husband, everything tidy and sweet.
Because that cannon‑fodder wife had the same name as her, Seraphina Bennette stayed up all night finishing the book.
Then on Monday, she helped someone on the street, got into a car accident, and boom—Heaven tossed her straight into the body of the male lead’s doomed ex‑wife. And on top of that, she was supposed to carry four babies for him!
She saved a person, did a good deed—how was this even remotely fair?
No wonder young people nowadays hesitate to help others.
Not only might you get blamed, but if you die doing it, Heaven still acts like it’s rewarding you with “a new life”—except it’s a punishment wrapped in a bow.
Seraphina cursed the heavens in her mind for being blind.
She glanced at the man in the army‑green uniform—Analise Angelis—with his sharp, stern features and rigid posture. His face was dark with anger and humiliation. She took a deep breath and croaked, “Everyone… just stop…”
Her throat was raw from shouting the night before; her voice came out like a duck being strangled—ugly, but effective. Both her stepbrother Marcus Reynolds and her mother Catherine Atkins went quiet.
Marcus stared at Seraphina with pure disgust. Thinking of how his good buddy had been dragged into this mess by this chubby, lazy woman—he felt sick. He shouldn’t have let Analise Angelis serve as his groomsman.
If Analise hadn’t shown up and gotten drunk, Catherine and this stepsister wouldn’t have trapped him.
“Sweetie, you don’t worry,” Catherine said, hands on her hips. “Analise slept with you. If he doesn’t marry you, he can kiss that uniform goodbye. Might as well go eat a bullet.”
Villagers crowded at the doorway of the Bennette house, eyeing Analise Angelis.
“Captain Angelis, the rice is already cooked. Just take Seraphina. You can’t throw away your future over this,” someone said.
“Yeah. Seraphina’s a bit heavy, not exactly pretty, and not a match for you. But women all look the same once the lights are off anyway.”
Seraphina lowered her head and looked at her stomach. The original owner was indeed on the heavier side, but nothing extreme—maybe around one hundred forty pounds.
Standing next to a tall, handsome man who was also a captain… yeah, they didn’t match at all.
It wasn’t hard to guess how she’d ended up like this. Her mother had definitely played a big part in it.
Seraphina Bennette’s mom, Catherine Atkins, had lost her first husband and then remarried into the Reynolds family, dragging Seraphina along with her.
But this stepmother… she wasn’t the kind-hearted type. Anything good to eat or drink went straight to her own daughter. As for the stepson, if he managed to fill his stomach, that already counted as luck.
The chores at home were the same story. Catherine wouldn’t let her daughter lift a finger; everything got shoved onto the stepson. That was how the original Seraphina got spoiled into being both lazy and greedy.
Then Catherine heard that her daughter fancied her stepson’s good buddy—who just so happened to be the battalion commander. If her daughter could marry a soldier and live the good life, why not? Catherine’s mind started turning, and she actually forced her daughter and the man together, pushing things so far that backing out wasn’t an option anymore.
“Mom, just… stop.” Seraphina looked at Catherine and spoke up.
She grew up in modern society, with her values upright and clear. Forcing someone into marriage? Not happening