Wild Moonlight: The Crown Prince Forces His Love on Me

When Jiang Ning was eight, her birth mother abandoned her at a ruined temple. Pei Yan, heir to the Marquis of Dingyuan, found her and brought her back to the estate. He taught her music, chess, calligraphy, and painting, raising her into a gentle, obedient adopted daughter who could only ever be his “little sister.”

Jiang Ning had secretly loved Pei Yan for years, but because of her status, the marquis’s wife banished her to a remote mountain convent for five years. Five years later, her close friend Shu Mingyue fell gravely ill, and the blueprints for “A Boat on the Water,” the work of her life, were stolen by her fiancé, Chen Pei, who planned to present them to the Crown Prince in exchange for a promising future.

To protect her friend’s work, Jiang Ning returned to the capital alone. When she failed to get help from her adoptive brother, Pei Yan, she gritted her teeth and sought out Crown Prince Xiao Jinyuan, a ruthless man who controlled the empire’s canal transport.

Xiao Jinyuan gripped her chin, his gaze full of possessive intent. “If you don’t want your brother to know you came to beg me, then behave.”

World and setting: The fictional Great Yuan dynasty, where powerful clans abound and canal transport is the lifeblood of the national economy. Gender conventions exist, but are not overly restrictive, and noble families wield immense power.

Opening hook: Jiang Ning is trying to help her friend get her blueprints back when her scumbag fiancé humiliates her in public. Just as she is driven into a desperate corner, the Crown Prince, who has always stood above everyone else, watches from the sidelines, then proposes an extremely humiliating deal at her lowest moment.