Cassandra

I thought I had the perfect marriage to Emerson Gonzales, the most powerful man in the music industry. When the doctor confirmed our baby had a strong, healthy heartbeat, I felt like the luckiest woman alive. That was before I discovered the truth. I wasn't his wife; I was a substitute. A perfect imitation of his cousin Gisele, who had been in a coma for three years. The baby wasn't meant to be mine, either. It was a "legacy" for Gisele, a gift for when she woke up. And when she did wake up, my life became a living hell. She shattered the last memento of my dead mother, and Emerson told me it was just a "cheap little figurine." He had me brutally beaten for her amusement, recording the whole thing as a tribute. But that wasn't the worst of it. Gisele attacked me, causing a violent miscarriage. Then, she threw the ashes of my mother and my unborn child on the floor and ground them into the dirt with her heel. My husband, my entire world-all of it was a calculated sham. I was just an incubator, and now, I was disposable. With nothing left to lose, I took my passport and fled to Paris. When he finally found me, begging me to come home for the sake of "our baby," I just showed him the medical report. "What baby are you talking about, Emerson?"

My boyfriend said I was immortal and asked me to exchange my life for his first love. I agreed. He didn't know that I had already died after the exchange. But it's okay, I have a system. He promised to accompany me every year on my birthday, and I would gain a year of new life. Next week is my birthday, and the system allows me to stay as a robot and wait for resurrection. But he forgot about me completely. On my birthday, he was out with his first love and the news of their engagement went viral. He sent me a message warning me: "If Xi's health is not good, we will have a wedding to fulfill her wishes, and you are not allowed to cause trouble." But how could a dead person cause trouble? However, he went almost crazy when he saw my mechanical body.

My wedding to Ethan Reed was just weeks away. After seven years, I was certain of our perfect future. Then, Ethan claimed "selective amnesia" from a head injury, forgetting only me. I tried to make him remember, until I overheard his video call. "Total genius move," he boasted to friends. His amnesia was a fake "hall pass" to pursue influencer Chloe Vance before our wedding. Heartbroken, I feigned belief. I endured his open flirting with Chloe and their taunting selfies. He mocked my distress, prioritizing Chloe's fake emergency. After an accident he caused, he abandoned me, injured, choosing to send Chloe to the hospital first. He even tried to cut me off financially. How could my fiancé be this cruel, calculating monster? His betrayal poisoned every memory. I felt like a fool for trusting such boundless cruelty. His audacity left me reeling. But I wouldn’t be his victim. Instead of breaking, a cold plan formed. I would shed my identity, become Olivia Carter. I would disappear, leaving him, my past, and his engagement ring behind forever, claiming my freedom.

I was a wolfless outcast taken in by the Blackwood Pack, about to be mated to the powerful Alpha heir, Adrien. But at our grand union ceremony, he walked down the aisle holding another woman's hand. "I reject you as my mate," he announced coldly in front of all the guests. Instead of defending me, my adoptive mother dug her nails into my arm, snarling that I was a curse who brought embarrassment to their name. My adoptive father and brothers watched with disdain, demanding I apologize for being dumped. My hypocritical sister, Kendall, pretended to play the peacemaker while giving me a secret, triumphant smirk. For years, she had systematically stolen my life—my room, my achievements, and even the silver wolf-head brooch left by my dead mother, wearing it like a trophy while I was treated like dirt under their shoes. They all expected me to break down, to cry and beg on my knees for Adrien to reconsider. They thought I was still the pathetic charity case they could endlessly manipulate and humiliate. But the weak girl who would have flinched at their cruelty died in a previous life. I didn't shed a single tear. I calmly accepted his rejection, walked right up to Kendall, and slapped her hard across her fake, innocent face. Then, under their shocked gazes, I turned to the most terrifying, powerful Lycan king in the room. "I don't want compensation. I claim Blake Wiggins as my new mate."

Dr. Kayli Byrd was in the middle of her ER shift when the trauma doors burst open. The patient wheeled in from a car crash was her husband of five years, Brody. But he wasn't alone. Beside him was his mistress, Carly, and Kayli's own son, Leo. Brody didn't even look at Kayli as his wife. He just barked orders at her like she was staff, demanding a full workup for Carly's minor scratch. When Kayli reached out to check on her son, Leo flinched in fear. He buried his face into the mistress's neck, whimpering for "Auntie Carly" and completely rejecting his own mother. Later, at the courthouse, Brody deliberately brought Carly and Leo to flaunt his perfect new family. He thought this would break Kayli. He thought she would cry and beg him not to leave. For five years, Kayli had sacrificed her surgical career to play the quiet, invisible wife for his wealthy family. She finally understood she was just a placeholder, easily replaced by a woman who had effortlessly stolen both her husband and her child. The betrayal was absolute, leaving her with a cold, hollow space in her chest. But instead of breaking down, Kayli calmly handed the mediator her terms. "I'm waiving my custody rights to Leo, and I want a twenty million dollar severance to disappear quietly." Before Brody could even process the shock, Kayli blocked his number, packed a single suitcase, and boarded a one-way flight to Europe to start a new life.

I woke up naked in a stranger’s bed aboard the Seraphina, a luxury yacht drifting across the Atlantic. My head was splitting. My dress was torn on the floor. Bruises bloomed across my skin like proof of a crime I couldn’t remember committing. Before I could even scream, the cabin door burst open. My father stood there with my boyfriend behind him, leading a swarm of reporters with flashing cameras. “I have no such daughter. From this day forward, Alaina Romero has nothing to do with the Snyder family.” My father disowned me in front of the world. My boyfriend looked at me like I was filth and ended everything without asking a single question. I had been drugged, framed, and destroyed in one night. When I tried to throw myself into the Atlantic, my stepmother stopped me. Not because she cared. She needed me alive long enough to take her precious daughter’s place in an arranged marriage. If I refused, she would cut off my dying mother’s life support. That was how I became the bride of Dereck Carlisle, the billionaire heir everyone whispered about but no one dared to face. They said he was disfigured. Violent. Half-mad. A monster locked away inside his family’s grand estate. He hated me before we even met. His family treated me like a stain on their name. The servants mocked me. His relatives tried to humiliate me. Someone even tried to scald me with boiling tea. I had lost my family, my reputation, my education, and my future. They thought I would break. But then I saw the monster no one else saw clearly. Dereck Carlisle, shaking in the dark, trapped inside the agony of severe PTSD. I didn’t run. I threw him the handmade herbal sachet my mother taught me to make, and for the first time in years, his demons went quiet. They locked me in a cage and called me a pawn. Fine. I would survive their cage. Then I would make every last one of them regret underestimating me.

For three years, my fiancé Jaxon kept me locked away in a top Swiss psychiatric clinic, claiming it was the only way to cure my severe PTSD. But as I was signing my discharge papers, the receptionist handed me a recovery certificate dated a full twelve months ago. She casually mentioned that my heavy "psychiatric medication" for the past year had been nothing but vitamin supplements. I rushed back to New York to surprise him, only to overhear him laughing in his private club. He had been married to a billionaire socialite the entire time I was locked away. "A few tweaked medical reports, the right 'medication' to keep her foggy. It bought me the time I needed to secure my marriage." His mother then threw a massive check in my face, ordering me to disappear. Later, a toxicologist friend tested my leftover "vitamins." They weren't just sedatives; they were chemical castration drugs designed to permanently sterilize me. The man who swore to protect me after my father's death had orchestrated my imprisonment and tried to destroy my body, all while playing the devoted fiancé. But Jaxon miscalculated one crucial detail. I was already six weeks pregnant with his child. I picked up his mother's check, wiped away my tears, and crushed the fake pills under my heel. "Help me disappear without a trace." I spoke into the burner phone, deciding right then to take my baby and build an empire of my own.

I was the devoted Luna of the Blackwood Pack, bound to my fated mate, Alpha Ryker. But he coldly rejected our sacred bond for a pure-blooded she-wolf, tossing me aside like garbage. That was when a cold voice in my head revealed the horrifying truth. "Your fate is to be rejected, a tragic footnote in their epic love story." My entire life was a scripted prophecy controlled by a twisted entity. According to the script, I was supposed to be locked away, my inner wolf withering from the broken bond until I died in agony. The entity even confessed to orchestrating the murder of Alpha Gideon, the only father figure I ever had, just to keep our bloodline enslaved to this sick narrative. I refused to be a ghost in someone else's happily ever after. Why should my family die and my soul be erased just to serve a predetermined fate? Instead of crying like the prophecy demanded, I tore my own soul apart to shatter the ancient Scroll of Fate, destroying the entity itself. Opening my eyes again, I was back to being a ten-year-old child. It was the exact day my lifelong trauma began. "Do as I say, Elara. Do not make any more trouble for me." My mother was trying to force me to take the blame for a bully, just to save her own reputation. This time, I am writing the script.

For seventeen years, I was the pride of the Carlisle family, the perfect daughter destined to inherit an empire. But that life ended the moment a DNA report slid across my father’s mahogany desk. The paper proved I was a stranger. Vanessa, the girl sobbing in the corner, was the real biological daughter they had been searching for. "You need to leave. Tonight. Before the press gets wind of this. Before the stock prices dip." My father’s voice was as cold as flint. My mother wouldn't even look at me, staring out the window at the gardens as if I were already a ghost. Just like that, I was erased. I left behind the Birkin bags and the diamonds, throwing my Centurion Card into a crystal bowl with a clatter that echoed like a gunshot. I walked out into the cold night and climbed into a rusted Ford Taurus driven by a man I had never met—my biological father. I went from a mansion to a fourth-floor walk-up in Queens that smelled of laundry detergent and struggle. My new siblings looked at me with a mix of fear and disgust, waiting for the "fallen princess" to break. They expected me to beg for my old life back, to crumble without the luxury I’d known since birth. But they didn't know the truth. I had spent years training in a shark tank, honing survival skills they couldn't imagine. While Richard Carlisle froze my trust funds to starve me out, my net worth was climbing by millions on an encrypted trading app. They thought they were throwing me to the wolves. They didn't realize they were just letting me off my leash. As the Carlisles prepared to debut Vanessa at the Manhattan Arts Gala, I was already making my move. "Get dressed. We're going to a party."

For five years, my husband Gabriel was the perfect man. He was a doting, gentle producer who saw the magic in me, the quiet songwriter behind the scenes. Everyone said the way he looked at me was pure adoration. I believed them. But his love wasn't for me. It was a shield to protect his real project: my younger sister, the pop star Aria. He was stealing my songs and my art, gifting my soul to her so she could shine while I remained in the shadows. The final proof came at a party celebrating her latest stolen triumph. When Aria faked a fall, the sound of my husband screaming her name was filled with a raw, desperate love I had never heard in our entire marriage. It was a love reserved only for her. He then turned to me, his eyes cold, and hissed, "What did you do?" In that single moment, the woman who loved him died. My entire world, built on his beautiful lies, shattered completely. I wasn't his wife; I was just the golden goose, and my heart was simply collateral damage. So when he asked what I wanted for my thirtieth birthday, I gave him a small, empty smile. "I want to go out on the yacht. Just the two of us. We can watch the sunrise." He thought it was a romantic escape. He had no idea it was the stage for my disappearance and the beginning of his ruin.

It was my son Ethan' s fifth birthday, a day meant for celebration. His small hand clutched mine, his eyes wide with the innocent wish to visit the city aquarium. But then, my husband David, a man as imposing as the military jacket he wore, declared his plans had changed, dismissing our son' s hopes with chilling indifference. "The aquarium is for common people." he sneered, his true priority a mistress, Lisa Johnson, and their sordid affair. When I begged for just a few hours, David' s face hardened into a mask of cruel indifference. Ethan, sensing the tension, began to cry softly. "Crying? Over something so trivial?" he scoffed, before scooping Ethan into his arms. My son' s cries turned to shrieks as David strode towards our private lake. "I' m teaching him a lesson," he calmly stated. Before I could react, he tossed our five-year-old son into the dark, cold water. The splash was horribly loud, and Ethan' s small body disappeared, then reappeared, flailing, gasping for air. David stood motionless, watching him drown, "If he' s my son, he' ll survive." I screamed, fighting to reach Ethan, but David' s steel grip held me back, forcing me to watch as my son' s struggles grew weaker, his head bobbing, his small hands slapping the water with less and less force. His eyes, wide with terror, locked on me, a desperate, silent plea. Then his head went under. It didn' t come back up. "He failed," David stated, as I collapsed onto the ground, my life shattered. I returned home to find Ethan' s room being dismantled, his world erased, replaced by a nursery for Lisa' s unborn child. They stood there, smiling, planning their future on the ashes of my son' s life. "Ethan doesn' t need a room anymore, Sarah," David said, his voice laced with that same chilling indifference. "He' s dead!" I shrieked, "You killed him!" His response was a dismissive sigh, and Lisa, cunningly feigning distress for her baby, manipulated David into striking me. His slap echoed in the empty room, stinging my cheek, and in that horrifying moment, I saw the monster he truly was. This wasn' t just indifference; it was pure evil. With his father' s help, I held a small memorial for Ethan, a vigil that David and Lisa callously ignored, even sharing a triumphant kiss in front of our son' s symbolic casket. My heart turned to ice. Then David, in a fit of rage, smashed Ethan' s last photograph and burned his beloved teddy bear, extinguishing the last tangible pieces of my son, and with them, any lingering attachment I had to him. Later, I discovered David was sterile, meaning Lisa' s baby wasn' t his. This wasn' t just betrayal; it was a calculated scheme. Clutching the charred remains of Ethan' s teddy bear' s eye, a searing physical anchor to my unimaginable loss, I walked out of that house and that life with a quiet, resolute dignity. I was done.

The sterile hospital room hummed with the slow, dying breath of my daughter, Gabrielle. My rare family gift, usually a beacon of fortune, felt utterly useless as I watched her slip away. My husband, Andrew, stood cold and calculating, not grieving, but orchestrating a political damage control campaign, sacrificing Gabrielle' s reputation for his ambition. Then, the true horror unfolded: he confessed his affair, then mocked my ancestral remedy-the very cure that saved his life once-before pouring the last precious vial onto a sick dog, letting our daughter die. How could a man be so heartless, so utterly devoid of humanity, to choose ambition and a dog' s comfort over his own child' s life? But as I buried Gabrielle in the sacred Appalachian soil of our ancestors, a chilling realization ignited within me: the pact was broken, and now, my gift would no longer protect them; it would exact a vengeful fate.

The Nevada desert trip with my adoptive parents, Richard and Linda, was meant to be a relaxing break from my Seattle game studio life. Then a drifter, "K," whispered something chilling to them; their faces instantly turned cold, demanding I sign over my multi-million dollar company to him. I laughed, thinking it a joke, but their terrifying insistence quickly proved it was real. Alone at the rented casita, Linda handed me a drugged beer, and the world went fuzzy. My own parents dragged me off, delivering me to a brutal woman who tortured me in a remote trailer, breaking my legs. Days passed in grinding agony, K taunting me about destiny, until I died there on the dirty floor. What impossible words had K whispered, what monstrous secret could turn my family into my destroyers? Consumed by this horrifying betrayal, I died without an answer. Then, I gasped and awoke, whole and unbroken, back in the casita. My legs moved freely, the desert sun warm on my face. It was the morning of the trip, the day K would reappear, and I had somehow been granted a second chance to fight.

I was the President's Old Lady - and the only reason his MC was still breathing. For three years, I ran every legal business the Serpents of Redemption owned. While Craig chased road glory across state lines, I turned a failing auto shop and a tattoo parlor into the money that kept the brothers fed, the bikes fueled, and the clubhouse lights on. Then he rode home from a two-month run with a sweetbutt on the back of his Harley - and her son. Ginger, he said, had saved his life on the road. So he put her in the main residence, in the room directly across from our bed. He handed her my ledgers and called it repayment. When her son dumped a cup of scalding coffee over my hand, Craig never checked my burns. He scooped up the boy and blamed me. His grandmother - the club's Matriarch - stood before every patched brother and accused me of hurting "family." That night, Craig told me Ginger held a place in his heart I could never reach. A debt of blood he'd honor above me. Three years. My family's fortune. My scarred hand. All of it - worthless next to his roadside savior. So I did the one thing a President never expects his Old Lady to do. I gave back his patch. Now they can keep their empty ledgers. They can play happy family in a clubhouse I built. And when this motorcycle club burns - I'll be the one holding the match.

After six years away, I returned to my hometown with a single suitcase and a picture of my fiancé tangled up with my stepsister. I thought it was just a simple, disgusting betrayal, but when I planted a bug in their private suite to get a confession, I heard a truth that froze my blood. My fiancé, Leo, laughed about how my own father had already signed over my mother's legacy—The Nightingale Ranch—as collateral to his powerful family. "Once this is all done, Claire will have nothing. And the woman you marry will be me," my stepsister Jenna cheered. Leo cooed back, calling me a stray dog he'd kick to the curb once he was bored, a worthless woman who couldn't even hold onto her family's land. My family had sold me out, and the man I loved was planning to leave me with absolutely nothing. I didn't cry. The pain burned away into a cold, hard hate. How could my own father conspire with them to destroy the only thing I had left of my mother? I crashed their prestigious charity auction and played their filthy recording over the speakers for the entire town to hear. But when Leo charged at me in a murderous rage, a wall of leather and muscle stepped in front of me. Kade "Chaos" Peterson, the terrifying President of the rival motorcycle club, crushed Leo's wrist and announced to the stunned room, "She's with me now."

Chloe had just given birth to twins, lying exhausted in a cramped, bustling hospital ward. When she called her husband, Julian, he was busy partying with his actress mistress. He coldly hung up on her, having already drafted a brutal divorce agreement that would leave her with a pittance. Strangers in the next bed loudly mocked her pitiful state, gossiping about how Julian was dumping her. For years, Chloe had erased her own identity to fit into his elite world, only to be thrown away like garbage. She was completely alone, clutching her helpless babies, bracing herself to sign the cruel papers just to survive. She couldn't understand why her absolute devotion was met with such chilling indifference. Why did she have to suffer this ultimate humiliation while he celebrated with the woman who ruined her life? But then, a senior doctor noticed a unique mole on her wrist and ran a secret DNA test. The results were staggering: Chloe was the long-lost daughter of the billionaire Beaumont family. With her fiercely protective parents and three powerful brothers suddenly forming an impenetrable fortress around her, Chloe picked up her phone and texted her arrogant husband. "City Hall tomorrow at 10 AM. If you don't show up, my lawyer will handle everything. And trust me, you won't like their terms."

Five years ago, I stood in the freezing rain at my mother's funeral, waiting for my husband. Blake Knight, the billionaire NHL superstar, was two hours late. When he finally showed up, he brought his rumored girlfriend, the woman he had just rented a hotel rooftop for to celebrate her birthday. Watching him defend her fake tears, my heart completely died. I took off my diamond wedding ring, placed it on my mother's headstone, and walked away from my marriage forever. I fled to London, changed my name to Ava, and secretly raised the triplets he never knew existed. I thought I was finally safe from him. But today, my kids vandalized a silver Aston Martin in our apartment's parking garage, and the owner caught my youngest daughter. My phone rang. The voice on the other end was Blake's. He had moved into my building, and he was holding my little girl in his penthouse, demanding her mother come get her immediately. Panic suffocated me. If I walked through that door, my five years of hiding would be instantly destroyed. He would recognize me, realize I didn't get rid of our child like everyone thought, and he would use all his power to take my babies away. I couldn't let him ruin my life again. "I'm just her nanny," I lied through my teeth. I frantically begged my best friend to go upstairs and rescue my daughter in my place. He bought the disguise, but now, the King of the Ice is dangerously obsessed with investigating my new identity.

"Sign the contract, or lose everything." I stared at the papers that would seal my fate-a three-year marriage to Julian Blackwood, the ruthless billionaire they call the Ice King. My family didn't ask. They demanded. My father's company was drowning, my stepsister's engagement had exploded, and I was the replacement bride they could sacrifice. Just another transaction. Julian made it clear on our wedding day: "Don't expect affection. Don't expect companionship. Certainly don't expect love." He refused to kiss me at the altar. He gave me a bedroom down the hall and told me to stay out of his way. I was Mrs. Blackwood in name only-a contract, a convenience, a means to an end. I accepted it. I had survived twelve years of abuse in my own home. I could survive three years of indifference in his. But then Nate, Julian's best friend, showed me kindness, and suddenly my cold husband became possessive. When my sister attacked me, he became protective. Now the man who promised me nothing is fighting his own father to keep me. The marriage that was supposed to be fake is becoming terrifyingly real and the secrets about my mother's death are threatening to destroy everything. They said Julian Blackwood destroys everything he touches. What they didn't tell me... is that sometimes destruction is exactly what you need to be reborn. With a pregnancy involved, how was I going to end this three-year marriage peacefully?

I was in the hospital, enduring the agonizing pain of labor, while my husband, a famous hockey captain, refused to show up. When I called him for the twelfth time, begging for him, he lost his patience. "Giving birth is a woman's job, don't bother me with this stuff." Then, I heard my stepsister's sweet voice offering him a drink, and he immediately softened before hanging up on me. I gave birth to twins all by myself. The nurses treated me with cold indifference, and the family in the next bed loudly mocked me as a pathetic "Puck Bunny" who was just an adopted orphan about to be dumped. They were right. A month ago, my husband had thrown divorce papers at me, demanding I make way because my stepsister was pregnant with his child. I thought my life was a joke. I was just a discarded prop he married to satisfy his grandfather, a fake daughter my adoptive parents only used to elevate my stepsister. I was completely alone, ready to sign the papers just to protect my two babies. But then, the head of the hospital rushed in, transferred me to the top-floor VIP suite, and handed me a DNA test. It turned out I wasn't an unwanted orphan, but the long-lost daughter of the ultra-wealthy Sinclair family who had been searching for me for twenty years. Looking at my billionaire parents and three powerful brothers who just flew in on their private jets to protect me, I picked up my phone to call my arrogant husband. This time, I was going to make him leave with nothing.

"From tonight on, Farrah is my one and only Old Lady! As for you, Sloane... you're just my personal bed-warmer." In the deafening roar of the crowded motorcycle club, my boyfriend of five years hauled another woman against his chest, publicly stripping me of my title. The entire room erupted in laughter, waiting for the "helpless orphan" to break down and cry. His bloodsucking mother and sister smirked in the crowd. For five years, I had served their family like an unpaid maid, secretly bleeding my dead father's legacy dry just to pay off their debts. Now, they were thrilled to see me thrown into the dirt. Beau pinched my chin, offering his mercy like a king to a beggar. "As long as you know your place and stay in the basement to do the chores, I'll generously let you be my secret baby mama. It's the greatest mercy a cursed orphan with a dead bloodline will ever get." They thought they had stripped me of everything. They expected me to crawl on my knees and beg for their scraps. The very next morning, I broke into their safe, took back my stolen inheritance and the keys to my father's legendary motorcycle, and rode straight to the National President-the man who held the absolute power of life and death over the entire outlaw world. When Beau smugly swaggered into the President's office, fully expecting to find me begging on my knees for him to take me back, he was instead slapped in the face with a wax-sealed document of formal severance. "She is a free agent now. Anyone who touches her answers to my gavel." I straddled my father's roaring heavy chopper, looking down at my ex's humiliated, panicked face. "This is just the beginning, Beau. I'm going to make your family bleed out everything you stole." But what I didn't realize was that the moment I took my first step toward revenge, the dangerously wild man I collided with in the dark the night before-the one wearing the forbidden insignia of the absolute royal bloodline-had already locked his sights on me like a predator claiming his prey...

Ivanna had everything: a stable marriage, a promising career, and the love of the man she had fought for, even against his own family. But when she finally managed to conceive, fate tore her happiness away in the most heart-wrenching way imaginable. Her husband had wanted a child... just not with her. She made the hardest decision of her life: signing a divorce agreement that left her with nothing. She left without looking back, her heart shattered, carrying a silent promise never to return. Until now. Four years have passed, and she's back in Boston, the city where her dreams were once shattered-with a new life, newfound strength... and a secret that will change everything. She is no longer the same woman who left in silence. And her ex-husband isn't prepared to uncover what she's been hiding. What will happen when the ex-wife returns with the one secret that might ruin him... or redeem him?

I went to my stepsister's birthday party, foolishly hoping for a family truce. Instead, she drugged my drink and had me shoved into a dark hotel suite, where a stranger took my innocence. When I sneaked back home the next morning, battered and humiliated, I overheard my stepsister and stepmother laughing in the hallway. They had orchestrated the whole trap to destroy my reputation so I would be forced to marry a thrice-divorced, abusive butcher. "And don't forget the little extras we've been putting in her food," my stepmother gloated. "She'll never lose the weight. That fat Miss Piggy is meant to be your backdrop." The revelation chilled me to the bone. My years of punishing diets, the brutal exercise, the deep self-hatred—none of it was my fault. It was poison, fed to me daily by the family I trusted. I packed a single bag, took the commemorative coin I had stolen from the stranger's nightstand as a reminder of my lowest point, and vanished into the city. One year later, having lost ninety pounds and transformed into a completely different woman, I agreed to attend the blind date with the butcher they arranged. But because of a flipped brass table number, I sat down in front of the wrong man. It was Julian Sinclair, the billionaire stranger from that dark room, and he looked at me and proposed a contract marriage.

I was the Luna of the Stone River Pack, the fated mate to the Alpha, Gallagher. But he gave all his love and gentleness to a fragile human girl named Carson. In my past life, on the day he publicly chose her over me, I cried and begged him not to go. My desperate love only disgusted him. He and his human lover eventually threw me into a cold, blood-stained dungeon. While he used my Pack's resources to pamper his mistress, I was left to writhe in the soul-tearing agony that the mate-bond inflicts on a betrayed partner. I was tortured, stripped of my dignity, and ultimately died a pathetic death, my heart crushed to dust. Until my last breath, I didn't understand why the Moon Goddess's fated bond meant absolutely nothing to him. Why did my blind devotion and absolute loyalty only earn me a brutal, lonely death in the dark? Opening my eyes again, the phantom pain of a silver blade slicing my throat woke me up. I looked at my unscarred hands. I was reborn. I was back to the exact day three years ago when the tragedy started—the day he first chose her. When he looked at me with arrogance, expecting my usual crying fit, I just stared back with dead eyes. "Good riddance." As he slammed the door to comfort his lover, I calmly picked up my phone and accessed his unlimited black card. This time, I will use his money to build my own empire.