Her Daughter's Funeral, Their Wedding Night

I stood outside Room 2206 of the Pierre-Saint Hotel, my thumb hovering over the "Go Live" button on my phone. I wasn't Isa Faulkner, the dutiful fiancée, anymore; I was an executioner ready to broadcast my own ruin to the world. The door swung open to reveal my fiancé, Holden, tangled with a runway model while 50,000 viewers watched the betrayal in real-time. I expected the truth to set me free, but I didn't realize the explosion would destroy me first. My father slapped me across the face for tanking a billion-dollar merger and disowned me on the spot, while my sister Kylee smiled as she took my seat on the board. Within an hour, I was kicked out into the freezing rain with nothing but a suitcase and a broken pearl bracelet. Just as I hit rock bottom, a black Maybach pulled to the curb and Gerhardt Phillips—the "Ice King" of Wall Street—offered me a seat. He was a man who lived behind glass walls and suffered from a touch phobia so severe he hadn't been touched in years, yet he was holding my hand as if I were his only oxygen. I didn't understand why my presence was the only thing that could stop his violent tremors, or why I found my mother’s "lost" necklace hidden in his family’s private vault. I certainly didn't understand why I overheard his father plotting to "dispose" of me the same way they had handled my mother years ago. What really happened in the fire that killed my mother, and why was the man I just married the only one who knew the truth? I gripped the contract he gave me and prepared for a life in the lion's den. "I'll marry you, Gerhardt," I said, looking into his cold, ice-blue eyes. "But when we're done, I want enough gasoline to burn the Faulkner name to ash."

In my past life, my billionaire husband Julian brought a frail, "traumatized" earthquake survivor named Ava into our home. I didn't know she was his mistress until I was bleeding out on a sterile delivery bed. While I fought for my life and our unborn child, Julian coldly signed a Do Not Resuscitate order. In that life, I had cried, screamed, and begged for his love. He just called me hysterical, slept with her in the guest wing, and secretly drained my pre-marital assets to buy her mansions and priceless pink diamonds. I died completely broken, stripped of my dignity, listening to the flatline of my own heart monitor. I couldn't understand how the man who promised me a perfect life could condemn me to death so easily. Why did my blind love only earn me a tragic end while they lived happily ever after on my family's money? Opening my eyes again, I was back on the exact day he brought Ava home. This time, I didn't shed a single tear. "Ava will be staying in the guest wing," Julian stated, expecting me to explode. I smiled perfectly, welcomed her in, and secretly called my divorce attorney to trigger my prenup's exit clause. This time, I chose to live for vengeance.

I woke up in a lavish bedroom, only to find a man built like a god of war chained to my wall, glaring at me with pure, unadulterated hatred. A glowing apparition appeared and told me I had died in a car crash and transmigrated into the body of Elara, a tyrant Luna. Worse, the chained man was Ryker, one of my six fated mates whom the original Elara had brutally tortured. Because of her sadistic crimes-starving them, exiling them, and sending two of them on a suicide mission-my affinity with them was at negative five hundred. The apparition delivered my terrifying death sentence. "In three days, at the Marking Ceremony, you will be killed by your six mates." No matter what I did-freeing Ryker, sharing my food, or lifting their brother's exile-they viewed every act of kindness as a sick, twisted trap. They were just waiting for the punchline to my cruel joke, ready to expose me and end my life. I was just a librarian who organized book clubs and paid my taxes. Why did the Goddess throw me into this doomed vessel to pay for a psychopath's blood debts? How was I supposed to survive when the men destined to love me were actively plotting to rip my throat out? Cornered by their righteous fury, I realized playing defense wouldn't work. I grabbed a dagger, sliced my own palm over the ceremonial stone, and swore a blood oath to bring their missing brothers home-or initiate a soul-shattering Rejection Ceremony myself.

For three years, I wasn't a foster child. I was a living, breathing cure. Hidden away in the attic of the Thomas mansion, my sole purpose was to keep their precious daughter alive. Every week, they drained my blood to treat her rare disease, leaving me anemic, scarred, and invisible. I was the "walking blood bag" from the wrong side of the tracks-a stray they'd reluctantly taken in. The day Katharina was finally cured, I overheard the truth. "That walking blood bag has served her purpose," the grandmother hissed. "We are done with her." They threw me out into a freezing rainstorm, tossing a crumpled check at my feet like a tip for a beggar. Payment, they said, for the years I'd "leeched" off their family. Payment for the six thousand milliliters of blood they'd stolen, for the chronic anemia, for the scars. I shredded their charity in front of their faces and walked into the storm. They laughed, screaming that I'd be back, that I'd be begging on the streets by morning. But as I stood alone on that dark road, my world shifted. A sleek, black Rolls-Royce pulled up in silence. The door opened, and my real family stepped out. I wasn't a stray from the slums. I was their lost heiress. And the Thomases are about to learn that the girl they bled dry is now the one holding all the power.

I hovered in the corner of the damp Runt Quarters, powerless as a ghost, watching my five-year-old daughter take her last breath. She died of a fever that a simple medicine could have cured. But my husband, Alpha Elroy, refused to pay for it. He was too busy dining with his mistress to waste resources on a "runt." When he finally arrived, there were no tears. He picked up my daughter’s small body like a bag of trash and tossed her into the incineration pit meant for criminals. "Stop hiding, Annis!" he roared at the empty woods, thinking I was alive and watching. "Your trick didn't work. The runt is dead." I screamed at him, clawing at his suit, but my hands passed right through him. Days later, his mistress gave birth to a son. But the baby was born with a fractured soul, dying. The doctor said only a bone marrow graft from the White Wolf bloodline could save him. Elroy didn't hesitate. He looked toward the incineration pit. "Retrieve the girl's body," he commanded his warriors. "Her bones will save the future Alpha." He intended to butcher our daughter's corpse to save his illegitimate child. Enraged, he hunted down the Rogue who had secretly stolen Emma's body before it could burn. "Give me the body!" Elroy demanded. "And tell Annis to stop spoofing her credit cards in Europe and show her face!" The Rogue looked at him with cold pity and threw a coroner's report at his chest. "Annis isn't in Europe, Elroy." "She has been rotting in a shallow grave for six months. Your mistress paid for the bullet."

I stood in the ballroom of the Pierre Hotel, holding a champagne flute that felt like a fragile anchor against a rising tide of anxiety. Across the room, the crowd of New York's elite parted as my fiancé, Campbell Brock, stepped onto the stage to announce a historic merger-and a shocking engagement to someone else. "I am proud to announce my engagement to Kandice Rose," he said, pulling the "real" daughter of the family into his arms while looking right through me as if I were a ghost. I dropped my glass, the crystal shattering at my feet, but the public humiliation was only the beginning. By the next morning, I was a viral meme dubbed the "Meltdown Girl," and the American Ballet Theatre had suspended me from my position as principal dancer for "moral turpitude." My bank accounts were frozen, my reputation was in tatters, and Kandice was on a livestream tearfully claiming I was a jealous foster girl who had tried to seduce Campbell behind her back. I had spent four years building a life with this man, only to be discarded like a piece of old wallpaper the moment a better business deal came along. How could the man who promised me a future turn me into a national joke overnight, and why was the world so eager to believe I was the villain in my own tragedy? When my high school best friend, the notorious billionaire playboy Charlton Bernard, found me drinking tequila in a dive bar, he didn't offer me a shoulder to cry on. He slid a marriage contract across the table and pressed a black titanium credit card into my hand. "Marry me for a year, Daphne," he said, his eyes burning with a dark, protective intensity that made my heart race. "We'll join their reality show as newlyweds and show the world exactly who the real winner is." I looked at the card, then at the man who had always been my shadow, and realized that being sensible had only gotten me dumped on a stage. "Let's go get married."