He Chose Her, I Chose Myself

For two years, I held the Blackwood Pack together as Luna, waiting for my Fated Mate, Alpha Jaxson, to return from the border wars. But when his convoy finally arrived, he didn't even look at me. Instead, he helped out a fragile, pregnant woman and her young son. In front of the entire pack, he announced she was his "chosen family" and that she was carrying his child. He demanded I welcome his mistress as a sister, claiming her father had saved his life. When I refused to share my mate and handed all my Luna duties over to her, his family turned on me. At dinner, the mistress's son deliberately rammed into a servant, spilling a tureen of scalding soup all over my hand. As my skin blistered in excruciating pain, Jaxson's grandmother didn't check on me. Instead, she shielded the smirking boy. "As the Luna, can't you be more composed? You're frightening the child!" And Jaxson, the Alpha who was supposed to protect me, just stood there in absolute silence. I looked at the severe burns on my hand and the ugly faces of this family I had served for years. The last trace of affection in my heart completely vanished. I didn't scream or cry. I calmly called my private physician to document my injuries. Taking back the title of Luna was no longer enough. I wanted my freedom.

On our third anniversary, my husband canceled our dinner, claiming a sudden work emergency. I tracked his phone to an exclusive French restaurant, only to find him tenderly fastening a blessed bracelet—one I had flown across the world to get for him—onto his college ex-girlfriend's wrist. The sheer shock triggered a violent placental abruption. Bleeding out in my car just across the street, I frantically called his number. Through the window, I watched him glance at his screen, frown in annoyance, and press decline to focus on his lover. While I was wheeled into a freezing operating room for an emergency C-section utterly alone, he took his mistress back to our marital bed. He didn't even bother to check if I was alive, completely oblivious that our premature daughter was fighting for her life in the NICU. I soon discovered our entire marriage was a sham. He had used my family's wealth to save his company, and now he was trading me to secure a massive business deal with his ex's father. The man I loved didn't exist; he only saw me as a disposable asset. "I'm going to make him wish he had never been born." After secretly securing my baby in a private retreat, I ordered a medical-grade silicone pregnancy belly to hide my flat stomach. I stepped back into our penthouse, ready to burn his precious empire to the ground.

My marriage had been a cold, empty room for five years. I was reeling from a devastating loss, sitting in the ER breakroom, when a familiar voice shattered what little peace I had left. "Mark, are you really going to die for her? For Emily Davis?" David Chase's voice, raw with anger, cut through the hospital air outside my husband' s room. His next words felt like a physical blow: "All these years, every overtime shift, every missed holiday, every time you let Sarah and Lily down... wasn't it all just so you could hear her voice on the dispatch? Just to hear Emily say, 'Engine 32, you're cleared to return to base'?" My world tilted. It wasn' t about his job, not his heroism. It was about Emily Davis, his ex-girlfriend. He had covered for her when her family went bankrupt, joining the fire academy to be near her, while I, Sarah, picked up the pieces, paying his debts, loving him for 16 years, waiting for a new beginning. Then, Lily, our daughter, died. The fever spiked viciously, taking her life in my arms within hours. Mark never knew. He never answered my desperate calls. He was always on duty, always chasing the next emergency-which now I knew was always about Emily. Why was I just a placeholder? Why was our daughter a casualty of his obsession? I didn't understand. I couldn't understand how everything I believed was a lie. How could I have been so blind? Something inside me, something that had been dying for five years, finally broke. I pulled out my phone, not to call a lawyer, but my old professor. "Dr. Reed," I said, my voice shockingly steady. "You once told me about a flight nurse program. Is it too late to apply?"

I was burning with a 104-degree fever when my mafia boss husband's mistress sent an emergency code, claiming he was bleeding out. Too weak to stand, my mother-in-law took the medical supplies into the hurricane for me, only to be killed in a rival hit-and-run. I dragged my sick body across enemy lines to finish the delivery, only to find my husband laughing with his mistress in his office. "It was just a loyalty test to see how fast you'd react," she sneered. When I told him his mother died for their sick game, he refused to believe me. He called me a manipulative liar and threw me out into the freezing rain. Days later, he tracked me down to the family mausoleum. Believing his mistress's lies that we were just faking the death to steal his money, he snatched his mother's urn from my hands and maliciously smashed it to dust. He even shoved me so hard against the stone altar that I miscarried our unborn child. I watched the gray ashes scatter over his expensive shoes, my heart turning to ice. How could the man I loved be so blind, choosing a cheap mistress over his own mother's life and his wife's devotion? When the police finally arrived to confirm his mother's tragic death and the mistress's betrayal was exposed, he fell to his knees in the dirt, weeping and begging for my forgiveness. But I just smiled, demanded my divorce, and walked away.

Denice Copeland's son was dying of leukemia, and his only hope for survival was a savior sibling. But the wealthy Montgomery family offered a cruel ultimatum. To get the experimental treatments her son desperately needed, Denice had to conceive a child naturally with Jasper Montgomery—her dead husband's cold, estranged twin brother. Jasper treated the arrangement like a clinical transaction, taking her body without a shred of tenderness and threatening to cut her son's medical care if she disobeyed. The ultimate betrayal happened when Denice collapsed from exhaustion at his hospital. Jasper's glamorous partner, Kira, suddenly appeared and took control of Denice's dying son. Kira made the little boy call her "Mommy" and ordered security to throw Denice out. "I don't know you. I've never seen you before in my life." Jasper stood between Denice and her own son, coldly defending the woman who had stolen her child. Denice was completely shattered. She finally understood she had never been anything but a cheap stand-in for Kira, a convenient breeding vessel for the Montgomery bloodline. Stripped of her dignity, her past love, and now her only child, her mind violently fractured in her freezing, mildew-stained apartment. Abandoning the last shred of her pride, she sent Jasper one final, desperate text. "Tonight. I'm ovulating. Come." Then, she stepped fully clothed into a scalding shower to drown herself, forcing the man who destroyed her to finally face the wreckage he had made.

Five years after my ex, Clay, traded me for power, we met again at an exclusive summit. He and his new fiancée, Destany, publicly humiliated me, calling me a trespasser and a thief for looking for my son's lost locket. Then, my three-year-old son, Justus, ran to me, crying "Mama!" In a horrifying move, Destany snatched him from my arms. She shrieked to the powerful crowd that I was a low-born commoner who had kidnapped a child of noble blood. The room erupted, calling for my arrest. Clay, the man I once loved, watched with cold satisfaction as guards pinned my arms back. He ordered them to take my son away and deal with me. I screamed that Justus was mine, but my pleas were drowned out by their accusations. How could this be happening? The man who once promised me everything was now helping to rip my child away from me, branding me a criminal. But just as they were about to drag me away, an immense power slammed into the room, forcing everyone to their knees. A tall, imposing figure appeared, his golden eyes blazing with fury. My husband, Damien, had arrived.