The Hockey Star's Runaway Fake Girlfriend

In my past life, I believed the lies of my lover, Kade, and poisoned the Alpha Regent, Bertram, to save my pack. But as Bertram drank the poisoned wine with a sad, accepting smile, I realized he was the only one who truly loved me. Kade didn't give me freedom. He locked me in a dungeon and revealed the horrifying truth. He and my adopted sister, Dayse, had been manipulating me all along. They framed my father and slaughtered my entire family. Even worse, Kade revealed the child I was carrying wasn't his, but Bertram's heir—conceived during a night Kade himself had orchestrated. As Kade drove a sword through my heart, my soul was consumed by an absolute, bottomless hatred. I didn't understand why the sister I protected and the man I trusted wanted to destroy me so completely. I swore to the Moon Goddess that I would become a ghost of vengeance and make them suffer a thousand times over. Opening my eyes again, a sharp slap stung my cheek. I wasn't dead on the cliff. I was back on my sixteenth birthday. Looking at my cousin holding the drugged drink meant to ruin my life, I smiled and forced it down her throat instead.

Fallon only wanted a relaxing nature retreat, but instead found herself lost in a dense forest, her limited-edition Balenciaga sneakers ruined by mud and her phone showing zero signal. Before she could even curse her tour guide, a massive boar-monster the size of a truck burst from the bushes to eat her. She thought she was dead, until a giant silver-and-black snake dropped from the canopy and crushed the beast. When Fallon woke up, she was trapped in a primitive cliff cave with a towering, muscular man who had the exact same cold, mismatched slit eyes as the snake. A mechanical system voice echoed in her skull, telling her an anomaly had dragged her to the brutal Beast World. Returning to Earth was impossible. Here, females were incredibly weak commodities, and the deadly "wind season" was fast approaching. "Eat, or you will die. The wind season comes." The snake-man, Justice, shoved a charred, dripping slab of raw bloody meat into her face. Fallon sobbed in despair. She was trapped in a savage dimension with no modern comforts, abandoned by a glitchy system that only gave her a tiny, empty pocket space in her mind. Worse, she realized this terrifying apex predator had absolutely zero food stored for the freezing winter. But when she instinctively clutched her grandmother's silver necklace, her tiny pocket space suddenly upgraded into a massive, room-sized storage dimension. Looking at the awkward but fiercely protective snake-man who promised to hunt for her, Fallon wiped her tears. She had the ultimate storage cheat, and he had the muscle. It was time to conquer the Beast World.

For seven years, I was Alpha Zane’s Chosen Mate, suppressing my warrior instincts to be the docile, supportive partner he demanded. On our seventh anniversary, while I waited by a candlelit table, I accidentally overheard his mind-link with another woman. "Seven years is a habit, my dear, not love. She's docile, she'll understand." He told Seraphina, his new political ally, laughing as he dismissed my entire existence. I didn't scream or cry. I scraped the anniversary cake into the trash, drafted a formal rejection letter, and walked out of the packhouse. But Zane didn't even notice my departure. He was so consumed by his new lover that my rejection letter was treated as garbage and tossed into the incinerator. He paraded Seraphina around the pack, even handing my hard-earned strategic command over to her—a woman who knew absolutely nothing about war. When my loyal subordinates protested, he violently suppressed them, declaring my absence a "childish tantrum" and framing me as the bitter obstacle to his destined romance. He honestly thought I was just hiding in my room, waiting to beg for his charity and accept a humiliating demotion. He had no idea that I had already crossed the border into enemy territory. Tonight, I am attending his grand celebration. Not as the heartbroken mate he discarded, but as the newly appointed Gamma of his deadliest rival, the Sterling Pack.

My family accused me of betraying them, of nearly destroying the tech empire they had built from nothing. As punishment, my father and two older brothers locked me in my room, leaving me without food or water until I confessed to a crime I didn't commit. But when a medical condition flared and I began to suffocate, they dismissed my desperate screams for help as just another one of my "theatrics." "She's just being dramatic," I heard them say through the thick oak door, right before they added extra bolts. They were completely blinded by Ivy, the manipulative outsider I had welcomed as a sister. They chose her lies over their own blood, forgetting how I had secretly liquidated my own assets to save their company years ago. I died alone, my last breath a desperate gasp in a house that refused to listen. Then, I woke up. Floating as a spirit above my own decaying body, I became a silent witness, waiting for the moment they would finally break down the door and be forced to see what they had done.

Tonight was supposed to be the night I became the happiest woman in D.C., celebrating my engagement at the legendary Bolton Manor gala. I wore emerald silk and a diamond that cost more than most mansions, convinced that Hank Bolton was my soulmate and the key to my family's future. But behind the heavy oak doors of the guest wing, the dream died. I found my fiancé tangled with another woman, laughing about how I was nothing more than a "clueless cash cow" whose inheritance would fund his run for the Senate. In my first life, I reacted with tears and screams, which only allowed his family to paint me as an unstable lunatic. They stripped me of my dignity, bankrupted the Adams estate, and watched coldly as my brother, Lucas, died in a ditch trying to save me. I ended up gasping for air in a burning building, realizing too late that my perfect engagement was actually my execution. I died in the soot and the shadows, feeling the searing heat of a betrayal that burned worse than the fire. I lost everything because I was too blind to see the monsters hiding behind expensive smiles. But then, I suddenly gasped for air and realized the smoke was gone. I was standing in front of a vanity, the calendar mocking me: October 14th. The night of the gala. I had been given a second chance, and this time, I wasn't going to be the victim. I recorded the betrayal on my phone and walked into the library with a heart made of ice. I didn't just blow up the engagement; I demanded a new groom—Hank’s "invalid" older brother, Dereck, a man the world had written off as a dying recluse. "I'll take him," I told the stunned family. I wanted a husband who couldn't cheat, a puppet who would leave me a wealthy widow within a year. I thought I was choosing a safe, broken man to shield me from my enemies. I didn't know that under his blanket, Dereck was hiding a holster, or that the "dying" man was actually a predator who had been waiting for someone exactly like me to walk into his trap.

The drill's whine was the only thing in my world, vibrating through my skull and drowning out my own screams. I was strapped to a cold metal table, paralyzed by wolfsbane, while surgeons bored into my hip bone to siphon my essence. "Just a little more," the surgeon muttered. "Isabella needs the boost for the wedding photos." They weren't saving my sister's life. They were harvesting my marrow just to make her skin glow for a picture. I looked at the observation window, begging with my eyes. Dante, the Alpha I had dragged from the jaws of death, stood there. He wasn't looking at me. He was holding Isabella's hand. He didn't know I was the one who healed him. He believed her lies. "Take it all if you have to," Dante's voice drifted through our fading mate bond. "Don't let her fade." The drill punched through. My heart stuttered and stopped. I died on that table, a hollowed-out husk used to feed my sister's vanity. "Seraphina! Are you deaf?" A sharp voice snapped me back into existence. I gasped, clutching my hip. No blood. No drill. No pain. I looked at the calendar on my father's desk. I was alive. And I had exactly one year before the surgery that killed me. I looked at my trembling hands and felt the ancient anger of my White Wolf stirring. I wasn't going to be the sacrifice this time. I was going to be the arsonist.