Secret Baby: The Jilted Wife's Final Goodbye

A week before my wedding, I went to the airport parking garage to surprise my fiancé with a luxury watch. Instead, I caught him having sex in his car with my best friend and maid of honor. Devastated and desperate to forget, I went to an exclusive club and blew my $50,000 trust fund to buy a one-night stand with a gorgeous stranger. But the nightmare was just beginning. At work, my cheating best friend stole my hard-earned promotion, and my ex shamelessly defended her. Worse, the escort I had paid for sex turned out to be the ruthless new CEO of my airline. He tormented me on a flight to Paris. When I was robbed of my passport and wallet on the freezing streets, he forced me to be his gala date just to get my life back. But the ultimate trap was waiting for me in New York. A secretly taken photo of me leaving the CEO's penthouse leaked on the company forum. "I knew she got that Paris trip for a reason." My ex and my former best friend led the charge in the comments, framing me as a shameless gold digger who slept her way to the top. I was stripped of my flying credentials, suspended from the job I loved, and publicly humiliated. I didn't understand why the CEO was playing these cruel games, or who had orchestrated this perfect trap to ruin my life. Standing outside the airport with my career in ashes, I realized crying wouldn't save me. I wiped my tears, accepted my mother's invitation to a high-society mixer, and prepared to make everyone who set me up pay the price.

The glacial water of the Moon Lake filled my throat, pulling me down into the sunless depths. Through the churning water, I saw Silas, the Alpha Crown Prince, standing on the shore, watching me drown. In our past life, he dove in, triggering a fated bond that forced us to marry. I spent decades bleeding for his kingdom as his Luna, but he only ever loved my older sister, Isabella. "You have laboured hard." That was all he whispered on my deathbed. Not that he loved me. He spent his whole life mourning my sister's accidental death. Now, as my lungs burned, a dreadful clarity hit me—he remembered. We had both been reborn to the night of the Mating Ball. He wanted to fix his mistake. He meant to let me die, erasing the faulty beginning of our story so he could finally choose my sister. I didn't feel sad or angry. Instead, the immense burden of my past life began to dissolve in the murky water. If he wished to sever this twisted cord of fate, I would gladly lend him the blade. I jammed a silver pin into my leg to kick free of my heavy boots and swam into the black heart of the lake. This time, I would never let him use me again. I would gladly hand him over to my sister, and marry the terrifying, "degenerate" Duke of the North instead.

Christa discovered her adopted daughter Evelyn was sneaking around with a street thug named Dante. When she furiously confronted her, Evelyn squeezed out a few tears and played the tragic, abused orphan. "Mom is so cruel to me, I just want someone to love me," Evelyn cried to the men of the house, who instantly took her side. Christa didn't realize her anger only gave the girl the perfect victim card. Evelyn manipulated the family's guilt to drain their wealth and orchestrate a massive corporate fraud. When the authorities closed in, Evelyn let Christa's eldest daughter Julianna take the fall, sending her to federal prison. The Stephenson family went completely bankrupt. Christa's husband Grant, crushed by the betrayal and debt, jumped off a Manhattan skyscraper. Until her family was entirely destroyed, Christa couldn't understand. They had given the orphan a home, a trust fund, and endless love. Why did Evelyn treat them like easy marks? Why did she use their kindness as a weapon to tear them apart? Opening her eyes again, Christa saw the heavy velvet drapes letting in the pale morning light. She was back seven years ago, on the exact day she first caught Evelyn texting that thug. This time, Christa wouldn't scream or fight. She would cut off the money, drop the rules, and watch the parasite dig her own grave.

I spent two years scrubbing locker room floors and collecting trash just to buy gifts for my girlfriend, Sylvia. I thought she was the only one who didn't care that I was a "wolfless" Omega. But the day before my eighteenth birthday, I caught her in the arms of Dixon, our pack's future Alpha. She laughed in my face, calling me a scentless puppy and admitting our entire relationship was just a cruel bet. When I lunged at him, Dixon beat me half to death. He pinned my bleeding face to the wet tiles with his combat boot and used a permanent marker to scrawl "WOLFLESS LOSER" across my chest. My pack cheered, and even at a party later, the people I thought were my friends treated me like a contagious disease. I laid in my cramped dorm, suffocating under the crushing despair. Why was I born so weak? Why did I have to endure this brutal humiliation just for existing? Then, my phone buzzed with an unknown number, and a cold, elegant voice spoke. "Your trial is over, Aden. You are a royal Lycan, and your hundred-million-dollar trust fund has been activated." Looking at the impossible string of zeros on my screen, the ancient beast in my blood finally woke up. It was time to make the Alpha who broke me choke on his own arrogance.

For years, I was Faron Blackwell' s "whipping post." A cruel pact with his mother forced me to endure one hundred public humiliations for his affairs, a living tally of his conquests. I was a joke to high society, the wife who couldn't keep her husband. After the final scandal, I discovered I was pregnant. But Faron, repulsed by the scars his family' s punishments left on my body, hadn't touched me in months. He was convinced the child wasn't his. He ordered his mistress, a doctor, to terminate the pregnancy. "Make sure she feels every bit of it," he said. "No anesthesia." To force a confession about a lover who never existed, he trapped me and the children from my non-profit in a building and set off a bomb. As the inferno raged, I heard him screaming my name. I ran straight into the flames, ready to end the nightmare. But Faron didn't know his own mother had a different escape plan for me all along.

For seven years, I was the secret wife of Chandler Roberson, a rising political star. I sacrificed my own journalism career to be his "rock," the ghost in the background of his perfect life, always believing his promise that it was all for us. That promise shattered the night he brought his mistress, Britni, to our home. She took one look at me, then threw herself down the stairs, letting out a theatrical scream. "She pushed me!" she cried. Chandler didn't hesitate. He slapped me across the face, his eyes blazing with a rage I'd never seen. "You bitch! What did you do?!" he snarled, rushing to her side. He cradled her in his arms, his face a mask of concern for her and pure hatred for me. He believed her instantly, ready to paint me as a violent, jealous monster to protect his affair and his career. In that moment, watching him choose her, watching my life crumble under his cold, indifferent gaze, the woman who had loved him for twenty years died. But then I was back. Reborn in that same moment, with the memory of his betrayal burning in my soul. And I remembered the one thing he'd forgotten: the hidden camera in the entryway, recording his perfect crime.