From Ashes: The Unwanted Wife's Return

On my wedding day, my fiancé Connor received an urgent phone call. He told me a D-list actress had broken her leg on set, then abandoned me right at the altar. In my past life, I cried until my throat bled, begging him not to leave. But my tears only brought endless humiliation. My mother and adopted sister mocked me, framed me, and forged my signature to steal my multi-million dollar trust fund. They kicked me out of the family estate without a single dime. I ended up freezing to death in the minus-twenty-degree New York blizzard, listening to my mother's voicemail telling me to die in the street as long as I didn't bleed on her carpets. Until my last breath, I couldn't understand why my own blood relatives hated me so much, yet treated an adopted daughter like a precious princess. The only person who showed me any mercy—draping his wool coat over my frozen corpse and giving me a proper burial—was Connor's ruthless, untouchable uncle, Harding Snow. Opening my eyes again, I was back in the bridal suite, right as Connor was rushing out the door. This time, I didn't shed a single tear. I let him run to his actress, then walked straight into the VIP room to face the most feared billionaire on Wall Street. "The wedding proceeds as planned, but the groom's name changes to yours."

I died in the apocalypse, only to wake up as Kenzie Banks, a bankrupt high-society monster in an interstellar beast-world. But before I could even process my new reality, a cold AI voice informed me of my impending death. "Your contract beast-husbands possess the legal right to execute you at the end of the two-month trial period." I rushed to the basement and saw the horrific truth. The original Kenzie had starved them, whipped them with thermal blades, sent their brothers to die as cannon fodder, and framed the youngest to rot in a maximum-security prison. Now, these lethal, broken men were methodically planning to rip my organs out the second the contract dissolved. To make matters worse, she had squandered her fortune on a man who despised her, leaving me two million credits in debt and facing imminent exile to the deadly wastelands. I had survived rotting zombies on Earth, only to be trapped in a weak, universally hated body, doomed to be butchered by the very people I was supposed to call family. Why did I have to pay the ultimate price for a psychotic woman's deadly sins? I refused to just sit around and wait for my execution. Tapping into my apocalyptic subspace inventory, I hauled out military-grade rations, healed their bleeding wounds, and slammed a legally binding divorce contract on the table. If I wanted to survive this sixty-day countdown, I had to turn my executioners into my loyal allies-starting with breaking the husband she framed out of prison.

Waking up from an emergency appendectomy, Ana reached for her phone, expecting a comforting text from her boyfriend of three years. Instead, a trending video popped up, showing him passionately kissing her stepsister on an Aspen balcony. "She's just my assistant. Efficient, but boring. She'll get over it." His cruel words in the video revealed a calculated coup. Ana's 25th birthday was in three days. According to her father's will, if she wasn't married by then, her entire inheritance—millions in assets and the family company—would automatically go to her stepmother and this exact stepsister. They were deliberately keeping her unwed and bedridden to rob her blind. Three years of late nights and sacrifices for his career were all a lie. The betrayal hit her harder than the surgical pain. But the despair lasted only a second before morphing into a cold, sharp fury. She refused to let them steal her birthright. Yanking the IV needle from her bleeding hand, Ana ripped a photo of a rumored-gay playboy from a gossip magazine. She sneaked out of the hospital, determined to buy a fake husband within 72 hours. But in her pain-hazed rush inside a dimly lit private club, she approached the wrong man. She didn't realize the man she just proposed to wasn't a safe, harmless playboy at all. She had just accidentally married Austen Velez—the undisputed King of Wall Street, and her cheating ex-boyfriend's most terrifying arch-nemesis.

I was dying in a mangled SUV during a freak blizzard, my ribs crushed by the steering column. With my last ounce of strength, I called my husband for help. But Bennett just impatiently told me not to ruin his dinner reservations. Through the phone, I heard the sweet, cloying laughter of his mistress, Celine. I even heard my own son cheerfully calling her "Auntie Celine" and asking for ice cream. "Your son is having a good time. For once, don't make everything about you. Stop this ridiculous game and go home." Bennett growled those words and hung up on me to go shopping with her. For ten years, I had given up my family's corporate empire to be his perfect wife, only to be entirely erased and replaced. As the freezing cold seeped into my bones, I realized the restrictive prenup I signed for love was just a cage. I died alone in the snow, filled with rage. I hated Bennett for his cruelty, and Celine for her lies. But most of all, I hated myself for being so weak and believing love was enough. As my heart gave its final beat, a desperate thought burned through the dark void. If I could do it all again... Opening my eyes, I was no longer in that cold, metal tomb. I was back at my son's fifth birthday party three years ago. Celine was just about to serve him the cake laced with his deadly allergen. This time, I wouldn't be the hysterical wife taking the blame. I packed my bags, walked out the door, and told him to expect the divorce papers.

On the eve of my glamorous Waldorf Astoria wedding, I went to the penthouse to surprise my fiancé, Hugh, wearing my late mother's heirloom pearls. Instead, I heard my stepsister's familiar laugh and caught them tangled together on the sofa. Through the cracked door, I heard Hugh slur that he was only marrying me for my family's financial backing. "As soon as I secure my inheritance, she's the first thing I'm getting rid of," he promised her. Floy giggled and asked for my mother's pearl necklace, my only legacy. Hugh agreed without hesitation, mocking my dead mother's naivety and my desperate dreams of building a family. Every sweet word he had ever said was a lie, a knife he had been patiently sliding between my ribs for years. They planned to strip me of everything the moment I signed the prenup. I didn't cry or scream. The crushing weight of their betrayal hollowed me out, leaving behind a terrifying, absolute calm. Why should I be the one to lose everything while they stole my future and insulted my mother's memory? I calmly walked down the hall, set the prenuptial agreement on fire, and vanished into the rainy night. If Hugh wanted to play dirty for the Maxwell empire, I would play for keeps. Using a forgotten, century-old family covenant, I was going to marry Hugh's uncle-the comatose, paralyzed war hero, Fleet Maxwell. I would return not as a naive bride, but as their worst nightmare: his aunt, and the new lady of the house.

I am a resident surgeon, secretly married to Dr. Barrett Walters, the Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery. It was a transactional marriage; he paid my mother's mounting medical bills, and I was his secret, obedient wife in the dark. But at the hospital, he was a cold-blooded tyrant who deliberately made my life a living hell. During a major medical conference, he viciously tore apart my successful surgical repair, looking me dead in the eye as he called me incompetent in front of all my colleagues. The humiliation didn't stop there. With his tacit approval, the senior residents bullied me, assigning me every brutal night shift. When his beautiful, wealthy heiress "girlfriend" visited the ward, he publicly mocked my background to make her smile. "Some people get in through the back door. They're not fit for the front lines." Even when I was forced to work as a secret banquet waitress to cover the medical copays he ignored, he found me, ruined the job out of pure possessive jealousy, and then fined my meager resident salary the very next morning just to show his absolute control. I endured his punishing kisses and cruel rebukes, sacrificing my dignity just to keep my mother alive. But I couldn't understand why he had to destroy every shred of my peace. If he wanted the perfect heiress, why did he refuse to let me go? Staring at his cold, controlling eyes in the stairwell, my exhaustion finally overpowered my fear. I was done being his victim, and it was time to tear up this contract.