3184 Book(s) Related to i was his perfect wife until i chose myself

I married Quentin Hale for strategic reasons. I chose him because he understood boundaries.
For three years, I never regretted that decision.
Then his new assistant started feeding him from her own spoon, taking my seat in his car, and appearing as his date at a charity auction.
The society reporters even began calling them a perfect match.
I gave my husband three chances to remember that I was his equal.
He wasted every one of them. Then he finally admitted that all he wanted was to teach me how a proper wife should behave.
Quentin thought the business alliance between our families would keep me by his side.
He forgot that I had been running Voss Group long before I became Mrs. Hale.
I had never needed a husband badly enough to let one teach me how to live.

I almost died giving birth to my daughter. The doctors gave me a thirty percent chance of survival — and I took it, because I thought a child might finally make my husband choose home over her.

I was wrong.

I stood in the hallway and listened to Kael tell his mother that I was "more resilient" — that the risks of childbirth were too serious for the woman he truly loved, so it had to be me. I was not his wife. I was a vessel.

Then my daughter, the child I had bled for, looked me in the eyes and said she wished Ivy were her mother instead.

That was the night I stopped waiting.

I filed for divorce. I walked out. I reclaimed the research career I had abandoned for a man who never saw me. And I told myself I was done.

What I didn't expect was the little boy I pulled back from the edge of suffocation — a child with no parents, a face I couldn't stop feeling I recognized, and a medical robot I had designed with my own hands tucked inside his coat.

Who is he? And why does finding him feel like the beginning of something I'm not ready for?

I was Ethan Blake's perfect mistress for five years, adhering faithfully to his rules of secrecy and obedience.

I knew his coffee preferences, his pre-meeting anxieties, yet it wasn't until his arranged-marriage partner returned that I understood I was merely a replaceable 'item' in his life plan.

When my mother passed and the pressure of medical bills vanished, I realized for the first time — that contract with its monthly transfers had bought not just my time, but my very right to say 'no' to him.

And now, when I no longer need his money...

This transaction, forged in the name of bondage, will be terminated by me.

I've been secretly married to him for five years, but he's never treated me as his wife. Our six-year-old daughter has never called him Dad in public.

One drunken night, I got pregnant. He gave me a marriage contract that came with one condition: secrecy.

I thought time would change everything. I stood by him through the company's darkest days. When I was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer, he didn't come. When our daughter was born, he was in a meeting. Every moment that mattered, he wasn't there.

Then that clumsy intern showed up.

From that point on, he gave her all his attention and patience. He broke his own rules for her again and again. That's when I finally understood: when someone doesn't love you, they just don't.

So I took my daughter and disappeared from his world completely.

But why did that calm, controlled man lose his mind?

She baked his pack to perfection for five years, only to overhear she was just the “cheaper version” of his fated mate.

When Alpha Brian slaps her, abandons her in flames, and chooses the villainess who faked everything… Angela walks away, rejects him forever, returns home as the hidden heiress of a powerhouse pack, marries the Lycan King who worships her and watches her ex spiral into madness.

I was Sophie Langley, the only daughter of a modestly wealthy family.
Then I married Harrison Whitmore, the heir to a Manhattan dynasty.
Harrison was five years older than me, stern, private, and almost offensively rich. He had no scandals, no revolving door of women, and no hobbies beyond making money.
Conveniently, my favorite hobby was spending it.
The black card never declined. The couture never ran out. Neither did the jewelry.
My life as a trophy wife was perfect—until Harrison's childhood friend came home from London.
After that, my husband stopped coming home.

Turns out, for five years, all Callum ever saw when he looked at me — the wolfless one — was a stain on his Alpha reputation.
Everyone knew he was about to marry Elvira, the pureblooded heiress of the Silverfang pack. The entire Blood Moon pack was already gearing up for their bonding ceremony.
My best friend Tessa, a Beta, fed them updates on my every move in their group chat, laughing along as I made healing broths for Callum like I was a joke to them.
They figured as long as they dangled my brother's medical care over my head, I'd swallow my pride and stay their dirty little secret forever.
Until the day Elvira decided to prove who was in charge, and threw my brother into a pit lined with silver spikes.
Watching Callum shield blood-soaked Elvira behind him, I didn't cry. I didn't scream.
I just pulled a knife and drove it into the bond mark on my neck.

They say we only live once. Elena Hart got a second chance, and this time she is not wasting it on love that never loved her back.

For seventeen years, Elena loved her best friend, Damien Cole. When their families arranged their marriage, she thought her dream had come true. But Damien never loved her. His heart belonged to her twin sister, Elise.

Elena married him anyway. He grew colder every day. When Elise was murdered, he blamed Elena for everything. One drunken night, a car crash took them both. With his last breath, Damien begged her: "If we meet again in another life, don't come between me and her. Marry someone else."

Then Elena opened her eyes.

She was twenty-three again, in her old bedroom, three days before the marriage was to be signed. Elise was alive. Damien was alive. And the same cruel plan was already moving.

This time, Elena will not beg. She will not chase. She will not cry where he can see.

Instead, she makes a shocking choice: she will marry Damien's cold older brother, Adrian Cole, the most feared man in the business world. He does not trust her. He does not smile. But he sees something in her that no one ever did.

Elena has a bigger secret than her rebirth. She knows who kills Elise, and when. To stop it, she must stand beside the one man the killer wants to destroy.

But the future is changing. Elise is hiding her own plans. Damien keeps dreaming of a grave and a crying woman he cannot name. And the man Elena chose for revenge may become the only one who truly sees her.

Some regrets die with you.
Hers came back to live.

Spring is the season I dread the most.

Because every spring, my mere existence becomes a lethal weapon against my own son.

Theron told me he suffers from a highly rare condition: Maternal Stress Rejection Syndrome.

If I so much as get near Flynn during the spring months, it triggers severe asthma attacks and terrifying asphyxiation.

To keep our boy alive, Theron takes him away to an isolated treatment center for three months, every single year.

And I stay behind, swallowing antidepressants by the handful just to survive the crushing guilt.

That is, until I found a photo hidden in Theron's burner phone.

In the picture, my husband and my son are tightly embracing another woman.

The so-called Maternal Stress Rejection Syndrome was nothing but a sick lie—a meticulously crafted excuse so my husband could spend the season playing "happy family" with his first love.

......

Clare, a room service staff met a rich businessman named Michael. Both of them gets attracted to each other and spent a sexy romantic full of lust journey to New Zealand. During the journey, Michael feels falling for her and wants more time with Clare and asks her to go with him. Which made Clare reveal her worse past secrets which can cause trouble for both of them in the future. But Michael assured her past will not come in between and they can have a good time together. Clare agrees and the problem started after Michael's relatives and friends come to know about Clare's past. How they still manage to stay in love, stay together is the story you will know next.

For five years, my husband told me I was lucky. A human with no magic, no name, no worth — and he, the Dark Elf King, had taken me in anyway.
I believed him. I swallowed every insult in his court. I let his nobles call my son a halfbreed bastard.
Then he promised our boy he'd come to his fifth birthday, and instead he knocked him across the garden for biting the woman he'd been sneaking off to every night.
That was the day I stopped waiting.
I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I took my son and I erased us — our scent, our warmth, every hair, every speck of dust. As far as the world is concerned, we were never in it at all.
Three months later, he's on his knees outside the Celestial Sanctum, offering half his soul to any god who will find his missing wife.
He should be careful what he asks for.

Millie’s world is small and safe. It revolves around her parents and her two childhood best friends, Daxton and Sammy. They are her constant, her comfort, her definition of home. To her, that’s all she’ll ever need.
Or at least, that’s what she tells herself. Because deep down, she has always believed she would never be enough to be chosen.
Then Alan moves in next door. Raised by a single mother, Alan has spent his life earning everything the hard way. He has ambition, discipline, and a future built with his own hands.
But there’s one thing he’s never had…a real childhood... and someone who stays. And when he sees Millie, surrounded by laughter and warmth, he knows he’s found what he’s been missing.
He doesn’t just want to be part of her world. He wants her. Slowly, patiently, he begins to break through her walls.
For the first time, Millie feels something unfamiliar, something terrifying—Love.
But just when she starts to explore these newly felt feelings, everything changes.
Daxton, her protector, her closest friend, the one who has always stood by her, confesses his deep-seated feelings for her.
Now Millie stands at a crossroads she was never prepared for.
The boy who feels like home…Or the one who makes her want more.

To stop the merfolk from being slaughtered, I went ashore to seduce the boy I grew up with — Lucian Voss, now one of the world's top scientists.
He still had feelings for me. He kept me in his bed for seven days and seven nights, refusing to let go.
I woke from the haze of pleasure to a pair of pliers prying the scales off my back.
Lucian watched me arch in agony, his expression ice-cold.
"Mermaid scales can repair genetic defects. You don't mind sharing a few, do you?"
"After all, what your kind owes me is worth far more than a handful of scales."
Two years. For two years I watched him marry another woman.
He held my kind's lives over my head and forbade me to leave. Every few days, he'd pry the scales from my spine, grind them into powder, and feed them to his new wife Vivienne to strengthen her body.
He shackled my ankles and ordered me to stay up all night washing his bedsheets. I had to kneel outside their bedroom door, motionless, listening to them together until dawn.
When Vivienne got pregnant, she started complaining about the color of the scale powder.
"Honey, these last few have been so dull. Is she running out?"
Lucian glanced at me.
The look on his face — he was counting. Calculating how many scales I had left.
He hated me to the bone, yet every time I nearly passed out from the pain, he was the one who pulled me off the floor. Forced medicine down my throat, fingers clamped around my jaw until I swallowed.
"You're counting on the fact that I still care about you. So tell me — where are my parents?"
I stayed silent and let the contradiction hang there.
It wouldn't matter soon. I wouldn't have to keep that secret much longer.
A mermaid who stays on land for three years without returning to the sea will die. No exceptions.
And I had three days left.

Palesa Mokhosi, 24, is a broke architecture graduate in Maseru. Her mother needs emergency surgery: R350,000 in 7 days.

Michael Thorne, 32, is the ruthless CEO of Thorne Holdings. His board wants him out. His grandfather's will is clear: marry and stay married for one year, or lose his billion-rand empire.

A failed job interview becomes a proposal: "Marry me for one year. R5 million upfront. No love. No sex. No questions."

She says yes.

The contract is simple, until it isn't. Late-night whiskey, 2am meals from a man who claims he doesn't care, and the way he looks at her like she's the only real thing in his world.

Michael does control, not love — until his fake wife starts breaking every wall he built.

When her ex returns, his ex-fiancée reappears, and the board learns their fake marriage is turning real, everything unravels.

She was his fake wife. He was her paycheck. Now they're risking it all for each other.

In my past life, I loved the wrong man, chose the wrong path, and died trapped in an underground prison.

Reborn and given a second chance, facing the choice between the Blackwood brothers, everyone expected me to fall into Kellan's arms again—that once "perfect lover," that demon who tortured me to death.

But this time, I chose his older brother, Kai.

I chose the eldest son rumored to be cold and ruthless, the dangerous man who handled "gray business" overseas, the only person who bled for me in my previous life.

When I took Kai's hand in front of everyone, Kellan lost his mind, and so did my twin sister Aria.

"You love me!" Kellan screamed hysterically. "How could you choose that cold-blooded bastard?"

I smiled calmly: "Because this time, I'm choosing someone who truly loves me."

The pain of my past life won't repeat itself. The revenge of this life has only just begun.

I thought my husband was cheating, so I followed him to catch him in the act, only to witness him kill someone on our wedding anniversary.

His hands were still covered in blood when he touched my red hair and asked me what was wrong.

Was he the legendary "Red Hair Reaper"?

When the police came knocking the next day, I told them everything.

But they would never know—even the murder I "witnessed" that night was nothing but a performance staged for them from beginning to end.

Meet Georgia Sanchez, an eighteen-year-old girl who has a miserable past. Her mother was killed by thieves. Her father is a drunkard who often molested her. Her younger sister died from hunger, and her younger brother is suffering from severe pneumonia. She has no money to pay her brother's bill, so she had no choice but to work in a brothel, which she considers much better than being raped by her own father without getting anything. Her life suddenly changed, by chance or by the grace of the gods in heaven, when she met a wealthy businessman named Harry Will, who offered her a strange job: to pretend to be his girlfriend for six months in order to make his ex-fiancée jealous. But this didn't turn out right, as Georgia truly fell in love with the almost-perfect man, and if she's dreaming, she doesn't want to wake up. But even in dreams, she has bad luck; the man doesn't love her and considers her a friend or a younger sister. What's Georgia going to do now? How can she accept the fact that Sir Harry doesn't love her?

She gets into the wrong car and spills all her deepest secrets to the wrong person. By the time she realizes her mistake, it's already too late.


For ten years, Lucy Knowles has been hopelessly in love with her best friend, Owen Brooks.
She's stood by him through everything. She's been his shoulder to cry on every time his cheating girlfriend shattered his heart.
Seven times in a row, Lucy thought he'd finally see her now that his girlfriend was out of the picture. Instead, he took her back with open arms every single time.
When Owen ditches her for the last game of the season, Lucy reaches her breaking point.
Angry and heartbroken, she climbs into the wrong car.
Unfortunately, it belongs to Tyler Holt—the one guy she can't stand and Owen's biggest rival.
A sudden thunderstorm forces them to spend the night together off campus, and Lucy discovers there's a completely different side to Tyler than the arrogant jerk she thought she knew.
Then Tyler makes her an offer.
"I can help you kill two birds with one stone," he says.
"Hurt them both by ruining their upcoming engagement party."
Excitement rushes through her. Watching Owen and his girlfriend get a taste of their own medicine has always been tempting.
But Tyler Holt never does anything unless there's something in it for him.
And Lucy can't stop wondering what a guy like Tyler could possibly want from a naïve nerd who hates him.

My childhood fiancé chose my best friend in his family's sacred bridal draw, then told me I could still live with him—as his mistress.
He wanted her as his wife and me running his empire.
I refused.
If I couldn't be his wife, I'd be his worst nightmare.
In seven days, I'm marrying his ruthless uncle.
Let's see if he still wants me as his dirty secret when he has to bow his head and call me “Aunt Serena.”

"Just this once." Ethan's huge cock thrust hard into me.
He lifted one of my legs and hung it over his shoulder, thrusting so hard I moaned uncontrollably. "God, you're so tight..."
I tried to escape, but he grabbed my ankles and pulled me towards him.
I begged, "Let go of me...I'm dying..."

A year ago, Lucy was imprisoned after being framed for intentionally injuring Ivy, her husband Ethan's first love. After being granted family leave, she rushes to visit her ailing grandmother, but Ethan fucks her against her will. He mercilessly make her give a blood transfusion to Ivy, causing her to miss her grandmother’s dying words. Jailed, the only family dead, and her dreams shattered, Lucy is desperate for a divorce from this man who doesn't love her, but Ethan coldly proclaims, "There's only widowhood in the Storm family, not divorce."

"And now, he's certain your life is over because he kicked you out. They're probably already placing bets on how long it will take for you to bow and beg at their feet to take you back. But..." He said coldly.

"But..." I breathed.

"Imagine suddenly returning with a husband so wealthy he makes them look like paupers. Not only is he filthy rich, but he's hopelessly in love with you, spoiling you rotten. Imagine their shock, their anger, and your satisfaction that you have exceeded their expectations. Won't that be fulfilling?"

"And... who would that husband be?" I whispered.

"Me." He grinned as he caressed my cheek. "Let's get married, my dear Iris."

••~•

After being humiliated and disowned on her wedding day, Iris is suddenly approached by Gordon Graff, the enigmatic and highly controversial billionaire and also her ex's uncle, who asks for her hand in marriage.

His goal: make her family and ex pay for everything they've done to her.

But what happens when the line between pretence and true love begins to blur, and dangerous secrets begin to unfold?

Will the man who has promised to protect her be her doom? And will she be a casualty in his dangerous game of revenge?

I thought telling Alpha Kane I was pregnant would be the hardest part of my day.

That was before I found my step-sister naked on his mahogany desk.
I remained committed to my role of Luna for three years while I suffered through his distant behavior because I viewed our mate bond as a holy connection. The moment he wiped her lipstick from his mouth, the bond that connected us to each other shattered in my heart because he had treated me as someone who lacked excitement.

He wanted me to weep while I accepted my lower-status position. I used my mother’s billion-dollar tech patents to lock him out, then I denied him on the pack intercom, before I entered the advanced security facilities of his most dangerous competitor.

Alpha Kaelen, the Lycan King, doesn't function as an uncontrollable animal. He possesses dangerous charisma which combines with his exceptional intelligence. I didn't request his protection; I established the terms for it. I presented him with the blueprints which would lead to our shared enemy's financial ruin. We are currently dismantling Kane's business empire together. Our formal agreement starts to dissolve into an irresistible attraction which develops during our nighttime strategy meetings and our executive boardroom business takeovers.

Kaelen discovers my hidden pregnancy secret, but he does not exile me from his presence. He displays a wicked grin while making his intention to take ownership of his opponent's offspring permanent. Kane will initiate a violent conflict to reclaim me as his possessions disappear and his remorse transforms into a primal fixation.

Will my charming, deadly protector permit me to handle my own conflicts or will we destroy everything my ex left behind?

I was the heir of Sliver Claw Pack, born with a crippled wolf spirit.
From the day I could walk, everyone said the same thing—
Only Harvey, the future Alpha of Black Moon Pack, would ever be willing to take me as his mate.
So when he publicly canceled our mate bond, I still believed every word he said.
He told me the woman had saved his life. He told me their bond was only temporary—three years. He promised that when those three years ended, he would marry me.
So I willingly became the lover who could never stand in the light.
Until the three-year deadline approached. To negotiate with a rival Alpha, he pushed me— a woman born with a crippled wolf spirit, a woman who could not even shift— into a brutal forest trial filled with beasts.
He said it was the last time. He said that when it was over, he would marry me.
But when the leopard tore open my chest, I finally understood— The wolf placed last in the pack…was the one abandoned to die.
Yet the Moon Goddess gave me a second life.
When I returned to the age of twenty-two and saw him holding that woman’s hand again, I finally realized something.
This time, I would never be his shadow mate again.
And his insane younger brother—looked at me beneath the moonlight and blood and said, “Emma, I can be your mate.”

Lysander’s ex-girlfriend, Evangeline, suggested a hiking trip. Out of obligation to me as his fiancée, he brought me along.
We got lost in the woods and trespassed onto the territory of his half-brother, Orion.
When Orion pointed a gun at us and forced him to choose—
In my past life, he chose me.
As a result, Evangeline was sold to a rival, Matthias, and was tortured to death. I spent the rest of my life bearing the full weight of Lysander’s hatred.
In the third year of our marriage, I lay in a hospital bed after a miscarriage. He stood coldly beside me and said, "Now you know how it feels to lose the love of your life."
Reborn into this life, as Orion’s gun points at me and Evangeline once again, I make the choice for him.
I’m leaving the chance to survive to his true love.

"She's dying, can't you be more generous?" That's what my husband said.
So I was generous.
I gave her my husband's time when our daughter was in the ER for an allergic reaction she caused.
I gave her my once-in-a-lifetime concert ticket because "she deserved it more."
I even endured our daughter wishing I would die in her place.
But when he accused me of orchestrating a kidnapping to win his sympathy, I knew my generosity had run out. I threw the divorce papers in his face. He laughed, thinking I couldn't survive without him.
He's about to find out how wrong he is.

Ryan Aldridge had one rule: he showed up for whoever needed him most.

The problem was, it was never me.

Throat swelling shut in the ER? He was unclogging Sloane Harrington's drain. Anniversary dinner? He left between courses because Sloane was "spiraling."

I forgave it every time. I was the cool girl. The understanding fiancée.

Then my studio caught fire, and a beam came down on my chest.

I lay there—bleeding, pinned, choking on smoke—and watched Ryan vault over me to carry out a woman with a sprained ankle.

"Jocelyn, come on. You can handle this. Look at her—she's shaking."

Something in me went still. Not broken. Finished.

I twisted off the ring with blood-slick fingers and let it disappear into the ash.

Then I disappeared too.

I barely escaped the Valley of the Dread Dragon, my magic completely drained. A betrothal awaited me in Winterhold. But the moment I arrived, my fiancé Arthur refused to acknowledge who I was. He stood by and watched as his socalled true love Elena stole my wand, scarred my face, and swore to strip me bare and parade me through the streets. He thought he stood above me, blind to exactly whom he was defying — I held his entire family in my power. When my brother Damian arrived, he did not merely rescue me. He gave me the chance to pay back every wound and humiliation I had suffered, one by one.

What happens to a perfect housewife?
After seven years of marriage, I am known as the perfect wife. I love my husband Ron, and I've always thought our marriage was perfect except for the lack of an heir. However, on our seventh anniversary, my husband told me that my little sister, Gina, was pregnant with his child. At this moment, I feel my world collapse! I frantically went to Gina's apartment to ask her why she was trying to break up my marriage, only to see her clutching her stomach as she lay on the floor in pain, and I was arrested as a murderer. “Let me out! I want to see my husband!” In prison, I found out that I was pregnant. I was anxious to tell my husband the news, but Gina's dagger came instead. At the moment of death, I shouted from the bottom of my heart: I am willing to pay any price to revenge. When I opened my eyes again, Ron was urging me to go to the funeral. What's going on? I'm back in my house? I grabbed my phone and looked at the date. It was seven days before our 7th anniversary. Yes, I was reborn, and this time I won't let it happen again. All those who betray me must be punished. But why is there a dangerous man following me?

My younger sister, Freya, was preparing for her advanced training in New York the following week, so she dragged me to the dance studio to help her correct her movements. I put on my dance shoes as usual and stood in the center of the floor, ready to demonstrate a turn.

The moment my foot slipped, I didn't even have time to react.

My body hit the ground hard, and the sharp pain from the back of my head nearly made me lose consciousness. I lay on the cold floor, my throat tight, unable to even cry out for help.

When Mother rushed in, she didn't spare me a glance.

She immediately helped Freya up and took her to the hospital. I missed the critical window for treatment and died on the way to the hospital.

At eighteen, I gave my virginity to Hunter in his bed.

I swallowed all the pain and hesitation, naively believing that three years of a pathetic crush had finally earned my way into his heart.

Until the next morning, when I heard his teammates' unabashed mockery:

"Damn, you finally bagged the nerd? How was it?"

Hunter scoffed, his tone dripping with utter contempt.

"Just messing around. If I'm bringing a real girlfriend out, it's gotta be someone on Serena's level—head cheerleader."

I wordlessly opened my college application portal, deleted the garbage local state school I had picked just to stay with him, and changed it back to Yale.

He confidently thought I would follow him blindly, until he video-called me on opening day and completely lost his mind seeing who was beside me: his own stepbrother.

Kate Brady doesn’t exist. She’s a name on a passport, a voice Jackson Ruspoli has started to trust, a lie built carefully enough to survive inside the walls of Ruspoli Industries. Underneath her is Natalie Cromwell, a woman who died the same year her father did, when his ruined name became the only inheritance she had left.

Getting close to Jackson was supposed to be simple: find the buried proof that clears her father, and disappear before anyone learns her real name. But Jackson isn’t the careless mark she expected.
He’s sharp enough to know something about her doesn’t add up, and dangerous enough that being caught could cost her more than the job.

Then someone else starts using her real name.
Someone who remembers exactly what happened ten years ago, and wants the kind of ending that doesn’t leave room for the truth to matter, only for everything to burn. Now Natalie isn’t just racing to expose what Jackson’s family did. She’s racing to stop a stranger from destroying her only chance to do it right, before she becomes the one person left to blame.

The closer she gets to the truth, the closer she gets to Jackson. And the more she has to lose the moment he finds out who she really is.

She came here to be the hunter. She’s starting to realize she might already be the prey.

My three-year-old daughter Elsie called her father Dorian while I lay dying on the floor beside our bed.
"Daddy, the bad magic hurt Mommy. Please come home."
"If she wants to die, let her." He called us liars, then went back to cut the birthday cake for Selene—his foster sister and first love.
What he did not know was that the curse that killed me that night had been meant for him.
Now I can only watch. My little girl tucks coats around my body to keep me warm. Her father walks past our bedroom door again and again, certain I'm just sulking, because the woman he chose told him so.
By the time Dorian finally opens that door, there is nothing left to save.
He will learn the truth. He will beg.

For three years, I loved Alpha Damon enough to swallow every humiliation. Then he left me at the mating altar for his stepsister and expected me to understand. I walked away from him, from his pack, and from the fake Moon Goddess decree she used to destroy me. He thought I was only heartbroken. He did not know I was the hidden heir of Ravencrest, and the next time we met, I would return as his conqueror.

I mined in a medieval pit, lived on moldy black bread, with whip scars across my back and iron chains around my ankles. The lord treated us like livestock.

I thought that was simply how the world worked—until I forced open a hidden passage and crawled into a white corridor that should not have existed: cold fluorescent lights, metal doors, surveillance cameras, as if the skin of the age had been ripped away in an instant.

That was when I understood: the Middle Ages were only a set, everyone around me was acting, and I was nothing more than a toy for the amusement of the rich.

They cloned the real-life rivals they could never defeat, threw them into different “scenarios,” and tortured them for pleasure.

They thought they could keep me in the dark forever.

What they don’t know is that I’m ready to get out—and tear this entire human-toy industry out by the roots.

His hand hovered close to my jaw, held back until I said yes. I hauled him down hard to me, the mating bond burning sharp between our bones.
“You know what this means.” Darian’s growl rumbled against my cheek.
“I know exactly what I want,” I breathed. “Kiss me. Don’t make me beg for it.”

I arrive at the Royal Pack’s wolf-royal court carrying only a bitter memory and quiet rage for my sister. Claire, once a palace seamstress, was destroyed by Prince Rowan Vale, hushed by his mother Sabine, and buried under a lie that shame killed her. No plea reached Queen Elinor, and no one was held accountable.

I have no rare wolf gift or secret noble blood. I take a menial laundry servant’s post, determined to avenge Claire. I creep through the court’s petty cruelties to earn a place in the gown chambers, where I meet Darian Vale, the queen’s conflicted brother. A fated mate bond sparks between us, but I view it as a trap. I will not stay hidden to protect his family’s name.

I rise to become Queen Elinor’s personal attendant and bond with other palace outcasts. Yet every step closer to power makes my hunt for the truth more dangerous. I uncover a devastating secret: Darian knew Claire, and what he knows could break the fragile thing blooming between us. When private justice fails, I lay every awful truth of Claire’s fate before the Pack Assembly.

This is no crown tale. I fight not to rule, but to make the court notice its forgotten servants. I will secure justice for Claire, and choose love, only on my own terms.

My childhood sweetheart, Philip Mitchell, was a hockey prodigy.
When he wanted to throw away his Olympic qualifiers to take care of his sick girlfriend, I told his coach and his mother.
Because of me, he was dragged back to the ice. He won the Olympic gold, secured a spot at Harvard, and eventually became a billionaire sports agent.
I, however, ended up with nothing.
During a public practice, he swung his hockey stick with full force—right into my eye.
As blood blinded my vision and my retina detached, he looked down at me with pure disgust. "You ruined her life, Arabella. This is your karma."
When I opened my eyes again, I wasn't in the hospital.
I was back in the locker room at seventeen, right before everything went wrong.

The night before the gala where my rich family would finally claim me as their real daughter, I sent an email to my future self.
Have Mom and Dad really accepted me?
Does Spencer still hate me?
Julian and I are married by now, right?
A second later, my inbox exploded.
Dozens of photos, one after another, loading faster than I could scroll. Every single one was Julian—my Julian—wrapped around Camille. Kissing her. Cradling her face like she was something precious.
The blood drained out of me.
Then the voice messages started. And the voice was mine—older, hoarse, recorded somewhere I didn't recognize, and raw with panic.
"They're going to kill you—"
"Mom and Dad want to make it up to Camille, so tomorrow at the gala they're going to stage an accident. A fire. They burn your legs on purpose—you'll be crippled, Cora. In a wheelchair for the rest of your life—"
"Spencer leaks the videos. He says the only way Camille gets to be an Ashcroft again is if you're destroyed—"
"And Julian—he's so terrified you'll expose the truth and hurt her that he's the one who has you committed. He signs the papers himself."
The last message was barely a voice at all. Just breath, thin and failing.
"Cora. Don't go back."

I came home early from a business trip and overheard the woman Joseph always called his “poor stepmother” clinging to him in his office, begging for a kiss. Her swollen belly carried his child.
“When do I get to stop pretending to be your stepmother?” Susan whined.
Joseph’s cold laugh stripped away the last of my dignity. “Soon. Once I drain Emma’s company dry, she’ll be useless.”
I used to think Joseph was my salvation.
After his father died and his pregnant stepmother had nowhere to go, I ignored my family’s objections and brought them both into my home. I poured every resource I had into helping him rise.
I even became pregnant with his child.
Only then did I realize I had never really been his wife.
I was only the stepping stone they used to climb into wealth.
That night, Susan staged a miscarriage.
And Joseph, his face twisted with rage, locked me—pregnant and bleeding—inside a freezing basement.
“A vicious woman like you doesn’t deserve a child.”

I came home early from a business trip and overheard the woman Joseph always called his “poor stepmother” clinging to him in his office, begging for a kiss. Her swollen belly carried his child.
“When do I get to stop pretending to be your stepmother?” Susan whined.
Joseph’s cold laugh stripped away the last of my dignity. “Soon. Once I drain Emma’s company dry, she’ll be useless.”
I used to think Joseph was my salvation.
After his father died and his pregnant stepmother had nowhere to go, I ignored my family’s objections and brought them both into my home. I poured every resource I had into helping him rise.
I even became pregnant with his child.
Only then did I realize I had never really been his wife.
I was only the stepping stone they used to climb into wealth.
That night, Susan staged a miscarriage.
And Joseph, his face twisted with rage, locked me—pregnant and bleeding—inside a freezing basement.
“A vicious woman like you doesn’t deserve a child.”

Rule #1 of cheating: Always turn off your personal hotspot!
Text from Jaxon (7:00 PM): “Coach is killing us tonight. Stuck at practice. Wish I was at the concert with you, future wifey. 🥺”
My iPhone (8:30 PM): Connected to Jaxon’s Personal Hotspot.
My heart flatlined.
As fate would have it, the stage spotlight hit my face. The singer handed me a mic.
Instead of playing the lucky fan, I turned the concert into a massive manhunt.
The jumbotron found him in Section 104.
He wasn't alone.
When the cameras exposed his panicked face and the blonde in his arms, I gave him the ultimate send-off in front of a live audience:
"I'm officially dropping you. You two deserve each other. Match made in hell. "

Isadora Bellini spent her entire life living in the shadow of her twin sister, Giulia—but nothing hurt more than the moment their childhood best friend and her fated mate, Capo Lorenzo, chose Giulia over her. Shattered and humiliated, Isadora disappeared from the Luna Nera Clan, carving out a quiet life among humans. Eight years later, she’s dragged back to the one place she promised never to return—for Giulia’s funeral. What begins as a painful farewell quickly spirals into a storm of secrets, guilt, and dangerously unresolved emotions.
Lorenzo isn’t the same confident Capo who once broke her heart—he’s grieving, broken, and searching for answers. But so is Isadora. As truths begin to unravel—about Giulia’s betrayal, Lorenzo’s rejection, and a past that refuses to stay buried—Isadora finds herself caught between the scars of yesterday and the pull of a bond she tried to erase.
In a world where fate is sealed by blood and moonlight, and love can be the sharpest weapon of all… will Isadora risk everything to uncover the truth, or let her pain write the ending for her?
When love feels like betrayal, how do you trust what your heart still wants?

Father calls me and Chloe into his study, and two documents already sit on the desk. On the left, the Whitfield family succession papers. On the right, the marriage agreement with the Sullivan family.

He lights a cigar, the smoke half hiding his face. "You two need to make a choice today. One of you takes over the Whitfield family. The other marries Derek Sullivan."

In my last life, Chloe took the succession papers.

She sat down in Father's office, put on an expensive suit, called in every department head, and announced she'd make the Whitfield family stronger. But she couldn't even read a warehouse ledger, didn't know which shipping route mattered most, couldn't tell flattery from threats in a family meeting.

Within three years, the south warehouse burned down, the north route slipped out of our hands, and cash kept bleeding out of the books like there was a hole in them.

Father died on a dark street, three bullets in his chest.

Chloe fled with whatever money was left, and I got married off to Derek instead.

After the wedding, he took my passport and locked me in the basement of the Sullivan estate. When I refused to sign the transfer documents, he had them cut off my water for three days straight. In family meetings, one wrong word out of me and he'd slap me in front of everyone. During an ambush, he shoved me right into the line of fire.

Later, Chloe found me. She pointed a gun at my chest, and there wasn't a trace of sisterly feeling left in her eyes. "This is all because you're useless. If you'd helped Derek keep the Sullivan family steady, Whitfield wouldn't have gone under."

I opened my eyes in a pool of blood and woke up back on this day.

For three years, I genuinely believed I was the luckiest woman in the world.

Until I hit play on that video.

The moment the screen lit up, my perfect reality shattered into a million jagged pieces.

The woman writhing on the bed was Amanda—the sweet, innocent girl we had both grown up with.

And the hand tracing the curve of her bare skin? It wore the platinum wedding band I had personally slipped onto Louis’s finger.

"I missed you so much..."

"You drive me fucking crazy, baby..."

Hearing my own husband's signature sweet nothings whispered to my childhood best friend gutted me completely.

Our entire social circle constantly praised us as the golden couple. But beneath the glossy surface, who could have guessed this flawless marriage was built on a mountain of sick lies?

Well, if Louis was such a brilliant actor, I figured it was time to give him a show of my own.

I was going to rip off his mask and show the entire world exactly what kind of monster my "perfect husband" truly was.

My mate, Alpha Grant, ran a pack in western Washington. A witch had cursed his wolf the day he was born, and he could never pick out a she-wolf's scent well enough to know his true mate.
He spent five years hunting for her. Every dead end wore him down a little more, until he finally quit.
That was the moment he chose me.
On our bonding night, he told me the real reason.
"Mara," he said quietly, "I didn't have a choice. If the pack found out their Alpha couldn't even find his true mate, they'd see me as a joke. So I picked you. You're my chosen mate, but I swear no one will ever take your title. You're my Luna. Even if I find my true mate someday... nothing will change that."
Then he looked away and added, "I'm cursed, but I still have to look for her. I have to search every corner of the pack."

On Valentine's Day, the Rogue King came to slaughter my mate, the Alpha of the Silvercrest pack, Adrian Barrett. But he wasn't home. He was busy celebrating with his childhood love, Celeste, leaving our five-year-old daughter at the assassin's mercy. To save her, I swallowed deadly wolfsbane.

"Daddy, please come home! Mommy is coughing blood!" Sophie sobbed into the phone.
"Stop lying just to ruin my night," Adrian snapped.
Before the line went dead, another little girl's voice chimed in. "Daddy Adrian, which dress should my mommy wear?"
"The red one, sweetheart," he cooed softly, and hung up.
I bled to death on our bed while he played perfect father to another woman's child.

But death wasn't the end. My spirit rose from my cooling corpse, forced to watch as my little girl learned a cruel truth: her father would always choose someone else.

We'd agreed to spend summer break in the Hamptons. Right before break started, my boyfriend suggested we hit the water park out in the suburbs first, just to blow off some steam.

I thought it was a date. Just the two of us. But when I get to the gate, my best friend Sienna is standing there in a string bikini.

I tell her that's not safe to swim in. Her face goes cold and she tells me to mind my own business.

Colton frowns too and dumps his phone, a towel, and Sienna's makeup bag into my arms. "Vivienne, do you have to kill the mood? Sienna's scared to go alone. What's the big deal if I keep her company?"

In the wave pool, he holds her against his chest and the two of them roll around in the spray, laughing.

When they come out, Sienna takes the ice water I haven't even opened and takes a big swig, then hands it to Colton, and he drinks half the bottle right from where her lips were.

I stand there feeling like the hired help.

Two years of killing myself to be the understanding, easygoing girlfriend, and all it got me was a boyfriend who walks all over me without thinking twice.

If he's that close with my best friend, he can't blame me for calling up his best friend since they were kids.

"Julian, can you come get me?"

My husband used my cottage to cheat on me. Fine. I found out, I drove three hours, and I walked into my own house to find his mistress wearing my dead grandmother's sweater.
She told me to leave.
He showed up, kissed her in front of me, then grabbed my arm and shoved me into the door frame.
That's when I had the asthma attack. He's known about my asthma for five years.
My inhaler rolled across the porch floor. His mistress picked it up, held it out, and told me to sign a statement saying I'd caused all of this. Then she'd give it back.
He looked at me on the ground and said: She's performing.
I'm sitting on the floor of my own grandmother's house, gasping, and my husband is telling the neighbors I'm acting.
Nobody thought to ask whose family manages every property on this coastline.

Born into a legacy of power, privilege, and bloodshed, she’s known only a life behind mansion gates—where even friends are assigned, choices are made for her, and cake for breakfast is a normal dilemma. But when her family arranges a marriage with a stranger from a rival empire, she decides it’s time to break free. Dressed as a servant, identity erased, she climbs the wall that separates her from the world she's never known.
But freedom comes at a cost.
Just as she’s about to leap into the unknown, the night ignites in flames and screams. Her home burns. Her family falls. And from her perch above it all, she watches in horror as the only life she’s ever known is destroyed.
"Mummy!" she cries, but no one hears her.
Because she was never meant to escape—she was meant to disappear.
A coming-of-age mafia thriller where one girl’s quest for freedom collides with a brutal betrayal, and survival becomes her only choice.

Eight years ago I shoved Chase Whitaker away from a firework he lit on the beach, and it took my eyes.
Everybody in Harbor Point calls him a saint for staying with me. Our families put a ring on my finger when I was seventeen. He's been my eyes since we were ten. He tells me who just walked in and what's in every photo. He promised me in a hospital room that he would never lie to me.
Three weeks ago a surgeon in Boston gave my sight back. Nobody knows except my parents. I was saving it for my eighteenth birthday. Take the dark glasses off, look right at him.
I didn't get that far. At the table I read the message on his phone.
Honestly? Sometimes I wish that firework had just finished the job.
Then my friend since sixth grade leaned over to tell me he'd been staring at me all night, and he kissed another girl over my shoulder while he held my hand.
They think I still can't see. I'm going to let them.

I thought I was the perfect wife and mother, until I heard my husband outside his office, laughing, calling me a "prison warden" and planning to use our daughter as cover while he ran off to Tuscany with his grad student.

Everything fell apart. Then my daughter, in front of everyone: "That's just our annoying nanny."

I tried to hold on to what was left of our family, but my daughter shoved me down the stairs. I lost the baby, and my husband just checked his watch while I bled out on the floor.

They locked me in and left for Italy.

Alone in the hospital, they told me I'd lost the baby and had "memory damage."

Now they're back, expecting the same obedient wife.

She's gone.

And I'm done loving them.