Rivalry

It was my fifth engagement party, and my fiancé, Adrian, didn't show up. Again.

Guests from every family showed up, and one by one, they left again.

Adrian was the Don of the Severino family. We'd been engaged for three years.

His father, Vincent, New York's old Godfather, had arranged the match himself. Every family in the city knew I'd be the next Severino Donna.

My mom, Diane, didn't rush i...

For eighteen years, I was my family's invisible daughter.
My sister got a $100,000 graduation gift; I got a free promotional tote bag.
They promised her a $7,000 monthly allowance for college; I was told to survive on $700.
She got a custom gown; I was told to wear a plain shirt and hide in a corner.
Even Silas, my boyfriend of three years, chose to stand proudly by her side.

They thought I w...

To celebrate landing our biggest client of the year, the company rented out the entire terrace of a beachside bar.

When it was time for the team photo, the only open spot left was next to my boyfriend, Harrison Kent.

I'd barely moved over when he waved toward the back of the crowd. "Lacey, come stand here."

Lacey Monroe was my best friend. She squeezed in beside him with a smile. The second the...

I was born the true heiress of the powerful Voss family, but after being swapped at birth and failing to awaken my wolf, I was branded as worthless trash.
For six years, I worked as a "Scavenger" in the underground slums. I hauled mutant corpses, endured silver poisoning, and swallowed cheap suppressants—all to pay off my husband’s massive debts and buy the cure for my brother’s fatal blood diseas...

My boyfriend, Ethan Whitmore, has prosopagnosia. He can't remember faces unless he's looking right at them.
At our wedding send-off dinner, my roommate blindfolded him and challenged him to name three things about the woman he'd loved for four years.
"Big eyes. Small face," he said.
My heart nearly burst with happiness.
Even blindfolded, he still remembered me.
Then he smiled and added, "And there...

On our fifth anniversary, my Mafia Don husband kissed my cheek, then switched to Corsican to tell our adopted daughter how much he enjoyed getting her pregnant piece by piece.

He didn't know I spoke seven languages. Corsican included.

He didn't know that in three days, I would vanish — no body, no trail, no goodbye.

When I disappeared, he lost his mind.

Now it was my turn to teach hi...

On the night of my college graduation, Sloane Callahan, the biological daughter my Mafia family had only recently brought home, asked me what I planned to do next.

Before I could answer, my four childhood friends spoke up one after another.

One by one, all four showed me documents proving they were moving to California.

Then Graham Whitmore, heir to one of Chicago's most powerful Mafia families...

On the day of my marking ceremony, my mate, Ryan Mercer, is caught kissing my sister, Paige Frost, in the dressing room. The whole pack gets to laugh at my humiliation.

Then Alpha Ethan Vale steps forward. With everyone watching, he gives me his mark.

Once we're married, Ethan couldn't be kinder to me. But we can't conceive a pup. At last, I try IVF, and I finally get pregnant.

He becomes even ...

They played ninety-nine pranks on me to break my brother. For the ninety-ninth, I gave them a corpse.

For three years, I was the secret girlfriend of Damien, heir to the Bloodmoon Pack and my brother’s sworn enemy. For three years, I was his hidden toy, and I sat through ninety-eight cruel “pranks” without ever knowing they were pranks.

When they planned the last one, locking me alone in a conde...

I sat alone at our engagement dinner, having waited for eight long hours.

When my phone finally buzzed, Jasper sounded rushed.

"Lira? I'm so sorry. Things went sideways on my end. Your parents didn't stick around, did they?"

I stared at the melted ice in the champagne bucket.

"No," I said, my voice hollow.

He sighed. "Let's push it to next week, alright? I'll call your parents tomorrow and ex...

Out on a pack hunting run, a grizzly mauled me, and I was rushed straight to the infirmary.
The last thing I remembered clearly was the scent of pine and blood before everything went dark.
Now I was awake, bandaged, and staring at a man who looked ready to fall apart.
Watching my boyfriend Ryan spiral into a blind panic beside my hospital bed, a mischievous thought popped into my head. I'd play a ...

"The Draganovs are moving on Celeste tonight. I'm taking her to the safe house. We'll do the claiming after this, Orla. I promise."
That's what my husband said the seventh time he chose Celeste over me.
Celeste. The girl he'd loved since before he had a wife to ignore.
The first time, she heard footsteps outside her window at two in the morning. Rafael sent his whole detail to sit on her house and...

In my family, there's a rule: any woman who reaches thirty without getting married must return to the family estate and have her marriage arranged by the Council of Elders.
When I told Dominic Moretti about this, he was sitting on my desk flipping through financial reports.
After hearing me out, he let out a derisive laugh.
"Is the Bennett family some medieval royal house? A bunch of old men get t...

"I saved you. Now you're mine."

Five years ago, Matteo De Luca took a bullet for me. Ever since, I willingly stayed hidden as the secret lover of New York's most ruthless Mafia heir.

He claimed the shadows were the only way to protect me from rival families. I believed him—right up until his former flame, Serena, returned to the city.

Suddenly, his protective instincts shifted. He left me al...

My mother gave me her kidney. The price was my husband.
As the orderlies wheeled me toward surgery, Mom gripped my hand and begged through her tears: “Promise me you'll divorce Ansel. Your sister needs him.”
My husband had already signed the papers. “Give me one year,” he said. “Once Tam's back on her feet, we'll get remarried.”
I survived the operation. I signed away my marriage. Then I vanished ...

I chose Adrian Cole for a strategic marriage because he understood boundaries.

For three years, he never gave me a reason to regret it.

Then his new assistant fed him from her fork, took my seat in his car, and appeared on his arm at a charity gala while society reporters called them a perfect match.

I gave my husband three chances to remember that I was his equal. He used every one—then adm...

I've been reborn, transported back to the day I gave birth to my daughter.

In my past life, I humbled myself for love, only to be betrayed by my husband Caspian and his mistress Serafina.

They disfigured me, murdered my little girl, and threw me in prison.

This time around, I'm divorcing him without a second thought, holding my daughter close, and escaping this living hell!

I had been Lucan Ferretti's wife for five years. I had also been the woman who took a bullet meant for him.
Four years of fertility treatments. Four years of empty rooms where a nursery should have been. Then, the day I finally get a positive test, I find something else: two secret sons, funded by my husband's money, waiting in a house I was never supposed to find.
Their names? The ones Lucan and ...

On our wedding day, my fiancé died in a terrible car accident on his way to pick me up.

I was left a widow, carrying a child who would never know its father.

The shock left me severely depressed. I wanted to end my life more times than I could count. Everyone told me to keep going for the baby.

On the day of his funeral, his older brother returned from Africa with his wife to pay their respects...

On the day of my final interview for the Yale scholarship, my childhood best friend, Carter, handed me a carton of chocolate milk.
I drank every drop, touched that he’d remembered. When I woke up, the hair I’d been growing for ten years was scattered all over the floor.
The prettiest girl in school twirled her scissors and smiled at him. “Your mom’s sleeping pills work great. I practically shaved ...