5546 Book(s) Related to my childhood alpha hates me

Ten years into my marriage, I'd traded my paintbrush for a spatula and turned into Mrs. Holloway.

Ever since my sister Brooke moved in, my husband Bennett and my daughter Lucy had picked up a habit. Anytime Brooke and I disagreed, they put it to a vote.

On my birthday I wanted steak. Two hands went up for the salad bar Brooke liked. When I hadn't slept in weeks and wanted to see a therapist, they sided with Brooke, who said I just had too much time on my hands.

We'd decided long ago that for our tenth anniversary, we'd go back to Jenny Lake, where Bennett had proposed. Then Brooke mentioned she wanted to surf in Maui. Another vote. Two to one, again.

Bennett finished booking the tickets before it even occurred to him to look at me.

"There were only three business-class seats left, so we grabbed them. Just book yourself an economy seat, okay?"

I nodded and bought a one-way ticket to Wyoming.

This time, I wasn't going with them.

"Thanksgiving's at Garrett's new place this year!"

My sister Paisley dropped a location pin in the family group chat, followed by a string of party emojis. My fiancé, Garrett, ran a real estate company, and the pin pointed to a model home they'd just finished building.

That evening, I grabbed a pumpkin pie fresh out of the oven and caught a rideshare to the address. When we got there, the driver let me out and drove off.

But there was no house in front of me. Just a ring of chain-link fence around an abandoned foundation overgrown with weeds.

On my phone, Paisley had her livestream camera shoved right in her grinning face. She'd built a following of a few hundred thousand off prank videos.

"Look, you guys, my sister fell for it again!"

The camera swung around. My parents were cracking up and pounding the table. Mom wiped tears from her eyes. "How is she this gullible? Where does she even get it from?"

I called Garrett. He was my last hope.

"Elise, your parents say you're on your own getting home." He sounded bored. "We've done this a million times. Don't be such a sore loser."

I'd lost count of how many times Paisley had pranked me growing up. And every single time, the whole family had been right there clapping.

The old me would've called back in tears, begging them to come get me.

This time, I set the pumpkin pie down on the concrete, turned around, and started walking away from home.

What they didn't know was that tonight, I wasn't going to be the one who lost.

I was the most in-demand wedding planner in Boston. I'd run more than three hundred weddings, and not one of them had ever been off by a single second.

The only wedding I couldn't pull off was my own.

My fiancé, Graham, and I had been together for seven years, and everyone knew he was a perfectionist.

Everyone called his executive assistant, Sloane, Miss Punctual. She was also my best friend.

In Graham's eyes, Sloane was the gold standard, and I never measured up.

At our engagement party, I showed up one song late, and the first dance went to him and Sloane.

On Thanksgiving, I walked in two minutes late, and Sloane was already sitting in the seat saved for me next to his parents.

For the charter flight to Aspen, I was thirty seconds too late to board. The door closed right in my face, and Sloane flew off with her head on his shoulder.

We'd tried to get married seventeen times. Every single time, he stopped it halfway through and had Sloane stand in for me to finish the run-through.

For the eighteenth, I had all four screens in the ballroom running a synced countdown, and I'd practiced at home with a stopwatch for over two hundred nights.

But two seconds before I was supposed to say my vows, Sloane beat me to it and blurted out "I do."

Graham didn't even look at the screens. He just turned to me and said, "You're late again. The wedding's off."

That was when I finally got it. My timing had never been the problem. The problem was that the wrong woman was standing across from him.

He took Sloane's hand. "Watch closely. We'll show you one more time."

I took out the two wedding rings and slid one onto his finger and the other onto hers.

"Don't bother. Here's to your happily ever after."

On the day Carter and I remarried, our son Finn had been in the hospital for forty days.

The line at City Hall was long. Carter spent the whole time with his head down, texting, wearing a smile I hadn't seen on him in years.

The person on the other end was Wren Dalton, an art student getting by on a scholarship and part-time jobs. She'd turned Carter down three times. When he sent her a full set of art supplies, she shipped it back untouched with a note: Leave me alone.

Carter said nobody had ever treated him like that before.

The look in his eyes when he said it was the same look he used to give me, back when he was trying to win me over more than ten years ago.

I didn't call him out on it. The last time we divorced, I fought with everything I had and still walked away without a dime or a job. I walked out on him, and he still found a way to drag me back.

After City Hall, Carter dropped me off at the hospital and said he wouldn't be home that night. I nodded and watched his car pull away.

Around midnight, our housekeeper sent me a video. It was from our house: Carter carrying Wren up the stairs toward the bedroom, and her laughing, bright and happy.

Everyone was waiting for me to cry. But this time, I just pushed my ring down to the base of my finger so it wouldn't slip off.

What they didn't know was that this remarriage was an act. Sooner or later, I'd be the one to take that ring off.

Our company's year-end retreat was a ski trip to Silver Peak, and it took until day three for Cole, the guy I'd been in love with for years, to finally ski a run with me.

We were only halfway down a green run when he pulled up at the bottom of a pitch and shook his head, clearly annoyed.

"Your balance is awful. I've shown you a hundred times and you're still doing the same thing."

One of our coworkers laughed. "Seriously? Cole had Addison for one afternoon and she's already doing blues."

Addison was the assistant he'd hired a year ago.

Cole didn't look at me again. He flagged down a stranger who had just skied to the bottom.

"Hey man, can you take her down a couple runs for me? I'll pay you after."

He was skiing off toward Addison before he'd even finished talking.

Addison hunched her shoulders and said she was cold. Cole pulled off his scarf with a smile and looped it around her neck a few times.

Looking at that scarf, I thought about the first time I ever stood on a ski slope.

My legs were shaking so hard I could barely stay up.

He stood right behind me, hands hovering by my arms in case I slipped, and we inched our way down together.

He kept saying the same thing the whole time. "Don't worry, I've got you. You're not gonna fall."

For all these years, I'd thought I was stuck on the green runs because I was a slow learner.

Now I finally saw it. He hadn't been behind me for a long time.

So I didn't need to keep looking back for him anymore.

I died once.

Spent seventy years as a housewife the first time around. Biggest regret? Never felt my heart race.

Met her in this life, and that's when I learned what being alive actually meant. In this world where assassins pay in gold coins and seek sanctuary at Continental hotels, we became a duo called "Swans," hunting down the man who destroyed her family. Every single day, dancing on a razor's edge.

Two years ago, the explosion killed Raven Hayes right in front of me.

To survive, I married a naive tech heir, slipped into silk dresses and started doing the charity gala circuit, tried to convince myself this was the peace I wanted.

Until that enemy became a High Table member and announced a hundred-million-dollar bounty on me to the world.

I used to be scared. Used to run. Used to ask why it had to be me.

But sitting at my vanity, staring at this stranger's face in the mirror, all done up like some socialite, I suddenly realized none of it mattered anymore.

I'm going to die eventually anyway. Might as well die looking like myself.

Three years after returning to the Duke's estate, I finally admit the truth: the phoenix I poured my heart into raising doesn't love me. He only spreads his brilliant tail feathers for the replacement.

I was six when traffickers took me, stuck in the slums for twenty years. A year after losing me, the Duke and Duchess adopted an infant from the church.

That girl became the new daughter, enjoying everything that should have been mine.

When they found me at twenty-six, my parents looked at me with guilt, yes, but mostly like I was a stranger. They loved the daughter they raised more.

I don't blame them.

Twenty years in the slums taught me: don't count on anyone's love. Only power and gold won't betray you.

So when he refused me for the third time, I went to the black market auction and bought a battered wolf slave.

The phoenix finally panicked, feathers flaring, voice shaking:

"Master, you promised you'd only keep one magical beast..."

The whole city is waiting to see me, Evelyn Parker, make a fool of myself at my seventh engagement party.

Six years ago, I declared before the city's social elite that I wouldn't marry unless my fiancé put the ring on my finger himself. Mason and I grew up together. I never doubted that he would.

The first time, he said he had left the ring at home. The second time, his assistant had brought the wrong jewelry box. The third time, he showed up drunk and claimed he'd lost it.

Six years. Six engagement parties. Six excuses.

Tonight, he checks every pocket, then smiles and says, "Sorry." Then Sophie, my adopted sister, leads him backstage with my parents and older brother gathered around them.

The guests can barely contain their snickers.

I face the room alone and apologize to every guest. As I pass Nate, a man whose family has never been on good terms with the Parkers, he sets down his drink.

"If you're willing, I'll marry you."

I give him a faint smile and head backstage. I need to ask Mason how much longer he expects this ridiculous waiting game to continue.

Before I can open the door, I hear his voice from inside.

"Sophie is leaving for London soon. I don't want to become her brother-in-law before she goes."

My parents agree.

"Evelyn has already waited six years. What difference would one more year make?"

They knew all along.

And every single time, they chose to make me the one who had to give something up.

I turn around, walk back into the ballroom, and stop in front of Nate.

"Did you mean what you said?"

Four years ago, I got mauled by a rogue wolf saving my Beta husband Derek. The attack left me unable to carry pups.

He held me that night, covered in my blood, and swore through tears that kids never mattered to him anyway.

Four years later, he's sleeping with Paige, a she-wolf I took in out of kindness six months back.

"Every family needs an heir. You can't give me one, so Paige offered. Just accept it and keep being my mate."

Paige, eyes brimming with tears, insisted she only wanted to repay my kindness. The baby would call me mother. She'd never try to take my place.

I almost laughed. Since when does anyone repay a favor by climbing into bed with the man who took her in?

I refused. He brought my parents and my brother into it to force my hand.

I didn't waste another word on him. I severed the bond and moved my whole family out to Moonhaven Pack on the coast.

Turns out nobody leaves a single she-wolf alone, no matter where she goes. Thugs kept showing up outside my door, stirring up trouble.

Right when things get unbearable, a big guy shows up out of nowhere and beats the group of them into running for their lives.

He's tall, scars all over his arms. He looks me over for a long moment, then says, "I need a wife to look after my two kids. Marry me. I'll protect your whole family."

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?

Everyone says I'm the woman Jasper loves most.

But only I know that in his heart, I've always come second to Sadie.

Seven years ago, I shoved him out from under a collapsing rig and shattered my right ankle. I never skated competitively again.

He held me and swore that the day he won the Grand Slam, he'd marry me in front of the whole world.

I believed him. So I learned to be his support crew. I sharpened his blades, hand-sewed his costumes, dragged my bad leg around everywhere he went. I turned myself into the shadow that followed him.

Then Sadie came along. Young, healthy, able to do things I could never do again.

Tonight, Jasper wins the Grand Slam. The cameras circle him, the whole arena chanting for him to propose.

But he looks down at Sadie in his arms and smiles.

"Out of everyone, she's the one I want to thank most for this medal. I wouldn't have made it here without her."

That's the moment I stop wanting to stay.

For a hundred years, I used my blood to suppress Grant’s Dragon Frenzy, helping him rise to become Head of the Gold Dragon Clan.

The day of his Ascension Ceremony was also supposed to be the day of our Bonding Ceremony.

Instead, in front of guests from every supernatural race, he named Lacey, a Light Fae, as his Consort. He said I could stay at his side, but only as his Personal Guard, without so much as a title.

I swallowed my pride and begged him to reconsider.

In return, the dragon army razed the wolves’ territory and slaughtered nearly my entire pack.

As the final drops of blood drained from my body, I saw Lacey nestled in Grant’s arms, laughing without a care in the world.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day of Grant’s Ascension Ceremony.

This time, I wanted to see how long he could keep his throne without me.

A month before we made our engagement official, Blake, the man I planned to marry, suggested taking a trip to the Rocky Mountains with his friends.

His close friend Brooke handed out bottles of bear spray she claimed had cost her a fortune.

The sickly sweet smell seemed wrong to me. I warned everyone not to use it, but they accused me of being jealous of her. To defend Brooke, Blake sprayed the entire bottle all over me in front of everyone.

That night, a crazed grizzly followed the scent straight to our campsite.

Everyone piled into the SUV. Blake shoved me back outside and locked the doors.

“Caroline, aren’t you always the one putting everyone else first? Then keep it away from us!”

Brooke curled up against his chest, smug satisfaction gleaming in her eyes.

As the bear’s fangs crushed my shoulder blade, the SUV sped away.

For three years, I had hidden the fact that I was the Carrington family’s heiress and lived like I was broke just to be with him. I had paid for the respectable life he pretended he could afford.

And all I got in return was a car door locked from the inside.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back beside the campfire on the first night of the trip.

I've got a reputation on campus as a doormat with zero dignity. I bring Wyatt Langley food, do his homework, act as his emotional dumping ground. Been at it for a year.

His rich friends mock my cheap clothes and say I'm reaching way out of my league. He never stops them. Sometimes he even laughs along.

Finally, he announces in front of everyone that he's breaking up with me. His first love is coming back from Europe, so I need to get lost.

Everyone's waiting to see me cry.

I glance at the five million dollars that hit my account half an hour ago and say, with complete sincerity, "Okay. Congrats."

What nobody knows is that I put up with him, tolerated his rotten temper, for one simple reason. His mom pays way too well.

Now the money's here. Time to end this arrangement.

So why, the second I walk away, does he start tearing the city apart trying to find me?

The club is dragging everyone out to a tomb Blair Whitmore's family dug up in Egypt, and nobody asked if this was a good idea.

She even brings some so-called expert along. Everyone crowds around the dark opening, practically shaking with excitement.

I'm the only one who tries to stop it.

"There's a mechanism in there. It's dangerous. We shouldn't go in. We need to report it to the antiquities authority first."

They just laugh at me.

"God, Blair, you're unbelievable. Untouched site like this and you just land it."

"Right, and some people never say two words all semester and now they want in on the action."

My palms are sweating. They don't know I come from a family of manuscript conservators. I grew up surrounded by dead languages and schematics for ancient mechanisms. What nobody else can read, I read clearly.

The stele at the entrance is carved with Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the warning is not subtle:

Whoever enters here will lose their soul to the void, and their bones will turn to dust.

Our engagement has gone unfulfilled for ten years.

My parents saved his family in that yacht accident. With their dying breath, they asked his family to look after me. In return, we go to city hall every year, trying to fulfill this obligation.

Ten attempts. Ten failures.

Elevator malfunctions, food poisoning, home invasions, car crashes... Every single time, I get hurt at the worst possible moment while he walks away without a scratch.

This makes ten. A truck slams into the passenger side, my head smashes against the window, and he's already running across the street, pulling that woman into his arms.

On my way to find him after they stitch me up, I hear his assistant's voice in the hospital corridor:

"Mr. Ashford, the truck driver's been taken care of. Money'll hit his account like we agreed... but is this really fair to Miss Bennett? It's been ten years, every single year—"

William's voice comes out low and tired. "I don't have a choice. Her parents saved me, but I'm in love with Emma."

I look down at the diagnosis. ALS. Late stage.

Turns out I've been trying to marry a lie this whole time.

My husband Spencer quit his job to manage a rising model's career. In six months, she dropped the weight, blew up online, and turned into a supermodel — magazine covers, major runways, deal after deal.

Meanwhile, I watch myself expand by the day. Bloated. Double chin forming. Skin getting worse.

The whole world calls me greedy, lazy, out of control. Even my parents call to tell me to watch what I eat. And there's nothing I can say to make anyone understand.

Then one night, I catch them on the balcony, voices low, thinking no one can hear: "Forget about that fat cow. Once she drops dead, the house and the insurance are all ours."

That's when it finally makes sense.

Camille has a system tied to her. And it's tied to me.

Every pound I gain, she loses one.

I'm the fuel. The stepping stone. The inheritance they're waiting to collect.

She gets thin while I get fat?

So as long as I keep eating, she keeps losing weight?

Good.

I go ahead and spend a hundred grand booking a reclusive private chef for a full month. No limits on ingredients, price doesn't matter. The more extravagant, the better.

I'm going to eat whatever I want and actually enjoy my life.

Let's see how long she stays thin while I'm out here actually living my life.

Landon Rhodes and I grew up together, both dreaming of becoming top chefs. But I knew he was the one with a palate kissed by God.

So when Rowan Stone, this street-rat punk, got her claws into him, I took the drinks, the smoke, the slaps for him. When he wanted to skip the National Young Chefs Competition to stay with her drunk ass, I dragged him back to the culinary lab.

He won the championship, got recruited by a three-star Michelin restaurant, graduated and made millions. I became the most invisible prep cook in his kitchen.

Until Rowan wrapped her car around a pole during one of her episodes, and he lured me into a basement.

"This is all your fault! If you'd minded your own damn business, she'd still be alive!"

His foot came down on my right hand. Bones cracking. My fingers ground to pulp.

All those 5 AM trips to the fish market for him. All those nights watching stock simmer for forty-eight hours straight. All the praise he soaked up at final practicals. My sacrifices, and all I got in return was his hatred.

"These worthless hands that can only cut vegetables deserve to rot in the ground with her."

The pain swallowed me whole.

When I wake up again, I'm back to that afternoon when he said he was going to the bar to find her.

This time, I won't stop him.

Three years ago, a private plane crash took my father, my mother, my brother Carter, and Grayson, the man I'd loved for seven years and was about to marry.

To hold onto everything they left behind, I cried until my eyes were raw, destroyed my stomach, and fought my way through boardrooms and Wall Street vultures.

On countless nights, I held their photographs and cried until I passed out.

What I never understood was why Willow, the foster sister we'd taken in, vanished without a trace after the crash.

Until today, three years later, when I drive back to the family estate with a diagnosis in my bag telling me I have three months to live.

I push open the heavy door and hear laughter. I see my family—the family that's supposed to be dead—gathered around Willow and her three-year-old son, singing happy birthday.

Turns out no one in this world ever loved me at all.

Why do they all get to live while I'm the only one who have to die?

Everyone thinks that after ten years engaged to Alpha Grayson, I'll end up as Frostpeak's Luna. Then one night at a gala, in front of the whole pack, he hands me over to the lowest rogue he can find.

Someone speaks up for me.

"Alpha Grayson, if you're done with her, just let her go. Why humiliate her like this? She dragged you through three days and nights in a blizzard ten years ago. She froze her body half to death saving you. She can't even shift anymore."

"That rogue can barely feed himself. She'll go with him and suffer for it."

Grayson just pulls the crying Omega closer, disgust all over his face.

"She saved me because she wanted the Luna title, that's all. I'm sick of her acting like I owe her something."

"Watch. Give it a few days and she'll come crawling back, begging me on her knees to change my mind."

I don't cry. I don't beg. I unclasp the engagement necklace, drop it at his feet, and walk out with the rogue.

Three days later, Grayson will show up at the Fringe with a hundred guards to drag me back, screaming that I'm heartless.

My husband's foster sister, Delilah, gets poisoned and ends up paralyzed. My husband, Grayson, the Don of this whole crime family, doesn't even bother checking the security cameras. He just throws me, two months pregnant, into the cistern where they punish traitors.

"Tessa, hand over the antidote, or die."

I kneel in the freezing swamp water and beg him. I didn't poison her.

He answers with a kick to the stomach.

For three straight days, I suffer down there. Leeches tear into my skin. My baby turns into a pool of black blood and dissolves into the filthy water. By the end, my vocal cords tear to shreds, my body goes cold, and I stop breathing.

His men get on their knees and beg him to spare me. He just sneers.

"That woman's always been good at playing the victim. No food, no medicine. Let her keep soaking."

Three days later, he finally walks into the cistern, and it's only to give me an ultimatum.

"Crawl out and apologize to Delilah on your knees. Otherwise I'll strip you of your title and sell you off to a trafficking ring. You'll wish you were dead."

No one answers him.

He has no idea. I already am.

In the dark underworld, Matthias Sterling is a feared mob boss and the only family I had left after my parents died. I used to be the girl he cherished, until I turned eighteen and confessed my feelings to him.

From that day on, the tenderness in his eyes turned to disgust. He brought home Rose Hartley and threw me away like trash.

In my past life, someone drugged him with a powerful aphrodisiac. I gave myself to him as the cure, only for him to call me a shameless whore. But when I got pregnant, he married me anyway.

On our wedding day, Rose ran to rival territory heartbroken and ended up dead. When he heard the news, he said nothing. Just finished the ceremony.

When I went into labor, he locked me in the house and said coldly, "If it weren't for you, I would've married her. She wouldn't have run to enemy territory and died."

He blamed everything on me. In the end, I died in childbirth. He wouldn't even let anyone call a doctor.

When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the night that changed everything.

My boyfriend looks at me like I'm trash. Too fat. Too plain. My clothes are ugly. He never misses a chance to tear me down.

I thought he was just mean. Then his "good friend" Sophie spilled coffee all over our ten-thousand-dollar control board.

That board was three months of work. Three months of all-nighters, twice I passed out from low blood sugar. It was our entry for the National Robotics Competition. The deadline's tomorrow. Now it's gone.

I confronted Sophie, and he stormed in, pulled her into his arms, and pointed his finger in my face. "It's just a stupid competition. Did you really need to come at Sophie like that?"

Turns out he's not just mean. He genuinely can't stand me.

I'm a figure skating prodigy from one of the wealthiest families in the country. I'm also an idiot.

I believed that if I was kind enough, people would be kind in return. So I sponsored Haley Dunning, a scholarship skater on our team, and treated her like my own little sister.

The day before the NCAA qualifier, she came up to me with a sports drink, said she wanted to help keep my energy up.

I drank it. Went down on the ice with a broken leg. Drug test came back positive for banned stimulants.

Overnight, I went from the queen of the rink to the face of a scandal no one could stop talking about.

Expelled from school. Torn apart on social media. Calloway Corporation's stock in freefall.

Haley stood in front of the cameras, tears in her eyes: "Piper just wanted to win so badly. I never thought she'd go this far..."

I fell into a depression. Couldn't sleep without medication.

Then one day, she showed up at my hospital room with my boyfriend, bearing "comfort": a cup of water and a few pills: "Piper, take your meds, okay? This is all my fault for being so stupid..."

Three minutes later, I'm coughing up blood, convulsing on the floor.

Right before I died, I caught the look on her face. That sweet, innocent face. A slow, vicious smile spreading across it.

She knocked over the pill bottle and started screaming: "I grabbed the wrong ones! I mixed up her antidepressants with some old person's heart meds! I'm so stupid!"

My boyfriend pulled her into his arms. Didn't even glance at me dying on the floor: "She meant well. Piper just had bad luck."

I was poisoned to death in that hospital room.

Then I opened my eyes, and it was the day before the qualifier.

I was the Sinclair family's lost daughter, missing for fifteen years. The day they found me, I thought I'd finally found the home I'd always dreamed of.

I didn't know they only brought me back to keep their other daughter alive. The one with the rare blood disease.

For three years, they drained my blood over and over. Took my bone marrow once.

My birth parents told me, "Eloise is fragile. You're the older sister. Take care of her."

My fiancé said, "You have such a good heart. You wouldn't want to see her suffer, would you?"

Today, I just gave six hundred milliliters of blood. I'm lying here weak in this hospital bed, and I hear them talking outside my door.

"Eloise is getting worse. We should take Aria's kidney now. Give it to her. We can't wait any longer."

That's when I finally understood. I was never their found daughter.

I was inventory. A blood bag. Spare parts waiting to be harvested.

If that's what their love is, I don't want it.

Two weeks before my due date, my husband Ethan is racing out the door into a stormy night.

All because his childhood friend Scarlett's apartment lost power, and she says her claustrophobia is kicking in.

I'm clutching my belly, telling him my water broke, begging him to look at the blood on the floor.

"You pulling this again? Last week wasn't enough? Scarlett's actually in danger."

He shakes off my hand. The door slams shut.

I'm standing in a pool of blood, watching his taillights disappear into the rain.

My baby won't have a father anymore.

Sold into a marriage with a stranger she'll never meet, Aveline Reeves loses everything. Six years later, one drugged night of desperate passion with Manhattan's most dangerous billionaire changes everything.
She flees his bed, leaving only a priceless ring—never knowing she's just marked herself for hunting.

"Nancy has returned. I'll have my secretary prepare the divorce settlement."

Andrew Lopez, the superstar and my secret contract husband of three years, buttoned his shirt coldly. For three years, I was his perfect, obedient wife in the shadows. I fulfilled his every need and never caused a single scandal. But the moment his first love returned, I became entirely disposable.

"Very well, I will sign it," I smiled, understanding my place.

I packed my bags and prepared to step aside. But the script didn't go as he planned. When his "innocent" first love tried to bully and humiliate me, I refused to be a pushover, tearing off her fake mask. And when my handsome former classmate showed up to protect me, Andrew completely lost his mind.

He pinned me against the wall, his eyes burning with intense jealousy. "You're still my wife! Stay away from him."

I let out a cold laugh. "We're getting divorced, remember? You chose your true love. Now, watch me shine and live my best life without you."

In the ten years I was with Chase Holloway, I got used to him "forgetting" things.

The night he proposed, he showed up empty-handed and said the ring was still at the jeweler's. The day we went to City Hall for our marriage license, he dug through every pocket of his coat and said he'd left his paperwork at home. On our wedding day, he didn't show up at all.

I found out later he'd been in the ballroom next door, filling in as the groom for his childhood friend Mallory Fairchild after her fiancé left her at the altar.

When my dad heard, he clutched his chest, collapsed, and never woke up.

I begged Chase to come see my dad at the hospital. Instead, he raised his glass, apologized to the room, and laughed it off, telling everyone I was just someone from work who had a crush on him.

A month later he got back from his honeymoon, ruffled my hair, and smiled. "How's your dad doing? Let's pick a new date and do it right this time. It'll cheer him up."

He had no idea my dad's headstone had been up for three weeks.

And he definitely didn't know we were already over.

I was cleaning coffee from my husband's suit sleeve when the news alert lit up my phone: Vivian Lane had come home, and Adrian Shaw had gone to the airport himself to meet her.

In the photo, he wore the charcoal suit I had pressed that morning.

He held her suitcase with one hand and looked at her with a smile I had spent three years trying to earn.

That was the first time I understood I had not been building a marriage.

I had been keeping someone else's place warm.

Three years together, and the texts I'd sent Nolan Garrett could probably fill an entire medical chart.

Pasta or salad for dinner. Rain boots or sneakers when it was pouring. I ran everything by him.

Then one night, right in front of me, he muted my texts.

"Can you grow up a little?" He didn't even look up. "Not everything has to go through me."

After that, I really did stop asking.

I signed the papers for my transfer to the Denver office before it even occurred to me to tell him.

My best friend Meredith's wedding invitation said I could bring a plus-one. I RSVP'd for one.

I even found a surgeon for my wrist and picked the date myself.

Not that it mattered. All his patience had gone to his student, Amber Lowell, a long time ago.

The night I found out I was pregnant, I called him. He was with Amber. All he said was to stop making trouble, and then he hung up.

So I never told him he was going to be a dad.

By the time he finally thought of me, I was already on a plane to Denver.

I'd be half a country away, and out of his life for good.

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 camera clicked, the whole terrace erupted in whistles.

"Okay, these two belong on a magazine cover!"

"Since when does Mr. Kent ask anyone to take a picture with him? I mean, come on."

Someone popped a bottle of champagne in the middle of it all. The crowd pushed forward, I got shoved into a table, and a broken glass sliced open my palm. Barely a few feet away, Harrison was bent over, wiping champagne off Lacey's dress.

The company had a strict rule against dating your boss. For three years, I'd helped him keep us perfectly hidden, believing that one day he'd finally take my hand in front of everyone.

But standing there with my bleeding hand clenched, I suddenly didn't want to wait anymore.

I was done with a relationship that could never see the light of day.

Everyone in this city knows that the king of the underworld, my husband Vincent, is crazy about me.

Three years ago, when that bullet tore through my abdomen, it took away my chance of ever being a mother. He held my blood-soaked body and swore to God he'd make the shooter's entire family pay. A month later, that family was wiped off the map in this city. No one dares speak their name anymore.

He sat by my hospital bed, holding my hand. "I don't need kids. I only need you."

I believed him.

Until six months ago, when his brother died in an accident, leaving behind his wife Serena. The family pressure came like a tidal wave. An heir. A bloodline. That's all they cared about. And that woman became everyone's golden ticket to keeping the Caruso name alive.

That's when my husband stopped coming home at night. Every night, I hear them through the wall. Sounds that used to be mine.

But today, the doctor told me my body is healing. The chances are slim, but there's hope.

I clutch the medical report and rush home, imagining Vincent's face when he sees the results. Maybe everything can go back to how it was. Maybe he'll realize he doesn't need her.

Until I stand outside our mansion and hear laughter pouring out.

"Serena's pregnant! Can you believe it? The family finally has an heir!"

"Finally. The family's saved."

Rhett and I hated each other for ten years.

He hated me because my father drugged his drink and arranged for me to end up in his bed.

He was forced to marry me. Kendall, the stepsister he cherished, couldn’t handle the shock and ran away. She was later kidnapped and murdered outside the city.

I hated him for blaming everything on me. He never touched me, never looked at me, and never spoke a single word to me.

Our marriage became a cold, lonely grave.

Then I was kidnapped.

He stormed into an abandoned warehouse and threw himself between me and the bomb.

Before he died, he said, “Maren, if we get another life, I hope we never meet again.”

When I open my eyes again, I’m back in that hotel room ten years earlier.

Rhett lies on the bed in a Manhattan hotel suite, his shirt hanging open, his skin flushed and his breathing ragged.

This time, I don’t go near him.

I call my father instead.

“Dad, call off the security guards. I don’t want him anymore.”

“Book me a flight out of the country. The sooner, the better.”

Everyone says he loved me more than anything. So I chose to answer that love with death.

Forbes cover stories, tearful speeches at charity galas, shutting down Fifth Avenue every Valentine's Day just to watch fireworks with me. They said he ruled a business empire but would kneel in front of the entire world and call me his reason to live.

I used to believe it.

Until I discovered my perfect husband had built another home with another woman. A warm one, filled with laughter and his child.

So I chose to disappear the night the storm swallowed everything.

They say he spent three days on his knees at the cliff's edge, screaming my name into the black ocean. The man worth billions couldn't even find his wife's body.

When the rescue team recovered that burned-out car, he finally opened the safe I'd left for him. Inside was a positive pregnancy test and a divorce agreement that would never be signed.

By then, nothing mattered anymore.

The Vane family has carried the vampire's curse for generations. Of every pair of twin sisters born into our bloodline, one will not live to see twenty-five.

Everyone assumed it was my sister — the one always coughing up blood.

Nobody knew that for twenty years, every full moon, the one gritting her teeth through the pain, never making a sound, was me.

The Divine took pity on me and gave me three chances. Win the genuine love of my parents, my brother, or my husband — any one of them — and the curse would lift.

Three chances. Three failures.

The only hope I had left was the baby inside me, seven months along. Bring him into this world, and I'd live.

Then my husband kicked open my hospital room door. My own brother pulled on a surgical gown and picked up a knife. My parents signed the forms outside.

They were going to cut me open, take the last thing keeping me alive, and use it to save my "cursed" sister.

After my life slipped away entirely, the truth came out.

So why is it that the people who sent me to my death are the ones who lost their minds?

"I had the hospital put your mother back on treatment. Now behave yourself, and quit making up excuses to get money out of me."

The call came from my husband, Silas Crane.

The Don of the Crane family had noticed I hadn't gone to his assistant for money in five whole days. He probably figured I'd finally been trained to be a proper Donna.

Before he hung up, he added, "I know life's tough for people from the wrong side of town. But you're not going to scam the Cranes that easily."

I didn't tell him the divorce papers were sitting right in front of me.

When I packed, I went through the entire walk-in closet. In the end, the only thing I could take was the old denim jacket I'd worn the day I married into this family.

From the outside, being the Crane Donna looked like having it all.

But in five years, I couldn't even scrape together two decent outfits.

The jewelry and gowns were locked in a safe. Every dollar I spent needed a written request, and Silas's personal assistant, Tessa Vaughn, had to approve it.

His reason was simple. I came from nothing, and he was afraid I'd start blowing money the second I married into wealth.

Five days ago, Mom was lying in a hospital bed waiting on a $300,000 surgery deposit.

Tessa sent my request back again and again. Before the money ever came through, Mom was gone.

I'd put up with Silas for five years, and it was never about love. It was about the surgery slot at the Crane hospital that could save Mom.

Now Mom was gone, and there was nothing left in the Crane family that could keep me here.

Every time my husband wants to make me give in, he slaps divorce papers on the table. Every time my parents want me to cave, they threaten to disown me.

What they want is simple: give everything to my twin sister.

I used to fight back. I cried. I demanded to know why it always had to be me.

But when the doctor slides the test results across his desk and tells me in that pitying voice, "Stage four brain cancer. You have a month, maybe less," something in me just... stops caring.

I'm dying anyway. They can do whatever the hell they want.

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.

Everyone knows Adrian loves me more than life itself. When that car crashed, he threw himself over me and took the hit. First thing he said when he woke up in the hospital: "Where is she? Is she okay?"

Everyone says I married the best man in the city.

What they don't know is this man has married me ten times. And divorced me ten times. All for the woman he's never gotten over.

The first time, I got on my knees and begged him not to leave. He just looked at me with those cold eyes and said, "Don't embarrass yourself."

The fourth time, we were fighting in the car. Then we crashed, and I lost our baby.

By the seventh time, I stopped crying. Just signed the papers, packed my things, waited for him to come back like he always did.

My tears, my compromises, all those times I bent until I nearly broke. What did I get? Him coming back like clockwork, just to do it all over again.

This time, when he slides that tenth divorce agreement across the desk, I finally get it. Some people's hearts never had room for you in the first place.

So this time, I'm throwing him out. Him and this whole Mrs. Hayes charade. Straight into the trash where they belong.

It's supposed to be our last class trip before graduation. The bus loses control on a mountain road and goes over the edge.

I think we're all going to die.

When I open my eyes again, I'm sitting in a classroom that looks like it's been rotting for decades.

A system alert blares through my skull:

【Welcome to Ravenwood High. Unnameable creatures roam the campus. Survive 7 days. Uncover the truth behind the campus Boss's death. Every player who dies adds $800,000 to the prize pool. Make it out, and the money is yours.】

Everyone loses it. Screaming, crying, total chaos. The first thing Brett does is shove me toward the door to check the hallway. Because of course he does. I'm the class punching bag. The girl nobody would miss.

Everyone assumes I'll be the first to die.

What nobody sees is the smile pulling at the corner of my mouth as I stand at that door, staring at whatever is writhing in the shadows of the hallway.

Ryan loves me deeply—at least that's what everyone says. Seven years together, we look like the perfect couple to outsiders. But only I know he's betrayed me three times.

The first time was three years ago. His brother died saving him, leaving behind his widow Sophia—Ryan's unforgettable first love. He married her behind my back. When I found out, I completely fell apart. I have dignity. I refuse to be the other woman. I wanted to leave, but he begged on his knees. "This is just to take care of my sister-in-law. Once I find the truth about my brother's death, I'll divorce her. Then we can get married."

I believed him. I forgot that a man never lets go of a lost love he's gotten back.

The second time was at last year's company anniversary. In front of everyone, he introduced Sophia as his wife. I watched them on stage, a knife through my heart. That night he explained, "It's just for show. Once everything's over, we can be together."

I believed him again.

The third time was two weeks ago. Surveillance footage showed Ryan with Sophia entering a hotel room. I rushed to confront him, but heard her voice outside his office. "Ryan, I'm pregnant. It's your baby."

Through the crack in the door, I see him hesitate. In that instant I understand.

He's going to keep her.

He spots me and rushes out in a panic. "It was an accident! Let me explain! After she has the baby, I'll give her money and make her leave. She won't be in our lives anymore!"

In that moment, I finally wake up. There will be no future for us.

A bored demon out for a good time came after me and my worst enemy, and locked us in a room with no door.

The rules are simple. We each have to confess three secrets the other one has no idea about, for his amusement, and only then do we get out.

Weston raises an eyebrow, that lazy, punchable smirk on his face.

"After ten years of being at each other's throats, what could you possibly still be hiding from me?"

He doesn't know I never actually hated him.

He doesn't know that three months ago, at that masquerade, the woman he slept with was me.

And he definitely doesn't know the baby I'm carrying is his.

My serpent mate has locked me in the castle, nine months pregnant. A dozen serpent guards watch me day and night. I can't even leave the room.

A month ago, his brother died in a hunting accident. He became the serpent clan leader. Then he brought back his brother's widow, the woman he grew up with. His first love.

He said he needed to take care of his brother's widow. He told me we'd all live together in the castle, nice and peaceful.

I said no.

I'm his mate. I'm a beastman. My pride won't let me accept that. And they grew up together, childhood sweethearts. How could I not think about it?

She came to him in tears, heavily pregnant. She said I poisoned her medicine, that I wanted to kill her and the baby.

He believed her.

He decided I was just some rogue beastman with no background, jealous and vicious, only after his title and money. So he locked me in this freezing castle while he camped outside her delivery room.

When labor hit, I screamed for a healer. I swore I never hurt her. I just couldn't live with her under the same roof. I only ever loved him.

He just laughed. "You're good at acting. I don't believe a word out of you. Once she delivers safely, I'll deal with you. Don't think you can trick me into coming back."

But when a trembling guard reported "Your mate and the child... they didn't make it," he lost it completely.

On my birthday, my husband hands me a snow-white hamster with a smile and says keeping it in the house will bring us good luck.

My seven-year-old son names it Snow.

But the second I see its red eyes, my blood runs cold.

Because in my last life, I got the exact same gift on this exact same day.

Back then I treated it like something precious. I fed it the best food, bought it the biggest cage, cleaned out the shavings every single day.

And every night it burrowed into my blankets, bit through the skin at my wrist and my throat, and drank my blood a little at a time until there was almost none left.

I begged my husband to get rid of it. All he said was that I was paranoid, that I was faking being sick to get attention.

My son planted himself in front of the cage and screamed that Snow was better behaved than me.

Then, on our wedding anniversary, I collapsed in the bathroom and never woke up.

My spirit drifted near the ceiling, and only then did I finally see it.

That hamster climbed down off my body and turned into a woman in a white dress, and threw herself into my husband's arms.

His eyes went red and he said now that she'd drained me dry, she could finally take her real shape again.

My son ran to her and sweetly called her "Hamster Mommy."

It turned out the thing was my husband's old love, the one who'd died young. He'd used black magic to hide her inside a pet's body.

And I was nothing but a container. A blood supply.

Now my eyes are open again, and the cut on my finger is still warm.

This time, I won't let a single one of them get away.

To save enough for a summer trip with my boyfriend, Tripp, and his friends, I worked late every night after school as a food runner at the upscale French restaurant in town.

Tripp told me his family didn't have much money. He wore old thrift-store T-shirts and always ordered the cheapest lunch in the cafeteria.

I felt bad for him. During the year we were together, I quietly paid for most of our dates.

Until one night, when I carried a bottle of wine to a private dining room and heard voices coming from inside.

"Tripp, how long are you going to keep pretending you're broke?" It was Chase, Tripp's best friend.

Then I heard Bitsy's sugary-sweet voice. She and Tripp had grown up together. "Thanks for the limited-edition bag, Tripp. Eighty grand, and it's absolutely gorgeous. I love it!"

I froze. An eighty-thousand-dollar bag? He wouldn't even spend twelve dollars on a burger.

Then Tripp spoke in a lazy drawl. "Girls like Nora are low-maintenance. She's easy to fool. Buy her an iced latte, and she'll act like it means the world to her. She barely costs me anything."

He had never really cared about me.

Three years ago, on a night when it wouldn't stop raining, I carried Victor Caster out of a pile of bodies.

He'd taken two bullets. He grabbed my ankle and said: when I get back, I'll give you the world.

But when he came back, it was my sister Sabrina on his arm.

After that she was the woman who ran the Caster house, and I was the crazy one they locked away upstate.

Three years later, at the engagement party, Sabrina opened up her own wrist and screamed that I did it.

I tried to explain.

But the man I'd given half my life to save wouldn't even look at me. He just flicked his hand.

"Her hands don't know their place. Take them. And I don't want that face in front of me."

He never once looked up.

So why is it that the next time he sees me, the moment he really looks at my face, he goes down on his knees?

My parents raised me for twenty-four years. Then they found out I wasn't their biological daughter.

Their real daughter came home. She'd only been back two years. That's all it took to erase twenty-four.

When kidnappers grabbed us, I used my body as a shield. They beat me until something inside me ruptured. I was dying from internal bleeding, but no one could tell.

My parents wouldn't even look at me. "This is your fault! None of this would've happened if it weren't for you!"

"Get downstairs and apologize to your sister. If you can't, pack your things and get out."

They threw her a party at a downtown hotel while I died alone in my room.

I thought they'd be relieved. Maybe even glad. I thought they'd just move on like I never existed.

But when they finally learned the truth, they fell apart.

I don't realize how badly I've been wronged until they're strapping me to the gurney.

My name is Camille Brooks. I'm one of the best cardiothoracic surgeons in the city, and I have never lost a patient on my table.

My fiancé, Adrian Vance, is the golden boy of the entire hospital. We're supposed to get married next month.

It's a stormy night when he calls, telling me to get to the hospital right now. There's a patient bleeding out, and only I can save them.

I race through the rain, but I get stuck in traffic halfway there. By the time I push through the OR doors, the patient has no pulse.

The family points at me. They say I botched the procedure and killed him. And Adrian Vance, my own fiancé, takes the stand and shows up with "ironclad evidence" against me.

I have nothing to fight back with. I go to prison. My parents can't handle it. It destroys them both. They take their own lives.

It's only after I die that I learn who really held the scalpel that night: Daisy Whitman, the woman Adrian never got over.

I was just the fall guy.

Then I open my eyes.

I'm back. One hour before everything falls apart, riding through the rain toward the hospital.

This time, I'm going to survive.

And I'm going to watch both of you burn.

It's fall break, and Mom and my sister Della Sinclair are visiting me at St. Julian's Academy.

The South Campus Arctic Biome is a landmark the Sinclair family funded years ago. It's filled with the rare arctic flowers Mom and Della have always loved. Every single time they visit, they have to go in.

That's when Kiley Croft, the girl Fletcher Waverly grew up with, pulls what she calls "a little prank." While no one's paying attention, she locks the door from the outside panel and pushes the temperature controls to maximum.

The people inside are trapped. They burn to death.

Kiley runs to Fletcher in tears, and instead of calling 911, he pulls her close and tells her:

"Hey. It's okay. It was an accident. This isn't on you."

He doesn't call me until the fire trucks show up.

"Blythe, the biome caught fire. Your mom and your sister are trapped inside."

I spin around.

Della is right next to me, sniffling and complaining about her cold. Mom is passing her tissues.

They're both completely fine.

Then who the hell is in there?