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As the sole heir to one of America’s wealthiest families, I had always known the Harrington rule: every heir had to go through all four years of high school under an assumed identity, without using a single dollar of the family fortune.

So I wore thick black-framed glasses and secondhand sneakers and worked part-time jobs to support myself.

Everyone at school mocked me for being poor. They said my face was the only thing I had going for me.

Only Nolan, the top-ranked student in our grade, never looked down on me. Once, he slid half an eraser across the library table to me and told me that education could change a person’s life.

The day we started dating, he held my hand and promised me:

“Georgie, I’ll hold your hand through all of it. No matter how hard things get, I won’t let go.”

I believed him.

But during the outdoor club’s final hiking trip before my four-year disguise was over, a storm rolled in. Savannah, his childhood sweetheart, complained that her ankle hurt.

Nolan immediately let go of me and knocked me into the mud as he rushed to her.

Everyone gathered around Savannah to make sure she was okay. Then they laughed at me for thinking a poor girl like me could ever belong with someone like Nolan.

I didn’t cry.

I took off my glasses and placed my muddy, bloodstained hand in the palm of Holden, the Upper East Side heir who had spent the past two years trying to get me to go out with him.

“If you take my hand, you’re agreeing to be my girlfriend.”

“Okay.”

My brother's first day on the job, and the new intern, Ashley Pratt, accuses him of trying something with her in the break room.

In my last life, I panicked under all those judging stares and my father screaming at me over the phone. I grabbed my brother by the shoulder and forced him to bow and apologize to her, tried to pay her off to make it go away.

She turned around and leaked the wire transfer online instead, twisted it into a story about rich people paying to buy back their good name. The backlash spiraled out of control. My brother couldn't take the flood of hate anymore and jumped from the roof. He hit the ground and there was nothing left of him to recognize.

My father used my failure to handle it as an excuse to push me off the board. I ended up watching the woman responsible climb over my brother's grave and take the CEO seat at Merritt Industries.

Fate is giving me a second shot.

My brother reaches for me, eyes rimmed red. "Camille, I swear I didn't do anything."

I pull him behind me and look down at the woman crying on the floor.

"She's saying you assaulted her? Fine. Let's call the cops."

The day the Gryphon army marched home in victory, my sister's husband came back safe. My husband, Tobias, died on the ice.

Everyone pitied me, and I believed them. I mourned him for years, handed over every resource the Elven Realm had to offer to Crown Prince Nathaniel, and helped him lock down his claim to the throne.

It took me years to find out the man who came back wasn't Nathaniel at all. It was my "dead" husband, Tobias.

He killed his own brother, stole his face with forbidden magic, all so he could marry my sister Sabrina and make her his queen, official and out in the open.

"Sabrina and I are the real thing. Pretending to be my brother, that was for the good of the kingdom."

They framed me for treason and threw me into the Pit of Judgment. As I burned, I watched the two of them hold each other while the kingdom cheered.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the army came home.

My sister begged me to stop grieving, tears in her eyes. "Nathaniel" swore he'd give me a life of luxury. The old king stood in front of everyone and promised to grant me anything I wanted.

This time, I didn't cry. I chose to remarry without a second thought.

Tobias thought wearing his brother's face was all it took to sit on that throne. What he didn't know was that without me, he never stood a chance of getting there at all.

An accident took my sight when I was a child. From that day on, my world was nothing but darkness.

When I was little, Derek, my childhood sweetheart, held my hand and swore he would be my eyes and protect me for the rest of my life.

But as we grew older, he began to see me as a burden just because I was blind. He fell for my bright, outgoing younger sister, Lilith.

He often hid my cane and watched me struggle to find my way. Then he and Lilith would laugh at me together.

Today was my coming-of-age mate party. It was supposed to be the day Derek and I became mates.

Instead, he brought in five werewolves and had them pretend to be him so I would have to pick him out from among them.

He said that if I chose him correctly, we would mate today.

But I could smell every one of them clearly.

Not a single man among the five was Derek.

Then again, whether I chose him or someone else had stopped mattering a long time ago.

My name is Junie. I'm six years old, a half-werewolf. My mom Juliet is a human witch, the gentlest woman alive.

A month ago, Mom was eight months pregnant. We were walking by the river when Dad's childhood friend Melody shoved her straight into the rushing current. The cold water took my unborn brother. When they pulled Mom out, she was covered in blood, her magic all but gone.

Dad, Maxwell, is the youngest Alpha of the Silver Wolf pack and runs a family conglomerate. That day in the hospital hallway, his eyes went red and he swore through gritted teeth that whoever did this would pay for it, hard, in front of the Tribunal.

Mom believed him.

Then came the trial. The second Dad saw that the woman sitting in the defendant's seat was Melody, he went quiet.

Right there in front of the judge, he took it back. He said Melody never meant to push her, that Mom's magic had gone haywire from the pregnancy and she'd slipped into the river on her own.

Melody walked free. Mom got community service.

The day we left the courthouse, Melody buried her face in Dad's chest and sobbed, but the second no one else could see, she shot Mom a cold little smirk. Dad kissed her forehead like her tears were breaking his heart.

Mom just watched them, one hand over her empty belly. Those eyes that used to be so full of love were calm now.

She let out a slow breath. "Maxwell, let's break the mate bond."

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?"

The day I came home carrying the Royal Pack's highest honor, the one that names its strongest warrior, I pictured Irene's proud smile waiting for me, and Chase's arms wrapping around me.

Then I cross into Crescent Moon Pack territory and the smell hits me. Blood, thick enough to make me gag.

I claw through the scorched wreckage like something possessed, not even noticing my nails tearing, blood running down my fingers.

And then I find her. Irene, the one person who'd ever shown me real kindness, lying in the ash. Not breathing. Gone.

Three scents linger in the air, all of them familiar: Garrett. Ivy. And Chase.

I follow the scent to the lakeside lodge, and that's when I hear Chase, his voice dripping with that same gentle warmth I used to love. "Who cares about Irene, as long as you're happy."

Something in my head just snaps.

"Traitors don't get to live."

Tonight, they're all going to join Irene in death.

Preston Ashford and I made a promise to get into UCLA together.

I held onto that promise through all of senior year, surviving on four hours of sleep a night. Then results day came, and I found out someone had logged into my application and changed it.

I only ever gave Preston my password.

I storm over to confront him and catch Vanessa Ashby, the daughter of an old family friend, the one everyone tiptoed around because of her depression, laughing. "Preston, what do you think Elise looked like when she found out?"

Preston lets out a lazy laugh. "She'll freak out, obviously. Girl's wound so tight, might as well get some use out of her."

Vanessa has depression, and I'm the one who's supposed to make her laugh.

I'm the one who ate dirt at track meets. I'm the one who got laughed at for singing off-key. I'm the one everyone pointed and laughed at. And every time she doubled over laughing, Preston told me I was a good girl.

I turned myself into a joke, just to get a little scrap of kindness thrown my way.

But not this time. I'm done playing the clown.

I straighten up after three back-to-back all-nighters, my stomach aching so badly I can barely stand up straight. At one in the morning, I head to the twenty-four-hour diner below my studio for a bowl of soup, just to keep myself going.

Steam rises off the bowl, and when I look up, my blood goes cold.

Beckett Wexford, my husband, head of the Wexford Group and a man with a serious germ phobia, sits right there, completely out of place in this greasy late-night diner.

He patiently picks the onions out of her burger, one piece at a time, while the girl next to him laughs, bright and carefree, her profile eerily close to what mine looked like at twenty.

"Beckett, you're so bad at this. It's just an onion."

The man who's been ice cold to me for years has a look in his eyes I've never seen before, soft, doting, like she's something precious to him.

"Hold on, almost done."

Eight years of marriage, and I turned myself into some neurotic housekeeper. Turns out all that tenderness was just going somewhere else.

I pull out my phone and open the divorce agreement I drafted a while ago.

Eight years. It's time to get myself out of this.

The moment I gave up wasn't when I found out my husband was cheating. It was when I heard my ten-year-old daughter laugh into the phone and say, "Mom's so clueless. She has no idea about Dad and Summer."

Ten years ago, I was a top biomedical researcher, making six figures. I gave it all up for his promotion and our newborn daughter. Ten years later, the perfect marriage I traded my career and youth for turned out to be nothing but an elaborate lie.

He called me his safe haven, then got in our bed with his mistress and discussed how to keep me in the dark.

This time, I'm not going to cry or make a scene. I'm going to quietly gather my evidence and call the lab director I've turned down seven times.

In my past life, I went into labor and they wheeled me into surgery. When I woke up, my stomach was flat. My baby was gone.

My husband held my hand, his eyes rimmed red, and told me I'd never been pregnant at all. He said the thing growing in me was a ten-pound tumor.

My own mother held me and cried, saying I'd wanted a baby so badly that I'd started imagining things.

The doctor pulled out my entire medical file. Even the head nurse, the one who'd felt my belly the night before and told me how healthy my pup was, looked at me with pity and swore she'd never seen me before in her life.

But I felt him kick. I heard his heartbeat. I'm sure of it.

I ran through that hospital barefoot, screaming, tearing through every room, grabbing every person who walked past me, until the enforcers dragged me off like I was some lunatic.

They chained me up and threw me in the deepest cell in the Abyss.

I rotted down there alone, half out of my mind, until I died.

When I open my eyes again, I'm back in the car, contractions ripping through me, on my way to Silverleaf Medical Center.

The baby is still kicking.

Just because I got a B+ in physics, my father slapped me across the face and kicked me while I was down.

"If you worked even half as hard at school as we do at our jobs, you'd have straight A's!"

"Your mom and I kill ourselves every single day, and this is how you repay us?"

To make sure I couldn't argue anymore, they spent a fortune getting their hands on some kind of devil's contract.

Dad sneered: "Once this thing is signed, every hour we work, you have to study. Now that's what I call fair."

Mom nodded along: "No more complaining that we don't understand what you go through."

Looking at their smug, satisfied faces, I didn't argue. I just bit my finger and signed.

Because I knew better than anyone what their "killing ourselves" actually amounted to.

By the time the contract came due, they were on their knees begging me to cancel it.

I've run a pet rescue shop for five years. I've lost count of the animals I've saved. Around the neighborhood, people call me the good Samaritan of Main Street. My husband, Adam Carter, and I have been married five years, and he's always been gentle and attentive.

It's a rainy night in late fall, and I come across an injured starling in the alley on my way home, its wing broken.

The second I scoop it into my arms, a man's voice cuts through the dark.

"Tomorrow night, eight o'clock. Whatever you do, don't go home. Your husband's going to sneak out with your best friend, and on the road, they're going to hit someone and kill them. Then they're going to run, and they're going to pin it on you."

I look down into the starling's eyes, and the color drains out of my face.

Five years of what I thought was love, and it was just a trap waiting to close in.

A talking bird. Nobody's going to believe that if I go to the cops.

I don't even think twice. I just take the bird and head downtown.

I gave Arthur a thousand years. A thousand years to secure his throne as God-King.

And on the day of our engagement ceremony, he announced he was marrying someone else.

In my past life, I bled myself dry for him.

He told me Lilith needed Seraphim blood to live. I believed him. He bound me to the Divine Punishment Pillar and carved open my chest, one cut at a time.

He massacred my entire clan, calling it "treason."

I only learned the truth as I was dying. That pitiful "saint" was a demon from the Abyss all along.

Now that I'm reborn, watching him sit on that throne makes my skin crawl.

I destroy our engagement in front of everyone and take the entire Seraphim clan with me.

This time, I'm only here to watch him destroy himself.

I loved Damien for ten years. Ten years, right up until the moment he took the heart that was supposed to save our daughter and gave it to someone else's child.

Lily was only seven. She was terrified of the dark, terrified of pain. She never got that heart. She just faded, right there in that hospital bed.

And Damien was down the hall, celebrating someone else's miracle.

He had no idea what I was holding when he finally came home. He had no idea my stomach cancer had already hit the final stage.

There was nothing left in this world worth staying for.

So this time, I didn't yell. I didn't cry.

I just slid the divorce papers across the table.

He thought I was bluffing.

But this time, I had nothing left to lose.

The fake heiress and I died twice fighting over the same thing—which of us would get adopted by that wealthy couple.

The first time, I got the necklace. I became their daughter. I thought I'd finally have everything I'd ever wanted. Three months later, they drowned me in the bathtub.

William's voice still echoes in my head. "This is your fault! If we'd taken Chloe instead, she'd still be alive!"

The second time, I gave Chloe the necklace. Let her have the good life. I thought that would keep me safe.

Five years later, Chloe turned up dead in their mansion. The Harringtons called the cops on me. They said I broke in and killed her out of jealousy. I died in prison, broken and tortured. The last thing I heard was Catherine's voice through the visiting room glass, cold as ice. "You belong in the gutter."

The third time, I open my eyes again.

I watch the couple smile at us, all warmth and kindness, and one question burns in my mind. Which daughter do they actually want?

My boyfriend Tyler, his childhood sweetheart Chelsea, and I went on a road trip through the Australian Outback in the Northern Territory.

A few scrawny, yellow-coated dogs lingered by the roadside. Chelsea insisted on getting out to feed them.

I warned her they were dingoes, vicious predators that ruled this desert.

Her eyes welled up and she called me heartless. Tyler jumped in too, saying I grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth, that I didn't get what it was like for regular people, that I couldn't even spare a couple of hot dogs.

She forced the door open and ran out. The pack lunged at her. Her screams tore through the air. Tyler cowered in the car, shaking.

I was the only one who got out to help her.

Chelsea scrambled back into the car, but Tyler slammed the door shut and locked it.

I never forgot his face pressed against the window, terrified and selfish. I never forgot the despair of feeling fangs rip through my throat.

After I died, the two of them flew back to the States and posted a sobbing video, claiming I was the one who'd insisted on getting out to take pictures and set the dogs off.

The online hate came for my family, all of it, all at once. My parents, both with weak hearts, collapsed under the stress. Neither one made it.

My whole family, destroyed because I couldn't stop caring for one second.

When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the day the trip started.

When Trevor Sullivan had nothing, I gave up billions to follow him to Silicon Valley. Everyone said I was crazy in love with him, until his first love came back to the States right after he made it big.

Seven years of playing the perfect wife and mother, and then I hear him coaching our five-year-old daughter: "Ruby, you can't tell Mommy about my fake wedding with Amber. Not a word, okay?"

"But Daddy, Mommy's gonna be sad..."

"If you tell Mommy, Daddy won't love you anymore. Got it?"

My daughter trembles, nodding frantically.

I stand outside the door, my heart turning to ash.

For the woman he never got over, he doesn't just betray our marriage. He makes our five-year-old lie for him.

Everyone expects me to cry, to beg, to fall apart.

Instead, I dial the number I blocked seven years ago: "Dad, can the family jet still come get me?"

Trevor Sullivan has no idea. I was never some gold digger who needed him to survive. I was the one with everything who made myself small for his sake.

Everyone knew Ethan Blackwood and I were Professor Richard Hartwell's two proudest students. From childhood easels to Columbia studios, inseparable for over a decade.

Everyone assumed we'd get married, stand together on the Pritzker stage someday. Until he fell in love with Sophia Crane, daughter of our mentor's academic rival.

I let him go. Love isn't something I can design.

But I never thought he'd destroy our mentor's entire life for her.

Five years later, he's back in New York riding high on his success, excited to "make amends" with Professor Hartwell.

I laugh.

Go ahead, Ethan Blackwood. You'll spend the rest of your life searching.

I'm the youngest lead surgeon in our hospital's cardiothoracic department. My fiancé, Adrian Wexford, runs the whole department.

His first love, Bella Hartley, is a mediocre surgeon, but she wants to take over the surgery that should be mine before her promotion review.

In my last life, I fought for it. I told them she didn't have the skill to handle it alone, that it was gambling with a patient's life. I threatened to quit and saved the patient.

But Bella couldn't handle the gossip going around the department. She got depressed and jumped off the hospital roof.

Adrian never said a word about it. He kept treating me the same, picked out wedding rings with me, smiled and told me we'd go on our honeymoon right after the wedding.

I thought he'd let it go.

Then on our wedding day, one glass of wine in, I woke up in a freezing basement, strapped down to an operating table.

He held a scalpel and cut into me, inch by inch, his eyes bloodshot.

"If you hadn't fought so hard for that surgery, Bella wouldn't have jumped. You owe her. Pay with your life."

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the afternoon he first suggested giving Bella the surgery.

This time, I didn't argue. I just smiled. "Sure. Let Bella take the lead on this one."

They have no idea that next Tuesday, the Chief of Surgery is bringing the board and a visiting specialist to observe, unannounced.

We'll see how they explain this one.

The Enforcement Corps hauled me out of my apartment in the middle of the night and dumped me at the Southside Precinct.

The subordinate I'd trained myself had scratch marks all over her neck and collarbone, and she was shaking so hard she could barely stay on her feet.

The second she saw me, she pointed and started screaming that my mate had raped her.

"Director Cordelia, I've always looked up to you. You can't sic your mate on me just because I disagreed with you in a meeting!"

My brain just went blank. Because I don't have a mate.

Three months after my miscarriage, at the celebration dinner he hosts for my "recovery," he tells his partners in French, "She's just a trophy wife. Doesn't understand basic business."

"What about that new assistant? The twenty-two-year-old?"

"So much smarter," he laughs. "And in bed? Way more exciting."

They think I don't understand. To everyone here, I'm just the stay-at-home wife who gave up her VP position at an investment bank to play house.

They don't know I minored in French. I spent a full year studying abroad at the Sorbonne.

As I lay in the operating room, bleeding out from the miscarriage, he was already seeing her.

Je comprends tout. I understand everything.

Over the champagne and candlelight, I smile at him.

He has no idea this is the last time he'll ever see it.

Three years after my pilot husband "died" in a plane crash, I walk in on him cutting a birthday cake for his three-year-old son backstage at the company memorial gala.

Luke freezes in the lounge, his hand still on the knife, staring at me.

His parents rush over to shield him. The same couple who screamed at me in the funeral home, wishing I'd died instead of him.

"Nora, just calm down. There's an explanation..."

Claire covers her slightly rounded belly, tears streaming down her face. "I'm so sorry, Nora. My baby needs his father. Please, I'm begging you. I couldn't help myself—I love him."

I thought I'd break down. Thought I'd scream.

But all that guilt, all that self-blame, three years of missing him burns away the second I see the truth.

Nothing's left.

"You're being married to a prince," he said, cold and measured. "You claim you can't contribute to this pack as a warrior? Fine. Then this is your chance at redemption."
"Honor?" I spat the word like poison. "You and the king are exactly the same—both fine sacrificing me for your precious legacy."
"Enough." His voice dropped, dangerous and quiet. "Do you want to spend decades unable to shift? Watching everyone you trained with surpass you? Is that the life you want? Really?"
The denial stuck in my throat. We both knew the answer.
"So leave." Softer now. "You're my most stubborn daughter, Elara. This choice is brutal. Unfair. But at least it's a chance to prove you're still the warrior you claim to be."
He paused at the door. "Some wolves come late," he said quietly. "The ones you have to fight for — they're often more beautiful than anyone ever imagined."
Then he was gone.

She trained like a warrior. Fought like a warrior. Thought like one, planned like one, bled like one — just like the legendary parents whose name she was supposed to carry on.
She just never turned into one.
Every wolf shifts. Elara didn't. One failure erased everything else — no command, no place on the battlefield. Just a wedding dress and a one-way trip to vampire territory.
The last bride sent to secure this same alliance took her own life. Elara is the one they scrambled to send in her place — before the ink on the treaty could even dry.
She tells herself she just has to survive where her predecessor couldn't.
She has no idea what's actually waiting for her in that castle — and by the time she finds out, it's already too late to run.

After Alpha King Kaius publicly rejected Elowen, she left his kingdom and never looked back. She had to start over completely - no pack, no family, no one to help her. She built a new life on her own and thought she was safe. But on what should have been a peaceful birthday, she found herself captured by the King's guards and thrown into the castle dungeons. Now they think she's some kind of enemy spy, and she needs to escape before Kaius figures out who she really is and discovers all the secrets she's been hiding. The problem is, she's not the same broken girl who left four years ago, and he's not exactly the same cold bastard who rejected her either. With lives on the line and nowhere left to run, can she get out before everything falls apart?

She stole from the wrong billionaire. Now she's his most valuable prize.

Half-fae thief Vesper thought she'd pulled off the heist of a lifetime—until she discovered her mark was a dragon in disguise. Draken, the ruthless CEO who rules Las Vegas with an iron fist and a hoard of gold, doesn't forgive. He doesn't forget. And he never lets go of what's his.

One stolen memento. One impossible connection. One soul-bond that neither of them wanted.

Now she's caught between vampire syndicates, dragon-hunters, and a possessive billionaire who claims her as his fated mate. But none of them saw it coming: her half-fae bloodline wasn't a weakness—it was the perfect vessel for primordial dragon magic, a power no mortal was ever meant to wield.

Now she can see through any lie, bend probability at the casino tables, and challenge the immortal elite who've ruled Vegas for centuries. In a city where money is god and magic is currency, Vesper must master these stolen abilities before her enemies weaponize her gifts—or before Draken's obsession consumes them both.

He wanted a puppet. He got a queen instead.

Elora Frost is used to being the punchline. To her wealthy father and evil stepsister, she's a broken charity case. To the school, she's the weird girl in thrift-store sweaters. The ice rink is her only sanctuary—the only place she isn't hiding.

Enter Cade Rhodes. Arrogant. Dangerous. Elite.

On his first day at Winterbourne, the hockey prodigy completely dismantles the school's social hierarchy—and for some twisted reason, he decides Elora is his new favorite project.

He offers her a terrifying proposition: submit to his complete control for one year as his fake girlfriend, and he'll make her untouchable.

She accepts—because for the freedom to skate, she'd make any deal.

Overnight, the prey becomes the predator. The bullies who tortured her are suddenly terrified. Her family is begging for her favor.

And Cade is about to learn a dangerous lesson.

When you dress a figure skater in armor and give her the power to fight back... she doesn't just survive.

She conquers. And the fake feelings brewing between them might be the most dangerous battle of all.

Through a one-way mirror, I watched the passionate scene unfold between my fiancé and my best friend. I turned and impulsively married the stranger I bumped into in the hall.

At the wedding, I publicly replaced the groom, turning that scumbag into the laughingstock of the city.

It wasn't until he faced my new husband and stammered, "Uncle," that I realized... in this revenge plot, perhaps I wasn't the main character after all.

To save my dying sister, I provoked James Smith, the city's most dangerous Mafia Don.

I thought it was a simple transaction, but he pinned me against the wall, his fingers tracing my lips as he whispered dangerously, "Sweetie, since you call me your sugar daddy, then fulfill your obligations. Remember, your first time was mine, and you’ll never escape me in this lifetime."

I believed he was a heartless monster until, facing death, he shoved his only gun into my hands and placed his ring around my neck. "Ella, run! Hide and wait for me..."

As his black SUV drifted into the gunfire to draw them away, I was left trembling. Would he make it back alive to claim me again?

I came to Warton Academy to find my mother. I stayed for the boy who breathes fire.

He’s the school’s pariah, a Dragon shifter with a temper as hot as his flames. Everyone says he’s evil. Everyone says to stay away. But when a pack of werewolves attacks me in the dorm hallway, it’s George who saves me. It’s George who looks at me like I’m the only thing worth protecting in this cruel world.

Our romance is a secret, a spark in the dark. But someone on campus knows my secret too.

They know I’m not just a witch. They know I’m something rarer.

With George by my side, I’m ready to decode the mystery of my past and prove that even a "nobody" can tame a Dragon Prince.

Everyone thinks I'm the wild child of the family, the one who won't fall in line.

Blake's the young king of the business world—rational, cold, always in those perfectly cut suits.

But every night, he's got me pinned underneath him, breathing my name.

He said I was his, but never let me see daylight. Until she came back—my father's mistress's daughter, in her white dress, smiling like an angel.

On my birthday, he went to pick her up from the airport. When the chandelier crashed down, he carried her to the hospital and left me bleeding on the floor. When she smashed my mother's heirloom, he made me apologize on my knees. He said she was fragile, needed care; said I was strong enough to understand.

Then I heard them on my bed, her moaning his name.

So I left. Married a man who truly loved me. And he went insane.

He kidnapped me, forced a wedding, announced to the world I was his wife.

But this time, I just smiled and shook my head.

"Let go. It's too late."

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.

I woke up at twenty-seven again, still tied by a sacred mate bond to the most powerful Alpha in the Northwest. We had twin cubs. Everyone said I was lucky.

Before my first life ended, that bond had helped destroy me.

This time, I took the contract that could dissolve it to my mate's first love.

“Ronan's yours,” I told Vanessa. “The cubs, too. Get his Alpha mark on this, and after the bond-breaking ceremony, I'll leave.”

She stared at the document. I'd been his Luna for six years. She had spent long enough trying to take my place that she couldn't understand why I was handing it over.

I killed myself because I couldn't survive another day inside Adrian Vale's hatred.

At the funeral home, he took my urn, smiled and said I didn't deserve a grave, or a headstone, or a single person standing over me pretending I'd been worth something.

Then he opened his hand and let me fall. He walked through my ashes without looking back.

Less than a week later, the same man would return to that funeral home in tears and demand that they give me back.

"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.

Dante Ashford is my stepbrother, and the one person I should never have fallen in love with.

When I was ten, my parents died saving his family. The Ashfords took me in. He was good to me back then. Somewhere along the way, I fell for him.

When I was eighteen, he nearly died in an ambush. I donated blood, then a kidney to save him. I was unconscious for three days. When I woke up, Vivian Ross sat by his bed—and he believed she was his savior.

After that, he pushed me away. Vivian became his fiancée.

In my past life, Vivian's crimes brought disaster to our family. Dante got on his knees and begged me to take her punishment. I refused. She died anyway. Then he pretended to love me, planned our wedding—and on that day, his assistant announced to everyone: "This wedding was a lesson to show Miss Elena Hayes what it feels like to be abandoned by the whole world."

I jumped from the church balcony.

When I opened my eyes, I was back at that moment—him on his knees, begging.

This time, I said yes.

Dante, from now on, we're done.

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?"

My sister and I married the twin Alphas. Everyone in the pack called us blessed.

When rogues attacked me five months into my pregnancy, our mates cut off our calls for help. Their stepsister needed them.

My baby died. My sister saved me, but the silver blade that struck her left her unable to shift again.

From my hospital bed, I told my husband I wanted our mate bond severed.

He ignored me for two days. Then I told him our child was gone.

His answer came at once: "Stop using our baby to manipulate me."

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."

My beast companions are in the middle of my medicinal soak when a soft, dramatic little "ow" drifts in from outside.

Vex, my wolfkin companion, drops my leg. Brom, the bearkin, jerks his hand and a fortune's worth of elixir spills into the water.

They crash through the floor-to-ceiling window and bolt outside without a single glance back — all for some ordinary girl.

I'm still staring at the broken glass when a stream of glowing blue text pops up out of nowhere.

[The main character Ivy literally fake-tripped in the garden and these two idiots jumped out a window for her!]
[Honestly, the original side character Lillia had it so rough. Backstabbed by her own companions, dies a miserable death, and they end up in Ivy's entourage…]
[And she never even figures out what's happening. Just suffers through the whole thing without a clue.]

I read through all of it, and one thought slowly rises: seriously?

If my companions won't behave, just get new ones. Simple.

I go straight to my mom, and before I've even finished talking, she's already pulling me toward the door.

"Any beast that turns on its master isn't worth keeping. Come on, baby — let's go pick you out some new ones. Mom's paying, so make it the most expensive ones they've got."

The day my sister and I came back to life, we made one call: swap fiancés.

Last time, Dad burned every favor he had to lock down two marriage deals for the family. One with a mafia family that runs the West Coast. The other with a corporate CEO.

My sister married the mafia leader. She was too gentle, too kind for a world that ran on blood and backstabbing. The man had a childhood friend who played soft and helpless but was vicious as hell underneath. That woman tormented my sister for decades before finally arranging an "accident" that killed her.

And me? I got the polished CEO.

Sounds good, right? Except we tortured each other from day one. He was all rules and manners, always talking like he was giving a speech. Me? I blow up fast and if I can throw a punch, I will. Every day was the same standoff. He'd pull back, I'd push forward, and nobody gave an inch.

We spent our whole lives being polite and miserable.

Then one day, my sister and I woke up on the afternoon they announced the engagements.

Three months ago, I was kidnapped. When Alexander rescued me, I woke up in a hospital bed with my clothes disheveled and bruises covering my body. What happened during those hours? I don't remember any of it.

A week ago, I found out I was pregnant. He held me as I shook and told me that it wasn't my fault. That he failed to protect me. Even if the baby wasn't his, he'd raise it. He'd still give me the perfect wedding.

But the guilt ate me alive until depression took hold.

Every night, sleep stays out of reach. Nightmares find me the moment I close my eyes. I've tried to end it. Three times now. Each time, someone found me just in time.

After the third failed attempt, I make tea and head toward his study to apologize. Voices drift through the door before I reach it.

"Are you out of your mind? Evelyn's your fiancée!" His friend sounds disbelieving. "You actually hired someone to kidnap her? Made her think she was assaulted? Just so Lily could take her place? Do you know how messed up that is? What that does to someone?"

Alexander's voice comes out calm. "Lily got sick because of me. Her dying wish is to marry me once before she goes. If I didn't push Evelyn out of the picture, her father would never let Lily take her place."

All those nights. All those nightmares. All those times I scrubbed my hands raw until they bled. It was all a lie. A setup.

For another woman.

I pull out my phone and call my father.

"Dad. I'll agree to the arrangement."

Three years ago, I took a bullet for Damon Kingsley. It came within half an inch of my heart.

He looked me in the eyes, his own red, and swore he'd love me for the rest of his life. So I married into this century-old Italian-American Mafia dynasty.

But on our wedding night, the moment he touched me, he convulsed, coughed up blood, and collapsed.

The second time, an old condition flared up and kept him flat on his back for a month.

The third time, he nearly bled out.

Every time after that, the same thing.

The whole family called me a curse. Marked. Bad luck. The kind of woman who brings death to whoever gets close.

The Godmother gave me an ultimatum: get pregnant within a month, or sign the divorce papers and be shipped off to Chicago to marry the devil himself.

I was carrying a fertility tonic to his study, ready to beg him one more time, when I heard voices through the door.

"Mr. Kingsley, please, you gotta stop. Every time you don't wanna go near her, you shoot yourself up with that stuff. You're gonna kill yourself."

Damon was quiet for a long moment. Then, calm and flat: "Aurora is the only woman I love. I'd take the pain any day over touching her."

All this time, while the whole family called me a curse, the one who actually put it on me was the man I almost died for.

Damon Kingsley. After today, we're done. In this life or the next, don't ever cross my path again.

My husband is an angel on an earthly trial. Every time he feels something for me, he endures divine punishment — like his chest is being ripped open from the inside.

But he told me he'd take that pain gladly, as long as it was for me.

He left a mark on my collarbone. Activate it when you're in danger, he said, and I'll rip through anything to get to you.

I believed him.

Then came a mission where I got grabbed by an armed fugitive gang and held in an abandoned warehouse for three straight days of torture and abuse.

No water. No sleep. The tendons in my hands and feet cut one by one.

Half-dead, I used the last of my strength to activate the mark.

And I heard him talking to his angel companion.

"Beckett, why did you give those people Demi's location? You know what they'll do to her."

He didn't even flinch. "She'll be fine. She's the Chosen One — she can't die. They were going after Macie. I didn't have a choice. Once this mission's over, I can petition to stay on earth. I'll make it up to Demi. She gets it."

So that's the price of being understanding. Dying inside a trap he built for me.

My heart just shatters. And I stop fighting.

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?