Ethan Blake

When I was ten years old, I insisted that my older brother come back to celebrate my birthday with me. Tragically, he died in a plane crash, leaving no remains behind. From that moment on, I became a constant source of pain and resentment for my parents, a reminder of their loss. They blamed me for my brother's death, and every year on the anniversary of his passing, they forced me to kneel at the cemetery and beg for forgiveness. For eight long years, I endured this ritual. I thought I was destined to spend my life atoning for my sins. But on my eighteenth birthday, I was pursued and ultimately killed by criminals. In my final moments, I desperately tried to send a message to my mother for help, but she responded with harsh accusations. "I bet you're just looking for an excuse not to atone for your brother's death, always making excuses! If you hadn't insisted he come back, my son wouldn't have died. This is your deserved retribution!" The call was abruptly cut off, leaving me staring blankly at the darkened screen, having lost all hope and will to live. After all, what right did someone like me have to continue living in this world? Yet, later on, when my brother-thought dead for eight years-suddenly returned with his pregnant wife. They were devastated upon hearing the news of my tragic end.

Kaelen was supposed to be my destiny. The future Alpha of our pack, my childhood love, and my fated mate. But one night, I smelled another woman on him-a sickly sweet Omega scent I knew all too well. I followed him and found them under the great oak, locked in a lover's kiss. His betrayal was a slow and deliberate poison. When his precious Omega, Lyra, staged a fall, he cradled her like she was made of glass. But when he sabotaged my saddle during a dangerous jump, causing my horse to throw me and break my leg, he called it a "warning" not to touch her. His care for me afterward was just damage control to avoid my father's suspicion. At a public auction, he used my family's money to buy her a priceless diamond, leaving me humiliated and unable to pay. I finally understood what I'd overheard on the pack's mind-link days before. To him and his brothers-in-arms, I was just a "pampered princess," a prize to be won for power. Lyra was the one they truly desired. He thought he could break me, force me to accept being second best. He was wrong. On the night of my 20th birthday, the night I was supposed to be bonded to him, I stood before two packs and made a different choice. I rejected him and announced my union with a rival Alpha, a man who sees me as a queen, not a consolation prize.

For three years, I was Alpha Laurence's fated mate, a title he never honored. He was in love with another woman, Rosalie, and I was just an inconvenient placeholder he refused to mark. The night my father lay dying, I begged him for the life-saving medicine he had promised to deliver. He was with Rosalie. Through our mental link, I heard her laugh in the background before he cut me off. "Stop bothering me with trivial matters," he snarled. His lover then faked an illness, pulling every senior healer away from my father's side. He died while my mate was choosing a tuxedo with another woman. My father's life was a "trivial matter" to the man who was supposed to be my other half. In his obsession, he had become an accomplice to murder. But he had no idea what I had done. Days earlier, while he was distracted by a call from her, I slipped a single page into a thick stack of documents. He signed it without reading, and with a flick of his wrist, he severed his own soul. He had just signed the Ritual of Rejection.

After seven years in a dungeon for a crime I didn't commit, my fated mate, the Alpha who let them drag me away, finally opened my cell door. He announced I would take my place as his Luna, not out of love, but because the law demanded it. But the moment a frantic mind-link came through that his precious Seraphina-my adopted sister, the one who framed me-was having trouble breathing, he abandoned me without a second glance. That night, huddled in a dusty shack, I overheard my own parents' secret conversation. They were planning to have me exiled. Permanently. My return had upset Seraphina, and her "weak heart" couldn't take the shock. I lay there in the darkness, feeling nothing. Not surprise. Not even pain. Just a profound, empty coldness. They were casting me out. Again. But as they plotted my exile, a secret message arrived for me-an offer of escape. A new life in a sanctuary far to the north, where I could leave the Blackmoon Pack behind forever. They thought they were getting rid of me. Little did they know, I was already gone.

Today is my fifth wedding anniversary. It's also the day my husband, Ethan, asked me for a divorce for the 38th time. He does this for Ilene, his childhood friend. The woman who crashed her car on our wedding day, leaving her unable to have children. Ever since, he's been repaying a debt of guilt, and I've been the price. For five years, I endured the cycle of divorce and remarriage. But this time was different. Ilene pushed me down a flight of stairs. Ethan found me bleeding and promised me justice. He swore he would make her pay. But days later, the police called. The security footage of the incident had been mysteriously erased. There was no evidence, no case. That night, Ilene had me kidnapped. As her men tore at my clothes in the back of a van, I managed to call Ethan. He rejected my call. I jumped from the moving van. And as I ran for my life, bleeding on the cold asphalt, I made a vow. This time, there would be no 39th remarriage. This time, I would disappear.

For three years, I lay dying from a poison, my only hope a single-dose antidote, the Moonpetal Elixir. My husband, Alpha Joshua, had played the part of a devoted mate, and I trusted him to save me. But through our fading bond, I overheard his secret command to the pack's healer. "Give the Moonpetal Elixir to Ella Campbell's mother." His reason shattered my world: "Ella gave me a son. A healthy, strong son." He had a secret family. The past three years of his loving care were a lie. He was just waiting for me to die. He even brought me their leftover soup, calling me "the sick wolf," and defiled my parents' sacred home with his mistress and their child. He planned to tell the pack my cure was stolen, turning my death into a tragedy for his own gain. He thought I was a weak, dying wolf. He had no idea what kind of storm he had just awakened. That night, I gathered the last of my strength and severed our mate bond. The pain was excruciating, but I walked out of that house of lies, leaving only my wedding ring behind. I would not die. I would live to watch his world burn.

My husband was in the shower, the sound of water a familiar rhythm to our mornings. I was just placing a cup of coffee on his desk, a small ritual in our five years of what I thought was a perfect marriage. Then, an email notification flashed on his laptop: "You're invited to the Christening of Leo Thomas." Our last name. The sender: Hayden Cleveland, a social media influencer. An icy dread settled in. It was an invitation for his son, a son I didn't know existed. I went to the church, hidden in the shadows, and saw him holding a baby, a little boy with his dark hair and eyes. Hayden Cleveland, the mother, leaned on his shoulder, a picture of domestic bliss. They looked like a family. A perfect, happy family. My world crumbled. I remembered him refusing to have a baby with me, citing work pressure. All his business trips, the late nights-were they spent with them? The lie was so easy for him. How could I have been so blind? I called the Zurich Architectural Fellowship, a prestigious program I had deferred for him. "I' d like to accept the fellowship," I said, my voice eerily calm. "I can leave immediately."

My husband, Craig, got the promotion. After three long years stuck in a small town, we were finally going home to corporate headquarters. But when I went to file our joint relocation paperwork, the HR administrator gave me a pitying look. Craig, she explained, had already filed a single-person relocation, listing a different spouse: his high-school sweetheart, Chanel Murphy. A single, numb phone call to the county clerk's office revealed the devastating truth. I had signed my own divorce papers two months ago, tricked by Craig, who claimed they were investment documents. He had remarried the very next day. He used my talent as a top software architect to secure his promotion, all while orchestrating this cruel deception. I had sacrificed my own career opportunities for our future, a future he was already building with someone else. The pain was suffocating, but then rage burned through my grief. I picked up my phone, my fingers steady. I called Elek Preston, the VP of Engineering, the man who had offered me a lead role on a high-stakes project. "Is the offer still open?" I asked, my voice clear and hard.

After a terrifying rock-climbing fall, I woke up in a hospital, my past a blank slate thanks to selective amnesia. My best friend, Chloe, gently informed me I’d lost all memory of my long-term, now ex-boyfriend, Ethan Cole. Though I felt nothing for this forgotten man, he and his glamorous, vindictive girlfriend, Bella Rossi, swiftly re-entered my life, each encounter proving more unsettling than the last. Their malicious disdain for me was palpable. From Bella staging a fall and Ethan’s shocking physical assault that broke my hand, to his public humiliation of me and Bella’s brazen plagiarism of my baking designs—which Ethan shockingly validated as a judge—it felt like a relentless campaign to destroy me. Bella even tried to burn me alive at his parents' house, and Ethan left me in the flames. How could this man, whom I supposedly loved, be so utterly cruel, even after my amnesia wiped him from my mind? His continuous betrayal, culminating in the public destruction of my career and Bella's desperate attempt to run me over, deepened my bewilderment and pain, leaving me questioning everything. But in the chaos, a kind, genuine baker named Noah Evans emerged, shielding me, showing me what true love felt like. And when a final, devastating trauma jolted my memories back, I faced a choice: succumb to the past or embrace the peaceful, loving future Noah offered, cementing my new life far from Ethan's toxic shadow.

For five years, I loved my fated mate, Lucian. As the Alpha's daughter, I used my influence to raise him from a low-status warrior to our pack's third-in-command. I believed our bond was a gift from the Moon Goddess. That belief shattered when Rogues ambushed me on patrol. I screamed for him through our mind-link as they held a silver knife to my throat, but he never answered. I later learned he ignored my pleas while he was in bed with my half-sister. When I confronted him at a pack ball, he publicly humiliated me before slapping me across the face. After I uttered the words to reject him, he had me arrested and thrown into the dungeons. On his orders, the prisoners tortured me for days. They starved me, cut me with silver, and left me tied to a stone pillar in the cold. The man I had given my soul to wanted me utterly broken. Lying on that filthy floor, I finally understood. He never loved me; he only loved the power I gave him. Three months later, I invited him to my Mating Ceremony. He arrived beaming, believing this was his grand reconciliation. He watched from the front row as I walked down the aisle, turned my back on him, and placed my hand in that of a powerful rival Alpha—my true, Second Chance Mate. This wasn't forgiveness. This was revenge.

After dying a terrible death, I was miraculously reborn into the first year of my marriage to Ethan. This time, I vowed to atone for my past betrayal and cherish the man I had once inadvertently destroyed. However, the Ethan I returned to was a cold stranger, his every public gesture reserved for his new companion, Bella Vance. Then came the chilling call: Bella needed a kidney, and my own frail mother was the only match, a desperate demand he twisted into a threat against my family's livelihood. My pleas to spare her were met with icy contempt, leaving me isolated while she was forced into surgery. He openly paraded his devotion to Bella, publicly humiliated me, and subjected me to unimaginable physical torture, including a brutal "stress test" and frostbite, forcing me to confess to Bella's fabricated accusations. Each act of cruelty, each dismissive gaze, twisted the knife deeper, making me question why the man who once died for me was now so intent on destroying me. Broken but resolute, I plotted my escape, faking my own death to finally, irrevocably, be free of his suffocating control.