The-Odd-Alpha

[Fated/Forced Mate Bond + Forced Proximity + Only One Who Can Save Him + Hidden Royal Bloodline + Cursed With A Ticking Clock + Secret Villain Hiding In Plain Sight + Betrayal By A Trusted Insider + Escape Attempt Gone Wrong + Enemies to Allies Royal Court + Choosing Him Twice + Second Chance Choice] Zenaida Kessington has 365 days to make a monster fall in love with her or watch him disappear forever. She fell through a portal expecting to die. Instead, she landed in the lap of the most feared king in the Beast Realm, and woke something in him that hasn't stirred in a decade: a mate bond neither of them asked for. Vyrn is dying by inches, his humanity eaten alive by a curse with a deadline. The bond could save him. But it only works if she chooses him freely, and Zenaida doesn't do anything freely but escape. When the one chance to go home turns out to be a trap set by the same enemy who cursed him, Zenaida has to decide what's worse: staying bound to a man who broke his own rules to save her life, or losing him to a beast that might not remember her name. With 365 days, one impossible bond, and a king running out of time to be saved by the one woman who was never supposed to find him... except she was.

THE CONTRACT I SIGNED WITH MY EX - Blurb He chose his empire over the woman he promised to protect. Five years after Aderinsola "Rin" Adeyemi was framed, convicted, and erased, a new woman returns to the city that killed her life. Rina Vale is polished, rich, and hungry for one thing... revenge. She walks into Lucien Blackwood's world with a contract in hand, an alliance that looks like salvation for his company but hides a clause that hands her the power to dismantle everything he built. Lucien thought silence was protection. He thought control could fix what he broke. Now he must live with the consequences of that choice as Rina pulls the strings. She toys with his memory, exposes his secrets, and forces him to watch the ruin he helped create. But as the truth unravels, the vendetta becomes something more dangerous because the woman who will not be silent still loves the man who betrayed her. If justice means burning the house down, is she willing to risk losing what's left of herself? And what if the child she was told she lost is not gone after all? A dark, fierce story of contracts, revenge, and the cost of silence.

I poured everything I had into it—staked my entire life's plan—all for one thing: building a perfect future with my fiancé. But everything I'd given my whole heart to, everything I'd raced toward with everything I had, couldn't withstand the betrayal he'd hidden in the shadows. He stole my pendant and my wedding gown and gave them to the female student he'd secretly been infatuated with. I threw myself forward, desperate to take back what was rightfully and entirely mine. But for that woman, he swept an entire row of clothing racks crashing down. The hard metal frame slammed into my arm, shattering it completely. My career as a gold-medal architect—something I'd guarded and built for years—was destroyed in that single moment. My chance to stand at the summit of my industry was gone forever. Bone-deep, searing pain tore through my body. I clutched my ruined arm, every last shred of restraint crumbling, and I wept in utter despair. But he just stood there, holding that female student's hand, and pronounced my verdict from on high: "Your hand is finished. You'll never be an architect again. From now on, Ariel will take your place." And then I understood. Through all those long years of sharing a life together, I had never been his one and only. I was nothing but a substitute—one that could be replaced at any time. So on the day of the wedding that was supposed to be ours, I walked into the ceremony hall step by step, arm-in-arm with the childhood friend who'd grown up beside me.

For years, I endured my husband Kellan's disdain, while he bent over backwards to please my scheming younger sister. When a sudden aneurysm required emergency life-saving surgery, I called him from the ER in absolute despair. He was busy celebrating my sister's new job. After listening to the lies she whispered about me in the background, he actually cursed at me. "If you're going to put on this act, don't bother coming home." He hung up the phone. I signed the surgery consent form alone, facing life and death all by myself. On the operating table, I hemorrhaged heavily. Not only did I lose my health, but I also lost the unborn little life I hadn't even had the chance to tell him about. Lying in the recovery room, I finally understood. His vows were nothing but empty lies, and I was always the expendable one in that relationship. And so, I signed the divorce papers and vanished from his life completely. Yet, he started looking for me like a madman, even taking revenge on everyone who had ever hurt me!

Just a few weeks before my wedding to Hudson, his ex-girlfriend moved in next door to us. She constantly made a huge deal out of the fact that her father had sacrificed his life to save Hudson, and even destroyed my wedding dress, yet Hudson just stood by and comforted her. Just as I secretly found out I was pregnant, he publicly announced that he was going to hold a "fake wedding" with her, claiming it was for her psychological therapy. This news quickly went viral online, sparking the fury of netizens who even ganged up to attack me, causing me to fall to the ground and bleed heavily. I lost our child, and the doctor told me that my hopes of ever becoming a mother again were almost completely destroyed. As I lay in the hospital bed, my heart completely dead inside, Hudson appeared in the ward. "Please understand why I have to hold this fake wedding for her." He begged me to support his fake wedding, and my heart was thoroughly shattered. After he left, I immediately packed my bags, contacted the wedding venue, and changed the groom's name to the man who had always stood by me through thick and thin. When he found out about this, he actually went crazy trying to win me back at all costs!

For five years, I gave everything I had, using my blood to build Gabriel's underworld empire. I expanded his territory, conquered half of the turfs, and allowed him to sit on that throne. But just as I secured a billion-dollar casino contract, he ruthlessly tore the silver badge from my chest. He handed my entire career over to his new love, Serena. "Hand everything over to my fiancée, or you won't leave this room alive." Serena was a helpless outsider who had never even touched a gun, yet she wanted everything that was mine. Gabriel humiliated me in front of twelve family capos and announced that they would be married next month. He even threatened that if I didn't hand over the family's encrypted master drive to her before dawn, he would blacklist me and send men to take my life. Did he really think I would just obediently step aside and watch them take away everything I had built with my own hands? So, I calmly handed Serena a master drive loaded with a logic bomb—one that would drain their accounts and expose them to the FBI. Then, I walked out into the pouring rain, accepted an invitation from his most lethal rival, and prepared to watch his empire burn to ashes.

I sacrificed my career and endured agonizing IVF treatments, all just to give my husband's wealthy family an heir. But when I checked the smart ring app his company had launched, I discovered my personal profile was labeled as a "Temporary User"—all data automatically wiped every 90 days. And positioned right above me, the name of his junior employee, Katerina, was glaringly listed as the "Primary User," complete with a detailed log tracking her 24-week pregnancy. When I confronted him, Calvin didn't apologize. Instead, he brought his pregnant mistress home. He actually demanded that I act as her caretaker, while his mother sneered, calling me a disposable ornament and ordering me to leave the marriage with nothing. My husband had merely used my painful fertility struggles to beta-test his algorithms, while secretly using our marital assets to fund his new family. In this marriage, I was nothing but a temporary data point. They thought I would silently accept being treated as a disposable "guest." But I handed over the evidence of his severe data privacy violations to a shrewd, ruthless lawyer, and then decisively exposed the truth to the world.

For eight years, I lived in a freezing, unheated apartment, washing the bloodstains out of my mob enforcer boyfriend's suits every day. He strictly gave me two thousand dollars a month, saying we had to live frugally and save up enough money to escape this dark world. But when I was washing his clothes, I found a receipt for a custom engagement ring worth sixty-eight thousand dollars. That ring wasn't for me, but for his secret lover, Mia. I cracked the password on his encrypted laptop and uncovered his three-year-long double life. He wasn't a bottom-tier thug struggling to survive in a dangerous game at all. He embezzled forty-eight thousand dollars from his mob boss's accounts every month to buy Mia diamonds, cars, and a luxury apartment in Manhattan. And meanwhile, I was drinking watery porridge just to save a little on the electricity bill. When I confronted him, he didn't show a single ounce of guilt, accusing me instead: "You're too heavy. Being around you suffocates me." He thought I was a pathetic parasite who couldn't survive without his protection. But what he didn't know was that I had already quietly earned over a million dollars through legitimate antique painting restoration work. I packed my bags. It was time to let the mob know who was really stealing their money.

I spent months overcoming my fear of heights, just so I could go skydiving with my boyfriend on our anniversary. But on the plane, Cole strapped my safety harness onto his "best friend" Giselle, telling me to wait for the next trip because she had just gone through a breakup, was feeling down, and needed this thrill to bounce back. She didn't care about my efforts at all, trying to brush me off with just a few words. Cole desperately defended her, accusing me of being petty and making a mountain out of a molehill. "She's fragile, Cathy! You're just jealous of a bond between us that you could never understand!" He actually expected me to accept being an outsider in my own relationship, while my family kept pressuring me to drop my so-called pride. For eight years, I poured everything into our relationship, only to finally realize I was nothing but a placeholder, expected to exit the stage whenever Giselle needed him. His constant emotional manipulation and blatant favoritism left me utterly exhausted. So, I packed my bags, paid him back every single cent he ever spent on me, and left without looking back. It was time for me to take over the multi-million dollar corporate project he was about to ruin. He really needed to see how I would step to the peak of my career!

asked my husband a silly TikTok challenge question: if it weren't me, who would he have married? He didn't hesitate. He said one name — Chloe, my once-closest best friend, the same woman who stole my first love years ago. This wasn't a joke. I soon found out he'd lied about a business trip. While I was in surgery, he was secretly vacationing with her, leaving me alone in the hospital. When I confronted them, my husband — to protect her — shoved me hard onto the cold floor. The violent impact made me lose our two-month-old baby. Just as my world was completely falling apart, Chloe leaned in with a victorious smirk and whispered her darkest secret: she had deliberately deleted my dying mother's final voicemail, making me miss my last chance to say goodbye. My husband knew exactly what kind of vicious person she was, and he still chose to protect her in front of his bleeding wife. Looking at the man now kneeling before me, crying and begging for mercy, I calmly pulled out the divorce papers. "Sign it. Then leave."

I was the chief consigliere of the Romano family, and I was secretly carrying the heir for my husband, Julian. But at a celebratory dinner, I saw my adopted sister actually seducing him. It turned out they had been sleeping together behind my back for a long time. When I confronted him, he gave the most ridiculous excuse. "I was drunk, the lights were too dim, I really thought it was you." Not only did he fail to make up for his mistakes, but he also stripped me of my power and gave my exclusive office to her. Because of the mess she made, a grieving widow attacked me with a hunting knife. When the cold blade pierced my abdomen, I dialed Julian's emergency number, but it went unanswered, like a stone dropping into the ocean. He was busy fooling around with my sister, with no time to answer the phone. When I woke up, I learned in the clinic that I had lost my child forever. While he wept outside my ward door, begging for my forgiveness, even willing to give me millions to make me stay, I calmly asked the doctor for a pen. I signed a permanent exile contract. I would build my own empire in this wasteland.

Imagine if you will: At the highly secretive, largely independent, inter-dimensional and (inevitably) clandestine organization called the Time Saving Agency, there is a saying that goes: ‘You can’t break an omelet without first making eggs’. While this may appear to be a rather flippant little idiom, there is – as is usually the case, far more to it than meets the eye. For starters, that’s a rather simple principle of Time Travel right there – and according to the pioneers of time travel, it’s one of the foundation stones of the Theory behind it. It’s something of a paradox – a mind-boggling annotation in the ever-puzzling and ever growing Anals of History. (Some readers may still be thinking that should be ‘Annals’ – however, the author of this work cannot be blamed for what you may think.)