The Broken Mother's Ruthless Revenge

I was the Fated Mate of Lycus Stone, chosen by the Moon Goddess herself. But he performed the sacrilegious ritual of Rejection, severing our sacred bond to run away with his widowed sister-in-law. He abandoned me and our newborn son in the freezing wilderness, claiming she was his true mate to secure a high-ranking position in a powerful pack. For a decade, while he enjoyed his prestige, I was trapped in a living hell. My in-laws treated me worse than a stray dog, beating me daily and forcing me to eat moldy scraps. Even my own daughter despised my low status, stealing my food to buy pretty dresses and laughing as I starved. "You're just a useless Omega. You deserve to suffer!" In the end, my frail body was ripped apart by wild beasts in the snow. I died listening to the agonizing sound of my own tearing flesh, completely abandoned. Until my last breath, I felt nothing but a suffocating despair. Why did my mate defy the Goddess to choose his brother's widow? Why did my family treat me like garbage while praising his monstrous betrayal? Opening my eyes again, the blinding pain was gone. I was back in that miserable cabin, exactly ten years ago. This time, I grabbed the heavy iron poker by the fireplace. The weak Elara is dead, and I am going to destroy them all.

I was supposed to marry the future Alpha of the Blackwood Pack today to save my dying family. Instead, minutes before the Uniting Ceremony, my maid handed me a tablet showing my fiancé, Julian, holding hands with a human in Paris. His public post read: "Fuck the chains. Chasing freedom." My father didn't comfort me. He looked at me like a failed investment and ordered me to fly to Paris to beg Julian to come back. My cousin disgustingly offered to take his "sloppy seconds" just to keep our alliance. Worse, the Blackwood officials stepped in. To save their own reputation, they decided to cancel the wedding and publicly announce that I, a wolfless Omega, was deemed impure by the Moon Goddess. This lie was a death sentence. It would void our pack's protection, allowing rival alphas to slaughter my family and annex our lands by tomorrow night. To all of them, my shattered dignity meant absolutely nothing. I was just a broken sacrifice, ready to be thrown to the wolves or sold to the lowest bidder. Why should I take the fall and lose everything for a coward who chose a human over his duty? The last shred of my obedience died right then and there. I pushed past my abusive family, walked straight down to the VIP lounge, and locked the heavy mahogany doors behind me. Looking the terrifying true Alpha, Damien Blackwood, dead in the eye, I offered him a victory. "Marry me instead."

Two years after my death, I was a ghost trapped beside my grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer's. She still thought I was alive, still trying to contact my ex-boyfriend, Liam. "Do you regret it, Chloe?" Liam's voice was biting and cold. "It's useless. Even if you got down on your knees and begged me, I would never give you another chance." He thought I was still alive. He thought I was manipulating my grandmother to get to him. But I was a ghost, and nothing more. I had left this world a long time ago. Liam was supposed to hate me forever, right up until someone told him the truth. "She's dead! She's been dead for two years. And you killed her." Liam's world shattered. He came looking for me in the most extreme way possible.

I woke up in a sterile hospital room with a throat like sandpaper and eyelids that felt sewn shut. I expected to see the water-stained ceiling of my tiny Queens apartment, but instead, I found myself tethered to expensive machines in a room smelling of funeral lilies. The nurse didn't call me Ainsley Bentley; she called me Mrs. Eaton, and she told me the year was 2024. Before I could process the four-year gap in my memory, the Eaton matriarch stormed in, calling me a "little actress" and throwing a newspaper at my legs. The headline screamed that I was a scandalous commoner wife who had just caused a DUI crash. Within hours, a ruthless lawyer named Preston was at my bedside, demanding I sign a separation agreement that stripped me of everything. He showed me grainy photos of me with another man, accusing me of infidelity and "endangering the family reputation." My so-called best friend, Kirstie, even tried to bribe me with fifty thousand dollars to flee to Paris, whispering that my husband was an unstable monster who would destroy me. When I finally confronted my husband Carson, the billionaire "Blind Prophet of Wall Street," he looked at me with chilling indifference through his dark glasses. He was convinced I had sold his location to the paparazzi for a tabloid payout, betraying him at his most vulnerable moment. I didn't understand any of it. I didn't remember the marriage, the scandals, or the luxury. But when I looked in the mirror, I found a jagged, violent scar running down my back—a "war wound" that didn't belong to a yoga instructor. I realized I knew how to cite matrimonial law by heart and how to neutralize a physical threat with a single move. "I'm staying," I told the family of sharks as I stood my ground in their massive estate. I refused to sign the papers. Instead, I found a micro SD card hidden in a hollowed-out lipstick and realized I wasn't just a victim of a crash. I was a variable they hadn't accounted for, and I was going to find out exactly who I was before they could finish what they started.

I spent a decade learning to save lives as a trauma surgeon, only to discover my parents had sold mine to the highest bidder. To end a turf war, I was forced back into the underworld to marry Ivan Hughes, a rival mob boss known for his brutality. I thought I was just a pawn in a business merger, but then my steady surgeon’s hands began to tremble, and a metallic taste filled my mouth. I ran my own toxicology report in secret. Positive for arsenic. My mother wasn't just forcing me into a loveless marriage; she was slowly poisoning me. I broke into my father's safe and found the truth: a birth certificate for Ivan’s secret son with his mistress, and a chain of emails between my mother and my fiancé. "The dosage is being increased," my mother wrote. "By the wedding night, she will be too weak to protest. You can dispose of her quietly after the heir is secured." My blood turned to ice. They were using me to transfer my trust fund to Ivan, planning to bury me and replace me with his mistress before the honeymoon even started. They thought they were killing a helpless girl. They forgot that a surgeon knows exactly where to cut to cause the most damage. I taped a microphone to my ribs beneath my white silk gown and walked onto the stage of our engagement gala. I didn't take the microphone to say "I do." I took it to burn their empire to the ground.

I stood at the gala, clutching my belly, waiting to tell Alpha Gabe about our child. I was the pack's "Wolfless" orphan, but I was his fated mate. Surely, an heir would change everything. But under the spotlight, Gabe didn't call my name. He wrapped his arm around Harper, a wealthy heiress, and announced she was carrying the future Alpha. When I screamed the truth, he didn't just deny me—he looked at me with pure disgust. "You are a genetic dead end," he spat. "Do not mistake my kindness for affection." They didn't exile me. They dragged me to the basement. First, they planned to steal my baby for Harper. Then, when jealousy rotted her mind, they decided to kill it. My own foster parents held me down, having sold me to clear their debts, while a doctor approached with a silver scalpel. "It's a Rogue mistake," Gabe said, watching me struggle against the straps. "End it." With seconds left, I begged for one final phone call. I dialed the number on an old, yellowed card I'd hidden for years. Gabe laughed, thinking I was calling a friend. But when the voice on the other end spoke, the room shook with an aura that forced the Alpha to his knees. "I am Antony Dean, the Lycan King," the voice roared through the speaker. "And I am ten minutes away." Gabe had rejected a nobody. He didn't know he had just declared war on the Princess of the Royal Pack.