After Rebirth, I Ruined His Alpha Reign

For eight years, I played the perfect, obedient Luna to the Alpha King, a wolfless girl trapped in a loveless, gilded cage. I gave up my dreams and endured his coldness, foolishly hoping to one day warm his heart. That illusion shattered the night he left his mind-link open by mistake. Through the faint connection, I heard a voice that froze my blood-my own son, Aiden, sleepily calling another woman "Mommy." And my husband, who had never shown me a drop of affection, replied to her with a tenderness that physically hurt. He was giving Scarlett everything: his love, a top executive position in his corporation, and my child. When I finally walked away and managed to snap a photo of them kissing in his car, he didn't apologize. Instead, he summoned a dozen pack warriors to trap me on the street, bruising my shoulder as he forced me to delete the evidence. "Remember what you are, Sienna. A wolfless. Nothing." He whispered those words with absolute certainty, believing I would soon crawl back to his luxury, broken and begging. He thought my eight years of submission meant my spirit was permanently crushed. But he didn't know about the hidden ghost protocol on my phone that had already backed up every incriminating photo. Standing in my cramped new apartment, I threw his platinum ring out the window and unboxed my old design sketches. Sienna Everly, the docile mate, is dead. I am Lyra, and I'm going to build an empire that will bring his entire world crashing down.

For eight years, I played the role of the perfect, submissive fiancée to New York billionaire Ethan Hayes, giving up my jewelry design career to be the graceful ornament on his arm. That was until I found a receipt for a romantic dinner and a custom sapphire bracelet—identical to my engagement gift—meant for Chloe, a younger socialite. When Chloe deliberately spilled red wine on my white gown at the Met Gala, Ethan didn't defend me. Instead, he shielded his mistress from the cameras and glared at me. "Ava, apologize to Chloe. Now." My humiliation didn't end there. I soon discovered his mother had sanctioned the affair all along just to protect their corporate alliances, telling me my job was simply to learn tolerance. To the Hayes dynasty, I was nothing but a compliant broodmare. Even worse, Ethan was secretly plotting to merge our assets after the wedding so he could fully control and eventually discard me. I had sacrificed my youth, my talent, and my identity for a man who viewed our entire relationship as a calculated business transaction. The sheer, naked cruelty of it left me feeling completely dehumanized and suffocated in a gilded cage. But I didn't cry, and I didn't confront him. Instead, I smiled, pretended to forgive his "minor indiscretions," and threw myself into planning the most lavish, highly-publicized engagement party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They wanted a show, so I was going to give them a spectacular execution.

Janet woke up gasping, the phantom fire of a deadly explosion still scorching her lungs. She had been reborn three years in the past, on the exact day her mother forced her into a marriage contract with Gaylord Bradford, a paralyzed and severely disfigured billionaire. Before she could even process her second chance, her cousin Kandy kicked the bedroom door open, flaunting a massive diamond ring. Kandy, who had also been reborn, smugly announced she had stolen Janet's Wall Street golden boy fiancé, Jax Adler. "You're going to marry that paralyzed monster," Kandy spat, gloating that she would build a billionaire dynasty with Jax while Janet wiped drool off a rotting corpse. Kandy expected Janet to have a complete mental collapse, completely unaware that Gaylord's own medical team was secretly injecting him with lethal neurotoxins to finish him off. But Janet only felt a cold, clinical pity. Kandy's "prophetic" memories were a polluted lie. Jax was actually sterile and dying of irreversible kidney failure, while Gaylord wasn't a dying freak—he was a dormant god whose body was merely in a high-dimensional hibernation. Why would Janet mourn losing a doomed fraud? Leaving her delusional cousin behind, Janet packed her bags and headed straight to Gaylord's maximum-security military cell. She physically tackled his corrupt doctor, drove three bio-electric silver needles into the crippled king's spine to awaken his deadened nerves, and looked him dead in his glacial blue eye. "Sign the marriage contract," Janet whispered. "I will make you walk again, and we will take back everything."

In my past life, the bullet chambered in the gun on the desk was less lethal than the indifference of the two men standing beside me. Dante and Matteo were supposed to be the future kings of Chicago, and I was their queen. But they threw it all away for Sofia—a liar with a pretty face and a fake sob story about a gambling father. They forced me into a gilded cage, making me serve Sofia like a maid while they played her saviors. They let me rot in isolation until I swallowed a bottle of pills just to escape the coldness of their neglect. They didn't even mourn me; they were too busy comforting the girl who would eventually destroy them. I died realizing that my loyalty was my fatal flaw. I had worshipped men who saw me as nothing more than an accessory, while they sacrificed their empire for a woman who played them for fools. But the universe has a sick sense of humor. It sent me back. Back to the day that sealed my fate. The Consigliere pushed the assignment papers toward us—the path to becoming Bosses. "We are not going," Dante said, looking at me with cold eyes. "Sofia needs us. She is fragile." In my past life, I begged them to stay. This time, I stepped forward and picked up the pen. "I will go," I said, signing my name in sharp black ink. "I don't need your protection anymore."

Seven years. That was the price tag attached to my father's life. When my father gambled away money he didn't have, Michael Vance paid the debt. He bought my father's safety, and in return, he bought me. I was nineteen then. A peasant girl he polished up to look like a mob wife. I was reapplying my lipstick in the vanity mirror of his armored SUV when I found a diamond choker tucked behind the sunshade. It was a million-dollar piece of jewelry that wasn't mine, engraved with a date that wasn't my birthday. That night at the gala, Michael threw his mistress's heavy fur coat at me. "Hold this, Sarah. Jessica gets hot easily." I stood there like a servant, buried under the scent of another woman’s perfume, watching my fiancé hold her on the dance floor with a tenderness he never showed me. When I stumbled from hunger, he called me a liability to his image. But when Jessica faked a crisis, he abandoned me at the venue to rush her home. I walked to the nearest trash can and shoved the expensive fur down past the half-eaten caviar. As the sugar from a cheap candy bar hit my bloodstream, the fog lifted. I realized I wasn't a wife-in-training. I was a debt that had been paid in full. I left the penthouse, the ring, and the life. But Michael wouldn't let his property go. He cornered me in a parking garage, screaming that I belonged to him, threatening to start a war. He didn't expect me to be standing next to David Chen, the Underboss of the rival Triad faction. And he certainly didn't expect me to take off my Louboutin stiletto and use it as a weapon. "I don't love you, Michael," I said, looking him in the eye as he knelt on the concrete. "And I'm not for sale anymore."

I carried our child for eight months, yet to my husband, Alpha Damien, I was invisible. When I placed the divorce agreement on his desk, he didn't even look up. He was too busy discussing nursery colors with Victoria, the woman who had taken my place in everything but title. That night, agony ripped through me. I went into premature labor right in the hallway. I grabbed Damien’s arm, begging him to save our child. But he shook me off. He turned his back on his bleeding wife to comfort Victoria, who was faking a panic attack about paint swatches. "Get the best doctors for Victoria!" he bellowed, leaving me to be wheeled into a cold storage room by a terrified intern. While he held her hand, I lay alone in the dark, my body failing. I didn't just lose the baby that night. I found out why I had been so weak. My blood was full of silver nitrate. Victoria had been poisoning me for months, and Damien had been too blind to notice. I signed the divorce papers on my deathbed and vanished into the storm. Three years later, I returned. Not as a rejected Luna, but as the owner of the empire that was buying him out. Damien stood before me at the Alpha Summit, gaunt and broken, holding the deed to his entire territory. "I signed it all over to you," he whispered, falling to his knees. "Please, Elena. I know the truth now. I’ll be your guard dog. Just let me make it right." I looked down at the man who had let our child die. "You can't buy me back, Damien," I said, stepping over him. "I'm not for sale anymore."