Unwanted By The Alpha Heir, Marked By The Northern King

Six years ago, I gave Ryan Carter one reckless night. By morning, the rising hockey star was gone. A few weeks later, I was staring at two pink lines-and the desperate call I made to him went unanswered. So I raised our son alone. Now Ryan has been traded to Boston. Worse, he is the newest superstar client of my fiercely protective older brother. At my brother's engagement party, five-year-old Oliver runs straight into Ryan's path. One look at the boy's cornflower blue eyes and unmistakable dimple, and Ryan knows. His shock looks real. So does his devastation. Ryan swears he never received my call. That while I was discovering I was pregnant, his mother was fighting for her life in the ICU. Maybe it is the truth. Maybe it is another polished lie from a notorious playboy with a violent temper and a talent for breaking hearts. I should protect Oliver. Protect myself. Keep Ryan far away from the life I built without him. But Ryan Carter has never backed down from a fight-and now he is fighting for his son. And for me. The chemistry between us still burns as fiercely as it did six years ago. But wanting him is easy. Trusting him with my heart-and our son's-is another matter entirely. Because the only thing more dangerous than hating the man who abandoned me is believing he never meant to leave.

I spent my entire life striving to be the perfect adopted daughter of the Fields family and a worthy mate to Collin, our future Alpha. But right before our ascension, I was thrown into the pack's darkest dungeon, falsely accused of treason. My stepsister Ashley and adoptive mother Eudora came to gloat, watching coldly as silver chains seared my flesh to the bone. "You were always just a placeholder, a tool to be used and discarded," Eudora sneered. They told me my loyal brother was locked away, and my innocent best friend was burned to ash. Then, my mate Collin walked in, proudly confessing that he had planted the fake evidence. He did it all just to secure his Alpha title and make Ashley his Luna, slaughtering every warrior who defended me. As the silver poison drained my life away, the hatred inside me coiled like a monster. Why did they take me in just to break me? Why was my absolute devotion rewarded with such a brutal betrayal? Opening my eyes again, I wasn't a decaying corpse on a cold stone floor. I was back in my fourteen-year-old body, on the exact night of the Summer Solstice. The very night my "family" first plotted to drug me and send a brute into my bedroom to ruin my reputation. This time, I neutralized the sedative, looked at my trembling, traitorous maid, and smiled. "Now, I'm going to give you a chance to live."

Isabel Jensen was the Cooper family's ultimate scapegoat. When her fake sister, Jessye, viciously pushed a classmate down a flight of marble stairs, the family didn't hesitate to protect the real monster. Her parents and her elite lawyer brother, Kadin, forced Isabel to sign a false confession to save the family's reputation. Kadin even used his legal expertise to ensure she received the maximum federal prison sentence with no parole. For two years, Isabel suffered in a cell while Jessye played the perfect, innocent victim. On the day of her release, Kadin showed up not to welcome her, but to throw a credit card onto the dirty asphalt. "You are nothing without the Cooper name. Out here, you're less than the junkies shooting up in the slums." He threatened to cut off her accounts, fully expecting her to drop to her knees and beg for his forgiveness. Her other brothers mocked her in their private group chats, betting she would starve on the streets within a week. The original Isabel had loved them desperately, constantly pleading for their affection, only to be ruthlessly discarded and framed. Why were they so blindly cruel to the one person who truly cared for them? But they didn't know the weak, easily manipulated girl had already died in that prison. The soul that took over her body was a transmigrated medical genius known on the dark web as The Surgeon. Isabel casually left his credit card in the dirt, stepped into a waiting Maybach sent by the billionaire Vanderbilt family, and prepared to crush the Cooper empire.

Jocelyn Yang lived in the grand Turner Mansion, not as a guest, but as a prisoner. Ever since her father's death, the ruthless billionaire Elam Turner forced her to atone for sins her father never committed. On her nineteenth birthday, a male classmate secretly sent her a diamond necklace. Elam, who had flown back from London overnight, flew into a psychotic, jealous rage at the sight of another man's gift. He mercilessly crushed the delicate necklace into the marble floor with his custom leather shoe. "Did you forget what you are?" Elam hissed, dragging her into a pitch-black storage room. "You take gifts from other men behind my back?" He pinned her to the dusty floorboards and violently assaulted her. The next morning, a wire transfer of $500,000 hit her bank account. He had humiliated her, broken her spirit, and was now casually trying to buy her silence. Later, when a broken bike left her walking miles through a freezing rainstorm, he just shoved scalding tea into her bleeding hands. "Look at you," he sneered. "You look like a stray dog ruining my floors." Jocelyn curled up in the cold, her lips bleeding and her heart shattered. She couldn't understand his terrifying obsession. If he hated her so much, why did he refuse to let her go? Why did he look at her with such manic hunger while systematically destroying her life? Staring at the massive sum of hush money on her phone, a desperate spark of vengeance flared in her chest. Jocelyn wired every single cent back to Elam's account. She picked up her charcoal pencil, vowing to win the upcoming art competition and buy her escape from this monster forever.

To save my father's failing workshop from ruthless loan sharks, I sold one year of my life. I signed a fake marriage contract with Cameron Fox, an icy billionaire who needed a wife to pacify his sick grandmother. The rules were strict: it was purely a commercial transaction, with absolutely no physical contact and no emotional attachments. Soon after, that cold hearted man seemed different to me. Wait, is he pursuing me?

I was the long-lost Donovan heiress, finally brought home after a childhood in foster care. My parents adored me, my husband cherished me, and the woman who tried to ruin my life, Kiera Reese, was locked away in a mental facility. I was safe. I was loved. On my birthday, I decided to surprise my husband, Ivan, at his office. But he wasn't there. I found him at a private art gallery across town. He was with Kiera. She wasn't in a facility. She was radiant, laughing as she stood beside my husband and their five-year-old son. I watched through the glass as Ivan kissed her, a familiar, loving gesture he’d used with me just that morning. I crept closer and overheard them. My birthday wish to go to the amusement park had been denied because he’d already promised the entire park to their son—whose birthday was the same day as mine. "She’s so grateful to have a family, she’d believe anything we tell her," Ivan said, his voice laced with a cruelty that stole my breath. "It's almost sad." My entire reality—my loving parents who funded this secret life, my devoted husband—was a five-year lie. I was just the fool they kept on stage. My phone buzzed. It was a text from Ivan, sent while he stood with his real family. "Just got out of the meeting. So exhausting. I miss you." The casual lie was the final blow. They thought I was a pathetic, grateful orphan they could control. They were about to find out just how wrong they were.