Jilted Wife: The Billionaire's Contract Bride

Today was supposed to be the day I bonded with Donn Carlisle, the heir of the Silver Moon Pack. For a Wolfless girl like me, it was supposed to be salvation. A name. A place. A future no one could take away. Then, minutes before the ceremony, I heard my stepsister giggle behind the altar. I found Donn with Brianda pressed against the ancient oak table where our vows were meant to be sealed. Her dress was hiked to her waist. His hands were on her body. And when Brianda saw me, she smiled, placed a hand on her swollen belly, and let me understand exactly how long they had been betraying me. Donn did not beg. He did not even look ashamed. He only adjusted his clothes and sneered, “You’re Wolfless. You can’t complete a true bonding anyway. This was only ever a formality.” So I burned the ceremonial veil. When the whole pack rushed in, I expected outrage. Instead, Donn’s mother blamed me for failing to keep my own man. Brianda sobbed that they were fated mates. My own family looked ready to drag me home and bury the scandal before it stained their precious golden daughter. They thought I would cry. They thought I would disappear. They forgot that a cornered woman has nothing left to lose. That night, I walked into the empty chambers of Ansel Carlisle, the legendary Alpha everyone believed dead. I took his silver-pommeled dagger, entered the family council, and cut open my palm before them all. “I pledge myself to the true Alpha,” I said. If they wanted to make me a discarded bride, I would make myself untouchable. I bound myself to a dead man and became Ansel Carlisle’s widow. Only Ansel was not dead. He came back from the northern border broken, unconscious, and trapped in a soul coma no healer could cure. The family called it a miracle. I called it a disaster. Because now I am not the widow of a fallen hero. I am the Luna of a living Alpha. And according to the healers, I may be the only one who can wake his wolf.

For seven years, I was the dutiful wife of the city's most ruthless Mafia Don, enduring his coldness and his family's constant disdain. Until a text from his new protégé lit up my phone during a syndicate dinner. She was moving her exotic pet into my dead child's locked nursery. When I confronted him, Dante didn't care. He publicly shattered a crystal glass just because my fingers had brushed it, treating my touch like a contagion. His mother mocked my inferior bloodline in front of the hardened Capos, threatening to destroy my mother's diner if I didn't submit to the protégé. Even worse, I soon discovered the devastating truth. This very protégé had tampered with my pregnancy medication three years ago, causing my agonizing miscarriage. And when faced with the undeniable evidence, Dante still chose to protect her over our dead heir. He thought I was just a powerless, barren civilian who would swallow her grief and bow to his mafia empire forever. He didn't know I was actually the Boss of the Haven Syndicate—the untouchable shadow board that controlled the lifelines of his entire operation. I stared at the man who had reduced our child's memory to an inconvenience, and calmly pulled out my phone. "Initiate the formal severing of my marriage," I ordered my men. "We are burning his whole operation to the ground."

For ten years, I was the invisible backbone of the Silver Creek Pack. I cooked the books to hide Alpha Ethan's gambling debts. I ghostwrote the peace treaties that kept our borders safe. I warmed his bed every night, waiting for the bite that would mark me as his Luna. On the night of our tenth anniversary, I didn't get a ring. I got replaced. Ethan walked into the gala with Ashley, a wealthy heiress dripping in gold, clinging to his arm. When I tried to speak to him, he didn't just ignore me. He used an Alpha Command—a biological weapon that hijacked my free will. "Go to the kitchen," he ordered, forcing my knees to hit the floor in front of the entire pack. "Ashley is sensitive to the smell of stress. You're ruining her night." He humiliated me in the house I helped build. He wore the crown I polished for him, thinking I was nothing more than a glorified housekeeper he could discard at will. He forgot that while he held the title, I held the passwords. I didn't go to the kitchen. I went to the office. I initiated a permanent wipe of the cloud backups, reformatted the local servers, and deleted ten years of financial strategies. Then, I snapped the mate bond and walked out into the rain. Three days later, I walked back into the conference room. Ethan laughed, thinking I was there to beg for my job back. I threw a foreclosure contract onto the table. "I'm not here to serve drinks, Ethan. I'm the new owner of your debt. Get out of my chair."

My husband stood over our son's cold, blue body, his eyes filled with pure hatred. "You killed him," Eli growled, using his Alpha tone to force me into submission. "You were too busy with your research to watch our heir." I broke. I accepted the punishment. I let them drag me to the water cells where the silver burned my skin. I let his "cousin" Kasey pour my son’s ashes into a filthy sewer grate while Eli stood by and watched, stone-faced. He stripped me of my title, my clothes, and threw me into the Rogue lands to rot. But in the ruins of the old temple, the Moon Goddess showed me the truth. I wasn't the only one distracted that day. While our three-year-old screamed for his daddy from the water, Eli heard him. He heard him, but he didn't come. Because he was in the boathouse, entangled in the sheets with Kasey. He ignored our son's dying cries to satisfy his lust. The pain was too much. To survive the agony, I chose the Ritual of Oblivion. I paid the ultimate price: I erased my memories of them. All of them. Years later, as the revered White Wolf Luna, I walked down the grand staircase of the Lycan palace. A man I didn't recognize fell to his knees in front of the crowd, weeping, clutching at the hem of my silver dress. "Harper, please! It’s me, Eli! Remember our baby!" I tilted my head, looking at him with polite indifference. "I'm sorry, sir." "I have no mate named Eli."

For seven years, my husband, Dwight, was a saint for publicly forgiving me for letting his mother die. Today, he let my father die. And I learned his forgiveness was just a seven-year-long lie. He refused to send a medical helicopter, choosing instead to listen to his new, twenty-two-year-old lover, Charity, preach about the universe's plan. At my father's funeral, she crashed the service in a wedding dress, drew a clown smile on my father's face with lipstick, and announced she was pregnant. "You're a barren wasteland," she sneered. "A broken woman he can't stand the sight of." That's when I understood. His forgiveness was never real. It was a slow-burning revenge for a crime his own mother had orchestrated against me-a crime that left me unable to ever have children. He thought he had taken everything from me. He was wrong. He left me one thing: revenge. And I was about to burn his entire world to the ground.

I went to the bank to set up a surprise trust fund for my twins' sixth birthday. For six years, I’d been the loving wife of tech mogul Gavyn Dunlap, and I believed my life was a perfect dream. But my application was rejected. The manager informed me that according to the official birth certificates, I wasn't their legal mother. Their mother was Iliana Dudley—my husband’s first love. I raced to his office, only to overhear the devastating truth from behind his door. My entire marriage was a sham. I was chosen because I resembled Iliana, hired as a surrogate to carry her biological children. For six years, I had been nothing more than a free nanny and a "comfortable placeholder" until she decided to return. That night, my children saw my heartbroken state and their faces twisted in disgust. "You look awful," my daughter sneered, before giving me a shove. I tumbled down the stairs, my head cracking against the post. As I lay there bleeding, they simply laughed. My husband walked in with Iliana, glanced at me on the floor, and then promised to take the kids for ice cream with their "real mom." "I wish Iliana was our real mom," my daughter said loudly as they left. Lying alone in a pool of my own blood, I finally understood. The six years of love I had poured into this family meant nothing to them. Fine. Their wish was granted.