The Woman Who Moved On

After waking up from a five-year coma, I expected a warm embrace from my Fated Mate, Alpha Caleb. Instead, I was greeted with disgust. Standing beside a woman named Hailie, Caleb accused me of being a traitor. He claimed I had sold pack secrets and faked my coma to escape punishment. My own brother, Fitz—the boy I had sacrificed my wolf spirit to save—stood by and let them condemn me to protect his own stolen power. My life became a living hell. Caleb locked me in a sauna filled with toxic Wolfsbane vapor. He burned my skin with silver-laced water while Hailie laughed. And finally, he watched me fall from a roof, leaving me to die broken and alone on the concrete. It was only after my death that he discovered the truth: Hailie was the real spy, and I was innocent. Consumed by guilt, Caleb burned to death beside my coffin, praying for a second chance. The Moon Goddess heard him. Time rewound. Caleb woke up back to the day I opened my eyes. This time, he banished Hailie instantly. He treated me like a fragile treasure, filling my room with roses and vowing to protect me from the world. He thinks he has been given a miracle to fix his mistakes. He thinks he can make me fall in love with him again. But there is one thing my "perfect" mate doesn't realize. I didn't lose my memory in the reset. I remember every single way he killed me.

It wasn't a gun, but the pen in my hand was going to end my life just the same. Liam, the man I was supposed to marry in a month, pointed to the tablet on his desk. It showed a live feed of my mother’s hospital room. "Sign the confession, Ava," he said, his voice devoid of any warmth. "Take the fall for the embezzlement. Or the funding for her ventilator stops in ten seconds." My heart hammered against my ribs. The crimes weren't mine. They belonged to Chloe, his mistress. But Liam Valenti, the Underboss of New York, was sacrificing me to save her. "She's fragile," he said casually, adjusting his silk cuffs. "She can't handle prison. You're strong. You'll survive." With tears blurring my vision, I signed the document. I signed away my career as a lawyer and my freedom to save my mother. Liam snatched the paper like a prize. He didn't offer comfort. He just smirked. "Good girl. The wedding is still on, of course. You'll look beautiful in the ankle monitor." He walked out to celebrate with his mistress, thinking he had won. Thinking he owned me. But he forgot one crucial detail. I wasn't just his fiancée. I was the one who laundered his money. I knew where every body was buried—literally and financially. The moment the door clicked shut, I stopped crying. I pulled out a burner phone and opened an encrypted app. I wasn't going to jail. I was going to war. I typed three words to the one man Liam feared most. "Execute Protocol Zero."

My husband, Edgar, and my mentee, Amelie, betrayed me. He staged a car crash that left me with amnesia, then held me captive for three years, convincing me he was my protector. Meanwhile, Amelie stole my identity, my family's fortune, and became the new "Elise Everett." My parents died of grief, believing I was dead. A slap from Amelie shattered the lies, and my memory came flooding back. I learned the horrifying truth: my perfect life was a prison built on my grave. Forced to play the part of a broken, amnesiac lover, I endured their cruelty, secretly gathering evidence of their crimes. I overheard Edgar confess everything-the crash, my parents' deaths, his plan to keep me as his "obedient pet" forever. He wanted to parade his new wife at his birthday gala, a final humiliation for me. So I offered to plan the party for him. He thought it was a gesture of love. He had no idea I was planning his downfall.

My future was a single, glowing line on a computer screen, a nearly perfect SAT score promising MIT and a clear path to my AI dreams. The world felt bright, simple, and entirely within my grasp. Then the doorbell rang. It was Jake, my childhood best friend, looking disheveled and heartbroken, muttering that he had "bombed" his scores and was "not getting in anywhere that matters." He begged me, citing our childhood promises, to abandon my Ivy League ambitions and go to the state university with him. But as he laid on the act, my laptop pinged. A tagged photo on Emily Chen's Instagram showed Jake triumphantly celebrating his 1450 SAT score, directly contradicting his tearful performance. He was accepted to CIT, a top tech school, and had obviously lied to manipulate me. The performance was flawless, the lies seamless. My voice was quiet, dead. "You got a 1450." His face froze, the grief replaced by panic, then anger. He tried to grab my laptop, shouting that I was ruining everything. Just then, an email from our school confirmed his score. My friendship with Jake, twelve years in the making, was dead. Suddenly, a new email popped up. This one from Emily. Attached were encrypted files: chat logs, emails, audio recordings. Their plan wasn't just to steal my AI. They were planning a hostile takeover of Alex Turner's company, Eos Dynamics, using my work as the weapon, framining him for corporate espionage. The sheer audacity of their continued deceit, even after all I knew, left me seething. They wanted to play games? I'd play.

I drove to my father's mansion, divorce papers on the passenger seat, ready to tell him about my broken marriage. But voices from his study stopped me cold. My stepmother' s pleased tone and my father' s soft replies revealed a horrifying plot: they had orchestrated my forced marriage to David, drugging him and luring me there, all to seize my mother' s company, Miller Corp. My own father had sold me for a company. The man who orchestrated my five years of misery also murdered my mother. My world shattered. Grief turned to rage. I confronted David, only to find him with my stepsister, Samantha. He ripped up my divorce papers and choked me, accusing me of using him. My own husband, the one person I thought I could rely on, stood by as my father beat me. He let me risk my life to save his mistress. He let me lose our baby. After all that, they offered me a divorce, believing they had won. Why did they hate me so much? Why was I, his wife, continually punished while his mistress was doted on? What dark secret bound them all to this twisted game, and what was truly at stake? But they underestimated me. I refused to be a victim. I would reclaim my mother' s legacy, expose their crimes, and make them pay for every tear, every betrayal, and every loss.

"No." The word fell like a stone in our perfectly proper living room. Thirty years old in two months, and the Miller Curse loomed-marry or face ruin. My parents, desperate, had arranged my marriage to Ethan Black, my childhood sweetheart. But the perfect picture shattered. I found out Ethan, the man I was supposed to marry, had been having an affair with Sarah Jenkins, my ambitious young intern whom I had personally mentored. The final insult came at a high-profile gala. Ethan took the stage, and with a smile, proposed to Sarah using a priceless architectural sketch-a design I had always adored, a symbol of our shared dreams. He then soft-talked Sarah, telling her she understood him better, and kissed her passionately while the room erupted in applause around me. He walked right past me, leaving me humiliated, shattered, and utterly alone in a room full of pitying and scornful eyes. My world tilted. How could the man who promised me everything publicly choose another woman, and use my memories to do it? But when he cornered me afterwards, offering to keep me as his secret mistress, his words twisted the knife. He even used the Miller Curse against me, threatening to destroy my career. That was when I knew: I wouldn't just walk away. I would rebuild. On my own terms.