Ava's Echo: A Betrayed Heart Returns

My husband stood me up on the biggest night of my career—my first solo art exhibition. I found him on the news, shielding another woman from a storm of cameras while the entire gallery watched my world collapse. His text was a final, cold slap in the face: "Kacie needs me. You'll be fine." For years, he'd called my art a "hobby," forgetting it was the foundation of his billion-dollar company. He had made me invisible. So I called my lawyer with a plan to use his arrogance against him. "Make the divorce papers look like a boring IP release form," I told her. "He'll sign anything to get me out of his office."

For ten years, I secretly loved my guardian, Ethan Hayes. After my family fell apart, he took me in and raised me. He was my entire world. On my eighteenth birthday, I gathered all my courage to confess my love to him. But his reaction was a fury I had never seen before. He swept my birthday cake to the floor and roared, "Are you insane? I am your GUARDIAN!" He then mercilessly tore the painting I had spent a year on-my confession-to shreds. Just days later, he brought home his fiancée, Chloe. The man who had promised to wait for me to grow up, who called me his brightest star, had vanished. My decade of desperate, burning love had only managed to burn myself. The person who was supposed to protect me had become the one who hurt me the most. I looked down at the NYU acceptance letter in my hand. I had to leave. I had to pull him out of my heart, no matter how much it hurt. I picked up the phone and dialed my father's number. "Dad," I said, my voice hoarse, "I've decided. I want to come be with you in New York."

For fifteen years, my husband Dustin and I were the fairytale. The high school sweethearts who made it, the tech CEO and his devoted wife. Our life was perfect. Then a text message arrived from an unknown number. It was a picture of his assistant's hand on his thigh in the suit pants I bought him. The texts from his mistress kept coming after that, a relentless barrage of poison. She sent photos of them in our bed and a video of him promising to leave me. She bragged that she was pregnant with his child. He’d come home and kiss me, call me his anchor, all while smelling of her perfume. He was buying her a condo and planning their future while I pretended to have morning sickness from bad scallops. The final straw came on my birthday. She sent a picture of him on one knee, giving her a diamond promise ring. So I didn’t cry. I secretly changed my name to Hope, converted our entire fortune into untraceable bearer bonds, and told a charity to empty our house of everything. The next day, as he headed to the airport for a "business trip" to Paris with her, I flew to Portugal. When he came home, he found an empty mansion, divorce papers, and our wedding rings melted into a single, shapeless lump of gold.

My mate, Alpha Damien, was holding a sacred naming ceremony for his heir. The only problem? He was celebrating a pup he had with Lyra, a rogue he brought into our pack. And I, his true mate, four months pregnant with his actual heir, was the only one not invited. When I confronted her, she clawed her own arm, drew blood, and screamed that I had attacked her. Damien saw her performance and didn't even look at me. He snarled, using his Alpha's Command to force me to leave, the power of our bond twisted into a weapon against me. Later, she attacked me for real, making me fall. As blood bloomed on my dress, threatening our child's life, she tossed her own pup onto a rug and screamed that I had tried to kill him. Damien burst in, saw me bleeding on the floor, and didn't hesitate. He scooped Lyra's screaming pup into his arms and sprinted away to find a healer, leaving me and his true heir to die. But as I lay there, my mother's voice echoed in my mind through our own link. My family's escort was waiting for me just beyond the territory border. He was about to find out that the Omega he threw away was actually the princess of the most powerful pack in the world.

My husband was in the shower, the sound of water a familiar rhythm to our mornings. I was just placing a cup of coffee on his desk, a small ritual in our five years of what I thought was a perfect marriage. Then, an email notification flashed on his laptop: "You're invited to the Christening of Leo Thomas." Our last name. The sender: Hayden Cleveland, a social media influencer. An icy dread settled in. It was an invitation for his son, a son I didn't know existed. I went to the church, hidden in the shadows, and saw him holding a baby, a little boy with his dark hair and eyes. Hayden Cleveland, the mother, leaned on his shoulder, a picture of domestic bliss. They looked like a family. A perfect, happy family. My world crumbled. I remembered him refusing to have a baby with me, citing work pressure. All his business trips, the late nights-were they spent with them? The lie was so easy for him. How could I have been so blind? I called the Zurich Architectural Fellowship, a prestigious program I had deferred for him. "I' d like to accept the fellowship," I said, my voice eerily calm. "I can leave immediately."

Eighteen days after giving up on Brendan Maynard, Jayde Rosario cut off her waist-length hair and called her father, announcing her decision to move to California and attend UC Berkeley. Her father, surprised, asked about the sudden change, reminding her how she' d always insisted on staying with Brendan. Jayde forced a laugh, revealing the painful truth: Brendan was getting married, and she, his stepsister, could no longer cling to him. That night, she tried to tell Brendan about her college acceptance, but his fiancée, Chloie Ellis, interrupted with a bubbly call, and Brendan' s tender words to Chloie twisted a knife in Jayde' s heart. She remembered how his tenderness used to be hers alone, how he had protected her, and how she had poured out her heart to him in a diary and a love letter, only for him to explode, tearing the letter and yelling, "I'm your brother!" He had stormed out, leaving her to painstakingly tape the shredded pieces back together. Her love, however, didn't die, not even when he brought Chloie home and told her to call her "sister-in-law." Now, she understood. She had to put that fire out herself. She had to dig Brendan out of her heart.

Dayna had worshiped her husband, only to watch him strip her late mother's estate and lavish devotion on another woman. After three miserable years, he discarded her, and she lay broken-until Kristopher, the man she once betrayed, dragged her from the wreckage. He now sat in a wheelchair, eyes like tempered steel. She offered a pact: she would mend his legs if he helped crush her ex. He scoffed, yet signed on. As their ruthless alliance caught fire, he uncovered her other lives-healer, hacker, pianist-and her numb heart stirred. But her groveling ex crawled back. "Dayna, you were my wife! How could you marry someone else? Come back!"

"Stella once savored Marc's devotion, yet his covert cruelty cut deep. She torched their wedding portrait at his feet while he sent flirty messages to his mistress. With her chest tight and eyes blazing, Stella delivered a sharp slap. Then she deleted her identity, signed onto a classified research mission, vanished without a trace, and left him a hidden bombshell. On launch day she vanished; that same dawn Marc's empire crumbled. All he unearthed was her death certificate, and he shattered. When they met again, a gala spotlighted Stella beside a tycoon. Marc begged. With a smirk, she said, ""Out of your league, darling."

After five years of playing the perfect daughter, Rylie was exposed as a stand-in. Her fiancé bolted, friends scattered, and her adoptive brothers shoved her out, telling her to grovel back to her real family. Done with humiliation, she swore to claw back what was hers. Shock followed: her birth family ruled the town's wealth. Overnight, she became their precious girl. The boardroom brother canceled meetings, the genius brother ditched his lab, the musician brother postponed a tour. As those who spurned her begged forgiveness, Admiral Brad Morgan calmly declared, "She's already taken."

After a one-night stand with a stranger, Roselyn woke up to find only a bank card without a PIN number. Still in a daze, she was detained on charges of theft. Just as the handcuffs were about to close, the mysterious man reappeared, holding her pregnancy report. "You're pregnant with my child," he said coldly. Shocked, Roselyn was whisked away in a helicopter to the presidential palace, where she learned the truth: the man from that night was none other than the country's most powerful and influential leader!

Isabelle Everett's perfect life crumbles when her billionaire husband, Damion Ryder, serves her divorce papers on their anniversary. Betrayal, heartbreak, and deceit propel her into a six-year journey of self-discovery. Now, with secrets exposed and old flames rekindled, Isabelle must choose between the man who broke her heart or her high school sweetheart, the one who's always loved her but has an ulterior motive. Will forgiveness transform their lives, or will the past destroy their future?

Gabriela learned her boyfriend had been two-timing her and writing her off as a brainless bimbo, so she drowned her heartache in reckless adventure. One sultry blackout night she tumbled into bed with a stranger, then slunk away at dawn, convinced she'd succumbed to a notorious playboy. She prayed she'd never see him again. Yet the man beneath those sheets was actually Wesley, the decisive, ice-cool, unshakeable CEO who signed her paychecks. Assuming her heart was elsewhere, Wesley returned to the office cloaked in calm, but every polite smile masked a dark surge of possessive jealousy.