His Defiant Luna: The Alpha Prince's Secret Healer

I was in the hospital, enduring the agonizing pain of labor, while my husband, a famous hockey captain, refused to show up. When I called him for the twelfth time, begging for him, he lost his patience. "Giving birth is a woman's job, don't bother me with this stuff." Then, I heard my stepsister's sweet voice offering him a drink, and he immediately softened before hanging up on me. I gave birth to twins all by myself. The nurses treated me with cold indifference, and the family in the next bed loudly mocked me as a pathetic "Puck Bunny" who was just an adopted orphan about to be dumped. They were right. A month ago, my husband had thrown divorce papers at me, demanding I make way because my stepsister was pregnant with his child. I thought my life was a joke. I was just a discarded prop he married to satisfy his grandfather, a fake daughter my adoptive parents only used to elevate my stepsister. I was completely alone, ready to sign the papers just to protect my two babies. But then, the head of the hospital rushed in, transferred me to the top-floor VIP suite, and handed me a DNA test. It turned out I wasn't an unwanted orphan, but the long-lost daughter of the ultra-wealthy Sinclair family who had been searching for me for twenty years. Looking at my billionaire parents and three powerful brothers who just flew in on their private jets to protect me, I picked up my phone to call my arrogant husband. This time, I was going to make him leave with nothing.

I was the perfect Mafia wife, my dowry the foundation of my husband's ambition. I paid for his Yale degree, his tailored suits, and the very mansion he called his own. My reward? He paraded his mistress into my bedroom and declared her his second wife, expecting me to silently finance their affair. They thought they had broken a merchant's daughter. They forgot I was raised by wolves. Armed with a blood chit—a life debt owed to my family by the most feared man in Chicago—I walked into the lion's den. I went to Damien 'The Wraith' Falcone, the Dark Don who rules the Outfit with an iron fist, to demand a simple annulment. But the King of Chicago isn't interested in simple transactions. He saw the steel beneath my silk, the vendetta burning in my eyes. He granted me my freedom, but at a price: my allegiance. Now, I'm a pawn in his lethal game of thrones, caught between a treacherous husband I swore to destroy and a ruthless Don who looks at me with a terrifying, possessive hunger. In a city built on loyalty and betrayal, I'm about to teach them all that a queen's wrath is the deadliest weapon of all.

I was dragged back from the countryside by my father for one purpose: to be a sacrificial lamb. He ordered me to marry the mafia Don Damien Valachi in place of my sister. Everyone in the underworld knew that this Don's brides never saw the light of the next day. My stepmother put on a fake smile and took my hand, calling it an "honor"; my sister hid behind her, unable to conceal the gleam of triumph in her eyes. I smiled coldly and held up two fingers: "Twenty million dollars. Now." My father tried to play tricks, planning to take back the money from my trust fund after I died, but I had someone transfer every cent out before the wedding, leaving him a zero balance. The next day, the wedding car pulled up to the Valachi estate. The butler ordered the driver to use the service entrance-it seemed my groom didn't think I was worthy of the front gate. I got out and switched to an armored vehicle. I floored the accelerator, crashing straight through the estate gates. The gates shattered, and I didn't stop until I reached the main steps. I jumped out, the heel of my shoe crushing a broken iron railing, and shouted: "The bride is here." I looked up, scanning every window until my gaze stopped on one dark pane. I knew Damien was watching. I brushed the dust off my skirt, raised my voice a notch, and smiled: "What, the Don of the Valachi family doesn't dare come out to meet his new wife?"

My fated mate, Bradford, gently stroked my cheek and told me it was just for one night. "For us, Clio. For our future." He kissed me, and then he served me up like a piece of meat to Conrad Vanderbilt IV, the most feared Lycan Prince in North America, all to secure a business deal. In my past life, I fought and cried in this monster's bed. But my desperate resistance only earned me a brutal claiming and Bradford's ultimate disgust. Later, when the business deal went sour and I was no longer useful, Bradford stood by and watched coldly. He watched as his new allies drove a silver blade right through my heart. Only as I lay dying did I realize the sickening truth. Underneath his scent of sandalwood, there was the sweet perfume of peaches and cream. He had been sleeping with my sister, Julie, all along, planning my ruin while holding my hand. As my lungs burned and the darkness took over, my heart shattered. How could my fated mate desecrate our sacred bond so ruthlessly, treating me as a disposable pawn just to pave the way for his true love? Then, a gasp. My own. My eyes flew open to the smooth feel of a silk nightgown and skin that was impossibly whole. I was back in the Lycan Prince's bedroom. Back on the night my life was sold. This time, when the terrifying Alpha stepped into the room, I didn't scream. I met his glowing golden eyes with a dead, calm stare. The hunt had begun, but this time, I knew the rules of the game.

Alisa Winters stood dripping wet in the grand foyer of her childhood home, greeted only by the sneers of the servants. Her father threw a heavy file onto his desk, coldly ordering her to marry Damien Sterling next week. Damien was a notoriously ruthless billionaire, but he was also a walking corpse, dying of a rare, incurable disease. Her pampered stepsister, Cecelia, had backed out of the arranged marriage, screaming that she refused to be a widow before twenty-five. So, Alisa was dragged in to be the sacrificial lamb. When Alisa refused to be sold off to save their bankrupt company, her father pulled out her late mother's prized jewelry box. He threatened to dump every last memory and letter her mother left behind into the ocean if she didn't sign the contract immediately. Her stepmother and sister watched with malicious glee. "Have fun being a nursemaid to a dying man," Cecelia sneered. They thought she was just a helpless, discarded daughter. They thought they had her completely cornered, using her dead mother's legacy to force her into a miserable life with a doomed man. But they didn't know Alisa was actually "The Surgeon," the most sought-after underground medic in the world. She picked up the pen and signed the marriage contract with a chilling smile. Marrying into the powerful Sterling family wasn't a punishment; it was her perfect cover to investigate her mother's murder. She would cure the dying billionaire, and together, they would tear the Webster family apart.

I was balancing four pitchers of watery beer when my phone buzzed with a photo of my cousin flaunting a massive pink diamond on the hand of my ex-fiancé. Jennings Bowen didn't just break our engagement; his family stripped away my medical scholarship and branded me a "reputational liability," leaving me to scrub grease in a Queens dive bar. When Jennings walked into my bar with the arrogance of old money, my alcohol-fueled rage took over, and I ended up vomiting all over his handmade Italian leather shoes. He didn't just have me arrested; he baited my younger brother, Leo, into a fight and had him charged with felony assault. "He’s nineteen, Bronwyn. We’ll bury him," Jennings whispered at the precinct, while his mother ensured no lawyer in the city would touch our case. With a fifty-thousand-dollar bail I couldn't pay and an eviction notice on my door, I was backed into a corner with absolutely nothing left to lose. I couldn't understand why these people were so obsessed with crushing someone who was already down, or how they could sleep at night while destroying a teenager's life. I realized then that playing by their rules wouldn't save Leo, so I dug out the set of black ceramic scalpels I had hidden under my bed for five years. I wasn't just a waitress or a failed student; I was "The Ghost," a surgeon who operated in the shadows where the law couldn't follow. I marched to the gates of the Phelps estate, the home of the billionaire father who abandoned me, ready to trade his life for my brother's freedom. "I'm here to save you," I told the dying man as his family watched in horror. "But the price is my brother’s life, and you’re going to pay it."