Betrayed By Him, Claimed By His Brother

I died with the taste of bitter almonds burning in my throat. My husband, Kian Ferguson, watched me collapse over the poisoned wine. He did not call for help. He did not kneel beside me. He only looked at me with cold, satisfied eyes, as if my death had finally made room for the woman he truly wanted—his delicate cousin, Isabelle. In my first life, I begged for his love. I endured his family's humiliation. I drank the bitter tonics they forced upon me in the name of fertility, even as my body grew weaker by the day. I was blamed for an empty nursery, mocked as a barren wife, and trapped in a marriage that was slowly killing me. Then I opened my eyes again. I was back five years in the past, riding beside Kian at the King's autumn hunt—the very day I first saw how he looked at Isabelle. This time, I did not weep. I did not fight for him. I returned to Blackwood Manor and asked for an annulment. Kian laughed in my face. "You want to leave?" he said, seizing my arms. "There are only two ways out of this marriage, Adeline. In a coffin, or with my permission. And I will grant you neither." I went to the King for justice. The Crown turned me away. They all believed I had nowhere left to run. A discarded wife. A useless vine. A woman with no power, no allies, and no future beyond the Duke's gilded cage. They were wrong. I sold my dowry in secret. I bought merchant ships under a hidden name. I gathered remedies, debts, secrets, and gold. If no one would grant me freedom, I would purchase it myself. If no one would give me justice, I would become powerful enough to demand it. And by the time Kian Ferguson realizes his unwanted wife has become the mysterious Nightingale, it will be far too late to cage me again.

"I reject you, wolfless beggar!" After her betrothed publicly humiliated her and tore her wedding dress to ribbons, he expected Alexandra to crawl and weep. Instead, her dormant soul awakened. Armed with the deadly reflexes of an elite surgeon and combat expert, she broke his guards with bare hands and deflected his blade with two fingers. Then, she did the unthinkable. She walked past him and proposed to the kingdom's ruthless nightmare—the Butcher King. "Marry me, and I'll purge the deadly poison from your bones." "Deal," the monster King replied. He thought he threw away trash. He didn't know he just forced her onto the throne of his supreme monarch.

Six years ago, my mother's life support was about to be cut off over a $50,000 medical bill. Desperate, I agreed to sell myself to a wealthy client in Penthouse C. But in my blind panic, I swiped my key card into Penthouse B. Before I could explain, a terrifying stranger dragged me into the pitch-black room and ruthlessly claimed me. When dawn broke, I realized my catastrophic mistake. Worse, when my mother's nurse called, the stranger mistook it for a pimp and violently smashed my only phone to pieces against the wall. I fled the hotel in tears, only to discover the real client next door had already left. Because of that one wrong door, the money never came in time, and my mother passed away two days later. I was left with a shattered life and, nine months later, a pair of fatherless twins. For six years, I struggled in the dirt to raise my children alone. I thought I had finally escaped that nightmare. "We prefer to hire employees without family baggage," the interviewer sneered, rejecting me for a junior designer role. I didn't understand. If I was humiliated and rejected so harshly, why did the corporate HR department suddenly override the decision and send me a direct offer an hour later? It wasn't until I walked into the CEO's office that my blood ran cold. The ruthless billionaire sitting behind the desk, holding my six-year-old revenge note, was the monster from that dark room.

As a lowly refugee in the Imperium, I was once forcibly matched with three worthless males who imprisoned and mentally abused me for two years. But I secretly recorded every crime, took them to court, had them sentenced to hard labor, and seized all their assets. To truly take control of my destiny, I risked my life to hunt a Level 4 beast and finally qualified for the advanced elite matching. The system unexpectedly assigned me nine elite partners-I thought it was my turning point, but instead I faced even greater contempt. The city's wealthiest billionaire called me from a fake account, pretending to be a starving, debt-ridden gambler just to scare me into canceling the match. An ancient aristocrat planned to lock me in his remote outer bailey, intending to use me as a disposable medical tool. And the military commander, Jaxon Stryker-the very man whose life I had just saved in the deadly Umbral Forest-sent his assistant to my cramped apartment. "Commander Stryker is prepared to offer you a substantial sum to terminate the contract." I looked at the astronomical number glowing on the credit chip. In their eyes, I was just a cheap burden, a gold-digging parasite that could be paid to go away. They had no idea that I had single-handedly slaughtered a giant pythonoid, nor did they know I was the fierce savior Jaxon was currently tearing the city apart to find. A cold smile spread across my face. "Tell your Commander that if he wants to terminate the contract, this is far from enough." Since they wanted to play games, I would show these arrogant elites exactly what this Terran refugee was made of.

As the adopted daughter of the wealthy Warren family, Azaria spent her whole life trying to please them. But during a yacht trip in a storm, her sister Hattie suddenly scratched her own arm until it bled and threw herself into their brother's arms. "Sister... why did you have to push me?" Hattie sobbed. Without listening to a single word of Azaria's explanation, her brother Ford nearly crushed her wrist and dragged her across the slippery deck. Her adoptive father, Arthur, looked at her with pure disgust. "The Warren family has no daughter as venomous as you," he said coldly. Then, without a second of hesitation, he kicked her hard in the stomach, sending her tumbling off the railing and into the freezing Atlantic. As she thrashed in the dark, churning water, her last sight was Hattie's victorious smirk and her family turning their backs on her. Saltwater flooded her lungs, bringing a tearing, agonizing pain. Family, love, belonging... it was all a cruel, elaborate lie. In her final moments of life, her despair turned into a burning hatred. If she lived, she would make them all pay in blood. Opening her eyes again, the smell of the ocean was replaced by the sharp scent of antiseptic. She was back in the hospital, exactly three month before her death. It was the day Hattie faked a car accident to claim she was blind, and her father and brother were forcing Azaria to sign a consent form to donate her corneas to her. Looking at their impatient faces and Hattie's crocodile tears, Azaria picked up the paperwork. Under their stunned gazes, she slowly and deliberately tore the consent form to pieces.

I was dying of late-stage Silver-blood Syndrome, so I swallowed my pride and entrusted our six-year-old daughter to my ex-husband, the powerful Pack Alpha. But instead of showing mercy, he looked at my pale face with absolute disgust. He thought I was abandoning our pup to run off with another man. "If you cannot raise our bloodline properly, I will strip your custody rights forever." He proudly paraded his new Luna and her son, leaving me to endure the agonizing poison completely alone. I vomited silver blood in a cold hospital room until my heart finally flatlined. He didn't even know I was dead until my body was sent to the Pack morgue. As my soul slipped away, I couldn't understand why he broke our fated mate bond for a woman who masked her true scent with cheap chemical perfumes. Why did he let me rot in the slums while he lovingly raised a Rogue's child as his own heir? But the Moon Goddess refused to take my life. Three years later, I woke up from a sacred medical stasis, no longer a weak Omega, but the legendary White Wolf. When my ex-husband discovered his new wife's deception and came crawling back in tears to beg for a second chance, I calmly turned away. This time, I chose the man who stayed by my deathbed, leaving the great Alpha to drown in his own regret.