Forsaken By One Alpha, Claimed By His Rival

I spent the entire afternoon baking a chocolate lava cake to surprise my boyfriend of two years for his birthday. But when I quietly unlocked his apartment door, I found him tangled in the sheets with my inseparable best friend. They didn't even scramble apart. Mason just glared at me with pure annoyance, treating me like an unwelcome intruder who had ruined their intimate moment. Kennedy shamelessly hid behind his back, wearing his shirt and whimpering that it "just happened." I smashed the birthday cake directly into his cheating face, threw my apartment key at his feet, and ran out into the freezing night. Right then, my mom called, cheerfully urging me to hurry up with our wedding plans. Her words were like salt poured into my shattered heart. I had wasted two years of my life on two dogs. Crying behind the wheel, I nearly ran over a tall, arrogant stranger walking on the highway in the pouring rain. He was freezing and penniless, so I impulsively brought him back to my apartment for the night. The next morning, a frantic pounding echoed through my front door. "Harper! Open up! Mom's here to see you!" My mom had made a surprise visit, and she thought I was still happily engaged to Mason. Desperate, I grabbed the handsome stranger's arm. "Please, pretend you're my boyfriend!" The penniless man looked at my panicked face and smirked. "Fine. But you owe me."

I was born to be Alpha Damien Carlisle's fated Luna. Instead, I lived like a stray dog in his pack. For one year, I watched everyone worship Lilith Vance, his fragile first love, while they mocked me as the barren mate he was too ashamed to mark. Then I learned the truth. His mother had been forcing brutal fertility herbs into my body. His sister threw an illegal sterility poison at me. And Damien, my own mate, had been secretly lacing my food with wolfsbane contraceptives for months. When I confronted him, he did not deny it. "I couldn't let you get pregnant," he said coldly. "If Lilith found out you were carrying my heir, the shock might kill her." I finally understood. I was never his Luna. I was his bloodline. His legal womb. His family's insurance policy. The moment Lilith coughed up blood, Damien abandoned me without looking back. So I ran to the capital and begged the Alpha King to grant me a formal Rejection. He threw my petition away unread. My mate had poisoned me. My pack had betrayed me. And the King himself refused to free me. Fine. If the law would not save me, I would save myself. In my past life, I had been a healer no one believed until it was too late. This time, I remembered everything. In seven days, at the Royal Hunt, the Alpha King would drink a silver poison designed to kill even a Lycan. No royal healer would be able to save him. But I would. I packed my surgical kit, disappeared into the city slums, and prepared the only cure in the kingdom. When the King lay dying, he would finally listen. And the price of his life would be simple. My freedom.

For five years, I held House Ward together with my own two hands-a Dragonless wife managing an ancient dragon-blooded estate, counting the days for my husband to come home from the war. He came home with a pregnant mistress on his arm and a son who wore his eyes. He petitioned the Dragon King to make her his legal co-consort, and entered their bastard into the bloodline registry as his heir. His family doted on the boy and treated me like a ghost-until the boy shoved a bowl of scalding soup onto my hand at dinner. "A Dragonless woman is worthy of a physician's time?" the matriarch sneered, hugging the grinning child. So I summoned my own physician. Paid from my own gold. And I smiled. Because I finally saw the game they were playing. I handed every key and every ledger to his clueless mistress-the very ledgers that prove House Ward is a gilded, crumbling shell held upright by my dowry alone. I accepted his co-consort. But I set one condition: the Rejection Ritual. A severance more final than divorce. They think I'm surrendering. They don't know I've already lit the fuse. Let the glittering house burn. I'm done being his wife.

After my grandmother passed away, the wealthy Beaumont family finally tracked me down to my rundown trailer park. They didn't come to welcome me home. My cousins threw a check in my face, demanding my signature to liquidate a billion-dollar offshore trust before mocking my cheap clothes. But what they didn't know was the secret my grandmother left behind. Inside a hidden rosewood box, I found the brutal truth. My mother didn't die in a simple car crash. She was murdered, and my own father's family was behind it. When I tried to dig into the dark web to find the killer, a massive corporate counter-hack wiped the trail clean. Before I could even leave town, my aunt sent four armed thugs to ambush my bus. They thought I was just a desperate, helpless orphan who would quietly disappear. I didn't understand why my own blood relatives wanted us dead so badly. What exactly was my mother hiding that made the Beaumonts willing to shatter her skull and hunt me down like an animal? I broke the hitmen's bones, wiped the blood from my hands, and boarded the flight to New York. It is time to make the Beaumont family pay in blood. And the ruthless billionaire sitting next to me—who has no idea I am the legendary underground surgeon he is desperately searching for—will be my perfect weapon.

At my own engagement party, I thought I was finally going to become Collin's wife and truly belong to the Beaumont family after being missing for ten years. But under the spotlight, Collin walked right past me. He knelt and slipped my million-dollar ruby ring onto my adopted sister Ivy's finger-just because she got a tiny scratch from a broken glass. My family didn't defend me. My mother dug her nails into my arm, calling me vicious. My three brothers surrounded Ivy protectively, demanding I apologize for embarrassing them. When I later exposed that Ivy had secretly hired thugs to abduct and beat me, my father roared in anger. He didn't believe a single word I said. Instead, he froze all my bank accounts and officially disowned me, caring only about the thirty percent company shares in my trust fund. I looked at the family I had spent years trying to please. They never loved me; they only loved the fake, manipulative daughter they raised while I was gone. My heart completely died. Penniless and cast out into the cold night, I walked into a diner and sat across from Damian Sterling, the dying titan of the tech world. I looked at the incurable poison spreading through his veins and smiled. "I am the only person alive who can save you," I said. "In exchange, you will be my sword to make the Beaumonts tremble."

For four years, I was the perfect Luna and the mastermind behind my Alpha husband's corporate empire. But on a rare weekend off, I caught him on a private beach with his stepsister, Seraphina, and their three-year-old daughter. My fated mate had built a whole secret family behind my back. Fleeing the scene in shock, I got into a horrific car crash. I woke up in the hospital, battered and broken, only to overhear Caden comforting his mistress right by my bedside. "I don't even want to touch her," he whispered. "Her wolfless state is disgusting." When I finally returned home, my belongings were boxed up, and Seraphina had completely taken over my house. When I caught their illegitimate child stealing my late mother's sapphire necklace, Caden slapped me across the face to protect them. Even my own father sided with the cheating Alpha, stripping me of my executive position to give to the mistress, demanding I play the docile wife for the sake of their upcoming IPO. Four years of absolute devotion, and my own flesh and blood treated me like a disposable pawn just because I couldn't shift into a wolf. They all expected me to cry, to beg, and to submit to their endless humiliation. Instead, I slapped my husband back. "I will step down and keep your dirty secrets," I told them calmly. "For one hundred million dollars." They thought they had won by paying me off. They didn't know I was using their money to build a new empire that would crush them all.