Someone inside the Wall

My little brother, Leo, was dying, dependent on a miracle surgery our family couldn't afford. My only hope was my five-year relationship with Ethan Vanderbilt, the wealthy heir - a relationship I' d clung to despite his growing cruelty. Then, he called me to his penthouse, not for reconciliation, but to introduce Isabella Romano, his new, stunning fiancée. "You were always a bit... much, Mia," he sneered, discarding me for an "upgrade." Public humiliation followed, as society pages lauded their perfect match, branding me the desperate ex. My own father, desperate for Leo' s life, told me I should have "tried harder." Our last hope seemed to vanish. Just when I thought I was at rock bottom, Ethan' s ruthless uncle, Charles Vanderbilt, offered a bizarre lifeline: full funding for Leo' s surgery. The catch? I had to go to a remote Vermont clinic and act as a discreet observer for his "comatose" brother-in-law, Marcus Thorne. Spy on a dying man for the family who' d just ruined me? Why me? What dark secrets was I being forced into? It felt like a devil' s bargain, a humiliation worse than anything Ethan could inflict, and I couldn't ignore the chilling sense of injustice. But for Leo, I' d do anything. So I packed my bags, leaving everything behind for that bleak, uncertain future in Vermont. I expected silent days watching a still form, but the "comatose" Marcus Thorne wasn't so comatose after all. And the very first thing he said to me wasn't 'hello,' but, "As I recall, Mia Hayes, you were my first kiss."

I hid my identity as the Alpha King's daughter just to be Santino's perfectly submissive Luna. I thought deep love would be enough. I was wrong. Three years into our marriage, Santino brought a pregnant woman into our pack compound, and even gave my late mother's necklace to his mistress. I tried to argue, to make him respect our marriage. But he said, "Without my protection, you are nothing." I played the harmless, weak Luna for so long that he actually thought I was a helpless Omega. Santino wants a war? Then I will give him a war. "Damian," my mind was made up as I awakened the Royal Guard, "destroy everything." Santino could certainly start the fire. But when the war ends, only I can decide. By the time he regrets it, it will be too late.

I was dying of cancer when my destructive ex, Brooks Ferguson, returned to Seattle. The first thing he did was demolish my late father's record store. But his new fiancée, Grace, delivered the final blow. With a vicious smile, she cornered me and poured my mother's ashes onto the filthy street. I snapped. I rammed my vintage Mustang into her convertible-twice. I woke up in the hospital, coughing up blood, just in time to see Brooks on the news. "When I find her," he snarled to the cameras, "I' m going to enjoy breaking every single bone in her body." He had no idea the cancer, accelerated by his cruelty, was already killing me. He wanted my body? Fine. I refused all treatment and arranged for the hospital to call him. My final revenge wasn't to fight him. It was to die and make him claim the corpse of the woman he destroyed.

I was the fated mate of Brannon Hoffman, the powerful Alpha heir, devoting five years of my life to him. But he coldly demanded I voluntarily renounce my claim, insisting his lover, Elenore, was dying of Moon Sickness and needed his bond to survive. In my past life, I was completely shattered. Elenore put on a sickening show of pity, while Brannon threw me away without even a formal rejection ritual, sparing himself the pain of the bond snapping. He trapped me with Pack Law—a loophole only the elders could unlock—so I could never leave, never be free, never stop being the "pending" nothing he'd made me. Worst of all, he used his Alpha command to drag away my dying grandmother's only doctor, all to treat Elenore's faked, blood-stained cough. They left my grandmother to die in agony, then paraded their "true love" at a high-society charity gala. I died in dark isolation, my heart broken and my family utterly destroyed. Opening my eyes again, I was back in Brannon's study, breathing in the scent of cedar right as he asked me to step down. This time, I didn't weep. I didn't beg. I named my own terms. "I won't voluntarily renounce you." I looked at his arrogant face and smiled coldly. "I will formally reject you—on the full moon, before every elder and every wolf in the Pack." But I knew his games wouldn't end there. So I walked into the palace of the crown itself, seeking a power he could never command. And there, the crippled, "short-lived" Prince Gideon—the man the whole kingdom had written off as a ghost—looked at me and offered a way out no one saw coming. A royal mate bond. A prince's protection. A throne's shadow. I accepted his hand. Because this time, I'm not running from the game. I'm the one setting the rules.

For years, I endured the mockery of being a "wolfless" outcast, acting as the perfectly devoted mate to Alpha Julian. But just weeks before his Mating ceremony with the noble Isabella, I overheard him call me a mere "placeholder" and a temporary "bed warmer." He didn't just break my heart; he crushed my dignity. He forced me to iron Isabella's wedding gowns. When Isabella faked an allergic reaction to a cake I baked, Julian didn't even investigate. "Something made with such vile intentions belongs in the garbage, just like you!" He roared, throwing my cake into the trash and demanding I apologize to the woman who was parading around with my stolen family heirloom. Looking at his cold, judgmental eyes, the lingering illusion of our bond evaporated into a vast, silent wasteland. How could I have been so foolish to love a man so utterly blind? I didn't shed a single tear. "Consider this my apology." I smiled, picking up a glass of ice water and throwing it directly into Isabella's perfectly made-up face. Locked away in the Ancestral Hall as punishment, I didn't panic. Instead, I calmly began plotting with his rival cousin, setting a trap for Isabella's powerful family. I no longer wanted his love; I wanted my absolute freedom.

I was a lowly Omega mated to Caleb, the Alpha of the Silver Moon Pack. I thought I had finally found my harbor. But when our five-year-old daughter, Aria, plunged into a frozen lake and nearly drowned, he was nowhere to be found. He had blocked our mental link to play house with my sister's daughters at the Gamma estate. For three days, Aria lay dying in a coma. The trauma forced her inner wolf into hibernation. To protect her mind, it erased every conscious memory of her father—but her wolf remembered the wound. His scent was not a memory anymore. It was a scar. When she finally woke up, she shrank away from the heavy velvet curtains. "Mama, it smells like cold ashes in a wet hearth. Make it go away." She was screaming in terror just smelling his lingering scent. Her mind could not name him, but her body still remembered what it felt like to be abandoned in the snow. He had given the healing moonstones and the winter pelt he promised our daughter to my sister's twins instead. My sister even sneered at my desperate pleas, telling everyone I was just faking the accident to get his attention. I had spent my entire life bending my neck to the Pack hierarchy, enduring my family's disdain and my mate's cruel neglect. But looking at my fractured child, the heavy chain around my heart simply vanished, replaced by cold iron. I didn't cry, and I didn't beg for his love anymore. Instead, I packed my meager dowry, went straight to the Luna Queen for a Royal Decree of Rejection, and took my daughter away to build an empire of our own.