Mi Lu

For three years, I kept my relationship with Grayson a secret to protect his tech career, playing the role of his strict, single coworker. But I opened our company internal software today to find hundreds of colleagues enthusiastically betting on when he would propose to my best friend, Kloe. I screenshotted it and sent it to Grayson, asking for an explanation. His reply was dismissive: "Just office banter. Can you not be such a prude about it? It's embarrassing." Instead of shutting the rumors down, Grayson basked in the attention. "Jealousy is a career killer, Blair," my coworkers sneered, plastering my desk with sticky notes. I had paid half his mortgage and sacrificed my youth for his success, only to be thrown away for twenty minutes of cheap office applause. I stared at the word "embarrassing," my nails digging into my palm to keep the tears from falling. I took a deep breath and peeled the mocking sticky notes off my desk one by one, tucking them into my bag—they wanted to see me break, but I was going to walk out of this with my head held high. I signed my transfer papers to Denver, dialed the best defamation lawyer in Seattle, and prepared to tear down their perfect facade.

My ex-husband returned after a three-year bet, ready to reclaim me and the son he thought was his. He had no idea that I'd secretly aborted his child, divorced him, and remarried the day he left. His world was about to come crashing down. His delusion turned deadly when he and his manipulative best friend, Haylee, kidnapped my son, Leo. I found them at his family's mansion, with Leo suffocating from a severe allergic reaction to a dog they were forcing him to play with. Elliot physically restrained me, scolding me for overreacting while Haylee giggled as my son turned blue. At the hospital, as Leo fought for his life, Elliot grabbed my arm, demanding to know who the man standing beside me was. He was convinced this was all a game to make him jealous. That's when my real husband, billionaire Gregory Morton, stepped forward. "Since when is this child yours, Elliot?"

I was forced to sign my life away to Jaxson Wilson, a ruthless Wall Street predator, just to save my family's failing company. But the moment the ink dried on our marriage certificate, my family showed their true colors. My cousin tried to physically attack me out of pure jealousy, and my grandfather weaponized my dead parents' tragic accident just to ensure my absolute obedience. Suffering a severe panic attack, I packed my bags and fled the toxic estate. I expected to be tossed into a cold, empty penthouse by my new billionaire husband. After all, this was just a corporate merger, and I was nothing but a tool to stabilize his stock. Yet, everything Jaxson did completely shattered my expectations. He didn't neglect me. He personally designed a breathtaking mansion tailored to my habits. When I cooked cheap pasta in the middle of the night, the billionaire CEO rolled up his sleeves to wash my dishes. When a speeding truck nearly hit me, he risked his own life to pull me back, his eyes dark with a terrifying, raw panic. I couldn't understand it. Why was this cold, untouchable man treating a fake, transactional wife with such intense, suffocating protection? "It doesn't matter if my family likes you. You married me. Not them." Looking at the multi-million dollar diamonds he had just fastened around my neck, my fear finally evaporated. If my family wanted to throw me to the wolves, I would gladly become the alpha's wife and make them regret it.

For three years, June played the perfect, submissive wife to billionaire Augustus Pruitt, hoping a child would finally warm his cold heart and secure their marriage. But when she cautiously suggested they have a baby, he looked at her with pure, unfiltered disgust. "A woman who schemes her way into a marriage doesn't get to carry my blood." He sneered, leaving immediately to lavish his mistress with diamonds. The nightmare only escalated from there. Augustus bought the one painting June desperately wanted—a piece she had secretly created herself—just to gift it to his mistress. He publicly outbid June at the gallery, mocking her lack of wealth, and left her to collapse in the freezing rain. When the storm gave her a severe 104-degree fever and she nearly died on their staircase, he didn't even stay by her hospital bed. Instead, he sent an assistant with a box of jewelry to buy her silence, then forced her to attend a family dinner where his mother and sister viciously mocked her barren womb and background. Looking at Augustus, who sat there casually cutting his steak while his family tore her apart, the last flicker of hope in June's chest sputtered and died. She finally understood that her three years of bleeding devotion were nothing but a pathetic joke to them. She dropped her silverware, the sharp clatter silencing the entire room. She wasn't going to be their punching bag anymore. It was time to finalize the divorce papers, reclaim her hidden identity as the world-renowned artist 'mr.sun', and make them all regret it.

For twelve years, I was the shame of the Silver Moon Pack. A Luna who never shifted, a barren wife who couldn't give Alpha Ivan an heir. I thought my body was broken. But on my thirtieth birthday, I learned I wasn't sick. I was being murdered. Tracking Ivan to a downtown gallery, I expected to catch him in a lie about work. Instead, I saw him playing father to a child that wasn't mine, while his mistress looked on with a smirk. Then, I heard my own father’s voice booming through the thin glass. "If that White Wolf blood of hers ever woke up, she'd destroy us all. Better she dies a sickly Omega." My husband, my Fated Mate, didn't defend me. He just checked his watch. "She smells of death already. The Wolfsbane in her tea will finish her off during the fireworks tonight. Then we can finally replace the mule." My knees hit the floor. For five years, the "medicine" they forced down my throat wasn't a cure. It was poison designed to suppress my Supreme rank. They didn't hate me because I was weak; they were killing me because I was stronger than all of them combined. I drove back to the mansion, my sadness hardening into cold rage. I poured the lethal tea down the sink and picked up the microphone for the Pack Gathering. They were expecting a funeral tonight. I was about to give them a public execution.

I took a blade for my husband, Marco, five years ago. It saved his life, but the wound to my stomach cost me the ability to give him an heir. He swore it didn't matter. "I only need you," he had whispered. Today, he brought home my replacement. He called her a "surrogate," a university student named Bianca who was meant to secure his family's bloodline. But that night, I found them tangled in our guest bed. I stood in the doorway, a ghost in my own home, and listened to him praise her. "You're so pure," he whispered. "Lia... she's so frigid." The betrayal was a second blade twisting in my old scar. His affair became blatant. He showered her with gifts and forgot my birthday. When she coveted the heirloom pendant my dying mother gave me, he ripped it from my neck and gave it to her. "It's a worthless trinket," he scoffed. That night, she tried to run me over with his Aston Martin. He arrived to find me bleeding in the driveway, and he didn't even ask if I was okay. He just looked at me with disgust, believing her lies instantly. "What the hell have you done now?" he bellowed. "You're not dead, are you?" I laughed then, a hollow, chilling sound. I picked up my suitcase, turned my back on the ruins of my marriage, and made a single phone call. "Dante," I said to my brother, the Don of the Romano family. "It's done. Cut them off."

I was the orphan the wealthy Sampson family raised as their own. For twenty years, their house was my home, and their son, Brock, was my brother and best friend. My life was perfect, safe, and filled with love. Then Brock brought home Fiona. She was beautiful, charming, and immediately saw me as a rival to be eliminated. She started a war of whispers, calling me a freeloader with an incestuous obsession, a parasite on their fortune. When she deliberately shattered the only locket I had of my dead parents, Brock defended her. "You're acting like a spoiled brat," he told me. My own brother, my protector, chose a manipulative stranger over me, believing her poison. The family that had saved me was being torn apart from the inside. At my graduation party, Fiona cornered me, promising to publicly toast to my "sick obsession" and ruin my family's name. She thought I would crumble. But as she took the stage, I calmly walked over to my father's chief of staff. "Let her speak," I said. "And have security ready."

I found my mate, the Alpha, on his knees. But it wasn't for me, his Luna. He was tenderly massaging the swollen ankle of Isabella, his pregnant, widowed sister-in-law, with a look of concern I had never once received. For months, he had allowed her to live in our private den, letting her disrespect me at every turn. He cooked her favorite breakfast—a meal he knew would make me violently ill—and lied that it was a gift for me. The final betrayal came when I found her wearing my mother's sacred necklace, a sigil passed down through generations of my family's Lunas. When I confronted her, she let it slip from her fingers with a theatrical gasp, shattering my heritage on the marble floor. Something inside me snapped. I slapped her. Seeing his precious, grieving widow struck, my mate didn't hesitate. He slapped me back. The full force of an Alpha sent me crashing to the ground, my hand landing in the broken shards of my past. Lying there, bleeding, I looked up at the man I was bound to and spoke the forbidden words. "I, Selene of the Silvermoon Pack, reject you, Lycan of the Blackstone Pack, as my Mate." Then I sent a single, clear message through the mind-link to my oldest friend. "He hit me. Bring your warriors. I want this place torn down to the ground."

My name is Ava Green, and I have a secret gift: anything I touch turns to gold when my emotions run high. After 500 transformations, I earned a wish, and on the glowing silk sheets of a night filled with love, I used it to make my husband, Mark Sterling, CEO of the planet' s largest tech company, Innovate Global, along with universal acclaim. The next morning, the news exploded: Mark was the new CEO. But at his first press conference, he introduced his "fiancée": not me, his wife of three years, but Dr. Emily Hayes, his childhood friend. My world shattered as he paraded her, while proclaiming I "knew my place" as his "good luck charm" and the "woman on the side." How could he betray me so completely, after all I' d given him? He thought he had me trapped, controlled by threats to my family. He had no idea that beneath my feigned compliance, I was twisting my gift, transforming every ounce of my humiliation and pain into a dark, potent curse.

My 21st birthday gala was supposed to be a dream: my custom Tiffany gown, a perfect fiancé, a future as the Vanderbilt heiress. But a horrifying premonition shattered it, a vivid nightmare where my cousin Chloe stole my dress and my spotlight, while my fiancé Liam and even my own brother, Ethan, betrayed me. They' d condemn me to a forced marriage with Dimitri Volkov, a Russian oligarch' s volatile son, leading to my complete ruin and tragic end. I woke with a gasp, determined to defy destiny. My first moves were bold: humiliating Chloe publicly, slapping Liam, and forcing a groveling apology from Ethan. But my initial triumph was short-lived. Chloe, with Ethan's complicity, concocted a fake pregnancy to ensnare him, while Liam, desperate for family alliance, joined their despicable plot. Together, they orchestrated the slow poisoning of my beloved father, Harrison Vanderbilt, seizing control of his empire and pushing me towards the very Volkov marriage my vision foretold. How could my own kin commit such monstrous acts? The crushing grief for my father morphed into a cold, burning fury. They thought they had broken me, defeated me into quiet submission. They were wrong. Unknown to them, my father had armed me with a secret dossier and a network of loyalists. As I boarded the jet to Monaco, I was no longer a Vanderbilt heiress being shipped off; I was a predator, unleashed.

I leaned against the old warehouse frame, my body aching and face swollen from the fight with my family. I' d given up everything for Chloe, ready to start a new life with her. But the workshop wasn't quiet; it blazed with obnoxious music, laughter, and champagne bottles. Chloe was there, too, stunning in a sparkling dress, laughing with the very society people she claimed to hate. Then she saw me, and her laughter didn't stop; it only twisted into a slow, cruel smirk. "Look what the cat dragged in," she purred, her voice cold. My brother, Marcus, stepped forward, his smug smile sealing my dread. This wasn' t Chloe' s workshop; it was rented. My entire relationship, my grand sacrifice, was just a bet. A monstrously cruel game, orchestrated by Chloe and my own brother, to see if "golden boy" Ethan Cole would actually throw away his life for a girl he thought was a poor, struggling mechanic. Her friends roared with laughter as they unveiled the prize for their wager: a perfect, gleaming vintage Shelby Cobra, the legendary car I had always dreamed of. Humiliation burned hotter than any physical pain, scorching every inch of my being. "You… you lied about everything?" I rasped, the words choked with disbelief and a crushing sense of betrayal. How could the woman I' d loved, my own blood, orchestrate such a depraved, public spectacle? Was I truly that naive, that blind to believe in such a perfect lie? I stumbled, broken, back out into the night, their mocking laughter echoing like a death knell in the empty street. But as I walked away from the ruins of my life, a chilling realization ignited within me: this wasn't just my humiliation; it was their first move, and now, I was ready to play.

She didn't know whether her choice was right or not, but she had been cornered into the dead end. Three years ago, Vicky left without saying anything to Lincoln. Having been looking for her crazily for half a year, he finally gave up. If not for her daughter, she didn't want to have anything to do with him for the rest of her life, but fate had another plan. The first day they met again after years, she spent a wild night with him. Only by then did he realize that he had never forgotten her. But she still chose to leave him the next day, yet he would never let her go this time.

I flew back to New York on my twenty-fifth birthday, carrying vintage gold cufflinks I spent weeks finding for my billionaire husband, Declan. But when I walked into our townhouse, I found him throwing a massive victory party with Sloane, a glamorous socialite, standing by his side as the proud hostess. "Don't cause a scene. Go upstairs." Declan coldly dismissed me in front of his guests. Even Poppy, the rookie player whose shattered ankle I had painstakingly rebuilt, rolled her eyes and ignored me to suck up to Sloane. Hiding in the shadows, I heard the maids gossiping that everyone thought Sloane was the future Mrs. Hartford. To make matters worse, I discovered Sloane had stolen my anonymous, groundbreaking medical algorithm and was planning to present it as her own. First my husband, then the girl I mentored like family, and now the scientific foundation I had built with my own hands. Declan even texted me to cancel our birthday breakfast without a single apology, treating me like an annoying afterthought. My tears vanished, replaced by a freezing clarity. I signed the divorce papers, leaving them on his desk with zero demands for his money. Then I packed my bags, booked a one-way ticket to Boston, and prepared to destroy them on the global stage.

Cast out by an "elite" family and mocked by high society, Elena shocked everyone by marrying the most powerful man in town. They assumed it was a temporary arrangement-after all, he had said, "The agreement is for two years. After that, we're done." Yet after the wedding, he refused to let her go. "Elena, you can't leave me." As he doted on her, rumors shattered one by one. A renowned painter, top hacker, and tech mastermind-her true identities stunned the world. When a luxury empire announced their lost heiress, all eyes turned to her. "Why did she look exactly like Elena?"

For eighteen years, I was the Tucker family's adopted punching bag, while their biological daughter, Jessica, was treated like royalty. The moment I graduated college, they kicked me out. Brenda Tucker sneered, calling me a jinx who was bankrupting their company. But I knew the truth. They were erasing me to ensure I wouldn't ruin Jessica's chances of seducing Beckett Sinclair, a billionaire hockey heir, at an upcoming high-society banquet. She threw a fifty-thousand-dollar check at my feet like I was a beggar, ordering me to never claim I knew them. My adoptive father, who had ruined his own company with terrible investments, actually grabbed my arm and demanded I beg the Sinclairs for a bailout on my way out. When I refused, they cursed me, screaming that I was destined to rot in some backwater town forever. I walked into the cold New York night with my two scuffed suitcases, feeling completely hollow. I thought I was just a discarded orphan, thrown away by the only family I had ever known. But then, an older man pulled up to the corner. He handed me a faded photograph of a woman who looked exactly like me. "Miss Chloe, I am here to take you home." That was how I found out I wasn't an abandoned orphan. I was maliciously switched at birth, and my real parents-the billionaire owners of the New York Monarchs-had been searching for me for twenty-two years.

For twenty years, I was kept in a gilded cage as the Daugherty family's most valuable political bargaining chip. But on the day of my arranged marriage, my corrupt father gave my fiancé to my cruel younger sister, Brinley. Instead, I was shipped off to the badlands to marry Erik "Grim" Marshall, the brutal President of an outlaw biker club, who was reportedly paralyzed and dying from a shattered spine. Brinley flaunted her designer wedding gown in my face, boasting about how she stole my life and ordered bulldozers to destroy my late mother's rose garden. "Get in the car and crawl off to that biker compound to die." My father coldly threw me to the wolves to save his own skin. When I arrived at the heavily guarded biker compound, the gang members treated me like disposable trash. They tried to extort my dowry and locked me in a dark, rotting quarantine basement to wait for my new husband to die. They all thought I was just a weak, discarded princess, meant to spend my miserable life cleaning bedpans for a crippled warlord before being torn apart by his violent gang. What they didn't know was that I was a lethal combat surgeon and toxicologist. Before I left, I planted a specialized neurotoxin in Brinley's dress that would turn her wedding night into a humiliating, public bloodbath. And as I looked down at the "dying" biker king on the steel table, I pulled out my scalpel. I wasn't here to rot in the dirt; I was going to cure this monster and use him to carve out an empire of my own.

"I'm badly injured. Get over here right now!" Fresh off a grueling twelve-hour open-heart surgery, I received a frantic call from my boyfriend, Derik. Without even changing my scrubs, I rushed through Boston's freezing autumn rain to the bar. But the moment I pushed open the VIP room door, my blood ran completely cold. Derik was sitting perfectly unharmed on the sofa, with a scantily clad, third-rate model straddling his lap. Seeing me soaked to the bone and looking like a mess, the model didn't get off him. Instead, she leaned into his chest with fake innocence: "Sorry to bother you, sis. I just twisted my ankle, but Derik was so worried he insisted a top doctor like you come take a look." The cold rain dripped from my hair. Swallowing the sharp pain in my chest, my voice trembled: "I'm a cardiothoracic surgeon. I can't treat an ankle." "If you can't even look at a twisted ankle, what use are you?" Derik interrupted impatiently, looking at me like I was a cheap object. "Don't forget, my family funded your medical degree. You're nothing but a free maid we took in out of charity! As long as you behave, I might still let you keep the title of my girlfriend." In that instant, my four years of walking on eggshells and compromising felt like a massive joke. Instead of crying and begging like he expected, I looked at him coldly. "You're right, I can't treat it. So I'm officially giving up the position of your girlfriend to her." Leaving Derik staring in shock, I turned around, walked out of the room, and rushed straight into a restroom stall. Just as I was about to let out a sob, the door was violently kicked open. A towering, blood-soaked man forced his way in, pinning me hard against the wall. The overwhelming scent of fresh blood and dangerous masculinity instantly enveloped me. "Keep your mouth shut if you want to live." Hearing the assassins' footsteps approaching outside, my doctor's instinct kicked in. I yanked his belt loose, grabbed his collar, and kissed him fiercely. I thought I had just saved a stranger, until a few days later when Derik's grandmother suffered a severe heart attack. Her life was hanging by a thread, and the surgery required the signature of the family's ultimate patriarch. Outside the ER, Derik arrogantly showed up with his arms around that model. "She's already carrying my child! Once my grandmother wakes up, I'm kicking you out of this hospital!" he yelled at me. Suddenly, the temperature in the hallway seemed to drop below freezing. Flanked by two rows of bodyguards, a terrifyingly powerful man strode out. Derik, who was acting so high and mighty a second ago, instantly turned pale. He shrank like a frightened mouse, trembling as he bowed his head: "U-Uncle..." My mind completely short-circuited, my heart hammering wildly against my ribs. The dangerously lethal man I had fiercely kissed and stripped to bandage in that dirty restroom late that night... was actually Derik's most feared and revered billionaire uncle?!

During the car accident, Katherine's fiancé shoved her toward danger just to save the servant's daughter. Waking up in the ICU shattered every illusion she had left. She called off the engagement, cut ties with her family, and stopped sacrificing herself for people who never valued her. Her brothers mocked her decision, certain she would return begging within days. Instead, their worlds collapsed one after another. Her eldest brother was baffled. "Why is the company's cash flow a complete mess?" Because Katherine had pulled her investment. Her second brother was livid. "Why is mymasterpiece being called plagiarism?" Because Katherine wasn't letting him steal her work anymore. Her youngest brother was panicked. "Why is the whole racing community shutting me out?" Because Katherine had walked away from the team. By the time they realized everything she had done behind the scenes, it was too late. Standing beside her powerful new fiancé, Katherine smiled coldly. "Your chance to fix this expired long ago."

For seven years, I played the perfect, hidden wife to billionaire August Chambers while working quietly as an ER nurse. Three days before our marriage contract expired, he stormed into my emergency room carrying a bleeding woman. It was Allena, his cousin's fiancée. She had suffered a ruptured corpus luteum from their violent, aggressive sex. Instead of hiding his affair, August ordered me to clear the floor and threw a massive check at my face to buy my silence. Later, his friends trapped me in a VIP club. When a waiter tripped, August violently shoved me aside just to protect Allena from a spilled cup of coffee. I crashed into a glass table, a sharp edge slicing deep into my arm. "Apologize to her, and I'll have my driver take you to the hospital." As my blood soaked into the white rug, he stood over me, demanding I get on my knees for his mistress. He didn't know I had faked a miscarriage five years ago to secretly raise our daughter far away from his cruelty. He also didn't know the money he flaunted was pocket change compared to my hidden AI tech empire. I calmly tied a tourniquet around my bleeding arm with my teeth and wiped my blood directly over his heart onto his custom suit. "I'm done with you." The submissive nurse was dead, and it was time to let him burn in the ruins of his own lies.

Three years of marriage, and Jayson Mccormick never once looked at me the way he looks at my sister. I told myself he was just cold. That if I loved him hard enough, he'd eventually love me back. Then I crashed his secret wedding. The bride was Kate-the daughter my parents kept while I was lost. The guests? My entire family. They all knew. They all helped. "She's dying," Jayson said. "Let her have this." So I let her have it all. The husband. The family. The life they built around her. I walked away with nothing-because I knew I could make it all back. After years of silence, the legendary perfumer and the financial genius have returned. They think I have nothing. They don't know that, where they never bothered to look, I've already built an empire of my own. It's time to bury the obedient wife.

Bethany's daughter needed blood after a car accident, but her husband gave the city's entire supply to his secretary for mild anemia. Bethany begged a mysterious man for help and promised to marry him if he saved her child. Although blood and specialists arrived, her daughter died. So did her heart. Keeping her word, Bethany married the man. At their wedding, her remorseful ex fell to his knees and begged her to return. "Bring my daughter back first," she demanded. The powerful tycoon kicked him aside, and pulled his pregnant wife into his protective embrace. "Leave my wife alone, unless you want your company ruined."

For three years, Allison poured herself into marriage, caring for Henry and their home while he gave her nothing but silence. When his first love returned, he handed her divorce papers and cast her aside. Heartbroken, Allison walked away and reclaimed the brilliant life she had buried-becoming a famed jewelry designer, restoration master, and mysterious healer. Only then did everyone learn Henry's unwanted wife was a hidden genius. Late one night, he called, begging for another chance. Before she could answer, a male voice spoke. "Allison, who's that?" Allison answered aloofly, "Just a scammer."