Lethal Honeymoon

My Alpha mate and I survived a deadly rogue attack years ago. He held my bleeding body and swore to the moon that I would be his only Luna. But today, his cold voice echoed through the pack mind-link, officially announcing his mating ceremony with another high-ranking woman. When I returned to the pack manor, his mother humiliated me by using her aura to press my Omega nature into the floor. His new fiancée mocked my low status and flaunted her custom-made diamond ring—the very ring I had designed for my own coronation. To keep me around as a hidden pet, Kael even arranged for me to marry a cheap, low-ranking lookalike of himself. When I resisted, he used his Alpha Command to crush my shoulders, warning me not to ruin his pack's reputation. I didn't understand why the man who once loved me could throw me away like garbage. It wasn't until I accidentally found his diary that I learned his dying mother had used a forbidden blood oath to force his betrayal. She traded her life for mine, and Kael chose his political duty over my soul, playing god with my life and expecting me to quietly bear the agony. My heart completely died. I threw his moonstone ring into the mud, leaving him on his knees desperately digging in the rain. Then, I calmly called the rival Nightfall Alpha. "Meet me at the Priestess temple tomorrow. We are severing the bond."

Emaline Finley was drowning in massive debt to keep her dying father alive, even enduring a humiliating blind date with an arrogant man just to find a financial lifeline. But the fatal blow came from her former best friend, Kitty. Kitty, who was already engaged to Emaline's ex-boyfriend, deliberately told Emaline's father that his expensive treatments were bleeding his daughter dry. Out of extreme guilt, her father threw away his life-saving medication and checked himself out of the hospital to die at home. When Emaline found him, he was coughing up pools of bright red blood, his lungs rapidly collapsing. As the paramedics rushed him away, Kitty called to gloat, mocking Emaline's poverty and telling her to go watch her father die. Emaline was completely shattered, suffocating under the sheer injustice of it all. She had been betrayed, stripped of her dignity, and was now forced to watch her only parent slip away because of a cruel, spiteful lie. Just as her world went dark, a wildly wealthy stranger stepped in. Cullen Preston, the mysterious man who had witnessed her humiliating date, paid the astronomical medical bills and brought in the city's top surgeon to pull her father back from death. But his salvation wasn't charity. "Consider it a dowry." He bought her father's life, and in exchange, he demanded Emaline as his wife.

I borrowed my wealthy best friend's identity to seduce Colonel Ethan Christensen. He was the powerful uncle of my ex-boyfriend, Kayden, who had brutally dumped me for a rich heiress. My revenge plan worked too well. Ethan fell deeply in love with my fake persona and proposed. But then he handed me a thick envelope: a top-secret military background check requiring fingerprints and ten years of history. My fake identity was about to be shattered. I faced federal fraud charges and prison time. More than that, the guilt was eating me alive. Ethan wasn't a pawn; he was a genuinely honorable man who promised to protect me. Terrified and exhausted by the lies, I typed out a full confession, ready to tell him everything and walk away. But right before I hit send, Kayden's new fiancée called to gloat about their engagement. Through the phone, I heard Kayden's voice, lazily mocking my low status. "Tell her to stay home. Tell her to find someone on her own level in the gutter." The rage burned away all my guilt. Why should I be the bigger person while they destroyed my life without a second thought? I deleted the confession and called my friend to hire a black-market hacker. I needed a flawless, forged background in forty-eight hours. I am going to marry Ethan Christensen, and I am going to smile when Kayden is forced to call me "Aunt."

I thought marrying into the Barrett dynasty would be my fairy tale, but my wedding day felt more like a business merger. My husband, Jarret, didn't even look at me as he checked his watch at the altar, treating our marriage like a political chore. Two months later, the world shattered when Jarret's diplomatic convoy was bombed. The news reported him dead, with his twin brother Jayden as the sole survivor. When "Jayden" returned to the estate limping on a cane, the house became a tomb. My mother-in-law and our cousin Cristine immediately moved to freeze my bank accounts and strip me of my rights, calling me a "greedy climber." I was a widow in a house of wolves, but the real nightmare started when I saw "Jayden" drop his cane and passionately kiss Jarret's mistress in the dark. I crept to the study and heard the bone-chilling truth: Jarret wasn't the one who died. He had murdered his own brother in the blast to steal his identity and become a "surviving hero." Even worse, he was already planning my "accidental" overdose once I signed over the family trust. My blood ran cold as I realized the gentle, calloused hands that touched me on my wedding night hadn't belonged to my husband at all. I had fallen in love with Jayden, the man Jarret had just vaporized for a promotion. I tried to escape, but they caught me and forced a sedative into my arm. When I woke up, the family doctor was standing over me with a predatory smile. "Congratulations, Elise. You're ten weeks pregnant." Jarret leaned over my bed, his eyes cold and victorious. They aren't going to kill me anymore. They've turned me into an incubator for an heir, trapped in a golden cage with the monster who murdered the father of my child.

I stood in the center of the ballroom, watching my husband accept credit for the massacre I had meticulously planned. To the underworld, Craig Snyder was the King, a strategic genius who had crippled the Russian mafia. To me, he was the man who had just re-gifted my anniversary present—a Patek Philippe watch—to match the diamond bracelet dangling from his mistress’s wrist. The Senator’s daughter, Chanel, laughed at a joke only he could hear, wearing a red dress and a look of naive adoration that used to be mine. When I confronted him, expecting an apology, Craig didn't just dismiss me. He slapped me across the face in front of the city's elite, the sound echoing like a gunshot. He yanked the wedding ring off my finger, drawing blood, and placed it into Chanel’s palm, calling me a hysterical, barren relic. Later, I found the forged documents. He had signed my name to transfer every asset we built together into his sole possession, leaving me with nothing but a hush-money check. He thought I was just a scorned wife. He forgot that I was the architect of his empire. So, I drove my car off a bridge. I let the world believe I was dead. I let him mourn the woman he destroyed while I watched from the shadows, erasing his existence from my accounts. Six months later, at the Global Crime Summit, Craig stood up with a diamond ring, ready to beg my memory for forgiveness. But the doors opened, and I didn't walk in alone. I walked onto the stage holding the hand of his deadliest rival, Felix Tyson. I wasn't there to take him back. I was there to take his kingdom.

For years, I was the perfect, quiet wife to Dante Moretti, the most feared Mafia Don in New York. I mistook his lavish gifts for affection and his cold protection for care. The ninety-ninth time I asked for a divorce, he laughed. An hour later, his mistress, Isabella, called him. "Get out," he ordered, leaving me on a dark street corner in the pouring rain so he could rush to her side. As I watched his armored car vanish, I finally understood the truth. Our marriage was a transaction, a pact made to settle my father's debts. I was just a placeholder, a substitute living a life designed for Isabella. Every gift, every gesture, was an echo of her tastes. He never saw me. To him, I wasn't his wife; I was a possession. An obligation he could discard at will. He thought I was too weak, too dependent to ever fight back. He believed I couldn't survive without him. He thought I would just run and hide. He was wrong. You don't escape a man like Dante Moretti. He would hunt you to the ends of the earth, not out of love, but out of pride. To break a pact with a Don, you can't just run. You have to be prepared for war. And standing there, drenched and abandoned, I made a new vow: I wouldn't just leave him. I would burn his entire world to ash.