Grump

For five years, I bled to crown Azure Gale House as the champion, enduring brutal combat drills and toxic draughts for my mentor, Dean Alistair Sterling. But at the exact moment of my victory, a poisoned dagger was driven through my spine. When I forced my head around, I was stunned by what I saw. Alistair stood over me with cold, lifeless eyes, casually wiping my blood from his knuckles like spilled tea. Beside him stood Beverly Wynn, a talentless junior who could barely conjure a shield, looking down at me with gloating pity. Alistair slowly raised the ritual blade, revealing the horrifying truth. "Your core will live forever inside Beverly. Be grateful, child. It is the highest honor you could ever achieve." He had never been mentoring me. All those private lectures and isolating training regimens—he had been fattening me like livestock for the slaughter, just to harvest my flawless celestial core for his favorite puppet. I couldn't fight back. The venom turned my magic into a freezing sludge, locking my muscles as they prepared to flay my soul. Until my dying breath, I felt nothing but pure, unadulterated hatred. Out of sheer spite, I reversed the spin of my core, detonating my soul in a blinding flash to ensure they got nothing but ashes. Opening my eyes again, I was back on the day of the Welcoming Ceremony, exactly five years ago. When Alistair confidently offered me his personal seal in front of the entire school, I smiled and walked straight toward the disgraced, sleeping Dean of the worst house in the Keep.

Arlena woke up in a sterile hospital room, exactly one month before the apocalypse would unravel the world. Her grandmother and uncle were looming over her bed, shoving a clipboard into her face. It was the Bone Marrow Donation Consent form for her cousin, Brandi. They had deliberately booked her parents on a cheap European tour, isolating Arlena so they could force her to sign. In her previous life, she had given in. The donation completely crashed her immune system right before the extreme weather and societal collapse hit. While she lay weak and suffering, her family had drained her trust fund and occupied her home. Her aunt had snatched her last loaf of bread with a triumphant sneer, leaving Arlena to freeze to death in a dirty alley. Now, when Arlena rasped out a firm "No," her uncle locked the hospital door and lunged for her throat. "You need to be taught a lesson! Your parents are too soft on you. I'll do it for them!" He roared, ready to take her marrow by brute force. She stared at the monsters she called family. They never cared if the procedure would cripple her. To them, she was nothing but a spare part, a blood bag to be used up and discarded so they could steal her inheritance. But the compliant niece died in the snow. Arlena grabbed a pair of surgical scissors and plunged them straight into her uncle's hand. Tearing the consent form to shreds, she escaped the hospital to unlock her grandfather's hidden pocket dimension. This time, she would build an impenetrable doomsday fortress, and let them rot in the coming hell.

My husband told me I was a contractual obligation, an irritant he was forced to endure after a car crash stole his memory of our love five years ago. He replaced me with a social media influencer, a woman whose lies were as polished as her feed. But when her baby was found with a small cut on her lip, she tearfully accused me of being a jealous monster who attacked an innocent child. My husband, the man I had stood by through everything, didn't hesitate. In a blind rage, he ordered a guard to take a needle and thread and sew my lips shut. "She needs to see nothing. Hear nothing. Say nothing," he commanded, his voice devoid of mercy. He then had me hung upside down in the lobby of my own wellness retreat, a public spectacle for the world to condemn. As I dangled there, bleeding and broken, I finally understood. My blind love and foolish hope had been my downfall. I had loved the wrong man, and he had utterly destroyed me. But they made one fatal mistake. They didn't know about the hidden camera I' d planted in the baby's room. And they had no idea that my family could crush his entire empire with a single phone call.

I fled my werewolf pack five years ago to hide in a human city, all to escape a recurring nightmare. Every full moon, a terrifying, golden-eyed Lycan slaughters everything in his path, forces me to my knees with a crushing Alpha command, and claims I am his fated mate. The vivid dreams were destroying my inner wolf, forcing me to finally agree to return to my pack for the annual Pack Run to seek a cure. But right before my flight home, I accidentally bumped into Rick Miller, the most arrogant, tyrannical Alpha on our college campus. He looked down at the coffee spilled on his expensive leather jacket with pure disdain, publicly humiliating me in front of the entire airport. "Do you have any idea what this jacket costs? Never mind. It's not like you could afford to replace it." As he coldly insulted me, a terrifying realization suddenly froze my blood. He smelled exactly like the ancient pine and storm from my nightmares, and his brief touch sent a mate's electric spark straight to my soul. How could this cruel, spoiled campus bully possibly be the legendary, terrifying Lycan King who haunted my every sleeping moment? As he turned and boarded his private jet, I looked down at my trembling hands and realized the horrifying truth. My trip back to the pack wasn't a journey to heal my trauma. I was walking straight into the cage of the very monster I had spent five years trying to outrun.

I was a top-tier model with a fiancé I trusted to manage every cent I earned. I thought we were building a life together until a blown fuse at the studio sent me home twenty minutes early. The silence of the penthouse was broken by a trail of clothes: Haywood’s silk tie, then a red-soled stiletto that belonged to Brandy, the girl I had mentored like a sister. Through the bedroom door, I watched the man I loved tell his mistress that I was "yesterday's news" while they tangled in the sheets I had picked out six months ago. I didn't scream; I just turned to leave, but the betrayal went deeper than the bedroom. When I checked my banking app, my balance was exactly $12.45. Haywood had liquidated every holding account and savings entry I owned, using a "tax strategy" he’d convinced me of to steal my entire past. Within hours, the man who robbed me was planting stories in the press, claiming I was having a drug-fueled breakdown. He wanted me penniless, homeless, and discredited so no one would believe the truth. He even tried to force me into a "rehab" facility to silence me forever while he promoted his pregnant mistress. I stood on a New York curb with nothing left but a desperate, insane idea born from a headline on my phone. Isham Rhodes, the most ruthless CEO in the city, needed a wife by thirty to keep his empire, and I needed a shield to survive mine. "Mr. Rhodes, I hear you need a puppet," I said, intercepting him in the rain outside City Hall. "I don't want your love. I want a legal document that makes me untouchable." He didn't ask for a romance; he asked for my ID. Now, with a billionaire’s black card in my pocket and a marriage certificate in my hand, I’m going back to the agency to take back everything they stole. The war has just begun.

The man smiling in the silver frame on my vanity was the very same man who, in exactly three months, would wrap his hands around my throat. I knew this because I had already died. I had felt the freezing, silty water of the Hudson River fill my lungs while Alexander watched the life drain from my eyes, his mistress laughing in the background. I had hovered like a ghost above my own funeral, watching the betrayal continue even after my death. My mother, the perfect Mafia widow, stood stoically next to my killer, unaware she had sold her daughter to a butcher. My fiancé checked his watch, bored, waiting to liquidate my inheritance. But then I saw him. Darrian Golden. The Don of the rival clan. The enemy. He stood in the pouring rain, his expensive suit soaked through, staring at my coffin as if the world had ended. When the earth hit the wood, he didn't just cry; he roared in primal agony. My fiancé killed me, but my enemy was the only one who mourned me. "The Commission is waiting," my mother’s voice snapped the timeline back into place. She stood in my doorway, demanding I set the engagement date to secure the territory. She saw a charming Capo; I saw the rat who had cut my father's brake lines. In my first life, I was a trembling bird. In this life, I was the match that would burn the cage down. I smashed the photo frame against the marble table, the sound cracking through the room like a gunshot. "Contact the Golden Clan," I commanded. My mother went pale. "He is a savage, Azalea. He butchers men for sport." "Tell Don Golden that Azalea Kidd is offering a parley," I said, looking out the window at the city that would soon be ours. "Tell him I am offering the only thing he has ever wanted: Me."

Eighteen days after giving up on Jarrett Sheppard, Alayna Dickerson cut off her waist-length hair and called her father, announcing her decision to move to California and attend the UC Berkeley College of Music. Her father, Samuel Dickerson, surprised, asked about the sudden change, reminding her how she'd always insisted on staying with Jarrett. Alayna forced a laugh, revealing the painful truth: Jarrett was getting married, and she, his stepsister, could no longer cling to him. That night, she tried to tell Jarrett about her college acceptance, but his fiancée, Kisha Prince, interrupted with a bubbly call, and Jarrett's tender words to Kisha twisted a knife in Alayna's heart. She remembered how his tenderness used to be hers alone, how he had given her her first harmonica when she was eight, becoming her musical mentor, and how she had poured out her heart to him in a love letter at seventeen, only for him to explode, tearing the letter and yelling, "I'm your brother!" He had stormed out, leaving her to painstakingly tape the shredded pieces back together. Her love, however, didn't die, not even when he brought Kisha home and told her to call her "sister-in-law." Now, she understood. She had to put that fire out herself. She had to dig Jarrett out of her heart.

Five years ago, I saved my fiancé' s life on a mountain in Aspen. The fall left me with a permanent vision impairment-a constant, shimmering reminder of the day I chose him over my own perfect sight. He repaid me by secretly changing our Aspen wedding to Miami because his best friend, Annmarie, complained it was too cold. I overheard him call my sacrifice "sentimental crap" and watched him buy her a fifty-thousand-dollar dress while scoffing at mine. On our wedding day, he left me waiting at the altar to rush to Annmarie' s side for a conveniently timed "panic attack." He was so sure I' d forgive him. He always was. He saw my sacrifice not as a gift, but as a contract that guaranteed my submission. So when he finally called the empty Miami venue, I let him hear the mountain wind and the chapel bells before I spoke. "My wedding is about to start," I told him. "But it' s not with you."

For fifty dollars, I sold a piece of my dignity to the school's golden boy. I was eighteen, starving, and desperate enough to take his bet. That single photo destroyed my life. I became "Fifty-Dollar Ella," the school slut, haunted by whispers and scorn. My stepmother and stepsister reveled in my public humiliation, ensuring my life was a living hell. I spent the next decade clawing my way to the top of Wall Street, but I died alone, filled with the bitter regret of a stolen youth. Until the end, I never understood why they all hated me so much. Then, I opened my eyes. I was eighteen again, back in that classroom, moments before the bet that ruined me. A shadow fell over my desk. It was him. "Meet me after school," Javier Mack whispered, a smug look on his face. But this time, the scared, hungry girl was gone. In her place was a shark. And I was ready to play.

My husband, the tech billionaire Jackson Watkins, was perfect. For two years, he adored me, and our marriage was the envy of everyone we knew. Then a woman from his past appeared, holding the hand of a pale, sick four-year-old boy. His son. The boy had leukemia, and Jackson became consumed with saving him. After an accident at the hospital, his son had a seizure. In the chaos, I fell hard, a sharp pain shooting through my abdomen. Jackson ran right past me, carrying his son, and left me bleeding on the floor. I lost our baby that day, alone. He never even called. When he finally appeared at my hospital bed the next morning, he was wearing a different suit. He begged for forgiveness for being absent, not knowing the real reason for my tears. Then I saw it. A dark hickey on his neck. He had been with her while I was losing our child. He told me his son's dying wish was to see his parents married. He begged me to agree to a temporary separation and a fake wedding with her. I looked at his desperate, selfish face, and a strange calm settled over me. "Okay," I said. "I'll do it."

I woke up in the hospital after my husband tried to kill me in an explosion. The doctor said I was lucky—the shrapnel had missed my major arteries. Then he told me something else. I was eight weeks pregnant. Just then, my husband, Julius, walked in. He ignored me and spoke to the doctor. He said his mistress, Kenzie, had leukemia and needed an urgent bone marrow transplant. He wanted me to be the donor. The doctor was aghast. "Mr. Carroll, your wife is pregnant and critically injured. That procedure would require an abortion and could kill her." Julius's face was a mask of stone. "The abortion is a given," he said. "Kenzie is the priority. Florence is strong, she can have another baby later." He was talking about our child like it was a tumor to be removed. He would kill our baby and risk my life for a woman who was faking a terminal illness. In that sterile hospital room, the part of me that had loved him, the part that had forgiven him, turned to ash. They wheeled me into surgery. As the anesthetic flowed into my veins, I felt a strange sense of peace. This was the end, and the beginning. When I woke up, my baby was gone. With a calmness that scared even me, I picked up the phone and dialed a number I hadn't called in ten years. "Dad," I whispered. "I'm coming home." For a decade, I had hidden my true identity as a Horton heiress, all for a man who just tried to murder me. Florence Whitehead was dead. But the Horton heiress was just waking up, and she was going to burn their world to the ground.

For seven years, I dedicated my life to Liam Miller, the charismatic CEO, building his empire and standing by his side as his quiet fiancée. I was his unwavering support, his peace in a world of ambition and noise. Then, an anonymous text ripped my world apart: "Liam is in danger. The Ophidian Club. Now." I found him laughing, his arm around a notorious poker player, Isabella Ross, betting away millions of his company' s money, my contribution, on her. My head hit the floor, and in the haze, I heard his voice, cold and dismissive, "Don' t worry about her. She' s just a charity case." At home, I heard Isabella's cruel words, "She's like a lost puppy you picked up, Liam. Loyal, but ultimately just a pet you can get rid of." "A charity case? A pet?" The words tasted like ash. My seven years, my identity as a software engineer who built his company, reduced to a "convenient background" for his rise. Why had I meant so little? Why was I just a substitute, a cheap copy of a woman he truly loved? Standing on that stage, forced to smile as his "perfect partner" for the cameras, I vowed that when his deal was secured, I would take my settlement and disappear forever. But when Alex Vance, Liam' s ruthless rival, stepped into my life, claiming Liam had turned my existence into a cruel experiment, I knew I had to fight back, not just for freedom, but for survival.

The morning sun streamed into my penthouse, just like any other day. My fiancé, Liam, walked in with coffee and a croissant, his perfect smile radiating devotion. But the world had been dark just moments before, stained with the taste of blood and the memory of his smiling face as I lay dying on the cold floor of an institution. Now, it was two years before that horrific end. Two years before he destroyed everything and had me committed to a mental asylum. The last thing I remembered was his betrayal, his cruel laughter as my life, my company, and my sanity were systematically stripped away for his ambition. I watched him now, playing the part of the loving partner, reminiscing about the "Project Titan" software that was once my life' s work, the very foundation he would steal and rebrand as his own. He told me I was working too hard, that he would "take the pressure off." It was the same speech, the same insidious opening move he' d used before. A practiced performance that had once fooled me completely. How could I have been so blind, so naive, to open my heart and my world to such a snake? The memories of his lies, his manipulation, his ultimate act of sending me to an early grave, burned through me. But this time, the pain was fuel, not weakness. My smile might have been soft, but inside, a cold certainty settled deep in my bones. This wasn't a dream. It was a do-over. He thought he had won. He thought this was the start of everything for him. He was right. It was the start of his end. And I was going to enjoy every second of it.

At eighty, I lay dying in a sterile hospital room, a life I felt was utterly wasted flashing before my eyes. My wife of sixty years, Olivia Hayes, sat beside me, her stoic composure a familiar mask. Then, her whispered confession shattered everything: "Tell Daniel… I've always loved him." Daniel, her colleague from decades ago. Sixty years of quiet resentment, of being a placeholder, a fool. Rage burned in my dying body-a useless, consuming fire. Then, darkness. Light. Soft blankets. My young mother' s beaming face. It was 1987. I was a baby again, but the memories of my eighty-year life, and Olivia's betrayal, were searing. "Mom," I squeaked, my infant voice unwavering, "I won't marry Olivia Hayes." Years later, at eighteen, the name Olivia was a constant dread. Our families had an arranged engagement, a relic I had accepted in my past life. This time, it was a prison sentence. I saw her with Daniel Lee at the community center, laughing the unguarded laugh I rarely saw in our marriage, her caring gestures confirming the truth. She approached me, that familiar stoic calm in place, perhaps to touch my arm. I stepped back, a deliberate movement. "Are you avoiding me?" she asked, her tone flat. I met her gaze directly. "We should keep our distance, Olivia. It's better for everyone." I walked away. My past life, a suffocating nightmare. This life would be different. This life was for me. I would be free.

Vegas wedding day. I stood in my dress, heart pounding, ready for my fiancé, Bryce. Then, a scene out of a nightmare unfolded: a woman and a child burst in, the boy crying, "Daddy!" Unbelievably, Bryce revealed this was his ex, Kelli, and their son, Jayden. He announced he was marrying her instead—right then and there—and asked me to pose for a "friend photo" for social media. My world shattered as they walked into the chapel, leaving me publicly humiliated. The nightmare, I soon learned, was just beginning. Not content with abandoning me, Bryce and his crew invaded my beautiful Malibu home, trashing it, defiling my most cherished possessions. The very next day, they threw a brazen party on my private lawn, mocking my pain. When I confronted them, their malicious posse turned violent, shoving and hitting me, screaming accusations that I was the "homewrecker." Bryce, the coward, just stood by. I was bruised, violated, and utterly alone, my sanctuary desecrated. How could someone I loved unleash such monstrous cruelty? How could I, the victim, suddenly become the villain in the eyes of a hostile crowd? My spirit was crushed; I felt utterly helpless against this wave of injustice. Just as I thought all hope was lost, a sleek black SUV screeched to a halt. Nolan. My oldest friend for ten years. He'd left a multi-billion dollar deal mid-signing to get here. He stepped out, eyes blazing, and in a voice that brooked no argument, he simply said, "I'm her husband."

I woke up to the stench of rust and rotting flesh, no longer a master botanist who commanded life itself, but a D-class exile dumped on a wasteland planet. Memories that weren't mine flooded in. I was framed by my stepsister, betrayed by my fiancé, and banished by my own family to the Ashfall Peninsula to die. The original girl actually starved to death in despair. The moment I opened my eyes, a scavenger tried to smash my skull with a rusty pipe just to eat me. After I killed him to survive, I discovered a harsher truth: in this universe, plant seeds are classified as A-level strategic resources, completely monopolized by the Imperium. But the universe had a sick sense of humor. A mandatory background scan suddenly triggered a galactic broadcast: I, the exiled trash, was a perfect genetic match for the Imperium's top war hero, General Alexander Orr. The family that ruthlessly erased my existence instantly saw me as a golden ticket. My cheating ex-fiancé was dispatched to drag me back, furious that his "property" was matched with someone else. They all thought I was still that weak, naive girl they could manipulate. But as I held the pure, glowing Life Source Crystals I had secretly extracted from the scrap heap, a cold smile crept onto my face. "I didn't come here to die. I came here to build an empire." I turned my back on the galactic broadcast and stepped into the deadly wilderness.

I knelt on the cold stone of the Dragon God Altar, waiting to marry Lord Harper Carney. It was my only chance to escape the gilded cage of my family. But when Harper finally arrived, he wasn't alone. His arm was wrapped tightly around my cousin, Hettie. Right in front of the entire court, he coldly announced that our marriage was a mistake. Hettie leaned into his embrace, wearing a triumphant smile while playing the innocent victim. The assembled nobles openly jeered at me. They mocked my greatest failing—that I was a worthless "Dragonless" born without the inner fire. My own father was furious, not at them, but at me. He demanded I go to Hettie's estate and beg for her forgiveness. When I refused, he threatened to cut off all my funds and revoke my only job at the Royal Scribes' Office. I was publicly abandoned, stripped of my dignity, and left with absolutely nothing. I didn't cry, and I didn't scream. Why should I be the one to apologize when they were the ones who betrayed me? For years, I had endured their abuse, treated like a pawn to be sacrificed at will. But looking at their smug faces, my despair turned into cold resolve. I took off my betrothal coronet and dropped it at Harper's feet, publicly nullifying the contract myself. I thought I would have to face the ruin alone, until a mysterious, powerful man with burning golden eyes stepped out of the shadows. "Marry me," he said. "I will be your shield, and we will crush them together."

Lillian woke in a werecreature universe as a total loser. Good news was that women ruled here and could take multiple mates, yet she still ended up as the one everyone looked down on. Compared to her talented sister at every turn, she watched her first match get stolen and her next four mates reject her without mercy. The first mate was the King of Succubine himself. On their very first meeting, he warned Lillian that he was only staying long enough to recover from his injuries-and that there could never be anything between them. The second mate was a merman. He took one look at her and said he had no interest in a loser like her, tossing her some cash so she could break off their bond herself. The third mate was the progenitor vampire-over a thousand years old. He admitted to admiring her sister instead and made it clear he had no interest in a layabout like Lillian. Lillian cut every bond and chose her own path instead. But as she rose higher and higher, those same men returned, full of regret and begging her to look at them again. The fourth mate was a werewolf Lillian had rescued from an underground fighting ring. She thought he might actually stay-until he revealed himself as royalty. And of course, he wanted to break their bond for more power.

I took a blood-binding curse to save my younger sister Danae, ruining my magic affinity forever. Instead of gratitude, she stole our mother's token and convinced our father to dump me at a school for magical rejects. In my past life, I actually believed her sweet lies. I thought she was shielding me from the cruel aristocratic academies. I went to that unfashionable boarding school, only to be ground into dust by rogue curses and treated like garbage. Meanwhile, she lived in a palace, surrounded by devoted admirers and endless luxury. When I was finally dragged to the execution pyre, my own father and sister stood in the high stands, watching me burn alive with cold satisfaction. I died screaming in agony, clawing at my scorched skin, utterly betrayed by the family I had bled for. Until the flames consumed me, I didn't understand. Why did the sister I sacrificed everything for want me dead? Why was my devotion rewarded with a fiery grave? Opening my eyes again, I was back on the very morning of my departure to that trash magic school. Danae walked into my room with a warm mug of milk, a razor-thin smear of satisfaction flashing across her lips. She thought she was the only one who had returned to the past. "Sister, you look terrible. Did you have that nightmare again?" This time, I will gladly take the train to the school of rejects. Not to hide in shame, but to build an altar of bone and ruin out of everyone who burned me alive.

I entered a contractual marriage with Cyril Sweeney just to protect my antique restoration studio from local developers. I thought he was merely an eccentric, wealthy cargo pilot, but I soon realized I had married a monster. His skin was colder than ice, he could throw a grown man across a room effortlessly, and strangers in tailored suits dropped to their knees calling him "My Lord." But the most agonizing part was his violent rejection of me. Whenever I got close, or accidentally scraped my skin and bled, he would shove me away like I was a plague. His glacial eyes would turn pitch black, his throat convulsing as if fighting a demon. "Run before I kill you!" He roared at me with a feral, terrifying rasp, his hands clawing at his own throat. The final straw came when I found an antique pocket watch on his desk, holding a faded photograph of a young girl. I realized I wasn't a wife; I was just a convenient, nameless replacement for a ghost he still carried over his dead heart. I didn't understand why he looked at me with such desperate agony, nor why my blood drove him to the brink of madness. I didn't know the girl in the photograph was actually me from ten years ago. As I slammed my truck into reverse to escape his haunted glass villa, I had no idea the real nightmare was just beginning.

For five years, I poured my blood and sweat into restoring ancient manuscripts to save my fiancé Chalmers's family business from bankruptcy. But on the morning of our wedding, he abandoned me at the altar. He rushed off to comfort his childhood friend, Edla, who claimed to have a catastrophic injury. Under local guild laws, if I wasn't legally married by sunset, Chalmers's family would seize the proprietary rights to every single manuscript I had restored. When I went home to pack my things, Edla showed up leaning on Chalmers, wearing bandages stained with fake bakery dye and a luxury sweater that still had the anti-theft tag attached. She cried theatrical tears, begging me not to punish Chalmers. Instead of seeing her obvious lies, Chalmers called me a heartless, spiteful statue. He demanded I apologize, arrogantly offering a cheap steak dinner as compensation for my ruined wedding. He sneered that no man in town would ever marry a penniless orphan like me, and I would be begging on his doorstep by the end of the week. I looked at the man I had supported through 47 of Edla's orchestrated emergencies, feeling utterly disgusted by his endless manipulation and greed. Did he really think my dignity and my life's work were worth so little? I threw his cheap engagement ring directly into the greasy trash can. Then, I walked straight into the municipal registry hall and proposed to Everette Holmes—a paralyzed, debt-ridden outcast who radiated an unnerving, freezing aura. This time, I would rather tie my fate to a dangerous stranger than let Chalmers own my future.

My engagement to Kile, the heir of House Golden, was witnessed by the Duke himself. I thought my days as a helpless orphan were over. But right before our wedding, he coldly informed me that my status was being revoked. I was to enter his family as a lesser consort. The title of primary wife was being given to his lover, Journey. She hid behind Kile, wearing a spotless white dress and trembling like a fragile lotus. "Cassie, please don't blame him, I can live without a title," she cried, playing the perfect victim. Kile shielded her, glaring at me with pure disgust, shouting that I was being completely unreasonable. The next day, the entire Elder Council cornered me in their grand hall. They told me that as a "Dragonless" nobody, I should be immensely grateful for any scrap they threw my way. They all stared at me, waiting for me to swallow my pride and accept a lifetime of humiliation. They thought I was entirely broken. They thought I had no backing and no choice but to bow down to their cruelty. Instead, I looked straight at the Chief Elder and smiled. "I refuse to be a lesser consort," I announced clearly, watching Kile's smug expression freeze. "But to preserve our families' dignity, I will fulfill the contract." I looked right into Kile's shocked eyes. "I will marry your dead older brother, Lord Ayden."

I was forced to replace my sister and marry Lord Gideon Carlisle, a crippled Dragon Lord rumored to be a monster whose brides always ended up dead. But the real danger wasn't my terrifying husband. It was Audrey, the fragile, innocent girl he took in and fiercely protected. She lured me to a cliff, confessed to murdering his first two brides, and tried to shove me into the abyss. When her clumsy attack failed and she nearly fell herself, Gideon's shadow guard rushed in to save her. But he only saw the aftermath. Audrey immediately burst into tears, pointing a shaking finger at me. "It was her! She pushed me! She tried to kill me!" Without hesitation, Gideon chose to believe his precious ward. He looked at me with cold, golden dragon eyes, condemning his own wife without a trial. He threatened me with dragon's flame and locked me in my chambers, while Audrey smiled triumphantly behind his back. I couldn't believe a supposedly brilliant Dragon Lord could be so utterly blind, protecting the very monster who had cursed his life while treating me like the villain. But I wasn't the weak, original bride who would just accept this injustice and die quietly. I calmly walked back into his study, pulled out a vial of Truth Serum, and forced it down Audrey's throat so my blind husband could finally hear the truth.

On my wedding day, I caught my fiancé in my stepsister's arms. She was pregnant with his child. And instead of begging for forgiveness, Damian Harrison laughed in my face. He admitted he had always planned to marry me, dump me in some forgotten country estate, and keep my stepsister as the woman he truly loved. So I burned my wedding veil in front of the entire Harrison family and walked away. That should have been the end of it. Instead, Damian's mother sent armed men after me. Why? Because I was a Dragonless nobody from the borderlands, and in her eyes, humiliating a Harrison was a crime worse than her son's betrayal. I had no dragon blood. No powerful family willing to protect me. Not even my own father would risk offending the Harrisons for my sake. If I wanted to survive, I needed someone they feared more than they hated me. So I returned to the Harrison estate and made an outrageous demand. I would marry Damian's uncle. Gideon Harrison-the legendary Dragon Lord, the kingdom's greatest war hero... and a man everyone believed was dead. Perfect. As his widow, I would outrank the man who betrayed me, become his aunt by marriage, and gain enough power to make every Harrison who humiliated me regret it. I signed the marriage pact without hesitation. Then a knight burst into the ancestral hall with impossible news. Gideon Harrison was alive. My dead husband wasn't dead. He was being brought home.

On my twenty-first birthday, I was just a broke orphan sitting in a dark apartment, staring at an overdue rent notice. A freak lightning strike suddenly shattered my reality, tearing me from Earth and dropping me into a primal alien jungle, where I was cornered by a massive white tiger. I thought I was dead, but I woke up in a high-tech hospital surrounded by people with animal ears, scales, and tails. The doctor looked at me with pity and delivered the crushing truth. "Earth is a lost world, Anya. To us, you are a purebred human relic." In this Varden Empire ruled by genetically superior Beastkin, I was painfully fragile, physically weak, and treated like a delicate museum exhibit. Worse, I learned that the monstrous tiger from the jungle was actually Marshal Jaxon Kensington, the ruthless and overwhelmingly powerful commander of the Imperial Army. I felt completely helpless and suffocated. I was trapped in an alien world where I was inferior to everyone, terrified of the military monster who had brought me here. Why was I dragged into this brutal universe just to be a weak specimen? What I didn't know was that the Empire's registry had just paired my DNA with the Marshal's, flashing an impossible 99% compatibility match. By Imperial Law, the cold, untouchable commander was now permanently bound to me, and his terrifying, primal obsession had just been awakened.