Huang Xiaohuai

I thought the Burch family gave me a loving home when they took me out of the orphanage. But when the global deep freeze apocalypse hit, my adoptive parents mercilessly kicked me out of the bunker to freeze to death. As I lay dying in the snow, covered in horrific purple frostbite, my adoptive sister Kendal walked past me in a pristine designer jacket. Around her neck was my only childhood possession—an antique gold necklace my adoptive mother had ripped off my neck to give to her. Kendal gloated, bragging that my pendant held a magical space with infinite supplies and fresh food while the rest of the world starved. I realized I had spent years emptying my life savings to fund their luxury cars and fake medical emergencies. They had drained my bank accounts, stolen my bloodline's heirloom, and used my magical lifeline to live like royalty while leaving me to die. I took my last ragged breath in that blinding blizzard, consumed by a toxic hatred. Why was I so hopelessly weak? Why did I let them take everything from me? Opening my eyes again, the painful frostbite scars were gone. My skin was warm. I grabbed my phone. The screen lit up: November 12. It was exactly three days before the world ended. When my adoptive mother called, faking a tearful emergency to demand another thirty thousand dollars, I smiled coldly. "Just tell me where to send the money, Mom." This time, I'm taking my space back, and I'm going to drain them dry.

I used my ten-million-dollar dowry and exhausted my health to keep my mate's bankrupt pack afloat and buy life-saving elixirs for his dying mother. However, when Alpha Justin finally returned from the war, he not only reeked of another she-wolf's scent, but also slapped a Royal Decree on the table, coldly announcing that Gamma Brenna would be his "Co-Luna." His parasitic family, who had survived entirely on my blood and wealth, immediately turned on me, mocking me as a "wolfless orphan" whose family was slaughtered. "Brenna is a warrior; she doesn't have the time to raise children," Justin told me arrogantly. "So, you will act as their unpaid nanny. If you behave, I'll sleep with you just once to give you a pup as a 'consolation prize.' But my heart and body belong entirely to Brenna." They demanded I swallow this ultimate humiliation, step aside, and continue funding their luxurious lifestyle. They thought I was a pathetic, wolfless victim who would obediently act as their personal ATM just to avoid being cast out into the woods as a Rogue. They didn't know that my "wolfless" body harbored a rare, ancient White Wolf. They didn't know that Justin's so-called "heroic glory" was stolen-built on the slaughtered corpses of my family to cover up his own cowardice. And they certainly didn't know I had already visited the Alpha King. Keep your consolation prize, Justin. I'm packing up every last cent of my ten million dollars and securing my Royal Severance Decree. With the entire Royal Army standing behind me, I'm going to sit back and watch your arrogant pack starve to death.

For four years, Kasie Carlisle played the flawless wife to the wealthy Byrd family heir. Then, a notification on their shared tablet shattered everything: a photo of her husband, Harris, naked in bed with her college friend. Before Kasie could confront him, her mother-in-law called. She'd known about the affair for months. She'd already prepared divorce papers. One million dollars to disappear quietly. "For a girl from your background, that's more than you could earn in a lifetime." Kasie smiled. Cold. Sharp. Terrifying. "My price is ten billion. And half of everything." She had the evidence. She had the leverage. And Margo had no choice but to sign. So Kasie played the oblivious wife while Harris, blind to the trap closing around him, paraded his mistress through their home, laughed as his friends mocked her in public, and dragged her across a ballroom floor when she finally fought back. Then came the black SUV, deliberately ramming her car off the highway. Bleeding and concussed in the hospital, she watched Harris storm in—not to comfort her, but to accuse her of staging a suicide attempt for attention. He threw her blood-stained anniversary dress in the trash. He whispered sweet nothings to his mistress on the phone while she lay in the next room. He never suspected a thing. Lying in the dark, Kasie felt the last ember of her love turn to ash. She had almost died, and he only cared about how it made him look. So she stopped fighting. Feigning complete defeat, she resigned from the family business, told Harris she was emotionally broken, and asked for a solo trip to Italy to clear her head. As Harris smugly booked her flight, believing he had finally tamed his disobedient wife, Kasie picked up her phone and texted her lawyer. "The fish is on the hook. Initiate phase two." He never saw it coming.

I walked into my apartment dripping wet from the rain, only to hear a guttural moan coming from the bedroom. I told myself it was just the TV, but my shaking hands could barely fit the key into the lock. When the door swung open, I saw a pair of red stilettos on the floor and my fiancé's favorite silk tie discarded like trash. I pushed the bedroom door open to find Javon in our bed with another woman, the sheets I had just washed two days ago tangled around them. Instead of apologizing, Javon looked at me with a sneer and barked, "You don't know how to knock?" He claimed he paid the bills, even though I worked double shifts just to keep the lights on while he chased a promotion he'd never get. When I slapped him, he didn't show remorse-he called me a "stupid bitch" and lunged at me with a look of pure malice. My life was a total wreck; my fiancé was a cheater, and my grandmother was about to be kicked out of her nursing home because I was forty dollars short of the payment. I felt like I was falling off a cliff with no one to catch me. Why was the man I loved treating me like a cockroach in my own home? Just as Javon moved to strike me, a shadow fell over the room. A man in an expensive black trench coat stood in the doorway, his presence sucking the oxygen out of the room. It was Carmine Wilkinson, a man I had never met but whose terrifying calm made my heart stop. He didn't look at the trash on the bed; he only looked at me. He handed me a monogrammed handkerchief and asked one simple, brutal question. "Do you want revenge?" I nodded, desperate for any lifeline in the middle of my imploding world. He didn't offer me a shoulder to cry on; he looked me in the eye and gave me an ultimatum that would change my life forever. "Good. Get your ID. We're going to City Hall."

My name is Sarah Miller, and I built an empire for the man I loved. AuraTech, David Chen' s tech company, was on the brink of collapse until I rescued it by writing the core algorithm that became its foundation. He promised me the world in return. Now, he' s a tech titan, and I' m a prisoner, framed for corporate espionage-the very crime he committed against my family. He had me locked away in a remote, high-tech detention facility while he and his new fiancée, Chloe Davis, flaunted the smart-fabric made from my stolen family designs. Chloe, David' s fiancée, arrived to mock me, wearing a dress made from my stolen code. She reveled in telling me how David not only stole my family' s unique textile archives but then crushed their business, turning their legacy into marketable assets for AuraTech. Everything they treasured was gone, destroyed by the man I loved. The pain intensified when I recalled the truth I discovered just before my arrest: I was pregnant with David' s child. The stress of his betrayal and my imprisonment led to a miscarriage. Yet, in front of me, David coolly ordered the deletion of my family' s digital archives, knowing they contained the ultrasound scans and heartbeat recording of our baby. He erased our child. He believed he had broken my spirit, but he was wrong. Fuelled by unimaginable grief and rage, I activated the fail-safe I had hidden in AuraTech' s core code. The digital curse, woven through every system and product built on my stolen work, would turn his triumph into a torment, making all who celebrated his fraud into living antennas for my pain.

Dr. Evelyn Reed had finally done it. Three years of relentless work, the neural interface cure for her paralyzed husband, Ethan, was a success. A triumphant smile touched her lips as she reached for her phone to share the life-changing news. But an email caught her eye, a cheerful invitation that turned her world to ice. "Dr. Ethan Vance and Miss Tiffany Reed request the pleasure of your company at the celebration of their marriage." Ethan. Her husband. Tiffany. Her own niece. It was a sick joke, a complete error, yet the high-end Parisian wedding agency confirmed its legitimacy. Her joy evaporated, replaced by a cold dread as she drove through the night, a ghost to a celebration she was never meant to see. She saw him there, standing, whole, laughing, with Tiffany tucked into his arm, radiant in white. He kissed her, a tender kiss meant for the world to see, and Evelyn' s world tilted off its axis. Then she heard them talking, overheard their cruel confessions: he had always loved Tiffany, while Evelyn was merely "a necessary step," "a convenient solution." The man she had sacrificed everything for, the man who had promised his undying love, had been betraying her for two years with her own blood. The pain of betrayal, the hollowness of her sacrifice, the absolute injustice of it all, left her hollowed out, empty of tears. She watched him walk away from her in the hospital, choosing Tiffany, right after a fire, right after she found out a bomb, orchestrated by Tiffany, nearly killed her. This wasn't a love triangle; it was a war, and she was losing. Driven by a quiet, ice-cold resolve, Evelyn began to fight back.

The whistle blew, but the hit came a second later-a sickening crunch that echoed across the field. I watched my son, Caleb, collapse, his dreams of a football scholarship shattering with his knee. Ryan Blakely, the star linebacker from the town' s wealthiest, most powerful family, stood over him, flexing, a sneer on his face. Then his father, Mr. Blakely, offered me a paltry sum to sign an NDA, dismissing the career-ending injury as an "in-game accident," outright threatening my livelihood if I didn't comply, all while the corrupt sheriff and coach turned a blind eye. I saw my son's spirit break as he was mocked on crutches, and I realized nobody would help; the system was rigged. But then, I remembered a promise, a fading beacon in the dark: a general, Maria' s commanding officer, who once told me, "We don't leave our own behind," after handing me my Medal of Honor wife' s medal. With nothing left to lose, I clutched that medal and drove toward a military base, hoping a general's word still meant something.

The first thing I remembered from my last life was the smell. Stale beer, blood, and the cheap, cloying perfume Jenna always wore. I was on the cold concrete floor of my brewery, my head bleeding, watching my fiancé, Liam, kiss my best friend, Jenna. They had just pushed me. 'Is she dead?' Jenna asked, pulling away. 'Doesn' t matter,' Liam said, his voice cold. 'With her gone, the brewery is ours. Her parents will be lost.' They left me there to die. In that life, their betrayal led to my family' s ruin and my own demise, bled dry by their endless demands for 'business expenses' that were really just lavish trips and gifts. I perished, feeling the bitter sting of ultimate betrayal and injustice. But then, I somehow returned. I was staring at that same man, my fiancé Liam, very much alive, standing in my parents' living room. He was giving me the exact same ultimatum, demanding my family' s money for his 'Master Brewer program' and Jenna' s living expenses. This was the moment I chose him over my family last time. The moment I signed their death warrant and my own. Not this time. This time, the memory of my own blood on the brewery floor was a burning clarity. This time, Liam and Jenna would pay. This time, I' m strong enough to fight back.

I was at that awful class reunion, the air thick with fake smiles and bitter memories. Jessica' s sneering laughter echoed in my ears, and then, a crushing pain in my chest. Darkness. I was dead. Not a peaceful passing, but a final, bitter end to a life they' d stolen. Mike Johnson, my childhood friend, and his toxic girlfriend, Jessica Smith, had meticulously orchestrated my downfall years ago. They framed me for hacking, shattered my dreams of a Stanford scholarship, and left me with dead-end jobs and a broken spirit. My death at that reunion was just the cruel crescendo of their lifelong amusement at my expense. The injustice burned hotter than any physical pain. Why did I have to suffer for their venomous games? Why was my future stolen, and they got away scot-free? The sheer, unfair waste of it all. Then, sunlight streamed through my bedroom window. My old room, exactly as it was before everything went wrong. My hands, seventeen again. I wasn't just back in time, I was back, a second chance. But a chilling notification on my phone confirmed my worst fear. "Did you see it? Mike and Jessica at the game last night!" They were back too. And they remembered. They thought they had a cheat code to life. They were wrong. This time, I was ready.

Our anniversary was supposed to be a night of celebration, a quiet evening in our Brooklyn brownstone, cementing the perfect life my husband Ethan and I had built. But a sudden fall down our dimly lit stairs ripped that perfect facade apart, plunging me into darkness and pain. In the sterile blur of the Manhattan hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness, I heard my husband' s voice, clear and cold, talking to a doctor: "The increased sedative dose is my directive... She won't feel it... The fetus is viable, but proceed with the induction... It's critical for Liam's formal introduction to the Miller Family Foundation." Our baby, gone. My legs, paralyzed. Ethan' s sorrow felt too practiced, too deep. As I lay 'unconscious,' I overheard him tell his lawyer something monstrous: the fall wasn' t an accident; it was orchestrated. My baby' s death, planned. My paralysis, a consequence he accepted. All for a child named Liam, and a debt to a woman named Olivia. My entire marriage was a meticulously crafted lie, my life a pawn in his ruthless game. How could the man who promised me forever shatter my world so utterly, all for a 'debt' and a hidden son, ensuring I could never have children again? But beneath the feigned despair, a steel resolve took root. They thought I was broken and gone. They were about to learn that Sarah Miller doesn' t break, she rebuilds – and she comes back for everything they took.

As a successful surgeon, I, Michael, dedicated my life to my chosen sister, Chloe, whose critical lung condition required a transplant. My biological sister, Sarah, however, remained nothing but a painful, inconvenient burden, ignored and resented for years. Terminally ill and near death, Sarah made a final, desperate call from her hospital bed, her voice weak as she tried to say goodbye. My only response? A chilling, impatient "If you're not dead, stop bothering me!" before I hung up. I dismissed every subsequent plea from her university, every warning about her rapidly deteriorating health, convinced she was just a "drama queen" faking for attention. Even when her name appeared on the critical admissions list at the very hospital where Chloe was scheduled for her life-saving surgery, I coldly scoffed, "She's doing this to ruin my day." How could I, a healer, allow such a festering hatred to consume me, built on a lie I blindly believed for years? The sheer, crushing weight of Sarah's silent suffering and my monstrous indifference hangs over me, a chilling testament to my unforgivable cruelty. But then, the unimaginable truth was slammed into my reality: the anonymous donor who saved Chloe's life was none other than Sarah. In a single, devastating moment, her ultimate sacrifice exposed the agonizing depths of my abandonment, shattering my carefully constructed world and setting me on a course of inescapable, public ruin.

If she could go back to her previous life, Olivia would not divorce Geoffrey and would heed his pleas to not abort their child. Because of her foolish decisions, the man she loved hooked up with her best friend, and even conspired to arrange her car accident. It was only then that she realized Geoffrey's goodness. When she was reborn and woke up in their bridal room, she promised herself that she would not choose the same path as before. All she wanted now was to live a good life with Geoffrey.

Allison Montgomery was waiting at the airport when an audio alert from her parked Range Rover flashed on her phone. Assuming it was a break-in, she checked the live dashcam feed, only to see her fiancé, Finn, and her younger sister, Cheyanne, passionately making out in the backseat. "Tell me I'm better than her," Cheyanne whispered. "Tell me I'm better than Allison." "You are," Finn gasped. "God, you are." When Allison confronted her family with the video, she expected justice. Instead, her uncle and mother fiercely defended the cheaters. They blamed Allison's "cold and frigid" nature for pushing Finn away, victim-blaming her in front of the entire household staff. To protect their corporate alliance, her uncle ruthlessly announced that the engagement would be transferred to Cheyanne, and threatened to strip Allison of her inheritance. Stripped of her fiancé, her family, and her dignity, Allison realized her pristine twenty-year life was a complete lie. The people who were supposed to love her were actively protecting her abusers, leaving her utterly isolated and burning with a cold, protective rage. Refusing to be their victim, Allison targeted Finn's ruthless, billionaire uncle, Adam Kensington, proposing a fake marriage to secure the capital needed to crush her family. But when the notoriously untouchable Wall Street phantom not only accepted her proposal, but demanded she immediately move into his penthouse to raise his secret daughter, Allison realized she had just sold her soul to the devil.

For four years, I played the part of the perfect, pathetic wife to my billionaire husband, Damian Nunez. Bleeding from a gunshot wound I took to secure a multi-billion-dollar deal for his company, I dragged myself to our penthouse, ready to finally end the charade.

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.

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?"

Imagine this. Your husband carries another woman out of a burning building. He doesn't recognize you. You're just the doctor. You're nobody. Same night, you find out you're not nobody. You're a secret billionaire heiress. Your real family has been searching for you for twenty-five years. You sign the divorce papers. He thinks you'll come back. One week later, you show up to the biggest gala of the year. White dress. Diamond earrings. On the arm of a man richer, hotter, and ten times more powerful than your ex. Your ex-husband's face when he sees you? Priceless. His mistress's face when she gets escorted out by security? Even better. And the new man? He's been waiting for you his entire life. He doesn't play games. He doesn't have a mistress. He just looks at you like you're the only woman in the room. This is not a love story about a girl waiting for a boy to choose her. This is a love story about a girl who chose herself. And then got everything she ever deserved.

Twenty minutes before the "Wedding of the Century" at The Plaza, I stood outside the Presidential Suite in a fifty-thousand-dollar Vera Wang gown. I was the girl from a West Virginia trailer park about to marry Hugh Maxwell, the golden heir to a billion-dollar defense empire. I pushed the door open only to find Hugh pinned against the bed with my own stepsister, Floy. She was wearing my bridal diamond necklace, and the sounds of their laughter scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper. I didn't scream; I listened as Hugh grunted that once the wedding was over and the trust fund unlocked, he'd dump "that hillbilly trash" on a bus back to the mountains. They weren't just cheating; they were planning to steal my family's land deeds and leave me with nothing. When I set off the sprinklers and exposed their naked bodies to the paparazzi, the Maxwell family didn't apologize. They called me a "greedy peasant" and threatened to ruin my life unless I signed a new deal to save their crashing stock. I realized then that I was never a bride to them. I was a transaction, a rounding error in a ledger to be used and discarded. They thought my poverty made me weak and my silence made me a victim. "If we don't have a marriage certificate by midnight, the bank freezes thirty percent of our liquidity," their lawyer warned. So, I gave them exactly what they wanted. I used a loophole in their hundred-year-old family covenant and married the only other direct heir available. I didn't marry Hugh. I walked into the ICU and married his uncle, Fleet Maxwell-the legendary war hero who had been in a vegetative state for months. Now, I am the matriarch of the Maxwell dynasty. I've suspended Hugh's executive powers, exiled my mother-in-law to the Swiss Alps, and taken control of the family vault. They think I'm just a gold-digger waiting for a "corpse" to die so I can collect a fifty-million-dollar widow's payout. But last night, as I lay beside my comatose husband, the man they called a vegetable gripped my hand back.

Isabel returned to her penthouse after a grueling seventeen-hour flight, only to be greeted by the cloying scent of another woman's perfume. Her husband of three years, Darius, sat waiting with divorce papers. He wanted to marry his mistress, Dove, and offered Isabel a measly one million dollars, treating her like a greedy charity case from the Rust Belt who should just take the payout and vanish. But Isabel didn't want his pity. She demanded the four percent equity stake in his family's company that she rightfully owned—a stake worth 1.5 billion dollars. When she revealed this, the wealthy family turned vicious. They refused to acknowledge that she had secretly saved their empire from bankruptcy years ago. Instead, Darius and Dove orchestrated a brutal public execution. They ambushed her at a top law firm, spreading malicious lies that her investment money was stolen from a Ponzi scheme. They even hired a fake victim to scream at her in the lobby, successfully terrifying Isabel's lawyer into dropping her case on the spot. She had quietly rescued their entire legacy, yet they were willing to frame her as a criminal and destroy her life just to keep her rightful billions. As Darius and his mistress gloated over her absolute ruin, the most ruthless and feared lawyer in New York suddenly stepped in front of Isabel, his voice cutting through the dead silence. "Your case, I'll take it."

When I called my husband while trapped in a kidnapper's warehouse, he laughed. "Stop faking," he said, "my delicate mistress needs her sleep." He hung up. I signed the divorce papers drenched in my own blood, giving up everything just to escape the monster I married. His mother threw a broken umbrella at me in the rain. I had nothing-no money, no identity, no hope. But the moment I turned away, eight black Escalades encircled the street. A man in a tailored suit stepped out of a Rolls-Royce, shielding me with an umbrella. In his hand was a DNA test-and twenty-three years of relentless search. "Your last name isn't Smith," he said, wiping blood from my wrist with his handkerchief. "It's Wilder. The Wilder family. And the man who left you to die?" He smiled, icy. "He owes us nine billion dollars."

For three quiet, patient years, Christina kept house, only to be coldly discarded by the man she once trusted. Instead, he paraded a new lover, making her the punchline of every town joke. Liberated, she honed her long-ignored gifts, astonishing the town with triumph after gleaming triumph. Upon discovering she'd been a treasure all along, her ex-husband's regret drove him to pursue her. "Honey, let's get back together!" With a cold smirk, Christina spat, "Fuck off." A silken-suited mogul slipped an arm around her waist. "She's married to me now. Guards, get him the hell out of here!"

After six years together, Joslyn was abandoned before her wedding when her boyfriend chose his first love over her. Then came an unexpected proposal-from Connor, her ex-boyfriend's adoptive father. "Marry me. You'll get everything you want-and you can get back at him." The deal came with its perks: a lavish monthly allowance, abundant resources at her fingertips, a husband who was practically never home, and the sheer pleasure of rubbing her new status in her ex-boyfriend's face. But the distant husband she expected turned possessive instead. While her ex begged publicly for another chance, Connor pulled her into his arms. "Say that again, and you'll be out of the family forever." Only later did Joslyn discover the truth-Connor had spent six years planning to make her his. Believing it was only a beneficial deal, Joslyn agreed. Constant traveling? A complete lie. And the promise that they'd each live their own lives? Another carefully spun deception. On their wedding night, he had her pinned beneath him, his kisses stealing her breath. And night after night, he kept coming home-utterly fixated on her.