EVA PINK

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 was born wolfless, the defective daughter of the Nichols Pack. My only value was an arranged engagement to Julian Hayes, the powerful Alpha heir my family needed for an alliance. Then my stepsister handed me a glass of champagne at the pack gala. When I woke up the next morning, I was naked in a stranger's bed, covered in bruises and bite marks, with a terrifying Alpha's scent burned into my skin. I had no memory of the night before. Only one certainty remained. I had been drugged. I ran home in the stranger's shirt, desperate for protection. Instead, my fiancé looked at me with disgust, my stepsister took my place beside him, and my father decided I was still useful after all. Not as a daughter. As a bargaining chip. He sold me to Alpha Montgomery, a cruel old tyrant rumored to be seeking a bride. When I refused, my father gave me the one threat I could never ignore. "Marry him, or your brother's treatments stop." For Noah, my dying younger brother, I agreed. I even tried a forbidden purification ritual to erase the stranger's scent from my body. But before the healers could begin, a gray-eyed Alpha cornered me in the hospital and shut it all down with a single command. I thought he was only the Lycan King's ruthless enforcer. I thought the man I had to marry was an old monster waiting in the dark. I was wrong. On the eve of my wedding, my groom called. His voice made my cruel father bow in terror. His words made my blood turn cold. He was not old. He was not weak. He was the stranger from that night. The Alpha who had marked me. The Lycan King himself. And he whispered through the phone, "Tomorrow, you become my Luna. Everything you are belongs to me."

My fiancé, Julian, was the Alpha heir, and our engagement was supposed to unite our powerful Packs. But hours before our grand ceremony, he coldly confessed that he had always loved my best friend, Seraphina. She orchestrated a flawless trap, hiring a drugged Omega and bringing a mob of reporters to "discover" me in my hotel bed. Julian didn't even let me explain. He looked at me with pure disgust, publicly breaking our engagement and letting the media brand me a worthless, cheating whore. Stripped of my title and abandoned by my family, I was left completely defenseless. That same night, a pack of savage Rogues cornered me in an icy alley. They ripped through my flesh, and my desperate screams were swallowed by the storm. As my blood seeped into the freezing pavement, I saw Seraphina in my mind, wearing the gown that should have been mine, holding Julian's arm. Until my last breath, I couldn't accept it. I had devoted my entire life to him and our Pack. Why was my loyalty repaid with such a vicious betrayal? Why did I have to die like a pathetic, wolfless joke just so they could have their happy ending? Opening my eyes again, I was back in the luxurious hotel bed, mere minutes before Seraphina and the reporters were set to burst through the door.

For three months, I thought I was the only woman who knew Fabiano’s soul. Then he saw my face — and decided I was worth less than the check he slid across the table. But it was all a clerical error. When we finally met and he saw my plain face, he realized I wasn't the glamorous mafia princess he thought he was talking to. He immediately severed our connection and forced me to help him court her instead, promising a blank check to save my dying grandmother from loan sharks in return. I swallowed my pride and did everything he asked. When my grandmother suddenly needed immediate brain surgery to survive the night, I crashed his VIP party to cash in his promise. Fabiano wrote the check, but his new princess snatched it, poured red wine all over the paper, and threw it in the trash. "You are a jealous, pathetic leech. You are nothing," she spat, laughing in my face. I stood there with my hand frozen in the empty air, looking at Fabiano. The man who once swore he would burn down the city for me just sat there on the leather sofa, watching in complete silence as my grandmother's only lifeline was destroyed. The foolish warmth I carried for him instantly died. I turned around, walked out into the freezing rain, and got into the armored SUV of his biggest rival. This time, I wouldn't beg for scraps; I was going to build my own empire.

I was exactly three thousand words away from eviction when the heir to the New York underworld smashed my laptop and offered me a job instead of an apology. Dante Vitiello wanted me to write a memoir that would paint him as a saint. I moved into his penthouse, thinking I could keep things professional. But when his arranged fiancée, the daughter of the Chicago Outfit, arrived, she didn't see an employee. She saw a threat. She didn't just humiliate me; she leaked fake evidence to the press, branding me as a federal informant. I woke up in a hospital bed with the word "RAT" plastered across every gossip site. Sofia’s guards were stationed outside my door, blocking even the nurses. I was a liability. A stain on the Vitiello name. I knew how these stories ended. The Prince always chooses the Family. The Alliance is more important than the girl. I was packing my bag, shaking with fear, ready to disappear into the night to save him from ruin. But Dante didn't come to fire me. He walked into the boardroom where his father and the Chicago Boss were waiting for him to beg for forgiveness. He looked at the crown that was his birthright, then he looked at the gun on the table. He didn't kneel. He didn't apologize. He slammed his weapon down, shattering a hundred-year alliance and forfeiting his empire with a single sentence. "Keep the crown. I take the girl."

For three years, I was the one scrubbing the scent of blood from his hands and holding him while he screamed in pain. I was the one who taught Coleton Barron how to walk again after the car bomb nearly took his legs. But the moment he reclaimed his seat as Don, I became invisible. At his recovery gala, he draped his arm around Charly—the woman who fled when he was crippled—and laughed as he told his inner circle I was "just the hired help." It didn't stop at insults. When Charly faked a fall, he shoved me aside with enough force to crack my skull against the pool edge. When a bomb went off in a gallery, he looked me in the eye, saw me trapped under debris, and turned his back to carry her to safety instead. He even held a gun to my head because she lied about me poisoning his soup. His mother threw a check at me, telling me that tools go back in the box when the job is done. They thought I would beg to stay. They thought I was weak. I took the five million and vanished without a word. Three years later, I returned to New York. Not as his nurse, but as the fiancée of the only man Coleton fears. And when he saw the diamond on my finger, the King of New York finally realized he had thrown away his only lifeline.

I was a Vitiello, sold to the Morettis to secure an alliance. For five years, I quietly loved Dante, counting down the minutes until our wedding at St. Patrick's Cathedral. But it ended with a single text three minutes before the ceremony. "Stay at the apartment. Sofia is awake. Don't make a scene." His ex-girlfriend, the love of his life, had woken from a coma with no memory. Just like that, I was erased. For thirty days, I waited in the shadows while Dante played hero to a woman who didn't remember him. He told me he was protecting her fragile mind. But then I found the truth. I stood outside the doctor's office and heard Dante refuse a treatment that would restore Sofia's memory. "If she remembers, she might leave again," Dante told the doctor. "Elena will wait. She's a good soldier. Let me have my fantasy." He wasn't protecting her. He was keeping her broken to feed his ego, banking on my submission. He thought I was furniture he could put in storage. He was wrong. I didn't go back to the apartment. Instead, I dialed a number every made man in New York feared. "Matteo," I said to Dante's lethal older brother, the King of the underworld. "I am done waiting. I want to be a Moretti bride. But not Dante's."

Tentu, saya akan menambahkan POV (Point of View) ke setiap bab sesuai dengan permintaan Anda, tanpa mengubah format atau konten lainnya. On the day my daughter turned five, my husband Carter finally came home-with his mistress and a child who looked exactly like him. He introduced me as the "mother of his child," not his wife, while my own parents fawned over his illegitimate daughter to secure a business merger. I was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, leaving me with months to live, yet no one cared. The breaking point wasn't my illness, but seeing Carter slap our daughter across the face because she refused to give her first-place ribbon to his mistress's child. "She disrespected me! I have a right to discipline my own daughter!" He thinks I' m just a dying, discarded wife who will fade away quietly to make room for his new family. He' s wrong. I have three months left to live, and I' m going to spend every second of it burning his empire to the ground. My funeral will be the stage for his destruction.

At my husband's nephew's christening, I saw him across the ballroom holding a newborn with another woman. I was four months pregnant with his heir, but he was presenting her son as his own. He had built a criminal empire, and our marriage was a strategic alliance. But now, the men who toasted our wedding were congratulating him on another woman's child, their gazes sliding right past me. My mother confirmed my worst fears: he'd been paying for his mistress's apartment for months. His mistress, Selena, cornered me, her voice dripping with venom. "He chose me. And our son." The stress brought on sharp, agonizing cramps, but when my husband, Dante, rushed over, he took her side. "Calm down," he commanded. "You're making a scene." He accused me of being hysterical, of cornering his fragile mistress who had just given birth. Through a haze of pain, I watched him shield her from me, his wife, telling me to go home and "be rational." The public humiliation was absolute. In the lawyer's office, Selena slapped me, then knocked over her own baby's carrier and screamed that I had attacked her child. Dante believed her without question. As I collapsed from the pain, the last thing I saw was his back as he walked away with his new family. I woke up in the hospital. He arrived with his mistress, not to see if I was okay, but to demand I apologize to her. That was the moment the woman he married died. And in her place, someone new was born.

For three years, I lay dying from a poison, my only hope a single-dose antidote, the Moonpetal Elixir. My husband, Alpha Joshua, had played the part of a devoted mate, and I trusted him to save me. But through our fading bond, I overheard his secret command to the pack's healer. "Give the Moonpetal Elixir to Ella Campbell's mother." His reason shattered my world: "Ella gave me a son. A healthy, strong son." He had a secret family. The past three years of his loving care were a lie. He was just waiting for me to die. He even brought me their leftover soup, calling me "the sick wolf," and defiled my parents' sacred home with his mistress and their child. He planned to tell the pack my cure was stolen, turning my death into a tragedy for his own gain. He thought I was a weak, dying wolf. He had no idea what kind of storm he had just awakened. That night, I gathered the last of my strength and severed our mate bond. The pain was excruciating, but I walked out of that house of lies, leaving only my wedding ring behind. I would not die. I would live to watch his world burn.

My life with Andrew was a constant dance around the baseball bat, a premonition of my own bloody end that haunted my every waking moment. Then, I found my father-in-law, Mr. Scott, in a pool of his own blood on the kitchen floor, a deep gash on his forehead. Instead of calling 911, I manipulated my lifelong hemophobia and feigned terror, dialing Andrew' s cousin, Ethan, a kind paramedic, dragging him into a manufactured crisis. At the hospital, Andrew' s true colors bled through: he cursed me, refused to sign for his dying father' s emergency surgery, and screamed divorce, all while giggling with his mistress, Sabrina, in the background. He even tried to strangle me at his father' s funeral, abandoning the casket to rush to Sabrina' s side, believing her needs superseded everything. I wasn' t a helpless victim anymore; I recorded his abuse, exposed his heartless acts online, and watched, stone-faced, as the internet tore him apart, leading to his public humiliation and firing. But Andrew, fueled by rage and paranoia, wasn't done; he came for me, knife in hand, convinced I was conspiring to steal his inheritance with Ethan. When Ethan arrived and got stabbed trying to save me, something snapped inside him, and he furiously plunged the knife into Andrew, again and again. Ethan got prison time for manslaughter, but Andrew' s death wasn' t just a simple crime of passion; his wife' s whispered revelation at the funeral, a calculated confession of her own brutal past with Ethan, shattered my understanding of what truly happened that night. Now, years later, I am finally free, walking away from the ghosts and the blood, ready to build a new life for myself, but the true scope of the sacrifices made for my freedom still lingers.

The smell of burnt coffee and cheap vanilla filled my lungs, my hands shaking behind the counter of "The Daily Grind." Just moments ago, I was on a rooftop, the white of my wedding dress stained with grime, watching my fiancé declare his love for my best friend, Molly. My mother collapsed, her heart giving out from the shock, and I saw her fall before I turned and jumped. Yet here I was, alive, the calendar showing weeks before that catastrophic wedding day, the memory of my mother's lifeless body still fresh in my mind. Molly walked in, her fake-sweet smile exactly as I remembered, still utterly oblivious to the hatred now burning ice-cold in my stomach. She started her tale of a "Karmic App," claiming any man I liked would fall for her instead, her crocodile tears perfected. This was the lie she told me the first time, covering her tracks as she systematically stole every relationship and piece of joy from my life. I stared at her, the woman who orchestrated my downfall, consumed by a rage so pure it threatened to shatter me. Why was I back? Why was I given this impossible second chance, only to relive the agony that killed my mother and drove me to jump? Then it hit me: The app wasn't a curse; it was her weapon, and this time, I wasn't just back-I was going to be the one to erase her.

The cold garage floor seeped through my thin jeans as I lay hidden, listening. This wasn't a memory; it was a horrifying déjà vu, a second chance at the day that had once destroyed me. Inside, I heard my husband Kevin' s bitter voice, dismissing me as "simple," "always tired," and "smelling like the diner." His mother, Helen, chimed in, labeling me an "anchor, dragging him down" from his imagined football star glory. Then came the chilling words from my own twelve-year-old son, Justin. He openly wished Aunt Tiffany, the "friend" I'd helped through her divorce, was his mom, because her house didn' t smell like "fried onions." Tiffany' s smooth voice, dripping with fake concern, endorsed their narrative, twisting my double shifts into "neglect." I knew their entire sinister plot, every humiliating detail: Justin' s fake "runaway" act, Kevin' s performative call to the police and Child Protective Services, framing me as an unfit mother. They planned to file for emergency custody, force a divorce, and escape with Justin to a new "perfect" life with Tiffany, leaving me utterly ruined. In my first life, I was blindsided. I fought desperately, screamed, cried, and ultimately lost everything-my son, my home, my reputation. I truly died a broken woman, my soul consumed by an unbearable grief. But somehow, I was back. The crushing grief was gone, replaced by a terrifying calm and an ice-cold resolve. They still believed I was simple, weak. They were about to discover the monstrous mistake they had made.

The last thing Ethan Walker remembered was the bitter taste of pills. His life, once defined by Coast Guard rescues, had been systematically dismantled by his ambitious wife, Sarah, and her manipulative half-brother, Liam. They'd dismissed his debilitating leg injury, isolated him, and even sent their eight-year-old son, Ben, away, claiming it was for his "future." Drowning in pain and despair, discarded as a liability, Ethan saw no other escape. His final, icy thought: "Sarah, if there's another life, I won't love you again." Then, he gasped, bolting upright in his familiar bedroom. The early Alaskan sunlight cut through the blinds, and he saw the date: months before Liam' s arrival, before the crushing betrayals. He was alive. Again. The shock was a physical blow, but beneath it, a burning fury ignited. He' d believed in Sarah, in their life together, only for her to choose ambition and a snake like Liam over everything. How could she have let Liam twist their love, their family, into something so toxic? The memory of his shattered past, the agonizing spiral, the feeling of being entirely powerless and betrayed, hit him with brutal force. He wouldn't let it happen again. This time, he wouldn't be the wreckage left behind. His hand, trembling with cold resolve, reached for his phone. He was calling a divorce lawyer. When Sarah walked in, her composure already cracking, he stared her down, his voice cold. His fight for freedom, for Ben, and for his own redemption, began now.

At first sight, he realized that he would never forget that face. Nancy was the one who saved Mond’s life and the one to steal his first kiss. Without even a shred of information about the girl’s whereabouts, he spent half a year and all his resources looking for her. Little did he know, that he was the groom her family was forcing her to marry. As she was running away from that marriage, she sought his help and got inside his car, not knowing that she was sitting right next to the man who was, in fact, responsible for all her troubles.

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.

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 was the eldest daughter of the Reynolds family, but in a world that worshipped dragon power, I was born completely "Dragonless." After ten years of being engaged to Prince Krishna, the King suddenly decreed that my fiancé would marry my half-sister Deena instead. As for me, my father ruthlessly discarded me. I was ordered to marry Lord Boyce Carlisle, a crippled, dying warlord with a shattered Dragon Core and failing organs. I was being sent to a desolate border fortress just to be a dying man's nursemaid, and then his widow. Deena flaunted her triumphant smile, whispering maliciously in my ear. "This is the fate a 'Dragonless' deserves. You're being sent there to be buried with him." My father didn't even look at me, treating my death sentence as a highly profitable political trade. The suffocating despair and humiliation drove me to tie a silk sash to the ceiling beam and kick the chair away. Why should I be thrown away like trash? Why did my mother and I have to die in obscurity while they celebrated their royal wedding? But as the noose tightened, a violent torrent of memories flooded my mind. I remembered my past life as a top surgeon on Earth who spent thirty years snatching lives back from the jaws of death. I didn't die. I cut myself down, wiped away my tears, and looked at my hands. I would heal this dying warlord, and use him to drag every single one of them to hell.

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.

She died in the apocalypse-betrayed, abandoned, and torn apart by the infected. Then she woke up. Two months before the end of the world. Twenty-two years old again. And on her wrist, a wooden bracelet that her mother had left behind. The bracelet came with a system. A system that eats gold. With enough gold, she can unlock infinite storage for food, water, weapons-anything she needs to survive. The super-hurricane, the floods, the insect plagues, the volcanic winter, the scorching heat... she knows exactly what's coming. While the world sleeps, Joanna shops. She drains her aunt's bank account, maxes out every loan she can find, and buys out half the city. The apocalypse is coming. She'll be ready. But when the chaos begins, the wolves come crawling back-relatives who sold her, friends who betrayed her, a father who abandoned her. They want her food. Her water. Her mercy. Joanna has a different plan. "Why don't you decide who dies first?"

I gave Kaelen Sterling everything. My fortune. My family's trust. Even the military secrets that should never have left my father's hands. He swore he loved me. Then he used me to destroy my entire family. My father was beheaded for treason. My brothers died on the battlefield. My sick mother coughed up blood until her final breath. And the fortune my mother had saved for me became the stepping stone Kaelen and his precious "savior," Jacqueline Byrd, used to climb into the highest circles of the kingdom. When there was nothing left to steal, Kaelen locked me inside an abandoned manor and set it on fire. Through the flames, I saw him holding Jacqueline in his arms. She was pregnant with his child. And she was wearing silk bought with my mother's dowry. "Burn it all," Kaelen said coldly. "Leave no trace." I died screaming his name. Then I opened my eyes. I was twenty again. Kaelen had just returned from the battlefield after being declared dead for two years—and standing beside him was Jacqueline, looking fragile and innocent as ever. "She saved my life," he told me. "You will accept her." In my last life, I did. This time, I slapped him across the face. Then I burned our marriage contract. They all thought grief had driven me mad. They had no idea I remembered everything. Every betrayal. Every secret. Every scandal that had not happened yet. I knew which noble houses would fall. I knew which princes would rise. I knew the hidden weaknesses of the people who would one day control the Dragon Court. And they had forgotten something else. I was never just a wealthy heiress. I knew herbs. I knew alchemy. I knew how to survive a royal court where one wrong move could cost an entire family its head. Kaelen wanted my fortune. Jacqueline wanted my place. My stepmother wanted my mother's power. And the men above them wanted to use House Croft as another piece on their board. Let them try. I died once as their pawn. This life, I will take back my family, my fortune, and every drop of blood they owe me. And when I am finished, I won't just survive the Dragon Court. I will rule it.

In the final days before the world collapsed, Ivy Brooks died... betrayed by the very people she trusted most. She had fought, struggled, and sacrificed everything just to survive the apocalypse only to be pushed into death along with her three daughters at the very end by her own husband. With her last breath, Ivy made a vow. If she could turn back time...she would never be weak again and of course protect her daughters. This time, she would stand at the top. When Ivy opened her eyes, she found herself back in time with her still rounded belly of her third baby.... Twenty days before the apocalypse. Armed with memories of the future and a mysterious system in her mind, Ivy moved without hesitation. She hoarded supplies, secured weapons, and took control of every resource she could get her hands on. While others laughed, doubted, and wasted time... Ivy was building her empire along with her daughters. In this life, she would not be prey but will be an hunter. With danger closing in and only twenty days to prepare, Ivy must outplay enemies both old and new, uncover the truth behind the system, and carve out her own kingdom in a collapsing world. Because this time...she wasn't just going to survive the apocalypse. She was going to rule it along with a man, a love interest from the past before her marriage collapse. He provided everything Ivy needed. Money especially in change of a marriage with her and when the apocalypse started too....he ruled it with her as well as her daughters.

I was the adopted, "Dragonless" daughter of the Sterling family, bound by a prestigious marriage contract to my fiancé, Julian. But during the annual charity ball, I followed a secret note to a guest suite, only to catch him tangled on the sofa with my cousin, Isabelle. When I calmly called the Dragon Guard to expose their affair, my adoptive parents didn't comfort me. Instead, they furiously blamed me. "It was an emergency! Our kind Isabelle used her scent to save him, and you just tried to destroy him!" They praised her as a hero, officially handed my fiancé over to her, and decided to punish me for tarnishing the family name. Their revenge was a new marriage contract. They were going to sell me off to Lord Valerius, a cruel, elderly man notorious for outliving three wives. I stared at the death sentence in my hands, my blood running cold. I was the one betrayed, yet I was being discarded like useless trash to pave the way for my cousin's happiness. Why should I let them destroy my life just to protect their twisted, perfect image? I didn't cry, and I refused to be their sacrificial lamb. I drafted a cold, calculated business proposal, packed my bags, and walked out of that toxic house forever. I was going to propose to the most ruthless, powerful predator in the kingdom-Gideon Montgomery. If I had to step into a dragon's lair, I would be the one to choose it.

After transmigrating into a doomed novel villainess in the werecreature universe, who was destined for exile and death, Ella refused to follow the script. Since the real heiress would return in two years, she prepared early-gathering money, allies, and powerful supporters. One by one, she rescued the discarded men of the heroine. There was the abandoned werewolf, half-dead in his cage. She claimed him without a second thought. Then came the broken healer-disfigured, depressed, his mind warped by years of family cruelty. She pulled him from the wreckage. And the poor little thing treated like a wallet by the heroine, a pawn by his own family. She took him in anyway. But things spiraled out of control. The "useless" princess everyone mocked awakened as the empire's only SSS-ranked female-and suddenly, every powerful werecreature wanted to stay by her side forever. When the real heiress finally came back, she was floored. Not one of the men she'd been eyeing could even come close to the mates of that so-called "useless" Ella. Surrounded by the mates she'd collected along the way, Ella let out a long, tired sigh. "I think I've bitten off way more than I can chew!"

The sensation of falling wasn't like flying; it was heavy, violent, and smelled of burning flesh. Above us, on the crumbling balcony of the Sears manor, Duke Cato Sears turned his back, shielding his cousin Bianca from the smoke as he walked away, leaving my sister Blossom and me to drop into the abyss. As the darkness slammed shut like an iron door, I realized my entire life had been a cruel script written by the people I called family. In my first life, I was the sacrificial lamb of the Dawson manor, sold to a man who eventually watched me die without blinking. My sister Blossom had pushed me into Cato's arms to avoid his rumors, only to laugh when the fire finally consumed us both. My father had measured my value like a piece of livestock, and my step-grandmother didn't even acknowledge my existence while I was being led to the slaughter. I died in that fire, feeling the heat scorch my skin and the weight of a hatred so potent it tasted like bile. I spent twenty years being the weak, manipulated shadow of a girl, only to end up as nothing more than a phantom scorch mark on a "hero's" estate. I couldn't understand why my own blood treated my life like a game they could discard. The injustice of it all burned hotter than the flames that took my last breath. Then, I sat up, sucking in air that tasted of lavender and air conditioning, not smoke. I was back in my bedroom, three days before the engagement ball that ruined my life. Blossom stood at the door, her "sweet" mask slipping as she tried to manipulate me into the Duke's path again. She thought she was the only one who had come back, but she didn't realize that this time, I was going to let her have exactly what she wanted: the Duke, the bankruptcy, and the living hell that awaited her in that house.