His Rejected Luna, His Worst Enemy

I spent three years building my husband, Axel Farrell, into Silicon Valley's ultimate "family man." As his lead PR strategist, I carefully managed his public image, making sure the world saw him as a perfect, devoted husband while I worked in the shadows of our estate. The illusion shattered when he came home one night smelling of sandalwood and roses, with three deep fingernail scratches carved into his back. When I tried to check his phone, the passcode we had used for years-our wedding anniversary-had been changed. The betrayal got worse the next morning when his mother called me a "defective product" and tried to force me into a fertility clinic. Axel didn't defend me; instead, he shoved me against a marble bar at a public gala to protect his mistress in front of the world's elite. By the time I tried to leave, Axel had frozen my bank accounts and filed a forged legal petition to have me declared mentally incompetent. He planned to have me legally kidnapped and locked in a private psychiatric ward just to stop me from filing for divorce. He even blocked every major law firm in the city from taking my case, leaving me with no money, no identity, and no one to turn to. I couldn't understand how the man who "saved" me from the mud years ago could be the same monster now trying to legally erase my existence. Was our entire marriage just a grooming process to exploit my genius for his billion-dollar empire? As the deadline for my forced commitment approached, I stopped crying and opened my laptop. I leaked the video of his affair to every tech journalist in the country, watching his stock price crash in real-time. "Axel thinks starving me out will make me crawl back to him," I whispered as I walked into the headquarters of his biggest rival. "But he forgot that the most valuable part of his company is in my head." I was no longer the abandoned wife; I was the one who was going to take his throne and burn it to the ground.

A deadly silver parasite infected my brain, causing my mind to regress to my fifteen-year-old self. But my Fated Mate, Alpha Hunter, firmly believed my madness was just a pathetic act. He brought his mistress, Ivy, into our home and allowed her to brainwash our five-year-old son against me. When Ivy faked a shallow scratch on her neck, Hunter crushed my hand under his boot and threw me into a freezing dungeon lined with toxic silver dust. He even handed our son a pair of scissors, watching coldly as the boy shredded my dead mother's dresses. "Eat it, you ugly old witch!" My own flesh and blood screamed those words at me while kicking a bowl of rotting meat at my bare feet. To break my spirit completely, Hunter dragged me into a thunderstorm and forced me to look at the burned ruins of my slaughtered pack, ripping away my only safe memory. I didn't understand why the Mate chosen by the Moon Goddess would torture me so ruthlessly, or why my own child treated me like a filthy Rogue. It wasn't until I lay dying on a hospital bed, completely blind and coughing up black blood, that the mental dam broke and my twenty-five-year-old memories finally returned. Looking at Hunter, who had just discovered the truth and was now sobbing on his knees for my forgiveness, I calmly made my final vow.

On her third wedding anniversary, Alicia was crushed in a horrific multi-car pileup. Trapped in the bloody wreckage, she used her last ounce of strength to call her husband, Julian, for help. The call connected, but instead of his voice, she heard loud music and the clinking of glasses. Julian was at a party, tenderly wishing his mistress, Bianca, a happy birthday. After surviving the night alone in the hospital, Alicia dragged her battered, bleeding body back to their penthouse. She found Bianca wearing her silk robe, sitting at the vanity in her master bedroom. When Julian walked out of the shower, his first reaction wasn't concern for his injured wife. Instead, he looked at her bandaged head with absolute disgust. "What kind of trick are you playing now?" To prove she was faking it for attention, he violently ripped the bandage right off her fresh wound. As blood poured down her face, Julian wrapped his arms around a fake-crying Bianca, calling Alicia an insane, manipulative monster. For three years, she had endured his coldness, her genuine love constantly dismissed as the schemes of a social-climbing liar. She didn't understand how the man she once loved could be so blind, so casually cruel while she was literally bleeding out in front of him. But looking at the two of them standing united against her, the last embers of her love finally turned to ash. She calmly wiped the blood from her face and called her best friend. "I need a divorce lawyer. The best one you can find."

My husband stood by the window of his Manhattan office, his silhouette cutting through the storm like a blade. He didn't even look at me as he tossed the divorce papers onto the desk, his voice a cold baritone. "Sign it," Isaiah commanded, "or your brother’s dialysis treatment ends today." He believed the lie that I had pushed his pregnant mistress down a flight of stairs in a jealous rage. To save my dying brother, I signed the confession and accepted the role of a murderer, trading my freedom for a life of disgrace. At the funeral, Isaiah forced me to crawl on my knees through the freezing mud to the grave while a mob of mourners spat on me and cursed my name. When I went to prison, his influence followed me into the showers, where inmates told me the King wanted me to "remember my crime" before they used rusty shears to hack off my finger. Five years later, I was a ghost living in a damp basement with the son Isaiah never knew I had, hiding my mangled hand under a leather glove. When he eventually tracked us down, he didn't show mercy; he tore my son from my arms, calling me an unfit monster and swearing I would rot in a cage. I couldn't understand how the man I once loved could look at my broken body and see only a criminal, never realizing that every scar I carried was a gift from his own hatred. As he walked away with my child, I swallowed a bottle of pills to end the nightmare, leaving Isaiah to rip the glove from my hand and discover the mangled truth just as my eyes finally closed.

For five years, my husband kept me in a dog cage because he believed I murdered his fiancée, my stepsister Kinsley. He stripped me of my dignity, my name, and my humanity, all to avenge a woman who wasn't even dead. When Kinsley finally returned, alive and smiling, I thought my nightmare was over. Instead, she framed me again. Right in front of Courtland, she pushed my little brother down the stone steps of the estate. I held my brother's broken body in the rain, screaming for help. But Courtland just stood there, shielding Kinsley under his umbrella, looking at me with cold indifference. He chose the monster over his wife. That night, I realized love wasn't enough to save me. So, I stood on the edge of the hospital roof and let gravity take me. I wanted him to mourn. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to burn. Three years later, at a gala in New York, the Ice King dropped his champagne glass. He stared at me—the woman in the red dress, the fiancée of his rival. I looked him dead in the eye and smiled like a stranger. He cornered me later, his voice trembling with rage and obsession. "Death is the only divorce in my world, Anastasia. And you are still very much alive."

The first thing I felt was the slow, steady beep of a machine. I opened my eyes to a sterile white ceiling, definitely not my bedroom. A nurse rushed in, dropping her clipboard, whispering, "She' s awake!" Then a doctor: "Mrs. Hayes? Ava? Can you tell me your name?" "Ava Reed... Ava Hayes." "And the year?" "2023. It' s October." Their pitying looks made my skin crawl. "Ava," the doctor said gently, "It' s not 2023." He pointed to a digital screen: July 12, 2038. Fifteen years. Gone. Just like that. The car crash that felt like yesterday had apparently happened a decade and a half ago. My Lily, my four-year-old daughter, would be nineteen. My husband, Ethan… I called him, desperate, finding his contact on a sleek, alien device. A voice answered, but it wasn' t his. It was cold, hollow. "Who is this?" "Ethan? It' s me. It' s Ava." Then, a harsh, bitter laugh. "My wife is dead. She died fifteen years ago. Don' t you dare use her name again." He was about to hang up. "The scar!" I screamed, "Under your left rib, from Miller' s Peak! And Lily… she called her bear 'Sir Reginald Fluffen-Bottom' !" Silence on the line. Then a whisper: "How… how do you know that?" Who was this stranger on the phone? What had happened to my life, my family? I was Ava Reed, a woman robbed of fifteen years. "Because I am your wife, you idiot. Oceanville General, Room 304. Ten minutes." I hung up, a cold, hard knot forming in my stomach. Ethan never showed. Instead, a slick lawyer offered me a hotel, a car, a credit card. I took the car. My daughter. Lily.