Not His Old Lady Anymore

Strapped to the cold metal table in the hospital basement, I begged my Fated Mate, Alpha Marcus, for mercy. He ignored my tears. With a voice devoid of warmth, he ordered the doctor to inject liquid silver into my veins—a poison designed to dissolve the wolf spirit. "Do it," he commanded. "If she remains a wolf, she is a liability. As a human, she can stay as an Omega." I screamed as the silver acid ate through my soul, severing the connection to my wolf. Marcus didn't flinch. He wasn't saving me from my burn injuries; he was clearing the path for his mistress, Rachel, and their secret illegitimate son. Broken and wolfless, I was forced to watch him publicly claim his bastard child as the new heir. He thought I was submissive. He thought I would quietly fade into the servant's quarters to be his charity case. He didn't know I had cracked his safe and found the DNA tests proving his three-year betrayal. On the morning of his wedding to Rachel, I smiled as I climbed into the car that would take me to my "exile." Ten minutes later, my scheduled email exposing every lie hit the Council of Elders. And while Marcus fell to his knees screaming at the sight of my burning vehicle, realizing he had destroyed his True Mate for a fraud, I was already gone.

For three years, I poured my entire merchant family's fortune into helping my husband, Ethan, awaken his dragon soul and become a Dragon Knight. But on the very night we celebrated his knighthood, he brought a noblewoman named Blanca into our home. He coldly announced that the King had granted him permission to take her as a second wife, claiming my merchant blood was no longer worthy of his new status. When I unlocked the estate's hidden ledgers, the devastating truth finally hit me. My massive dowry hadn't just funded his knightly training. Ethan and his entire family had been secretly funneling my gold to Blanca for months, paying off her family's debts and buying her lavish gifts. They had drained me completely dry, expecting me to quietly manage their bankrupt household as an unpaid servant while Blanca enjoyed the title of his wife. When I demanded to dissolve our sacred marriage contract, his family just laughed in my face. "You're a Dragonless woman! Where would you go without the protection of House Franks?" Ethan mocked. They were so certain I would swallow the humiliation. They truly believed a discarded, penniless woman had absolutely no cards left to play. So, I tossed the matron's ring onto the empty ledgers and walked out the door. Taking only my mother's last hidden relic, I boarded a carriage straight to the capital. It was time to cash in a dangerous favor with Gideon Carlisle, the terrifying Dragon Lord of the North.

I was brutally rejected by my fated mate, Caden, and torn apart by Rogue wolves in the dark forest. Floating above my own mangled corpse, I watched the paramedics call my emergency contacts. "I don't know anyone by that name," Caden said coldly before hanging up. My own mother was even worse, screaming at the nurse that I was a curse and telling them to throw my body in the trash. I became an unclaimed corpse, but my severed mate-bond pulled my soul back to the Pack house. There, I saw Caden tenderly carrying my sister, Bonita, into his bedroom. They were secretly lovers. Bonita was wearing my jewelry designs, claiming my life's work as her own. My father and stepmother were already plotting to declare me insane so Bonita could take my place as the future Luna. Caden even ordered my design portfolio to be thrown away, while using his power to hire a world-class mentor for Bonita's stolen talent. I watched my family and my mate trample on my grave to pave a golden road for a thief. But the most chilling discovery was in Caden's private study. He had a photo of his late mother, engraved with a vow of vengeance against me. He actually believed I had betrayed and murdered his mother when I was just a child. Why did my fated mate hate me for a crime I never committed? What sick lies had my family fed him? I refused to fade into the afterlife as a forgotten, powerless ghost. I will stay in this world, tear down their perfect little play, and make them pay for every drop of my blood.

Strapped to the cold metal table in the hospital basement, I begged my Fated Mate, Alpha Marcus, for mercy. He ignored my tears. With a voice devoid of warmth, he ordered the doctor to inject liquid silver into my veins—a poison designed to dissolve the wolf spirit. "Do it," he commanded. "If she remains a wolf, she is a liability. As a human, she can stay as an Omega." I screamed as the silver acid ate through my soul, severing the connection to my wolf. Marcus didn't flinch. He wasn't saving me from my burn injuries; he was clearing the path for his mistress, Rachel, and their secret illegitimate son. Broken and wolfless, I was forced to watch him publicly claim his bastard child as the new heir. He thought I was submissive. He thought I would quietly fade into the servant's quarters to be his charity case. He didn't know I had cracked his safe and found the DNA tests proving his three-year betrayal. On the morning of his wedding to Rachel, I smiled as I climbed into the car that would take me to my "exile." Ten minutes later, my scheduled email exposing every lie hit the Council of Elders. And while Marcus fell to his knees screaming at the sight of my burning vehicle, realizing he had destroyed his True Mate for a fraud, I was already gone.

I spent two years trying to please Xander Yates, thinking he was the man who would help me save my family’s struggling manufacturing business. As a former senior legal counsel, I thought I knew how to handle sharks, but I never expected the man I loved to be the one who would try to skin me alive. Everything shattered at a high-end gala when I felt a chemical fire start in my marrow. Xander had spiked my drink, chasing me through the hotel corridors with a predatory smile, ready to take by force what I wouldn't give him willingly. I barely escaped into an elevator, stealing a key card from a man in a sharp grey suit and collapsing in room 8086. That stranger turned out to be Crockett Blackburn, the "Ice King of Wall Street" and a man my family had spent years avoiding. He didn't save me out of the goodness of his heart; he saved me because he saw a "messy variable" he could turn into a weapon. By morning, Xander was blackmailing me with a video of me drugged, and Crockett was offering me a deal that felt like a deal with the devil. He would save my factory, but only if I gave him 51% controlling interest and became his personal legal counsel. The humiliation was total. Xander called me a junkie and a slut, while Crockett looked at the bruises on my neck with the cold, clinical assessment of a man checking a damaged piece of equipment. When a secret bid was leaked, Crockett didn't hesitate to pin the blame on me, accusing me of working with my ex to drive up the price. I was a pawn in a game between two monsters, one who wanted to destroy my body and another who wanted to own my soul and my family’s legacy. I had lost my apartment, my reputation, and my safety in less than twenty-four hours. "I don't like it when people break my things," Crockett told me as he applied ointment to the marks Xander left on my throat. I realized then that if I wanted to survive, I had to stop being the victim and start being the predator. I signed the contract, moved into Blackburn’s penthouse, and prepared for a scorched-earth war against the Yates family. I don't care if Crockett Blackburn is using me as a leash—as long as he lets me be the one to bite.

I was the lead architect for the Pack's billion-dollar tech company, and I was secretly carrying the Alpha's heir. I thought the merger would finally make Caleb Mark me. Instead, I walked into my office to find a mistress sitting in my chair. Caleb didn't just fire me. When I refused to hand over the encryption keys to the system I built, he locked me in a reinforced closet lined with silver mesh. For a pregnant wolf, silver is poison. I pounded on the door until my knuckles bled. "Caleb! Please! It burns! I'm losing the baby!" I screamed until my voice broke, feeling the life drain from my womb. But outside the door, his mistress laughed. "Don't listen to her, Caleb. She's just a weak Omega faking it for attention." And my Fated Mate believed her. He left me in that dark box while our son died in a pool of my own blood. He thought he had broken me. He thought I would die a silent death so he could parade his fake heir around. He forgot one thing: I wrote the code that runs his entire life. Three days later, I didn't show up to the hospital morgue. I rolled my wheelchair onto the stage of his global press conference, flanked by the rival Alpha he feared most. I held up the remote to the main server. "You killed my son for a lie, Caleb," I smiled into the microphone as the screens behind him broadcast the footage of his crime. "Now, say goodbye to your empire."