On our wedding day, Jace Parker, an Alpha, ran out on me.   I clutched my pregnancy test results so tightly that my fingertips turned white.   Eventually, I decided to accept a marriage proposal from another Alpha I barely knew.   My husband took me to Alderhaven for a change of scenery 2 months later. We ran into Jace by chance.   He was grinning with his usual swagger, holding a girl in his arms and kissing her passionately on the sidewalk.   His friend gave him a knowing smile.   "Nora hasn't contacted you in all this time. Aren't you worried?"   Jace paused, then answered in a husky voice, "Give it a few more days. I'll go find her when I'm done."   The aloof, elegant man beside me asked quietly, "Do you know him?"   I shook my head.   "That Alpha's scent makes me sick. Let's go."

My mom, it turns out, was an heiress—kidnapped and sold. The moment I understood that, it hit me all at once: I had to get her home. That day, when I got back, I asked her. "Mom, do you want to run?" She flinched, hard. "Run? Where to? If I run, what happens to you?" I grabbed her cold hand. "Mom, you deserve to be free." That night, I started planning her escape. We'd almost made it to the edge of town when her whole body started shaking. And that was when Dad came storming after us, swearing. "You worthless bitch—where the hell do you think you're going!" Seeing him closing in, I shoved my mom. "Mom, run!" She froze for a split second, then bolted past the town line like her life depended on it.

I'm an orphan, and somehow I married into money. On our wedding day, my husband booked the biggest venue in Manhattan just to show everyone how much he loved me. After the wedding, the luxury piled up faster than I could keep track of, and he handed me a card with $200,000 a month to spend. My best friend Lily, though, married the poorest man around. Life was hard for her; her husband went out to construction sites every day to earn a living. She'd always say, eyes red, "Claire, I wish I were you." I'd just smile and say nothing. Later, she actually made a wish on a magic lamp, and swapped our souls. She cried while she apologized to me. "I'm sorry. I really couldn't stand being crammed into some Brooklyn walk-up with a guy like that. And I sure didn't want to live off the day-old bread and bruised produce Ethan drags home every night." Then, at the end, she smiled. "But Claire, you're an orphan. You were never cut out for a life like this." With that, she got into the town car and didn't look back. I stood there, laughing until the tears came. She didn't know I spent every day on my knees scrubbing floors, and could barely get a meal. She didn't know Chase saw prostitutes constantly, and that he'd given me HIV a long time ago. And she really didn't know I couldn't spend a single cent off that $200,000 card. I wiped my eyes and turned toward the neighborhood she'd fought so hard to escape.