Inside the prison, the matriarch slammed fifty million on the table. "Break up my son and his girlfriend Chloe. My family cannot have such a scheming woman as its mistress." I pocketed the card, smiling. "By fair means or foul?" "Yes. Whatever it takes!" I became the matriarch's adopted sister and entered their family. When Chloe staged a fall and framed me for pushing her, I kicked her down the stairs in front of everyone. She hired hitmen to take me out, then I threatened the kidnappers into turning on their own employer. She was vicious, yet I was even more so. Looking down at Chloe's ashen face, I let out a cold, contemptuous laugh. "Play dirty with me? You're not even in my league!"

I chased Noah for five years, and he wouldn't even accept a box of chocolates from me. After losing touch for two years, I found him in a lounge, watching another woman slip a tip into his shirt pocket. He accepted it and thanked her under his breath. I paid $700 for his exclusive company that night. He only said, "You don't have to help me like this." My hand stalled as I reached for him, but I asked anyway, "Then could you kiss me?"

I'm Emma Reed, and Lucas Hayes—the man I'd secretly loved for ten years—fell for my roommate, Sophia Carter, in the middle of a video call with me. The next day, Lucas asked me to set them up on a date. "Emma, I've never liked anyone this much. Help me." His voice was low and gentle, but there wasn't much pleading in it. Because he knew I couldn't say no to him.

The new transfer student, Chloe Parker, claimed she was bound to a dating system. She needed my childhood friend, Noah Carter, to help her complete one inappropriate task after another. If he refused, she said the system would punish her. I warned Noah that Chloe was using him. He only glared at me. "She'll be punished if she fails. Why are you so selfish, Emma Bennett?" I stopped trying to convince him. Then a teacher discovered the sex toy Chloe had brought to class, and Noah pointed straight at me. "It's hers." I became the laughingstock of the entire school. Several boys eventually dragged me into an alley, and I didn't survive that winter. When I opened my eyes again, the toy was rolling past the toe of my shoe.

The day our two children died in a car crash, my husband slept with his secretary seven times in a hotel room. Six years later, I had long since remarried, yet he tried to force me to come home and raise his secretary's son. Then his secretary laid a hand on my child. I slapped her across the face and called my husband, Noah Whitmore. My ex still had no idea that the investor he had been begging to meet was my husband. "Someone here says he has the right to discipline your wife." "Don't let him leave. I'm here."

The nurse said my husband could only respond to the woman he truly loved, so she asked me to help him provide a sample. Still in pain from the procedure, I pushed the door open—and found him masturbating to a photo of my sister, moaning her name. I canceled the treatment and handed him divorce papers. He was too busy comforting my sister to read them. He signed without a second glance. Later, he begged me to come home. But the billionaire my sister had always dreamed of marrying took my hand. "She's my wife now."

The dentist I had a crush on, Evan Reed, told me to save his number. The moment I unlocked my phone, he saw the steamy novel I had been secretly reading. I wanted to leave the planet on the spot. I thought I had blown any chance I might have had with him. Then somehow, I ended up moving into his house.

I pretended to be a wealthy heiress and went on a date with a man who drove a Vespera. Then he fell in love with my stories, and I fell in love with him. What he didn't know was that even the name I'd given him was borrowed.

I spent six years developing a cancer drug. The patent application named my husband's intern as the inventor. When I confronted my husband, Evan Mercer, he acted as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. "Lily Vaughn is meeting with investors. How is she supposed to impress them if she has nothing to show for herself?" When I refused to give in, he removed me from my position in front of everyone and ordered me to work as her assistant. As I left his office, I saw a photo Lily had posted in the company group chat. She was sitting on the terrace of my home, holding my husband's hand. His wedding ring was gone. When I returned to the office, he even tried to force me to apologize to her. "Sign the statement, or we're getting divorced!" I pushed my resignation letter and divorce petition across the table. "I choose divorce." He told me to stop acting out of spite. I had already texted my father, Richard Hart. Claire: Put the next round of funding on hold. Later, Evan sent me an email with the subject line: Save me!

I crossed over into the Underworld and returned with a $10 billion inheritance for my husband, Julian Blackwood. For his adopted sister, Serena Blackwood, he destroyed my only way home and had my soul ripped apart. When I was given a second chance at the past, I let Serena make the journey instead. He thought he had finally saved the woman he loved. He had no idea she was too terrified to even go near the river of the dead. Later, Julian dropped to the ground and begged me to go down one more time. I smiled and pulled my skirt free from his hands. "You destroyed my way home with your own hands. And now you want me to find your money for you? Not a chance."

After the bullying started, I endured it in silence, afraid my grandfather's heart condition couldn't handle the stress. But they still showed him the video they had taken to humiliate me. Grandpa was rushed into intensive care, and they kept laughing. After everything I'd been through, I still hadn't been able to protect him. Why should they get to live as though nothing had happened? The people who hurt me—and everyone who helped them—I would make sure they all paid for what they had done. Your good days are over.

The three commemorative bottles I had set aside for our daughter were taken by my husband, Owen Bennett, for his assistant Nicole Dawson's birthday. The wine was worth $680,000. It sat beside Nicole's birthday cake, and even the wooden cases engraved with my daughter's name became props for her photos. She posted them on Instagram with the caption: Owen's surprise for me. Everyone says the wine is amazing. My husband replied beneath it: Owen: [If you're happy, it was worth it.] I took a screenshot and posted it in the company group chat. Audrey: Can't afford a birthday present for your assistant, so you steal from your own daughter? Later, I slapped the divorce papers down in front of him and cut off my family's funding to his company. He asked me, "You're divorcing me over a few bottles of wine?" I looked him in the eye. "Yes."

My name was Nora Hartwell. The day my wealthy biological parents came to take me home, I brought along a notebook filled with every worst-case scenario I could think of. Entry One: The fake heiress, Vivian Hartwell, would deliberately hurt herself, then accuse me of pushing her. Entry Two: Something valuable she "lost" would turn up in my bag. My mother, Caroline Hartwell, read it, then pulled me into a tight hug, tears filling her eyes. "Sweetheart, you've been through so much all these years. You have me now. No one is ever going to treat you like that again." I breathed a quiet sigh of relief, hoping I would never need any of my plans. Two days later, the fake heiress fell down the stone steps right in front of me, then sobbed that I had pushed her. I pulled up the security footage. But my father, Richard Hartwell, scooped her into his arms and snapped at me, "Is proving you didn't do it really more important than making sure she's okay?" That was when I understood. They didn't need proof. They'd already decided who they were going to protect. Later, a stolen diamond brooch really did appear in my bag. This time, I didn't beg my parents to believe me. I called the police in front of everyone.

At midnight, I was digging through the trash behind my apartment when my ex-boyfriend, Noah Reed, pulled up beside me in a Lamborghini. I hadn't seen him in 4 years. He tossed me two empty water bottles. "So this is what life is like after marrying a rich man?" Clutching the silver ring I had just found, I told him, "I dropped the diamond ring my husband gave me. 3 carats." His expression immediately hardened. Later, the entire internet condemned me as greedy and shameless. With everything I owned packed into a suitcase, I had nowhere to go in a Halston rainstorm. But he knelt in the floodwater and opened a ring box. "This one is 5 carats. Ivy, give me one more chance. Please."

My name was Monica Carter. In the tenth year of my marriage to Daniel Carter, I discovered he was cheating on me. That night, we had just finished celebrating the 8th birthday of our son, Noah Carter. Daniel handed him a GoPro and gave his shoulder an affectionate pat. "You're 8 now, Noah. Starting today, you need to learn how to be a responsible man." I took a picture of them and posted it on Instagram. Monica: My two boys. At the time, I still believed that having a husband, a child, and three dance centers we had built together meant those ten years had been worth it. The very next day, he took a 23-year-old woman to a spa hotel in Desert Springs under the pretense of meeting a potential franchisee. He used the money we had earned together to book a suite for the two of them.

I'd spent 32 years in a child-free marriage. Then, on the night my husband, Grant Whitmore, retired, he told me he had a son and a daughter. He'd had them all along. "Ivy, you couldn't have children, and I gave up half my life for you. Now I want to enjoy having my son and daughter around. Don't keep dragging me down." Grant rushed me to sign the divorce papers so he could move his mistress, Celeste Bennett, and their two children, Luke and Lily Bennett, into the home we had shared for 30 years. I almost laughed. Because all those years ago, I wasn't the one diagnosed with fertility problems. He was.

On the day Gavin and I were supposed to register our marriage, my fiancé, Gavin Mercer, had security throw me out of City Hall. Then he took his childhood sweetheart by the hand and walked inside. He looked at me without a trace of guilt. "Valerie's child needs a father, and she needs to be covered by my family health insurance. Once Valerie and I divorce, I'll marry you." I had loved him for seven years. Everyone assumed that this time, just like all the times before, I would obediently wait for him. But that very night, I accepted the overseas marriage my family had arranged for me. I flew to Kingswell and disappeared from Gavin's life completely. Three years later, I accompanied my husband back to Grayport to visit his adoptive father's grave. When something urgent came up, he asked the local branch of his company to send someone to pick me up. I never expected the man waiting for me to be Gavin, whom I hadn't seen in three years. "You've made your point long enough. It's time you came back. Valerie's daughter is starting preschool. From now on, you can handle drop-off and pickup."

It was the Fourth of July, and my husband—who ran a law firm in Boston—suddenly had an "urgent business trip." Just like that, he couldn't make our vacation after all. That same afternoon, his intern posted a video on Instagram. There was Ethan, a man who barely wasted three words on anyone in a courtroom, standing hands on hips, trading insults over a chain-link fence with a pack of women outside a trailer park. The caption: It really is different when your husband's a lawyer. About time somebody gave them a taste of what they put me through. I laughed, hit like, and left a comment. Claire: [Not bad. Guess those sky-high billable hours pay for something after all.] The whole firm lost it. Screenshots everywhere. People were half-seriously running a pool on which divorce attorney I'd hire. A second later, Ethan called. Still breathing hard. "Claire, what the hell are you doing in the comments? How is Lily supposed to show her face at the office after this?" "Those women trash-talk her every single day. What's wrong with me having her back? Oh, right—a spoiled little rich girl like you, coddled your whole life, wouldn't know the first thing about what girls from nothing have to put up with." He threw it at me like a slap. "Delete it. I'll take you somewhere at Thanksgiving instead." Thanksgiving? I laughed, cold, and hung up. In three days, the divorce decree the court had already handed down would be final. He could save the trip for his poor girl.

My name is Amelia Hart. For seven years, I pulled all-nighters handling cases for my husband's law firm—and brought in eighty percent of its revenue. Then my husband, Ethan Reed, slapped me over Chloe Bennett—the girl whose education he had funded. He forced me out of our marriage with nothing and let Chloe steal the credit for my work—and the $5 million case I had landed from the wealthiest woman in America. Smiling, I handed Chloe the client's number. What neither Chloe nor Ethan knew was that the wealthiest woman in America, Victoria Sterling, was my mother.

My granddaughter got beaten so badly by the school bully she ended up in emergency surgery. Then the bully's father slid me a check to say she'd tripped and fallen on her own. When the school and the cops both closed ranks around him, I took the medals my son and daughter-in-law had left behind and went looking for a man who'd served with them. He found me a lawyer—then walked me right into the rich man's charity gala. And just as they were about to hand him Philanthropist of the Year, I laid the settlement out in front of the whole room. "Hold that trophy a second. Let everybody here decide for themselves—is this fifty grand charity, or is it hush money?"

For seven years, my husband pretended to be poor—only to spend $198,000 on a piano for the daughter of his first love. I took our daughter and left. Seven years later, she was a piano prodigy. He tracked us down with a piano in tow and begged through his tears for her to call him Dad. She refused the gift. "I can buy my own piano now, Dad. I don't want yours anymore."

When enemy knights abducted me, Duke Locke was watching the sunrise beside Swan Lake with his new lover. When a messenger delivered my plea for help, Locke barely glanced at it. "Keep her locked up. Let her suffer for a while. Maybe then she'll stop using tricks like this to cling to me." By the time his answer reached the tower, a cold blade had already cut into my neck. I looked at the enemy lord whose name inspired terror across the land. "Duke Ronan, killing me will gain you nothing. But if you're willing to make a deal, I can give you the one thing Locke is most afraid of losing." Ronan lowered his gaze to me. "What?" "His title." When Locke finally remembered me, he stormed Ronan's border fortress himself. By then, Ronan had me in his arms while Locke stood outside, screaming for me to come back. Ronan looked down at me, asleep against his chest. He brushed his fingertips over my cheek, then gave Locke a taunting smile. "Too late. She doesn't have the strength to leave with you now."

On the day my ex-girlfriend Audrey Whitmore got married, I whispered five words in her ear. The next second, she picked up the knife and killed the groom. Six years later, I said the same five words to her again. This time, she killed her own parents. Everyone was convinced I had incited her to murder. It was not until the recording was released that they discovered all I had said was...

My name was Cheryl Dulles. After graduation, I pretended to break my leg. While I relaxed in bed to "recover," my cousin Janet Dulles panicked. In my previous life, Janet had treated our entire class to a graduation trip to Saint Maren Island. Halfway through the trip, she sold me on the dark web, then used the money to party with our classmates. I was tortured to death somewhere in the Azure Sea. When my parents confronted Janet, she acted as though she were the one who had been wronged. "I invited everyone, but I warned them over and over not to leave the harbor. Cheryl just wouldn't listen!" My boyfriend, Samuel Reed, backed her up. "She's the one who went looking for trouble. She snuck off to the red-light district alone at night. Her disappearance is no one's fault but her own!" Every one of our classmates gave false testimony, claiming I had slipped out by myself in the middle of the night. My parents were devastated. As my sole cousin, Janet moved into our home under the pretense of comforting them. Then she and Samuel murdered my parents for the inheritance. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day Janet invited our whole class to Saint Maren Island.

At my father's funeral, the scholarship student he had sponsored barged in with a huge baby bump. She dropped to her knees before me, her eyes bloodshot. "I'm carrying Allen's child! We were always careful, but it still happened. Please return him to me. I was his true love!" What she didn't know was that my father was actually a woman.

I was suffering from severe kidney failure and desperately needed a transplant. But not only had my husband, Hayden Agnes, betrayed me—he intended to give the kidney that could save my life to his mistress's mother. I was done with the man who had betrayed me. But my life and the dignity that were rightfully mine? I would take them back. I called Christian Field. He was the untouchable king of Holloway's business world—and the unhinged man who had loved me in secret for years, waiting so long for me to choose him. "I'm going to Holloway for surgery. Come get me in three days." Christian came for me, beside himself with joy. But after I left, Hayden lost it entirely.

On our way to a job interview, Ida Prescott, my best friend, who had always warned me to mind my own business, suddenly sprinted toward a Rolls-Royce that had just been hit by a truck. That was when I found out she had traveled back as well. In our previous lives, I, Delia Avery, and Ida had been the two brightest stars in Kingsley University's finance program. After graduation, we both made it to the final interview at a Fortune 500 conglomerate. On the day of the interview, we came across the company's CEO after his car crashed. I gave up the interview to save him. Ida raced to the interview without looking back. She got the job. I lost my chance at a prestigious firm. Everyone thought it was a terrible shame. Almost no one knew that the CEO repaid me by marrying me in a wedding that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. I married the man at the very top of Ida's corporate ladder and had the world at my feet. She remained an overworked employee crushed beneath impossible performance targets. At the annual gala, I stood beside the CEO dripping in jewels while she faded into the crowd, worn down and invisible. Driven mad by jealousy, she plunged a knife into me in front of everyone. When I opened my eyes again, we had both returned to the day of the CEO's accident.

On the night of our sixth anniversary, I found a case of wedding champagne in my fiancé Adrian Cole's private wine cellar. The card bore the name of Evelyn Bell, his first love—and her wedding date happened to be the same as ours. It turned out he hadn't proposed because he had finally decided he wanted to marry me. He simply couldn't stand the thought of her marrying someone else. So I slipped off the engagement ring that had come six years too late and gently set it atop the champagne case. "Adrian, let's call off the engagement."

After five years with Julian Hale, I had waited through three weddings without a groom. Claire Morris always pretended to be sick right before the ceremony. Julian would tell me to be understanding and move the wedding to the following week. Our wedding had already been postponed three times because of her. After he hung up, I saw the post she had just shared. In the photo, Julian's wedding jacket was draped around her shoulders, and their fingers were intertwined. Her caption read: He always chooses me first. I'm the happiest woman in the world. I took off my ring and called a number I hadn't dialed in two years. Adrian Shaw was my childhood friend—and Julian's sworn rival. "Adrian, you once said you'd come whenever I needed you. Does that promise still stand?" "Adrian, come marry me." "Wait for me." That day, the wedding wasn't canceled. I simply changed grooms.

When I was 13, everyone decided I had murdered my parents. I spent two years in a juvenile treatment center. After my release, I returned to the restaurant my parents had left behind and raised the three younger siblings who hated me. 25 years later, I was sentenced to life in prison for another murder. Then I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. My siblings refused to let me die in peace. They connected a memory reader to my brain and livestreamed the feed for the world to see, determined to show everyone exactly what kind of monster I was. But when my memories lit up the screen, the first thing they saw was the life I had never told anyone about.

At my birthday party, a severe allergic reaction landed me in the hospital. When I woke up, I casually asked my fiancé, "Who are you?" He thought I had amnesia, so he pawned me off on his cousin and seized his chance to run away with my best friend. What they didn't know was that I remembered everything. And they had no idea that the man they'd dragged in to pose as my fiancé had waited years for this day.

The world knew me as Victoria Hawthorne, heiress to Hawthorne Group. Aboard a floating casino in international waters, I found my younger sister, Erin Bennett, who was supposed to be studying in Montavia. She had already gambled away everything she owned. Her two childhood friends, the same men who had once sworn to protect her, were now helping a fake heiress force her into signing a 10-year blood donation agreement. Above them, a massive screen played intimate footage they had secretly recorded and doctored. Every guest in the room was waiting for her to surrender. But for our mother's sake, my sister removed the family seal I had left her and wagered her last €50 million. The fake heiress laughed in her face. "Your sister died years ago. No one is coming to save you." I descended the stairs from the second floor and pushed the remaining chips toward my sister. "Who told you I was dead?"

I, Nora Blake, had been married to Ethan Hawthorne for three years. But the day he welcomed his first love, Celeste Laurent, back to Westbrook, I finally realized that none of his tenderness had ever truly belonged to me. He remembered what I liked for breakfast, the music I loved, and how easily I got cold—all because another woman liked the same things. The third time I asked for a divorce, he abandoned me in a Westbrook downpour, certain that with my father gravely ill and no career of my own, I would never be able to leave the Hawthorne family. He didn't know that the papers he had signed with his own hand included our separation agreement. And he had no idea that the man waiting to take me away was his first love's brother, Lucien Laurent. Later, I reclaimed my dream and moved to Bellariva. But he followed me there, red-eyed, begging me to come back. I slipped my arm through Lucien's and calmly reminded him, "Ethan, from now on, Celeste, the woman you've never been able to forget, will have to call me Mrs. Laurent."

My roommate's snake could understand every word we said. It was also the snake that killed me. In my previous life, my roommate, Vanessa Grant, found an injured white snake beside a forest highway and insisted on keeping it in our college dorm. I reported her to the residence hall director. Vanessa abandoned the snake in a derelict greenhouse, but she went there every day to feed it and told it over and over that I was the one who wanted it dead. Four years later, that same white snake led a swarm into my home. My parents and my 7-year-old sister died in front of me. I became its final prey. When I opened my eyes again, a cold forked tongue was brushing past the tip of my nose. Vanessa smiled. "Erin, it's so beautiful. Can we let it live here?" I looked into those green eyes and smiled too. "Sure."

I used my family's power to secure my husband Damian Kane's place among the Five Families. But ten days before I was due to give birth, he believed his assistant's fabricated evidence and locked me inside a glass wine cellar chilled to 18°F, forcing me to confess in front of everyone. Hundreds of guests raised their glasses and watched the spectacle as he tried to make me sign over my last remaining dock. I proved I had an alibi. Even after he knew the evidence was false, he still let his bodyguards manhandle me despite my nine-month belly. Only when blood stained the floor did he panic and order them to stop. But I had already sent the emergency distress signal my father had left me. Ten seconds later, my father, the man rumored to have been dead for three years, blew open the hall and stormed in with his men. "Who dares lay a hand on my daughter?"

On the day of his coronation, Julian Bennett, the new king, publicly tore up our three-year engagement and made Cecilia Ashford, the prime minister's daughter, his queen. My brother gripped the hilt of his sword. My father produced bonds proving the royal family owed the Harringtons 1.87 million gold coins. My mother ordered the bank ledgers moved. At midnight, I, Evelyn Harrington, stopped the carriage of Adrian Montclair, Duke of the North. "Marry me. I'll raise funds for the North, and in a year, we can have the marriage annulled." Later, the new king lost his crown for murdering his father and conspiring with the enemy. Covered in mud, he knelt at my feet and begged for mercy. The famously aloof Duke of the North took my hand and looked down at him. "She is my wife. You should call her Aunt first."

I deliberately left the lounge window open. Adrian Black was confined across the courtyard, close enough to hear Rowan White and me all night. The next morning, he stood before me with his chest wrapped in bandages and his eyes bloodshot. "You already have Rowan," he said hoarsely. "Why can't you have me too?" I was wearing Rowan's shirt. I looked at Adrian without a trace of emotion. "I thought women like Ivy were more your type. I'm covered in scars and smelling of blood. Wouldn't I make your skin crawl?" Adrian's eyes reddened. Rowan stepped up behind me and calmly fastened the top button of my shirt. The gesture pulled me back to one month earlier, just after the full-moon ceremony. I had still been carrying a fresh wound from defending the city when I went to the medic for medicine to ease Adrian's old injury. The door to the side hall beside Blackwood's oath platform had been left slightly open. I was about to step inside when I heard my name. Adrian and I had fought side by side for ten years. I had taken silver bullets meant for him and retaken the last of Blackwood's six border outposts. I had believed that once the war was over, he would finally keep his promise and marry me. Then I heard Deputy Commander Kyle speaking from inside. "Mara retook all six border outposts for Blackwood. You used to trust her more than anyone. What changed?" Adrian turned the moonstone ring on his finger, the matching half of the one Ivy wore. "Mara?" His voice was cold. "She's covered in scars and always reeks of blood. The thought of sharing a bed with her makes my skin crawl. How could she possibly compare to Ivy?" Kyle hesitated. "But every garrison at those six outposts answers to Commander Mara. What happens if she turns against you?" Adrian scoffed. "Blackwood belongs to me. So what if she leaves? It's not like those outposts would follow her." That was when I understood. He had never intended to keep his promise. He was going to marry someone else. I dropped the medicine I'd brought him into the nearest trash can, pulled out my phone, and sent a message to the one man Adrian hated most. Rowan. Mara: Wanna watch Adrian lose me and all six border outposts?

I was the Blackwood Pack's long-lost trueborn daughter, with the purest Alpha blood running through my veins. The day the Blackwood Pack's Alpha and Luna, my biological parents, came for me with the DNA results in hand, I sighed. I'd read far too many werewolf novels to believe this would end well. "Forget it. You must love the daughter you raised more. If I go back with you, the whole pack will only hate me. I might as well stay here." Mom and Dad swore again and again by the Moon Goddess that they would treat me well. The Blackwood territory was rich, and life there would be comfortable. In the end, I decided to go home with them. Once I climbed into the black SUV bound for the pack's castle, I spent the entire drive scribbling in a little notebook. Mom leaned over curiously. "What are you writing, sweetheart?" "I'm predicting all the ways your adopted daughter might try to hurt me." I pointed to the title on the cover: How to Survive the Sister Who Took Your Place. 1. The injury ruse: she hurts herself on purpose and makes Mom and Dad think I bullied her. 2. The theft setup: she accuses me of stealing the family's ceremonial wolf fang and makes Mom and Dad think I'm a thief. There were a lot more. Mom and Dad read page after page of notes and repeatedly assured me that none of those things would ever happen. When I arrived at the castle, Mia Blackwood, the girl who had taken my place, welcomed me with open arms. Relieved, I decided to try living in peace with her. Before returning, however, I had insisted that security install cameras in every blind spot, with the master controls in my possession. At the time, Mom and Dad thought I was making a fuss over nothing. Then, two days after I arrived, Mia threw herself down the main staircase and claimed I had pushed her. Mom and Dad flew into a rage and raised their hands to strike me. I put a check mark beside "the injury ruse", held up my notebook, and said calmly, "Mom, Dad, I had cameras installed in advance. Why don't we check the footage first?"

My name is Mara Ashford. The day I returned home after a six-month classified assignment, I received one last message from my daughter, Lily Ashford. Lily: Mom, help me. By the time I reached her school, she was chained to a radiator with a dog leash. The girl who had stolen her Bellmont internship stood on her passport and claimed that her father was the CEO of Northstar and her mother headed a classified national project. But I founded Northstar. And I had always been in charge of that classified project. I looked at my husband, standing silently behind the girl, and finally realized something. They had stolen far more than an internship from us.

When college started, I hid my identity as a billionaire heiress to live a few days as a normal person. But the maid's daughter from my house showed up, parading around campus under my name. We locked eyes. She pointed right at me, calling me a broke loser. Alright then. If she wanted to mess with me, she was about to find out she had chosen the wrong person to mess with.

For five years, I kept my marriage a secret while designing the Bay Arts Center for my husband. Then he gave the credit to his first love. The day after I learned I was pregnant, his first love walked onto the stage on his arm and claimed five years of my work as her own. I exposed her in front of everyone, but my husband reported me for stealing the plans and locked me away in an island villa. I escaped and slipped into an old theater to find the ledger that could clear my name—only for someone to blow up the building. With our lives hanging in the balance, he saved her first. I plunged into the freezing water and was presumed dead. He searched for me until he nearly lost his mind. But when I returned two years later with a major award, I discovered that there was more to his supposed first love—and his betrayal—than I had ever known. He had never loved her at all. From beginning to end, I was the only one he loved. But I had already moved on.

My ex-husband, Keller Thorne, once spent an entire night on his knees outside the Federal Technology Safety Commission, begging A.G. to save his company. He had no idea he was begging me. By morning, torrential rain had flooded half of Harbor City. Keller's tailored suit was soaked and wrinkled, all trace of his usual confidence gone. "If A.G. agrees to step in, I'll resign as CEO." The commission's executive secretary looked down at him. Her voice was calm enough to be cruel. "Mr. Thorne, she doesn't want your job." Only months earlier, Keller had sent me divorce papers through his attorney. Then he had told the press that I had never even gone to college—that a woman like me could never understand his world. But A.G., the woman he had spent 3 years trying and failing to meet, was me.

On the day I took my sister's place and married into the Moretti family, I watched my new husband put a bullet through a traitor's right hand. If I wanted to make it out alive, I needed to look harmless. So I slipped on an old hearing aid my stepfather had given me and pretended I couldn't hear a thing. Luca believed me. After that, the most feared man in Greyport started saying exactly what was on his mind whenever I was within earshot: "You smiled at Bruno four times today. Not once at me. He's not coming into the house tomorrow." "Noah knows a few signs. Why were you talking to him for so long? I'm sending him to East Docks tomorrow." "You keep saying this marriage contract ends in 6 months. Who says I'm letting you leave when it does?" To his face, I feigned confusion. Behind his back, I used the sign language he couldn't understand to call him bossy, petty, and impossible. Then Luca went to his knees before an enemy for me—and began learning sign language in secret. The night my lie finally came to light, he closed the bedroom door, removed my hearing aid, and signed back every insult I'd ever thrown at him. Then he stepped closer, his eyes rimmed with red. "You could hear me from the very first day?" "When I told you I wouldn't let you leave—when I told you I loved you, that I wanted to keep you forever—you heard all of that too?"

I had spent years waiting for my fated Alpha to mark me, only to watch him give another woman the scent meant for his mate alone. He let her take over my bedroom. He handed her my deepest secrets and watched as she tore open my oldest wounds. Again and again, he abandoned me because she was weak and I was strong enough to endure it. Then he used that same excuse to let my most trusted comrade die. So I stopped enduring. And I stopped needing him. At the full-moon ceremony, I rejected his mark before the entire pack. His face went deathly pale. Then he coughed up blood and fell to his knees in front of them all.

For Caleb, I chose to remain—a human in a wolf pack that had never welcomed outsiders. I built a hospital and prepared medicine. I gave everything I had to keep his world running, until I made Caleb both Alpha and chairman of the consortium. Then he brought home a timid pure-blood she-wolf. "Lyla, I need a pure-blood heir. I have no choice." I stared at the woman sheltered in his arms. "No. I won't accept it." Caleb's expression hardened. He broke his promise to love only me and let her stay. Every day after that, their intimate sounds drifted through the wall from the guest room next door. I silently counted down the days until I could leave. I had endured enough. I was leaving him.

I'm Lyra Hale, one of the poorest wolves on the East Coast. For a six-figure salary, I became the secretary to my high school archrival, Ethan Voss, the Alpha of Silvermoon Pack. He was sharp-tongued, impossible to please, and constantly complained that I dressed like a nun. What he didn't know? I was the reason he bombed the SAT and lost his shot at Wharton. When that insufferable Alpha called me in to work on a holiday, I couldn't help but vent on TikTok from my office, "If I sold off everything in the boss's office, I'd have enough to quit, live it up, and hire a dozen male strippers for a three-day bender." The video went viral. The top comment was from my Alpha boss himself: Ethan: [Are you insane? Why not sell me too? Am I not worth enough?] Terrified, I handed in my resignation. But my boss tracked me down across the country. His eyes were bloodshot, like he wanted to devour me, and he wrapped me in his pheromones. I thought this was revenge. Then I heard the Alpha—the one who always looked down on everyone—sigh, "I'd been waiting for you for ten years."

I was Ava, and I had a happy family—until a homeless girl came to our door and destroyed everything. My parents spent their life savings to save Lily, a runaway girl we found on the streets. They raised her like their own daughter. But when her wealthy biological parents finally tracked her down, Lily twisted the truth to win their sympathy and affection. She accused us of being human traffickers who had stolen her. Our reputation was ruined. We were shunned by everyone. My parents died in a car crash she orchestrated. My brother went after her for revenge—they shattered his knees and locked him in a mental institution. And I was pushed off an 18-story building by the men she hired. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day she showed up at our doorstep, clutching a worn-out bag, looking timid and fragile.

My husband risked his life to save his assistant—and became a national hero overnight. That assistant was his mistress. He scolded me for not understanding the bigger picture, certain I would swallow the humiliation and stay. I signed the divorce papers without a word. Then I released every last recording of their affair—the ones they'd thought were safe. He fell from grace. He knelt and begged for my forgiveness. I felt nothing but disgust. I'd held back my disgust and saved both their lives under gunfire. I could just as easily—without mercy—send them both straight to hell.

Three years ago, I handed over the evidence that my ex-husband's mistress had drowned our son. My ex—a mafia don—threw it straight into the fireplace, pulled his new woman close, and told me to stop being dramatic. I didn't stop, so he threw me out like trash. Now I'm back in New York—a top darknet operative with a federal agent husband at my side. First day home, I walked into the wrong VIP booth and got humiliated in front of my ex's whole family. I didn't argue. I didn't even raise my voice. I just set a trap for him at the hospital, and on live TV, in front of millions, I exposed his mistress for the killer she really was. His family's reputation shattered. Their stock crashed. They cornered me and demanded payback. My ex hesitated, pretending to weigh whether to save his family or save me. The next second, my husband crashed an armored vehicle straight through the hospital entrance, federal agents swarming in behind him. He shut down my ex's hospital and his entire family. They both knelt and begged. Sorry. Blood debts demand blood.

"You're as unfeeling as a stone and give me no pleasure at all. Hurry up and go see my brother to get your useless body cured!" The husband I had supported with all my family's fortune pushed me away with a look of disgust. Yet he turned around and pulled his future sister-in-law into his arms, plotting to poison my medicine, drive me insane, and seize my company. Watching this pair of clueless scumbags, I turned and walked straight into his eldest brother's private clinic. He had no idea that with a single word from me, the hundreds of billions in assets he coveted could be completely frozen. He also had no idea that his unapproachable, cold-blooded, ascetic medical genius of an eldest brother was right now kneeling before me, red-eyed, begging me to give him the chance to help me get my revenge. No matter. I can't wait to see him kneeling on the ground, respectfully calling me his sister-in-law.

I went to the black market to sell blood just to pay off my bankrupt boyfriend's debts. But when I came home, I saw him mocking me in a group chat: "Trash from the slums trying to climb the Ashford family tree? She's just a stray dog I keep for entertainment—she doesn't deserve me." To make the act convincing, he let loan sharks come after me, watched coldly as I collapsed from blood loss, and even allowed his men to beat my cat to death. I turned around, smashed the flower shop I had opened for him, and dialed the number of the billionaire father I had never contacted before: "Make the Ashford family company go bankrupt, and I'll agree to the arranged marriage." My ex-boyfriend thought I was penniless and would come crawling back to him eventually. Until the inheritance gala. He actually knelt at my feet, eyes red, begging me to take him back. I lifted his chin with the tip of my heel and looked down at him. "You don't deserve me."

In my past life, I went in to administer a sedative during the Mafia Boss's manic episode, only to be forcefully claimed by him when he completely lost his mind. But when he sobered up, he accused me of setting him up. He left me to die in childbirth, giving all his affection to my half-sister instead. Reborn, I stood outside his door, listening to the maddening sounds of destruction inside. My sister shot me a provoking glare. "You're a doctor. Are you just going to stand here and do nothing?" I simply stepped aside, handing the death trap over to her with a faint smile. "He doesn't need a doctor right now; he needs a sacrifice. Want to be the Madame? Be my guest." She eagerly pushed the door open. Soon, her gasps and tearful whimpers echoed from within. I turned around, went back to my room, locked the door, and went to sleep. On the day of their engagement, I left the estate for good. Later, my sister's incompetence caused his mania to severely worsen, pushing him to the brink of death. With bloodshot eyes, the once-ruthless Boss dropped to his knees before me. Desperately clutching my hem, he begged, "I was wrong... I realize now that it's always been you. Please, come back and save me." I pried his fingers off, one by one. "Get out of my way."

At our fifth-anniversary dinner, just as I was about to take out a positive pregnancy test, my husband pulled me into his arms and whispered in French, "Elena hasn't been able to conceive in five years. Chloe is so much better; she got pregnant in just three months." Chloe is my step-sister. What he didn't know was that I am completely fluent in French. My step-sister sent a video of her pregnancy to usurp my place? I responded by forwarding irrefutable proof of their fraud and illicit asset transfers straight to the prosecutors! Then, I smashed my phone, reclaimed my true identity as a genius designer, and flew overseas. I heard that later, facing bankruptcy and prison time, my husband discovered that the child my step-sister was carrying was actually another man's bastard. And when, in his absolute despair, he opened the "fifth-anniversary gift" I had left behind, he completely lost his mind. Inside were only two things: a signed set of divorce papers and a positive pregnancy test.

I'm the heir to a business dynasty. For three years, I kept my identity hidden while quietly funding my husband's rise, turning a low-level finance associate into one of Wall Street's hottest rising stars. His pregnant mistress, convinced I was nothing more than a trophy wife living off his success, cornered me while I was out with friends and shoved the check at me, expecting me to cover the bill. My husband even demanded I pay him back ten million—as compensation for the mistress's emotional distress. I nodded calmly. "Fine." Three minutes later, a helicopter thundered overhead as a convoy of armored vehicles sealed off the street. I stopped hiding who I was. I scattered cash at his feet and said coldly, "Take it. Consider it the price of your life." The Wall Street rising star who had been so full of himself only moments earlier suddenly buckled. He dropped to his knees amid the scattered bills and desperately begged for mercy. I tossed my wedding ring into the trash and turned away without a second glance. Begging now? Too late.

I kept my billionaire heiress identity a secret, quietly keeping my boyfriend's startup afloat with my personal black card for five months. His repayment? Backing his scheming new assistant and using doctored receipts to publicly frame me for embezzlement. The ungrateful bastard I'd built with my own money used the chance to seize power: "Hand over your clients and get the hell out." I didn't waste a single breath defending myself. I just threw my keys on the table and walked away. The next day, the fallout began. I cut off my secret funding, and his cash flow collapsed instantly. When he brought his new fling to beg the city's top billionaire for a bailout, I linked arms with the investor—my uncle—and had security toss them out like trash. When he went live online to play the victim and smear my name, I dropped the unedited bank statements—along with the deed to the very office building they worked in—canceling him permanently. Looking at my desperate, bankrupt ex, I smirked. "You wanted to convict me of embezzlement? Fine. Consider your entire company liquidated!"

"I was bleeding out on the delivery table, fighting for my life. But my tycoon husband's personal assistant refused to release the 150,000-dollar surgery deposit. ""The boss is in a meeting. Don't bother him with such a trivial matter."" Because of that missing 150,000, I lost my baby, and my uterus. And that so-called ""meeting""? He was teaching his assistant how to play golf, his hands wrapped around hers. Afterward, my husband showed no remorse. He even threatened to cut off my credit cards—to teach me a lesson. I threw the divorce papers in his face. He thought I couldn't survive without him. But he had no idea who I really was. I was a Wall Street titan, a master of capital. He wouldn't part with 150,000 to save my life. So on the day of the divorce, I'd rally the entire market and watch his empire crumble."

Jason Smith, my partner of four years, and Mia Scott, who I once called my best friend, were indebted to me for four years of rent, a $32,000 student loan, 47 dinners, two fever pills, half a loaf of frozen bread, an unborn baby, and two lives.   When the brutal apocalypse descended, in their greed for two loaves of bread, they murdered my baby and used me as zombie bait, leaving me to die.   Clinging to life, I cut my wrist to lure the zombies, determined to bring those backstabbers down with me.   Reborn 30 days before the world went to hell, I swiped their IDs and took out massive loans in their names. This time around, they would pay for every single debt with their lives!

My name is Evelyn Sutton, twenty-seven years old. I used to be a prodigy designer whose talent outshone all her peers. Five years ago, for my husband Sebastian Locke, I put down my pen, turned down all major international contracts, and hid away my brilliance — willingly becoming a full-time wife. Later, after ten months of pregnancy, I gave birth to our son, Aiden. I poured all my time, energy, youth, and passion into the family and the kid. Today was supposed to be the parent-child activity day at the kindergarten. No one expected that a fire would break out at the school.A beam collapsed in the flames and landed heavily on my calf. In the face of danger, everyone instinctively shielded their loved ones and desperately ran toward the emergency exit. But when the fire came, my husband and my son, not one of them looked back at me.Without exception, they all rushed over to protect my husband's childhood sweetheart: Cassandra Lindon.

My name is Liana Nolan. I'm 22 years old, an ordinary nurse in the Neurosurgery Department at Silverwood General Hospital. Few people know that I have another identity: a neuroscience prodigy and a doctor of neuropharmacology, under the pen name LinN. The global medical community and powerful figures from all over the world are eager to meet LinN. At this very moment, wearing my faded, worn-out nurse's uniform, I'm standing in the corner of the nurses' station, being ordered around by Dulcie Sage — who only started working here three months ago. All because she is my boyfriend's assistant nurse — and also the one he's cheating on me with.

My CEO husband's manic episode hit just as the company's core formula was destroyed. In my past life, I cut my own veins for a blood remedy. Pregnant, I stayed awake three days straight to save his life. Then I miscarried, died, watched him hand all the credit to his little damsel in distress. Reborn, hearing him howling through the wall, I called her right away. "The chance to save the CEO is all yours." Husband's doomed? I'm going to bed. The next day, she showed up clutching a half-baked draft she'd fished out of my trash. He rewarded her by smashing my signature perfume—our love token—and asked me to piss off. I calmly destroyed every last trace of the life-saving formula he depended on and walked out with nothing. What they didn't know was that discarded draft was defective. It'd trigger a lethal toxic crisis. Without me, his only future was despair, insanity, and a very slow death.

I lifted the hem of my nightgown and let my trembling hand find its way between my thighs. The moment my fingers brushed the place that had been ignored for months, a wave of suppressed need crashed through me. I closed my eyes. I let myself imagine something hot and hard pushing into me. My fingers moved harder, faster, my breath coming in short, ragged pulls. I was right on the edge—— Then the bathroom door was kicked open.

"You embezzled thirty-five thousand dollars from the firm. Get out." My lawyer boyfriend shoved the termination letter in my face. Right next to him stood the intern I had personally hired. I didn't get angry at their pathetic setup. Instead, I smiled. He had no idea the building his precious law firm sat in belonged to me. He had no idea the billionaire he'd been sucking up to for three years was my mother. And he definitely had no idea that every single client in that contact book he just stole? They worked for my mother. And they all knew exactly who I was. All he knew was that I was the idiot who loved him enough to give him everything. That's fine. Tomorrow, he'd find out the truth.

I once believed that Aaron was my fated mate, a gift from the Moon Goddess. Three years ago, I took a fatal silver bullet for him, leaving a permanent, unhealable scar on my collarbone. But when he woke up, he caught the scent of a white camellia ribbon that my sister had picked up, and he mistook her for his savior. From then on, I became the vicious older sister in his eyes. And she became his redemption. On the night of the full moon, I witnessed him losing control in heat outside the guard room. He clutched my sister's ribbon as if it were his only reason to live. Later, to vent his anger for my sister, he locked me in a water dungeon and tortured me with fifty pure silver poisoned needles until I was nearly dead. In that moment, I finally decided that I didn't want him anymore. I accepted my father's arrangement and agreed to marry the rumored dying Wolf King of the Northern Pack. Before leaving, I left behind two documents. One was a guard termination contract. The other was an application to sever the fated mate bond. One month later, Aaron finally discovered that I was the one who had saved him all along. Dragging his broken body, he knelt outside my Wolf Queen coronation ceremony, begging me to come back. But by then, I was no longer his fated mate. I was the Wolf Queen of the North.

"Serra, don't make a scene." At the Rite of Union, Kyle looked at me coldly. "Other than Elara, I will never love anyone. But if you admit your mistake now, I can still leave you half of the Alpha's mate position." Everyone in the hall thought I would back down. After all, in my past life, I bled for him, hunted for him, brought him resources, and sacrificed everything to raise him to the position of Alpha. But no one knew that when I died in the blizzard on the border, I saw with my own eyes this man, who was supposed to have died in battle, passionately kissing Elara. In this life, I publicly broke off the engagement, bypassed Kyle, and chose his archrival, Zane. That blood-soaked man pulled me into his arms and shielded me against his chest. Later, he caught me when I fell from the platform; he jumped down to save me when I broke my leg and fell into a well. Kyle, for his pure first love, knelt in the blizzard for three days and three nights. And finally, when the truth came to light, he learned— The one who had truly saved him back then was never Elara. It was me. That night, the wind and snow crushed down upon the camp. I lifted the tent flap and saw that man, once so proud and untouchable, still kneeling in the snow, his knees sunk deep into the frozen earth, his body covered in frost. He looked up at me, his eyes rimmed red, his voice hoarse as he trembled: "Serra... could you, just once more, look at me?"

Everyone believed Mark Snyder, the racer with five championship titles, was head over heels for his wife. But I alone knew the truth. He had callously tossed my engagement ring, a symbol of my dedication, into a dumpster overflowing with used condoms. He cruelly joked to his mistress, "Once I've conned her into handing over all her secrets, I'll get rid of her." Little did he know, on the eve of the championship award ceremony, with his ego at an all-time high, I erased every shred of the team's confidential data. I incinerated 1,800 pages of meticulously detailed track notes. Then, with a smirk of icy satisfaction, I broadcasted his infidelity live to the world. I couldn't wait to see how he would manage to win without the brains behind his success.