My name was Sara Sterling.  At 18, I became engaged to Alvin Hawthorne, heir to the Hawthorne family. In the dangerous world we lived in, he was the one person I thought I could always count on. I held on to that promise for seven long years. Again and again, he told me things were too unstable or the timing wasn't right, and I kept waiting while the years slipped by. Then, on our wedding day, just as the priest was about to begin the vows, Alvin got word that his assistant, Lina Parker, had been kidnapped. He left me standing at the altar in front of everyone and went after her himself. In that moment, I saw something in his eyes I'd never seen when he looked at me: real fear, and a depth of feeling he had never once shown me. He came back later with his men and promised we'd try again in three days. But when I caught the scent of Lina's freesia perfume on him, then looked at myself in the mirror, I suddenly felt exhausted. I didn't want him anymore.

An injury had left the Wolf King, Lucien Blackthorn, with little chance of fathering a child. After years without one, he had no choice but to name his nephew, Sebastian Blackthorn, as his heir. Then he met me, Alice Sinclair, and I became pregnant with his child. For the first time in years, he had hope. He sent me to a private clinic so I could safely carry the baby to term. But Sebastian's wife, Victoria Ashford, stormed in with her men and yanked me by the hair. "You think getting pregnant with some bastard means you can force me to hand over my husband?" I told her the baby belonged to the Wolf King, but she crushed my mate badge beneath her heel. "If he could father children, why would he ever name my husband his heir?" She beat me until I went into premature labor, then injured my baby while trying to snatch him away. I held my gasping child and begged her to let the nurse through, but she ordered her men to block the door. Then the Wolf King arrived. He shoved her aside and pulled me, battered and bleeding, into his arms. "How dare you touch my mate and my child?"

The wedding march began—but my groom, Simon Mercer, was nowhere to be found. At the exact same moment, my mother, Caroline Webb, posted a video in the family group chat. In it, Simon was down on one knee before my cousin Phoebe Carter, holding up a ring and asking her to marry him. Our relatives crowded around them, cheering, while my father, Martin Webb, stood nearby, smiling as he topped up their champagne glasses. I took off my veil and was about to go over there when my mother suddenly called me out in the chat. “Phoebe’s only wish is to have a wedding with Simon. Don’t come here and ruin it for her.” My hands trembling, I called her and asked why everyone else had known except me. She did not sound remotely guilty. “If we’d told you, would you have agreed?” “She’s already lost both her parents, and now she’s this ill. You have us. You have a career. It’s one wedding, Audrey Webb. What difference can it possibly make?” “Be good. Let her have a happy day, and don’t ruin it for everyone.” I gripped my phone and stared at the woman in the mirror, still dressed in her wedding gown. So it wasn’t only my love that had been a lie. My family’s love was a lie too.

I, Isabel White, had been dating Jonas Sapir, CEO of Sapir Group, for six months. The day I learned I was pregnant, I went to find him at a private club. Outside the door, I heard his twin brother laughing. "Jonas, I've been pretending to be you all this time. She won't dump you when she finds out, will she?" Jonas scoffed. "As if she could bear to leave me. You haven't slept with her, have you? I haven't even done that yet." "Relax. I'm just having fun with her." I clapped a hand over my mouth and crushed the doctor's report in my fist. The man who draped his coat over my shoulders by day and the one who held me at night, promising me forever, weren't the same person. I did not storm in and confront them. When I went home, I acted as if nothing had happened. In secret, however, I arranged my own death. I was keeping the baby, and I was taking it far away from both men. In one more day, I would be gone.

In my previous life, my younger sister and I both married into the Blackthorn Pack. I was the eldest daughter of Silvermoon's Alpha, and everyone said I was the obvious choice to become Blackthorn's next Luna. Yet in the fifth year of my marriage, the baby I had fought so hard to conceive was rejected by Blackthorn's bloodline registry. My husband decided I had betrayed him. He killed our baby in front of me, then threw me into an abandoned silver mine. My sister, meanwhile, gave his younger brother a legitimate heir and became Luna in a blaze of glory. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the mating ball. My husband walked right past me and fastened the engagement necklace around my sister's neck. That was when I knew he had traveled back as well. He thought choosing another woman would give him an heir his father approved of. What he didn't know was that he wasn't the Blackthorn Alpha's biological son at all. I couldn't wait to see whom he would blame after my sister gave birth.

I came home clutching the results of my pregnancy test, ready to tell Mom she was going to be a grandmother. Over dinner, Mom suddenly brought up my best friend. "Natalie Foster's getting married next Saturday. Make sure you keep the day free." I froze. "To whom?" "Colin Reed, of course. The three of you grew up together. Didn't she tell you?" Under the table, the test results slowly crumpled in my fist. Colin was the boyfriend I had been secretly dating for five years. He was also the father of the child inside me. Just then, the doorbell rang. Colin walked in holding Natalie's hand. She nestled against him, and the diamond on her ring finger stabbed painfully at my eyes. I looked down and opened my phone. Only last night, he had told me: Colin: Wait for me. I promise I'll marry you. When I looked up again, he was taking off Natalie's scarf with such tenderness that, for a moment, I felt dazed. Only yesterday, that tenderness had belonged to me. Colin, you lied to me.

The day Dominic Harrington drove me to a prenatal appointment, his young assistant, Ivy Walker, deliberately sped up and rear-ended our car. For three months, I'd heard him complain constantly about Ivy, saying she was careless and botched even the simplest tasks. He even claimed that she would be fired sooner or later. Yet after the crash, he ran straight to Ivy and carried her into an ambulance, even though she'd only scraped her forehead. He forgot I was still trapped in the passenger seat, four months pregnant. He forgot we'd been married for seven years and had spent two of them longing for this baby. Since he'd chosen someone else, my baby and I were done with him.

On our third anniversary, Adrian handed me divorce papers. His mentor's daughter was terminally ill. Her dying wish was to marry the man she'd loved for ten years. That man was my husband. "It's only a temporary divorce. Once she's gone, we'll get married again." I looked down at the pregnancy test report hidden in my purse. I didn't tell him that the baby we'd wanted for two years was finally here. Before I signed, I asked him one last question. "What if I won't marry you again?" Adrian laughed. "Elena, we've been together for seven years. You could never bring yourself to leave me." I didn't argue. I simply signed my name at the bottom of the agreement. He had no idea. This time, I wasn't going to wait for him to come back.

After my brother got into a car accident, he swore up and down he'd traveled back from the future. Then he stormed into my company's lobby and screamed at my ice-cold boss, "Christian!" I went white as a sheet. I nearly died on the spot. I'd just spent 30 minutes in Christian Mercer's office getting torn apart over a slip in one of my proposals. If this was what pushed him over the edge, my Wall Street career was toast. I tried to haul my brother off, but he latched onto my boss's waistband and howled at the top of his lungs. "Christian! You still haven't told her? What are you, a ninja?! You've even got Stella's initials tattooed on your lower back! What are you waiting for?!" The little punk was talking complete nonsense. But Christian was clearly furious. Color flooded that usually pale, unreadable face—up his cheeks, out to his ears, down his neck. Even the rims of his eyes had gone pink. That night, I was already drafting my resignation letter when I happened to catch the private WhatsApp messages Christian had sent my brother. Christian: This is Christian. Did you really come back from the future? Christian: The tattoo on my lower back… how did you know about it? Christian: Stella and I… do we really get married down the line? Christian: How many kids will we have? Will they take after her or me? Christian: Hold on. What did you mean by a "divorce scare"? Is some bastard going to try to take her from me?!

When I stepped out of the fitting room in my wedding dress, Damian Hart—my fiancé of 10 years—leaned down and kissed me gently between the brows. "Now that I've seen you in your wedding dress, Evelyn, I won't be coming to our bonding ceremony next week." I froze. "What do you mean?" His voice was apologetic, but there wasn't a trace of remorse in his eyes. "Chloe Reed came of age yesterday, and the Moon Goddess revealed that she's my fated mate. I married her at city hall this morning. I'm her mate now. If I go through another ceremony with you, it'll hurt her." Cold seeped through my entire body, and I couldn't keep the tremor from my voice. "We've been together for 10 years. The whole pack knows I'm supposed to become your Luna..." Damian sighed, wearing the patient look of a man indulging an unreasonable child. "Evelyn, you're still the woman I love most. If you can't bear to give up the ceremony, hire any man you want to play the groom. You shouldn't have to miss out." He paused, his gaze settling on my pristine white dress. His smile was tender and cruel. "You don't even have a wolf. No one in the pack would ever recognize you as Luna anyway. What difference does it make who stands in as the groom?" He was certain I had nowhere else to go, certain that, just as I had for the past 10 years, I would cry and then remain by his side. I didn't cry. I pushed the surprise I had prepared for him back into my dress pocket. It was a bloodline report bearing my full name, Evelyn Moore, and proving that I belonged to the Silvermoon royal family. Damian was right about one thing. I shouldn't settle for less. In seven days, I would walk into that bonding ceremony with a man who was truly worthy of me.

Six years after I was cast out of the Black Pine Pack, my ex-Alpha, Derek Hawthorne, arrived in the Northern Territory with the son we had together, claiming he was there to take me home. His expression was haughty. "Cure Selena Rhodes's silver poisoning, and I'll restore your place in the pack. You can return to the packhouse as Noah Hawthorne's birth mother." Noah looked impatient. "Mom is already being generous by letting you treat her. Don't push your luck." I did not board the Black Pine Pack's carriage. Instead, I left for Alliance City with the Werewolf Royal Court's convoy. Father and son followed the entire way, convinced I was still throwing a tantrum. At the city gates, a golden-eyed pup raced into my arms and wrapped his arms around my neck. "Mommy, who are they?" Derek went white. "You had another man's child?" I held my pup close and met their stares calmly. "Why is that so surprising? Our bond was severed six years ago. We haven't had anything to do with each other since."

My name is Nora O'Connell. At 18, I took a fall on the ice and woke up eight years in the future. Eight years later, I was married to my childhood rival, Finn Callahan, and we had a 4-year-old son, Sean Callahan. Worse, I had become a vicious woman who abandoned them both to grovel at Cole Mercer's feet. Cole was a poor student sponsored by my family, and I couldn't stand him. I couldn't believe my 26-year-old self had turned into his lapdog. It was absurd. I wanted to change everything, but no one believed me. My parents treated me like a threat. My son was afraid of me. Even Finn, who had loved me for years, handed me divorce papers. Everyone assumed I would run away with Cole and take my son with me again. Then Cole called me his dog in front of everyone. I slapped him hard across the face. My son held his penguin close in shock. "Dad, Mom didn't come here to run away. "She came here to beat him up!"

When I turned eighteen, I sensed my fated mate, Alpha Roman. I thought this was a gift straight from the moon goddess herself. For seven whole years, I waited for him to mark me, to follow through on every promise he'd made. But he always brushed me off with the same lines: "The timing isn't right yet" or "Just wait a little longer." That went on until our wedding day seven years later. On our wedding day, he got an urgent call saying that his assistant, Lena, had been kidnapped. Without a second of hesitation, he called the whole wedding off right there in front of all our guests and left me stranded alone at the wedding venue. I could feel it, clear as day—how frantic he was over her, how deeply he cared for her. That kind of raw, intense emotion? He'd never felt that strongly about me even once in seven years. When he finally came back, he promised we'd hold a make-up wedding three days later. Lena's scent clung to him, and in that instant, I knew. I was done with this man for good.

When my mother called and told me to meet Dante Moretti's prospective bride that evening, Dante was asleep beside me, one arm locked firmly around my waist. Thinking our parents must have gotten something wrong, I gently woke him. "They said Ms. Costa is back, and she's being set up with you." Without opening his eyes, he gave a sleepy hum and pulled me closer. "Perfect. Pick out a suit for me this afternoon. Elena likes black, so don't choose a tie that's too flashy." My whole body went rigid. "Then what are we?" Dante opened his eyes as though I had asked something ridiculous. "Sofia, we eat together, drink together, and share a bed. That's all." He pinched my cheek, his tone careless. "You didn't actually think I was going to marry you, did you?"

"Don, I can't take two! It'll kill me!" Inside the interview room, the fox heiress who had been mocking me as an "ignorant human bumpkin" only seconds ago let out a bloodcurdling scream. The cat-shifter heiress went deathly pale and scrambled backward on all fours. "I'm withdrawing from the bride-selection interview! Please, let me go!" I stood there, utterly dumbfounded. Wait... I'd come to interview for a high-paying executive assistant position at Viper Group so I could cover some medical bills. How had I wandered into a snake-shifter mafia don's bride-selection interview instead? Who in their right mind selected his wife through interviews? Before I could sneak away, however, a wave of savage, scorching snake pheromones swept through the room. Then a miracle happened. The heat that had tormented my body year-round—a condition top doctors had diagnosed as a genetic defect—vanished the moment his terrifying presence washed over me. For the first time in years, I felt completely at ease. My eyes lit up. Under everyone's horrified gaze, I threw myself into the arms of the furious Don Lucas. "If they don't want you, I do! Don Lucas, pick me!"

For 6 years, I thought I had a family. My adopted sister, Selena, hired men to ruin me. When her crimes came to light, my parents and Karl, my Alpha and bonded mate, stood firmly by my side. They held me when I broke down. They told me I was safe. They made me believe I was loved. I trusted them. I handed over the evidence and let them handle everything. They told me Selena died in a car crash while on the run. I believed them. Until the 6th year of my marriage. I had just finished another agonizing fertility treatment when I ran into Selena. The same Selena who was supposed to be dead. She was holding a five-year-old boy's hand, nestled against Karl's chest, whispering. "Karl, thank God you and Mom and Dad destroyed that footage and helped me fake my death. Otherwise, Ella would've sent me to prison for sure. "You kept saying that once Max and I were settled, you'd take Ella off birth control and have a kid with her. But Max can't do without you. Could you really bear to send us away?" That was when I understood that the family I thought I had was nothing but a massive lie, carefully built by my parents and my husband. 6 years of blaming myself. 6 years of suffering, agonizing over why I couldn't give Karl a child. It had all been a sick joke. One they designed. My parents. My husband. Selena. They had been the real family all along. I was just the fool they'd kept around for 6 years. Desperately, I gripped the silver knife and carved Karl's mate mark out of my neck—the mark that was supposed to mean loyalty. Family. Love. I didn't want any of it anymore. This love was soaked in lies and filth. I was done.

I'd been dating Theo Grant for six months. Heir to a New York dynasty. Out of my league in every way. The day I found out I was pregnant, I accidentally overheard his twin brother Lucas laughing. "Bro, I've been pretending to be you and playing around with your little girlfriend for months. She's not going to dump you over it, is she?" Theo's voice was casual, unconcerned. "So what? She wouldn't dare. And she wouldn't want to anyway. You didn't touch her, did you? I've been with her for half a year and haven't even slept with her yet. Play all you want, but don't cross that line." Lucas's smile carried a hidden meaning. "Of course not." I clamped my hand over my mouth, the pregnancy test report crumpled into a tight ball in my fist. So that was it. The Theo who was gentle and loving during the day, and the "Theo" who possessed me wildly at night—they were two different people. They wore the same face, and they treated me like a toy to be passed around for their mutual amusement. I didn't cry. I didn't make a scene. I stayed the obedient poor girl from the slums. Privately, I booked an abortion. And I arranged my own perfect, untraceable death. But when Theo learned I had lost the baby and that I was gone, he went mad. He grabbed his brother by the throat and snarled, "Who gave you permission to touch her?

The day before the extreme heat disaster hit, my husband brought home his "childhood sweetheart." She'd just gotten divorced, had nowhere to stay, and needed to crash with us for a few days. I wasn't on board. He said I was petty and couldn't stand to see anyone else do well. My stepson called me a mean, wicked stepmother and told his dad to kick me out and keep this aunt instead. The next day, the sun went haywire. Temperatures spiked to a hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit, and we were all trapped indoors. I told my husband we didn't have enough food and water for three people. He called me selfish and cold-hearted, said I was basically pushing her to die. The heatwave dragged on for eighteen days. The three of them ate through every last scrap in the house. When FEMA finally airdropped supplies and ice blocks, my husband, my stepson, and the "childhood sweetheart" grabbed everything for themselves. I was already lightheaded from the heat and reached for a piece of ice. My stepson shoved me away with his foot. "You've got more body fat and you handle heat better. Don't waste the ice." They banished me to the glass sunroom with no AC. I baked to death in that sweltering box. When I opened my eyes again, it was the day before the heatwave. My husband asked if she could stay. I smiled and said yes. This time around, I'm kicking back with the AC blasting, eating ice cream, and watching them tear each other apart over a single drop of water.