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, laughing in that sweet, flirtatious way of hers. "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. "And to make sure our son stays the only heir, you've been slipping her contraceptives every single day. Watching her go through all that pain, those awful treatments, all because she couldn't get pregnant... you really went to all that trouble for me. "But as long as the three of us are happy together, I can rest easy." 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 grabbed the test and ran to his private club, heart hammering, ready to surprise him. Instead, I heard his twin brother laughing inside. "Bro, your little bird is way too trusting. Every time I showed up pretending to be you, she never questioned it once." Theo's voice drifted through the door, bored. "You didn't touch her, did you? Six months, and I never did. She's beneath me." Lucas laughed harder. "Of course not. Why would I want your sloppy seconds?" So that was the truth. The man who'd been taking me in the dark, who'd gotten me pregnant — it was his twin. Same face. Same blood. Different monster. And the two of them were in on it together. I was their shared joke. So I terminated the pregnancy, faked my own death, and mailed the abortion paperwork — along with a suicide note — straight to the party where they'd planned to humiliate me. Turns out, they couldn't handle it. "Who the hell told you to touch her?!" "Track her phone! Find her, now!"

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.