Contract Over: I Rejected My Alpha Husband First
When her father fled with his mistress, leaving crushing debts behind, Freya Gilbert had nowhere to turn. Crashing Alpha Jonas's welcome ceremony in desperation, she never expected to find her fated mate there. But it wasn't gentle Jonas who made her wolf howl "mate." It was the dangerous, devastatingly powerful Niklaus Lockwood.
One scorching night of passion sealed her fate.
Niklaus already had his perfect chosen mate, the elegant Rebekah. Unwilling to abandon his plans, he offered Freya a cold business deal: be his contract Luna for three years, play the perfect wife in public, and he'd clear her debts. When their arrangement expired, she'd accept his rejection and disappear quietly.
Freya thought she could survive a loveless marriage. She was wrong.
Three years later, she's fallen hopelessly for the Alpha who sees her as nothing more than a gold-digging Omega. On their anniversary night, the very day their contract expires, Niklaus chooses Rebekah.
The message couldn't be clearer.
But when Freya files for divorce and moves out first, Niklaus's carefully controlled world shatters. The mate bond he's suppressed for years, and he never expected his obedient, compliant wife to actually leave him.
"I, Freya Gilbert, reject you, Niklaus Lockwood."
The words that should have set them both free only ignite a fire that threatens to consume them both.
Can a love born from a business contract survive the flames of pride and betrayal? Or will the most powerful Alpha in the territory lose his true mate because he was too blind to see what was right in front of him?
When the contract ends, the real battle for love begins.
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Chapter 8
Pain ripped through Niklaus's chest the moment Freya uttered those words of rejection. His face remained stoic, but his blue eyes darkened to stormy red.
"I command you to stay," he growled, his Alpha authority vibrating through the air.
Freya's knees buckled as the mate bond protested violently against her rejection. Her body trembled with effort to remain standing, the agony clawing through her veins like wildfire.
Vicki whimpered inside her mind.
"We can't leave him. It hurts too much."
"We have to," Freya answered silently. "We can't live like this anymore."
Niklaus stalked toward her. His tall frame loomed over her petite one as he reached out, his finger tilting her chin up. His touch sent unwanted sparks across her skin despite the pain.
"You'd endure this excruciating pain just to get away from me?" he asked, his deep voice rough with hurt and anger. "Is staying with me really that unbearable?"
He laughed, cold and mocking. "Without me, how will you support yourself? With that pathetic thousand-dollar monthly salary? You can't even pay rent, let alone afford that necklace around your throat."
The contempt in his voice was unmistakable.The diamond necklace suddenly felt like a shackle around her throat.
Freya twisted her head, trying to escape his grip, but moving only made the rejection pain worse.
"That's my problem," she managed through gritted teeth. "Not yours to worry about."
"Ha," Niklaus scoffed, anger flashing in his eyes. "Have you already found my replacement? Someone to warm your bed and pay your bills?"
She said nothing. It wasn't true, but she wouldn't give him the pleasure of denying it.
Niklaus took her silence as confirmation. His jaw tightened, anger flashing across his face. He released her chin, stepping back with a cold smile.
"Perhaps there's something you don't understand," he said. "You have no authority to decide whether we sever our mate bond."
Freya looked confused. Was his behavior simply because she'd initiated the divorce? Had she wounded his Alpha pride? Or perhaps he worried about Rebekah's reputation if his Luna rejected him first.
After all, just submitting her resignation had sent the entire company into gossip overdrive.
Seeing that their conversation was going nowhere, Freya decided to make her position clear.
"Whether you agree or not, I want a divorce and I won't move back in with you."
Niklaus stared down at her, his shoulders tense. "So you're saying you want to leave me."
The word "leave" made Freya's heart clench painfully, both bitter and aching. After all this time, she still reacted to him.
"According to the contract, we don't need to live together anymore," she clarified, avoiding his intense gaze.
Niklaus studied her for several seconds, his expression unreadable.
A knock interrupted their standoff. Beta Dale's voice came through the door. "Alpha Niklaus, the meeting is about to start."
"Move back in," Niklaus said before walking out.
Freya stayed where she was. "Niklaus, I'm not coming back."
Niklaus seemed unmoved. "When have you said that before?"
In that moment, Freya knew he didn't believe her. She didn't bother arguing further. He would eventually understand that this time, she truly wasn't returning.
Freya's resignation letter remained on his desk when she left Lockwood Enterprises. If he refused to accept it, that was his problem. They could sue her if they wanted.
She returned to her hotel suite, sinking into a hot shower and then nestling into the ridiculously expensive Egyptian cotton sheets. A petty revenge, but satisfying.
Around midnight, loud knocking shattered her peace. Tightening her robe, she opened the door to find the hotel manager, his smile tight and uncomfortable.
"Miss Gilbert, sorry to bother you so late, but there's an issue with your room."
Freya raised an eyebrow. "What kind of issue?"
"Electrical problems," he said awkwardly, gesturing toward the ceiling. "Fire hazard. We need to move you. Now."
"Fine," Freya sighed, too tired to argue. "Give me another room."
The manager's smile tightened further. "I deeply regret to inform you that we're fully booked tonight."
Freya immediately understood what was happening. Only one person could force a five-star hotel to kick out a guest at midnight.
"Niklaus is behind this, isn't he?" she asked bluntly.
The manager looked away. "Miss Gilbert, this is standard protocol for--"
"Cut the crap," Freya cut him off. "He thinks forcing me out will send me crawling back to his pack house."
The manager said nothing. That was answer enough.
Freya swore under her breath and started throwing her stuff into her suitcase.
Twenty minutes later.
Freya grabbed her suitcase and headed for the exit.
"Miss Gilbert, wait!" The receptionist hurried over. "There's a cancellation fee."
Freya stopped dead. "You're kicking me out and charging me for it?"
"We refunded your money, but you're still leaving early. I believe we mentioned the cancellation penalty when you checked in. Hotel policy."
The logic was insane, but Freya was too tired to argue. Fine. She'd use Niklaus's card.
She handed over the black card.
"I'm sorry, Miss Gilbert," the receptionist said, clearly embarrassed. "It seems there's an issue with your card."
Freya's stomach dropped. She dug through her wallet and pulled out another card. Declined. Then another. Declined.
Every single one.
Freya couldn't believe it. Niklaus had frozen every single card linked to his.
Cutting off her money? Really? He really thought this would force her home?
The receptionist kept smiling, but her eyes had changed.
Freya recognized that look--contempt, judgment. The fallen Luna who couldn't even pay a hotel bill.
Too bad for them. She wasn't putting on a show anymore.
Freya smiled back and pulled out a gold card. "Try this one. Thank you."
The receptionist's eyes widened slightly at the exclusive card.
"The payment went through perfectly, Miss Gilbert," the receptionist confirmed, surprised.
Freya smiled. "Excellent."
She took the card back from the receptionist.
Outside the hotel, a familiar black Bentley pulled up to the curb. Daniel, Niklaus's longtime driver, stepped out and reached for her luggage.
"Luna Freya," he greeted formally. "Alpha Niklaus sent me to bring you home."
"How considerate," she said sarcastically.
Freya stepped away from his offered hand. "And I suppose if I check into another hotel, he'll have me kicked out of there too?"
Daniel's silence said it all.
Her phone rang, Niklaus's name lighting up the screen.
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9.3
Born into privilege, Eleanor never imagined her life could shatter in a single night. Then her father disappeared with his mistress, her mother fell from a building and slipped into a coma, and everything she once owned turned to dust.
Determined not to ruin Jonathan's future with her family's disgrace, she ended their relationship and became the bride of a man trapped in a vegetative state.
She believed that was the last time their paths would cross. But two years later, Jonathan pinned her in the dark and whispered, "Long time no see, my sister-in-law."
7.6
To pay for her father's life support, Haleigh sold herself into a marriage with Fabian Blackburn, a ruthless billionaire in a deep coma.
But on her wedding day, she caught her boyfriend cheating with her stepsister, laughing about how they would steal the inheritance the second Fabian stopped breathing. Cornered and desperate, Haleigh secretly underwent IVF using her comatose husband's frozen sperm to secure the family trust.
Weeks later, a miracle happened. Fabian woke up.
But instead of gratitude, he treated her like trash. He threw annulment papers at her face, completely disgusted by the arranged marriage.
"If you try any dirty tricks to get pregnant, I will personally drag you to a clinic and have that bastard scraped out of you."
Terrified, Haleigh hid her positive pregnancy test and desperately tried to hack her way to enough cash to escape. But while using his computer, she accidentally opened a highly classified folder.
Inside was a medical file and a photo of a severely disabled girl who looked exactly like Fabian.
Before she could process it, Fabian walked in. Seeing the screen, his cold mask shattered into pure, unhinged madness. He lunged across the room, lifting her off the floor by her throat, completely ignoring her desperate gasps for air.
"Lock her in the basement," he roared to his guards. "No food. No water."
Curled on the freezing concrete, clutching her newly pregnant belly, Haleigh didn't understand what she had just seen that turned him into a murderous monster.
But she knew one thing: if she didn't escape this terrifying estate, both she and his unborn heir would die in the dark.
8.5
For five years, I was tech billionaire Alden Maxwell' s secret. A pretty accessory on his arm, a deal I made to save my father' s life. I played my part, quietly planning my escape for the day our contract ended.
But then his first love, Amanda, came back.
At a lavish auction, he spent ten million dollars to outbid me for my own mother' s heirloom bangle, only to place it on Amanda' s wrist, calling it a "token of his undying affection."
Later, he told me I was just practice. A "little bird" he could use to learn how to be gentle before he went back to his true love.
That' s when the last of my foolish hope died. I was never a person to him, just a transaction he could buy and discard.
So I disappeared. I took a five-year, off-grid research position and cut all ties. When he finally tracked me down, begging me to name my price, I faced him through the sterile glass of the facility and gave him my final answer.
"We' re done."
9.5
Bridget left the office early on her anniversary, her pocket heavy with a custom velvet ring box meant for her fiancé.
But when she pushed open the bedroom door, she found him tangled in their bed with her best friend, Chloe.
"Bridget! Wait, it's not what it looks like!" Jacob stammered, his eyes wide with panic.
"Evidence," Bridget stated coldly, snapping a photo of their naked bodies before fleeing into the freezing New York night.
Desperate to numb the betrayal, she got blackout drunk at an underground lounge and threw herself at a dark, terrifyingly handsome stranger.
She woke up in a penthouse suite alone, finding only a limitless black credit card left on the nightstand.
Humiliated and feeling like a cheap escort, she ran away, swearing to forget the nightmare.
But the nightmare had just begun. When she rushed into the office, she discovered the stranger was Jevon Rocha—the ruthless billionaire CEO of her company.
He didn't fire her. Instead, he trapped her in a twisted, obsessive power game, forcing her into his private life and demanding she report to his penthouse.
Bridget couldn't understand why a ruthless billionaire was so dangerously fixated on a low-level employee.
Until she stumbled upon his secret social media account and saw a crayon drawing of a little kid, captioned with a single word: "Finally."
A wave of absolute horror washed over her. He wasn't just playing games; he was hiding a secret child and a messy, high-stakes family drama.
She refused to be the naive collateral damage in a billionaire's twisted life.
Trembling, Bridget hit "Block" on his profile, determined to escape his dangerous web.
7.2
I spent my whole life trying to fit into the "Kensington aesthetic," dyeing my hair blonde and playing dumb just to earn a crumb of my father's approval. But when the manor went up in flames, I realized I was never a daughter to them-I was just an inconvenience.
I lay pinned under a heavy oak beam, the smell of copper and burnt sugar filling my lungs. My father, Arthur, stood in the doorway with my brothers, looking like a phalanx of saviors, but their eyes weren't on me.
They rushed past my outstretched, bloody hand to save my sister, Karly, who was huddled in a corner without a scratch on her. My brother Archer scooped her up like spun glass, stepping over my crushed leg without a second glance. Just before they crossed the threshold, Karly looked back at me and smiled-a small, victorious, terrifying smile. My father didn't offer help; he just shouted that I was an arsonist and slammed the door, sentencing me to burn alive in my own bedroom.
As the crystal chandelier melted and crashed toward me, I didn't feel fear anymore. I felt a guttural, distilled hate for the family that left me to die because of a lie. I had spent my life begging for scraps at a table that was never meant for me, and I died realizing they never loved me at all.
"If I come back," I promised into the void, "I will burn you all down."
I gasped for air and woke up in my bed, the smell of lavender replacing the smoke. It was September 14th, five years before the fire, the exact week I had started ruining myself to please them. I looked in the mirror, scrubbed off the pathetic makeup mask, and realized the old, desperate Kala was dead. If I was going to burn, I'd make sure they were the ones who felt the heat first.
"Queen is back online," I whispered.
9.5
Zara grew up with nothing but resilience and ambition. Raised in an orphanage, she fought her way into the corporate world, believing education would be her salvation and love her reward. When she married Dante, a powerful CEO, she thought she had finally found both.
She was wrong.
Behind closed doors, Zara's marriage became a nightmare of cruelty, betrayal, and calculated malice. Stripped of her career, manipulated through her own child, and nearly killed by the very family she married into, Zara is forced to face a devastating truth: she was never meant to survive.
When she walks away from everything with no money, no protection, and only her dignity Zara makes one promise: she will return.
What she doesn't expect is to uncover a shocking secret about her past one that reveals she was stolen as a child, her life destroyed by a conspiracy rooted in greed and revenge. Reclaimed by her real family and armed with power she never knew was hers, Zara rises from the ashes stronger than ever.
This time, she isn't fighting for love.
She's fighting for justice.
And revenge will be delicious.