From Useless Dud To The Alpha's Queen
For three years, Alana acted as the sole tactical brain for the Dawnbreaker squad, keeping them alive despite being labeled a useless "Dud" Conduit.
But right before the crucial Ascension Trials, squad leader Cash handed her a corporate sponsorship contract. The condition? She had to become the "private companion" to a greasy corporate heir just so the squad could get high-tier gear.
When she refused, the teammates she had bled for unanimously voted to kick her out.
"You're just window dressing, a liability."
They revoked her safehouse access, burned her belongings, and the academy advisor even tried to force her into a state-sanctioned breeding program. They left her to freeze in the slums, betting she would desperately crawl into the rich man's bed.
What they didn't know was that her inability to summon an Eidolon wasn't a lack of talent. Her teammate Dallin had been secretly sabotaging her rituals for years, crippling her potential just to keep her chained as their free tactician.
Stripped of everything and pushed to the absolute brink, Alana's despair morphed into a deadly resolve.
Using a million-credit black market loan and a forbidden blood matrix, she forcibly anchored an Apex-Tier cosmic wolf disguised as a harmless silver pup.
When her ex-squad tried to publicly humiliate her and burn her new "pet" alive in the cafeteria, a flash of silver light severed Dallin's hand instantly.
Looking at her screaming former teammates, Alana finally smiled.
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Chapter 2
Alana walked down the long, sterile hallway, the echo of her own footsteps the only sound in her ears. Her heart pounded a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She reached the end of the corridor and stopped in front of the frosted glass door of the Dawnbreaker lounge.
She shoved the door open. The hinges shrieked, a high-pitched scrape of metal on metal.
The loud laughter inside died instantly. Three heads snapped toward her.
Dallin Gates, their fire mage, sat on the edge of the desk. He was tossing a new, crimson-gemmed enhancement ring in the air. When he saw Alana, his eyes darted away, refusing to meet hers.
Jered Gibbs, the shadow assassin, slouched on the expensive leather sofa. He was filing his nails. He didn't even lift his chin, his face a mask of total indifference.
Charmaine Bass, their holy cleric, stood up. She smoothed the front of her pristine white robes and walked toward her, her face twisting into a mask of deep, fake sorrow.
Alana's eyes burned. She stared at the three people she had bled for.
"Did you all agree to Cash's filthy deal?" she demanded, her voice cutting through the heavy silence.
Dallin clicked his tongue in annoyance. He caught his ring and shoved it onto his finger. "Don't be so rigid, Alana. You're holding us back. We need that gear."
A bitter, humorless laugh tore from Alana's throat. She pointed a shaking finger straight at Dallin's face.
"Last month, you stepped out of formation in the Ash Rift," Alana snapped. "I burned my own mental energy to pull the aggro off you. I saved your life, Dallin."
Dallin's face flushed a dark, angry red. He jumped off the desk. A ball of orange flame ignited in his right palm, the heat radiating across the room.
Alana didn't flinch. She stared at the fire, her eyes dead. "You still can't even stabilize your temperature output. Pathetic."
"Enough," Jered said coldly. He paused his nail filing. "Chet is offering us silver-tier daggers. Sacrificing you is a good trade."
Alana whipped her head toward the sofa. "The blueprints for those daggers? I stayed awake for three days hacking the firewall to get you the specs."
Jered's hand jerked. The metal file slipped, slicing into his cuticle. A drop of blood welled up. Jered hissed, his eyes flashing with sudden irritation.
Charmaine sighed heavily. She reached out, trying to place a comforting hand on Alana's shoulder. "Alana, my child. You must understand the spirit of sacrifice for the greater good."
Bile rose in Alana's throat. She slapped Charmaine's hand away with a sharp smack.
"Don't touch me," she spat. "You use your holy magic to cover up the stench of your own selfishness. You're a hypocrite."
The lounge door opened again. Cash strolled in, a smug, satisfied smirk plastered across his face. He walked past Alana, treating her like empty air, and sat down in the large chair at the head of the table.
He tapped his knuckles against the glass surface. "Let's make this official. A democratic vote. All in favor of removing Alana Nicholson from Dawnbreaker, raise your hand."
Dallin shot his right hand into the air immediately, a vicious grin on his face.
Jered hesitated for a single second. Then, slowly, he raised his hand, keeping his eyes fixed on the wall.
Charmaine closed her eyes, traced a holy cross over her chest, and raised her hand.
Three votes. Unanimous.
Alana stared at the three raised hands. A strange, suffocating pressure in her chest suddenly vanished. The tightness in her shoulders uncoiled. She let out a long, slow breath.
Her lips curled into a cold, sharp smile.
She reached up to the collar of her jacket. Her fingers closed around the silver Dawnbreaker badge. She ripped it off, the pin tearing a small hole in the fabric.
She raised her arm and slammed the heavy silver badge down onto the crystal coffee table.
Crack.
A jagged, spiderweb fracture exploded across the pristine glass surface. The sharp sound made all four of them jump. Cash's smug expression shattered, replaced by dark fury.
Alana swept her eyes over them one last time.
"You didn't kick me out," she said, her voice eerily calm. "I am abandoning you pieces of trash."
She turned around and walked out the door. She didn't look back.
"You're nothing without us!" Dallin screamed from inside.
Alana grabbed the heavy door handle and slammed it shut, cutting off his voice and sealing the toxic air inside.
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9.7
Clarissa rushed into a crowded nightclub for one simple reason: to save her wildly drunk best friend.
But her ruthless billionaire husband, Giovanny, was watching from the VIP room. After effortlessly ruining a man just for grabbing her wrist, Giovanny punished Clarissa for breaching their public image contract with an impossible curfew.
When she inevitably arrived back at his penthouse late, he didn't just yell. He forced her to her knees by his bathtub to wash his back, making her watch an explicit, humiliating video as punishment.
A sudden family medical emergency dragged them to his parents' estate. Still in her soaked, transparent dress and his misbuttoned shirt, Giovanny's mother caught them. She joyfully assumed they had been passionately intimate.
Instead of clearing her name, Giovanny pulled Clarissa close and lied to his mother's face.
"We are working very hard on the family's future, Mother."
He locked her in the guest suite, tossed a sheer silk nightgown on the bed, and literally shattered the tablet holding their "no-contact" prenuptial agreement. He then slapped a file against the window—he had secretly bought all her father's toxic debt.
Clarissa was terrified. They were supposed to be business allies bound by a strict contract. Why was he suddenly acting like a predator determined to own her body and soul?
"Give me an heir, or your father goes to federal prison," he whispered.
Stripped of all choices, Clarissa picked up the white silk. She would surrender tonight to save her family, but as his shadow swallowed her, she made a silent vow to survive this monster, and one day, tear his empire to the ground.
7.2
Four years ago, Madelynn accepted money from Caiden's family and vanished. She thought it was for the best-he would remain the untouchable heir while she faced her tough life alone.
When they met again, Caiden humiliated her in public, yet appeared when she was cornered by a difficult client, pulling her back into his life.
He forced her to stay as his lover, using her mother's medical bills as leverage, whispering, "What you owe me... you'll repay the same way."
Madelynn believed he despised her. Only after the accident, when he ran toward her before the explosion, did she understand-he never let go.
9.4
Aria Mcgee was the unwanted second daughter of a decaying Long Island family.
To save their bankrupt corporation, her father and older sister drugged her. They shoved her into a town car and delivered her to a ruthless Wall Street billionaire's bed like a piece of meat.
They expected her to be the perfect sacrifice. The original Aria had no access to her own trust fund and was forced to live in a windowless broom closet. Even worse, a cold, synthetic System voice echoed in her skull, demanding she play the tragic, helpless female lead. It ordered her to endure her family's abuse and suffer the billionaire's humiliation to force a pathetic romance plotline.
"Host must follow the tragic trajectory and achieve the ultimate painful romance."
But the soul that woke up in that bed wasn't a weak, frightened girl. She was a dead Hollywood Oscar-winning actress. Why would a top-tier professional ever agree to play the weeping victim in such a garbage, B-list script?
Instead of trembling in fear as the System commanded, Aria looked at the billionaire and smiled. Using her flawless acting skills, she shattered his ego, extracted a hundred thousand dollars, and walked right out the door. Now, she was heading back to the Mcgee estate, ready to rip her money from her father's greedy hands and burn her sister's life to the ground.
7.9
For five years, April Gamble loved Julian Travis with everything she had, trusting him completely.
But on a stormy night, he casually tossed a liquidation agreement at her feet, single-handedly destroying her grandfather's company.
He coldly admitted he only dated her to steal Vance Group's internal financial data.
"You were convenient," Julian said, swirling his whiskey without a shred of guilt.
Before April could even process the brutal betrayal, a breaking news alert lit up her phone.
She watched in absolute horror as her grandfather jumped from the ledge of the Vance Tower on live television.
Julian looked at her writhing, screaming form with utter boredom and simply ordered his bodyguard to throw her out.
Blinded by grief and tears, April sped into the torrential rain, only to be completely crushed by a hydroplaning transport truck at an intersection.
As the shattered glass tore into her skin and the metal crushed her ribs, she died with a hatred so pure it made her teeth ache.
Why did five years of devotion mean absolutely nothing to him? Why did her family have to die just to feed his ruthless greed?
When she opened her eyes again, the harsh hospital lights blinded her, but the familiar burn scar on her arm was gone.
She wasn't the betrayed financial analyst April Gamble anymore.
She had woken up in the body of Altagracia Blanchard, the most notorious, obscenely wealthy heiress in New York.
Julian had taken everything from her, but now, armed with a billionaire's empire, she was going to bury him.
9.7
Charity woke up in a hellish, acid-rain-soaked slum, trapped inside a bloated body covered in festering, toxic sores. She was the exiled Grand Princess of the Empire.
But the real nightmare wasn't her ruined body. It was the fact that the original owner had used her royal authority to force genetic marriage contracts onto four top-tier, powerful men.
Now, she was bound to them, and they absolutely loathed her.
Hjalmar, chained to a bed in her filthy room, smiled like a feral beast and promised to rip her head off the second his chains snapped.
Braden, a ruthless military officer, saved her from a mutated rat only to look at her with pure disgust.
"If you want to die, go die somewhere else. Don't dirty my patrol sector."
Even the locals mocked her fallen status, and a wealthy heiress publicly framed her for stealing a hundred-thousand-coin energy core just to see her rot in a dark cell.
She was universally despised, physically repulsive, and a lethal biological toxin gave her exactly 59 days left to live. How was she supposed to survive this absolute hell when her starting affection with her partners was at negative 100?
Then, a mechanical voice echoed in her skull, activating a survival system. To purge the poison, she had to harvest emotional energy by making these four men fall for her. Charity accepted the mandate, unlocked a top-tier culinary skill, and grabbed a rusted meat cleaver to start her counterattack.
9.6
I was only three and a half years old, living in a damp basement and beaten daily by Enoch Pruitt with a heavy leather whip.
"Get up, you useless waste of space!"
He always told me I was a stray he had picked out of the garbage.
But during one brutal beating that nearly stopped my heart, time froze, and a glowing figure called The Chronicler appeared.
"You are not an abandoned orphan, Clare. You carry the blood of the highest gods."
He revealed that I was the stolen daughter of the ultra-wealthy Barrett family.
Then, he showed me the horrific ending of my previous life.
I had died right here on this bloody dirt floor.
My real parents and three brothers went completely insane with grief, turning into ruthless monsters who destroyed themselves and the entire world to avenge me.
Meanwhile, the Pruitt family kept torturing me, locking me in a woodshed and feeding me moldy bread.
The memory of my bones breaking and my real mother's agonizing screams crushed my chest.
Why did I have to suffer like an animal while my true family tore the world apart looking for me?
This time, I refused to die in the mud.
I accepted my divine blood, my eyes glowing gold as I summoned a bolt of purple lightning to strike my abuser.
I just needed to survive the night.
Because my real father's heavily armed convoy was already tearing up the mountain, ready to burn this hell to the ground.