His Mark Of Shame, Her Awakening
Ten years ago, I was banished from my pack, branded a whore and a traitor for allegedly drugging and stealing my sister's fated mate.
Now, I was summoned back because my father, the Alpha who disowned me, was dying from a poisoned attack.
Standing by his deathbed, a locked memory finally surfaced—I didn't drug anyone. My husband and I were both victims, poisoned with wolfsbane to force our mating.
But before my father could reveal who orchestrated the setup, his heart monitor flatlined.
My brother instantly shoved me to the ground, pointing a trembling finger at my face.
"You killed him. I will hunt you, I will break you, and I will make your life a living hell."
Even my husband, Kieran, the man I was forced to marry to save our unborn child, walked right past me in the hospital corridor.
He didn't spare me a single glance, choosing instead to gently comfort my mother while I sat bruised and shattered on the cold floor.
I didn't understand why my own family hated me so blindly, and I understood even less who had framed me a decade ago.
What terrified my father so much in his final moments that he couldn't even speak the culprit's name?
Watching my cold husband walk away with the family that abandoned me, the last shred of my naive hope died.
I wiped my tears and stood up. This time, I was going to tear this pack apart to find the truth.
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Chapter 6
Seraphina's POV:
The revelation of the wolfsbane was a storm in my mind, but it was followed by the cold, quiet dread of another memory. The aftermath. The trial.
I was back on the floor, but this time it was the polished stone of the Elder's council chamber.
**[Flashback]**
The day after the Blood Moon Rite, they dragged us both before the council. I remember Kieran standing beside me, his face pale, his stormy grey eyes filled with a confusion that mirrored my own.
Celeste was there, weeping, her voice breaking as she recounted what she had seen. Her pain was so raw, so genuine, it was impossible to doubt. She was the perfect victim.
I tried to explain. I tried to tell them about the drink, about the blank space in my memory. But the words came out jumbled, incoherent. I couldn't even name the herb then, couldn't articulate the feeling of being poisoned. To the furious elders, it sounded like the pathetic babbling of a liar caught in the act.
Kieran, too, claimed he remembered nothing after his first drink with Celeste. But he was the Alpha of another, powerful pack. They could not judge him, could not punish him. So, they directed all their wrath, all their judgment, at me. It was easier. I was one of their own. I was disposable.
The verdict was swift. For the crime of desecrating a sacred bond and betraying the pack, the sentence was death.
I remember the silence that followed, the feeling of the world ending.
But just before they were to carry out the sentence, a routine medical check changed everything.
Dr. Vance, his face grim, announced to the stunned council that I was pregnant. The pup was Kieran's. An Alpha's pup.
The news was a bomb that detonated in the silent chamber.
By the most ancient of werewolf laws, a law that superseded all others, no she-wolf carrying the bloodline of an Alpha could be harmed. The future of the species, the strength of the packs, depended on it.
My father, who seemed to have aged twenty years in a single night, made his decision. I was to be banished, cast out, my name stricken from the family.
But Kieran's pack, the Valerius pack, would not allow it. An heir to their Alpha could not be born a rogue, a bastard with no name and no protection.
The negotiations were brutal. For two days, the fate of my unborn child—my fate—was debated.
Finally, a shameful compromise was reached.
Kieran would have to mark me. He would have to claim me as his mate, giving me and his child the protection of his name. It was not a true mating. It was a sentence. They called it the Mark of Shame.
A mark that would feed and house the child, but would forever serve as a public reminder of the sin that created it.
I remember the moment he did it. He pushed my hair aside, and his teeth sank into the sensitive flesh of my neck. There was no passion, no love, no hint of the ecstasy a true mating was supposed to bring. Only cold, clinical duty and a wave of revulsion so strong it felt like acid in my veins. The pain was blinding, worse than the breaking of bones during a first shift.
Our bond was created in that moment, not as a bridge between two souls, but as a cold, iron chain.
**[End Flashback]**
My hand drifted to the back of my neck, my fingers tracing the faint, silvery scar that was always hidden by my hair. Even after ten years, it sometimes ached with a phantom pain.
That was the truth of my life with Kieran. We were not mates. We were cellmates, shackled together by the existence of our son.
I had stayed alive for Daniel. Kieran had fulfilled his duty to his bloodline. Our life together was a gilded cage, our marriage a ten-year-long silent truce. I could count on two hands the number of real conversations we'd had.
Daniel was my sun, my moon, my entire universe. But I was not naive. I knew that for Kieran, his fatherly affection was tangled up in his duty to raise a strong heir.
Our family was a lie, built on a foundation of shame.
And now I knew. I knew it was all a lie. We were all victims of a much larger one.
A fire I hadn't felt in a decade began to burn in my gut. A hot, cleansing anger. It wasn't just for me anymore. It was for Kieran, trapped in a loveless bond. It was for Celeste, robbed of her destiny. It was for my innocent son, born into a world of cold duty instead of love.
I would find out who did this. And I would make them pay.
That fire, that purpose, gave me a strength I didn't know I possessed. I reached for the wall, my muscles screaming in protest, and I pulled myself up. I was shaky, unsteady, but I was standing.
I was no longer just here to see a dying man. I was here to interrogate the last person alive who might know the truth.
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9.3
Jessie's biological parents brought her back from a Rust Belt wasteland just to force her into marrying a paralyzed heir to save their bankrupt empire.
Three years later, when the global doomsday apocalypse hit, her own family shoved her into a swarm of infected corpses.
As she was being torn apart by mutated hounds, she was stunned by what she saw.
Her fake sister, Harley, was clutching the antique silver necklace she had stolen from Jessie—an heirloom that secretly contained a magical spatial dimension.
When the infected swarmed them, her biological mother didn't even look back.
"Jessie is just white trash, she is perfectly suited to buy us time to run!"
Harley used Jessie's stolen necklace to live in absolute safety and luxury, while Jessie's windpipe was ripped out in the rotting wasteland.
Until she died, Jessie didn't understand. She was their true flesh and blood.
Why did her parents hate her so much? Why was she sacrificed so easily while the fake daughter got everything?
Opening her eyes again, the blinding glare of a crystal chandelier stabbed into her retinas.
She was back in the Manhattan penthouse on the exact day they sold her off.
This time, Jessie calmly signed the marriage contract, demanded a one hundred million dollar buyout, and walked out to prepare for the apocalypse.
7.7
Eva Brooks, a 25-year-old woman, was set up by her best friend. Her fiancé broke up with her and demanded compensation for allegedly cheating on him.
Eva had a one-night stand with the richest CEO in Dominic City, Ethan Owen. He was arrogant and offered her a job as his secretary.
As his secretary, Ethan couldn't shake his fondness for Eva. He became obsessed with her, worrying that she was cheating on him.
He broke up with his fiancée to become engaged to Eva, but will his fiancée let him go? Will Eva accept a relationship with her boss?
8.9
Audrey Fletcher was forced to marry the notorious playboy Julian Sterling to save her family's sinking company after her sister ran away.
On their wedding night, her new husband threw a $100,000 check at her face, told her they would be strangers in private, and abandoned her in the bridal suite.
She thought being trapped in a loveless, transactional marriage was the worst fate possible.
She was wrong.
To protect herself, Audrey hung a pair of men's boxer shorts on her balcony to fake a lover's presence.
Instead of deterring her husband, the ridiculous ruse brought Alistair Sterling—Julian's terrifying, powerful uncle and the true puppet master of the family.
He stormed into her apartment with a legal team to catch her cheating, and later even offered her ten million dollars to divorce his nephew.
When she refused out of fear of her own family's ruin, the situation escalated.
Forced to attend a charity gala, Audrey was tricked by staff into wearing a scandalous, backless gown and sent to a dark penthouse suite to beg her husband for peace.
But the man waiting in the shadows wasn't Julian. It was Alistair.
"Does the thought of seducing your husband's uncle give you a special kind of thrill?"
He didn't listen to her desperate explanations. Instead, he pinned her arms behind her back and crushed his mouth against hers in a brutal, punishing kiss.
Trembling with terror and revulsion, Audrey bit his lip until she tasted blood, shoved the billionaire away, and ran for her life.
She couldn't understand why this powerful man was so dangerously obsessed with destroying her sham marriage.
But as she fled into the cold city night, she realized the terrifying truth: the real game was just beginning.
8.4
Kathern was forced out of her sister's home by her abusive brother-in-law, who violently demanded she pay half the rent or get out.
To protect her sister from his rage, Kathern agreed to a six-month paper marriage with a stranger—an old woman's grandson, Bronson—in exchange for a simple apartment.
But her new husband treated her like a scheming gold digger from the very first second.
He showed up to City Hall in a cheap suit, shoved a brutal prenup in her face, and dumped her in a completely empty, dust-filled apartment.
"Just don't cause any trouble," he warned coldly, before leaving her alone.
When Kathern politely texted him to ask if he was coming home for dinner, he immediately blocked her number.
Kathern was furious and baffled. She didn't want a dime of his money, nor did she care about his boring middle-management job.
She had only agreed to this marriage for a place to sleep, yet this arrogant man treated her like absolute garbage.
Refusing to swallow the insult, Kathern immediately dialed his grandmother to expose his behavior.
She was going to build her own independent life, completely unaware that her "cheap corporate loser" of a husband was actually the ruthless billionaire CEO of the Vaughan empire.
7.5
Plot.
Synopsis.
Liora could never belong. The daughter of an extramarital affair, she had lived in the shadows, cut off from the rest of the family, and learned to fend for herself while surviving. Stripping gave her life now, but everything changed one wild night.
Two days before his wedding, Darius entered her club, craving for the last taste of bachelorhood, he pays Liora for a special dance which led to a one-night stand. Neither of them expected to see each other again or that Liora's long lost sister, Selene, was the bride waiting at the altar.
The one-night stand becomes a dangerous truth that must be hidden. Lies never remain hidden, however, and when Liora learns she is pregnant with Darius's child, silence may be not be an option for her.
Exposition.
Liora, a daughter born as a result of her father's infidelity with a maid, which resulted in the divorce that separates her from her big sister. Due to the family's financial difficulties faced while growing up and the consequent death of her father, Liora eventually becomes a stripper to put food on her table. Unknown to her at the time, she carried the hidden omega bloodline from her father's alpha lineage, suppressed by years away from the pack.
Inciting incident.
One night, she is hired by a man who is getting married in just two days and wants to enjoy his last moments of bachelorhood. She ends up having a one-night stand with him. The moment they touched, an undeniable mate spark ignited between them-raw, electric, and impossible to ignore-but neither understood its full power yet.
When Liora returns home that same night, she encounters an old man who introduces himself as the butler of the Blackwood family, tells her she has been invited to the wedding of her sister. This comes as a shock-Liora grew up knowing she had a sister, but Harlan never allowed them to meet. He carried that secret to his grave, and after his death, Liora stopped thinking about it. Despite her hesitation and doubts as to if they got the wrong person, she agrees to attend.
Rising action.
She arrives the night before the wedding , finds out she has been a daughter of the well known Blackwood family all along and learns the truth: it was her stepmother, not Harlan, who had always been against their meeting. The stepmother is currently serving time in jail for a minor business-related crime and her elder sister, Selene had her research done to find her because she wanted to reconcile with her younger sister and what better opportunity than a wedding. Liora also discovers that Selene is a sweetheart who had longed to meet her, but had been forced to stay away because of Ravenna's influence.
But then, another huge blow hits-Liora finds out that the man she was with last night, the one she slept with, is the man Selene is set to marry, Darius. She holds this secret to herself, haunted by the mate pull that now torments her every thought.
The marriage happens, and it all goes well. After that, Selene gives Liora a new path, far from her old job. She brings her into her home and starts to look after her. But soon, Liora finds out she is going to have a baby. With fear and shame, she hides this news.
Climax.
When Ravenna is released from prison, she is furious to find Liora living with her family. She makes it clear that she does not accept her, resenting her existence as a reminder of Harlan's infidelity. A few days later, Selene announces that she is pregnant too. Ravenna immediately becomes protective of her "real" daughter, which only deepens Liora's insecurities. She considers leaving before her secret is exposed.
But fate intervenes. An accident happens, and they find out Liora was pregnant. Since she was once a stripper, no one talks about the dad. But Darius, who knows they share risky secret, sets up a secret meeting for them to talk. He wants to know if he is the dad, and Liora says yes-but she will keep it quiet and plans to leave soon. In their tense exchange, the mate bond flares again, confirming what they both sensed that first night.
Ravenna,who happens to be at the wrong side at the right time ,overheard part of their talk. With doubts in her mind, she quietly does a DNA test between Darius and Liora's unborn baby.
The results confirm he is the father. Seeing her chance to drive a wedge between the sisters, she keeps the secret until the gender reveal party for both daughters. There, in front of everyone, she exposes the truth. The revelation makes headlines.
Selene feels utterly betrayed-by both her husband and her sister. She leaves Darius's house with Ravenna and sends divorce papers days later. Liora feels destroyed, her betrayal now public, and her pain is doubled when she learns Selene has lost her baby and is battling ovarian cancer, which requires an urgent bone marrow transplant.
Through her best friend, Dr. Thorne, Liora learns this. She gets tested and finds out she is a match , but her unborn baby stops her. Darius knows she got test
9.5
I was forced to sign my life away to Jaxson Wilson, a ruthless Wall Street predator, just to save my family's failing company.
But the moment the ink dried on our marriage certificate, my family showed their true colors.
My cousin tried to physically attack me out of pure jealousy, and my grandfather weaponized my dead parents' tragic accident just to ensure my absolute obedience.
Suffering a severe panic attack, I packed my bags and fled the toxic estate.
I expected to be tossed into a cold, empty penthouse by my new billionaire husband. After all, this was just a corporate merger, and I was nothing but a tool to stabilize his stock.
Yet, everything Jaxson did completely shattered my expectations.
He didn't neglect me. He personally designed a breathtaking mansion tailored to my habits.
When I cooked cheap pasta in the middle of the night, the billionaire CEO rolled up his sleeves to wash my dishes.
When a speeding truck nearly hit me, he risked his own life to pull me back, his eyes dark with a terrifying, raw panic.
I couldn't understand it. Why was this cold, untouchable man treating a fake, transactional wife with such intense, suffocating protection?
"It doesn't matter if my family likes you. You married me. Not them."
Looking at the multi-million dollar diamonds he had just fastened around my neck, my fear finally evaporated.
If my family wanted to throw me to the wolves, I would gladly become the alpha's wife and make them regret it.