My Husband’s Mistress Wore My Skin

The cage smells like rust and rot. My fingers scrape against cold metal bars, nails splitting as I claw for freedom that doesn't exist. Cain's laughter echoes from somewhere above, a sound that crawls under my skin and nests in my bones. "Please—" My voice cracks. The word tastes like blood. I jolt awake with my hand wrapped around the silver knife from my boot, blade pointed at shadows that aren't there. My silk sheets are soaked through with sweat. The knife trembles in my grip—my hands always shake when I'm alone—and I force myself to count. One breath. Two.

Chapters

Chapter 2

The sound that escapes Phoenix's throat when he finally sees me isn't guilt. It's irritation.

He pulls away from Sabrina with the casual ease of a man who's been caught doing something mildly inconvenient, like forgetting to file paperwork. Not destroying his marriage. Not desecrating five years of vows made over my broken body.

"Vivienne." My name in his mouth sounds like an accusation. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Sabrina sits up, her fingers—delicate, unmarred—fluttering to her throat in a gesture I recognize from old photographs. It's the exact way I used to react when startled at nineteen, before I learned that showing fear only made the pain last longer.

She's studied me. Memorized me. Stolen everything I used to be and wrapped herself in it like a wedding dress.

"I came to see my husband." My voice emerges steady, each word precisely placed. A Moore doesn't shatter in public. "I see I should have called ahead."

Phoenix stands, reaching for his uniform shirt. His jaw tightens—the only sign of discomfort. "You have no right to invade my privacy. This is a military installation, not your brother's palace."

"Our anniversary is tomorrow." The words taste like ashes. "I thought—"

"You thought what?" He buttons his shirt with sharp, angry movements. "That I'd pretend everything is fine? That I could forget what you—" He stops himself, but the damage is already done.

The unfinished sentence hangs between us like a noose.

"Say it." Something cold and sharp unfurls in my chest. "Finish what you were going to say, Phoenix."

His eyes meet mine, and I see it clearly now—the disgust he's been hiding behind political necessity and false courtesy. "Sabrina gives me something you can't, Vivienne. Purity. Innocence. She doesn't smell like Rogue males and wolfsbane. She doesn't wake up screaming. She doesn't—" His voice drops, cruel and precise. "She doesn't remind me of my failures every time I look at her."

The room tilts. My fingers find the doorframe, nails digging into painted wood. One breath. Two. Three.

Sabrina makes a soft sound—concern, perfectly performed. "Phoenix, maybe you should—"

"No." I cut her off without looking at her. My gaze stays locked on my husband. On the man I surrendered myself to save. "You're right. I do remind you of your failures. Because I am the living proof that you're a coward who let a woman sacrifice herself rather than face the consequences of your own recklessness."

Phoenix's face flushes red. "Get out."

"Gladly." I turn, my movements controlled despite the trembling that's starting in my hands. "Enjoy your costume party, Commander. I hope she's worth it."

I walk out before either of them can respond, my heels clicking a steady rhythm against the floor. The hallway stretches endlessly, but I don't run. A Moore doesn't run.

The guest room Elena arranged is three doors down. I make it inside, lock the door with shaking fingers, and slide down against the wood. The trembling spreads from my hands to my arms, my shoulders, my entire body.

Five years. Five years in that cage, telling myself it was worth it. That Phoenix would come for me. That our love would survive.

But there was no love. There never had been. Just ambition and convenience, and I was too naive to see the difference.

I don't cry. I learned in Seattle that tears only make the pain last longer.

Instead, I count my breaths and wait for the shaking to stop.

---

Morning arrives with a knock on my door. I'm already dressed—high-necked black blouse, tailored slacks, my armor of silk and steel. The trembling has stopped. My hands are steady as I open the door.

Sabrina stands in the hallway, wearing a pale pink dress with a Peter Pan collar. Another costume from my past. Her smile is bright and apologetic, her eyes wide with manufactured concern.

"Vivienne." She even says my name the way I used to, with a slight upturn at the end. "I wanted to apologize for last night. I feel just terrible about—"

"Do you." I lean against the doorframe, studying her the way I've learned to study everyone—looking for the tells, the micro-expressions that reveal truth beneath performance.

Her smile falters slightly. "Of course. I never meant to come between you and Phoenix. It just... happened."

"Nothing just happens, Sabrina." I let my gaze travel from her carefully styled hair to her designer shoes. "That perfume you're wearing. Jasmine and vanilla. Where did you get it?"

She touches her throat—my old gesture again. "Oh, this? I've worn it for years."

"Interesting." I straighten, and something in my posture makes her take a step back. "Because it was custom-made for me by a perfumer in Paris. The formula is proprietary. Exclusive."

Her face pales slightly. "I... I must have found something similar."

"Must have." I smile, and it's the same smile I watched my brother use on pack members who forgot their place. Polite. Cold. Absolutely devoid of warmth. "That dress is lovely too. Very... nostalgic. Tell me, Sabrina, do you practice my old laugh in the mirror? Or does it come naturally now?"

Her throat works as she swallows. "I don't know what you—"

"Yes, you do." I step closer, and she retreats another step. "You've studied me like a role in a play. Memorized my mannerisms, my style, my scent. You've built yourself a costume out of who I used to be, thinking it would make you worthy of wearing my title."

I lean in, close enough that she can see the scar that runs along my collarbone, usually hidden by high necklines.

"But here's what you don't understand, sweetheart." My voice drops to a whisper, soft and deadly. "You're performing a ghost. And ghosts don't bleed. They don't scar. They don't survive." I straighten, my smile never wavering. "I did."

Sabrina's manufactured innocence cracks, just for a moment. I see the calculation behind her eyes, the cold ambition that mirrors Phoenix's.

Then her mask slides back into place. "I should go. Phoenix will be wondering where I am."

"I'm sure he will." I step back into my room. "Do give him my regards."

I close the door on her pale, shaken face.

---

Dinner is a special kind of torture.

The officers' mess hall has been arranged for a formal meal—Phoenix's idea of maintaining appearances. I sit at the head table, spine straight, hands folded in my lap. My husband sits three seats away, Sabrina at his right hand.

He doesn't look at me once.

Conversation flows around me like water around a stone. Military talk, pack politics, carefully neutral topics that avoid the elephant in the room. I respond when directly addressed, my voice pleasant and empty.

Sabrina laughs at something Phoenix says, her hand resting on his arm. The sound is pitched exactly like mine used to be—bright and musical, untouched by screaming.

I take a sip of wine and taste nothing.

Elena appears at my elbow as dessert is served. "Miss Vivienne," she murmurs, barely audible. "Perhaps you should retire early. You look tired."

It's code. She's giving me an escape route.

I take it.

"Please excuse me." I stand, and years of training keep my movements graceful despite the exhaustion pressing down on my shoulders. "The flight has caught up with me."

No one protests. Phoenix doesn't even glance up.

I walk out of the mess hall with my head high, Elena a silent shadow at my back.

The guest room door is unlocked. I should have noticed. Should have remembered that in a military installation, locks only keep out people who respect boundaries.

The smell hits me first—cold and sharp, with an undertone of something floral. Jasmine and vanilla.

My mattress is soaked through, water pooling on the floor. Ice cubes float in the puddles, melting slowly. The sheets are ruined, the expensive silk turned translucent and clinging.

Elena moves past me, kneeling beside the bed. She inhales deeply, her wolf senses sharper than mine have been since the wolfsbane. When she looks up, her dark eyes are furious.

"Sabrina's scent is everywhere, Miss Vivienne. She wanted you to know it was her."

I stare at the destroyed bed, at the water soaking into expensive carpet, at the childish cruelty of it all.

Something inside me, something that's been bending for five years, finally snaps.

"Elena." My voice emerges calm, almost pleasant. "Call my brother. Tell him I need the Moore family seal. And contact the pack lawyers."

She straightens, understanding dawning in her eyes. "Miss Vivienne?"

I turn away from the ruined bed, from the ghost of who I used to be, from the fantasy that Phoenix Evans was ever worth saving.

"It's time to remind everyone exactly who I am."

A Moore doesn't break.

A Moore breaks others.

Continue to next part

Some think I'm cursed. Others think I'm unlucky. But I know what I am. My name is Leora, and I am the Redwood Pack's Alpha's daughter. Well, until my mother died. My father remarried late, so the Pack moved on to new hands. My new stepmother, Amarie, is a spawn of Satan. She gives me to the new Alpha's household as a maidservant as a price for not exiling my father. I become an outcast, abused and punished every single day. On my eighteenth birthday, I find out that I'm mated to the new Alpha's son, Caleb. Enraged, he rejects me, throwing me into the dungeons. In pains, I remain there for days. Then one fateful night, my luck changes. The Lycan King is visiting the Pack to find a mate. Which happens to be me. I'm alone, crying that night, when a towering golden-eyed man charges in and rips the dungeon doors off their hinges. I gasp when he cups my chin, and whispers softly. "Stop crying, mate. I'm here now. And I'll make sure no one ever brings you to tears ever again!" I thought my problems were over then. But it was only the beginning.

Fantasy Horror Werewolf

9.6

My Death, His Ultimate Downfall

9.6

For a decade, I was the perfect wife to tech mogul Carson Jarvis. I cleaned up every scandal and endured every affair, trapped by my father's "poison pill" inheritance clause that would leave me with nothing if I divorced him. His latest mistress was pregnant, but that wasn't what finally broke me. It was when he shut down our mansion's power grid for their tryst-and turned off my grandmother's life support. He murdered her. At a charity auction days later, he paraded his new love while she announced her pregnancy. When I confronted her for stealing my money, Carson watched as his guards broke my arm, leaving me bleeding on the floor while he comforted her. He thought I was his unbreakable wife, a possession with nowhere else to go. He expected me to clean up this mess, just like all the others. He was wrong. As I watched him shield her during the chaos of an explosion I secretly arranged, I knew my old life was over. Tonight, the world would learn of my death. And with it, Carson Jarvis would lose everything.

Horror Modern Romance

9.3

Reborn Heiress: Reclaiming My Monster Billionaire

9.3

Ginny was chained to a concrete pillar in an abandoned warehouse, bleeding and betrayed by the two people she trusted most. Her fiancé, Brant, and her adopted sister, Coretta, had just slashed her face open. Brant coldly admitted she was nothing but a disposable key to a vault, right before he tossed a lighter onto the gasoline-soaked floor. As Ginny burned alive in the roaring inferno, the heavy iron doors were violently smashed open. Bedford Parks—the notoriously ruthless, germaphobic "monster" of Silicon Valley whom Ginny had always feared—charged straight into the flames. Ignoring the blistering heat, he shielded her charred body with his own. A massive steel beam collapsed, snapping his spine. "I love you." He coughed up blood, whispering his final words against her blackened skin before dying to protect her. Hovering as a ghost, Ginny's soul screamed in agonizing realization. She had spent her life terrified of Bedford, yet he was the only one who truly loved her, while her supposed family laughed at her gruesome murder. Suddenly, a blinding white light swallowed the warehouse. Ginny gasped for air, opening her eyes to find herself sitting in the back of a luxury Maybach. She was eighteen again, wearing the humiliating clown makeup Coretta had tricked her into wearing on the day she was brought back to the wealthy Steele estate. Ginny stared at her reflection, her dark eyes turning cold and sharp. This time, she would tear her betrayers apart piece by piece, and she would protect her "monster."

Billionaire Horror Modern

7.8

Return From Grave: Reclaiming My Betrayed Heart

7.8

I returned to Boston after three years, not for forgiveness, but to die. My family, who blamed me for my mother's death, had cast me out, replacing me with a quiet, grateful orphan named Gabriela. She stole my father's love, my brother's affection, and my childhood sweetheart, Corey. Now, terminally ill, my only wish was to reclaim my mother's wedding dress, a final piece of her to hold onto. But Gabriela was wearing it to marry Corey. When I confronted her, she destroyed my mother's locket and cursed me to drop dead. In a blind rage, I slapped her. She shrieked, stabbed her own arm, and framed me for the attack. As my family and Corey looked on with disgust, calling me a maniac, my body gave out. I collapsed, coughing up blood, my secret illness revealed in the most brutal way possible. "You always blame me," I gasped, the words bubbling out with blood. "But I was just... dying." Their faces filled with dawning horror, but it was too late. I was already gone. Until I opened my eyes again, and my mother, who had been waiting for me all along, took my hand. "We'll be reborn," she promised, her eyes blazing with fury at the family who had destroyed me. "Together. As mother and daughter, again."

Fantasy Horror Romance

7.6

The Billionaire's Secret Blood Sacrifice Bride

7.6

Cora thought she was the luckiest woman alive, married to a devoted tech billionaire who showered her with custom haute couture and obsessive care. But his "protection" involved locking her inside their San Francisco estate, forcing her to swallow foul neon-green supplements, and drawing her blood with highly classified veterinary needles. She thought it was just his extreme paranoia, until a cynical doctor cornered her at a charity gala. "Kendrick isn't raising a wife. He's curating a very rare, very fragile medical specimen. You're his personal pharmacy." Terrified, Cora broke into Kendrick's hidden safe and found a medical report approving her total bone marrow and stem cell depletion. Kendrick wasn't a doting husband. He was raising her as a human bloodbag to save his terminally ill cousin. When she nearly uncovered the truth, Kendrick cried fake tears, claiming he only needed her antibodies. "Tomorrow, we are going to my private island in the Caribbean. Just the two of us. No internet. No guards. Just peace." Cora almost believed his vulnerable act, deeply confused by how a man who kissed her so tenderly could plan to slaughter her in cold blood. Then, while packing for the trip, she dropped a wooden box, revealing a hidden flight manifesto. Kendrick's return date was listed. Hers was completely blank. Stapled to the back was a clinical schedule: Intensive Marrow Harvesting - Final Stage. Patient will not require return transport. Hearing his heavy footsteps echoing in the hallway, Cora gripped the sharp edges of the broken box. She was not going to be a slaughtered lamb on that island.

Billionaire Horror Modern Romance

7.0

The Disposable Bride's Deadly Secret Identity

7.0

My debt-ridden uncle sold me to the Romero mafia family to save his own skin. I was forced to marry Emiliano Romero, a man known to the underworld as "The Ghost"—a rumored monster who supposedly tore his last two caretakers apart. My aunt and cousin delighted in my misery. My cousin came at me with a razor, leaving a nasty bruise on my face, while my aunt bleached my hair to make me look like a cheap, disposable doll. When the Romeros arrived, they didn't even pretend to want a daughter-in-law. "The Family needs a nobody whose death won't start a police report." They just wanted a clueless victim to sign a pre-nup and die quietly. They shoved me down a sterile hallway and locked me inside a fortified, padded cell with a man wrapped in heavy chains. They all thought they were sacrificing a helpless, terrified lamb to a madman. They laughed at my tears, completely convinced I was just gutter trash waiting to be slaughtered. But they had no idea I was a highly trained undercover operative. Listening to their arrogant whispers, the pieces finally clicked. Emiliano wasn't a deranged killer—he was a prisoner being drugged and framed by his own blood. I drained my uncle's bank account to buy a neurotoxin antidote, dropped my pathetic, trembling disguise, and stepped calmly into the monster's cage. I wasn't here to be their victim. I was here to save him.

Horror Mafia Mystery

My Husband’s Mistress Wore My Skin

Chapter 2

You may also like