My Stepson, My Mate
He hated my gut!
I detested his arrogance!
I was supposed to be his ex-stepmother,but I hated pack politics and returned to the human community after Alpha Holt's death.
I was forced back to heal the wounds of the one that hated me the most, my stepson Adrian.
To the world he was the famous NHL golden boy of hockey and to the Frostfang pack, their feared Alpha.
But the moon goddess had another plan.
On the night he was crowned as Alpha, his father's mark faded from my neck and Adrian's mate bond burnt harshly on my skin. But fate wasn't done yet.
We were expected to team up to fight a common foe when we could barely stand each other.
Was our fate strong enough to overcome physical hatred?
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Chapter 5
Selena's POV
The hospital had that cold, sterile smell that felt like no life could exist here. Walking toward the morgue was like dragging stones through my chest. Jane... was gone.
I still couldn't believe it. Even after getting the message, even after asking for directions, I kept thinking it had to be some type of prank. No way in hell was I going to accept it until I saw her with my very eyes.
A police officer waited in the hallway wearing a grim expression.
"Miss Ward?" he asked as I approached.
"Y-yes."
"I'm Officer Daniels. I called you about Miss Jane. Her body was found on the side of the road, probably on her way somewhere. We were able to reach you because her phone was in her purse, and your number was the first one we found."
Grief-stricken panic saw me barely get the words out. "Please, I-I need to see her."
With a small nod, he guided me down the hall to a private room. A doctor stood by the body, gloves on, keeping a calm, professional demeanor.
"Miss Ward... I'm very sorry," he said gently. "I need you to confirm the identity. We've preserved her carefully."
Inching closer to the table, my heart was racing like crazy. Hell... there my roommate was, lying motionless, eyes open but blank. Her once fair skin was now pale and bruised. I felt my throat close as I reached out before I even realized it.
"It's... her," I whispered in a broken voice.
Officer Daniels cleared his throat. "Witnesses claimed they saw nothing, but... the wounds look unusual."
The doctor carefully rolled up Jane's sleeves, revealing deep, crescent-shaped bruises along her arms. Leaning in, my stomach squeezed as my hands hovered over the huge-ass bite mark on her neck.
"Animal attack?" the doctor asked. "Possibly a stray dog or... something wild. It looks like she was trying to defend herself."
Nodding outwardly, I let them speak, but inside, I was damn near losing it. This wasn't a stray dog. Hell no. The bite was too clean, the claw marks way too exact. My wolf instincts flared up.
Wolf.
I stayed quiet though. Humans would never get it. They couldn't see what I saw, couldn't grasp what I knew. We weren't supposed to reveal ourselves anyway.
"Yes... it's consistent with an animal attack," I said carefully. But rage embraced me under the surface. Rogue wolves. There was no other explanation. No wolf in their right mind would dare go against the laws and attack a human.
Officer Daniels's voice dragged me back to reality. "We'll need you to answer a few questions, Miss Ward. Anything you remember, any contacts Jane had this morning or last night... anything could help."
I answered him as best I could, keeping my voice steady, but my mind refused to cooperate. Thoughts ran wild, crashing into each other.
How could Jane just... be gone? She had no enemies. None that I knew of, anyway. Sure, she could be loud and reckless, but she was endlessly kind. I'd met her three years ago, while looking for a roommate, and somehow, she'd become like a sister.
Rogue wolves in the human world? Hell, that's dangerous. Reckless. Totally unforgivable. If they were out there now–hunting, attacking–someone had to put a stop to them before anyone else got hurt.
And there was only one person who could.
Adrian.
Even after everything between us, after how damn frustrating, arrogant, and infuriating he was, he was Alpha now. The pack obeyed him. If rogue wolves were out there, breaking the rules, he was the only one who could rein them in, make them pay for daring to defy the laws.
I clenched my fists, my hands trembling anyway. So much for walking away from the supernatural world.
***
The whole talk at the hospital ended up taking much longer than I could bear. Between the questioning, the paperwork, and the pity-filled stares, I felt like I was losing air. By the time I was done, I locked myself in the women's restroom and finally broke.
I'd tried to stay composed, goddess knows I had, but grief didn't care about strength. So I let it crash over me until there was nothing left.
After shedding enough tears to fill a well, I finally splashed water on my face and stared at my reflection. My amber eyes were red, swollen, and tired. Jane was gone, and no amount of crying would change that.
If I couldn't save her, then I could at least make sure whoever, or whatever, did this paid. That much, I owed her.
That's what led me back to the training facility.
It made more sense to find Adrian there than at the pack house. After what happened yesterday, he'd never let me past the gate. He'd probably have the guards toss me out before I even spoke.
The place was quiet when I arrived. The bursts of laughter and clashing sticks were gone; training had wrapped up for the day. Players were heading out with their bags slung over their shoulders, their breath visible in the cold.
"Hey, Doc," one of them greeted, offering a small, tired smile.
I returned it weakly, scanning the area. "You seen Adrian?"
"Yeah," He adjusted his bag. "Still in the men's locker room. Stayed back to shower. Should be done any minute."
My throat went dry.
Out of everything he'd said, the word 'shower' kept running through my head along with impossible images of his naked body covered in soap.
My heart started beating fast, and the liquid that should've gone down my throat felt like it was running between my legs instead. Last night flashed in my mind–his hands on my boobs, his deep voice, that godlike body pressing down on mine.
"Damn it," I muttered under my breath. Heat. It had to be the damn heat. That, and the stupid mate mark on my neck that wouldn't stop pulsing every time I even thought about him.
Taking a steadying breath, I thanked the player and waited until the last of them left.
Now alone, I was at a crossroads.
I could remain waiting for him like a normal person. Or I could just... check. Just to see if he was done. That was all. Nothing else.
Right.
My heat-fogged brain apparently didn't get the memo because before I knew it, my legs were already carrying me toward the locker room.
The warm air inside reeked of soap, sweat, and musk. The locker room led straight into the shower area with rows of benches leading into a tiled corridor where the sound of running water echoed faintly.
"Adrian?" I called softly, cautious.
No response.
"Adrian," I tried again, a little louder this time.
Still nothing. Just the sound of water. Okay. He was still showering. I should go.
I spun to leave, but every muscle in my body froze when a low, rough grunt cut across the sound of the running water, followed by my name, breathless.
"Selena..."
That wasn't the voice of a man simply washing off a long day. That was the sound of a man lost in pleasure.
And he had just moaned my name.
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8.4
My mate, Alpha Santino, brought another woman into our home. She was a pregnant Omega, the widow of his fallen Beta, and he swore to protect her above all others.
He gave her my seat of honor, left our bed cold each night to soothe her feigned nightmares, and ignored me completely. I was the Luna of the Blackstone Pack, but I was becoming a ghost in my own life.
The final betrayal happened in my own bedroom. She stood over my vanity and deliberately shattered my mother's sacred moonstone necklace, the last piece of my family I had left.
When Santino burst in, he didn't see my heartbreak. He saw only her fake tears.
"What did you do to her?!" he roared, his voice laced with the Alpha's Command, a sacred power he used to crush my will.
Then, for her, he did the unforgivable. He raised his hand and struck me, his mate.
In that instant, the love I had desperately clung to turned to ice. The man I had sworn my life to had not only betrayed me but had defiled the sacred bond the Goddess herself had blessed.
As the pain of his betrayal ripped through me, something ancient and powerful awakened in my blood. I rose to my feet and spoke the words that would destroy his world and begin mine.
"I, Alessia Bianchi, reject you, Santino Moretti, as my mate."
7.1
On her eighteenth birthday, Melissa expected a fated mate bond and a future as Luna. Instead, she received a public humiliation that shattered her soul. Her childhood sweetheart, Kelan, rejected her for her best friend, and her own family sold her to the highest bidder like livestock, to Alpha Draven the Demon of Dark Moon Valley. He is a man twice her age, a tyrant who bought Melissa to break a dark bloodline curse. He expects an obedient pawn and a submissive wife.
He didn't expect a strategist. From the shadows of Draven's stone fortress, Melissa begins a cold-blooded campaign of revenge. She isn't just surviving; she's siphoning wealth, buying up her ex-mate's debts, and plotting a coup. But her plan hits a deadly snag when she touches Briston, the Alpha's son and heir. The spark is undeniable. The Moon Goddess has played a cruel joke and Melissa is fated to the son of the man who owns her.
9.0
I traded my innocence to my fated mate, the Alpha King, just to get a stalk of Moonlight Grass to save my dying brother.
But after a night of agonizing physical connection, he didn't mark me. Instead, he tossed me a single, useless dried leaf and a credit card, treating our sacred bond like a cheap transaction.
When I refused his insulting offer to be his secret, nameless mistress, he choked me against a wall and banished me from his lands forever. I fled to the human city, only to watch from the shadows a week later as he publicly escorted a pure-blood noble female, preparing to make her his Luna. Meanwhile, I was forced to sell herbs in the lawless black market just to survive, where I was cornered by a gang of violent rogues.
I didn't understand. We were chosen by the Moon Goddess. When our skin touched, the mating sparks nearly blinded us both. Why did he look at me with such cold disgust? Why did he throw me away like trash, only to parade another woman as his queen?
Running for my life from the rogues, I tripped and fell onto the asphalt, right at the feet of a convoy of black SUVs.
The man stepping out was the Alpha King who had sworn to kill me if he ever saw me again.
But as the rogues demanded I be handed over, his eyes darkened with a terrifying, primal fury.
"She's mine."
9.2
I woke up suffocating in the dark, only to find my mind trapped inside a tiny, plump, and entirely uncoordinated body.
A cold, mechanical voice echoed in my brain, announcing that I was dead in my original world and had transmigrated into a corporate revenge novel as the six-month-old illegitimate daughter of Edward McClure, the story's ruthless villain.
The system mercilessly outlined my doomed fate. Tonight, my cold-blooded father would abandon me to a state orphanage. By age two, he would officially sign my rights away, leaving me to die miserably at the hands of human traffickers. Outside my nursery, I could hear his terrifying footsteps approaching, his voice devoid of any human warmth as he debated throwing me out like garbage. I was completely helpless, trapped in a baby's body, staring up at a man who looked at me with pure, visceral disgust.
Why did I have to be reborn as the tragic cannon fodder of a tyrant destined to put a bullet in his own head? How was I supposed to win over a severe germaphobe when my unequipped infant reflexes made me literally pee and vomit all over his pristine Tom Ford suits?
"Your ultimate mission is to prevent Edward McClure's self-destruction. Step one: Survive tonight's abandonment crisis."
Hearing the system's terrifying ultimatum, I swallowed my adult panic, forced a pool of pitiful tears into my large eyes, and reached my chubby little hands toward the monster.
9.4
I was the eldest daughter of the powerful Kirk family, sent away to a Swiss sanatorium to recover from my supposed mental illness.
But my stepmother, Johnie, never intended for me to get better. She sent her personal cleaners to drag me onto a plane back to Washington D.C.
In my past life, I didn't know they were assassins. I was forcefully injected with heavy sedatives and locked in a secret torture chamber inside our luxury estate.
My stepmother and cousin skimmed my inheritance while watching me suffer.
They framed me as a crazy addict, and my own father, a sitting Senator, turned a blind eye to protect his political career.
"Her political value is gone, just get rid of her quietly."
That was the last thing I heard my father say before I was brutally slaughtered by my own family.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand why they hated me so much.
Why did my father let them force those pills down my throat?
Why was my life worth less than my stepmother's public image?
Opening my eyes again, the freezing sensation of lake water filling my lungs vanished.
I was back in the VIP room of the St. Moritz Sanatorium in 2023.
It was the exact morning before the cleaners walked through my door with uncapped syringes.
This time, I wouldn't just survive. I was going to cut the throat of the Kirk family.
8.8
Alaia Dudley spent her life playing the devoted partner, completely unaware that her fiancé Austen was sleeping with another woman.
She thought the worst he could do was break her heart, until she found herself pinned to a cold operating table.
Austen held her down with a cruel smirk while a scalpel sliced through her sternum.
They cracked her chest open while she was still fully conscious.
The agonizing pain of her heart being cut out burned into her nerve endings.
She realized then that to him, she was never a lover—just a spare organ, a boring piece of wood to be discarded the second his true love needed it.
She died in excruciating agony, choking on her own blood while the man she loved walked away with her heart.
Until her last breath, she didn't understand why she had to suffer so brutally.
Why did she waste her life begging for a monster's attention? Why did they get a happy ending while she was carved up like an animal?
But then, ice-cold water flooded her lungs, and Alaia violently broke the surface of her bathwater.
Her trembling fingers touched her smooth, flawless chest. No scars. Her heart was still beating.
The date on her phone glared back at her: it was exactly five years ago.
Tonight was the exact night Austen first took his mistress to a hotel room.
This time, she wouldn't just expose them. She would use Wall Street's most terrifying tyrant as her personal weapon to strip them of everything they had.