Rejected While Pregnant, I Reclaimed My Power
While I was pregnant, my husband held a party downstairs for another woman's son.
Through a hidden mental link, I overheard my husband, Don Dante Rossi, tell his consigliere he was going to publicly reject me tomorrow. He planned to make his mistress, Serena, his new mate.
An act forbidden by ancient law while I carried his heir.
Later, Serena cornered me, her smile venomous. When Dante appeared, she shrieked, clawing her own arm and blaming me for the attack.
Dante didn't even look at me. He snarled a command that froze my body and stole my voice, ordering me from his sight as he cradled her.
He moved her and her son into our master suite. I was demoted to the guest room at the end of the hall.
Passing her open door, I saw him rocking her baby, humming the lullaby my own mother used to sing to me.
I heard him promise her, "Soon, my love. I'll sever the bond and give you the life you deserve."
The love I felt for him, the power I'd hidden for four years to protect his fragile ego, all turned to ice.
He thought I was a weak, powerless wife he could discard. He was about to find out that the woman he betrayed was Alessia De Luca, princess of the most powerful family on the continent.
And I was finally going home.
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Chapter 4
Alessia POV:
Dante settled Serena and her child into the room right next to our—my—bedroom. The message was clear. They came first.
A wave of nausea washed over me, a combination of morning sickness and the soul-deep sickness of his betrayal. My body felt weak, drained. My inner wolf, the life force tied to his, was restless and agitated, confused by the actions of its mate. It was a constant, low-grade thrum of pain under my skin.
I stumbled into the small, cold guest room he had assigned me and collapsed onto the bed.
A few minutes later, the door creaked open. It was Dante. He approached the bed, his face a mask of false concern.
“Are you unwell?” he asked, his voice a soft murmur. He reached out and stroked my hair, a gesture that once would have brought me comfort. Now, it felt like a lie.
His hand was tainted. I could smell her on him. The cloying floral scent mixed with the sour smell of her baby’s milk. The scent was an invasion, a physical presence in the room that made my nausea worse. My body recoiled from his touch, a primal rejection of the foreign scent on my mate.
“I need some water,” I whispered, my throat dry. My own body was fighting against me, protesting the poison in our lives.
He nodded, turning to leave the room. But just as he reached the door, I felt it—a private, intimate mental link opening between him and Serena. It was a connection he had never shared with anyone but me.
*Dante, my love,* her thoughts simpered, dripping with fake vulnerability. *The baby is crying. He needs you. I need you.*
His hesitation was nonexistent.
*I’m coming,* he sent back instantly, his thought a warm caress I hadn't received in months.
He turned back to me, his expression hardening slightly. “Serena needs me. I’ll send a servant with your water.”
And then he was gone.
He left me, his pregnant, mated wife, lying sick and weak, to run to her side.
A bitter, painful lump formed in my throat. I couldn't stay here. I couldn't breathe this air. I pushed myself up, my legs trembling, and made my way down the hall towards the kitchen.
As I passed Serena's room, the door was ajar. I tried to look away, to keep walking, but my eyes were drawn to the scene inside against my will.
It was a perfect picture of domestic bliss. A fire crackled in the hearth. Serena was lying on the bed, looking artfully exhausted, while Dante sat beside her, gently rocking her baby in his arms. He was humming a lullaby, the same one my mother used to sing to me.
I froze, my hand flying to my mouth to stifle a sob. My body was a statue of pure, unadulterated pain.
Then I heard her voice, soft and venomous. “When will you do it, Dante? When will you finally reject her and sever the bond?”
I watched in horror as he leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. “Soon, my love,” he promised. “Very soon. I’ll give you and this little one the life you deserve. I promise.”
My world, which had been cracking for months, finally shattered into a million irreparable pieces.
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7.3
I was tracing the gold paint on my own tombstone when a hand tapped me on the shoulder.
It was Clayton.
The same man who, five years ago, had left me bleeding out in a ditch because he didn't want to be late for my sister's engagement party.
"Die quietly, Ivy," he had said over the phone before hanging up.
Now, standing over my grave, he dropped his cheap plastic flowers in shock.
"Ivy? You're... we buried you."
They hadn't buried me.
They had buried an empty box to save face, mourning a "troubled" daughter they had actually discarded like broken trash the moment I became a liability.
Clayton's shock quickly turned to that familiar, arrogant anger.
He accused me of faking my death for attention.
He told me I was sick for putting the family through such pain.
He even reached out to grab my arm, intending to drag me back to my father to apologize.
"You're coming with me," he spat. "You owe us an explanation."
But he made a fatal mistake.
He thought he was talking to Ivy Dillard, the soft girl who cried when she skinned her knees.
He didn't notice the town car waiting at the curb, or the man stepping out of it.
Before Clayton's fingers could graze my coat, a hand made of steel caught his wrist.
Collin Richardson, the most feared Capo in Chicago, stepped between us.
"Touch my wife again," Collin whispered, his voice promising violence. "And you lose the hand."
I smiled at the terror draining the color from Clayton's face.
I didn't come back from the dead to explain myself.
I came back to bury them.
7.5
On the morning of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I found a cream-colored document tucked inside my husband's suit pocket.
It was a twenty-million-dollar asset transfer for his former receptionist, Carmen. But what made my blood run cold was the contingent beneficiary: Leo, my newborn son who the hospital claimed was kidnapped twenty-three years ago.
When I confronted Devonte, he didn't even try to explain. He handed me a fake Cartier watch, canceled all my credit cards, and publicly called me delusional.
The next day, he moved Carmen into our mansion and emptied all our joint accounts into offshore trusts.
"If you don't sign these papers and walk away, I will have you committed," he threatened, his mother nodding in agreement.
They had orchestrated the kidnapping of my baby, hiding him with the mistress while I spent half my life sedated and screaming in grief. Now, to keep his secret, Devonte was going to lock me in a psychiatric ward and bury me in debt.
I didn't understand how the man I loved could be such a monster. Why did he steal my child? What else was hidden in that confidential adoption file?
Pushed to the absolute brink, I refused to be his victim.
When his goons came to my temporary apartment to drag me away, I turned to the rugged union electrician who had just fixed my lights.
"If you need a husband to keep you out of a psych ward, I'll marry you," he said, offering himself as my legal shield.
I took his hand. It was time to tear my husband's perfect life apart.
9.0
Ashlyn was supposed to be just a fragile college student, selling her rare blood to a vicious crime syndicate enforcer to keep his dying sister alive.
But the dynamic shattered when Alex returned from a two-month disappearance. He stepped into the penthouse covered in dirt and blood, sporting a horrific, jagged knife wound slashed completely across his face.
Knowing exactly how to exploit his insecurities, Ashlyn played the role of the terrified victim to perfection. She screamed, pushed against his chest, and called him a terrifying monster. Humiliated and enraged by her blatant disgust, Alex violently smashed a marble table and kicked her out. He forced her out into a freezing, torrential rainstorm without a coat, vowing to kill her if she ever showed her face again.
What the ruthless enforcer didn't know was that her pathetic, trembling tears were a flawless, calculated lie. She wasn't a helpless, greedy girl. She was a cold-blooded corporate mastermind hiding from a family of elite assassins. She desperately needed his impenetrable penthouse fortress to stay alive, and she knew the only way to secure her place wasn't to ask for it, but to make him beg for her return.
Three days later, his sister's organs began to fail, and the hospital's blood bank ran dry.
"I'll pay you whatever you want. Just get here."
Listening to the desperate, broken voice of the monster over her burner phone, Ashlyn smiled coldly in the dark. The trap had snapped shut, and he had just handed her all the power.
8.7
I make my living binding monsters to their promises. But Silas Malphas is the one monster I never should have touched.
As a Thread-Binder, I can see the glowing, invisible strings of loyalty, debt, and lies connecting everyone in the city's supernatural underworld. It makes me the ultimate contract lawyer-and the perfect infiltrator.
My mission is simple: secure a job in the inner circle of the House of Malphas, the city's most ruthless monster syndicate, and steal the Primal Ledger from their lethal heir.
Silas Malphas commands the shadows themselves. He is arrogant, dominant, and terrifyingly elegant. But the most dangerous thing about him isn't his power-it's that when I look at him, I see *nothing*. He is a void in the magical spectrum. No debts. No loyalties. He is completely unreadable.
I was supposed to betray him. But as I am dragged deeper into his golden cage of high-stakes negotiations and blood-soaked boardroom politics, the lines between my mission and my dark attraction to the Beast begin to blur.
When a rival faction launches a deadly coup and my cover is blown, I am left with a terrifying choice. To survive the night, I must forge a blood-oath contract with the very monster I was sent to destroy.
I'm no longer just his lawyer. I'm bound to the Beast.
8.7
I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella.
Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark.
But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved.
Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies.
When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel.
While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest.
The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella.
He ordered my father to punish me.
I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth.
That night, the love in my heart finally died.
On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape-the only proof that I was Seven.
Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney.
By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.
8.9
I walked in on my fiancé sleeping with my maid of honor...
On the day of our wedding.
I did what anyone would do:
Threw my ring in his face and found somewhere quiet to cry.
But then something else happened.
Something unexpected.
In that quiet place...
Someone found me.
Anton Stepanov is like something out of a dream.
Scratch that: out of a nightmare.
He's rich as sin, arrogant as heck, and way too handsome for his own good.
He's also way too handsome for mine.
So when he offers me his hand and a way out of the worst day of my life, I do the only thing I can do:
I say yes.
That's how I ended up on his yacht.
That's how I ended up in his bed.
That's how I ended up pregnant with his baby.