Second Chance: Reborn as the Villainess
Betrayed by the man she loved. Katrina Donovan's death was supposed to be the end. Instead, when Katrina opens her eyes, she isn't in heaven-She's in Rachel Sterling's body. The very woman who stole her lover, harvested her heart. The villain everyone hates.
Now trapped in the life of her enemy, Katrina must pretend to be the spoiled, manipulative heiress while hiding the truth that would destroy them all.
Worse-Owen Blake, the cold and powerful billionaire adopted son of the Sterling family, watches her every move. He despises "Rachel", believes she destroyed the only innocent girl he ever cared about. He doesn't know the girl he mourns... is standing right in front of him.
With hatred burning in her veins, Katrina swears she will not waste this second chance. She will expose the lies. Reclaim what was stolen. Make every person who carved out her heart beg for mercy.
But revenge is dangerous-Especially when the only man who might uncover the truth is the one who wants her dead.
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Chapter 1
The first thing Katrina Donovan understood that night was this-
Felix Clarke had never loved her.
"Doctor, prepare for surgery. I want everything foolproof."
Rachel's voice drifted lightly through the darkness, calm and elegant, as if she were discussing a dinner reservation instead of a life.
"I've searched a long time for this heart," she added, a faint smile curving her lips. "Now it's finally time to harvest it."
A shrill scream ripped through the closed-down medical wing, echoing against the hollow walls.
"Ah-!"
The sound tore into the night, sharp and desperate against the suffocating silence.
Katrina's wrists strained against the restraints binding her to the stretcher. Cold metal bit into her skin. The sharp scent of rust and disinfectant filled the air, turning her stomach.
Her heart pounded violently in her chest.
Her heart.
The one they wanted to rip out.
"Rachel... what are you doing?!" Katrina's voice trembled, fury burning in her crimson eyes. "What are you trying to do to me?!"
Rachel stepped forward from the shadows.
Under the dim light, her face looked delicate, almost fragile-the kind of woman others instinctively wanted to protect.
But her eyes were cold.
Mocking.
"Trying to do?" Rachel tilted her head slightly. "Kate, don't make it sound so dramatic. You should feel honored."
Honored?
A dull ache spread from Katrina's chest outward, as if invisible claws were tearing through her ribs. For the first time in her life, true fear coiled around her spine.
She suddenly turned toward the man standing beside Rachel.
Toward the man she had trusted more than anyone.
"Felix!" Her voice cracked. "Hurry-stop her! She's gone insane! Stop her!"
For a moment, he didn't move.
Then-
"Heh."
A low, cold laugh slipped from his lips.
The gentle, refined expression Felix had always worn-the mask that had fooled her for years-shattered completely. What replaced it was something ruthless. Detached.
Almost disgusted.
"Kate," he said calmly, "give it up. This is fate."
Fate?
Her fingers curled tightly into her palms.
"Even if you die," Felix continued, his tone disturbingly reasonable, "your heart can still be preserved. And with your status, being able to donate your heart to Miss Sterling is the greatest honor of your life."
The words struck harder than any blade.
Katrina stared at him as if seeing him for the first time.
Strange.
Terrifying.
Was this really the childhood sweetheart who had held her hands beneath the summer sun and promised to protect her forever?
The man who had sworn, over and over again, that he loved her?
Not only had he deceived her feelings-
He wanted her dead.
He wanted to carve out her heart and offer it to that vile woman as a gift.
Heh... Felix Clarke. I trusted you so completely.
A bitter laugh rose in her throat but never escaped. Grief flooded her chest, heavy and suffocating. All these years... she had been blind.
Blind enough to fall in love with a man like him.
Resolve surged through her veins.
With a sudden burst of strength, Katrina broke free from one of the loosened restraints and hurled herself toward a stone pillar.
Even if she died, she would never let them take her heart to prolong that bitch's life.
"Trying to die? You think I'll let you?"
"Grab her! Strap her back onto the stretcher!"
Rachel stepped forward, a faint, smug smile curling on her lips. In her mind, this battle had already been won.
She looked down at Katrina like a queen passing judgment on a condemned criminal.
The doctors and nurses exchanged knowing glances, their movements swift and practiced.
Rachel took a slow breath and lay down on the operating table. Confident as she was, facing such a major surgery still left her palms damp with sweat. But the thought that, once successful, she would never again have to worry about her condition filled her with anticipation.
She turned her head toward the other stretcher.
Katrina lay there, restrained once more, struggling in vain.
"Katrina," Rachel said, her voice brimming with triumph, "say goodbye to the world. Hahaha..."
"No! Rachel, you can't do this! This is a crime! You can't-let me go!"
Terror consumed her. Tears streamed down her face as she fought desperately, but it was useless.
The nurses pinned down her arms and legs. The masked doctor, expressionless, lifted a gleaming scalpel.
Slice.
Then another.
And another.
The blade cut into her chest, each stroke sending waves of agony through her body. Her vision blurred, darkness creeping in from the edges as if Death itself were calling her-step by step, dragging her into a bottomless abyss.
Every second felt like an eternity.
Watching herself slowly die was worse than death itself.
'Rachel Sterling... if there is another life, I will carve you into a thousand pieces and grind your bones to dust. This debt will be repaid.'
'And you, Felix-if there is another life, I will become your worst nightmare and make sure you suffer for eternity.'
Her bloodshot eyes burned with hatred. If looks could kill, Rachel would have been torn apart a hundred times over. That vicious woman not only stole her man-she wanted her heart.
Such hatred could never be washed clean.
But it was too late-
The surgery was nearing its end. The searing pain in her left chest completely devoured her senses. Perhaps in the next second, she would truly die.
"Katrina!"
Suddenly, just as her consciousness began to fade, a breathless shout pierced through the darkness-like dawn breaking through night.
"I-I'm here..."
She tried with all her strength to respond, but her voice was no louder than a whisper. Her throat was raw, her body drained of all strength.
And then-
She was pulled entirely into hell.
...
Intensive Care Unit.
Katrina's eyes flew open.
The last thing in her mind was the moment before death-the cold scalpel, the tearing pain in her chest. But the next second, the tubes connected to her body dragged her back to reality.
The oxygen mask. The IV lines. The steady beep of machines.
All of it proved one thing-
She was still alive.
She had been saved.
She had escaped the clutches of that cheating couple.
Her eyes instantly reddened. Overwhelming relief crashed over her, washing away the suffocating terror of death.
But in the very next moment, a tall, broad figure suddenly entered her line of sight like a bolt of lightning-
Owen Blake.
That devil.
Why was he here?
Did he save her?
No. Impossible. He and Rachel and Felix were clearly on the same side-birds of a feather.
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8.7
Emerson worked grueling twelve-hour shifts just to keep her five-year-old son, Leo, alive. Her only lifeline was her partner Alden, who was willing to give up his wealthy family to protect them.
But when Leo's bone marrow completely failed, the doctor delivered a death sentence. The only way to save him was a two-million-dollar treatment, or having another child with his biological father.
That father was Finnegan Mcconnell, the ruthless billionaire who had accused Emerson of faking her pregnancy and abandoned her five years ago.
Desperate for the medical fees, Emerson submitted her designs to Finnegan's company.
Instead of advancing the money, Finnegan tore her portfolio to shreds and trapped her as a prisoner in his estate.
To force her complete submission, he systematically destroyed her reality. He framed Alden with federal charges, leaving him facing twenty years in prison.
Alden's mother stormed into the pediatric ICU, violently strangling Emerson against the wall.
"Beg Finnegan to let my son go! You are a curse!"
Even Emerson's own adoptive mother showed up at the hospital, just to publicly mock her dying child.
Emerson was suffocating in despair. Finnegan already had a beautiful new wife and a five-year-old daughter—absolute proof he had been cheating while she was pregnant and alone.
He had his perfect family. Why did he have to hunt her down and sever every lifeline she had left, just to watch her drown?
With her son's heart monitor fading and Alden locked in a cell, her pride finally shattered.
Emerson walked into the top-floor executive office and dropped to her knees at the devil's feet, but the desperate mother looking up at him was preparing for a devastating revenge.
8.7
I was pregnant with the future heir of the Blackwood Pack, but my fated mate, Alpha Gavin, was nowhere to be found when sharp, tearing agony ripped through my swollen belly.
Instead of rushing to my side, he was in a luxury penthouse with his mistress, Piper.
When I desperately called his human number for help, it was Piper who answered the phone.
"I'm Piper. His future Luna."
Minutes later, I received a leaked audio file of Gavin promising to formally reject me the moment our pup was born.
Before the heartbreak could even set in, my armored SUV was violently rammed off the road by a massive truck.
It wasn't an accident. It was a targeted hit paid for by Piper's pack.
I woke up in the clinic with an empty womb. My pup was dead.
Gavin didn't even show up. He just mind-linked the butler to say he was "too busy" to deal with my loss.
He let his mistress murder our child and treated me like disposable trash, assuming my grief would make me a weak, compliant victim.
He thought he could just bury my trauma and move on with his perfect new life.
He was wrong.
I faked my own death in a fiery crash, leaving him with nothing but my signed rejection papers and the bloody receipt proving his mistress hired the killers.
Now, armed with a new identity and untraceable wealth, I am stepping out of the shadows.
I am going to bankrupt their packs from the inside out and make my former Alpha watch his empire burn.
9.5
The night I ran, I left everything behind.
My dead fiancé's ghost. His brother's cold hands reaching for me. A father who won't meet my eyes because he's already sold me to the highest bidder.
I thought I was escaping.
Then a stranger pulled me from the darkness, and I learned what real danger looks like.
Damon moves like he owns the world. Talks like every word matters. Looks at me like I'm the only woman who ever made him feel something. He says he's the son the Kings family erased, the bastard they tried to bury. He says Evan loved me-really loved me-and that's why I should trust him.
He wants me to sign a contract. One year as his wife. One year to help him destroy the family that destroyed us both. One year pretending to belong to a man who makes my heart race and my skin burn every time he's close.
But the closer we get, the more I feel him keeping secrets.
He touches me like I'm fragile. Looks away when I ask about Evan. Holds the truth behind his teeth like it might cut us both.
And the whole time, I'm falling.
Falling into his warmth. His danger. His impossible kindness that feels too real to be fake.
But if I've learned anything from the Kings, it's this: the men who save you are always the ones who need you most.
And the ones who need you?
They're the ones who hurt you in the end.
Evan knew something the night he died. Something about my father. Something about the deal that would make the Kings the most powerful people in the country.
Damon knows too.
And the only way he'll tell me?
Is if I say yes.
Say yes to the contract. Say yes to the marriage. Say yes to the fire building between us that feels less like pretending every single day.
But when I finally learn the truth-about Evan, about my father, about the empire that wants us both dead-
Will the man holding me survive what comes next?
And more terrifying:
Will I survive loving him?
9.3
For three years, Dara endured endless humiliation to be the perfect wife to billionaire Donavon Monroe.
But on their third anniversary, which was also her birthday, Donavon coldly threw divorce papers on the dining table.
He wanted her gone for his returning childhood sweetheart, completely ignoring the blistering burn on Dara's hand—a cruel injury intentionally caused by his brother just hours ago.
When Dara tearfully reminded him how she had bled and almost died to save his life three years ago, Donavon looked at her with pure disgust.
"I have zero interest in looking at the ugly scars you picked up in whatever slum you crawled out of."
He accused her of fabricating a savior complex just to secure a ring, perfectly content to let his mother and brother treat her like a glorified maid.
Dara's heart completely shattered.
She had sacrificed her life and dignity for a ruthless capitalist who viewed her as nothing but disposable trash.
With her last shred of pride, she signed the papers, ready to leave this suffocating nightmare forever.
But that night, a freak lightning storm struck the estate.
When Dara opened her eyes the next morning, she felt incredibly heavy and her center of gravity was completely wrong.
She looked in the mirror and saw Donavon's cold, chiseled face staring back at her in absolute terror.
They had swapped bodies.
Now, she held the absolute power of the Monroe empire, and Donavon was finally going to experience his family's vicious abuse firsthand.
9.0
For a whole year, April believed her billionaire husband, Bartholomew, abandoned her in Europe the day after their arranged wedding. She hated him so much she drunkenly prayed for his death at a club.
But he suddenly returned that very night, catching her red-handed. Instead of a divorce, he trapped her, threatening to bankrupt her bloodsucking family unless she moved into his penthouse to play the devoted wife.
Forced to comply, she attended a dinner with her toxic family. Her stepmother deliberately served her lobster—knowing April had a fatal allergy.
"Eat up, darling. I know hospital food is dreadful."
When April refused and exposed their massive gambling debts, her furious father raised his hand to strike her across the face.
But it was Bartholomew, the ruthless tyrant she despised, who caught her father's arm and snapped his wrist.
"If you ever try to touch my wife again, I will erase your family by sunrise."
April was completely stunned. Why was he defending her with such murderous rage? And why did he keep a cheap paper airplane she had made at age six preserved under a glass dome in his study?
The answer came that night. When Bartholomew stepped out of the shower, April saw the massive, jagged surgical scar sliced directly over his heart. He hadn't run away; he had been fighting for his life on an operating table. Staring at the man who had silently survived just to come back to her, April made her choice. She was going to uncover the truth behind his surgery and their past.
8.7
On the night of her engagement, Lila Hart discovers that her fiancé isn't just cheating-he's selling her to the cruel Alpha of the Silvermoon Pack to settle a debt.
Dragged into the arms of Damien Blackwood, a ruthless billionaire Alpha feared across the werewolf world, Lila vows to escape. But Damien isn't what he seems-behind his icy exterior lies a dangerous secret... one that ties Lila to him in ways neither can deny.