The Rejected Mate's Defiant Return To Power
I was the Fated Mate of Lycus Stone, chosen by the Moon Goddess herself.
But he performed the sacrilegious ritual of Rejection, severing our sacred bond to run away with his widowed sister-in-law.
He abandoned me and our newborn son in the freezing wilderness, claiming she was his true mate to secure a high-ranking position in a powerful pack.
For a decade, while he enjoyed his prestige, I was trapped in a living hell.
My in-laws treated me worse than a stray dog, beating me daily and forcing me to eat moldy scraps.
Even my own daughter despised my low status, stealing my food to buy pretty dresses and laughing as I starved.
"You're just a useless Omega. You deserve to suffer!"
In the end, my frail body was ripped apart by wild beasts in the snow.
I died listening to the agonizing sound of my own tearing flesh, completely abandoned.
Until my last breath, I felt nothing but a suffocating despair.
Why did my mate defy the Goddess to choose his brother's widow?
Why did my family treat me like garbage while praising his monstrous betrayal?
Opening my eyes again, the blinding pain was gone.
I was back in that miserable cabin, exactly ten years ago.
This time, I grabbed the heavy iron poker by the fireplace. The weak Elara is dead, and I am going to destroy them all.
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Chapter 3
Elara Thorne POV:
Magnus returned with a deer slung over his shoulders, a fine prize. I nodded in approval and immediately set to work, my hands moving with a practiced skill I'd learned surviving in the wild during my last life. Magnus watched me, a look of awe and confusion on his face. This was not the helpless mother he knew.
A loud, rattling engine announced the arrival of a beat-up pickup truck. My daughter, sixteen-year-old Freya, jumped out. She was dressed in clothes far too expensive for our family, her face painted with makeup.
Her eyes lit up when she saw the deer. "Finally, some real food! I'm starving," she complained, already reaching for the choicest cut, a thick leg of venison. "Hurry up, Mom. My friends are waiting for me in town."
It was her usual routine: take the best for herself to show off, leaving us the scraps.
My skinning knife flashed, its tip stopping an inch from her manicured fingers.
Freya shrieked, snatching her hand back. "What are you doing? Are you crazy?"
I slowly looked up from my work, my eyes flat and devoid of warmth. "None of this is for you."
She stared at me, then laughed as if I'd told a joke. "What did you say? This is my brother's kill!"
A cold smile touched my lips. "And what have you done for this family, Freya? Have you ever washed a dish? Chopped a piece of firewood? What gives you the right to enjoy any of it?"
She was speechless for a moment, then her face flushed with anger. "I'm your daughter! It's your duty to provide for me!"
She turned to her brother for support. "Magnus, look at her! She's lost her mind!"
Magnus glanced from my icy expression to his sister's indignant one and remained silent.
I stood up, wiping my bloody hands on a rag, and walked over to her. "From now on, 'duty' is a word that I define in this house."
I gestured to the truck. "Those 'friends' of yours only hang around because you occasionally steal something good from home to share. Now, there's nothing left to steal."
My eyes narrowed. "And that dress, that makeup... Astrid's been giving you money behind my back, hasn't she?"
The color drained from Freya's face. It was her secret.
"Well, her money is gone now," I continued, my voice relentless. "From now on, if you want to eat, you hunt. If you want new clothes, you earn the money to buy them."
I walked back to the deer, sliced off a small, gristly piece of meat from the neck, and tossed it at her feet. "That is your share for today. Eat it, or leave."
Freya trembled with a rage and humiliation she had never known. Tears welled in her eyes. "I hate you!" she screamed. "I'm going to find Grandma and Grandpa!"
She spun around and stormed toward the house to tattle, just as she always had.
I didn't stop her. I just called out calmly, "They're in the woodshed. You can join them if you like."
She skidded to a halt at the woodshed door and saw the heavy bolt slid across it. The faint sound of her grandparents' moaning drifted out from within.
The reality of the situation finally crashed down on her. Her protectors were gone. She was alone.
A wave of pure terror washed over her, and she collapsed to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.
I ignored her cries. I turned to Magnus, my voice even. "Finish skinning the deer. We're eating well tonight."
My tone was completely steady, as if Freya's breakdown was nothing more than the rustling of leaves in the wind.
Magnus looked at his weeping sister, then back at me. The respect in his eyes deepened into something closer to fear.
I knew what I was doing was harsh. But for a child as spoiled as Freya, the only way to force her to grow was to sever all her dependencies at once.
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7.7
Nora's life turned into a nightmare after she was banished from her pack by her own husband. She was subjected to mockery, abuse and humiliation before being cast out with nothing.
Faced with the cruelty of a world that had never once been kind to her, the moon goddess decided to bless her with her fated mate.
The same man she watched slaughter others without a single trace of mercy. The man who was twice as cold and twice as ruthless as the husband who destroyed her.
Yet he would not let her go. She found herself stuck between the husband who used her and the ruthless mate who wanted her but refused to admit it. Two powerful men. One woman who was never supposed to survive any of it. And a moon goddess who was not done with her yet.
9.4
I thought the Burch family gave me a loving home when they took me out of the orphanage.
But when the global deep freeze apocalypse hit, my adoptive parents mercilessly kicked me out of the bunker to freeze to death.
As I lay dying in the snow, covered in horrific purple frostbite, my adoptive sister Kendal walked past me in a pristine designer jacket.
Around her neck was my only childhood possession—an antique gold necklace my adoptive mother had ripped off my neck to give to her.
Kendal gloated, bragging that my pendant held a magical space with infinite supplies and fresh food while the rest of the world starved.
I realized I had spent years emptying my life savings to fund their luxury cars and fake medical emergencies.
They had drained my bank accounts, stolen my bloodline's heirloom, and used my magical lifeline to live like royalty while leaving me to die.
I took my last ragged breath in that blinding blizzard, consumed by a toxic hatred.
Why was I so hopelessly weak? Why did I let them take everything from me?
Opening my eyes again, the painful frostbite scars were gone. My skin was warm.
I grabbed my phone. The screen lit up: November 12.
It was exactly three days before the world ended.
When my adoptive mother called, faking a tearful emergency to demand another thirty thousand dollars, I smiled coldly.
"Just tell me where to send the money, Mom."
This time, I'm taking my space back, and I'm going to drain them dry.
7.1
The captain is dead to the world. And I'm the only one holding the kill switch.
Ethan Carter, the "Glacier of Silvercrest," was the most feared Alpha to ever step onto the ice. Now, he's nothing but a shell-a broken, comatose legend trapped in his own body.
My life? It was supposed to be simple. Graduate, survive the pack's bottom-tier status, and pay off my father's ruinous blood-debts. Instead, the pack elders handed me a contract soaked in cold, hard malice: I am the designated "Stabilizer." My only job is to touch him, scent him, and keep his wolf from flatlining.
I thought I was just a glorified nurse. I didn't realize the Alpha was listening.
When Ethan finally wakes, he isn't the hero the Kingdom of Valeria remembers. He's a starving predator with amber eyes that burn holes through my defenses and a temperament that makes the frost in the mansion seem warm. He hates the bargain, he hates the pack, and-most dangerously-he hates the way his scent turns wild whenever I'm near.
He wants me out of his sight. I want to be out of his reach.
But in a pack built on secrets, someone is still trying to finish the job they started on his life. Now, the man who wants me gone is the only one who can protect me. And as the rink turns into a battlefield, I'm realizing the most dangerous thing about the Alpha isn't his temper... it's the fact that once he claims a mate, he doesn't know how to let go.
Frozen hearts are meant to shatter. But in the fire of this pack, we're both going to burn.
9.5
As a highborn succubus, I somehow managed to starve myself to death-thanks to my obsessive cleanliness and ridiculously picky appetite.
When I opened my eyes again, I had transmigrated into Vivian Hartwell-the long-lost "real" daughter with a tragically cursed fate.
I had barely been taken back into the Hartwell family before they forced me to attend a so-called "death matchmaking" event in Kingsford-on behalf of Natalie Hartwell, the fake heiress-to meet Damian Blackwood, the infamous "living reaper."
Rumor had it Damian was brutal and bloodthirsty-every woman who'd ever been involved with him either ended up dead or driven insane.
At the event, over a hundred socialites were trembling on their knees, silently praying they wouldn't be the one chosen.
Just as Damian let out a cold smirk and reached to pick his unlucky victim, I took a deep breath from the back of the crowd.
The scent emanating from him was a rare, potent masculine essence-something encountered perhaps once in ten millennia.
For a painfully picky succubus like me, this was nothing short of salvation.
I kicked aside the girl blocking my way, my eyes practically glowing as I threw both hands up. "Pick me! Hurry, pick me!"
7.4
The house was a living inferno, the heat devouring the air in my lungs as I clutched my five-year-old daughter to my chest. Emily was dead weight, her skin already cooling even as the room turned into a furnace of orange and black.
Through the stinging smoke, I saw my husband, Kenney, crawling toward the door with a wet handkerchief pressed to his face. He didn't look back at the crib, and he didn't call my name; he was simply leaving us to burn.
I lunged forward and grabbed his ankle, my nightgown catching fire, but he didn't reach down to save me. He recoiled in horror at the sight of my burning hair and our dead child, kicking me back with a panicked shriek.
"Let go!" he shrieked.
I died as a massive, flaming timber snapped from the ceiling and crushed us both into silence. I couldn't believe that the man I loved would leave his family to die just to save his own skin, but the rage I felt was colder than the death that followed.
But then the burning stopped instantly, replaced by a cold so sharp it made my teeth ache. I gasped, jerking upright in my bed to find the velvet duvet cool under my palms and the nursery quiet, with Emily still breathing softly in her crib.
I had returned to the winter morning two years before the fire, the exact day Kenney finalized the deal to sell me to the King for a promotion. As Kenney stepped into the room with a practiced mask of concern, I realized I was no longer the victim of this story.
"A nightmare, my love?" he asked, reaching out to touch my shoulder.
I flinched away, my eyes burning with a hatred he couldn't yet understand. Tonight was the Winter Masquerade, the night he planned to offer me to the King as a prize, but this time, I was going to turn his social ladder into a gallows.
9.6
Antoinette stood on the manicured church lawn, the blinding summer sun stabbing her eyes. The funeral service for her parents had just ended.
A hand wrapped around her trembling shoulder, carrying the sharp, cloying scent of Fabian Cash's cologne. It was the exact same cologne her fiancé wore the night he locked her in a burning house to die in her previous life.
Now, wearing a mask of sorrowful devotion, Fabian tried to drag her to his car to control her parents' massive life insurance payout.
When she shoved him away in pure nausea, his mother Eleanor immediately shrieked to the crowd, deploying her usual guilt trip.
"She's lost her mind! The girl has completely snapped!"
The townspeople whispered and pointed fingers, watching Fabian play the victim as he tightened his bruising grip on her wrist, claiming she was hysterical and needed to be locked away.
Antoinette stared at the mother and son who had conspired to steal her family's estate and end her life. The rage inside her felt like battery acid pumping through her veins.
They didn't care if she lived or died; they only cared about the money. How could she let them strip her of everything again?
She didn't hesitate. She swung with every bit of strength she possessed, slapping Fabian across the face in front of the entire town.
"The engagement is over," she announced coldly.
Then, she turned her back on her greedy ex-fiancé and walked straight toward the terrifyingly powerful billionaire Hiram Graves, ready to let the world burn.