The Ruthless Captain's Secretly Pampered Star
Aries Mathis stared at the glowing projector screen, his blood running completely cold.
For two years, he thought his mentor and former captain, Elias Beck, had simply left for a massive signing bonus in Europe.
But the financial report in front of him revealed a much sicker truth.
Elias had secretly sold Aries' contract to the highest bidder, packaging his own prodigy up like a commodity to line his pockets before abandoning him.
Now, Elias was back in North America, building a new esports empire from scratch.
The betrayal crushed Aries, turning his devastation into a blinding, toxic rage. He spiraled into a self-destructive frenzy, publicly executing Elias's new players in official matches, terrorizing them until their hands physically shook.
He hated Elias with every fiber of his being, yet the gaping hole in his chest screamed with agonizing confusion.
Why did the man who once saved him from the streets throw him away like a stray dog?
Driven to the edge, Aries cornered Elias at a VIP club, lining up ten shot glasses on a table.
"One is pure, high-proof whiskey. The rest are iced tea."
Aries sneered, knowing Elias had a severe stomach ulcer that could put him in the hospital.
"Pick the whiskey, and I sign with your new team for free."
Elias looked at Aries' broken eyes, reached out, and swallowed the liquid in one gulp.
There was no burn. All ten glasses were sweet iced tea.
As Aries fled the club in a blind panic, Elias smiled, pulling out his phone to text his lawyer.
"Liquidate my personal portfolio. I am bringing him home."
Chapters
Share
Chapter 2
The cold air of the hallway hit Aries in the face as he pushed open the heavy glass door of the IAC team meeting room.
He kept his head down.
He walked straight to the very back of the long conference table and dropped into a chair.
He pulled the hood of his black sweatshirt up, hiding the dark circles under his eyes.
At the front of the room, Ricky and two other starting players were huddled together.
They were whispering.
Aries caught the sound of the word "Elias."
His jaw clenched so hard his teeth ground together.
The glass door swung open again.
General Manager Jensen Stein walked in, carrying a thick manila folder.
Jensen slammed the folder down onto the center of the table.
The loud smack made everyone jump.
The room went dead silent.
Jensen looked around the table, a fake look of sympathy plastered across his face.
He cleared his throat.
"I am sure you have all seen the news. Elias Beck is returning to the North American league."
Aries dropped his hands under the table.
He curled his fingers into fists, his nails digging so hard into his palms that the skin threatened to break.
Ricky let out a loud, mocking snort.
"Disgusting traitor," Ricky muttered.
Jensen held up a hand, silencing the room. "Ricky, take the others to the VOD review room. I need a private word with Aries."
Ricky smirked, standing up and jerking his head at the other starters. They filed out through the glass door, leaving Aries completely alone with the General Manager. Once the heavy door clicked shut, Jensen picked up a remote and clicked it at the projector hanging from the ceiling.
A spreadsheet appeared on the white screen at the front of the room.
It was a financial liquidation report from two years ago, the exact day their old team, Freefall Syndicate, was dissolved.
Jensen pointed a thick finger at a massive line item highlighted in red.
"Elias did not just leave for a massive signing bonus in Europe," Jensen said, his voice loud and theatrical. "He demanded a specific condition before he would sign."
Aries slowly lifted his head.
His bloodshot eyes locked onto the glowing numbers on the screen.
Jensen looked directly at Aries.
"Elias sold your contract to IAC, Aries. He packaged you up and sold you to the highest bidder to line his own pockets before he left the country."
The glowing red numbers reflected in Aries' wide eyes. The realization hit him with the force of a freight train, filling him with a twisted, sickening sense of utter worthlessness. He was entirely exposed, stripped bare in the cold glow of the projector.
Aries felt the room spin.
His stomach churned violently, acid burning the lining of his throat.
He could not pull air into his lungs.
Jensen kept talking, his voice a steady drone of poison.
He described how Elias sat at the negotiating table, cold and calculating, haggling over Aries' price tag like he was selling a used car.
An image flashed into Aries' mind.
It was the night before Elias left for Europe.
Elias' broad back, walking away down a dark street, never looking back.
A massive wave of humiliation crashed over Aries.
The betrayal felt like a physical weight crushing his spine.
He was a product.
He was a commodity.
Aries shot up from his chair.
His legs pushed back with so much force that the heavy office chair rolled backward and slammed into a whiteboard.
The metal frame of the board crashed to the floor with a deafening clatter.
Jensen stopped talking.
Everyone stared at Aries in shock.
Aries did not say a word.
His eyes were dead, frozen over with a layer of absolute ice.
He turned his back on the room and walked toward the door.
"Aries! Sit back down!" Jensen yelled, his voice cracking with lost authority.
Aries ignored him.
He shoved the glass door open and walked out.
He moved fast down the carpeted hallway of the team base.
His chest heaved up and down.
He pushed open the heavy fire door leading to the emergency stairwell and let it slam shut behind him.
He was completely alone.
Aries pulled his right arm back.
He drove his fist straight into the heavy metal door of a storage locker lining the wall.
The loud clang echoed violently through the stairwell as the skin on his knuckles split open instantly.
Blood smeared against the gray steel. In that blinding moment of agony, he didn't even care if he shattered every bone in his hand and ended his career.
He did not feel the pain in his hand.
He only felt the massive, gaping hole in his chest.
Aries leaned his back against the rough concrete and slowly slid down to the floor.
He pulled his knees to his chest.
He buried his face in his arms.
A low, guttural sound tore out of his throat, a sound of pure, suffocating agony.
You may also like
9.1
Waking up with a cold, scaly hand wrapped around my throat wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was realizing I'd transmigrated into the body of Terra Mason—the most despised woman in the entire Enclave. She drugged high-level beast-men and forced them into life-binding bio-contracts. She locked an aquatic warrior in a dry basement until his organs failed. She treated the most lethal males in the city like broken toys.
Zev, the Level 6 serpent who's currently choking me, would rather blow up his own heart than spend another day as my slave. His affection metric? Negative ninety. His trust? Zero.
Then my system activates: the Kore AI. It gives me exactly 500 credits, a medical nano-gel, and a recipe for neutralizing the radioactive poison in mutant meat. Real food. In this world, that's worth more than gold.
I save Rhys, the dying aquatic male everyone left for dead. I season a slab of purple mutant steak until Sam, a battle-scarred grizzly shifter, groans at the taste—and his trust points finally tick above zero. When my backstabbing ex-best friend tries to steal my males and destroy me, I don't scream or throw a tantrum like the old Terra. I dismantle her with the truth.
But earning their trust means more than grilling meat. A scorpion swarm ambushes us at midnight. Sam throws himself between me and a stinger the size of my arm. As he stands over the corpse, fur receding from his claws, he stares at me and whispers, "You were testing me."
Yes. I was. Because in this world, the weak don't survive. And I refuse to be weak again.
Four beast-men. Four contracts. One system. And a whole lot of steak. Let this dystopian wasteland know—I'm not the monster they remember. I'm worse. I'm the one who's going to feed them until they'd kill for me.
7.7
Not only was I drugged, blinded and assaulted. I was deceived into carrying a baby by a stranger I never knew. Then he appeared and took my child away.
I was sent to a militia by the father of my child. I thought I was rescued but I was recruited to be a weapon for killing. Who was manipulating me, I didn't know. The answers were far from what I knew.
Forced to blend into the world that I could never believe I would be to, a place where brutality reigned, kill or be killed was the only language. I have survived but he has to pay for everything he did to me, because I believed every phase of my life was set by him and him alone. Have I really survived?
Who would have thought, he existed twice in the same world? Do I really know who I should take revenge on? Him or the person I would sacrifice everything for?
Was my mother the one who orchestrated everything? What kind of pawn am I?
9.1
I stood alone at the marble altar, the silence of the temple pressing against my eardrums.
It was my Mating Ceremony, but the groom was missing.
My phone buzzed with a notification: a livestream of my mate, Alpha Cain, skipping our union to welcome my sister, Eris, home.
In the video, he held her like she was fragile glass, captioning it: "True power recognizes true power."
When I returned to the Pack House, humiliated, I wasn't met with an apology.
I was met with a slap from my mother.
Eris, feigning a powerful "Alpha Aura," claimed my mere scent was poisoning her.
To "save" her, my family locked me in my room.
But the true betrayal came when I overheard their hushed whispers through the door.
"Use Vera," my mother said, her voice chillingly practical.
"She recovers fast. We can drain her blood weekly for Eris. She can stay as a servant to raise Cain and Eris's pups."
My blood ran cold.
They didn't just neglect me; they planned to harvest me like livestock.
They thought I was the weak Omega they exiled to the North years ago to peel potatoes.
They had no idea that in the North, I wasn't a servant.
I was Commander V, a warrior forged in ice and blood.
I reached under my bed and pulled out my black tactical duffel.
"Screw the meatloaf," I whispered.
I wasn't just leaving. I was going to war.
9.1
With only fifteen days of cash flow left to save her tech startup, Aida had no choice but to seek a five-million-dollar bridge loan from Brendan Walls, a ruthless billionaire predator.
He agreed to sign the check, but on one sickening condition. He demanded Aida act as bait to get close to his corporate rival, Grayson Lott, treating her like a high-end call girl for a business transaction.
Forced to comply to save her employees, Aida let Grayson take her to a windowless underground club, where he secretly spiked her whiskey.
As the drugs paralyzed her body, triggering horrific flashbacks of a brutal assault from six years ago, Aida locked herself in the bathroom. She had to shatter a mirror and slice her own thigh open with a jagged shard of glass just to stay conscious enough to call Brendan for help.
Brendan's armored SUV immediately smashed through the club's wall to save her, and Grayson was arrested. But lying in the hospital, the horrifying truth finally clicked in Aida's mind.
The rescue was too fast. Brendan’s men hadn't rushed from Midtown; they had been parked outside the entire time. He had watched Grayson drug her and waited for the felony to happen just so he could legally seize Grayson's company. He had gambled her life and trauma for a hostile takeover.
When Brendan casually tossed a signed contract and luxury car keys onto her hospital bed as hush money, the last thread of Aida's sanity snapped.
"The deal is dead. NovaTech is mine. If you ever come near me again, I will kill you."
Bleeding and shaking with icy rage, Aida threw the keys at his chest, formally declaring war on the monster who thought he could buy her soul.
9.2
After catching my fiancé cheating with my adoptive sister, I broke off our engagement on the spot.
In retaliation, my abusive adoptive parents sold me to Kaelen Knight, the Lycan King, to clear our pack's debts.
He was rumored to be a ruthless, reclusive monster who had been horribly crippled in a fire centuries ago.
To ensure my absolute ruin, my sister planted fake love letters to my ex in my luggage and anonymously destroyed my university scholarship, cutting off my only escape route to the human world.
"A wolfless whore. You planned to drug me," Kaelen sneered, looking at the fake evidence with absolute disgust.
Believing I was a spy, my new husband had his guards throw me into the freezing woods with the Dire Wolves, leaving me to survive the night alone.
I was just a broken, wolfless Omega, entirely at the mercy of a cruel, powerless Lycan and a family that wanted me dead.
But I was wrong about him being powerless.
One night, I accidentally saw him rise from his wheelchair, his tall frame radiating an overwhelming, lethal aura.
He wasn't crippled at all.
The secret I thought was my shield was actually a loaded gun pointed at my head. Trapped with a terrifying predator, I had to stop playing the victim and fight for my life.
8.9
Aubree Hamilton was the top-tier executive assistant to Wall Street's most ruthless titan, Beck Franco. A month ago, she made a catastrophic mistake and spent the night in his bed.
Thinking she had erased the mistake with a morning-after pill, she panicked upon his return and lied about being engaged to push him away.
But Beck, a man who despised disloyalty above all else, immediately suspended her and ordered her escorted out of the building. Her nightmare only escalated when her toxic ex-boyfriend attacked her on the street, tearing her purse open and exposing the empty morning-after pill box to the public—and to Beck, who was watching from his penthouse. After having his security rescue her, Beck trapped her in his car, ruthlessly tearing apart her fake engagement. Later in her apartment, the suffocating tension between them almost ignited into a kiss, but a violent wave of nausea suddenly hit Aubree.
She shoved him away with all her strength and violently threw up in the bathroom.
Beck took it as the ultimate physical disgust. He walked out, deeply humiliated and dangerously obsessed, unleashing his resources to investigate her every move.
Left alone and trembling, Aubree finally checked the crushed white box. The pill she took had expired a month ago.
Staring at the two bright pink lines on the pregnancy test, she made a desperate vow: Beck Franco could never know she was carrying his child, and she had to disappear before he found out.