The Villainous Matriarch's Secretly Pampered Wolf Consorts
Ella was a dedicated veterinary surgeon in New York. But when she opened her eyes again, she woke up in a brutal, magical world.
Before she could even process her surroundings, a jagged bone dagger smashed into her pillow, missing her jugular by an inch.
The assassin was a young wolf beastman, glaring at her with bloodshot, feral hatred.
Memories crashed into her brain. She had transmigrated into the body of Ella Ortiz, a sadistic matriarch who tortured her bound beastman consorts for sport.
The original owner had just whipped the wolf boy's older brother with a flesh-rotting toxin, leaving him chained in the dungeon to die of sepsis. She had even banished a blinded leopard to a monster-infested forest.
They hated her enough to kill her, but they were bound by the Beast Mark. If she died, their energy cores would detonate instantly.
To save the dying brother, Ella had to rely on a newly activated Villain System.
But there was a sick catch: she could only buy modern, life-saving medicine by earning "Animosity Points."
She had to act like the cruel, arrogant tyrant they despised.
To harvest their hatred, she had to secretly heal their horrific wounds while publicly kicking them, mocking them, and violently abusing them.
As an animal lover, seeing these traumatized beastmen tremble in fear at her feet tore her heart to shreds. Why did she have to be a monster just to keep them breathing?
But watching the dying wolf finally breathe steadily after she secretly injected him with a serum, she made her choice.
If playing the psychopath was the only way to keep her consorts alive, she would be the greatest villain this world had ever seen.
"Pack your gear," Ella ordered her trembling guards, crushing her guilt beneath a cold sneer. "We are going into the Mist Forest to find that blind leopard."
Chapters
Share
Chapter 8
Night fell over the estate, bringing a heavy, suffocating silence. Ella dismissed all the servants, claiming their breathing annoyed her, and sent them to the outer quarters.
Once the halls were empty, she summoned Kevan.
"Go to the dungeon," she ordered, keeping her voice sharp. "Drag Cordaro up to the second-floor guest room. Do not let anyone see you."
Kevan didn't ask questions. He bowed and left.
Twenty minutes later, Kevan staggered into the lavish guest room, carrying Cordaro's massive, unconscious weight over his shoulder. He dumped the wolf beastman onto the center of the massive, velvet-covered bed.
The room was a stark contrast to the dungeon. A warm fire crackled in the hearth, casting a soft orange glow over the thick carpets and silk drapes.
"Get out," Ella snapped at Kevan. "And lock the door behind you."
Kevan hesitated for a fraction of a second, his eyes darting to Cordaro, before he bowed and exited. The heavy lock clicked shut.
Ella was finally alone.
She let out a long, shuddering breath. Her shoulders slumped, the arrogant posture draining out of her body. She walked over to the bed and looked down at Cordaro.
The blue serum had done its job perfectly. His breathing was deep and rhythmic. The horrific wounds on his chest were sealed under thick, healthy scabs. The fever had completely broken.
But he was still covered in dried blood, dungeon grime, and sweat. His thick fur was matted and stiff.
As a veterinarian, Ella had a pathological need to keep her patients clean. She couldn't stand seeing an animal-or a beastman-in such a filthy state. It violated every professional instinct she had.
She walked into the adjoining washroom and filled a silver basin with warm water. She grabbed a stack of soft, clean cotton towels.
Returning to the bed, she sat on the edge. She dipped a towel into the warm water, wrung it out, and gently began to wipe the grime from Cordaro's face.
Her movements were incredibly soft, practiced, and precise. She wiped away the dried blood from his jawline, avoiding the sensitive areas around his eyes.
The warmth of the water and the gentle friction seeped into Cordaro's subconscious.
He was trapped in a dark, painful limbo between sleep and waking. But suddenly, the pain began to recede. He felt a soft, warm hand pressing a damp cloth to his forehead.
The hand moved to his ears. The fingers were skilled, pressing exactly into the pressure points at the base of his skull, releasing the deep, coiled tension in his muscles.
It was a touch so tender, so completely devoid of malice, that Cordaro's fever-addled brain thought he was dreaming of his late mother.
A tiny, fragile whimper-a sound he hadn't made since he was a pup-escaped his lips.
Hearing that sound, Ella's heart melted completely. She forgot where she was. She forgot she was playing a tyrant.
She reached out and gently stroked the soft fur of his gray wolf ears. She leaned in close, her lips brushing against the shell of his ear.
"You're going to be okay," she whispered in that same strange, soft, otherworldly cadence.
Those two foreign words, spoken in a tone of pure, unadulterated kindness, acted like a lightning strike in Cordaro's brain.
His consciousness violently snapped awake.
That wasn't his mother. And it absolutely, unequivocally was not the sadistic Ella Ortiz. The woman who tortured him didn't know how to be gentle. She didn't speak whatever strange, melodic language that was.
Cordaro fought the heavy lethargy in his limbs. He forced his eyes to open, just a fraction of an inch.
Through the narrow slit of his eyelashes, illuminated by the flickering firelight, he saw her face.
Ella was leaning over him. Her eyes weren't filled with the usual manic cruelty. They were soft, focused, and brimming with a pure, clinical empathy.
Just as his vision began to clear entirely, Ella noticed the slight change in his breathing pattern.
Panic spiked in her chest. He's waking up.
She jerked backward, her heart leaping into her throat. In her haste, the damp towel slipped from her hand and landed squarely over Cordaro's eyes, blinding him again.
Ella scrambled off the bed, putting five feet of distance between them. She mentally screamed for the System, ready to buy a stun gun if he attacked her.
Cordaro didn't move. He lay perfectly still under the towel.
He couldn't see her, but he could smell her. The sharp, metallic scent of the dungeon was gone. Instead, the air was filled with Ella's unique scent-a cold, crisp fragrance like winter pine.
His mind raced, processing the impossible data. The tyrant had moved him to a warm bed. She was cleaning him. She had touched him with a tenderness that made his soul ache.
Who is this woman? Cordaro thought, his heart pounding against his ribs. Because she is not my Master.
Before Cordaro could pull the towel off his face, a violent, frantic pounding echoed from the hallway.
"Master!" Daulton's voice screamed through the thick oak door, raw with panic. "Open the door! What are you doing to him? !"
You may also like
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.
8.3
When Eli is forced to enroll at Blackwood Academy, he thinks it is just another remote boarding school. But on his first night, he realizes the terrifying truth.
This school is a prison.
Trapped in endless, deadly time loops, students are forced to complete cruel, supernatural trials. Ghosts, cursed hallways, hidden rules, and unspeakable creatures hunt them after dark. The only way to stay alive is to solve mysteries, earn credits, and obey the academy's twisted commands.
No one remembers how they arrived.
No one has ever graduated.
No one leaves alive.
Eli must team up with other desperate students to uncover the academy's century-old secret. If they fail, they will be trapped in the nightmare forever.
At Blackwood Academy, survival is the only exam.
7.1
The night before her wedding to Wall Street billionaire Everette Baird, Deliah Quinn stood happily in her haute couture gown.
Then, her younger sister Arvilla walked in, handed her a drugged glass of champagne, and slammed an ultrasound on the vanity.
"I'm pregnant with Everette's child," Arvilla sneered.
Before Deliah's paralyzed body could react, Arvilla dragged in a canister of industrial gasoline, soaked the bridal suite, tossed a lighter, and locked the heavy oak doors from the outside.
To escape the roaring inferno, Deliah smashed the glass balcony and threw herself into the freezing, violent waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
For five agonizing years, everyone believed the Quinn heiress was dead.
Deliah returned to New York entirely reborn—a top architectural designer and a single mother, having scrubbed her past clean and forgotten the people who destroyed her.
She only wanted a peaceful life with her five-year-old genius son, Leo.
But she had no idea her son was secretly hacking airport security cameras to find himself a wealthy stepdad.
Leo deliberately bumped into a terrifying, cold-blooded tycoon, spilling scalding coffee on his custom suit to get his attention.
When Deliah frantically rushed over to protect her son and apologize, the air in the terminal vanished.
Everette Baird stared at the exact face he had obsessively mourned for five years, his eyes turning pitch black as he crushed his phone in his bare hand.
8.5
Sera was the obedient, spoiled Hollywood socialite of the Beaumont family, completely devoted to her fiancé, Ethan.
But her life ended in a freezing Eastern European warehouse, chained to a damp concrete floor.
Right before she died, her captors shoved the transfer documents in her face. Ethan had sold her to human traffickers to cover his massive underground gambling debts.
While she suffered in absolute hell, her adoptive mother went on national television.
She squeezed out fake tears, publicly framing Sera for stealing family funds and eloping with a secret lover.
Sera's reputation was completely destroyed, and she was left to die a miserable, agonizing death in the dark.
She didn't understand why her family treated her like a disposable piece of trash.
She understood even less how the man who promised to marry her could hand her over to monsters without a second thought.
When she opened her eyes again, the biting cold and heavy iron chains were gone.
She was back five years in the past.
She was lying on a hotel bed, her limbs heavy with date-rape drugs, while a predatory Hollywood director hovered inches from her face.
It was the exact "exclusive audition" Ethan had arranged to exploit her for the very first time.
Sera didn't scream. With lethal, practiced precision, she shattered the director's wrist and brought a heavy crystal ashtray down on his skull.
The bleeding man collapsed onto the carpet and whimpered.
"Ethan promised... he said you'd be compliant..."
Staring at his pathetic face, a cold, predatory smile stretched across Sera's lips.
This time, she was going to systematically dismantle their lives.
7.2
Aria Nightshade spent her entire life waiting for one thing: the moment her fated mate would claim her, making her Luna. But on the night of her bonding ceremony, Liam Draven rejects her in front of the entire pack-publicly, brutally, without hesitation. He chooses another woman. Leaves her shattered.
Humiliated beyond repair, Aria prepares to disappear into whatever's left of her dignity.
Then the Alpha King intervenes.
Kael Draven-feared, untouchable, a man who answers to no one-steps between them and claims her himself. Not out of mercy. Not out of love. For reasons he refuses to explain, he binds her to him with magic older than the packs themselves, then hauls her to his fortress and locks her in a tower.
Aria should be terrified.
Instead, she's angry. Defiant. And increasingly aware that the man holding her captive isn't quite what he seems.
Kael is cold, calculated, and obsessed with understanding what she is-a wolf who shouldn't have survived a bond rupture, who shouldn't be standing, who shouldn't exist. As he slowly reveals the truth about her past and her bloodline, Aria discovers that her rejection was never about her worth. It was about her power. The kind of power that could reshape the entire werewolf hierarchy.
But Liam can't accept his loss. Kael's protection becomes possession. And Aria's slow transformation from broken girl to something far more dangerous forces her to choose: remain the victim they all rejected, or rise as the Luna that will make them all bow.
Even if it means destroying everything-and everyone-she once cared about.
8.0
I bought an antique four-poster bed at Sotheby's, said to be the final resting place of a long-dead European king.
A week later, I woke up to the thick smell of blood, only to find a massive, heavily wounded man in my bed holding a forged steel sword to my throat.
He was dressed in ruined velvet and gold, bleeding out from a massive abdominal gash. When I tried to save him with modern medicine, he called it sorcery and nearly choked me to death. He destroyed my expensive appliances, treating my home like a witch's lair. I thought he was a lunatic cosplayer who broke in, until he tossed me a massive ruby ring as a down payment for my help. I looked it up online. It was the lost coronation ring of King Cain the Cruel, valued at thirty million dollars.
I was terrified of this savage who could snap my neck in an instant. I couldn't comprehend how a tyrant who had been dead for 135 years was breathing in my attic, until he lay back down on the antique mattress and literally vanished into thin air before my eyes.
The bed was a time portal.
The police would lock him in a psych ward and confiscate the priceless artifact, leaving me with nothing but bloodstained sheets and trauma.
"I can give you more wealth than you can imagine."
So, when he reappeared and offered me the lost Fabergé eggs of his fallen empire in exchange for modern shelter, I didn't call 911. I took his hand and became the 21st-century gatekeeper for a time-traveling king.