Queenie

Lyra Vance was three weeks from marrying the quarterback she built. Then she opened his bedroom door. Cade was in bed with her sister. On the wedding sheets. With his championship watch on Sloane’s wrist. Lyra did not cry. She took proof and walked out. Her family chose Cade. Her firm fired her to keep him. Her money locked. A hotel turned her away. By midnight she had photos, a signed prenup, and nowhere safe to sleep. That is when Gabriel Thorne sent a car. The league calls him the Iron Heart. He hits men and feels nothing. Other women come through as static. Lyra’s voice is the first thing that reaches him, and he hates how badly he wants to keep it. His offer is ugly and clear. Six months in his house. She handles the dirt. She stands where the cameras can see her. She wears his mark when the city needs a story. Five hundred thousand. No love. No rescue. Lyra signs as his strategist. Then Sloane posts beside Cade like the wedding only changed names. Then the internet finds Lyra in Gabriel’s hoodie. Then a private lens turns toward his gates. Cade still thinks she is the girl who absorbs the mess. Gabriel did not hire that girl. He hired a weapon. Now he cannot stand anyone else looking at her.

“Who is she?" I asked, feeling tears well up in my eyes. "He met her at the Alpha training camp," he said. "She is a perfect suitor for him. It snowed last night, indicating that his wolf is happy with his choice." My heart sank, and tears made their way down my cheeks. Alexander took my innocence last night, and now he is taking that thing in his office as his Luna. Emily became the laughingstock of the pack on her 18th birthday and never expected the Alpha's son to be her mate. After a night of passionate love, Emily finds out that her mate has taken a chosen mate. Heartbroken and humiliated, she disappears from the pack. Now, five years later, Emily is a respected high-ranking warrior in King Alpha's army. When her best friend invites her to a night of music and laughter, she never expects to run into her mate. Will her mate figure out it is her? Will he chase after her, and most of all, will Emily be able to keep her secrets safe?

Some think I'm cursed. Others think I'm unlucky. But I know what I am. My name is Leora, and I am the Redwood Pack's Alpha's daughter. Well, until my mother died. My father remarried late, so the Pack moved on to new hands. My new stepmother, Amarie, is a spawn of Satan. She gives me to the new Alpha's household as a maidservant as a price for not exiling my father. I become an outcast, abused and punished every single day. On my eighteenth birthday, I find out that I'm mated to the new Alpha's son, Caleb. Enraged, he rejects me, throwing me into the dungeons. In pains, I remain there for days. Then one fateful night, my luck changes. The Lycan King is visiting the Pack to find a mate. Which happens to be me. I'm alone, crying that night, when a towering golden-eyed man charges in and rips the dungeon doors off their hinges. I gasp when he cups my chin, and whispers softly. "Stop crying, mate. I'm here now. And I'll make sure no one ever brings you to tears ever again!" I thought my problems were over then. But it was only the beginning.

"For years, I belonged to him. Not his mate. Not his love. But his bedmate. His Gamma. His shadow in the night. Alpha Calhoun made sure no man dared touch me, no wolf dared look at me. I was his possession, his secret, his sin wrapped in skin. And I endured it all—his rough hands, his dark devotion, his kisses that tasted like fire and chains because at least, for a while, he was mine. Until she returned. His destined mate. His so-called true love. And suddenly, I was nothing. Cast aside, silenced, left to wither in the shadows of a love that had never been mine to claim. But the thing about being claimed by a man like Calhoun… is that he never truly lets you go. ""Try to leave me, Elodie,"" his voice had been a snarl against my throat, his grip bruising my waist. ""I'll burn down every border, tear apart every wolf that stands in my way, until you crawl back to me. You're mine, even if the Moon Goddess herself wants to rip you away."" He didn't know then that I already had one foot out the door. And when I finally left his pack… I took more than just my broken heart with me."

She married him out of desperation, becoming the perfect docile wife while he treated her like dirt beneath his shoes. But everything shattered the night she overheard him mocking her with his friends-and discovered the necklace she'd cherished, her only link to the boy who once saved her life, didn't even belong to him. It was all a lie. No longer the doormat he married, she discards her fake identity and reclaims her birthright as the hidden heiress of Salvadore City. Now she's on a mission: find the necklace's true owner among his circle of friends, no matter how many hearts she has to break along the way. But her husband isn't ready to let go. Convinced she's playing games to make him jealous, he's blindsided when divorce papers land in his hands. By the time he realizes the woman he dismissed was never who he thought she was, she's already moved on-living her truth, chasing her destiny, and leaving him choking on regret. Some cages, once opened, can never be closed again.

"I, Lucia Volk..." she began again, determination in her voice. Draven’s expression darkened. "I would have to warn you, if you complete that statement, no one here will live to tell the tale." The threat sent ripples of fear through the crowd. Even the king stood frozen in place. Lucia’s breath caught. ‘Is he mad? How can he threaten an entire room of people, including the king, just to keep me?’ ‘That is our mate,’ Emily practically swooned. ‘He fears no one.’ Lucia Volks has spent her life as a servant girl in the Crimson Moon pack, and things got worse after being rejected by her mate. As she decided to accept her fate, she got a second mate, and he was someone that she could never have imagined, Draven Moonblood. Draven Moonblood, the most powerful lycan, never thought that he could find the light he had missed all his life in the form of Lucia Volks.

I despised Dante Moretti long before he slid that ring onto my finger. Arrogant. Controlling. The kind of boss who could ruin my day with a single clipped order. I hated the way he spoke to me. I hated the way he watched me more. But walking into my hometown with his ring and watching my ex-husband’s face drain of color felt wickedly perfect. The elders wanted to see real love before selling their land. So Dante and I lied. We played the sweet couple. Except Dante didn’t touch me like a man pretending. At the Christmas market, his hand slid down my spine and stopped right where it shouldn’t. At dinner, he whispered against my ear, “If he’s watching, spread your legs a little. Let him see who owns you now.” I should have slapped him. Instead, my body answered him before I could breathe. He kissed my temple too slow and held my waist too tight. When the lights dimmed, he murmured, “Open for me.” “Keep your eyes on me.” “I want you shaking for me, not for him.” Somewhere between hating him and wanting him to wreck me, everything blurred. Because the man who barked orders in boardrooms had me whispering his name in the dark, Christmas lights flickering over his bare shoulders while he swallowed every sound I made. My ex wanted me broken. Dante wanted me ruined, but only beneath him. And the worst part was how easily I let him. Santa didn’t bring me a miracle. He gave me a sin in a three piece suit and I tore the wrapping off with trembling hands.