Claudia Manns

"Sign it," he said. Three years of marriage ended with a line and a pen that trembled in her hand. It wasn't the papers that hurt—it was the way he didn't even flinch when she did. Amelia Hart walked out of his penthouse that night with nothing but a suitcase and a broken heartbeat. She'd given Daniel Sterling everything—her love, her identity, her silent devotion—only to be discarded the moment she became inconvenient. But when the empire he built begins to fall, when the cold CEO who never looked back suddenly needs the woman he threw away, he returns with the same hands that once let her go, now reaching for what he destroyed. Only this time, there's a clause he didn't read…

"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."