I was halfway through my wedding vows when the mafia king leaned down and whispered in my ear.

“Tell me something, my wife.”

His breath brushed lightly against my skin, warm and unsettling.

“Did the prosecutor teach you how to lie… or are you naturally talented?”

My heart stopped.

For a moment the entire cathedral blurred around me—the towering stained-glass windows, the rows of guests, the cameras flashing from the back of the aisle.

All I could hear was the pounding of my pulse in my ears.

Because the mission had been planned perfectly.

Marry Adrian Volkov.

Gain his trust.

Expose his crimes.

Simple.

Except now the most dangerous man in the city was looking at me with a faint smile, like a predator who had already caught his prey.

The priest cleared his throat nervously.

“Miss Carter… your vows?”

Right.

The vows.

My imagination had started to weigh heavier than the gown. I forced my myself back to focus.

If Adrian suspected anything, the worst thing I could do was show fear.

I lifted my chin and looked at him.

A human woman turned out to be the werewolf king's mate, and even pregnant with his pup🐺

1

I fucked the deadliest Alpha before I even met him.

It all started a few weeks ago.

“What do you mean my womb is weak?” My voice cracked as I gripped the arms of the chair. The sterile smell of disinfectant filled the small office, but it didn’t mask the sharp edge of humiliation rising in my throat.

Dr. Willis glanced at the file in front of him, then at me and the man sitting stiffly beside me. “Sienna, the tests show your ovarian reserve is dangerously low. Your egg count is far below what’s normal for your age. If you don’t conceive now, the likelihood of you ever having children naturally is almost zero.”

The words felt like a blade slipping under my ribs. My fiancé, Marcus, shifted in his seat, his jaw tight, but he didn’t reach for my hand. We’d been trying for over a year. Month after month of disappointment had left me raw. I had clung to the hope that someday, somehow, I’d see two pink lines on a stick.

That hope had kept me breathing.

Now, the doctor’s words confirmed what I’d been terrified to admit. If I didn’t get pregnant soon, I never would.

But that was weeks ago.

Today, I sat in the same chair, but without Marcus. Without the engagement ring I’d once refused to take off. My hands trembled in my lap as I waited for Dr. Willis to finish reading my file.

“I want an abortion,” I said finally, my voice low. My stomach twisted at the words, but I forced them out. I would never have thought I'd come to this. I bit back my tears, my hands clenched as my throat tightened, I'd spent all my savings on the IVF process but I just couldn't do it.

His head snapped up. “Sienna...”

“I can’t have this baby,” I said, blinking hard. “I just found out Marcus has been cheating on me for months. With more than one woman. I can’t…” My voice broke. I shook my head. “I can’t raise his child. I won’t.”

The silence stretched. Dr. Willis’s fingers tightened around the edge of my chart. Something shifted in his expression, the calm, clinical detachment faltered.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away. He flipped through the file again, his eyes scanning the pages like he was searching for something.

His shoulders stiffened, his breathing slowed. The panic wasn’t loud, but I saw it.

My heart started to pound. “Doctor?”

He closed the file but didn’t look at me. “Sienna… there’s a problem.”

I sat up straighter. “What kind of problem?”

His gaze finally met mine, and it was the first time I’d ever seen true horror in his eyes.

“You’re not carrying Marcus’s child.”

The words didn’t make sense at first. My mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Chapter 1: The Only Spot

Maya Thompson had been running on caffeine and hope for years.

It was 5:30 in the morning, and the café where she worked was still dark when she unlocked the front door. The quiet hum of the machines, the aroma of roasted beans, and the familiar click of her name tag against her apron—these were the things that kept her grounded.

By the time the sun broke through the city skyline, she’d already served a dozen tired professionals on their way to offices she could only dream of entering.

But today was different.

Today, for the first time in what felt like forever, she had something to look forward to.

Her professor had pulled her aside after class the night before. Maya had expected a warning—maybe about her grades slipping, or her frequent absences. But instead, he’d smiled, handing her a printed letter with the university’s official seal.

We are pleased to inform you…

You’ve been selected for this year’s exclusive internship opportunity with Blackwood Enterprises…

She couldn’t breathe at first. She’d blinked at the words, certain it was a mistake.

Blackwood Enterprises.

The most powerful company in the city. Some said in the country. A global empire built on dominance, discipline, and a reputation for absolute excellence.

Every year, Blackwood Enterprises selected one top-performing university to receive a single internship spot. Just one. And this year, they’d chosen her school. Out of hundreds of applicants—many with more impressive résumés, fancier last names, or family connections—Maya Thompson got it.

Her professor had smiled when she’d stared in disbelief.

“Sometimes, hard work beats pedigree,” he’d said. “You earned this.”

She had gone home shaking, tears welling up before the apartment door had even closed behind her.

Jamie, her younger brother, had been waiting for her on the couch, pale but smiling, his hospital ID wristband still on from the day’s check-up. When she told him the news, he grinned the widest he had in months.

His hand struck my face so hard my vision went white.

I gasped, my head whipping to the side as blood filled my mouth. The metallic tang coated my tongue, but I didn’t cry. I’d learned long ago, tears only made it worse.

“You disgusting little wretch!” my father snarled, grabbing a fistful of my hair and yanking my head back so hard my n**k cracked. “Feeding the prisoners now? What are you, their little savior? Pathetic!”

“I—I was just trying to—”

His boot slammed into my ribs, stealing the breath from my lungs. I crumpled to the floor, gagging, my hands still bound behind my back. Pain bloomed in waves, sharp and hot, as I fought to suk in air.

“You what? Thought I wouldn’t find out?” he spat, towering over me. “I gave you shelter, blood, a name, and you repay me by feeding those caged low-life?!”

I wanted to speak. To say it wasn’t betrayal, just mercy. But there was no point. Not with him.

My father wasn’t a man. He was a monster dressed in skin, and I was just the mistake he couldn’t kill fast enough.

He knelt beside me, shoving my face into the cold floor. “You are nothing. A shame to your bloodline! I should have ended you the day you were bor—”

“Alpha! We’re under atta—!”

The guard’s voice cut in, panicked. But it was too late.

His body slammed into the wall beside us, blood spraying across the stone. His n**k had been snapped before the last word left his l**s.

The storm wasn’t the only thing breaking in tonight.

I looked up, barely a second before lightning ripped the sky apart, lighting up the woods outside like a warzone. And there they were.

Wolves. Dozens. Charging in like death had finally come collecting.

My father let out a savage snarl and snatched a fistful of my hair, yanking me off the ground like I weighed nothing. Then, without a word, he hurled me straight at the door like I was bait.

His bones cracked mid-motion as he shifted, fur tearing through his skin in an explosion of rage. One breath later, he was gone, his massive wolf form smashing through the back door like a cowering r*m.

I didn’t have time to think. Two bodies tackled me from opposite sides, arms like iron vices locking around me as I kicked and screamed.

The shock burned off fast and terror took its place.

“Restrain her,” a voice snapped, low, cold, absolutely in command.

Chapter 1

My husband's other wife answered his phone.

I stood in the kitchen of our Manhattan penthouse, a $200 bottle of champagne sweating in my hand, our fifth anniversary dinner growing cold on the table — and a woman's voice, sleepy and intimate, murmured, "Come back to bed, baby."

Then a child cried in the background.

The champagne bottle slipped. Glass exploded across Italian marble. My bare feet found the shards before my brain found words.

"Hello?" the woman said again, irritated now. "Liam? Who is this?"

I couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't reconcile the sound of a toddler wailing "Daddy" with the man who had kissed my forehead that morning and said he'd be home by seven.

The call disconnected.

I stared at the blood pooling beneath my feet — bright red against white marble, beautiful in the way only terrible things can be — and felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. As if someone had reached inside my chest and switched off every nerve.

Then the nothing cracked, and everything flooded in at once.

I called him back. Straight to voicemail. Called again. Voicemail. Again. Again. Again.

Seven calls. Zero answers.

I pulled up his location on our shared app — the one he'd insisted we both use "for safety." The blue dot pulsed steadily in Greenwich, Connecticut. Not at the office in Midtown where he'd claimed a board emergency required his presence tonight. Not anywhere near Manhattan.

Greenwich. A residential neighborhood. A house I'd never seen.

My hands moved on autopilot. I wrapped my bleeding feet in kitchen towels, grabbed my car keys, and drove barefoot through the Lincoln Tunnel at ninety miles an hour with blood soaking through white cotton.

The GPS led me to a Colonial Revival on a tree-lined street. White picket fence. Rose bushes. A red tricycle on the front porch.

A tricycle.

I parked across the street and sat in the dark, watching the warm light spill from the windows of a home that looked like a catalog photograph of the life I thought I had. Through the sheer curtains, I could see movement — a woman's silhouette, the flicker of a television, the unmistakable shape of a Christmas tree even though it was October.

Then Liam walked past the window.

My Liam. My husband of five years. Wearing the Yale sweatshirt I'd bought him, carrying a child — maybe three years old — on his hip. He was laughing. The kind of loose, easy laugh I hadn't heard from him in years.

He leaned down and kissed the woman.

Not a quick peck. Not a guilty, stolen thing. A slow, comfortable kiss — the kiss of a man who was home.

I sat there for forty-seven minutes. I know because I watched every single one tick by on the dashboard clock. I sat there until the lights went off upstairs, until the house went dark and quiet and ordinary, until the only sound was my own breathing — ragged and raw, like an animal caught in a trap.

Then I drove back to Manhattan, cleaned the blood from the kitchen floor, bandaged my feet, and sat at the anniversary dinner table until dawn.

When Liam walked through the door at 6:45 AM, freshly showered and smelling of someone else's soap, I was still sitting there.

"Board meeting ran all night," he said, loosening his tie. He kissed my cheek without looking at me. "Sorry about dinner. I'll make it up to you."

I looked at this man — this stranger — and smiled.

"Of course," I said. "Happy anniversary."

Because I had already decided: I wasn't going to confront him. I wasn't going to scream or cry or beg for an explanation.

I was going to destroy him.

But I needed proof first. Ironclad, devastating, divorce-court-annihilating proof. And I knew exactly where to start.

The business card had been sitting in my desk drawer for six months — given to me by my college roommate after her own brutal divorce. Dominic Russo, Attorney at Law. Specialist in High-Asset Divorce & Financial Fraud.

My roommate had said three things about him: he was brilliant, he was ruthless, and he had never lost a case.

She'd also mentioned he was dangerously attractive, but that seemed irrelevant at the time.

Chapter 1

[Why does the supporting girl insist on searching that warehouse? She's doing it on purpose!]

[Don't open that door! They're at a critical moment, don't interrupt them, ugh!]

I thought I was hallucinating. Shaking off the strange lines of text, I pushed the door open.

"Grant? Any supplies in here?"

The warehouse went silent for a moment, followed by the sound of rustling.

Grant emerged from behind a row of shelves, his hair messy and a look of discomfort on his face.

I managed a small laugh. "What's with you? If I didn't know better, I'd think..."

My voice trailed off as I saw Kaylee following behind him.

Her shirt wasn't even fully buttoned. Seeing me, she looked away guiltily.

Thinking of the chat comments, my heart sank. "What are you two doing in here?"

Grant looked at me as if I were being ridiculous.

"What else do people do in a warehouse? Scavenging for supplies, obviously!"

"Did you think Kaylee and I were having an affair?"

Kaylee chimed in immediately:

"Sienna, don't misunderstand us. I just tripped over a shelf, and Grant was helping me up."

But I clearly saw the hickey on Grant's collarbone.

A piercing shade of red.

The strange chat comments flickered again.

[Interrupted at the peak! Her legs must be like jelly lol! Look at how weirdly she's walking!]

[The male lead's eyes are glued to her! Hey! Where are you looking!]

I subconsciously looked at Grant; he was indeed staring at Kaylee.

And Kaylee was walking with a strange, crossing gait, as if trying to hide something.

So, the comments were real.

[Alright, here comes my favorite part!]

[As soon as the supporting girl leaves, the lead is gonna pin her down and go for round two!]

[Why is she just standing there? Just leave already! You're ruining the vibe for our girl!]

It wasn't just the chat pushing me. Even Grant frowned at me.

"Have you checked the pharmacy on the west side yet?"

"I haven't finished here. I'll catch up with you later."

I didn't move, staring at Kaylee's flushed face.

Suddenly, because I hesitated for a second, Grant's expression darkened completely.

"You don't seriously think something's going on with me and Kaylee, do you?"

"There are zombies everywhere, and this is the only thing in your head?"

He shoved me out of the warehouse, and I walked straight into a zombie.

If I hadn't instinctively raised my hand to split its skull, I would have been its dinner.

But Grant, standing behind me, was still fuming, scolding me harshly.

"If you act out like this again, it won't just be one zombie!"

The door slammed shut, followed by a short, sharp gasp from inside the warehouse.

The chat exploded.

Chapter 2

[Aww, poor Kaylee, that must have been so uncomfortable! That other girl is so annoying!]

[Damn! The male lead is a beast! The shelves literally flipped over! Kaylee's voice is going hoarse!]

I froze, hearing the faint, sweet sounds drifting through the cracks of the door.

So in this story, I am the meddling, loathsome supporting character.

They are the soulmates, and I am the one holding them back?

But Grant and I crossed over to this world together.

We were a couple back in the modern world. During the first year of the apocalypse, we were both terrified.

In a peaceful society, we had never seen rotting, limping monsters that chased and bit people.

It was Grant who held me in his arms, hacking through zombies one by one to keep me safe.

He transformed from a college student into a formidable leader of the Sanctuary.

Back then, he said: "Sienna, I know you don't like crowds, but we have to build a base to keep you safe."

"The thought of you being caught by zombies because you're sleeping in the wild makes me go crazy."

So, he built the Sanctuary for me, taking in survivors.

And Kaylee was one of them.

She was found at the gates of the base last month.

She was barely alive then, and Grant didn't want to let her in.

I checked her, saw no bite marks, and begged Grant to let her stay.

Grant pinched my cheek and said, "You're too soft-hearted. Fine, I'll let her stay for your sake."

I never imagined that my kindness would facilitate their romance.

The chat kept scrolling.

[Whoa! The male lead is so rough, Kaylee literally fainted!]

[Man, the only 'hardship' she's gonna face from now on is him.]

[Hardship or his 'hard wood,' I'll be the judge of that! lol]

I felt like vomiting.

Just as I was about to burst in and expose them, a comment caught my eye.

[This is nothing! Once they get back to the modern world, they're gonna go for three days straight!]

Back to the modern world?!

We have a chance to go back?

[I remember the original plot: the supporting girl catches them, Kaylee gets slapped a few times, Grant gets mad and locks the girl in the warehouse.]

[She starves for three days, faints, and eventually gets eaten by zombies.]

[Speaking of which, the day she dies is the same day as the Celestial Alignment, and the leads go back home.]

Seeing that last comment, my hand stopped right before pushing the door.

Seven days, right?

Fine, I'll let these two live for one more week.

Chapter 1

[Annie’s POV]

"Diana, what we're building here isn't a fund—it's an infrastructure play with a ten-year thesis, and the early returns are already validating our positioning across every vertical we've entered." Jake gestures wildly, deploying his charm on the future investors.

I'm watching my husband sell a billion-dollar thesis he doesn't understand, and he's doing it beautifully. Jake is on camera in his office—the navy suit I picked, the ring light I angled, the growth model I built at 2 AM glowing on his second monitor.

What Jake Reed does better than anyone alive is make a room full of strangers believe he's the smartest person in it. The problem is what happens when someone pushes past the performance and checks the math.

Blackwell Partners has four people on the call, and the one who matters is Diana Huang—silver-framed glasses, managing director, reads footnotes for fun. The $1.8 billion Southeast Asia expansion I spent three months modeling and Jake three hours memorizing—she's nodding.

He's repackaging my logic in that warm, expansive voice, and they're buying every word. I mouth the phrasing from behind the glass partition, this silent choreography we've perfected over five years of marriage—he performs, I disappear.

Then our daughter screams from the hallway. Not a tantrum—a hurt sound, sharp and startled, and my whole body goes rigid over the keyboard. Through the glass, Jake's eyes cut to me, his jaw tightening into a sentence: Don't you dare.

My four-year-old is crying fifteen feet away, and her father is telling me with his eyes that the correct response is to keep typing. I mouth one minute, slip out of the chair, and go.

Sarah is crumpled by the hallway bookshelf, one knee scraped raw, tears cutting lines through the strawberry yogurt on her chin. "Mommy, I fell, I fell down," she says, twice, like saying it louder will fix it faster. I scoop her up and carry her to the kitchen, pressing my lips to her temple.

"I know, baby. Let me see." I run warm water over the scrape while her fingers twist into my shirt, and the whole time there's a clock behind my ribs counting down the seconds Jake is alone with Diana Huang and no safety net.

I smooth a cartoon cat Band-Aid over her knee and kiss it. "There. Can you sit right here and be super quiet for Mommy?"

"Like a mouse game?" She sniffles, wiping her nose on my sleeve. I nod, set her on the counter with her coloring book and I'm halfway to the office when Jake's voice reaches me through the door—pitched wrong, too fast, circling.

"The Southeast Asia margins are actually— Diana, if you look at the Q3 runway, we're— the thesis is really more of a long-term value capture—" He's stacking phrases instead of building toward a point. I can hear the exact moment he reaches for my numbers and finds air.

I slide back into my chair and start typing—14% compound margin, pivot to regulatory moat—but Diana has leaned back, arms crossed. Jake sees my prompt, overcorrects, contradicts the very projections I built.

Four minutes later the call ends with smiles and "we'll circle back," which is investor for "never again." Eighteen months of work—my work—gone in the ninety seconds it took to Band-Aid my daughter's knee.

Jake's door opens hard enough to bounce off the wall, and my pulse spikes because I have five years of muscle memory for this sound. I intercept him in the hallway, stepping between his trajectory and the kitchen where Sarah is humming on the counter.

"Living room." I use the voice I've learned for when the glass is about to break. "Not in front of her."

He follows me, and that's the last reasonable thing he does. "You walked out," he says, and the warmth that sells billion-dollar pitches has curdled into something tight and corrosive.

"Eighteen months, Blackwell Partners, and you walked out for a scraped knee." He's standing too close, the way he always does when he wants to remind me he's bigger.

"She was hurt, Jake." My arms cross tight against my ribs to keep my hands from shaking. "She's four years old—she needed her mother."

"That's my point—they fall, they cry, it's what they do." He's pacing the length of the couch, jaw working. "You had one job—feed me the numbers."

Every muscle in my back tightens. "I can't be your strategist and your nanny and your ghost all at once. Pick one."

"If you can't handle both, you're useless at either." The word useless sinks in, and five years of building my husband's empire from a room he keeps me hidden in condense into something white-hot behind my ribs.

"Without me feeding you those numbers," I say, and my voice comes out terrifyingly even, "you couldn't survive a single technical question about your own company." The first time I've said it out loud, and the truth sits between us with its teeth bared.

Jake goes still—pacing stops, jaw stops, everything draining into a flatness I've learned to fear more than the yelling. "You're nothing without me, Annie," he says, quiet now, surgical. "Every single thing you think you built—it's my name, my capital, my stage."

My throat works around something jagged. He's wrong, and he knows exactly where to cut so that won't matter.

Then the kitchen door creaks, and my chest caves in before I even turn around. Sarah is in the doorway, Band-Aid on her knee, both hands gripping the frame, making herself as small as the door will allow.

"Mommy?" Barely a whisper, her lower lip trembling so hard it blurs. "Why is Daddy yelling—did I do something bad?"

“Yes!” Jake turns on her—every inch of a man who just lost $1.8 billion aimed at his own four-year-old daughter. "Because you ruined everything," he says. "Every time you cry, you cost me!"

Sarah's whole face breaks. "I'm sorry, Daddy, I'm sorry, I won't cry anymore," she says, the words tumbling out in a rush—this tiny person trying to negotiate with a grown man's rage. Something behind my ribs snaps clean through.

Jake's arm draws back—hand open, aimed at her. I step between them before I even think about it—and his palm cracks across my cheekbone. My left ear goes to static, and the room lurches sideways.

Behind me, Sarah screams—not a cry, a real scream, raw and terrified. "Mommy! Daddy, don’t touch her!"

Jake stares at his own hand like it belongs to someone else, then his face rearranges into something cold and justified. "This is what you made me do," he says quietly. "Remember that."

I scoop Sarah up. She buries her face in my neck, shaking so hard her teeth chatter against my collarbone, whispering Mommy Mommy Mommy like a prayer. I walk past my husband without looking at him—upstairs, bedroom, two suitcases from the closet.

The same ones from our honeymoon, because the universe has a sick sense of humor. I pack fast—clothes for two, toothbrushes, Sarah's favorite sweater, my laptop, nothing of his.

"Where are we going, Mommy?" Sarah whispers from the bed, clutching her rabbit, eyes swollen to slits. "Is Daddy coming too?"

"Somewhere better," I say, zipping the second suitcase with hands that have finally stopped shaking. "Just us. It's an adventure."

She nods, because she's four and she still trusts me. I stand in the doorway and the penthouse stretches behind me—every square foot of the empire I built from inside these walls, and not one inch of it carries my name.

I pick up both suitcases and my daughter, and I walk out the front door.