From Useless Dud To The Alpha's Queen
For three years, Alana acted as the sole tactical brain for the Dawnbreaker squad, keeping them alive despite being labeled a useless "Dud" Conduit.
But right before the crucial Ascension Trials, squad leader Cash handed her a corporate sponsorship contract. The condition? She had to become the "private companion" to a greasy corporate heir just so the squad could get high-tier gear.
When she refused, the teammates she had bled for unanimously voted to kick her out.
"You're just window dressing, a liability."
They revoked her safehouse access, burned her belongings, and the academy advisor even tried to force her into a state-sanctioned breeding program. They left her to freeze in the slums, betting she would desperately crawl into the rich man's bed.
What they didn't know was that her inability to summon an Eidolon wasn't a lack of talent. Her teammate Dallin had been secretly sabotaging her rituals for years, crippling her potential just to keep her chained as their free tactician.
Stripped of everything and pushed to the absolute brink, Alana's despair morphed into a deadly resolve.
Using a million-credit black market loan and a forbidden blood matrix, she forcibly anchored an Apex-Tier cosmic wolf disguised as a harmless silver pup.
When her ex-squad tried to publicly humiliate her and burn her new "pet" alive in the cafeteria, a flash of silver light severed Dallin's hand instantly.
Looking at her screaming former teammates, Alana finally smiled.
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Chapter 2
Alana walked down the long, sterile hallway, the echo of her own footsteps the only sound in her ears. Her heart pounded a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She reached the end of the corridor and stopped in front of the frosted glass door of the Dawnbreaker lounge.
She shoved the door open. The hinges shrieked, a high-pitched scrape of metal on metal.
The loud laughter inside died instantly. Three heads snapped toward her.
Dallin Gates, their fire mage, sat on the edge of the desk. He was tossing a new, crimson-gemmed enhancement ring in the air. When he saw Alana, his eyes darted away, refusing to meet hers.
Jered Gibbs, the shadow assassin, slouched on the expensive leather sofa. He was filing his nails. He didn't even lift his chin, his face a mask of total indifference.
Charmaine Bass, their holy cleric, stood up. She smoothed the front of her pristine white robes and walked toward her, her face twisting into a mask of deep, fake sorrow.
Alana's eyes burned. She stared at the three people she had bled for.
"Did you all agree to Cash's filthy deal?" she demanded, her voice cutting through the heavy silence.
Dallin clicked his tongue in annoyance. He caught his ring and shoved it onto his finger. "Don't be so rigid, Alana. You're holding us back. We need that gear."
A bitter, humorless laugh tore from Alana's throat. She pointed a shaking finger straight at Dallin's face.
"Last month, you stepped out of formation in the Ash Rift," Alana snapped. "I burned my own mental energy to pull the aggro off you. I saved your life, Dallin."
Dallin's face flushed a dark, angry red. He jumped off the desk. A ball of orange flame ignited in his right palm, the heat radiating across the room.
Alana didn't flinch. She stared at the fire, her eyes dead. "You still can't even stabilize your temperature output. Pathetic."
"Enough," Jered said coldly. He paused his nail filing. "Chet is offering us silver-tier daggers. Sacrificing you is a good trade."
Alana whipped her head toward the sofa. "The blueprints for those daggers? I stayed awake for three days hacking the firewall to get you the specs."
Jered's hand jerked. The metal file slipped, slicing into his cuticle. A drop of blood welled up. Jered hissed, his eyes flashing with sudden irritation.
Charmaine sighed heavily. She reached out, trying to place a comforting hand on Alana's shoulder. "Alana, my child. You must understand the spirit of sacrifice for the greater good."
Bile rose in Alana's throat. She slapped Charmaine's hand away with a sharp smack.
"Don't touch me," she spat. "You use your holy magic to cover up the stench of your own selfishness. You're a hypocrite."
The lounge door opened again. Cash strolled in, a smug, satisfied smirk plastered across his face. He walked past Alana, treating her like empty air, and sat down in the large chair at the head of the table.
He tapped his knuckles against the glass surface. "Let's make this official. A democratic vote. All in favor of removing Alana Nicholson from Dawnbreaker, raise your hand."
Dallin shot his right hand into the air immediately, a vicious grin on his face.
Jered hesitated for a single second. Then, slowly, he raised his hand, keeping his eyes fixed on the wall.
Charmaine closed her eyes, traced a holy cross over her chest, and raised her hand.
Three votes. Unanimous.
Alana stared at the three raised hands. A strange, suffocating pressure in her chest suddenly vanished. The tightness in her shoulders uncoiled. She let out a long, slow breath.
Her lips curled into a cold, sharp smile.
She reached up to the collar of her jacket. Her fingers closed around the silver Dawnbreaker badge. She ripped it off, the pin tearing a small hole in the fabric.
She raised her arm and slammed the heavy silver badge down onto the crystal coffee table.
Crack.
A jagged, spiderweb fracture exploded across the pristine glass surface. The sharp sound made all four of them jump. Cash's smug expression shattered, replaced by dark fury.
Alana swept her eyes over them one last time.
"You didn't kick me out," she said, her voice eerily calm. "I am abandoning you pieces of trash."
She turned around and walked out the door. She didn't look back.
"You're nothing without us!" Dallin screamed from inside.
Alana grabbed the heavy door handle and slammed it shut, cutting off his voice and sealing the toxic air inside.
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9.3
On her wedding night at The Plaza Hotel, Clara went looking for her husband.
Instead, she found him in the dimly lit parking garage, passionately pinning down her bridesmaid.
She couldn't even scream or expose them. Just hours before the ceremony, Julian had tricked her into signing away her twenty percent shares of their co-founded company, leaving her completely penniless and unable to pay her grandmother's life-saving medical bills.
Fleeing in absolute despair, a sudden hotel blackout plunged her into a second nightmare. She was dragged into a pitch-black room and brutally violated by a heavily drugged stranger.
When a shattered Clara returned to the office to audit the books and reclaim her power, Julian demoted her to a dusty desk by the trash cans.
He flaunted his mistress in the executive suite and deliberately sent Clara into a horrifying trap. He arranged for vicious clients to drug and assault her, demanding high-definition blackmail photos so he could divorce her with absolutely nothing.
"Since you want to play rough, you can service Mr. Petrocelli tonight," the thug sneered, locking the VIP room door.
Clara was pushed to the brink of hell. Why was the man she devoted three years of her life to trying to destroy her so completely? And why did the freezing cedarwood scent of the stranger who ruined her in the dark perfectly match Conrad Vance, the ruthless CEO and Julian's untouchable uncle?
Rather than let Julian win, Clara smashed a glass bottle, held the jagged edge to her own throat to force the men back, and threw herself off the second-floor balcony into the freezing night.
But the bone-crushing impact never came. A massive figure shot out from the shadows and caught her, and her brutal counterattack finally began.
9.7
Clarissa rushed into a crowded nightclub for one simple reason: to save her wildly drunk best friend.
But her ruthless billionaire husband, Giovanny, was watching from the VIP room. After effortlessly ruining a man just for grabbing her wrist, Giovanny punished Clarissa for breaching their public image contract with an impossible curfew.
When she inevitably arrived back at his penthouse late, he didn't just yell. He forced her to her knees by his bathtub to wash his back, making her watch an explicit, humiliating video as punishment.
A sudden family medical emergency dragged them to his parents' estate. Still in her soaked, transparent dress and his misbuttoned shirt, Giovanny's mother caught them. She joyfully assumed they had been passionately intimate.
Instead of clearing her name, Giovanny pulled Clarissa close and lied to his mother's face.
"We are working very hard on the family's future, Mother."
He locked her in the guest suite, tossed a sheer silk nightgown on the bed, and literally shattered the tablet holding their "no-contact" prenuptial agreement. He then slapped a file against the window—he had secretly bought all her father's toxic debt.
Clarissa was terrified. They were supposed to be business allies bound by a strict contract. Why was he suddenly acting like a predator determined to own her body and soul?
"Give me an heir, or your father goes to federal prison," he whispered.
Stripped of all choices, Clarissa picked up the white silk. She would surrender tonight to save her family, but as his shadow swallowed her, she made a silent vow to survive this monster, and one day, tear his empire to the ground.
9.3
Grace finally decided to end her toxic, one-sided relationship with Adelbert, the arrogant heir to a global empire, by texting him to terminate their family trust.
His response was a single, freezing word: "Done."
When they accidentally bumped into each other in a law firm elevator, Adelbert looked right through her.
"I don't know her," he stated coldly to his frat brothers, treating her like invisible trash.
Humiliated and completely exhausted, Grace sought an escape in a brutal shooter game called PUBG.
But by a sick twist of fate, the random matchmaking threw her into a squad with Adelbert's frat brothers and a god-tier, toxic player named 'Ø'.
'Ø' relentlessly mocked her terrible skills, humiliating her and calling her a "pig" over the voice chat.
Yet, during the final shootout, this ruthless player suddenly threw his character in front of hers, taking a fatal barrage of bullets just to keep her alive.
Grace soon uncovered the terrifying truth: the top-ranked 'Ø' was actually Adelbert himself.
She was utterly confused and furious.
Why would the untouchable billionaire who ignored her legal texts and publicly humiliated her suddenly sacrifice himself for her in a cheap video game?
Refusing to swallow her pride in both the real and digital worlds, Grace sent a direct challenge to his gaming profile.
"I'll prove I'm not a pig."
Across the city, Adelbert stared at the notification, a dark smirk curling his lips, and clicked accept.
7.9
For five years, April Gamble loved Julian Travis with everything she had, trusting him completely.
But on a stormy night, he casually tossed a liquidation agreement at her feet, single-handedly destroying her grandfather's company.
He coldly admitted he only dated her to steal Vance Group's internal financial data.
"You were convenient," Julian said, swirling his whiskey without a shred of guilt.
Before April could even process the brutal betrayal, a breaking news alert lit up her phone.
She watched in absolute horror as her grandfather jumped from the ledge of the Vance Tower on live television.
Julian looked at her writhing, screaming form with utter boredom and simply ordered his bodyguard to throw her out.
Blinded by grief and tears, April sped into the torrential rain, only to be completely crushed by a hydroplaning transport truck at an intersection.
As the shattered glass tore into her skin and the metal crushed her ribs, she died with a hatred so pure it made her teeth ache.
Why did five years of devotion mean absolutely nothing to him? Why did her family have to die just to feed his ruthless greed?
When she opened her eyes again, the harsh hospital lights blinded her, but the familiar burn scar on her arm was gone.
She wasn't the betrayed financial analyst April Gamble anymore.
She had woken up in the body of Altagracia Blanchard, the most notorious, obscenely wealthy heiress in New York.
Julian had taken everything from her, but now, armed with a billionaire's empire, she was going to bury him.
9.3
Ginny was chained to a concrete pillar in an abandoned warehouse, bleeding and betrayed by the two people she trusted most.
Her fiancé, Brant, and her adopted sister, Coretta, had just slashed her face open. Brant coldly admitted she was nothing but a disposable key to a vault, right before he tossed a lighter onto the gasoline-soaked floor.
As Ginny burned alive in the roaring inferno, the heavy iron doors were violently smashed open. Bedford Parks—the notoriously ruthless, germaphobic "monster" of Silicon Valley whom Ginny had always feared—charged straight into the flames. Ignoring the blistering heat, he shielded her charred body with his own. A massive steel beam collapsed, snapping his spine.
"I love you."
He coughed up blood, whispering his final words against her blackened skin before dying to protect her.
Hovering as a ghost, Ginny's soul screamed in agonizing realization. She had spent her life terrified of Bedford, yet he was the only one who truly loved her, while her supposed family laughed at her gruesome murder.
Suddenly, a blinding white light swallowed the warehouse.
Ginny gasped for air, opening her eyes to find herself sitting in the back of a luxury Maybach. She was eighteen again, wearing the humiliating clown makeup Coretta had tricked her into wearing on the day she was brought back to the wealthy Steele estate.
Ginny stared at her reflection, her dark eyes turning cold and sharp.
This time, she would tear her betrayers apart piece by piece, and she would protect her "monster."
8.5
As Aurora lay dying of organ failure in the freezing ICU, she used her last ounce of strength to call her husband on their son's fifth birthday.
Instead of his voice, she heard the pop of champagne and the sweet laugh of his mistress, Jessica.
Conrad snatched the phone, impatiently ordering Aurora not to "ruin the mood" with her irrelevant calls.
But what truly pushed her into cardiac arrest was her five-year-old son's excited voice ringing through the speakerphone.
"I wish for Auntie Jessica to be my new mommy!"
"As long as you like it, Daddy will give you anything," Conrad promised without a second of hesitation.
Aurora gagged on her own blood and flatlined, the heart monitor erupting into a piercing red alarm.
She had swallowed her pride and wasted five years playing the perfect, submissive housewife, only to be thrown away like garbage by the two people she loved most.
She couldn't understand why her absolute devotion ended with her dying completely alone on a sterile mattress.
But she didn't die. Snatched from the jaws of death by a mysterious billionaire from her past, she woke up in a luxury suite, fully healed.
Looking at her pale, cold reflection in the window, the pathetic old Aurora died.
She packed her battered suitcase, signed a brutal postnuptial agreement waiving every single cent of her husband's wealth, and dropped the divorce papers on the table.
This time, she was leaving for good.