The Alpha's Forbidden Secret Fated Mate
I am an orphan taken in by the pack, and the powerful Alpha, Ryker, is my guardian. He is also my secret fated mate.
But next week, he is marrying another woman for a political alliance. While I was forced to help his fiancé pick out her wedding gown, Ryker cornered me in a fitting room and aggressively marked my neck, claiming me as his own.
When his fiancé almost caught us, his eyes turned cold. He shoved an unlimited black credit card into my hand, telling her it was just "charity" for his dead Beta's daughter.
Then, they drove away together, leaving me to take a grimy public bus back alone.
Back at the dorm, my roommate saw the unmistakable, possessive bite marks of an Alpha on my collarbone. Knowing my reputation was about to be ruined, I fled to a remote campus building to hide from them all.
But my adoptive mother's maid suddenly appeared at my door. She didn't come to comfort me. Instead, she delivered a chilling warning.
"Do not repeat the terrible mistakes of your family and the Blackwoods regarding the wrong kind of attachments."
I froze, my blood running cold as I realized I was under constant surveillance.
I thought Ryker's toxic obsession was my biggest nightmare. But what exactly happened between our families in the past, and why did everyone want me trapped in this beautifully decorated prison?
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Chapter 4
Elara Vance POV:
The next morning, I was in the communal dining hall before the sun had fully risen. I sat in the furthest corner, hoping to eat quickly and disappear before I had to face anyone. I hadn't slept, and the dark circles under my eyes were proof.
Moira found me anyway, setting her tray down across from me with a worried smile. "How's the knee, dear?"
"Much better," I lied, forcing a smile. "The Healer's salve worked wonders." I couldn't tell her Ryker had been the one to bring it, climbing through my window like a thief in the night. The lie tasted like ash in my mouth. Deceiving her, the only mother I’d ever really known, was a constant, dull ache in my chest. It strengthened my resolve.
She didn't press, instead chattering happily about the wedding preparations, her words painting a picture of a beautiful future. Every syllable was a needle prick against my heart.
A wave of expensive floral perfume announced Seraphina's arrival. She glided towards our table, radiant in an elegant silk morning robe.
"Good morning, Moira. Elara," she said, her smile perfectly in place.
I shot to my feet. "Future Luna."
She placed a hand on my arm, a gesture that was meant to seem kind but felt like a brand. "Please, don't be so formal. We'll be family soon." Her icy eyes lingered on my face for a moment too long, searching.
She turned her full attention to me, her tone deceptively sweet. "Elara, I was hoping you might do me a favor."
My stomach plummeted. This was not a request.
"I'm going into town today to select my gown for the union ceremony," Seraphina explained. "I'm not familiar with the local artisans, and Moira has pack duties. I've heard you have the best artistic eye in the scholastics program. Would you accompany me? I would value your opinion."
It was a brilliant trap. A request from the future Luna, framed as a compliment, was impossible to refuse without causing a grave insult.
"What a wonderful idea!" Moira chimed in, oblivious. "You should spend more time with Seraphina, Elara."
Every instinct screamed at me to say no. To help another woman choose the dress she would wear to marry my fated mate was a form of psychological torture I couldn't imagine surviving. My wolf snarled in my head, protesting this public claim on her male.
But then I looked into Seraphina's eyes, saw the challenge glinting beneath the polite facade, and I understood. This was a test. A declaration of war. After last night’s Mind-Link, she must have sensed something was wrong. She wanted to see how I would react.
Refusing would be an admission of guilt. Going would be hell.
Ryker’s voice echoed in my mind. *The two are not in conflict.* I would show him just how much conflict there was.
I took a deep breath and met Seraphina's gaze, my own expression carefully neutral. "Of course. It would be my honor, future Luna."
The speed of my acceptance seemed to surprise her. A flicker of something—annoyance? respect?—crossed her face before it was gone.
"To be able to help you choose the gown for your and the Alpha's most important moment," I continued, my voice steady as I twisted the knife in my own heart, "I would be truly honored." The words were for her, but they were also for me. I would witness it. I would force myself to see it, to feel it, until every last shred of hope was dead.
Seraphina's smile widened, triumphant. "Excellent. Ryker will be joining us. He has some business in town as well."
That was the final blow. The floor seemed to drop out from under me.
He would be there. They would play the part of the happy, devoted couple, and I would be their audience.
My face must have gone pale, but I forced my features into a mask of placid obedience.
I nodded, my voice a distant echo of my own. "Understood. Is there anything I need to do to prepare?"
"No, just be comfortable," Seraphina said, her gaze sweeping over me with the satisfaction of a cat who has cornered a mouse. "Meet us at the entrance in half an hour." She turned and walked away, her silk robe whispering behind her.
Moira was still beaming, telling me what a good impression I would make. I stared down at the food on my plate, now a tasteless mush. I wasn't just going dress shopping.
I was going to my own love's funeral.
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9.7
Darcie Miller survives elite St. Jude's Academy on sarcasm and invisibility, steering clear of golden quarterback Charles Sterling-her most ruthless tormentor. But when her father's bankruptcy hands everything to the Sterling family, Darcie faces a humiliating ultimatum: move into Charles's mansion as his live-in "academic handler" to keep him eligible for graduation.
Now the girl who despises him holds his future in her hands, and the boy who shattered her reputation might be the only one who truly sees her. In a world of cold marble and buried secrets, hate is about to catch fire-and obsession could burn them both.
7.9
I was lying in the emergency room with acute gastroenteritis on my birthday, but my mother ordered me to rip out my IV needle.
She threatened to freeze all my accounts if I didn't show up to my adopted sister's high-society matchmaking party.
When I arrived, dragging my weak body, I caught my fiancé Julio protecting his mistress.
Worse, my adopted sister Billie framed me for stealing my own grandmother's heirloom earrings just to play the victim in front of New York's elite.
I refused to be their stepping stone and projected the evidence of Julio's affair on the massive ballroom screen.
In a rage, my father cursed me, and my mother slapped me across the face so hard my mouth bled.
During the ensuing physical struggle, my adopted sister, the mistress, and I all plunged into the freezing outdoor swimming pool.
My fiancé desperately swam to save his mistress, while my own brother rushed to pull my adopted sister above the water.
I stopped kicking and let my heavy, soaked clothes pull me down to the bottom of the black pool.
Why did my own flesh and blood treat me like garbage?
After a mysterious bodyguard pulled me from the water, I watched my family frantically wrap the other two women in warm blankets.
I didn't shed a single tear.
"I am no longer a part of this family. I never want to see any of you again."
I publicly canceled the engagement, turned my back on the wealthy estate, and walked away into the freezing winter night.
7.2
Allie Patterson poured fifteen years into her husband Grayson’s tech startup, living in a cramped San Jose apartment. Every penny, every late night coding session, was for their shared future, built on his constant claims the company struggled, always on the verge of its big break.
Then, a grant deed arrived: a stunning $4.2 million Atherton villa, paid in full, listing Grayson and an unknown Kacey Schmidt as joint tenants.
Her coffee mug shattered as Allie’s world imploded. Driving to the mansion, she found Kacey in silk pajamas, flaunting a massive pink diamond and, beneath it, Grayson’s grandmother’s heirloom ring – the one he’d tearfully claimed to have lost years ago.
Kacey purred, "He's in the shower. We were so tired last night."
The words were a serrated knife, twisting, confirming years of lies.
Humiliation and rage burned out, leaving a terrifying, absolute silence. All her sacrifice and trust were a cruel, elaborate joke, orchestrated by the man she loved.
Allie calmly took photos, then gave herself one minute in her beat-up car to mourn. When it passed, her tears stopped, replaced by cold, calculated murder in her eyes. She typed a text to Grayson:
"Come home early tonight. I have a surprise for you."
9.2
I was bound by blood to a mysterious cloaked male named Rafe to secure a vital alliance. I was supposed to be the new Luna of the Nightfall Pack.
But the moment I arrived, I was stripped of my expected title and forced to be a mere personal assistant to the brutally handsome Alpha Kaelen. My fated mate never even showed up.
Alpha Kaelen treated me with icy disdain. He even dragged me to a high-end jewelry store to pick out a mating gift for his "future Luna." When the shop owner assumed the gift was for me, Kaelen coldly humiliated me in public.
"She is just my assistant."
Yet, when a rival Alpha tried to lay a hand on me at a summit, Kaelen nearly started a war. He shielded me with his body, his eyes blazing with furious possessiveness.
"She is mine."
I didn't understand. If I was nothing but a discarded political pawn, why did Kaelen's touch send electric sparks straight to my core, exactly like my fated mate? Why was he fiercely protective of me one second, only to treat me like absolute garbage the next?
Staring at the moonstone necklace he forced me to carry for his "real mate," the fragile hope in my chest finally died. I wouldn't wait for a phantom husband anymore; I was going to uncover Kaelen's secret, and then, I would leave this pack for good.
8.3
Two sisters born with unimaginable power but only one is allowed to carry it-allowed to rule.
Naidira Thornton lives her entire life as a shame to her powerful parents-an alpha without a wolf, a daughter without her parents' favour, a mate left unclaimed. When she is banished for a crime she is innocent of and replaced by her own twin in a marriage built in lies, the pack believes the weaker sister has been erased.
They are wrong.
The secrets pile sky high till a perfect Luna's crown and an alpha's authority shatters under bloodshed and betrayal, Naidira returns and triggers a chain of events no one can stop. Bonds awaken, wolves arise.
Power was never taken from Naidira. It was buried.
And when it breaks free, nothing-family, throne, or fate-will survive unchanged.
8.3
In a world where the Wither virus turned surviving women into breeding livestock, Elinore was disguised as a boy at birth just to survive.
For twenty-one years, she lived a suffocating lie as the ruthless Prince of Navia, binding her chest and hiding her true gender. But her fragile reality shattered when her uncle, the tyrant King Orestus, casually gambled away her older sister Josefina in a card game.
Elinore kicked down the doors and violently rescued her sister, holding a short sword to the sweaty minister's throat.
"She is my legal property now! The King bet her and lost!" the minister screamed, waving the royal wax seal.
Elinore forced him to flee, but the aftermath was devastating. Their parents had been murdered by the King a decade ago, leaving them as captive pawns. Josefina, completely broken and terrified, wept in Elinore's arms. She actually begged to be sold off to a distant, savage kingdom just to escape the daily, inescapable hell of their uncle's court.
Stripping off her heavy military uniform in the dead of night, Elinore stared at her bruised, female body in the mirror. She was drowning in a suffocating sense of injustice. Why did women have to live as prey?
But an even deeper, more terrifying mystery was waking up inside her.
A strange, feverish heat began pulsing deep in her abdomen—an alien biological demand she couldn't control. That very night, she dreamed of a monstrous, seven-foot-tall Urekai beast pinning her to the freezing mud, its glowing yellow eyes claiming her as its mate.
Her disguise was failing, and her own body was betraying her. To save her sister and uncover the truth behind her awakening, the fake Prince decided it was time to burn this tyrannical kingdom to the ground.