The Ruthless Captain's Secretly Pampered Star
Aries Mathis stared at the glowing projector screen, his blood running completely cold.
For two years, he thought his mentor and former captain, Elias Beck, had simply left for a massive signing bonus in Europe.
But the financial report in front of him revealed a much sicker truth.
Elias had secretly sold Aries' contract to the highest bidder, packaging his own prodigy up like a commodity to line his pockets before abandoning him.
Now, Elias was back in North America, building a new esports empire from scratch.
The betrayal crushed Aries, turning his devastation into a blinding, toxic rage. He spiraled into a self-destructive frenzy, publicly executing Elias's new players in official matches, terrorizing them until their hands physically shook.
He hated Elias with every fiber of his being, yet the gaping hole in his chest screamed with agonizing confusion.
Why did the man who once saved him from the streets throw him away like a stray dog?
Driven to the edge, Aries cornered Elias at a VIP club, lining up ten shot glasses on a table.
"One is pure, high-proof whiskey. The rest are iced tea."
Aries sneered, knowing Elias had a severe stomach ulcer that could put him in the hospital.
"Pick the whiskey, and I sign with your new team for free."
Elias looked at Aries' broken eyes, reached out, and swallowed the liquid in one gulp.
There was no burn. All ten glasses were sweet iced tea.
As Aries fled the club in a blind panic, Elias smiled, pulling out his phone to text his lawyer.
"Liquidate my personal portfolio. I am bringing him home."
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Chapter 2
The cold air of the hallway hit Aries in the face as he pushed open the heavy glass door of the IAC team meeting room.
He kept his head down.
He walked straight to the very back of the long conference table and dropped into a chair.
He pulled the hood of his black sweatshirt up, hiding the dark circles under his eyes.
At the front of the room, Ricky and two other starting players were huddled together.
They were whispering.
Aries caught the sound of the word "Elias."
His jaw clenched so hard his teeth ground together.
The glass door swung open again.
General Manager Jensen Stein walked in, carrying a thick manila folder.
Jensen slammed the folder down onto the center of the table.
The loud smack made everyone jump.
The room went dead silent.
Jensen looked around the table, a fake look of sympathy plastered across his face.
He cleared his throat.
"I am sure you have all seen the news. Elias Beck is returning to the North American league."
Aries dropped his hands under the table.
He curled his fingers into fists, his nails digging so hard into his palms that the skin threatened to break.
Ricky let out a loud, mocking snort.
"Disgusting traitor," Ricky muttered.
Jensen held up a hand, silencing the room. "Ricky, take the others to the VOD review room. I need a private word with Aries."
Ricky smirked, standing up and jerking his head at the other starters. They filed out through the glass door, leaving Aries completely alone with the General Manager. Once the heavy door clicked shut, Jensen picked up a remote and clicked it at the projector hanging from the ceiling.
A spreadsheet appeared on the white screen at the front of the room.
It was a financial liquidation report from two years ago, the exact day their old team, Freefall Syndicate, was dissolved.
Jensen pointed a thick finger at a massive line item highlighted in red.
"Elias did not just leave for a massive signing bonus in Europe," Jensen said, his voice loud and theatrical. "He demanded a specific condition before he would sign."
Aries slowly lifted his head.
His bloodshot eyes locked onto the glowing numbers on the screen.
Jensen looked directly at Aries.
"Elias sold your contract to IAC, Aries. He packaged you up and sold you to the highest bidder to line his own pockets before he left the country."
The glowing red numbers reflected in Aries' wide eyes. The realization hit him with the force of a freight train, filling him with a twisted, sickening sense of utter worthlessness. He was entirely exposed, stripped bare in the cold glow of the projector.
Aries felt the room spin.
His stomach churned violently, acid burning the lining of his throat.
He could not pull air into his lungs.
Jensen kept talking, his voice a steady drone of poison.
He described how Elias sat at the negotiating table, cold and calculating, haggling over Aries' price tag like he was selling a used car.
An image flashed into Aries' mind.
It was the night before Elias left for Europe.
Elias' broad back, walking away down a dark street, never looking back.
A massive wave of humiliation crashed over Aries.
The betrayal felt like a physical weight crushing his spine.
He was a product.
He was a commodity.
Aries shot up from his chair.
His legs pushed back with so much force that the heavy office chair rolled backward and slammed into a whiteboard.
The metal frame of the board crashed to the floor with a deafening clatter.
Jensen stopped talking.
Everyone stared at Aries in shock.
Aries did not say a word.
His eyes were dead, frozen over with a layer of absolute ice.
He turned his back on the room and walked toward the door.
"Aries! Sit back down!" Jensen yelled, his voice cracking with lost authority.
Aries ignored him.
He shoved the glass door open and walked out.
He moved fast down the carpeted hallway of the team base.
His chest heaved up and down.
He pushed open the heavy fire door leading to the emergency stairwell and let it slam shut behind him.
He was completely alone.
Aries pulled his right arm back.
He drove his fist straight into the heavy metal door of a storage locker lining the wall.
The loud clang echoed violently through the stairwell as the skin on his knuckles split open instantly.
Blood smeared against the gray steel. In that blinding moment of agony, he didn't even care if he shattered every bone in his hand and ended his career.
He did not feel the pain in his hand.
He only felt the massive, gaping hole in his chest.
Aries leaned his back against the rough concrete and slowly slid down to the floor.
He pulled his knees to his chest.
He buried his face in his arms.
A low, guttural sound tore out of his throat, a sound of pure, suffocating agony.
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7.7
My fiancé always told me he loved me. But not long after our engagement, I woke up suffocating in the dark.
He was pressing a pillow over my face, his eyes cold and dead, while my half-sister stood by watching with fake pity.
They had orchestrated everything just to steal my trust fund.
It all started with a massive hotel scandal. They had drugged me, thrown a cheap escort into my bed, and brought a mob of paparazzi to ruin my reputation.
When my fiancé broke through the crowd, playing the heartbroken victim, he knelt down with a massive diamond ring.
"I know things have been hard, but I love you. If you come home with me, I will forgive all of this."
In my past life, I cried tears of gratitude and let him slide that ring onto my finger.
That ring sealed my death warrant. I lost my company, my dignity, and eventually, my life.
Until my lungs burned and my heart stopped, I didn't understand.
How could the people I trusted most plot my murder so ruthlessly?
Why did they have to tear my entire life apart?
Opening my eyes again, I was back on the morning of the hotel scandal, exactly one year ago.
But the man lying bare-backed in my bed wasn't a random escort.
It was Johnathan Chase, my family's biggest corporate rival and the most ruthless predator on Wall Street.
Listening to the paparazzi pounding on the door, I smiled coldly.
9.1
Waking up with a cold, scaly hand wrapped around my throat wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was realizing I'd transmigrated into the body of Terra Mason—the most despised woman in the entire Enclave. She drugged high-level beast-men and forced them into life-binding bio-contracts. She locked an aquatic warrior in a dry basement until his organs failed. She treated the most lethal males in the city like broken toys.
Zev, the Level 6 serpent who's currently choking me, would rather blow up his own heart than spend another day as my slave. His affection metric? Negative ninety. His trust? Zero.
Then my system activates: the Kore AI. It gives me exactly 500 credits, a medical nano-gel, and a recipe for neutralizing the radioactive poison in mutant meat. Real food. In this world, that's worth more than gold.
I save Rhys, the dying aquatic male everyone left for dead. I season a slab of purple mutant steak until Sam, a battle-scarred grizzly shifter, groans at the taste—and his trust points finally tick above zero. When my backstabbing ex-best friend tries to steal my males and destroy me, I don't scream or throw a tantrum like the old Terra. I dismantle her with the truth.
But earning their trust means more than grilling meat. A scorpion swarm ambushes us at midnight. Sam throws himself between me and a stinger the size of my arm. As he stands over the corpse, fur receding from his claws, he stares at me and whispers, "You were testing me."
Yes. I was. Because in this world, the weak don't survive. And I refuse to be weak again.
Four beast-men. Four contracts. One system. And a whole lot of steak. Let this dystopian wasteland know—I'm not the monster they remember. I'm worse. I'm the one who's going to feed them until they'd kill for me.
9.6
Areli was the hardest-working medic in the Blackridge Clan, but her efforts only earned her the title of a useless burden.
Her supposed lover, Eugene, and her senior mentor, Gloria, lured her to the edge of the deadly Blackwind Cliff and shoved her straight into the abyss.
She miraculously survived the freefall, only to return and find Gloria standing before the entire clan, wearing a mask of fake sorrow.
"Look! The traitor is back! She eloped with wild males!" Gloria shrieked.
Eugene stepped up, looking heartbroken, and publicly accused her of betraying his love.
The crowd erupted, raining hisses and boos upon her, completely ignoring the horrific, life-threatening bruises that covered her battered body.
They blindly believed the lies, treating her like garbage while Gloria secretly plotted to poison her water and destroy her completely.
Areli felt a chilling sense of betrayal. How could the man who claimed to love her watch her fall with such cold eyes?
To make matters worse, her modern biochemist instincts revealed a terrifying truth: she was unexpectedly pregnant with the child of a savage Warlord she had encountered in the wild.
In this brutal, primitive world, showing any weakness was an absolute death sentence.
But she wasn't going to cower or run away.
Refusing the Warlord's offer to simply rescue her, Areli calmly placed a highly toxic herb on her drying rack and left her tent flap open.
The bait was set. Now, she just had to wait for the screams.
9.3
Six years ago, my adoptive family framed me for commercial espionage, stripped me of my identity, and threw me out. Now, I finally returned to the Solis estate as a commercial pilot to take back what was mine.
But the first thing my adoptive mother did was threaten me with that forged evidence again. She demanded I take my sister Kiana's place in a marriage contract with a disabled man, simply because Kiana refused to marry him.
When I refused, Kiana ambushed me at the airport with a mob of reporters. She cried for the cameras, publicly accusing me of causing our father's and brother's deaths. She painted me as a ruthless monster who bankrupted the company and ruined the family. The crowd instantly turned on me, screaming that I was a murderer and a gold-digger. Kiana wanted to completely destroy my reputation so I would have no choice but to submit to her arrangement.
I looked at her fake tears, feeling a cold, absolute fury. How dare she use the tragic deaths of the only family members who actually loved me as a prop for her sick show? They had ruined my life once, and now they wanted to bury me alive.
I didn't hesitate. I slapped her hard across the face right in front of the flashing cameras.
"That was for my father and brother."
Then, my real fiancé, a decorated Delta Force commander, rolled through the crowd in his wheelchair. He tossed a classified Pentagon file to the reporters, completely clearing my name and exposing Kiana's lies. I married him to start my revenge, but as I stepped into his heavily secured penthouse that night, I realized my powerful new husband had been preparing for me for a very long time.
9.7
I was an intern nurse working exhausting shifts, yet my mother constantly forced me into blind dates with wealthy, arrogant men to secure our family's social standing.
During a terrifying hospital lockdown, an assassin disguised as a doctor held a scalpel to my throat. I was almost killed, but a high-ranking military colonel threw his own body down a flight of concrete stairs to shield me.
I survived with cuts and bruises, but when I went home, my mother didn't care about my near-death experience. She was only furious that I had rushed out on my blind date with Preston, a rich financial analyst.
She forced me to meet him to apologize. When Preston grabbed my arm, bruised me, and mocked my attack as a pathetic lie, my mother still took his side.
"Men get angry," she told me coldly. "It's your job not to provoke them. You will beg for his forgiveness, or you are no longer welcome in this house."
I had narrowly escaped an assassin, yet my own family was willing to feed me to a monster just for a fat paycheck and neighborhood gossip.
My heart went completely dead.
So, when the intimidating Colonel appeared, offering me maximum military protection through a sudden marriage, I didn't hesitate.
I walked back into my parents' house and calmly slapped a crisp marriage certificate onto the coffee table.
"I won't be apologizing to Preston. I got married today."
9.5
One night, I was a girl seeking vengeance in a velvet mask. He was the stranger who took me against a cold stone wall, his touch a silent, lethal promise.
Now, he is Caspian Blackwood-the most feared architecture professor at Aethelgard. When my "perfect" boyfriend, Dominic Calloway, cheats on me and sabotages my degree, Caspian offers a lifeline with a razor-thin edge: Be his silent, nude model for thirty days.
The rules are absolute. I must wear a silk mask and a weighted collar. I must never speak. I must hold the poses he demands until my muscles scream for mercy. In the lecture hall, he ignores me with arctic indifference. In the studio, his gaze is a physical weight, stripping me faster than his hands ever could. But as the charcoal scratches against the paper, I realize the "deal" isn't just for art. It's for the soul I accidentally gave him in the dark. Will the deal destroy his career, or consume me first?