alpha's last minute bride

The doctor said I only had three days left to live. Acute liver failure. My only hope was an experimental clinical trial. It was extremely risky, but had the faintest sliver of a chance to survive. But my husband, David, gave the last available spot... to my adopted sister, Emma, also my daughter’s godmother. Her condition was still in its early stages. He said it was the "right decision," because she “deserved to live more.” I signed the papers to forgo treatment and took the high-dose painkillers prescribed by the doctor. The cost? My organs would shut down, and I would die. When I handed over the jewelry company I’d poured my heart into, along with all my designs, to Emma, my parents praised me, saying, “Now that’s what a good big sister should do.” When I agreed to divorce David so he could marry Emma, he said, “You’ve finally learned to be understanding.” When I told my daughter to call Emma ‘Mom,’ she clapped her hands and said, “Emma is such a gentle and kind mother!” When I gave all my assets to Emma, everyone in the family thought it was only natural. No one noticed anything was wrong with me. I’m just curious. Will they still be able to smile when they find out I'm dead?

My younger sister, Lydia Miller, and I are unexpectedly reborn into a beastman tribe, where the Beast God gives us a choice of identity. The first option is to become a beast woman with tremendous strength and a tall, imposing physique. The second option is to become a saintess with the ability to reproduce across species and an alluring, graceful figure. In our previous life, Lydia became a beast woman to survive, while I became the frail saintess. She ended up scorned by the tribe's beastmen for not being feminine enough. Meanwhile, I captured the hearts of the three strongest and most handsome beastmen in the tribe with my delicate frame. I became their most cherished beloved. Eventually, they rose to rule the primeval forest, and I basked in endless glory as their saintess. Driven mad with jealousy, Lydia pushed me into a poison swamp when no one was looking. With my last bit of strength, I plunged a poisonous thorn into her body, and we died together. When I open my eyes again, we're back at the moment when the Beast God asks us to make our choice. This time, Lydia rushes to claim the saintess identity first. "Ella, this time I'll be the saintess. Since I pity you so much, I'll let you have those three defective, impotent beastmen." I bite back the wild joy flooding through me. What's so great about serving as a breeding tool anyway? In a primitive society, strength is everything.

As an abandoned Omega with no wolf pack backing, Aria Miller struggles to survive in the glamorous and cruel entertainment circle of Los Angeles. She finally wins the leading role in a blockbuster audition, only to be cruelly betrayed by her half-sister Lily and her fiancé Mark. They forge a false pheromone out-of-control report, frame her as a dangerous Omega, and attempt to lock her away in a supernatural supervision center to ruin her career and freedom completely. At the moment she is about to be taken away, Noah Silvercrest, the top Alpha and powerful ruler of the West Coast strongest wolf pack and entertainment empire, suddenly appears. He makes a revenge contract with Aria—he will protect her, clear her name, help her counterattack in the entertainment industry and get revenge on her enemies, while Aria acts as his fake fiancée and temporary Luna to block his ambitious stepmother’s grab for inheritance and pack power. From a fake marriage pact to glamorous charity banquets, brutal variety show battles, public opinion smears and deadly murder plots, Aria grows from a vulnerable girl into a iron-willed Luna. She fights back against frame-ups, takes down her ruthless rivals, recovers the Silvercrest empire for Noah, and gradually falls into a real forbidden love with the cold and domineering wolf CEO. Between revenge, power struggles, wolf pack rules and heartfelt affection, the contractual fake marriage eventually turns into a lifelong fate bond between an Alpha overlord and his masked bride.

Noah Marr is the last surviving bloodline of his parents, a young heir who sleeps until noon, counts money until his hands cramp, and lists eating and gaming as his highest aspirations. At his own birthday banquet he announces these goals without embarrassment, and the room collectively writes him off as a useless rich boy. His fiancee moves to break off the engagement. Nobody takes him seriously. Noah takes none of it personally. Then, the people responsible for his parents’ deaths finally step into the light, and everyone who ever laughed at him gets a very different look at who they were actually dealing with. Every sneer he absorbed, every dismissal he let slide, was just silence before the thunder.

Noah Marr is the last surviving bloodline of his parents, a young heir who sleeps until noon, counts money until his hands cramp, and lists eating and gaming as his highest aspirations. At his own birthday banquet he announces these goals without embarrassment, and the room collectively writes him off as a useless rich boy. His fiancee moves to break off the engagement. Nobody takes him seriously. Noah takes none of it personally. Then, the people responsible for his parents’ deaths finally step into the light, and everyone who ever laughed at him gets a very different look at who they were actually dealing with. Every sneer he absorbed, every dismissal he let slide, was just silence before the thunder.

One moment he is a newly summoned baby fire dragon, expecting the sweet life of a contracted beast. The next, the girl who summoned him rips out his dragon core to feed a bear and kicks him into the trash. Alfie Lane survives, barely, clinging to the last thread of his life at the bottom of a garbage heap until the school beauty finds him and offers a contract.He takes it. The evolution system activates, the ancient bloodline stirs, and what started as the most humiliated creature in the beast taming world begins its climb. He devours, he grows, he evolves, and by the time he is standing in his divine dragon form the people who threw him away can only stare in disbelief. That was the F-rank trash dragon they discarded.Yes. That was him.

One moment he is a newly summoned baby fire dragon, expecting the sweet life of a contracted beast. The next, the girl who summoned him rips out his dragon core to feed a bear and kicks him into the trash. Alfie Lane survives, barely, clinging to the last thread of his life at the bottom of a garbage heap until the school beauty finds him and offers a contract.He takes it. The evolution system activates, the ancient bloodline stirs, and what started as the most humiliated creature in the beast taming world begins its climb. He devours, he grows, he evolves, and by the time he is standing in his divine dragon form the people who threw him away can only stare in disbelief. That was the F-rank trash dragon they discarded.Yes. That was him.

After being publicly rejected and hunted by her tyrannical Alpha fiancé, Elara is saved by a scarred, mysterious rogue wolf—unaware he is the exiled heir she once rescued as a child. When her brutal ex drives them into a dead end, her tears and love become the only catalyst to awaken his Ancient Lycan bloodline and shatter the tyranny.

Liam Wayne is minding his own business when the apocalypse arrives and drops his entire residential complex, Greenhill, into a monster-infested forest with no warning and no exit. He awakens a survival system almost by accident, unlocks a point exchange store and the ability to merge spaces, and makes a choice that surprises even himself—he is not leaving anyone behind. He pulls together an unlikely team, a motorcycle queen, a firefighter built like a wall, a surprisingly lethal young girl, and more, exchanges system points for weapons and supplies, and turns a community of ordinary neighbors into something that can actually fight back. Seven days of relentless undead waves.Internal betrayals from the selfish and the desperate. And through it all, the quiet stubborn solidarity of people who decide that survival means nothing if they do it alone. Liam leads them through every wave, every threat, every knife in the back, and carves a path out of the wasteland for every last one of them.

While Alpha Leon danced with his assistant on the dance floor, I sipped wine with clients. To avoid offending anyone, I let his intoxicated self brush his cold hand against my thigh. Still, Leon never glanced at me. His attention was entirely on helping the assistant brush stray hair from her forehead, softly asking if she was hungry. When the banquet ended, the assistant complained of boredom, and Leon immediately whisked her away, leaving me behind for the next round of festivities. “The young shewolf’s been busy with work lately. I’m just taking her to relax. “You don’t like bars, so don’t follow us. “Also, I won’t be back tonight. We’ll postpone tomorrow’s marking to another day.” We’d been together for five years. Although he gave me the title of Luna, he never marked me. This was the ninety-ninth time Leon Gray had unilaterally canceled marking me. So, I nodded. Since he was always busy, perhaps this marking was unnecessary.

I'm lying here, my body burning from within as the wolfsbane spreads through my veins. Meanwhile, my Alpha mate, Ryan, is giving the antidote I discovered to his childhood sweetheart, Vivian. With what little strength remains, I beg him to spare just a portion of the cure—enough to keep me alive for a few more days while I search for another remedy. Ryan doesn't even glance my way. He snarls, "I can't believe you're faking illness when Vivian is fighting for her life! Control your jealousy before I lose all respect for you!" Under his command, I'm confined to my quarters to "contemplate my sins." In the end, the wolfsbane consumes me completely. When Ryan discovers what he's done, he digs my grave with his own hands, howling with regret that comes too late.

On the day of my engagement party, my mother and I were sitting in the car waiting for the driver when my fiance's secretary suddenly sent me a video. In it, she had a middle-aged she-wolf by the hair, slapping her across the face again and again. "Selena, you gold-digging trash! Did you really think pretending to be some high-society socialite and getting engaged to Alpha Declan meant your mother could sneak into his house and steal?" Another slap landed. The woman's face was already grotesquely swollen. "Typical backwoods behavior. Always grabbing at things that don't belong to you. As Declan's secretary, I'm handling this filthy thief on his behalf." I slowly lowered my phone. Beside me, my mother was adjusting her necklace in her compact mirror. When she noticed me looking at her, she smiled and patted my hand. "Thorncrown Pack may be an absolute disaster when it comes to business, darling, but Declan is very handsome. Once the alliance is official, your father and I can help straighten things out." Frowning, I replayed the video. The sharp cheekbones. The immaculate chignon. And the mole on her ear. Oh my God. That was my future mother-in-law! I immediately called back. "Vanessa, do you have any idea what a complete idiot you are? That's Declan's mother!" She let out a vicious laugh. "Oh, please. Declan already told me all about you. Some nobody his father forced him to marry. " "He doesn't even care about you, so why would he give a damn about your relatives?"

The night of my first shift at eighteen, my two older brothers brought home a twelve-year-old orphaned Omega. My alpha brother seized the rare healing herb I'd spent all my savings on—herbs meant to ease my first transformation—and gave them to her instead. "You're strong enough," he growled. "You don't need such precious herbs." My beta brother snarled with fury, pointing toward the door. "Get out! Don't come back!" I said nothing more, just grabbed my packed bag and left. They assumed I was merely throwing a tantrum, that I'd return in a few days. My brothers, finally free of my presence, took the orphan girl on an international vacation to the Caribbean islands I'd always dreamed of visiting. Many days later, when they returned to the pack, they were shocked to discover I'd accepted an offer from the neighboring pack's Head Healer. The position required fifteen years of isolated herbal research. I could never return home. That night, they fell apart.

I was eight months pregnant and had just gone into labor, but my Alpha mate, Damien, locked me in a silver cage in the basement to delay my labor. When I cried out for help, he just told me to wait. Because his late brother's mate, Victoria, was also giving birth that day. The Pack Seer had foretold that only the firstborn pup would be blessed by the Moon Goddess and become the future Alpha. "The title belongs to Victoria's child," he said. "She lost Marcus. She has nothing. You already have all my love, Elena. The silver cage will make sure you deliver after her." The contractions were torture. I begged him to take me to the clinic. He grabbed my chin and forced me to look at him. "Stop pretending. I should've known you never loved me. All you've ever cared about is wealth and status!" "To force your labor early, just to steal what belongs to my nephew… You're truly wicked." Pale and trembling, I whispered: "The pup is coming, I can't stop it. Please, I'll make a blood oath. I don't care about the inheritance. I only love you!" He scoffed."If you loved me, you wouldn’t have forced Victoria into that contract to give up her pup’s birthright. I'll come back for you after she delivers. After all, that's my pup in there, too." He stood guard outside Victoria's delivery room. Only after he saw the newborn pup in her arms did he remember me. He ordered his Beta to release me. But the Beta's voice trembled. "Luna… and the pup… they're dead." And in that moment, Damien went feral.

When I opened my eyes, my sister Serena Shaw was kneeling in front of me, sobbing with a fruit knife pressed near her wrist. “Nora, I swear I didn’t mean it. I had too much to drink. I don’t even know how Lucas and I…” I almost laughed. Because I had seen this scene before. In my last life, Serena cried like a victim after sleeping with my fiancé, Lucas Arden. Everyone comforted her. Lucas married her to save her reputation. And I was pushed into a marriage with Graham West, Serena’s abandoned fiancé. Before the wedding, Lucas showed me my name tattooed on his wrist and promised he would only love me. I believed him. I wasted five years beside a husband who wanted my sister, waiting for a man who had married her. Then Serena died. I thought Lucas would finally come back to me. Instead, I found him at the funeral home, holding her photograph like he had lost the love of his life. “She was my wife,” he told me. “Let it go, Nora.” At my birthday party, Lucas and Graham fought over Serena on the rooftop. One had married her. One had never stopped wanting her. While they fought over her, I was shoved into traffic and died under the headlights. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the beginning. This time, I thought I was the only one who remembered. I was wrong. Lucas remembered. Graham remembered. And even with a second chance, both of them still chose Serena. This time, I would not be traded, chosen, or discarded. This time, I would build something none of them could take from me.

"Don't move. Your dress isn't on properly." Alpha Leo Stonewell lifted a hand to adjust my ceremonial gown. But the next second, the words that came out of his mouth sent a chill down my spine. "Layla, let Lilith wear this dress instead. Don't show up at our marking ceremony on the night of the full moon. She'll take your place then." I looked up immediately. "Have you lost your mind?" He sighed softly as if to suggest I was being unreasonable. "Lilith is just an Omega in the pack. I can't bear to let her stay with me without a rightful title. Tomorrow, I'll officially mark her during the ceremony." The northern wind sliced across my face. It felt bitterly cold, but it could hardly compare to the freezing ache in my chest. "We're supposed to become mates tomorrow. If you're going to mark her, then what did the past ten years between us even mean?" Leo frowned. Impatience crept into his voice. "Your wolf spirit has been dormant all this time. To the other werewolves in the pack, you're no different from an Omega. Layla, don't worry. Even if I mark her, I'll still take care of you for the rest of your life. Let her have this marking ceremony. Lilith is young and beautiful. She can't handle being wronged." My face slowly drained of color. If this Alpha thought I wasn't as young or beautiful as Lilith Lambert, then I didn't want him as my mate either.

On the day of my marking ceremony, my mate, Alex Burke, and my sister, Rose Roth, are caught mating in the dressing room. This renders me the laughingstock of the entire pack. While I'm drowning in humiliation, the Alpha, Nate Hyland, steps forward and marks me in front of everyone! After we get married, Nate treats me exceptionally well. However, we're never able to conceive a pup. Eventually, I turn to IVF and finally get pregnant. Nate becomes even more attentive to me. He even calls me "Darling" in his sleep. I think this is a blessing from the Moon Goddess. This continues until I hear the conversation between Nate and his Beta one day. "How could you, Nate? Luna Diana adores you and cares for you so much. But just because Rose is scared of pain and doesn't want to go through pregnancy, you secretly switched their eggs and made Luna Diana carry her child? The pup is due in two months! What are you going to do about this?" Nate goes silent for a moment. Then, he sighs softly and replies, "When the pup is born, I'll hand him to Rose and let her live out her dream of being a mother. I'll tell Diana the pup was stillborn. She's just an abandoned Omega. Staying with her for life is compensation enough." So all the love and tenderness he showed me is fake. I immediately schedule an abortion, as I don't want this filthy pup. And I am certainly not holding on to this sham of a marriage either. I may be an Omega, but I am no one's pawn.

To prevent the merfolk from being slaughtered, I decided to go ashore and seduce my childhood friend Cyrus, who had become the Alpha King. He still loved me deeply, and we spent three passionate days and nights together in bed. Waking up from a haze of pleasure, I hadn't even had the chance to rejoice before a corrosive elixir was dunked over my head. Listening to my pained wails, Cyrus smirked. "So even an immortal mermaid can feel pain, too? "Well, this is just a taste of what's to come if you don't tell me where my parents are!" Yes, he was convinced that the merfolk were behind his parents' disappearance. From then on, I was forced to watch him flirt with his mistress, Emily; had to extract my mermaid pearl to help heal her body; was forced to dance barefoot to entertain Emily so that she could sleep… Cyrus hated every fiber of my being, yet always held me tenderly in his arms whenever I was on the brink of death, carefully feeding me medicine. Sometimes, he was cruel. "Do you think I'll go easy on you just because I love you? Quick, continue torturing her!" Sometimes, he was gentle. "Can't you be good and tell me where my parents are?" Silently, I endured his twisted love without a word. Soon, however, these days would come to an end, and I wouldn't have to keep that secret any longer. After all, a mermaid who did not return to the sea after three years on land… Would turn into seafoam. And now, there were only three days until my time was up.