

For five years, Gideon—my brother's Beta—and I had a secret.We were supposed to announce our mating at the pack's Winter Solstice festival.Instead, he breathed hot against my ear."Babe, we've been sleeping together for five years. I'm bored with you. Find someone else for the marking ceremony, alright?"I didn't cry. I just gave a calm, simple nod. "Alright."Only because in my last life, I had begged him through tears to complete the bond.After he finally marked me, he grew cold.He never again woke me by rubbing his stubbled chin against my forehead.Even when we made love, he kept his eyes shut, as if he were wit for my life, he left me.He was going to comfort his savior, Aveline. The old wound she suffered saving him had relapsed, sending her into a mental spiral. In that moment, I finally understood.A mark I had to beg for was nothing but a curse, a wound that would never heal.This time, I pulled away with a smile, removing his hand from my waist. "You're right. I'm tired of it, too. We're done."h someone else, just using my body.When I was in agony giving birth to our pup, fighting

Amber, a genius Ivy League student, is drugged and sold into a black-market trap by her abusive family. After a night of uncontrollable passion inside a thunderstorm Maybach, she realizes her Ivy League degree won't rewrite her destiny—but Ethan Blackwood, the billionaire king of New York, can. Refusing to accept a humiliating $500,000 buyout check, Amber tears up her top-tier diploma,Society's hypocrisy, and marches straight into Blackwood Manor with a duffel bag of cash—demanding to be hired as Ethan's personal maid. Inside this opulent cage, she wields her lethal intellect as a chess master, dismantling rival conspiracies, manipulating family coups, and reverse-taming two dangerous Alpha men. She forces Ethan, the tyrannical billionaire, to kneel before her and surrender his empire, while turning Tyler, the deadly executive assistant, into a obsessively loyal hound who commits murder in the name of love. On the day of their lavish, televised ""Black Wedding"", as the vows are about to be sealed, Tyler—covered in blood and holding a withered black rose—shatters the church doors to unveil their dirty secrets to the world. Surrounded by flashing cameras and two obsessively devoted men waiting for her command, Empress Amber holds out her hand for the ultimate, deadly choice...