Second Life, Different Bed

"Miss! Wake up! Alpha Damien is going feral!"

Maria's frantic screams ripped through the night.

My eyes snapped open. I gasped for air, a cold sweat drenching my back.

The phantom agony of my bones splintering… The feel of warm blood on my face… It was still there, seared into my nerves.

My two little pups. Their screams echoed in my head. I could still see their father—my mate—tearing them apart right in front of me.

Maria’s voice yanked me back. It felt like a lifetime ago.

After I mated with Damien in my last life, Maria was fired. I never saw her again.

"Miss, are you listening?" Maria's voice grew more urgent. "There was something wrong with Alpha Damien's drink tonight. He needs—"

I flinched, my body recoiling. Then I looked into Maria’s desperate eyes.

"Maria, go get Isabella."

"What?" Maria froze, her face a mask of confusion.

"Tell her the man she loves, Damien, has been drugged with a Heat Potion," my voice was ice cold. "Tell her only a true love's touch can save him. Go now. Any longer and his wolf will be broken."

Stunned by my sudden authority, Maria scrambled out of the room.

The moment the door shut, my composure shattered. Tears streamed down my face in silence.

The agony of my past life washed over me.

Damien’s cruelty. Isabella’s venom.

And my two poor children. They were so small.

"Never again," I hissed, wiping my tears with a shaking hand. "It's different this time. I'll change everything."

I remembered this day from my last life.

Worried about Damien, I had rushed into his room.

He’d dragged me onto the bed and brutally marked me.

Maria, thinking we were in love, had quietly closed the door.

Soon after, I was found to be pregnant. Our mating ceremony was scheduled.

I thought it was the start of our love story. It was the beginning of hell.

He hated me. He hated that I'd trapped him, forcing him and Isabella apart.

He was cold, cruel. He called my pups half-bloods, worthless mongrels, refusing to even let them near him.

Five years into our mating, he finally snapped, killing me and our two children.

His giant wolf form charged. My children were clinging to my legs.

The next second, their sweet faces were covered in blood.

I buried my towering hatred deep in my soul and walked to another suite on the manor's top floor. I unfastened the straps of my dress.

I remembered this night.

Damien's adoptive father, the powerful Lycan King Caspian, was also drugged with the Heat Potion.

Worse, he was cursed. If he didn't find his fated mate in two years, his wolf would wither and die.

That was why Damien, his only adopted son, was the accepted heir.

But what if this time, Caspian had a pureblood heir of his own?

I pushed open the heavy oak doors of the King's suite…

The air in the room was thick with a primal danger.

Caspian's tall frame was silhouetted against the massive windows, his muscles corded and tight.

Even in his agony, he stood like a mountain.

Moonlight caught his silver hair, giving it an almost holy glow.

The Alpha scent rolling off him was a wild, suffocating wave.

His eyes locked onto mine, burning like silver fire in the dark. I saw his throat work as he swallowed hard.

Then, a feral fire ignited in his gaze.

"You came," his voice was a low, guttural growl.

The next second, he pulled me into his burning embrace…