ALTAR'd: Finding HOPE Through GRIT And GRATITUDE To NEVER GIVE UP.

Just one week before my marking ceremony with Lucien, I discovered his heart already belonged to someone else. His secretary, Anika, walked out of his office with a smirk that was a little too knowing. Her blouse was askew, her usually neat hair a tangled mess, and only the faintest trace of her crimson lipstick remained. My heart seized in my chest, and my fingers went cold on the doorknob. Two years ago, she had been a timid girl fresh from the countryside. All that pretense of innocence had vanished, replaced by a brazen ambition written across her face. Her relentless eagerness around Lucien had always grated on my nerves, and I had asked him more than once. "Lucien, can't you replace her?" His smile would always fade. "Anika saved my life," he'd say. "I can't be so heartless." Now, that single triumphant smirk was all it took for me to understand. What others once envied in me had already been trampled beneath her heels. My phone vibrated. It was a new proposal from the event planner. [The marking ceremony plan is nearly perfect. Can we finalize it?] I refused to be consumed by sorrow. I wiped a tear from my cheek and made one last adjustment to the document.——Replaced the bride's name withAnika I didn't want a false love, or a fake Alpha Lucien. Let them have the marking ceremony. Let Anika stand at his side as his Luna, his chosen mate. In seven days, I would be gone with my pup.

Jordan Bennet looked at his girlfriend and sneered, “Avery, let’s break up. In fact, I have never loved you, but I pitied you because your mother didn’t love you. I have wasted so many years with you and I am tired of pretending. I never knew what love is before I met the love of my life, Tiffany Spencer. Please move on with your life and forget about me.” Then he kissed his new girlfriend on the lips in front of Avery. She was so shocked, she couldn’t believe her eyes. She was dumped in front of his new girlfriend. She felt humiliated. After everything she had done for him, he cheated on her. Tears were brimming in her eyes but she held them back. She didn’t want to cry in front of them. Was she hallucinating? She pinched her thigh hard to check if she was not dreaming. After she realized that she wasn’t dreaming, she calmed herself down. A faint smile appeared at the corners of her mouth and said to Jordan, “Everything you have achieved because of me, you will lose it.”

The throne is threatened as Thalisse, a humble village on the outskirts of Apharoth is attacked. Since the king had no heirs, there was no one left to save the royal family from being overthrown. In desperation, the king declares Gairoshi, an ancient practice where the next king will be selected through a series of duels. Bold men from all around the world flock to the center city to participate and try out their luck in this tiring and grueling competition. As different characters gather for this prestigious event, from the nobles, mighty men, people from the shadows, and down to the Thalisse victims, they cross each other's paths and fate reveals that there is more blood to Gairoshi than they expected.

Those words defined Claire Reid's entire life—and her death. At twenty-eight, she dies in a hospital bed surrounded by the family she sacrificed everything for: the father who forced her to quit school, the sister who took everything she had, the husband who treated her like an inconvenience, and the mother who demanded endless gratitude for their abuse. As her heart stops, Claire sees their relief and realizes the devastating truth: she wasted her life loving people who never loved her back. Then she wakes up. One year earlier. One month before her family frames her for theft. This time, Claire refuses. Refuses to give money. Refuses to stay silent. Refuses to be grateful for crumbs. Armed with knowledge of their betrayals and a fury born from her wasted first life, she systematically dismantles their manipulations, exposes their schemes, and reclaims her identity. But when she tries to leave her cold, arranged marriage, something unexpected happens.

After I'm abducted, I call my mother, a policewoman, for help. However, she hangs up on me and stays by my adoptive sister's side. "Go to hell if you're so keen on it!" she snaps. I calmly watch as the abductors pluck my nails and torment me until none of my skin is left unharmed. In my past life, my mother actually came to my rescue. She left my adoptive sister by the roadside, and the latter ended up being violated and murdered. From then on, I became a criminal in my mother's eyes. She received an anonymous text on my adoptive sister's death anniversary. "I bet a good girl like you wouldn't want your mother to know you hired us to abduct you, right?" She thought I orchestrated the abduction because I wanted to vie for her attention. She thought that was the cause of my adoptive sister's death. "I've saved people all my life. I never would've expected my flesh and blood to be such a shameless monster! You should go to hell as atonement for killing Charlene!" She sewed my mouth shut, shattered every bone in my body, and threw my ashes into a junkyard. When I open my eyes again, I find myself back to the day my mother makes her choice.

My husband's first love, the woman he had once idolized, had left him for a powerful and influential school bully. Years later, she found herself in the midst of a bitter divorce and in need of a lawyer. And who else but my husband, now an accomplished attorney, ended up back in her orbit? As he moved toward her once more, I decided it was time to step aside. After all, there was no stopping someone determined to chase after a lost cause.