The Stand-In: My Life As An Understudy

I have been married to Andrew Connolly for four years, but whenever his gaze meets mine, there is no recognition at all. Even my voice doesn't register. He remembers everyone around him, yet the one person he never remembers is that I am his wife. If I put on a hat, he asks who I am. When I tie my hair up, he assumes I am a new hire at his company. To help him remember, I repeat the same outfit, the same makeup, the same hairstyle. Still, despite my daily presence, he treats me like a stranger. I tell myself Andrew is simply buried in work, that the neglect is accidental, right up until a concert night. I watch him cut through the crowd and embrace his first love, whom he has not seen in years. When the stage suddenly collapses, I seize his arm and beg, "Honey, please save me." Andrew shoves me away, his voice flat and cold. "You're not my wife. My wife is at home." I am crushed beneath the falling debris. Choking on blood, I can only watch as Andrew rescues his first love and walks away. That is when I realize it's not that he can't remember me, he just doesn't love me. The bodyguards drag me out of the wreckage. Later, I spend a month confined to bed with serious injuries. While I am in the hospital, I get a photo of Andrew kissing his first love. The blows land one after another and mercilessly jerk me awake. I am done with love, and I am done with him!

Ashley was once the strongest warrior, the most gifted healer, and the chosen Luna. Her future was set… until the night she vanished. Kidnapped by rogues and left to die, Ashley reached out to her mate, Alpha Jace, only to be met with a cold “contact later” as a response. The rogues laughed at her. “Even your Alpha doesn’t care if you live or die.” Alone and wounded, Ashley escaped but lost her wolf, Amy, in the process. When she was in need of his help, Jace was attending to Carina, his childhood friend. Ashley felt hurt and betrayed once she realized this and made the painful decision to reject Jace and sever their bond. But Jace refused to let her go and proposed an enticing offer. Just when Ashley tries to believe him, she uncovered the truth—she was never the mate. She was a stand-in. A shield to protect Carina. As the final straw, Ashley turned the tables. She blackmailed Jace’s beta, Lucas, when she discovers his involvement with the rogues and forced him to help her escape. But at the edge of her freedom, Jace is waiting and the final blow is delivered: losing her wolf was part of their plan. As Jace completed his plan by marking her as his forever, Ashley braced for the end. Until the Lycan King arrived. He doesn’t come to save her. He comes to claim her. But why would the most powerful man want a broken substitute? And what will happen when Ashley discovers she was never a pawn—she was the prize?

Life was steady—maybe not ideal, but manageable—for Evelyn Morgan, the overlooked daughter of a powerful business magnate and his unforgiving wife. Evelyn’s world revolves around a thankless life in the Morgan Mansion, where she's treated as little more than a maid, despite being family by blood. But everything changes the night her glamorous sister Diane, the chosen heiress, vanishes without a trace, leaving Evelyn with an unexpected and weighty responsibility. To save her family’s reputation and future, Evelyn must step in as Diane’s replacement, meeting with the mysterious and notoriously wealthy Mr. Volkow. Rumored to be a crippled recluse, he is nothing like she expected—gorgeous, intense, and unnervingly sharp. Evelyn quickly realizes her life will never be quite the same, especially as she navigates a world where her role and her heart seem more complicated than she ever imagined. But with each encounter, Evelyn begins to wonder if she’s in over her head...

Diana Winnington was pampered by her husband and got pregnant as she wished after three years of marriage.But when she showed the pregnancy test to the man, all she got in return was a divorce. Julian Fulcher snarled, “I will never allow my child to be conceived by another woman!” She was bewildered. “Why?”The man gave her a firm and decisive response. “I’ve never loved you!”It turned out that she was the only fool in this world!She thought this man was deeply in love with her. In truth, what he loved was only her face, which resembled another woman’s.She signed the divorce agreement promptly without hesitation, and vowed never to see him again!Yet the man who claimed that he had never loved her and told her to go, lost his mind.“Diana…”He looked at the grave of his beloved wife in the cemetery and finally came to his senses as he realized that they were inseparable, and she had subconsciously been a part of his heart and soul for a long time.

After receiving the news that her husband had died during a mission, my sister-in-law collapsed from the shock. When she woke up, she'd lost her memory. She clung to my husband and refused to let go. Our husbands were twin brothers. The doctor said she couldn't be triggered, so my husband and mother-in-law sat me down and begged me to play along until she got over this. Every time I brought it up again, they shut me down. "This is only until she gets her memory back!" So I watched as my husband and his widowed sister-in-law eat, sleep, and live under the same roof. Even our daughter could only stand by and watch her cousin call him "Daddy". One day, my daughter spiked a high fever and wouldn't wake up. I begged my husband to take us to the hospital. Unexpectedly, his sister-in-law went berserk over it and threatened to kill herself. In the chaos, I was stabbed in the heart by the scissors she swung around. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back to the day my husband agreed to play the role of a substitute husband.

My husband, Francis Zouche, thought we weren't well-off and could not afford to raise a child. So, he forcibly took me to the hospital to get an abortion. Right after the surgery, I discovered that he had transfered 200 thousand dollars to his first love, Heidi Colman, for her birthday. Out of pure rage, I got into a huge fight with him in the car, which led to an accident that killed us both. When I opened my eyes, we had returned to the day before our wedding. In our previous life, we were married for ten years. We weathered storms and supported each other, but Francis never wanted us to have a child of our own. On the day I died, I finally understood that the one he loved was Heidi. After getting a second shot at life, I decided to fulfill his wish. We canceled the wedding, blocked each other's phone numbers, and never contacted each other again. Eight years later, Francis became a top lawyer in Alvren and publicly proposed to Heidi at a law forum. Seeing that I was still single, he mocked me with a sneer, "Yvette, I know you loved me for two lifetimes. But I am getting married now. Don't keep waiting for me to come back to you." I glanced at him wordlessly and bent down to pick up my daughter before walking away. As a shocking realization hit him, his eyes reddened. He questioned furiously, "Didn't you promise to love me forever and to only give birth to my children?"