Secret Love Contract Marriage Short Stories & Novels

My marriage to Tommaso Volpe, Don of the Volpe family, is part of a five-year contract. We each have someone we love, and we stay out of each other's way. He loves his adopted sister, Gelsomina Volpe, who needs his protection. My heart belongs only to my deceased fiancé, Marco Damiano. For five years, I play the perfect Signora Volpe, enduring Gelsomina's provocations and cruelty again and again. She forces caustic substances down my throat that nearly destroy my esophagus. He tells me to let it go for his sake. She stages her own kidnapping and forces Tommaso to choose between saving her and me. He doesn't hesitate, choosing to save her while I sink to the bottom of that freezing lake. On the last day of our contract, I calmly pack my things and leave the signed divorce papers behind. I need to find a young man who looks just like Marco. He's all I have left to hold onto. But after I leave, Tommaso loses his mind searching for me, saying he's fallen in love with me. He threatens me with the entire city's underworld just to stay by my side. He watches me grow close to my new "replacement" and goes mad with jealousy. He thinks he still has a chance, but he has already lost this game from the very beginning.

During our marking ceremony, the patrol leader of my arranged mate, Alpha Cassian Locke, asks me to swear in the name of the Moon Goddess before all the other werewolves. First, I shall not enter the Alpha's room without permission. Second, I shall not kiss the Alpha on any part of his body without permission. Third, I shall not do anything that may cause the Alpha to feel uneasy. The list goes on. Suppressing my anger, I listen as he recites all 188 vows in the oath. Then, I turn to the werewolf sitting on the side with an upright posture. "Alpha Cassian, could you please explain the 99th vow? What do you mean, I must raise your heir no matter whose pup they are?"

I was a two-hundred-pound girl. But on the night of graduation, I slept with Nova, captain of the Ashbury Ravens hockey team. The next morning, laughter drifted down the hotel hallway from his teammates. "Nova slipped his room key to Sienna last night, right?" "What, you think he'd give it to the Zamboni? That tub of lard. One look at her gives you nightmares for three days." "Did you guys see her reporter's notebook? It's covered in Nova's name. She's actually got a crush on Nova. Disgusting." So the room key that had slipped into my notebook wasn't meant for me. And the name he murmured against me in the dark wasn't mine either. My eyes burned with humiliation. I got dressed, walked out alone, and disappeared for six years. Six years later, my mother, Diane Quinn, was three months behind on her dialysis bills, and the sports website I worked for was on its last legs. My editor, Claire Bennett, slapped a file on my desk. "Nova. Newly crowned MVP. Not one interview in six years. Land him, or you're out."