Another Word For Before

At seven months pregnant, I overhear my Alpha mate, Christopher Scott, secretly planning to break tradition by promoting his secretary to a Beta and handing the Luna's duties over to her. His friend urges him to reconsider. "Luna is about to give birth. Isn't it inappropriate to throw a promotion banquet for Scarlett right now?" But Christopher dismisses his concerns. "What can I do? Scarlett is carrying my pup too. I can't just ignore her. "Besides, with Rebecca's temper, she'd definitely throw a huge fit if she found out beforehand. I might as well wait until she has delivered the pup and is too exhausted to interfere, and only then will I hold Scarlett's promotion ceremony. I say nothing. I pretend I know nothing at all and walk away. On the day I go into labor, Christopher holds Scarlett Lane's promotion ceremony at the pack's most sacred altar. While the entire pack is celebrating Scarlett's rise, the doors of the altar are suddenly kicked open. My father, the Alpha King, walks in. "Christopher Scott, is this how you treat my daughter?"

In the day, Evelyn Jefferson is Warren Larkin's elegant and capable executive secretary. At night, she's his alluring bedfellow.After three years of such an arrangement, she thinks he loves her. But when she proposes to him, he says, "It's just a game—we fuck, not make love. Did you really think I'd take you seriously?"She loses hope in him and leaves without another word. From that day on, her life is transformed, and her career skyrockets. She becomes a renowned lawyer that no one in the industry dares offend. Countless suitors swarm her.He regrets his decision and pins her to the wall, his eyes bloodshot. "I'm yours in heart, mind, and soul. Will you marry me, please?"She smiles seductively. "Sorry, but you're standing in the way of my Mr. Right."

Everyone in the pack knew that my mate Damien loved me fiercely. After our mating ceremony, Damien gave me three bonding gifts. The first was a protective amulet he'd prayed three days and three nights for at the Moon Goddess shrine. The second was a sculpture he spent months carving with his own hands. The third was a diamond ring — the symbol of the Luna — priceless, and with it came the authority to govern the pack. On my birthday, he went searching for a moonstone and was ambushed by rogue wolves. He fell off a cliff. When he woke, his memory was gone. A bar hostess had rescued him. They fell in love. But the day before their mating ceremony, his memories returned, and he came back to me without hesitation. Just when I thought he'd ended things with her, on the very day I found out I was pregnant, I received a video — an intimate recording of the two of them together. Vivian was already carrying his child, nestled against Damien like a helpless little bird. "You're carrying my child. I won't abandon you. As for Elena — a few sweet words and she'll do whatever I say." I turned off my phone and sent a mind-link to my father. "Dad. The arranged mating you set up for me — I accept."

Marina spent five years serving her husband, only to be ridiculed and thrown out of his mansion at the slightest whim. Cast into the cold streets with nowhere to turn, she met a stranger that very night—one who made her weak in the knees. She had no time to mourn her lost marriage before falling into his arms, giving in to a night of intense longings that left her naked on his bed the next morning. She left without a word, thinking it was over. Until he reappeared, determined to take full responsibility of her. Marina thought her life might finally get better, but little did she know, the devil she once knew was far better than the angel she was yet to know.

I married my vampire husband ten years ago and gave him a half-blood heir, abandoning my career as a painter to become a full-time mother. Fortunately, my son inherited my talent. At just six years old, he held his first solo art exhibition, inspired by the theme "My Mother." But he never let me attend, and he never let me see his paintings. My husband said my presence would make Luke nervous---that I should stay home and do the housework as a good wife and mother, and wait for them to come back. I told myself he was just young and didn't know better, that he was only pushing back against my discipline, not truly rejecting me. Until the day I snuck into the gallery wearing a surgical mask pulled low. In the center of the crowd, my husband held our son's hand while tenderly pulling a woman in a red dress into his arms. He turned to the guests and announced: "This is Luke's mother---my wife." The three of them stood together, beaming with perfect happiness. And I---the one who'd stayed up all night setting up this exhibition---stood before the paintings while not a single person recognized me. That was when I finally understood. My seemingly gentle, caring vampire husband had long ago given our son a replacement mother. And I was nothing more than the human nanny who'd served her purpose by producing an heir.

"Are you sure you want this?" The witch slid the vial across the table. "Once I cast the unbinding spell, your Fated Mate connection will dissolve over ten days. On the tenth day, it's permanent. No reversals." I didn't hesitate. "Your name?" She picked up her pen. "Mara Voss." Her hand froze. Everyone in New York's vampire community knew that name. Conrad Levin — the Prince of the New York Dominion, an eight-hundred-year-old monster who had never shown a flicker of attachment to anything — had three years ago announced to the entire supernatural world that he'd found his Fated Mate. A human girl carrying the rarest blood type in existence. Golden blood. Her name was Mara Voss. I held out my wrist. The witch began her work. I opened my phone and booked a one-way ticket to Prague. Departing in exactly ten days. This time, Conrad would never find me.

She wasn’t his weakness. She was his ruin, and he would bring the world to its knees before he let her go. *** Kisarel thought she had it all figured out, until the night she caught her fiancé in bed with her cousin. The same cousin who was engaged to her boss, the ruthless and untouchable billionaire, Mr. Oceans Stark. Heartbroken, humiliated, and trapped on a business trip with the man her cousin was set to marry, Kisarel did the unthinkable – she begged her boss to make her forget her boyfriend's betrayal. Oceans swore he didn’t touch his employees. He swore his heart only belonged to a certain strange woman he'd been looking for, who saved his life so many years ago. But the moment Kisarel kissed him, every resolution he made shattered. And after their one sinful night together, Mr. Stark couldn't let Kisarel go. He began to do everything within his power to get her even more entangled in his web of obsession. There were a thousand reasons she should have stayed away from him. She ignored every single one. He knew every part of her belonged to someone else. But every part of him didn’t care. What neither of them knows is that Kisarel was the woman he’s been searching for all along. Now, Oceans is set to call off his wedding with Kisarel's cousin, and he expects Kisarel to also call off her wedding with her cheating fiancé. Kisarel is now tangled in an obsession so hot that it might consume her whole. And Oceans is ready to drown his entire empire just to keep the woman he truly loves.

Everyone in the Wandering Wolf Gang knew that Ash Blackwood loved me desperately and feared my disappearance most. To give me a sense of security, he drank a loyalty potion in front of me. He said that this magic potion would ensure that he would only desire me, get an erection for me alone, and that he would always report his whereabouts through our mate bond, even when he was on a dangerous mission. I worried about him, hiding my identity as the pack's tactical commander, I was worried that he would feel inferior, so I hid my own abilities and did not want him or the gang members to think that he had risen to power through my short-term precognitive abilities. Yet after a mission, I overheard pack members joking: "Alpha rushed so eagerly to meet Scarlett after taking the antidote, was she that amazing?" So after today’s battle, I quietly kept my mind link with Ash's group, and blocked his perception. In an unmuted mind-link, Ash's thoughts were filled with dirty desires and lascivious content, "Little slut, last time we went through seven vials of enhancement elixir, what do you think?" My heart turned to ice. In despair, I called upon the Moon Goddess: [I wish to leave this world.] The Goddess's ethereal voice echoed in my mind. [Once you leave, all traces of you will be erased from this realm.] [I know, please go ahead.] [Countdown begins: seven days.]

To be rejected by your fated mate is to be marked for death. Sloane Thorne has the scar to prove it. A rejection mark from Crew Harding, the boy who spent their entire lives tormenting her before destroying her in front of the entire pack. He murders her family, steals everything, and leaves her with a cursed mark that's slowly killing her. Three months later, she's hiding under a fake name when she collides with Kai Volkov. The Ice King. A second mate bond snaps into place. He sees Crew's mark on her skin. Assumes she's a spy and rejects her immediately. But Kai can't stay away. The bond won't let him. He takes her captive, swears it's for answers, but obsession doesn't need an excuse. Every touch sets them on fire. Every stolen glance is a war neither can win. Then Kai discovers what Crew has been hunting. What Sloane's family died protecting. What's been sleeping inside her all along. And suddenly, she's not just his mate. She's the weapon that could destroy them all. Now Crew wants her back. Collared, caged and his. But Kai Volkov doesn't share what's his. And Crew is about to learn that the hard way. But Sloane? She's done being claimed by Alphas who think she's theirs to break. Blood will spill. Alphas will fall. The question is whether she'll survive long enough to watch.

"I, Olivia Walsh, Beta of The Silver Moon Pack, reject Alpha Leo as my mate, my husband, and I would quit my duty as the Beta." The pain is overwhelming as if every bone breaks and restructures within a second. But I won't regret it, someone else would. Olivia Walsh has been suffering from the long-term ignorance of her Alpha, Leo. And this is it, she deserves better, instead of chasing the value of family responsibility, she wants to start over and find her inner self.