Evelyn Payne の小説・ストーリー

**Dangerous Addiction: The Woman He Couldn't Replace** Regina Kingston built her life with her own hands — a thriving architecture firm, a marriage she chose freely, a love she never stopped fighting for. But for three years, she has shared her husband with a ghost. Alexander Kingston is everything a woman could want on paper: billionaire, powerful, devastatingly controlled. What no one knows is that beneath the empire he built lies a grief he never buried — Rosalie Hart, his first love, dead in a fire six years ago, and somehow still occupying every locked door, every silence, every place in his heart Regina was never allowed to enter. On their anniversary, while Regina prepares a dinner he never comes home to eat, she overhears the truth she always feared: if Rosalie had lived, his life would have been different. Hers wouldn't have mattered at all. She signs the divorce papers that night. But before the ink even dries, an anonymous call and a chilling photograph shatter everything she thought she knew — Rosalie Hart may still be alive. Now Alexander has five days to prove that what he feels for Regina is real, not guilt, not habit, not a woman wearing someone else's shadow. As old wounds reopen and Evelyn Laurent — his childhood friend, devoted to him in ways he's never noticed — moves through the chaos with a calm too practiced to trust, Regina carries a secret of her own: she's pregnant, and she doesn't know if she'll have the chance to tell him before everything falls apart. Between a love fighting to be chosen and a past that refuses to stay dead, *Dangerous Addiction* asks the question every woman who has loved an unavailable man has asked herself: can you ever truly win against a ghost?

I am the sole heir to the Alpha King of Northaria, but I'm an Omega. All of Northaria awaits the day I come of age, hoping I'll awaken the kind of Alpha bloodline strong enough to claim the throne. But when the day finally comes, I'm still just a low-rank Omega. So, they say that the true heir must be one of the three "pledged Alphas" my father adopted from the major tribes. Whichever one of them marks me becomes the ruler of all Northaria packs. But none of them have ever truly looked at me. The one I like most is Quin Lawson. When I fainted on the snowy plains as a child, it was he who carried me back to the pack. I've tried countless times to get close to him, only to be met with nothing but cold, contemptuous stares. I used to think he was just emotionally distant—until the Moon Goddess Festival. That night, I saw him kneel before Silvia Anderson, the daughter of my father's second-in-command. His voice is soft, and his gaze is tender. "I'm marrying Evelyn only to repay the Alpha King's kindness. Once I get the inheritance, I'll make you my Luna. As long as she doesn't harm you, I'll even grant her a piece of land to live out her life in peace. You're my true mate." The night before the marking ceremony, my father asks me who I choose. I think of the way all three of the pledged Alphas look away whenever our eyes meet. I smile and say, "I'm the rightful heir of Northaria. My mate should be someone who brings the greatest strength to our pack. And so, I choose Alpha Heath of the Pyraxis pack." The air goes still. My father frowns. "Him? Are you sure? Every one of his mates has died under mysterious circumstances. His wolf is known to be vicious—no one dares get close to him. You truly want to be his mate?"