Winning The Week

The entire Silver Moon Pack knew that the Alpha, Wayne Smith, was completely devoted to me. After I casually mentioned that I liked the aurora, he immediately flew me to the Arctic Circle on his private jet. We stayed there for an entire month. I once offhandedly said I wanted to see meteor showers, and he took control of the Frost Moon Pack, the one that controlled the highest peak. He built a palace there just so I could lie down and look up at the entire Milky Way. On the night of the full moon, he swore before the whole pack. "I, Wayne, will have only Nina Shaw as my mate in this lifetime. My love will never waver." In front of all the werewolves, he knelt on one knee to put my shoes on, making it unmistakably clear that I was his one true love. Even when he shifted into his wolf form, he would forgo his pride and allow me to touch his head. But just moments ago, I reached into the pocket of the suit he had changed out of and found an ultrasound report. [Six-week-old pup with a normal heartbeat.] However, as the Luna of the Silver Moon Pack, I wasn't pregnant at all.

My best friend and my husband, Lorenzo Bartoli, fought every time they met. Lorenzo was the Don of the family, while my best friend was his Consigliere. She always fiercely opposed his most ruthless, high-risk decisions. Tempers explode every single time. But there was one rule that they both agreed on without any hesitation. No one was allowed to touch me. Because of them, no one in the city dared to cross me. Until the fifth month of my pregnancy, when I went down to the basement vault to organize Lorenzo's guns for him. I opened the safe to see stacks of letters, hundreds of them, all unsent. I picked one up. The moment I opened the letter, cold dread overwhelmed me. The receiver of the letter wasn't me. [My dearest Sofia…] I quickly scanned downward to the final lines of the letter. [If I don't make it back alive, everything in the Swissie accounts goes to you. As for Vittoria, she's a good woman, but I have never loved her.] With trembling hands, I tore open the rest of the letters like a hysterical woman. Three hundred of them in total. Every single one was addressed to Sofia Finzi. Sofia was not a stranger. She was my best friend.

Eight years of loyalty—wiped out by three days of her batting her lashes. At the bonfire, I swore the Alpha would finally mark me. Instead, I watched him fasten a sparkly little pendant around her neck. When the fire broke out, he ditched me—flames snapping at my heels. Said I could "handle myself," then played hero carrying her out. She showed up at my herb shop all smug, called me a "mutt no one wants." Then he showed up—Alpha on his knees outside my door, begging for another shot. I nodded toward my shelves. "These heal every wolf in Stormborne... except the Alpha who couldn't see what was right in front of him."

I once believed Sarah Weller was the love of my life. For her, I planned a once-in-a-lifetime wedding; for her, I launched a “True Love” jewelry collection worth over a billion. However, with only seven days left before the wedding, she calmly told me that she needed to fulfill her first love’s late mother’s final wish to marry him first, and only then marry me. As if it were a matter of fact, she said, “For Tim, all of this can be sacrificed. If you can’t even bear to lose that little bit of money, you can find someone else to marry right now.” Only then did I understand. In her world, I and everything I had built could be pushed aside at any moment for her so-called first love. So, I turned around without another word and called home. “Penelope,” I said to my sister-in-law, “the wedding will proceed as scheduled. Just do me a favor and replace the bride.”

On the day of the marking ceremony, Sabrina Carter returned to the pack. My fated mate and my childhood friend both abandoned me at the same time to welcome her. "Nicole, we can redo the ceremony another day." "Sabrina needs us more right now." After saying that, they turned and walked away without a single glance back. The two men who once swore they loved me turned my most anticipated wedding into a public joke. I stood there alone while everyone pointed, whispered, and laughed. Then, Sabrina posted a photo on Instagram, showing off how she was being doted on by both the pack Alpha and Beta. Every call I made to the two men was rejected again and again. In the photo, the ring that symbolized the Luna was on her finger. And Charlie Spencer had fastened the moonstone protection necklace, the one meant for me, around her neck instead. That was the moment something inside me finally broke for good. I bought a bond severing potion. I was done holding on. I was going to sever my mate bond with Joshua Ford.

After a vicious family power struggle, I fled to a small border town in the south. I took on a new identity and found work in a flower shop. Everyone believed I was dead. Then one day, someone from the family came to the shop to order flowers for the birthday party for Roman Jackson, the head of the Jackson family. The person who arrived was my former Underboss. She stared at me in shock and demanded to know why I had not returned to the Jackson family if I was still alive. She told me that Roman had kept watch over my grave for two years and that he had attempted suicide three times in the cemetery, each time stopped by someone else. Roman was my ex-husband. He had an adopted sister, Liliana. Fifteen years ago, her parents were gunned down while covering Roman's father's escape from a rival family. After that, Liliana became Roman's most cherished sister. She tampered with my armored car. The brakes failed, and the vehicle plunged off a cliff. I broke three ribs. Roman mobilized every resource the family had and pulled me back from the brink of death. She bribed my bodyguard and laced my red wine with a neurotoxin. I lay unconscious in the villa for three days and nights. Roman sealed off the entire city, hunted down everyone involved, and made them pay in blood. She tried to kill me, and he saved me. This absurd cycle went on for three years. Until the last time. She detonated a bomb at an arms deal I was overseeing, burning seventy percent of my body. As I was lifted onto the ambulance stretcher, I clutched Roman's suit and, with the last of my strength, begged him. "Kill her, Roman. She sabotaged the deal. Those are the family rules." He crouched down, his fingers brushing my bloodstained face. His voice was calm, almost cruel. "Liliana didn't mean to. Let it go. For the sake of what her parents sacrificed for the family." In that moment, my heart to him died completely.

I've been looking forward to my and Kael Bennett's mating ceremony. Unfortunately, he gets attacked by Rogues, resulting in him getting poisoned with wolfsbane. He remembers everyone else in the pack. Ironically, he has forgotten all about me, his fated mate. I try to awaken his memories time and again. But not only does Kael hate my guts, but he also allows another she-wolf to rob me of everything. He merely watches as said she-wolf, Maya Walsh, kills my beloved dog. He even stands by idly when I suffer from a miscarriage and lose my uterus. In the end, he believes the slanderous gossip surrounding me and exiles me from the pack while I'm still in a weakened state. When I'm granted a chance in a new life and completely forget about the past, Kael suddenly regains his memories. He looks for me everywhere like a lunatic just so he can tell me that he remembers everything. As I stare at the remorse-filled Alpha before me, I ask, "Who are you?"

We were supposed to be in love for eternity. But my vampire fiancé, Caius, has stood me up at our blood-bonding ceremony thirty-three times. The first time, the girl he’d sired, Evangeline, lost control during a hunt. He raced to her side, leaving me alone in the church under the blood moon. The second time, he vanished mid-ceremony because Evangeline was being bullied by another clan. He left me to face the elders’ mockery alone. After that, his little fledgling always had some fresh disaster for him to avert. And he always had an excuse: “I sired her. She’s like a child to me.” Then I saw the fresh bite marks on their necks. They had shared blood—the ultimate intimacy between mates. My heart turned to ash. It was time to burn our betrothal to the ground. The day I finally disappeared, he went mad, tearing our world apart to find me.

"Callum, why don't you spend more time with me?" As Callum Kilbourne's Beta, Lena Morrison keeps using sending documents to him as an excuse to badger him. Her voice is sickly sweet to the point I feel like puking. Thanks to my sharp sixth sense as a werewolf, I know immediately that Lena has feelings for Callum the first time she follows him into this house. At first, I thought even if this mate bond started from a mistake, at least my daughter, Mia Kilbourne's presence would serve as an anchor for both Callum and me. We'd at least make an effort to keep things peaceful on the surface. But when my five-year-old goes missing, I spend the whole night calling Callum on the phone. All I can hear is a cold, repetitive dial tone in return. The next day, Callum finally comes home, reeking of alcohol and carrying the faintest trace of an unfamiliar perfume. Suddenly, I feel exhausted. I don't even have the energy to fight with Callum anymore. A moment of silence later, I look up at him. "Let's break the bond, Callum." The Alpha, who's used to keeping everything under control at all times, suddenly glares at me with bloodshot eyes. He grabs me by the neck and pins me on the wall immediately, his claws soon tightening around my neck. "Break the bond, you say? What right do you even have to bring that up, Ayla Townsend?"

A unique video went viral overnight. In the video, on a snow-capped mountain peak, my boyfriend, Ted Moretti, knelt on one knee, his expression tender. Amidst applause, the ring on her finger sparkled; it was the ring of the Moretti family's future bride. Within hours, the video topped various trending charts. People hailed it as the most romantic proposal of the year. Anya Rossi later posted a message. "I've been looking forward to this wedding for so long, and now it's finally happening! Thank you!" The comment section was instantly flooded with excited exclamations. "A Mafia family heir and an ordinary woman? I love it!" "It's like something out of a novel." "So enviable." I went to my boyfriend to confirm. Before I could even speak, I heard him talking to a close friend in the study. “Do I have any other choice?” Ted said, a hint of annoyance in his voice. “If I don’t marry her, her gambler father will sell her off.” His friend hesitated. “But what about Carly? She’s been with you for so many years. Aren’t you worried she might lose her mind?” Ted chuckled, unconcerned. “So what if she’s angry? Carly and I have been together for six years. She won’t leave. She can’t leave.” At that moment, something deep inside me seemed to freeze completely. A month later On the same day Ted and Carly got married, I married another man. Our wedding processions met downtown. According to custom, we exchanged bouquets between the two passing wedding cars, and our windows rolled down simultaneously. That’s when Ted saw me. I was wearing a white wedding dress. Not behind him. But in another man’s arms. After knowing Ted Moretti for so many years, his consistently perfect composure crumbled for the first time.