Zombies In Left For Dead

The marking ceremony had reached the moment when the Luna crown should be exchanged, but my mate in name only still refused to lower his head. Once Drake Blackwood bit the side of my neck and completed the marking, our 66th ceremony would finally become real. Yet his eyes stayed fixed on his phone, and he did not even look at me. All because his widowed sister-in-law, Scarlett Moore, had posted a claim-release statement an hour earlier. Her late husband had been Drake’s older brother. Under pack law, Drake was obligated to protect her. Attached to her post was a ticket for a private pack flight, showing that she would land in an hour. Drake suddenly rose and announced in a low voice to the elders and pack members that the marking ceremony would be postponed. Then he left me standing there alone, turning me into a joke before the entire pack. I calmly packed away the Luna crown, calmly apologized to the guests, and calmly saw everyone off. After that, I opened Scarlett’s latest post on the MoonNet feed. In the photo, Drake stood beside her, holding out a newly hunted moonstone. I gave a bitter smile and called my birth parents through the private pack link. “Father, Mother, I’m willing to come back now.” “I’ll accept the marriage alliance for the Frostvale Pack.”

As Gamma of the Creed Pack, I'd held the Northern Border alone for three full years. Every time I called in to ask when I could come home, my mate — the Alpha of Creed — picked up the phone himself. He told me the rogues weren't cleared. He told me the rival packs were still circling. He said, "Nora. One more year. Once we have completely eliminated all our enemies, I will hold the grandest mating ceremony for you. I swear it on the Moon." I believed him. When I dragged myself out of a pile of dead rogues with a silver arrowhead still lodged an inch from my heart, bleeding too fast for a medevac, my warriors had to shift and run me back in wolf form all the way to Creed territory. The moment we crossed the border, I saw fairy lights strung from every streetlamp along the road to the pack house. Pack wolves on the sidewalks were talking loud, smiling at each other. "The Alpha's Mating Ceremony is tonight. He's taking the Elder's daughter as Luna. Three years of peace on the border. It's a good time to be Creed." I coughed dark blood into the fur on the back of my warrior's neck and laughed, short and bitter. He hadn't needed me holding the border. He just hadn't wanted me home.

During the pack's wilderness training, my adopted sister, Tessa, shoved me from a cliffside thick with wolfsbane. My Alpha, Fenrir, turned and left with Tessa feigning injury in his arms, leaving me for dead at the bottom of the ravine. I died instantly, but my soul lingered, watching everything with cold detachment. I watched as Tessa's tearful complaints swayed him into blaming me for my own disappearance. "Will Selene ever stop causing me trouble?" "She's weak and always looking for trouble. How could she possibly be fit to be our Luna?" He had no idea I was already dead at the bottom of that cliff choked with wolfsbane. Five whole days. The poison hit my bloodstream like liquid fire, racing through my veins with merciless speed. As my body decayed under the moonlight, my love for him faded with it. The title of Luna, the magnificent coronation I had dreamed of, everything I once cherished was now meaningless. The Selene who loved him was well and truly dead.

On my wedding day, the first love of my boyfriend appeared and declared she wanted my place at the altar. Sobbing theatrically, she pleaded, "Claire, I’m seriously ill. You have your whole life to be with Evan. Just let me have this wedding." And my boyfriend backed her up without hesitation. "Claire, you’re already pregnant with my child, and we’ve signed the marriage papers. You’ve got everything you need. This wedding? It doesn’t matter." The guests gawked, while I stood there as the punchline of their jokes. But instead of causing a scene, I kept my composure. That same day, I booked an abortion and looked his first love straight in the eye with a smile. "Sure, take the wedding, and take him too. He’s all yours."

Four months before my mating ceremony with Alpha Marcus, his mother pulled me aside with that familiar look of disdain. "You're just a common Omega who don't understand proper pack etiquette. How can you possibly stand beside my son as Luna?" Her solution? Ship me off to some specialized Luna training academy to learn "proper manners." Marcus wrapped his arms around me that night, his breath warm against my ear. "It's all for our future, Sylvia. Trust me." My heart melted. Of course I trusted him. I would have done anything for him. I never imagined that the so-called Luna Etiquette Academy was nothing but a torture chamber designed to break female wolves. Four months of hell. Four months of having twisted ideologies beaten into me: "Lunas must submit to Alphas." Question anything, and silver whips would tear your skin apart. I lost my ability to shift completely. When I finally escaped that nightmare, I discovered the horrifying truth. Marcus hadn't sent me there to better myself. He'd sent me there to get me out of the way—so I couldn't interfere with his childhood sweetheart Victoria's mating ceremony. But when I exposed the academy's brutal reality at that very ceremony, when Marcus finally learned what he'd put me through, the powerful Alpha completely lost his mind.

Elena Shaw is the wife of Henry Leone, the current head of the Monraven-based Mafia family in Newshire. She has been married to him for two years, but he has never once slept with her. Late one night, she inadvertently sees Henry relieving his desires while listening to a woman's voice. The voice belonged to Irene Shaw, her adopted younger sister and Henry's ex-fiancee. The year Elena turned 18, a DNA report changed both hers and Irene's fates. Elena is the real heir of the Shaw family, who had been taken at a young age and discarded abroad in Etolia. Meanwhile, Irene is the one who has taken her place in the Shaw family, receiving all of the love and glory that should've belonged to Elena. When Elena is brought back to the Shaw family, she replaces Irene as Henry's fiancee. However, Henry only marries her to take revenge against her for "ruining Irene's life". Even the fact that he had once saved her life turns out to be part of an elaborate lie. After learning the truth, Elena doesn't hesitate to leave. Once she disappears from Henry's world, the usually calm and collected Henry loses his mind.

Jean Buentura said, "Promise, I'll come back to you. I don't know when, but I will keep my promise to you, Calvin. Jean Buentura's last words before she went with her mother to Paris. She chose her mother for the sake. She broke up with Calvin because of her mother's wishes. Even though it was painful for her to leave the man she loved, she still managed to leave her husband They really love each other. And after seven years, Jean is back to fulfill her promise to Calvin Roswell. The man she loved and the one she wants to be with forever. "I'll do everything just to have you back, Calvin. Even if there are many other women around you, I'll do anything to get back to you. I'll be your wife forever and ever."

After I was reborn, when Blake's childhood sweetheart Catherine cut a lock of my hair during a party dare — again — I didn't do what I did in my past life. I didn't shear off all her hair in front of everyone and turn her into a bald wolf. I didn't lose control and storm into the Council of Elders when Blake defended her, threatening to sever our mate bond. Instead, I calmly removed the Luna's crown from my head and placed it on Catherine's. "The crown's hers now. Have fun with her." I put on my coat and walked out of the estate without looking back. It wasn't that I wanted to bow to Catherine. But in my past life, after I severed the bond with Blake, things went horribly wrong. He threw me into a cell made of pure silver, like I was some irredeemable criminal, and left me there while the metal scorched my skin day and night. When I finally escaped, I was poisoned by a witch from a rival pack. Dying from the pain, I abandoned every shred of my dignity and crawled to the doors of the Temple of the Moon Goddess, begging him to let the witch give me the antidote. He was kissing Catherine. He didn't even tell his guards to let me in. I died from the poison — one day before my father, the Alpha King, came to find me. I refused to meet that fate again. So I was done with Blake.

On the night I heard the rumor that my husband; My Alpha. The man who holds dear to my heart impregnated another lady. I couldn't believe my eyes. He desperately needed an heir and hence I'm not showing evidence of conceiving anytime soon. But what shock my heart; I was wrongly accused of poisoning the same lady who has sworn to scatter my marriage. My husband neither believed me or look second into my eyes for truth. He sent me to prison, despite all my pleading. But, the moon goddess is busy working for me. I'm with child! And once I'm out of here, the world will burn to my feet.

After fifteen years away, I was finally brought back to the DeLuca family. I thought I was returning to my real home. Instead, I walked into a house where the adopted daughter wanted me dead, my father treated me like a burden, and my brothers would rather watch me bleed than make her cry. On my first day back, she set dogs on me. That night, I was dragged to the top of the observatory and forced to apologize to her. When I fell from the tower covered in blood, they still called me a liar. Because in the DeLuca family, I may have been the real daughter by blood— but she was the daughter they loved. She thought she could bully me, poison me, and freeze me to death without consequence. She was wrong. Because the night I nearly died, my mother finally chose me—and turned a gun on the whole DeLuca family.