Playboy Alpha and His Contract Mate

The Scars She Hid From The World

REGINA MCBRIDE

The heavy iron gates of the Wilderness Correction Camp groaned as they released me after three years of state-sponsored hell. I stood on the dirt road, clutching a plastic bag that held my entire life, waiting for the family that claimed they sent me there for "rehab." My brother, Brady, picked me up in a luxury SUV only to throw me out onto a deserted highway in the middle of a brewing storm. He told me I was a "public relations nightmare" and that the rain might finally wash the "stink" of the camp off me. He drove away, leaving me to limp miles through the mud on a snapped ankle. When I finally dragged myself to our family estate, my mother didn't offer a hug; she gasped in horror because my muddy clothes were ruining her Italian marble. They didn't give me my old room back. Instead, they banished me to a moldy gardener’s shack and hired a "babysitter" to make sure I didn't embarrass them further. My sister, Kaleigh, stood there in white cashmere, pretending to cry while clinging to her fiancé, Ambrose—the man who had once been mine. They all treated me like a volatile junkie, refusing to acknowledge that Kaleigh was the one who planted the drugs in my bag three years ago. They wanted to believe I was broken so they wouldn't have to feel guilty about the "wellness retreat" that was actually a torture chamber. I sat in the dark of that shed, feeling the cooling gel on the cigarette burns that covered my arms, and realized they had made a fatal mistake. They thought they had erased me, but I had returned with a roadmap of scars and a hidden satellite phone. At dinner, I didn't beg for their love. I simply rolled up my sleeves and showed them the price of their silence. As the wine spilled and the lies crumbled, I sent a single text to the only person I trusted: "I'm in. Let them simmer." The hunt was finally on.

Modern Revenge Scheming

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Emily's POV

"Farm!" The Task Giver's ugly voice rang.

It's like the seventh time he'd decided another girl's fate. And Zyna wasn't just some girl. She was my friend, at least we were quite close in the Groomers school. It's just a posh name for a place they schooled orphans.

I heard my heart thud in my ears. I kept praying and hoping that mine would turn out differently.

I quite enjoyed sciences, I can't be doomed to a life on the Crestview farm.

"This one," He looked up at me from behind his huge mahogany desk. The man opened his teeth to reveal a very scary set with prolonged canines.

I shivered, hoping in vain that they would not smell my fear.

But the laughter that they burst into confirmed it. I was so scared, I almost pissed my pants.

"What's your name?" He asked me.

"Emily." I replied, looking away.

"What's your wolf name?" He asked, getting pissed.

I adjusted my stance and said the name I'd carefully kept a secret for as long as I discovered it on my necklace, the one thing I have from my mom who's image gets more blurry as the day goes by. "Vynara, Vynara Baron." I said, managing to get the words out before I choked on them.

"Baron?" Task Giver asked, looking up. I knew I had something like an oath with bad luck, but I honestly didn't think it was this bad. Why is he paying special attention to me?! I kept asking myself,

While he looked me up and down like a strange specie, I let my eyes wander his office. It was a very big room in the school. The biggest, even larger than our induction hall.

The only ceremony that was ever held was the one the little orphans had when they were scouted from all around Crestview.

It's a big city with three major wolf packs, equally strong and unable to take out each other, and so they all lived in faux unity.

"Is she mute?" He asked, glaring at me.

"No sir." I replied quickly.

"She's a dreamer." A man who stood right next to him said. "The Mistress says so." He added

I shot him a nasty look, which earned a feral assault on my cheeks.

I gasped in shock and pain, but held my tears back.

The Task Giver sucked his teeth, while indecently looking me up and down.

"How old are you?" He asked.

"Old enough to see my mark." I replied to him.

"I'm assuming you have?" He asked, looking strangely at me. But it was forgivable, I did give a strange answer.

"No." I replied to him, smiling.

It was no longer a thing of sadness being a wolf without a wolf mark.

I hadn't had my first shift yet, but I knew to expect it in the next three years, and I had a very big hunch that I'd have a big, bad, beautiful wolf.

"We'll send this one to the Damon palace." The Task Givers smiled very sinisterly.

"Why?" The man who had the most annoying input I'd ever heard earlier, asked him.

"She is just what they deserve." He said. "And I hear they are in need of a new maid."

"What happened to the old one?" I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.

"She died." He smiled again.

And against what he'd have imagined, I smiled back. They weren't gonna see my fears.

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