Rejected By My Mate, Claimed By His Cousin
“Damned curses and blood oaths,” Atlas growled.
His eyes blazed, not just with desire but with anguish and torment. My heart ached, and my fingers itched to smooth the worry from his face, but… they were tied.
“You set my soul on fire, Aria. You’re mine to touch, to ruin, to love in ways no one else ever will. I don’t care if the world burns, if I burn with it. But I’ll be damned if anyone else lays a hand on you. If the goddess wants you, she’ll have to rip you from my cold, dead hands.”
“Oh, Atlas,” was all I could breathe as he thrust deep, tearing through every last wall I had left.
—
Aria Davenport’s life was a mess. Bullied, overlooked, and raised like a side character in her own fairy tale, she figured her mate bond, if it ever showed up, would be underwhelming.
Instead, the universe gifted her Kaiden Thorne: her Alpha, longtime crush, and the heartbreak she never saw coming.
He rejected her in public, crowned her stepsister as Luna, and for good measure exiled her with a kill-on-sight order.
Still not enough? He topped it off by offering her as payment to an aging Alpha desperate for heirs.
Escaping that horror, Aria barely survived long enough to be found by Atlas Cooper, Kaiden’s sworn enemy and the broodiest Alpha in the region. Naturally, a second mate bond formed the moment their eyes met.
Perfect. Except Atlas wanted nothing to do with the bond, or with her. Maybe both.
The truth was Atlas refused to mark her. Nine mates had died by his side, and he couldn’t risk Aria becoming the tenth. And while he kept his distance, Aria was left to untangle more than heartbreak and second chances.
Because her past held a truth powerful enough to destroy packs. Someone had already killed to bury it. Now someone else was hunting her to finish the job. Aria was being hunted for reasons she didn’t understand, caught between two powerful Alphas, and standing on the edge of a truth that could shatter everything.
Can she survive when claiming either Alpha could cost her everything? And when the secret comes to light, will she rise as the salvation of the packs, or their undoing?