The Rejected Substitute: Her Secret White Wolf Identity

For three years, I acted as a substitute for my twin sister, married to the most powerful Alpha on the East Coast. To the world, I was Isabella, the spoiled princess. To my husband, Donovan, I was a nuisance he couldn't wait to divorce.

I counted down the seconds until the contract expired so I could take my money and disappear.

But three days before my freedom, his mistress was kidnapped. The rogues demanded a trade: the wife for the mistress. Donovan didn't hesitate. He dragged me to the warehouse and threw me to the wolves.

To prove he didn't care about me, the rogue handed him a silver dagger.

Donovan looked me in the eye and drove the blade into my thigh.

As I screamed in agony, the smell of burning flesh filling the air, he stepped over my bleeding body to carry his mistress to safety. He left me there to die on the cold concrete, convinced he was punishing a cruel woman.

He didn't know I was the one who had secretly given my rare blood to save that same mistress just a week prior.

He didn't know I wasn't Isabella. He didn't know he had just tortured Ava—his true Fated Mate hiding in plain sight.

When the real Isabella returned to claim the fortune, Donovan finally realized the woman in his house smelled wrong. He tore the world apart to find me, eventually falling to his knees in the rain to beg for a second chance.

But I just looked at him, my hand resting in the grip of a new, kinder Alpha, and whispered:

"I reject you."

Chapter 1

Ava POV:

Only twenty-four hours left.

The voice of my mother, the Luna of the Miller Pack, echoed in my head through the mind-link. It was cold, sharp, and purely transactional. The contract expires tomorrow at midnight, Ava. The fifty million dollars will be transferred, and you will be free. Do not mess this up in the final stretch.

I sat on the edge of the massive, cold bed in the guest wing of the Blackwood Estate. I didn't reply. I just cut the link, silence filling my mind again.

Three years. I had survived three years in this hell.

To the world, I was Isabella Miller, the proud, somewhat spoiled daughter of the Miller Alpha, married to the most powerful man on the East Coast, Alpha Donovan Blackwood. But that was a lie. Isabella had run away with her human lover three days before the wedding. My father, desperate for the Blackwood fortune to save our crumbling pack, had forced me into the white dress.

I was Ava. The "useless" twin. The Omega who couldn't shift, whose wolf was too weak to surface. I was the Shadow Luna.

I walked to the mirror. The woman staring back looked tired. My skin was pale, my eyes hollow. I touched the silver necklace around my throat. It was lined with a thin layer of wolfsbane, just enough