Chapter 1

For three years, I raised the bastard my serpent husband had fathered with my own younger sister.

Because I believed he was mine.

Three years ago, I suffered an accident while pregnant. When I woke up, the pup inside me was gone.

My husband showed me paperwork from a shifter hospital and told me my body could no longer carry the baby, but my sister had agreed to act as my surrogate and preserve my bloodline.

He said the child growing inside her carried my blood.

He said she was only giving birth to him for me.

So no matter how much I hated her, I endured it.

When my sister cramped during heat, I brewed medicine for her.

When pregnancy made her ears painfully sensitive and kept her awake at night, I brushed the knots from her snow-leopard fur and sat beside her bed.

When she went into labor, I knelt outside the delivery room for an entire day and night.

The little snake she gave birth to curled around my wrist, lifted his wet, innocent slit-pupiled eyes to me, and called me Mommy.

Meanwhile, his real mother took my husband into the mating den that should have belonged to me every single night.

Three years ago, I caught them in bed.

In a rage, I slapped them both.

My husband was a black-and-gold king cobra.

He offered no explanation and showed no guilt.

He only wrapped his freezing tail around my ankle and told me that the shock I had caused had sent my father and brother into severe feral episodes. They had been committed to the highest-security shifter containment facility in the country.

If I ever touched my sister again, he would make sure they died in there wearing suppression collars.

For my father, my brother, and the hatchling I believed was my own flesh and blood, I lowered my snow-leopard ears and endured three years of humiliation.

Only after the hatchling’s first-moon celebration did I dare ask my husband to release my family.

He lounged behind his desk, his black tail draped over the edge, and opened a video call.

My father was holding the hatchling.

My brother sat beside my sister, gently brushing out her white tail.

They had never been committed.

For three years, they had been with her the entire time.

They watched me care for her.

Watched me raise her child.

Watched me submit because I was terrified of what might happen to them.

Then my husband casually told me the truth.

My father and brother had been the ones who delivered my sister to his mating den in the first place.

The hospital records were fake.

The surrogacy was fake.

My baby had died in that accident three years ago.

The little snake I had cherished and raised was the bastard my husband had conceived with my sister.

They had even placed bets on how I would react once I found out.

My sister bet I would trash the office.

My father bet I would hurt myself.

My brother bet I would demand they send her away.

My husband bet I would cling to his tail and beg him not to abandon me.

Laughter poured through the phone.

My silver ears slowly flattened beneath the sound.

But I did not scream.

I did not beg.

I wiped away my tears and lifted my head.

“If you want to compensate me, give me one hundred million dollars.”

For the first time, my husband’s smile froze.

Then I named my price for the others.

Fifty million from my father.

Thirty million from my brother.

Three years of servitude. Ten years of marriage. Every time I had called them Dad and Brother.

I was willing to sell all of it.

Once the money arrived, we would be even.

My father and brother called me greedy and vulgar. They said I was unworthy of the snow-leopard bloodline.

My sister pressed herself against my husband, her soft ears lowered as she pretended to plead on my behalf.

My husband opened a drawer and pulled out a bond-dissolution agreement.

My sister had given birth to a male serpent heir.

Only a son born to a legally registered mate could enter the main bloodline and inherit his corporate empire.

So he intended to dissolve our marriage, register my sister as his mate, and legitimize the hatchling.

He told me it was nothing more than paperwork.

His fangs had already marked the back of my neck. His mating venom still lived in my blood. Once the hatchling was entered into the family registry, he would divorce my sister and bring me home again.

“You will always be my mate.”

That was what he said.

I picked up the pen and signed my name without hesitation.