Arcane Exfil - Chapter 30: Mettle

I scoffed. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”Cade squeezed his face into displeasure as he stepped closer to me, “What doesn’t matter anymore?” His blue eyes turned a shade darker than they should.“You are our mate, Isn’t that what you wanted all along?” Kael spoke and I snapped my gaze at him.It was too late! Nothing could ever make me want them. I loathed them so much that it hurt. Perhaps that’s what happens to a broken soul who was given a second chance.“Iris…” Zane called. He was the calmest of the three, his eyes were soft, trying to reach out to me and I stepped back avoiding him like a plague.They were monsters. All three of them.I find it hard to breathe but this was my decision to make. Gone was the fragile old me.“I, Iris Orlene…” I stared at the triplets dead in the eyes, inhaling sharply. Not a single drop of emotion was left in me.“Reject you all three Alphas; Cade, Kael, and Zane Verek to be my mate.”***Iris Oren, once the cherished daughter of Alpha Oren Roland and Luna Selene of the Blackbane Pack, I faced a dire accusation of treason for allegedly poisoning the former beta who’s now the current alpha, Alpha Darius Verek, the current ruthless leader who betrayed and murdered my parents when I was just a kid, accused me of their murder and took over the alpha throne. Now, I am a despised maid in my own pack. I am publicly condemned in the council room, surrounded by hostile pack members, including Alpha Darius, his sons who are triplets, Cade, Kael, and Zane, my childhood sweet hearts, and my former best friend Liora. Despite my weak protests of innocence, no one believed me, and Darius sentenced me to death by being buried alive but the council pleaded as he shifted the punishment to 200 strokes of whips with sulfur powder but unknown to me, it was changed to a silver powder, very dangerous to werewolves.During this brutal public punishment, I couldn’t make it, I died.Waking up again, I realised I'd been brought back to my past life, on my 18th birthday, days before my death.In my past life, I am a weak and wolfless omega who can’t even defend herself and has loved the triplets so dearly that I could do anything for them without considering my dignity. Now I am reborn, I am determined to change my fate.

Waking up in the middle of that, she nearly screamed—until she saw him.Her cold, obsessive husband. The man she had spent an entire lifetime running from.In her past life, she trusted the wrong people. She abandoned the man who truly loved her and ended up betrayed, ruined, and dead.This time? Ha! Divorce? Dream on.Since fate gave her another chance, she’d play the game her way. Stay mysterious, act sweet, and turn every schemer against each other.And as for the dangerously obsessed husband?Let’s see who traps who first!

Upon opening his eyes, there before him was a bridal chamber adorned with red candles and windows.A bride dressed in a phoenix coronet and robes of rank sat upright on the nuptial bed, her face covered by a red bridal veil.Zhao Rong rubbed his sleepy eyes, “Have I become a groom? Oh, and a junior one at that.”Understood.His facial expression brewed for a moment before he twisted his mouth into a smile, “Wait a second...”Huh, something's amiss.The bride is my childhood sweetheart who also harbored a crush on me?Oh, then that's alright.This is very fitting.Zhao Rong stepped forward, happily lifting the red bridal veil, “Hey hey, my lady, where are you running off to?”-------------In the great era of contention, the tide of the times surged forth, and Confucian Scholar Zhao Rong bravely faced it head-on. Not only did he seek to catch up to the footsteps of his childhood sweetheart turned Sword Immortal Lady, but he also wished to witness firsthand the dispute that engulfed more than half of the Cultivation World, the strife among the various schools of thought...—————[Slow-burn], [Non-cliché], [Non-level-up], [Romance plot], [Sweet without the angst]This book is also known as “I Have a Fox Fairy Wife”, “Rebirth: I Deliver Parcels in the Otherworld”, “Zhao Ziyu, The Smirking Scholar” “I Really Don't Want to Be a Kept Man”...