MATED TO THE CEO WHO TRIED TO KILL ME

Mia Hart doesn’t remember the moment she stopped believing in safety—but she remembers the moment she stopped believing in people. Ten years ago, in the dense heart of the Forest of Vale, she was hunted down and nearly killed by the one person she trusted above all others. A boy who was more than he claimed. A boy who changed—into something violent. Something ancient. Something impossible. She never told anyone what she saw. Not the doctors. Not the investigators. Not even herself. Lucien Vale disappeared that same night, leaving behind only blood, shattered memories, and a forest that no one dared return to. Now in her twenties, Mia is drawn back to the past in the most unlikely of places: a top-floor job at a restructured megacorporation called Vale Holdings, in the re-engineered capital of Solarae. It’s sleek. Professional. Safe. Until it isn’t. The company’s most powerful executive, Lucas Vale, is a man of precision, silence, and untouchable influence. He is everything Lucien could have become—if Lucien had survived. But the resemblance is more than passing. Lucas has the same eyes. The same voice. And when he says her name in a meeting she wasn’t supposed to attend, her entire body freezes. Because no one knew she would be there. Except him. Lucas doesn’t offer an apology. He doesn’t offer answers. What he offers is access. To the files. To the upper floors. To the past. As Mia digs deeper into Vale Holdings’ internal records, she finds traces of her father—a man she believed lived and died as a mechanic—embedded in executive archives dating back to the founding of Solarae’s post-collapse economy. There’s a reason she was hired. There’s a reason she survived that night in the forest. And there’s a reason why every step she takes is being watched by people in suits who never introduce themselves. Her bloodline is registered in a program that predates public government: Initiative H, a succession protocol encoded during the first century after Solarae’s restoration. It identifies Mia as a fallback for executive inheritance in the event of destabilization in the primary family line. She is not just an employee. She is a rightful inheritor. And someone inside the company is working to erase her existence. As encrypted warnings begin to appear on her office terminal, as elevators lock her into unauthorized floors, and as security agents begin shadowing her movement, Mia must decide whether to walk away from the empire that nearly killed her—or claim it from the inside. But she’s not the only one remembering that night in the woods. Lucas is watching. And Mia still doesn’t know if he came back to save her… or finish what he started.