A Study of Courtship - Chapter 18: Sapphire Comes Home

This stands at the forefront of strategy guides to Life (a shitty video game)!

Someone once saw me at the end of the world and respectfully called me the serpent that coils around the world—Jörmungandr.Someone once gazed upon my form at the edge of the Underworld and called me an ancient serpent—Satan.I was also feared by the gods and was called the hundred-headed dragon—Typhon.I have had many names—the serpent of creation, the serpent of sacrifice, the serpent of ceremony, the serpent of the world...But I have wandered through the chaos and arrived at the wilderness. There is only one divine name—the Primordial Ancient Serpent, the origin of everything.

On the night of her engagement, Stella Norton, the adopted and unworthy second daughter of James Norton, is accused of infidelity and replaced by her own sister.Humiliated and heartbroken, Stella is cast out of the hall under her father’s orders while her mother looks on.In a daze of pain and betrayal, she wanders into a club, desperate to drown her sorrow—only to fall into the arms of a stranger ~Adrian Carter~ whose presence feels dangerously magnetic.By morning, she wakes to a shocking reality. Adrian holding out a marriage certificate. “Mate, we’re married,” he said.“What mate?”“What marriage?”“We were never school mates, how do you call me mate?” She shrieked.Adrian Carter, the cold and mysterious heir of the Carter Empire had a secret no one knows…he is the Alpha of the most powerful pack in Crown City.But fate doesn’t stop at secrets. As their worlds collide, Stella discovers that her own past is far from ordinary.Hidden truths, prophecies, bonds, and dark forces begin to rise—testing not only their love but their very fate.Will their marriage survive the storm of destiny?Can love survive when destiny itself demands blood and truth?Or will it consume them both?

The daughter of a duke, the stuttering Maximilian, married a knight of lowly status at her father’s coercion.