Substitute Marriage: Awakening The Dragon King

By royal decree, I was arranged to marry the Sixth Lord, Prince Bronson.

But before the scroll could be sealed, my adoptive sister Blaire fell to her knees, fabricating a divine omen to steal my fiancé.

She forced me to take her place and marry the deposed Fourth Lord, Jonah Montgomery. Everyone knew Jonah was a crippled prince, his dragon core poisoned by Dragonslayer Gold, rotting away in a dark estate. My adoptive family eagerly threw me to the wolves, sending me off in a battered wooden cart. At Jonah's gates, the Queen's sadistic attendant even tried to force me to walk barefoot across white-hot iron plates just to burn me alive before I could see my husband.

Blaire gloated, entirely convinced she had stolen the ultimate prize. She thought I was just a dragonless orphan being sent to die beside a rotting corpse.

What she didn't know was that I had been reborn too.

In our past life, it took decades of my secret healing arts and political maneuvering to drag the cowardly Bronson to the throne. Blaire had gladly stolen my greatest burden.

And the "dying" cripple I was sent to marry? Deep within his poisoned marrow slept the most terrifying, pure-blooded Golden Dragon this kingdom had seen in three centuries.

I stepped into his freezing, death-filled bedchamber, grabbed his wrist, and smiled.

"Swear to be my sharpest sword, and I will make you a king."