How Does The Story Continue After My Natural Delivery?

At nine months pregnant, I was in the final stretch of my term, and my body heavy with a baby due any day. But my husband, Vito Falcone, underboss of the family, had locked me away. He held me in a sterile underground medical room and injected me with a labor suppressant. As I screamed in agony, he coldly told me to endure it. Because his brother's widow, Scarlett, was expected to go into labor at the exact same time. A blood oath he'd made with his late brother declared that the firstborn son would inherit the family's lucrative West Coast territory. "That inheritance belongs to Scarlett's child," he said. "With Daemon gone, she is utterly alone and destitute. You have my love, Alessia. All of it. I just need her to deliver safely. Then it's your turn." The drug was a constant, agonizing torment. I begged him to take me to a hospital. He grabbed me by the throat, forcing me to meet his icy gaze. "Stop the act! I know you're fine. You’re just trying to steal the inheritance." "To get ahead of Scarlett, you'll stop at nothing." My face was ashen. My body convulsed as I managed a desperate whisper. "The baby's coming. I don't care about the inheritance. I just love you, and I want our child to be born safely!" He sneered. "If you were really that innocent, if you had an ounce of love for me, you wouldn't have forced Scarlett to sign that prenup, waiving her child's inheritance rights." "Don't worry, I'll be back for you after she's given birth. you're carrying my own flesh and blood, after all." He kept a vigil outside Scarlett's delivery room all night. It was only after seeing the newborn in her arms that he remembered me. He finally sent his second in command, Marco, to release me. But when Marco finally called, his voice was shaking. "Boss... the missus and the baby... they're gone." In that moment, Vito Falcone shattered.

I once toyed with a college boy. When he fell in love with me, I ended things. Years later, after he made something of himself, he married me in front of everyone who thought I was lucky to have him. My family had fallen from grace, and to the outside world, I had won the jackpot. What they never saw was what happened behind closed doors. Every night, he brought a different woman home. I never cried. I never made a scene. That only seemed to enrage him more. So he went further. He got his first love, Natalie, pregnant on purpose. When I still stayed calm, he pinned me against the wall and demanded, "Stella, do you even love me?" Later, Natalie and I went into labor on the same night. I dropped to my knees and finally admitted I loved him, begging him to take me to the hospital. He held me tight, almost giddy with satisfaction. "I knew it," he said. "You liar." Then he shoved me aside, picked Natalie up, and walked away without looking back. "I'll take you to the hospital later. The pain of childbirth can be your punishment."

On the day my husband's dying first love gave birth, his father, the Don of the Lupo family, posted ten armed men outside my door. They were on high alert, terrified I might storm the delivery room and disrupt the birth of the first heir to the Lupo family. But I never even touched the door, not even when the newborn's cries echoed down the hall. Luca's mother, the family's Donna, let out a long sigh of relief, her hand tightly gripping the woman's on the hospital bed. "Bianca, we're here. That barren woman, Stella, won't lay a finger on you or my grandson." Luca leaned over, gently wiping the cold sweat from Bianca's brow, his eyes filled with tenderness. "Don't worry, Father's had his men lock down the entire private hospital. If she dares to cause a scene, I'll have her struck from the family records myself." Only after confirming I wouldn't show up to make trouble did he finally relax. He didn't understand. In his eyes, he was just honoring a debt, giving a dying woman a child to carry on her name, helping his first love fulfill her final wish. Why couldn't I just be graceful about it? Why couldn't I see the bigger picture? A satisfied smile touched Luca's lips as he gazed at the swaddled infant. He was even thinking that if I would just swallow my pride, admit I was wrong, and show Bianca a little kindness, he would forgive my previous coldness completely. He'd make it up to me, even offering me the hollow title of the child's mother, allowing me to keep my position as the Underboss's wife. But what he didn't know was that I had already signed the divorce papers my lawyer had drawn up. In a week, I would cut all ties with the Lupo family, take the twins growing inside me and walk away. We would never see each other again, not in this life or the next.

On the day of the earthquake, my sister Elena shoved me off the third floor, then burst into tears and said she had only been trying to save me. Everyone believed her. The only person who stood on my side was Nicolo, the youngest mafia boss Sicily had seen in decades. He lifted me out of the rubble, then proposed to me in front of everyone and said that from that day on, anyone who touched me would answer to him. Two months later, I was pregnant. Nicolo bought an entire island and planted it with my favorite irises for our wedding. My father spent a fortune on a one-of-a-kind gown made just for me. Everyone said I was the most envied woman in the family. Then I went into labor, and both of them disappeared. My father said the family had a deal on the line. Nicolo kissed my swollen belly, murmured that he would be back soon, and promised to bring gifts for me and the baby. Right before I was wheeled into the delivery room, an anonymous video landed on my phone. Nicolo was wearing a groom's suit. Elena stood beside him with a hand resting on her pregnant stomach. She was wearing my wedding dress. Her arm was looped through my fiance's as if she had won him fair and square. At the end of the clip, my father asked in a lowered voice, "If you and Valentina stay married only on paper, what happens to the child she gives birth to?" Nicolo was quiet for two seconds before he answered. "Valentina grew up with everything. Elena spent her whole life carrying the stain of being illegitimate. Her child will not grow up the same way." So all that tenderness had never been for me. It had all been for Elena. Fine. They could have each other.

I was once the cherished princess of the Silver Moon Pack, adored by all. Back then, I fell for Kael, one of the pack's rogues. But when I grew bored of our little fling, I cast him aside without a second thought. Years later, my pack was destroyed and my parents were killed. Kael, however, had risen to become the Alpha of a powerful new pack. He claimed me, forcing me to become his Luna. Everyone said I was lucky, but they didn't know the truth. They didn't know that he brought different she-wolves back to our territory every night. And through our mate bond, every moment of their intimacy seared my soul like a blazing fire. I never cried, never protested, simply enduring it all in silence. But my silence only made Kael more volatile. This time, he went a step further. He got his Beta, Chole, pregnant. Still, I remained calm. Enraged, Kael slammed me against a rough stone wall. "Elara, do you love me or not?" I had thought his outbursts were a twisted sign of his love, that he was waiting for me to break. But then, Chole and I went into labor at the same time. I begged him to take me to the pack hospital first, and wanted to tell him that I had no choice when I rejected him back then. He pulled me into a tight embrace, only to shove me away moments later. "See? I knew you would break." "Drop the act. Do you really think you're still that high and mighty princess?" He ignored my pleas, ignored the life of his own pup inside me. He swept Chole into his arms and left without a backward glance. His cold voice echoed through our mind-link. "Don't worry, I'm not abandoning you." "You deserve to feel a fraction of the pain I felt when you cast me aside. Savor it."

“Your body is made to carry my pup! Do that without objection and leave after giving birth to him,” Travis husked, his voice causing vibrations on earth. Rhea Duncan stared at him unblinkingly and scoffed, “I didn’t want to stay here anymore either. I’m still enduring your annoying nature because I have no choice.” • Rhea Duncan was inseminated by her best friend, Phoebe Barton, so that she could snatch her boyfriend from her. Her scheme was successful, but what Phoebe didn’t know was that she had just made her best friend a surrogate mother to the most eligible and enigmatic man in the country, and the alpha of his pack. What happens when a random human invades Alpha Travis’s world unexpectedly? What happens when Rhea Duncan realizes that the world she assumed was fiction is actually real, and she has just become a surrogate mother for the leader of that world? Will they accept that it is fate or just an accident?