Goodbye Days

My parents adopted a kid, and I treated him like treasure. Then he started looking uncannily like my husband, Brian. And I caught him whispering "Mom" to my sister, Ruby. Yeah. Plot twist: Brian had been cheating on me the whole time. With Ruby. They played house behind my back, smiling for family pics—with my parents' blessing. When the truth blew up, Ruby had the audacity to beg me to step aside. My parents told me to get over it. And that kid I loved like my own? Told me I deserved to die. But here's the kicker—Brian wouldn't even sign the divorce. Dude broke down, said he still loved me, swore the kid was a mistake. So I smiled and said, "Cool. You've got seven days. Prove it, and I'll forgive you." He went full simp mode. Emptied his bank account, treated me like I was gold. Even kicked Ruby down and yelled at her to apologize. Everyone thought I'd cave. Then the cops called, asked him to ID a body—and Brian totally lost it. He never knew I'd been dead this whole time. The Reaper gave me one last week to say goodbye.

My mate, David Hayes, who is the Alpha, has been cold to me ever since he claimed me as Luna of the pack. He assumes that I gave him a dose of pheromones under the full moon. That was why I got the chance to mate with him and ended up being pregnant so quickly. So, as an Alpha, and for the sake of his reputation, he decides to mark me. That is how I became his "mystery Luna". The pack only knows that he has a Luna, but no one knows it's me. When I gave birth to our pup the next year, he showed no interest in the slightest. When a lupine maid brings the newborn to him, he glances at the pup with disgust and turns away. "Let's hope he's nothing like his mother—scheming, manipulative, and a disgrace to the pack!" I lie in bed, weak and exhausted, but the tears won't stop. … Today, David's childhood friend, Sophia Sinclair, returned to the pack. The moment he heard the news, he lit up with excitement. That night, after coming back from Sophia's place, drunk out of his mind, he pulled our pup into his arms. My son, Joseph Hayes, was over the moon. He snuggled closer to him and whispered to me, "Mom, he hugged me on his own… Does that mean he accepts me now?" I held him tight, tears stinging my eyes. "His mate has come back. We're leaving the pack." What he didn't know was that the healer had already told me I have Wolf Spirit Degeneration, which leaves me only three days to live. Before I die, I'll take Joseph to my parents, where he'll be loved and cared for, and not hated and abandoned by his own father. In three days, David will never see me or our pup again—and for the rest of his life.

Natalie Hale spent five years loving a man who never learned to look at her. When Ethan Cole's first love returns and he asks for a divorce, Natalie doesn't beg. She doesn't break. She asks for one month, thirty days for him to fulfill every promise he made and never kept. A candlelit dinner, a drive-in movie, an amusement park in autumn, Small things. The things that were supposed to mean us. He agrees, then he cancels and then he lies. Then she waits alone, again and again, learning in real time what she already knew in her bones, she was never his priority. But something shifts during that month. He begins to see her: her beauty, her grace, the way a room moves when she enters it. Too late, too slow, and far too little. On the thirtieth day, Natalie signs the papers, leaves a cup of coffee on the counter made exactly to his taste, and walks out the door. Three years later, she walks back in not to him, but into the same room. Radiant, accomplished and accompanied by a man who has never once made her wait. And Ethan Cole finally understands the difference between losing someone and letting them go. He let her go. She lost nothing.

I was three months pregnant when the car crash happened. In those final moments of fading consciousness, I frantically dialed Damian’s private, encrypted line—the one meant only for emergencies. He never picked up. By the time I was rushed into surgery, I received a crushing blow: Damian had forcibly reassigned my lead private physician to the South District. He needed the best doctor to treat his childhood sweetheart, Evelyn, who had just been widowed. When I finally drifted awake through a haze of agony, my trembling fingers swiped open Instagram. I saw Evelyn’s latest post: “I knew that no matter the distance or the time, Damian would move heaven and earth to reach me. He even brought his Chief Physician just to help me heal from my grief.” In the accompanying photo, Damian—a man known for his cold, lethal eyes—was gazing at the woman beside him with a tenderness I hadn't seen in years. While I was clawing my way back from the brink of death, fighting to save our child, my husband was playing protector to another pregnant woman. A hollow, self-deprecating laugh escaped my lips. Without a second thought, I slid the wedding band off my ring finger. I opened my inbox and hit "Confirm" on the invitation from the world’s most elite International Finance Institute. If Evelyn is all he cares about, I’ll give them my blessing. In seven days, I will vanish from his world forever—and I’m taking my baby with me.

Having an Awakenist as my wife meant enduring her monkish attitude toward sex. We could only be intimate on the sixteenth of every month. Every detail—my position, rhythm, even my expression—had to follow her rigid rules. If I showed too much pleasure, she would immediately rise and leave. We had been married for five years. Was I ever tired of this? Yes. Still, I always gave in. I accepted these limitations because I loved her. "The Saintess loves me too," I told myself. That faith shattered the day I was sent to extinguish a hotel fire. Amid the flames, I found my wife pressed close to a man in disheveled clothes. Between their arms was a young boy.

It was my birthday. I thought he would take me to see the fireworks by the sea, but he showed up with another woman and her child. “Vera has a kid with her, and it’s inconvenient for them. Be a little understanding. She doesn’t know her way around here, and she has a lot of luggage. I’ll just drop them at the hotel.” He said it so casually, as if he were just explaining some trivial, everyday chore. It was that very gentleness of his that made me feel like I was so unreasonable getting angry over it. He helped them into the car. He leaned down to buckle the seatbelt on the child. Then, he turned to me with a smile. “I’ll be right back. Don’t overthink things.” I stood by the roadside and watched them drive away like a picture-perfect little family. As night fell, the sea breeze turned sharp and biting. Still, I waited until a notification of Vera Cannon’s social feed update lit up my screen. He was holding her daughter in his arms. They were watching the fireworks by the beach. It was a surprise I had planned for my own birthday. The comments poured in. [What a perfect match. What a beautiful little family!] Someone asked him why he was not picking me up. He just smiled and said, “Indy is very patient. She won’t be mad.” At that moment, my birthday cake melted into a puddle of frosting. I finally realized that he had not done that to be cruel to me. He was certain that I would always wait for him. However, even the warmest heart grew cold when neglected too many times. The waves crashed against the shore, over and over. With each crash, another shred of my hope washed away. This time, I was not going to wait for him to come back.