Plot Twists Short Stories & Alpha Biological Family Novels

When my stepsister, Kate Lawrence, is poisoned at the full moon ceremony, my father, Jack Blackwood, condemns me at once, convinced that I am the one behind it. He clamps silver chains around me and drags me into the manor's dark underground cell. His eyes burn hatefully as he snarls, "You wretch! How could I have a daughter like you? Rot in here!" I drop to my knees on the cold floor and try to explain, but the sentence he throws over his shoulder as he turns away snuffs out the last of my hope. "Even if she dies in there, no one shall go in! Whoever lets her out will die with her!" The cell severs the mind-link completely, so no one hears me screaming. Seven days later, he finally remembers me, not knowing that I'd already died on the fourth day when the silver burned through to the bone.

The day my twin sister was found, my parents decided that, to make up for everything she had missed, I had to sell all the love I had received over the past eighteen years to a memory bank and deposit the coins into an account set up exclusively for her. My mother's hugs were worth 800,000 coins. My brother's protection was worth 900,000. My fated mate's marriage proposal was worth one million... Every memory had a price. If I refused to sell even one, I would be branded selfish and deemed unworthy of remaining in the family. My Alpha father pushed the bill toward me. “Ten million. All this love should have belonged to your sister in the first place.” “She suffered out there for eighteen years, while you enjoyed eighteen years of love in her place.” I thought they just wanted to teach me a lesson. Until I discovered that once a transaction was completed, the memories sold to the bank could never be recovered. After I sold the memory of my mother singing me to sleep, I could no longer recognize her voice. After I sold the memory of my brother helping me through my first wolf-shifting, even seeing him injured stirred nothing in me but a sense of unfamiliarity. And when I sold the memory of my fated mate proposing to me, he finally panicked. Grabbing my hand with red-rimmed eyes, he asked why I couldn't even remember him. I didn't answer. Because I had already forgotten who he was. For the final transaction, I sold the last memory I had left. It was the night I was six, when my parents had shielded me with their own bodies at the risk of their lives and promised they would never abandon me. I looked at the remaining balance on the bill and sold that promise, too. Once the transaction was complete, my parents sent a message in the family group chat. “Lydia, the test is over.” “We were only afraid you'd become spoiled and refuse to accept your sister, so we wanted to see if you were willing to make sacrifices for her.” I stared blankly at the messages. I didn't recognize a single one of them.

When we were small, a witch named Sybil predicted that my sister would not live past sixteen. Since then, every eye in the family turned toward her. All the love in that house gathered around Aurora and stopped there. Whatever she wanted, whatever she wanted to do, our parents backed her completely. Every scrap of tenderness and every resource they had went to her, while I was left out in the cold, and the things that should have been mine were handed to her too. Even so, I never complained, not once. I knew my sister was someone to be pitied. Then the day of the prophecy came, the day she turned sixteen, and I was the one who ended up poisoned with wolfsbane, of all people, hanging on the edge of death. My parents were busy with her. They decided I was making a scene, and they ordered the guards to throw me out of the castle. My arms and legs had no strength left. I dragged myself toward the doors and called out in a shaking voice, "Dad, Mom, let me in, please, it hurts so much..." Instead, from behind the doors my father's gentle voice said to my sister, "Don't worry, sweetheart. The one causing trouble has been put out. No one is going to take your parents' love away from you again." Hearing that, something in me died for good. With the sound of my family fussing over her drifting through the door, I slowly closed my eyes.

Before our mating ceremony, my mate, Pavel Blackwell, took me and my older sister, Vivienne, out for seafood. The server recognized them and came over smiling. "The usual for you two?" Pavel nodded. He slid into the seat beside Vivienne without a second thought. The crab came out of the steamer, and he cracked the shell open piece by piece and passed the meat to her. I had been put at a spare chair shoved into the aisle, without so much as a dish of sauce in front of me. Halfway through the meal, the server appeared with a couples' silverware set. "Pavel, Vivienne, this is your hundredth visit to us. That means you get your custom set." A line was engraved on the back of each piece. "Pavel and Vivienne. Never apart." The earliest date on the record was three years ago today. It took me a moment to place the date. That was the day a severe allergic reaction sent me into surgery and I nearly didn't make it out. So for the three hours my life hung in the balance, Pavel had not been waiting outside that door at all. Vivienne ran a finger over the engraving and gave a mischievous smile. "Pavel, once you and my little sister are mated, she won't stop you from going out with me, will she?" Pavel ruffled her hair and turned to look at me. "Of course not. She's always been reasonable. "Besides, you and I have known each other for ten years. Ashlyn and I have only known we were fated mates for four. If it bothers her, she can learn to live with it." On the way back, I got into the back seat on my own. The front seat had always belonged to Vivienne. Then the car's voice assistant chimed in. "Welcome aboard, Vivienne! Pavel will get you home safely!" I watched the scenery stream past the window, and suddenly I was tired of all of it. So I took out my phone and sent my father a message. "I agree to the pack's arranged mating." Ten years of closeness had turned the two of them into a habit. Then let me be the one to quit mine. Four years of it.

Since I was little, I could see the souls of dead werewolves. I could even hear them speak. My parents believed a dark witch's prophecy. They thought I carried a vicious curse that would destroy the pack. They poured all their love into my adopted sister, Stella. They wouldn't even look at me. When Stella used her sweet disguise to secure a mating contract with Caleb Cross—the top Alpha heir of the Northern Territory—she became the absolute pride of the family. But right before the mating ceremony, Caleb was ambushed by enemies with silver poison and fell into a deep coma. The Cross family demanded Stella fulfill her contract. They wanted her to strip naked and enter his room every day to help clear the silver poison from his body. She backed away, trembling. "You want me to strip naked every day to hold a man dying of silver poison? Don't think I don't know! The silver poison has made his Alpha wolf completely feral! If he smells a stranger, he could go berserk in his sleep at any moment. I'm not risking my life for a crippled wolf who could go crazy at any second! The engagement is off!" Right at that moment, I saw Caleb's soul leave his body. His tall, wild figure was translucent. Those dominant, dark gold eyes glared at Stella. "I chose the wrong mate. The doctor said I'll wake up if a she-wolf is willing to soothe my feral wolf with her body heat and scent every day. She just has to help me sweat out the silver for the next six months. When I fully wake up, whoever stays by my side for these six months gets my multi-million dollar private island estate on the South Coast and five million dollars in cash. I want this selfish idiot to pay for her betrayal." My eyes instantly lit up. I raised my hand without hesitation. "What if... I sleep with him?" Becoming the almighty Luna didn't appeal to me at all. I just really wanted that estate and the five million dollars.