เรื่องสั้นแนว Feel-Good Story และนิยาย Bias Defy Fate

When I'm eight years old, my dad gets remarried. Then, when my stepmother gets pregnant, she decides I'm an eyesore. Dad shoves a train ticket into my hand. "I can't afford to raise you anymore. Your aunt's working down south. Go to her." I don't even remember what my aunt, Ava Shore, looks like anymore. All I know is that she left home at 18 and cut contact with Dad years ago. I spend a day and a night on that train, getting more scared by the minute. What if Aunt Ava doesn't want me, either? When I finally step off the train and exit the station, I'm greeted by an MPV. The door swings open, and a woman with big, blown-out curls and sunglasses steps out in high heels. "So you're the daughter my brother decided he didn't want?" I nod, clutching the straps of my duffel in a death grip. She crouches and studies me carefully. "Your hair's a mess. You look like some neglected stray." Before I can respond, a boy about my age pops his head out from behind her. "Mom, she looks awful." Aunt Ava immediately reaches back and twists his ear. "Say that again if you have the guts. If anyone at your school even thinks about bullying her, I'm coming for you first." The boy bares his teeth and hisses in pain, but he still reaches out and takes my duffel from me. A warm southern breeze washes over me, and tears form in my eyes. Suddenly, I don't feel so scared anymore.

Years ago, a witch cast a prophecy over me. She said I was the cursed wolf, an abomination who would bring the pack to ruin. My parents believed it completely. Locked me in the cellar that same night and left me to starve. My older sister, Sia, fought like hell to keep me alive. When the pack came for me, she stood in front of every single one of them, crying as she tried to shield me. "She's not an abomination. She's never hurt anyone." Because of those words, when the Alpha fell for her but still feared me, that so-called abomination, I volunteered for exile. Walked away from the pack forever. Before I left, I gave Sia a charm. Told her, if anyone ever laid a hand on her, just speak into it, and I'd come running. No questions asked. Three years later, I had clawed my way to Alpha of the Wintercrest Pack through sheer power. I was about to tell Sia the news when her distress signal hit me. My blood went cold. I raced back to my old pack, only to walk right into the Alpha's covenant ceremony with another woman. That smug witch was up there, chanting blessings over the happy couple. My parents stood by, grinning. And Sia? Nowhere. I scanned the crowd again. Still nothing. My chest tightened. Let me be crystal clear. If anything happened to Sia, I would give them a real abomination to fear.

My fiancé, Alpha Theron, was the star player on the pack hockey team. Yet even as his mate, the pack mocked me as a fat pig that had wandered in among wolves. But when he was attacked, I was the one who stepped in front of him. Hockey sticks came down on my back and my shoulders. The pain cut to the bone, and I gritted my teeth and took it. That overweight body everyone despised was the only reason not one blow landed on him. It was also what finally made the old Luna nod and agree to let me marry into the family. But while I lay unconscious from my injuries, Theron announced that he would mark my stepsister Hannah, the cheer captain, instead. Not only that. Hannah posted videos online of the two of us practicing cheer routines together. "Who wants to watch a pig dance sexy? The Alpha had his reasons for turning her down." "Look at all that useless fat. Is that really a wolf?" Then, while the mockery was at its worst, she asked me to forgive her, as if none of it had been on purpose. When my heart was already ash, my father and my stepmother threw me out of the house. "All that fat, clumsy and ugly, and she cannot even hold on to her own mate." "She is that fat and still joined the cheer squad. Now the rest of us get mocked too. How humiliating!" As a rogue, I swallowed every kind of suffering there is. In one year I lost over a hundred pounds and became the brightest cheer sweetheart in the league. Then I turned around and cheered for the most valuable player on the ice. Theron heard about it and came running. He dropped to his knees with red eyes and clung to the hem of my skirt. "You were my love, my mate! What does that idiot who can only swing a stick have that I don't?"