เรื่องสั้นแนว Healing และนิยาย Bias Family Emotions

My husband doesn't love me or our daughter. It's been six years since she was born, but he's never held her. The doctors say he has an emotional disorder, and that he doesn't know how to express the way he feels. But when his true love returns, he smiles at us for the first time. He even brings our daughter a gift. I think it's because he's finally seen sense… until she and I see the photo he uses as his phone's wallpaper. In it, his eyes are crinkled as he smiles. He has one arm around a little girl whose front tooth is missing, and he holds his true love's hand with the other. My daughter tugs on my hand, and her eyes redden. "Mommy, do you think we should leave? Should we give Daddy three final chances? Let's leave him if he still doesn't want us after that."

After my death, my parents sign an organ donor consent form on my behalf. They have my corneas removed and transplanted onto their beloved adoptive daughter, Grace Lane. She later marries my brother, and they become a true family. Grace and I competed over everything in life, yet I ended up dying with nothing. Now that I've been given a chance to start over, I decide to live life without them. Surprisingly, I find myself getting a happy ending.

My stepson pushes me down from the second floor, all because I accidentally break a bowl. He stands over me, looking down with a cold, emotionless gaze. "You're just a stand-in my grandfather forced on us. Don't even think about replacing my mother!" I stare up at the boy I've raised for eight years, and his indifference cuts deeper than any wound. Blood slowly trickles down from my forehead. Fighting through the pain, I dial a number. "Whatever debt I owed has been paid. It's time for me to leave." Coincidentally, I already have the divorce agreement that his father has signed.

At the annual gala, my father had me marry Asher Ziegler, a rising star in the finance industry whom he had groomed. Back then, I, Maddison Gruber, had no idea that Asher was in love with someone else. Sometime later, my father's company is investigated for product fraud, and his company's stock plummets. He even faces criminal charges. When this happens, Asher immediately brings his first love, Cora Singer, home and tells me outright that he is going to make her his legally wedded wife. My mother-in-law admonishes me. "Your family's bankrupt now, and you're completely barren! Why shouldn't my son remarry?" Asher slides a divorce agreement in front of me, his tone condescending. "Sign this, and I can let you stay here and live alongside Cora." But I say nothing. I merely quietly book a ticket to leave this place. In seven days, I will be following my father down south.

I secretly married my husband for six years, and then his first love came back. I decide to leave with my child and let his first love take her rightful place.

I used to be treated like a princess in Lumenclaw Pack. But the first day after my eighteenth birthday, my Alpha dad brought home a charity case—Callie from the welfare center. Everything flipped. Ryell, my own brother, ditched me for her. Jovan, my future mate? Shielded her. Even Dad called her sweet, kind—"a thousand times better than you." Graduation Day. Strike 101. They picked her. Again. "Aren't I your real family?" Dad hesitated—but only to hide Callie behind him like some precious thing. Her fake tears. His real slap. "Such a petty wolf. I wish I'd never had you." Ryell sneered, "Having a sister like you makes me sick. Get out!" I didn't scream. Didn't cry. Just packed and walked. They thought I'd break like always—cry, forgive, crawl back. But not this time. I called my mom. Took her offer. Moved to her distant pack. If they wanted me gone, wish granted. So why the hell did they come begging when they realized I meant it?

This marks the third year since Alan Cohen and I became mates, and today's finally the day of the Luna ceremony. As the ceremony begins, Alan takes my hand. But then he hesitates, refusing to move forward. I'm still trying to make sense of it when my adoptive sister, Eden Parker, suddenly breaks into the mind-link. She says she's just ended a failed mate bond with another Alpha and will be back within the hour. That's when I see a flicker of a smile on Alan's face. Then, without a second glance, he lets go of my hand and walks away. I turn to my adoptive brother, Dexter Parker, and my adoptive father, Hank Parker, hoping for some kind of comfort, only to realize they've already left the ceremony with Alan. And just like that, I became the joke of the entire pack. Eden sends me a photo. She's glowing beside Alan, her arm looped through Dexter's, with Hank beaming next to them. That's when I give up. I reach out through the mind-link to my birth father. "Dad, I'm ready to return to the Bloodmoon Pack."

I was eighteen when I donated one of my kidneys to Susie Grant, but she died to transplant rejection anyway, and I was chased out of the Grant family. Before long, the surgery incision festered, and I died of infection in the streets. When I opened my eyes again, I was five once more, and it was the day I was taken back to the Grant family's home. But this time, my brother Harry stepped in front of our parents, pointing at me as he said, "There's been a mistake. She's not actually my sister." Seeing the look of contempt in his eyes, I knew he had reincarnated too. As our parents left in disappointment, he shoved me a piece of candy and told me, "The Grant family just needs one daughter. There's no place for you among us if you can't save Susie."

The day Joe Tanner’s parents died and his classmates cornered him in cruel bullying, I was the one who jumped into the river to save him—and lost my heart to him in that moment. For the next ten years, I poured everything I had into him. I hid my own admission letter to Great Eastern University. I washed dishes until my hands cracked, hauled bricks until my shoulders bled, even sold the pocket watch my mother left me—all so he could study without worry. I watched him rise from a ridiculed illegitimate child to a celebrated professor at the very peak of academia. All I ever wanted in return was a home we could call ours. But the day he achieved success, he forgot the woman who had built his world. So, I made my choice— If he could abandon my love, then I would walk away without looking back.

My parents adopted an AI daughter. The day she came home, I suddenly became the most hated person in the family. Dad said I was a thorn in his side. Mom thought I couldn't hold a candle to Sophia, the AI. My brother Jack yelled at me, "All you do is make trouble!" I was so furious that I shoved Sophia to the floor. Mom's face went dark. She struck me hard across the face. "Sophia is your sister! If you were even half as good as her, I wouldn't be this angry!" "You're going to the Academy of Exemplary Obedience to learn how to be a proper, obedient daughter." I was sent away to "swap places" with an AI daughter. Three years later, my parents and brother came to pick me up. They called my name, but I didn't move. The headmaster smiled and said, "Mrs. Walker, you have to say 'Activate' before Unit EVA will respond."

I spent five years beside Kaelan, heir to the Elf King, and bore him a son, yet he never once acknowledged me in public. He said that when he became Elf King, he would give us the highest standing there was. Instead, at the Elven Assembly, he announced that another woman was his fiancée, then personally handed her our son's life-saving elixir to use as a facial treatment. Later I took my child away to the border, and he was finally willing to acknowledge us. But the child who used to run after him calling him Dad no longer needed a father.

"Today is supposed to be a good day. We're choosing Wendy's dowry. Stop standing there bringing bad luck down on us!" My mother pulled my sister back in disgust, afraid the blood I had coughed onto the floor would splash the silver-bound chest. When a forest elf girl is born, her family plants a bonded tree for her, a tree that lives and dies with its owner. When a daughter marries, her eldest brother takes the old branches the tree has dropped on its own and builds her a dowry chest, a sign symbolizing a lifelong covenant of love and kinship. The chest is filled with gowns and with whatever the family gives her, and the larger the chest, the deeper the blessing. My brother cut my tree down and damaged its roots as well. "Wendy's tree is too thin and weak. It isn't worthy of the Royal Court. I had no choice but to saw yours into boards and put together a respectable chest for her." My sister stroked the silver-bound chest made from my ancient tree like a highborn princess. The whole family gathered around her to pick out what would go inside, as though they had forgotten that I was a bride that day too. My voice shook. "Then what about me?" My mother looked at me shaking there, and her face filled with disgust. "You insist on marrying that short-lived human. A wicker basket is dowry enough for you." Only in that moment did I understand that to them my life mattered less than Wendy's dignity. So I no longer had to treat them as family.

The day my father's enemies kidnapped and tortured me, my family was celebrating my sister Isa's eighteenth birthday. The next day, she would be handed over to the Cammarata family, our rivals, to seal an alliance through marriage. My father is a Don with more enemies than he can count. When I was ten, the two families arranged a marriage alliance to keep the peace. If the two families ever went to war again, the one who'd been married off would be killed first to send a message. On the day they chose the bride, my sister grabbed the token first: a signet ring. From that day on, she was the one this family loved. My mother always said Isa was suffering in my place. So I had to give way to her in everything and protect her. Whatever my sister wanted, I had to hand it over. When we were little, an assassination attempt forced our car off the road. I clutched her to me during the crash and broke my own leg. When my mother arrived, she pulled Isa into her arms first, then turned on me. "Your sister's arm is all scraped up. Couldn't you have protected her better?" I pretended it didn't matter and went to the hospital alone. But I cried anyway while they set my leg. This time, when they kidnapped me, I dropped to my knees and begged for one call for help. I didn't hesitate for a second. I called my parents. My mother had already lost her patience. "Do you have to compete for attention even on your sister's birthday? After today, you can do whatever you want. I'm hanging up." But there wasn't going to be an after today, Mom. As I took my last breath while they tortured me, one thought filled my mind. If I died in my sister's place, would that finally make them happy?