Bias Reborn Short Stories & Novels

My mother suddenly suffered a brain hemorrhage, and I needed to pay $80,000 for surgery immediately. I called my wife right away. Before I could finish, she cut me off impatiently. "Gabriel Cole, didn't we agree when we got married that we'd keep our finances separate? Your mother being sick is your family's problem. Why should you touch my savings? Can't you have a little respect for the contract?" Then my stepson's sneering voice came through from her side. "Uncle Gabriel, can you stop morally blackmailing my mom? As a grown man, isn't it pathetic that you can't even pay your own mother's medical bills? Stop bothering us while we're eating sushi." Because I couldn't pay the fee in time, my mother missed the best window for surgery and died. It wasn't until noon the next day that my wife called me. Her first words were an accusation. "What's wrong with you? It's already noon. Why aren't you back to cook? Don't you know Mason has tutoring this afternoon?" "My mom died of a brain hemorrhage!" I roared through gritted teeth. My wife froze for a second. The first thing she blurted out was: "Well, don't expect me to pay for the funeral. That's a matter of principle. "And your mother dying is your mother dying. That's not a reason for you to skip cooking." In that instant, I knew the devotion I'd poured out for more than ten years meant nothing to her. Rage hit my heart. I suffered a heart attack and followed my mother into death. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day my wife proposed separate finances after marriage.

Everyone in Riverton knew Serena Prescott, the heiress of the Prescott family, collected boyfriends for the short term and never kept them for long. In five years of marriage, she had gone through ninety-nine new lovers. People in our circle said I had world-class patience, that I was the perfect husband who could endure anything. Then a swimming coach named Mason Clark appeared at Serena's side. Mason came from an ordinary family, yet he made her break her own rule about never bringing new lovers home. Serena gave me two choices. Either calmly accept him moving in, or take the money and leave, ending our marriage. Everyone was waiting to see me swallow my pride for love and keep playing the useless, obedient husband. This time, I chose divorce. Because in my last life, I chose to endure it, and all I got was Mason pushing further and further. He forbade Serena from sharing a room with me and only allowed her to see me once a month. In the end, the two of them had a son and a daughter and lived in endless glory. I guarded a marriage that existed in name only, then died of illness in a nursing home. Now that I've been given another life, I no longer have any attachment to her. I took half the fortune in exchange for the freedom of the rest of my life.

My husband was a Gold dragon. So was I. Yet I gave birth to a small Ice Blue dragon. Then came the news: my younger half-sister had borne a Gold dragon for his younger brother. Her fame spread like wildfire. Drakon Vexis, the Crown Prince, flew into a fury. He slaughtered my child. He threw me into the frozen dungeons, where I was tortured and starved until I breathed my last. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day of my coming-of-age ceremony—the day the dragon court chose its brides. Without hesitation, Drakon chose my sister. I knew then. He had been reborn too.

On the day my husband, Martin Clark, took wedding photos with his secretary, I didn't cause a massive scene like I used to. Instead, I personally went to help them pick out the best shots. I even had the photos framed and hung them right in the living room for every visiting guest to see. Rumors spread like wildfire among the families of Sicilana that I was the most powerless donna, allowing any mistress or side-chick to climb over my head. I simply smiled and said nothing. Half a month later, Martin explained to me, "The photos were just a birthday wish of hers." I nodded obediently. "Okay." In my past life, the moment I saw those photos, I rushed right in front of Martin and threw a huge fit, even posting all of his explicit cheating photos onto social media. To punish me, Martin deliberately sabotaged my father’s shipping lines, causing our family to suffer devastating losses. Using the excuse that I was mentally ill, he sent me to a psychiatric hospital, where I was controlled with drugs and died within a few years. Now that I have a second chance, I won't harbor a single shred of love for Martin. I only want money! Every single time he has an affair, I will divert another one of the Clark family's shipping lines away. Right now, there are only three lines left. One more mistress, and the Clark family will be turned into an empty shell.

On the day I left for a business trip, my son, Billy Smith, livestreamed his suicide attempt from our home. While I took my time shopping at the mall, my younger sister, Lori Chaney, and my husband, Greg Smith, were beside themselves with panic. By the time I got the call from Lori, I dropped everything at work and rushed home. However, I reached home to see Billy sobbing into the camera. “Mom, whenever Dad isn’t home, you bring Mr. Scott into the house. After that, you’d force me to keep it a secret. When I refused to play along, you abused me in every way you could! I also found the medical report in your nightstand. You have AIDS, but you never told Dad. I’m ashamed to have a disgusting woman like you as my mother!” Billy then jumped from the building and landed on the rescue airbag without a scratch. I, however, became the target of public outrage. I tried to clear my name, but no one believed me. After all, who would risk his own life just to frame his mother? Greg even brought me a glass of poisoned milk and forced me to drink it. He then told everyone that I had committed suicide out of shame. When I opened my eyes again, I realized I had been sent back in time to the day Billy threatened to kill himself.

During the May Day holiday, my roommates decided it would be funny to act like rich girls and got into character the second we got in an Uber. I knew better than to show off in front of strangers, so I tried to smooth things over, telling the driver, Andrew Houstead, that they were just joking. The moment my roommates' act fell apart, they flushed red with embarrassment and got out of the car. I didn't get the chance to follow. Andrew locked the doors and grabbed me. "Since you helped them out, you can pay the price for them," he said, smiling in a way that made my stomach drop. What followed was something I barely survived. I made it back to the city by sheer luck and went straight to the police. During the investigation, my roommates turned on me without hesitation. "She jumped into the front seat the second we got in. What do you think she was after?" "Exactly! And after we got out, she stayed behind. Obviously, she wanted something exciting with the driver." Their words didn't stay in that room. Andrew's wife heard them. She dragged me by the hair, screaming that I was a homewrecker, then put all my personal information online. Strangers I had never met piled on, calling me shameless, saying I got what I deserved. Andrew took it further. He sent my nude photos to my mother. She couldn't handle it. She had a heart attack and died on the spot. Not long after, I followed. In the end, my roommates used my death to secure guaranteed admission to graduate school, smiling like they had won. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in that Uber, right at the moment they started playing rich.

As the price of gold soars, my late mother, Eleanor Hutchinson, appears to me in my dream. She tells me she has left a gold bangle on my nightstand. If I wear them, they'll bring me wealth and bless the child I'm carrying. But after I find the bangle, I give it to the rabid dog the neighbors keep locked up. In my previous life, my younger sister, Irene Owens, and I marry two brothers and become pregnant at the same time. During a prenatal checkup, the doctor says Irene's baby appears to have severe birth defects and recommends terminating the pregnancy. She doesn't take it seriously at all. That very day, Mom comes to me in my dream, and I find the gold bangle on my bedside table. After I tell Irene about it, she slips the bangle onto my wrists. She says, "You always say Mom favors me. But after she dies, you're the first person she thinks of and approaches. Just wear them." I do exactly as she says and never take the bangle off. But on the day we give birth, Irene delivers a healthy baby boy with rosy cheeks and a loud, vigorous cry. My baby, however, is born with two sets of reproductive organs. The child isn't breathing the moment it's delivered. Before this, every prenatal exam has shown that my baby is healthy. I realize Irene and the bangle must have something to do with it. The sight of my horribly deformed baby drives me insane. In a fit of rage, I dig up Mom's grave and confront Irene. "Why does Mom keep paving the way for you even after she's dead?" She has me committed to a psychiatric hospital. I waste away in despair until I die. When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the day Mom first appears in my dream.

When our teacher caught my desk mate, Avery Collins, and me stealing mock exam papers just before the college entrance exam, he shouted, "The college entrance exam is right around the corner! What was the point of stealing the mock exam papers? Tell me, who was the mastermind?" In my previous life, I took the blame without hesitation. My father nearly beat me to death for it. Avery and I attended the same university, got married after graduation, and raised a daughter, spending thirty years together. I believed I had the perfect life. Then, on the day of my daughter, Emma's wedding, I was thrown out of the venue. Emma told me, "You have no right to be here. Caleb Morgan is my real father." Avery looked at me coldly. "After you got drunk, you already signed the divorce papers. The company, the house, and all the assets belong to me now. You're leaving with nothing. From this day forward, we're strangers." Lost in a daze, I wandered into the street and was crushed beneath a speeding truck. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day everything began. This time, I told the teacher directly, "Avery was the one behind it. I gave her the papers, but I never looked at them. My score belongs to me."

At my 20th birthday banquet, I am to sign and receive the ten-billion-dollar inheritance left to me by my mother. My half-sister, Samantha Hatfield, and Howard Daley, her husband, who is also a secretary, eagerly urge me to sign the document. In my previous life, they trick me into signing the very same agreement, and the inheritance somehow becomes theirs. When I try to fight back, no one listens to me. Together, they have me confined to a sanatorium, where I spend the rest of my life drugged, imprisoned, and forgotten. But this time, their scheme is going to fail—I have returned with memories of what happens from the past life. Under their confident, expectant gazes, I pick up the pen. However, I do not pick it up to sign. I raise my hand and slash the pen's tip across Howard's face. As he lets out a terrified scream, I tear the agreement into pieces in front of all the guests and hurl the paper scraps at them. I say coldly, "My mother left all this to me. What makes you two heartless parasites think you're worthy of laying even one finger on it?"

In my previous lifetime, my parents can't bear to marry Selena Madden to a faraway pack, so they decide to let her marry Alpha Kyle Abbott from the Shadowfrost pack. On the night a party is hosted, the drunken Kyle mistakes me for Selena, so he kisses and marks me on the spot. Later on, he's forced to marry me in order to take responsibility for what happened. Out of sorrow, Selena decides to marry far, far away to Londres. But after Kyle and I become mates, he pretends as though I don't exist. Throughout our three-year mate bond, I'm forced to endure the cold shoulder he gives me while helping him deal with all the pack-related affairs. On top of that, I still prepare Kyle's meals for him meticulously every day. Even when it comes to bedroom matters, I do my best to cooperate with him. Some time later, our relationship begins to ease up. Kyle no longer treats me coldly. I thought this is a sign that Kyle has accepted me as his mate. But when he dies in an accident, he has his Beta deliver his final words to me before he breathes his last. "Layla, if there is a next life, please let me and Selena be together." It turns out that Kyle has never forgotten Selena. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day Kyle and Selena are about to discuss their upcoming bonding ceremony. In this lifetime, I decide to fulfill their wish.

I made a deal with the Devil. My soul, in exchange for seven days on earth after I died. The eleventh hour after my death happened to fall on our third wedding anniversary. The moment I walked through the door, he had just come home from another woman's place. He had an anniversary gift waiting for me. A set of sapphires. But the card tucked beside them bore another woman's name. I spotted a pale lavender hair tie in his hand. Once, I would have fought him over a hair tie like that, all the way from the front hall to the study. This time, I said nothing. It was him who froze instead, staring at me like I was a stranger. "You didn't used to be like this. I almost miss the way you used to fall apart over everything." He was right. The old me would have thrown a fit over something as small as him forgetting to cut my steak. But ever since the miscarriage, my heart had been dying by slow degrees. When I found out I was pregnant, I was overjoyed. I wanted him to be the first to know. But I couldn't reach him, no matter how many times I called. I lost the baby. I hemorrhaged. That very afternoon, while I lay on the operating table, a photo of him and that woman hit the entertainment headlines. He never even knew I had carried a child. Now there was only one last thing I wanted from him. To drive me up to the northern coast, and bury me with his own hands. But when he realized I had truly vanished from this world, he came undone.

I have taken three stabs and one bullet for the eldest heir of the York family, Jonah York. I'm the best female bodyguard in the business. My younger sister, who does nothing but trail behind him acting cute, is nothing more than an extra. I think my loyalty and the scars covering my body are the source of all his security. That is my belief until the three of us are abducted together. The abductors say only two people can leave alive. Without a moment's hesitation, he turns to look at me and say, "You stay behind. My father will pay your family double the compensation. But Rose has to come with me." Rose Stenson is my younger sister. It turns out that her daily concern and gentle care have long since won him over. When I get a second chance at life, I wake up on the day the York family comes to choose their bodyguards.

My wife's first love was bound to an "overachiever" system—every ounce of exhaustion he racked up from grinding away at work got transferred straight to me. He pulled seven straight all-nighters to land a multi-million-dollar deal and became a legend in the industry. Meanwhile, I ended up in the ER with heart failure. When I tried to explain it to my wife, she shot me a look of pure disgust. "You're just born lazy," she snapped. "You can't stand seeing him succeed at such a young age, so you make up some sick fairy tale to accuse him." After that, every late night he pulled chipped away at my body. First came nervous exhaustion, then organ failure—until I was hanging on by a thread. I went to the hospital for tests, but the doctors couldn't find a thing. A few even hinted I might be suffering from paranoid delusions. Then, to get his company listed on the stock exchange, he locked himself in his office for two weeks straight. I wound up dead from overexertion in my own room. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the night of his very first all-nighter. This time, I bolted the door, pulled out a full strip of sleeping pills, and smiled. "Time to sleep."

Dad is struck by a sudden illness, causing him to die tragically in his office. At the funeral, my younger brother, Draco Lancaster, and my mom decide to swallow rat poison just to reunite with Dad out of sorrow. Everyone says that Dad didn't dote on Draco for nothing. But on the day after the funeral, Dad's superior comes knocking on the door. Apparently, Dad has misappropriated public property, so I am to be locked up in a stockpen serving as a holding cell in order to pay off the debt on his behalf. Later on, I finally clear the debt. But that's when I see my family, who should have been dead, laughing and chatting with each other in a car. It turns out that they've faked their deaths to flee from the consequences. Unable to accept the reality, I rush over to confront them. My family, who are terrified that the truth will get out, quickly run me over with the car as a result. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day my family is about to fake their deaths.

"Your love makes me sick." Those were the final words my husband, Vittorio De Luca, left me in my past life. On our wedding day, Elara Hale had crashed my ceremony, begging Vittorio to run away with her. But he chose to stay by my side. Yet, when Elara died of an illness shortly after, he harbored nothing but hatred for me. He detested that I had clung to him for over a decade, forcing him into a marriage he never wanted. More than that, he loathed himself for not running away with Elara. When I opened my eyes again, I was reborn before everything went wrong. I looked at him, "Vittorio, I'm getting married." He looked a bit troubled. "You know I’m busy with a critical territorial expansion. My mind is entirely elsewhere…" “Never mind.” I offered a faint, indifferent smile. Relieved, Vittorio leaned in and pressed a kiss to my forehead. "Don't worry. We've been together for twelve years. I'll do the right thing and take responsibility." He didn’t know what I meant, but I knew what I’d do in this lifetime. I would never choose him again, let alone marry him.

The night my mate died saving me, his last words were: "If there is a next life, let me be with Odette." So when I woke up, back on the day I begged my father to let me marry him, I chose someone else.

On the day of the funeral, Marcus asked me to share him with his sisters-in-law. The moment the news broke, Selena, the eldest brother's wife, hurled her wine glass to the floor. Vivian, the second brother's wife, raised her voice and tore into Marcus for having no sense of decency. But the Hartley family's men dropped to their knees, begging the two widows to become Marcus’s mistresses, to carry on the bloodline in honor of their fallen husbands. I stood off to the side watching, and something in me snapped. I shoved through the crowd, slammed my hands on the long table, and demanded to know exactly what Marcus thought I was to him. I called him no better than a thug. Then I turned on the two sisters-in-law, called them frauds in widow's clothing, and by the end I'd said something unforgivable to just about everyone in that room. After that, I couldn't let it go. I hired a lawyer and sued them for fraud, for a staged marriage. They turned it around on me and said I was plotting to swallow the entire Hartley estate and drive what was left of the family into the ground. My father's business was sabotaged again and again. Three key shipping routes went dark. The dockyard was seized. I was thrown out of the estate and died in a damp basement in Sicily, with no doctor and no family. The landlord found me when he came to collect rent. I only learned the truth after I died. They'd been working together all along. His public reveal of the mistress was merely meant to drive me to snap, giving him a valid excuse to end our marriage. Then I opened my eyes. I was back in that living room, on that same day. The portraits of the two brothers sat on the long table. Selena stood in a black dress, eyes rimmed red. "Marcus, your brother's body is barely cold, and you want us to be your mistresses?" Vivian wore a pale blouse, her voice trembling. "I'd sooner die than betray your brother." This time around, I was going to give them exactly what they asked for.

During a thunderstorm on the border, my fiancee, Eleanor Ashby, covers my retreat and falls down a cliff. The search and rescue team spends three months searching through flash floods without finding a trace of her. Everyone concludes she's dead. I refuse to give up and spend another two years looking for her. Eventually, I find her at a small clinic in a remote mountain village. But she's become the wife of the clinic's caregiver, Dylan Foster. That's when I learn she's lost her memory and fallen in love with someone else. In my previous life, I ignore her wishes and force a renowned neurosurgeon to use a high-risk treatment to restore her memories. The day her memories return, the man who has cared for and protected her for the past two years throws himself into the river in despair. Later, during an earthquake rescue mission, Eleanor and I are trapped beneath a collapsed mountainside. There's only one narrow escape route wide enough for one person. She forcibly pushes me out. Moments later, a second collapse buries her beneath a massive boulder. With her dying breath, she reaches through a crack in the rocks and grips my hand. She says in a hoarse voice, "Callum Pierce, these ten years we've spent together is repayment for the debt I owed you from the ten years before. We're even now. Neither of us owes the other anything anymore. "If there's a next life, don't let me remember the past. Please... let me be with him." Tears blur my vision. When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the day I find Eleanor. This time, I choose to respect her decision and let go of the life she's forgotten.

After Giselle left for Europe, I took her place. I made a blood pact with Julian—the feared vampire lord and CEO of Evernight Biotech. Every night for five years, he pinned me down, kissing every inch of my skin. We became enemies, craving and hating each other. He hated me, believing I schemed to drive Giselle away and stole her place as his mate. I hated him too. Every time he took me, he moaned Giselle’s name. He never even acknowledged me before his clan. Because of my awkward status, my parents—who desperately craved immortality—were mocked by high society. They poured all their toxic resentment onto me. In my past life, on a Blood Moon night, Julian and my parents threw a lavish welcome-home party for Giselle. They left me behind in the unwarded old manor. When rogue vampires broke in, I—a fragile human—was drained dry, along with the unborn half-blood baby in my womb. Meanwhile, my sister was enjoying the blessings of North America's elite. When I opened my eyes again, I was reborn. It was the exact day Giselle returned. This time, I refuse to beg Julian and my greedy parents for scraps.

"Sienna, he looks so pitiful." In my last life, I listened to my younger sister and chose the black fox who hadn't even taken human form as my fiancé. I poured everything I had into helping him take human form, but he carved out my inner core and presented it to my sister to curry her favor. When I lived again, at the mate-selection ceremony, my sister once more pointed pitifully at the black fox. In front of everyone, I chose the four-tailed white fox she wanted most. Then I "gifted" the black fox to her.