After Death Short Stories & Bias Regret Novels

Mom was Dad's fated mate. A half-blood Omega. A rogue with no pack. But every night, Dad would kiss her all over and make a promise. "I will bring you back when I become Alpha. You will be my Luna." But he lied. He took the Alpha title the year I was born. He needed power. So, he rejected my mom. He mated with a high-born she-wolf instead. Mom never got her dream mating ceremony. The backlash from the broken mate bond drove her insane. She became bitter and cruel. She tortured me just to get Dad's attention. "Call your father. Tell him your first shift hurts. Beg him to come." Dad just roared at me. "You learned your mother's dirty tricks. You are a disgusting parasite!" They took all their hatred for each other out on me. Later, Dad's pureblood Luna gave birth to a son. He became the perfect Alpha and a loving father in the pack's eyes. Mom completely lost her mind to jealousy and the severed bond. She bit me black and blue. She fed me liquid wolfsbane. All just to beg Dad to come see us once. That day, Mom went completely crazy. To force Dad to show up, she pushed me off the second-floor balcony. I hit the back of my head. My legs snapped. I cried and begged her to take me to the pack doctor. She just slapped me hard across the face. Then, sick in the head, she took a picture of me dying in a pool of blood and sent it to Dad. "Stop playing the victim! You have Alpha blood. You will heal. You are just like your cold-blooded father, born to torture me! This is all to make him come back to us!" Dad finally arrived. He released his crushing Alpha aura. He sent Mom flying across the room. "If you dare use this half-blood mutt to trick me again, I'll kick you out of this apartment. Get out!" Crazy screams mixed with sharp cries. I lay on the cold floor. The agonizing pain slowly faded away. Would they finally stop fighting this time?

A rival pack invaded, plunging our pack into the worst crisis we had ever faced. The witch, Morgana Vale, said that only a blood sacrifice could save the entire pack. So despite my anemia, I was dragged onto the altar. Morgana slit my wrist, and the moment my blood dripped onto the totem, the ritual began. When the bleeding got to be more than I could take, I tried to call it off, but my mother stopped me cold. "Sweetheart, hold on a little longer. You're the Alpha's daughter. Making a small sacrifice for the pack is only right. It's just a little blood. It won't kill you." I gritted my teeth and held on, my heart pounding like it would burst. The ritual lasted from morning until dusk, and my blood never stopped flowing. "Mom, I really can't take it anymore." My face was ghost-white, and my vision was starting to blur. But she just gave my bloodless face a cold glance. "Sacrificing for the pack is an honor. Being the Alpha's daughter doesn't mean you get to shirk your duty. I did not raise you to be selfish." By midnight, everything went black, and I collapsed on the altar. I'm sorry. I failed to do my duty. I'm sorry, Mother. I let you down.

To help my husband, Julian Parker, pay off the debt from his stock-market losses, I agreed to sell one of my kidneys. But on the day of the surgery, our six-year-old daughter, Ella Parker, ran to the clinic all by herself and frantically called Julian for help. Julian sounded conflicted. "Mom's only having one kidney removed. It'll get Dad out of this mess for good. But if she doesn't do it, Dad's whole future is ruined." Ella kept begging him to stop the surgery, but Julian simply hung up. Then he hurried toward a private hospital suite nearby, his face filled with worry. Inside lay Claire Morgan, the woman he'd never gotten over. Her face was deathly pale. "Don't worry. We've got a kidney for you. You're going to be fine." He lowered his voice. "And don't feel guilty. I'm the one who chose to lie to her. She's still young. She can live just fine with one kidney." Claire's transplant was a success. Julian was in such a good mood afterward that, for once, he even suggested taking Ella and me on a trip, calling it a belated honeymoon. But he had no idea I was already dead. After my kidney was removed, I couldn't even afford $9.90 for the antibiotics I needed. The wound became infected, and I died. And Ella finally gave up on her father, too.

I died on my 18th birthday. The woman who sliced open my chest with a scalpel was my mother, Erika Buckley, one of the top cardiothoracic surgeons in the country. The man who pushed the anesthetic to keep me from struggling was my father, Marcus Buckley, a renowned chief anesthesiologist. They calmly removed my warm heart and transplanted it into my brother, Caleb Buckley, whose chest was already cut wide open. I had always been his blood bank and his spare organ bank. Little did they know, my soul was floating above them, watching as my heart began to rot inside Caleb's chest.

In my third year as a blind massage therapist, Henry Young took his employees on a company retreat. By sheer coincidence, he ended up booking me. When he saw me, he remained perfectly composed, so much so that even his breathing did not falter. I served him the same way I treated every other client. Then his phone rang. My hands paused for a moment as my own voice, young and girlish, came through his phone speaker. His employees immediately started teasing him. Henry simply explained in a gentle voice, “My wife recorded that when she was young and didn’t know any better.” Just as he was leaving, Henry suddenly turned around. “Anya Walt, I’ve never forgotten you. “Are you really going to keep living this hard life, with my child by your side?” I rubbed my fingertips again and again, but said nothing. It seemed he still had no idea. Back then, I kept our child and delivered the baby. But the baby was stillborn.

On the day of my coming-of-age ceremony, the two men who cherish me above all else are absent. One is Vittorio Luciano, the only son of the Luciano family from the east, while the other is Carlos Gambino, the heir to the Gambino family from the south. This is a matter that could easily be settled with a few words, yet they try to think up all sorts of excuses to brush me off. "Anna, a gunfight has broken out at the port to the north, so I really can't step away." "I have to hold a family meeting with the elders. I can't skip it." However, the two men have barely hung up on me when I see them appear beside my adopted younger sister, Liliana Siciliano, at her coming-of-age ceremony. The two men stand guard, one on either side of Liliana, and anyone can tell that they're treating her like the most precious thing in the world. I look down at my phone, tears dripping onto the screen as I read the coldly indifferent excuses they sent me once again. How very ironic. The protection they once promised me is now all hers. However, what they don't know is that I won't make it past this winter.

From a young age, I've known I was born to be a substitute for my deceased sister, Leah. On my 6th birthday, my parents take me to the market to choose a cloak for cubs. I excitedly spend ages choosing, then point at a silver one. However, Mom's expression shifts drastically, and she grabs me by the ear and screams like a madwoman, "Who told you to choose silver? Leah's favorite color can only be red!" When Dad sees Mom act up, he roughly yanks me away. I fall to the ground, hitting my head, and blood streams down my face. From then on, I desperately try to become more like Leah. No matter what I choose, I only choose something in red, the color she loved most. But one day, I break the pack's record and awaken my wolf ahead of time. Mom tears up my recommendation letter for the Werewolf Warrior selection in front of everyone and forces me to give up. "Leah didn't get chosen back then, so you can't get chosen either!" The surrounding werewolves try to stop her, but she viciously scolds them in return. "If Leah hadn't died, she wouldn't even have been born! What right does she have to become a warrior?" When I see the hatred in her eyes, I feel like I am at rock bottom. But Mom… Since you really want me to live like Leah, doesn't that mean I should also die in a fire like she did when she was 18?

After learning the silver poison had sunk deep into my heart with no cure left, I secretly returned to the pack I'd left five years ago. I just wanted to see Leon Frost one last time. The one who was now their Alpha. Instead, I walked right into news that he was about to mate with his new chosen, Shelly Davis. Worse—they caught me. My mother had me in a wheelchair. Leon's eyes flickered with something unreadable when he saw me. He didn't speak. But Shelly sure did. "Well. Look who finally crawled back. Five years and you look like hell. Can't even walk anymore?" Her voice dripped with mockery. I held back the tears and tugged at my sleeve, hiding the decay spreading across my arms. "It's nothing. Just tripped and hurt my leg." Shelly's laugh cut through the air again. "Since Leon and I are holding our bonding ceremony, you should come witness it. Ten days from now. Full moon night." I kept my face calm and forced a smile. "Can't make it. I'm heading somewhere far away." Then I glanced at Leon—his face still empty, still silent—and signaled my mother to wheel me home. The further he got, the harder the tears fell. Leon, I wasn't lying. I have less than ten days. Before your ceremony even starts, I'll be gone.

Five years after my parents' divorce, I met my mother at school. She had just finished a parent-teacher meeting for her stepdaughter, who was the top student in the grade, and was beaming with joy. The moment she saw me, her expression darkened. "Do you always come to school dressed like this? This is how your father is raising you?" She handed me a business card and said in a condescending tone, "Take this. Tell your father that I'll enroll you in the international program right away if he's willing to admit his mistake. It's better than staying in the regular program and struggling." I did not take it and took a few steps back. "No thanks, Ms. Stroll." She frowned, her eyes filled with disgust. "You're utterly hopeless, just like your father. Don't ever tell anyone you're my son." I clenched the paper in my hand and calmly watched her leave. She had no idea it was not a report card. It was my withdrawal application from school after my father's death, because I had no one else to pay my tuition for me.

In the second year after I died, the psychopath who killed me was finally caught. The courtroom was packed on the day of the trial. Leo Mercer stood at the defense table in his orange jail uniform, humming to himself as if he didn't have a care in the world. The families of his seven known victims, grief-stricken and furious, demanded that prosecutors pursue an exception that would allow a death sentence. Leo's defense attorney, Nathan Reese, spoke evenly. "The purpose of the law is rehabilitation. Forgiveness is more powerful than killing. I oppose a death sentence for my client." Nathan's wife, Ada Reese, was also a prominent attorney. From the gallery, she declared, "Even criminals have human rights. How can we take someone's life just because he made a mistake? Besides, weren't the victims at least partly to blame? If they were decent women, why would he have chosen them?" Leo suddenly clapped his hands and burst out laughing. "Couldn't have said it better! To thank you, let me confess something. I didn't kill seven people. I killed eight." His eyes gleamed with excitement as he looked at the Reeses, his voice thick with amusement. "The eighth victim was your daughter. So remember what you just said, both of you. No death penalty for me."

Ethan Shaw is dead. His face has been destroyed and his limbs severed. When his body reaches the morgue, the person who performs the autopsy is his own wife, Dr. Vivian Sullivan. She is a cool, rational professor of forensic pathology, and she is the woman Ethan loved for more than a decade. Six years ago he lost his voice saving her life, and she married him because of it. In all the years that followed, she remembered every one of his follow-up appointments yet never once remembered his birthday. She tended his injuries, but gave every ounce of warmth and favor she had to his younger brother. Right up until the moment he died, Ethan was calling her, over and over. And she hung up on his last plea for help so she could film a meteor shower for his brother. Afterward, Vivian finds a scar she knows on the body, a red mole behind its ear, and the ring he died protecting--the one he'd meant to give her. She finally recognizes him.

The day of my mating ceremony with Alpha Kian, I arrived at the lake house villa—the venue we had chosen for our sacred ritual. My heart was pounding with anticipation. But when I pushed the doors open, the place was completely empty. I quickly mind-linked my parents. "Where is everyone? I'm at the villa, but it's empty. And my gown is gone." There was a heavy silence before my mother finally answered. "Freya... we temporarily changed the location." "Without telling me? Why?" "Isolde's wolf is fading," my father chimed in. "She is dying. Her last wish is to wear the Luna crown for just one day. So, we are holding the ceremony for her instead." "Freya, you're her only sister. Be the bigger person. Just let her have this." Even Kian, my Alpha, tried to soothe me over the link. "Don't worry, Freya. It's just a ceremony for her. A trick for the Moon Goddess. It'll just block our mate bond for a little while. We can have our real ceremony anytime after she's stable." I refused. It was insane. "You're being unreasonable, Freya," Kian sighed impatiently. "Just stay at the lake house and calm down." Then, they cut the mind-link completely. I was left all alone in the abandoned villa. Then the Rogues attacked. Wolfsbane burned the air. It choked my wolf. I couldn't scream. I couldn't fight. In desperation, I used our mate bond. I reached out to Kian with everything I had left. He just sighed through the bond. He thought I was throwing a tantrum over the ceremony. Then he severed the bond completely. When their fake ceremony was over, they finally remembered me. But all they found on the villa floor… was my body. Torn to shreds by Rogues.

Two years ago, my older sister Jaslyn and I were trapped in a housefire. The firefighters told Mom she had to make a choice. They could only save one of us. Mom chose me because I was closer to the door. Later, when she learned that the fire had been caused by us breaking into the neighbor's house to steal stuff, she grabbed me by the hair and yelled at me. "Your sister Jaslyn was a model student. There's no way she would steal anything. "You're the thief! If it weren't for you, she wouldn't have died!" From then on, I wasn't allowed to eat good food or wear nice clothes. Every day, I had to kneel before Jaslyn's portrait and atone for my sins. One day, the class fund went missing at school. Mom was convinced I had stolen it and dragged me away to confess. Terrified, I ran off, only to be hit by a car. As I lay dying, I called Mom and begged her to come save me. She snorted. "Such a liar! You stole Jaslyn's life from her back then. It's your turn to die now!" Later, Jaslyn, who had supposedly been dead for two years, returned and revealed the truth about what had happened back then. Mom broke down. She took Jaslyn from house to house, explaining the truth to every one of my classmates. "Nina is not a thief."

While a killer was dismembering me, my father was busy throwing a coming-of-age party for my adopted younger sister. When I called him for help, all I heard on the other end of the line was his venomous voice. "What kind of act are you putting on this time? If you want to die, hurry up and do it! Just stay out of my sight!" The next day, Dad went back to the police station to investigate a dismemberment case that had shocked the entire city. He gathered every clue the killer had left behind. What he never once suspected was that the body being pieced back together belonged to the biological daughter he hated so much.

On my birthday, the family's fake heiress threw herself into the sea. She left a suicide note saying she was giving me back my rightful place in the family. I'd already spent every day in the Carter house walking on eggshells, and in a single moment her death dropped me straight into hell. My parents hated me. "We brought you back into this family and gave you everything. Was that still not enough for you? Why couldn't you let her stay?" My brother blamed me. "You were raised in foster care like some wild animal. You don't belong in this family at all. Chloe was the one who begged us to bring you home. Don't you have an ounce of gratitude?" Not one of them mentioned that my life of supposed privilege meant living in the Carter house as Chloe's maid and errand girl. After pleading for me to come home, Chloe beat me, cursed me, and humiliated me whenever no one was watching. Whatever happened, they took her side without question. From then on, they locked me in the dog kennel behind the house, and no one asked about me again. That winter, the housekeeper decided it was too cold to come out and feed me, so I ate snow to fill my stomach. The snow aggravated my already weak stomach, and before long, I developed a high fever. The agony lasted through the entire night before I finally lost consciousness. I never learned whether the fever killed me or whether I froze to death. Not long after I died, Chloe came home.

Five years after our divorce, I saw my ex-husband, Noah Whitmore, beneath a magnolia tree. He had grown much thinner, but clothes looked more than twice as expensive as they used to be. "It's been a long time. How have you been?" [I've been fine, just a little bored. What about you?] "My company went public. Things have gone fairly smoothly, though I've been a little busy." [Oh, that's good.] After a long silence, he let out a sigh. "Belle, the magnolias in our hometown have bloomed again. Where did you go?" I looked down at my transparent body and answered his words once more. [I'm right here.] Unfortunately, he could no longer hear me.

My mother, Samantha, believed I was born a liar. Because she was deceived by my father's sweet words in her youth and abandoned after giving birth to me and my sister, Mia, she harbored a deep, bitter hatred for lies. She begged a witch for two magic rings. The rule was simple: if the wearer lied, the ring would glow red and burn them with magic. Mia's ring never hurt her, even when she broke a vase and blamed it on me. But if I simply said, "I'm thirsty," my ring would sear my flesh until I screamed. At first, I tried to defend myself, but Mom would just say, "The ring doesn't lie. Only through repeated punishment can your wicked soul be cleansed." After thousands of burns, even I started to believe I was naturally evil. On the day of the Blood Moon Ball, Mom was getting ready to take my sister out. A sudden, agonizing pain hit my abdomen. I curled up on the floor, begging, "Mom, my stomach hurts so bad. Please help me." But the ring just glowed red, constantly releasing its burning magic. Mom looked down at me, drenched in cold sweat, with utter disgust. "Faking sick just to tag along to the ball? You never change!" She turned, took Mia, and slammed the front door behind her. The intense pain made my body feel light and floaty. Dizzy, I thought to myself: Maybe when I'm dead, I'll finally be an honest child, and Mom will be happy.

The year my sister turned fifteen, my father, Grant Davis, became obsessed with holding auctions at home. Everything in the house, from a plate of meat to a turn with the washing machine, from school lunch money to after-school activity fees, had to be won by bidding with family credits. I worked odd jobs until I dropped, sleeping only three hours a night, and finally saved up a thick stack of family credits, the paper soft and warped from my sweat. All Melody had to do was sit on the couch and shed a few tears, and my father would stuff fistfuls of credits into her arms. "Girls deserve to be spoiled. Can't have Melody feeling left out." That day, the item up for auction was an old necklace that had belonged to my grandmother, Ruth Bennett. Eyes burning, I pushed everything I had onto the table. "Eight thousand." Melody tossed out ten thousand without a second thought, her voice sweet and wheedling. "This necklace would go perfectly with my new dress." I begged my father through tears. "This is the only thing Grandma ever left me. Please." My father slapped me so hard my ears rang and my vision blurred. "Highest bidder wins. That's the rule! You're too poor to win, so don't blame anyone else!" Melody snatched the necklace, gave it a look of disgust, and casually tossed it into the roaring fireplace. "Oops, the fire's getting low. This'll make good kindling." I threw myself at the fireplace. The back of my hand split open instantly from the heat, the skin blistering and peeling away. They left, slamming the door behind them, complaining that my screaming was bad luck in the house. Later, I couldn't stop thinking. If I put my own life on the auction block, how many credits would you bid?

When the fire trapped me, my Alpha mate, Graeme Blackwood, was throwing a birthday party for my little sister, Ayana. I was locked in the basement, trembling so violently my bones clattered against each other. When the flames first caught, I called him. Begged him. His voice was ice. "Evelyn, stop the act. It's Ayana's birthday. I'm not letting you out just so you can ruin it. Let her have her night. Once she's happy, I'll let you out." I tried to explain. With the last shred of strength I had, I called him again. He hung up on me. So I just watched. Watched the flames swallow everything.

My mom was a computer genius with a PhD who works in Silicon Valley. Shortly after I was born, she created an AI robot sister modeled after me. Mom said my AI robot sister was equipped with the world's most accurate child behavior evaluation system. The moment I made a mistake, it would detect it. From then on, my AI robot sister became the judge of my life. Whenever she issued a warning, even when I had done nothing wrong, all I received was punishment. I tried to defend myself before. But Mom said the robot she built with her own hands could never make a mistake, and she became even more convinced that I was an inferior child. On my birthday, Mom took my sister and me to participate in an Outstanding Children Competition. When I saw the rock-climbing challenge towering dozens of meters high, I shook my head desperately and refused because I had a fear of heights and a heart condition. But my AI robot sister coldly pulled up my medical data report: “She is completely healthy. This is a lie she created to avoid participating in the competition.” Mom's face darkened instantly. She grabbed my ear and dragged me toward the climbing wall. “You're still lying? Today, you're going up there!” Trembling, I began climbing upward. My breathing grew faster and faster. The moment my foot slipped, the pain in my heart felt as if it had been torn open by a blade. I fell into the foam safety pit, and slowly, my breathing stopped. Meanwhile, outside the arena, Mom was still cursing me for my terrible performance. Mom, I'm dead. From now on, I'll never be your embarrassing, stupid daughter again.