Bittersweet Short Stories & Novels

The day I buried my mother, my husband, Luca, the Don Ricci, conveniently disappeared. Later, my best friend, Annie, sent me a video. In it, she stood beside Luca in a hospital room while a doctor confirmed her pregnancy. Luca looked… happy. Radiant, even. The baby was theirs. Then another message came. Annie’s voice, “Sis, looks like you failed—just like your mother did against mine.” I had always known my father cheated on my mother and had a child out there somewhere. I just never imagined… it was Annie. That night, Luca came home—with Annie by his side. I said only four words. “I want a divorce.” Luca refused, saying I wouldn’t survive without him—but it was just gaslighting. In truth, he couldn’t afford to lose me or my family’s power. So I called one man Luca hated most in this world—his uncle, Stefan Ricci. The man who once stood equal to Luca in the race for power… If Luca believed he could humiliate me and still keep me tethered to him—his perfect little guarantee to the Don’s seat.… Then I could just as easily make another man take his place.

What John Dyke and I had was nothing more than a business marriage. In my previous life, I failed to understand that from the very beginning. I foolishly wanted love from him. I wanted us to be a real husband and wife. Worse, I kept throwing my weight around as Mrs. Dyke and constantly targeted the woman he truly loved. In the end, I destroyed the marriage alliance and ruined the partnership between our families. When my family went bankrupt, I was driven to my death by debt collectors. Meanwhile, John rose to become the richest man in the country, married the love of his life, and walked away with both power and happiness. Then I opened my eyes again. I had returned to the very first time I caught John and his precious first love together in a private club room. John frowned at me. "Naomi West, we had an agreement before this marriage. Other than appearing together when necessary, we don't interfere in each other's private lives. What exactly are you doing right now?" His tone carried barely suppressed anger. But in my previous life, not only did I fail to notice, I arrogantly slapped his true love in the name of being Mrs. Dyke. That was the beginning of my road to destruction. The memory of my car plunging off a cliff while I desperately tried to escape debt collectors flashed through my mind. I immediately waved my hands. "Whoa, don't misunderstand. I just walked into the wrong room. Please, carry on. Don't worry, I understand the rules of a business marriage." I backed out of the private room and even thoughtfully closed the door behind me. Then I turned around and went to find a few handsome young men to keep me company. Endless money to spend, a lot of time to enjoy my life, a husband who never came home... I really must have lost my mind in my previous life to waste time begging John for love.

Nathan Brooks had been tangled up with his secretary for far too long. All I did was ask one simple question. “Has Chloe Bennett resigned yet?” That was enough to make him hurl the glass in his hand at me. “You jealous, bitter woman,” he snapped. “Because of your jealousy, you drove Chloe away. “I told you I’m not divorcing you, Emily. Isn’t that enough for you?” I said nothing. I only looked down at the cut on my arm, where the shattered glass had sliced through my skin, then quietly bent down and picked up the broken pieces. What Nathan didn’t know was that I had already drawn up the divorce papers.

To help my fiance pay off his gambling debts, my father and I worked day and night hauling freight. One night, while driving through the dark, my father got into a car accident. When I rushed to the hospital with the compensation money, all that remained was the final voice message on his phone. "This should be enough to clear Derrick's debts. He really wants to live a good life with you, but it's just that his ex-girlfriend keeps pestering him. Once you pay his debt, take him far away from those people." Holding my father's memorial portrait, I planned to place the five hundred thousand he had earned in front of Derrick. But when I arrived at a private club lounge, I overheard his friends laughing. "Did she actually believe you were drowning in debt? She brought over that much money in one go. What are you going to do next?" Derrick's ex-girlfriend, Jessica Nesley, laughed and chimed in, "Derrick, don't you think the fake debt collectors I hired were pretty convincing? What's next? Are you going to test whether she really wants a future with you?" Derrick flicked ash from his cigarette and replied, "Yeah. The final test is to see whether she's the kind of woman who only cares about money. If she finds out I'm the president of Waterson Group, doesn't resent me for setting up her father, and still agrees to marry me, then I'll believe she truly loves me." Hearing those words, I stared at my father's photo while my whole body trembled. 'Father, this was the honest man we both trusted. Derrick, this wedding is over.'

At the Crestwood Academy gala, a voice cut through the noise. We stood before a wall of portraits, our past selves staring back at us. "To our time at the academy. Three words." Victoria, the academy's fallen golden girl, raised her glass. She'd been silent for years. "Strength. Passion." She paused. Her gaze, hot as an ember, locked onto the one wolf every eye was already on—my mate. "And... Caspen." A hush fell over the room. They were the academy's most tragic couple. Caspen, the reckless Alpha. Victoria, the radiant pureblood. Their love had been a wildfire, wild and consuming. But they had broken apart on the night of the Blood Moon, just before graduation. Every wolf here had witnessed their legend. Including me. I glanced at Caspen. His power was a physical weight in the air. That untamed wolf had sheathed his claws. He was my mate now. The Alpha of Alphas. Powerful. Composed. But his heart was not mine.

In the sixth year of my mating with Kael, his Alpha brother died in a rogue attack. Kael inherited his brother’s seat as Alpha. He also inherited his brother’s Luna, Vivienne. Every time he came back from her bed, he held me and said the same thing. “Baby, I only love you. Vivienne is the daughter of the Silverfang Alpha. Our pack is unstable and we need their support. This is a deal, nothing more. The moment she gives birth to an heir, I’ll declare you my one and only Luna.” Their room was right next to mine. Every night I lay there and listened to Vivienne’s pleasure and the low, satisfied growls he never made for me anymore. For half a year I went from feeling like my chest was being carved open to feeling nothing at all. At the end of that half year, Vivienne announced she was pregnant. The same day, Kael announced he would hold the mating ceremony with her. I stopped waiting. I closed my eyes and reached for the mind-link I had not used in six years. I called my father, the Alpha King. “Dad. You were right. I regret it. Come take me home.”

I'd been married to my vampire husband for three years, and he had always cherished me like a treasure. He held me close every night before I went to sleep. He never let go of my hand when we went out. He worried, always, that I might get hurt. A common cold was enough to make him cancel everything and stay up all night beside me. James told me no one in the world mattered more to him than I did. Everyone said he loved me to pieces. I believed it too. Until the day of the ceremony — the night he was supposed to turn me into a vampire. A woman who should have been dead walked back into his life. She had my face, tear-streaked, calling his name in a small voice. That was when I understood. I'd only ever been the stand-in for the woman he couldn't let go of. My stubbornness, my refusal to give up — all of it broke under the disappointment that kept piling up. So I gave up on him for good. I decided to keep our child to myself, and disappear from his world without a word. But later, he came back. Down on his knees, again and again, begging me to come home.

My best friend Caleb and I mated with the most beautiful and strongest female Alpha twins of the Creek Pack. Everyone said we were the luckiest guys in the territory. But the pack didn't know that Victor, their stepbrother, was the one the female Alpha twins truly loved. My best friend Caleb and I planned to sever the mate bond, but the night before we were due to leave, Caleb was poisoned with wolfsbane. I called his mate Selene, but she sneered, "Ryan, my sister says your and Caleb's little tricks are getting really old. Are you going to tell me tomorrow that Caleb accidentally fell off the cliff?"

Marcus's sixth patent had just gone through, and he said he was going to give me the grand proposal, the one that would close out four years of dating. The campus quad was covered in candles and roses. Marcus stood in the middle of it holding a bouquet, his eyes shining. He was halfway through his speech when his graduate student Claire threw herself into his arms. The plain silver band on her finger, identical to his, caught the candlelight. The crowd went still, then started murmuring. Every face turned toward them with the kind of look people get when they think they've stumbled onto a secret. And I was standing in the middle of that crowd. His girlfriend of four years, the one he had kept hidden the entire time, watching them hold each other. Watching him swallow the rest of his speech. Watching him hand my flowers to her. My phone buzzed in my hand. A message from S. "Sweetheart. Have you thought about it? We know we were wrong."

The day Lorenzo got kidnapped by a rival family, I found out I was three months pregnant. I took the million dollars his father offered, and I ran. The next time we met, I looked him in the eye and told him I'd been a mole for the rival family the whole time. He was chained up in a cellar, staring at me through the iron bars utterly despairing. He said he'd kill me himself, and then grind my bones to dust. Seven years later, when I saw him again, there was a beautiful woman on his arm. They were getting married. And I was so far down I had to beg him for a loan. He pulled out a thick stack of bills. Lit it on fire right in front of me. He said he'd rather burn it than give it to some whore feeding another man. He didn't know I was begging because my son was dying. His son too.

Three days after Theodore marked me, I took the three million his mother offered. Then I aborted our pup and forced our mate bond apart. Outside the operating room, he howled until he spat blood, begging me not to be so cruel. He said he would hate me for the rest of his life. Seven years later, we met again at an auction. A beautiful, docile she-wolf was sitting beside him. I'd come to the auction for the moonlight grass. But Theodore kept raising his paddle, snatching up the very lot I was bidding on. He took the moonlight grass, dropped it in front of me, and crushed it into the dirt with his heel. He said, "Anything you want, I'll destroy." He didn't know. The moonlight grass could save my pup's life. His pup, too.

It was at our engagement banquet that I finally learned the truth. I wasn't the true heiress of a noble human family. I wasn't the "fated bride" destined to bear a half-blood child for the vampires. I was just the wrong baby someone had brought home from the hospital. A fake. I'd thought that Alexander, the boy who'd risked his life to drag me out of a burning house, the boy I'd grown up beside, would love me the same as always. Instead, in front of everyone, he let go of my hand and looked down at me with cold eyes. "Without that bloodline, do you really think you deserve to stand beside me?" Then he reached out and slid the engagement ring off my finger himself. He turned, and led the true heiress up to the high platform. Everyone laughed at me. The fake heiress, delusional enough to think she could marry the vampire heir. I was thrown out of the only home I'd ever known. The only kindness left to me was Alexander's, a scrap of charity that let me stay at his side as the lowest thing a vampire could keep. A blood slave. And then, later, I died in an explosion. Saving him. Alexander knelt in the blood and lost his mind, screaming at everyone around him to save me. But there was something he didn't know. I hadn't died. Later still, at a vampire banquet, he saw me again at last. I walked past him on another man's arm, smiling. And this time, it was his turn to lose his mind begging me to look back at him.

The cocktail hour had just ended when I picked up a video call in the bridal suite. It was Ethan, three years from now. By then, time‑travel tech had matured enough to let him contact me three years into the past. After enough specific details, I finally believed it. The man on the screen really was Ethan, three years older. I rubbed my aching ankle and pouted at him through the screen. "Ethan, smiling at all these guests is exhausting. But the second I remember I actually married you today, I'm happy all over again." "We're still happy three years from now, right?" He was leaning back against a headboard, and he didn't answer. His face was flat and unreadable. Then I heard it: a woman's voice from his end, low and breathy, asking to be kissed. I froze for a second, then covered my mouth and laughed. "Is that future me? In broad daylight? Get a room." Ethan turned the camera into the bed. My maid of honor was lying there, naked, sprawled across his chest. Her body was covered in hickeys. He looked straight at me as I started to break, and his voice didn't shift at all. "As soon as the reception ended, I told you I had a client meeting. I went to her room instead." "Jo, now you know what's coming. The guests haven't gone home yet. If you want a divorce tonight, you can have one. Up to you."

I was getting married, but my boyfriend of five years did not know it yet. Lately, he had been driving a female coworker home every night and coming back late. She had a terrible memory and was always leaving things behind in his car. First it was earrings. Then adhesive bra inserts. Then intimate photos. One night, at midnight, she called to say she had left her allergy medication in his car. My boyfriend pulled his pants back on and rushed out the door to deliver it to her. Because of her, our wedding had already been postponed 19 times. After five years together, I decided to give him one last chance. "Either stop driving her home, or the wedding is off." He stayed silent all night. After that, he actually started coming home on time. I thought things were finally getting better. Then, one week before the wedding, I opened the front door and found half the furniture in our living room gone. The woman next door poked her head out and ran a hand over my washing machine with a smile. "Amanda, we're neighbors now. Ignatius loaned me the money to buy a house. He said I could use some of these old appliances until I get settled." My hands trembled as I opened my banking app. The $300,000 wedding fund we had spent five years saving was gone. Every last cent. This time, I did not even have the strength to argue. Then my mother called. "Sweetheart, how would you feel about moving the wedding to Rose Garden? I think your current venue doesn't do you justice." I looked around the half-empty living room and laughed. "Sure. And while we're at it, let's replace the groom too." After all, my mother had remarried into one of the wealthiest families in the country. My five stepbrothers had been waiting years for me to come home. And among the men around them who wanted to marry me? There was no shortage of candidates.

I foolishly endured five rounds of IVF, suffered through endless pain, and nearly died from severe prenatal hemorrhaging before finally giving birth to the first grandson of the Newton family, all because Bryce told me that we would get married once the baby was born. However, Bryce publicly took his first love, Selina, by the hand on the day of the baby shower and announced with a smile, "Thank you all for coming for Selina and my child." At that moment, I froze at the top of the staircase. When he spotted me, he walked over with a smile and said, "I knew I couldn't keep this hidden forever, so I thought it would be better to tell you now while the baby's still young." Then, he raised his glass toward me as if he were negotiating a business deal. "You got pregnant before marriage, so everyone looks down on you. Plus, your parents have disowned you. You have nowhere else to go. Don't worry. You can keep raising the child, but Selina would be the child's legal guardian. "You'll come with me to the City Hall to handle the registration tomorrow." He thought I would lose my mind and swallow my pride for the sake of my child. Instead, I quietly left and sought out the true heir of the Newton family, who had just returned from abroad. A few days later, my child and I were officially become members of Newton family. I became Bryce's stepmother on that same day. Naturally, my child became his younger brother. I had sole custody over my child, and that wasn't all. No, the best part of this deal was that the Newton family inheritance would eventually belong to me as well.

From dating to marriage, seven years together, Kevin Fletcher bailed on fifty-two trips with me. Every single time, he had an excuse. A project deadline. A last-minute business trip. An elderly relative who suddenly wasn't doing well. And every single time, he promised he'd make it up to me. I believed him. Fifty-two times. Until last month, when I found a travel planner tucked away in his study. Inside were fifty-two plane tickets to the same city. And fifty-two photos of him and his so-called childhood friend, Fiona Snow. Written on the first photo: [She said she wanted to see the ocean, so I cleared my schedule and took her.] On the thirty-third: [She got drunk and said her biggest regret was never starting a family with me.] The fifty-second photo was dated the same day he blew off our fifth wedding anniversary trip. On the back, he'd written: [She's pregnant. I'm going to be a dad!] I wiped my tears away, opened my laptop, and drafted the divorce papers. Then I booked a ticket to Antarctica. This time, I was going to see the view alone.

When I was six years old, I became an actual dummy after playing a silly game with my older sister, Hannah Hubbard. My mental age is stuck at six years old. Because of that, my grandma receives a huge shock, causing her condition to deteriorate. Since then, Hannah has completely transformed into a brand new person. Thanks to her scholarship and her efforts to collect and sell trash, Grandma and I are able to survive under her care. Hannah is such a prideful person, and yet when her classmates call her stupid nicknames, she doesn't get mad at them at all. But if anyone is to call me an idiot, Hannah will seek justice for me no matter what. That night, Hannah gathers me in her arms while crying soundlessly. "My Oliver isn't an idiot at all. You just haven't grown up yet. Oliver, promise me that you will never leave me, okay?" I just nod blankly. For the next three years, I cling to her like glue. That is, until Blake Mueller appears in our lives. When I'm done playing with the mud, I forget to wash my hands, so I accidentally soil Blake's white shirt with my soiled hands. That's when Hannah suddenly breaks down emotionally and kicks me out of the house. "Oliver Hubbard, you've dragged me down my whole life! Are you going to cause trouble for Blake as well? Can you please be more understanding and stop causing more trouble for me?" Finally, an idea sparks inside my dim-witted brain for once. It turns out that my existence brings nothing but misery to Hannah. So, I hide inside the casket Grandma has custom-ordered for herself. There, I close my eyes and begin counting down quietly. Three, two, one. Let the game begin.

I'm the type who has the urge to overshare my life with him. It can be anything, be it the flowers blooming by the side of the road, the unpleasant coffee I end up having, or the sunset I've seen when I'm on my way home from work. Heck, when I think of Edwin Howell all of a sudden, I can't resist texting him at all. His replies are always short and perfunctory, though I suppose they count as a form of response from him. Hence, over the past six months, I've relied on these cold-sounding yet present replies to give me enough strength to deal with the engagement party, go wedding gown shopping, and choose the wedding venue all by myself. Somehow, I've managed to hang in there till the week before the wedding. But five days before the wedding, I discover an AI program that's installed within Edwin's computer. It can categorize every single sentence that I've sent to Edwin and extract the keywords. Then, it'll draft the most perfunctory responses that will never go wrong. If I miss Edwin, the AI will reply, "Mm-hmm." If I feel aggrieved, the AI will reply, "Got it." When I try to vent my frustrations to Edwin, the AI will reply, "Don't make such a big deal out of it." It turns out that Edwin isn't the one who has been responding to my need to overshare. The thing is, he has been texting another woman nonstop in another private chat. They talk about anything and everything under the sun, from exchanging simple good mornings and good nights to asking, "What are you having for lunch today?" and "Do you wanna go to the beach someday?" Finally, I realize that Edwin isn't the silent type who keeps his love in. If anything, he's the flashy type who will proclaim his love anywhere, anytime. It's just that… his love has never been mine to have. As for me, I've finally made up my mind to stop spending my life waiting for a response that will never come.

After Nathaniel Cross promises to break things off and refocus on our marriage after having an affair, I give him three chances to meet with the young lady to end things between them completely. He uses every possible moment to spend time with her. They have dinner and do crafts. He even stays by her side through the night. When he comes back, he throws away everything that has to do with her and takes my hand again. "Trust me. I'll never betray you again," Nathaniel promises. One day, I collide with a young woman on the road. She makes a phone call to ask for help. The voice that answers belongs to one of my husband's friends. "Nathaniel, I don't think you should go. You've already used up all three chances. If Caroline finds out about this, she'll definitely ask for a divorce." Then, I hear Nathaniel's confident reply. "Caroline is an orphan. No one has ever loved or cared about her. She's more afraid of divorce than I am. Just keep quiet about this. I know what I'm doing. This is the last time." I feel my entire body turn cold. Only then do I realize that the sobbing woman in front of me is the mistress he has been so devoted to protecting. 20 minutes later, the man who has just sworn to return wholeheartedly to his family with me rushes frantically to the hospital.

I was thrown out someone else's door twice before I even turned thirty. The first time was during my marriage with Donald Stern, a businessman. When it was time for my pregnancy checkup, I found out he was making love to a college girl right in front of the 100th floor's window. He called me a childish woman and threw me out the door. My father told me that all wealthy men cheated sooner or later. To prove people wrong, I married my childhood friend of ten years, Shawn Foster. He was accepting and caring of me. He did not mind that my ex-husband still sent apology gifts every year. He did not even mind that we had no children after three years of marriage. Every time we were going at it and reaching the climax, he would nibble on my ear and whisper, "We don't need children. All I need is you." On our anniversary, he brought home a woman I had never seen before and ordered the butler to throw my luggage out of the main bedroom. I clenched the pregnancy test I had not yet shown him. With a trembling voice, I asked, "What's the meaning of this?" A cigarette sat between his fingers. He had a look on his face that said he had just heard the biggest joke getting cracked. "Drop the act already, Yvonne. Haven't you learned anything from Donald dumping you?"