Tragic Love Defy Fate Short Stories & Novels

I never thought I'd die on my honeymoon. 160 feet down in a pitch-black underwater cave, Adam Hunter, my husband who has spent ten years courting me, kills me with a knife. When he returns home, he takes everything my family owns. The broke nobody turns into a billionaire powerhouse overnight. Meanwhile, my parents spend every last cent trying to prove he murdered me, only to die in bitter despair. When I open my eyes, I'm back at the moment before the dive. Adam lies beside me, holding me tightly as he sleeps peacefully. Only I know that he will kill me in the crushing darkness of the deep water. I have less than two hours to escape this death trap. I look at the clock. The countdown begins.

For seven years, I destroyed myself trying to give my mate an heir. Thirty-six pregnancies. Thirty-six miscarriages. Thirty-six tiny lives were buried while my husband held me in his arms and promised me it wasn’t my fault. I believed Alpha Cassian Blackthorne loved me. I believed the Moon Goddess had blessed our bond. I believed every painful miscarriage was a tragedy we suffered together. Until the day I discovered the horrifying truth; Cassian never wanted my children. For seven years, the man I loved has been secretly poisoning me with wolfsbane, slowly destroying both my body and my wolf as punishment for the death of the woman he truly loved. And when I finally become pregnant again, Cassian murders both me and our unborn child without hesitation. Broken and full of regret, I died praying for one thing only: a second chance never to love Cassian again. When I opened my eyes, I found myself back seven years in the past on the night everything began. But this time, something is different: Cassian has returned, too, and, unlike before, he chooses to save his first love and abandon me to die in her place. Fine. This time, I will no longer beg for his love. I will reject the mate bond, protect my family from the tragedy waiting ahead, and rewrite my fate completely while taking my revenge. But the more I pull away, the more the cold Alpha who once destroyed me begins to look at me with emotions I have never seen before and suddenly he's scared of losing me forever.

The Southlands priest once prophesied that the Duke of Winslet's house would produce a Saintess who could command every beast alive. I'd hidden the golden serpent mark on my wrist since childhood, but my cousin, Rose Winslet, flaunted a poisonous snake coiled around hers every day. When the marriage decree came, she got exactly what she wanted: the Crown Prince. I was given to the Seventh Prince instead, a man with two ruined legs whom the entire court despised. For six years after that, I trained hawks to carry messages and drove wolves through enemy lines, and it was my hands that put him on the throne. The day he was crowned, I told him, overjoyed, that I was the true beast-commanding Saintess all along. He had my hand tendons severed and threw me into the Serpent Pit. "Monica, if you had to pretend to be someone, why did it have to be Rose? If you hadn't hidden that mark on purpose, how could I have mistaken my true savior for someone else? "Rose was tortured to death by the Crown Prince, and it's all because of you!" When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the priest tested the Saintess's identity before the entire court. The Seventh Prince got there first, slicing open his palm and letting his blood drip into the mouth of the venomous snake Rose kept as a pet. "Father, I'll give up my claim to the throne. I only want to marry Rose Winslet."

Vivian Grant had changed. Everyone in Riverton’s elite social circle was talking about it. The notoriously spoiled heiress of the Grant family had gone from a shameless heartbreaker to a hopeless romantic. She used to drive her Porsche straight onto campus, shove a bouquet of roses into some handsome guy’s arms, and walk away without a second glance. Now, ignoring the cheers and teasing around her, she walked up to the campus heartthrob, politely held out her hand, and introduced herself. “Hi, Nathan Hayes. I’m Vivian Grant.” Once, on her twentieth birthday, she had made a wish. “This year, I’m going to sleep with every good-looking man in Riverton.” But now, she and Nathan had been together for four years without ever breaking up. Even their graduation photos looked like wedding pictures. She had once torn up their engagement agreement in public and stormed off, her heels striking the floor with every furious step. Now, the company she and Nathan had founded together was about to go public. Vivian was already planning to propose to him the night of the IPO. She had even bought the ring. A platinum band with their initials engraved on the inside. On the day the company went public, Vivian cooked dinner herself. She was terrible in the kitchen. Hot oil splattered across her hand, making her hiss in pain, but she still carried the dishes to the table with a smile. Her fingers brushed over the ring as she murmured softly, the satisfaction of finally setting everything right filling her voice. “Nathan, I’m going to make up for every regret you’ve ever had.” “From now on, there’ll be nothing left for us but happiness.” No one knew the truth. Vivian had been reborn.

I went to surprise my fiancé, Dante Rossi, in my wheelchair. But just as I reached his door, my phone rang. The caller was me, ten years in the future. "Don't go in. He's in there with another woman." "No way." She read back the text I had just typed and deleted. "If I could still dance, would you come home earlier?" My hand jerked. I hadn't sent those words to anyone. I lost my legs saving him, and I would never dance ballet again. The day of my amputation, Dante, a Boston mafia Don, knelt beside my hospital bed in tears and begged me to marry him. He swore that whenever I was in pain, he would be right there with me. He loves me. How could he change? But the woman on the phone started to cry. "Last night, I fell in the bathroom. When I called him, all he said was, 'Erin, how much longer are you going to make me feel guilty about your legs?'" I gripped the armrest. "And then what?" "I apologized. I begged him not to be mad." I stared at the empty fabric hanging where my legs used to be. I'm the one who fell. I'm the one who got hurt. So why am I the one saying sorry? Just then, Dante texted me, "Still busy. Be good and don't wait up." Through the glass wall of the shooting range, I watched him put his phone away. Then he leaned down and kissed the woman in his arms. She turned her head, and I forgot how to breathe. How can it be her?

The day I went to meet my online boyfriend, Liam Hayes, in person, two of them showed up. One walked past me with my best friend holding his arm. "Weren't you supposed to meet someone else today? Why did you come to spend time with me instead?" "No one important. I didn’t feel like going." The other kept sending messages to my phone: "I'm sorry I'm late. Are you upset? Where are you? I don't see you." My fingertips went cold. I snapped a photo of the man from behind and sent it. "Is this you?" A brief silence followed before he replied with a selfie. The man in the photo wore the white shirt we'd agreed on. His face was the same, but his jawline was a little more defined than that of the man who had just walked past. The same street stretched out behind him. A banner outside one of the shops read, "Celebrating Five Years—Thank You for Your Support!" But that shop had only opened for the first time that morning.

After graduation, just before I was supposed to start working at my boyfriend's company, I got a phone call from myself twelve years in the future. I could barely get the question out fast enough. "Well? Did my genius boyfriend's startup make it?" My future self laughed softly. "It did. His company goes public when he's thirty-two, and by thirty-five, his net worth is over ten billion." I was ecstatic. "So I make it big in the industry right alongside him, right?" There was a long silence on the other end. "You have two kids, and at the company, you're in charge of... ordering takeout, filing reimbursements, hiring people, and putting together reports." I froze. Her words suddenly came faster. "So listen to me. Take a different job. "Don't work for him and spend your time doing whatever needs doing. Take the development job at that major tech company that offered you a role. "Three years from now, the Director of Engineering gets fired for bribery. You'll have a shot at taking his place, with an annual salary of five million. "Once you get that first year's salary, don't buy a car. Buy two small apartments in Briarport's old district. Two years later, that area will be redeveloped to support a new free trade zone. The relocation compensation will be enough for you to start your own company without taking out a loan." I hurried to ask, "What kind of company?" "AI." She told me about all the changes the industry would go through over the next twelve years, then carefully walked me through several crucial turning points I needed to remember. There were only ten seconds left on the call. I stopped her before she could hang up. "One last question." "Xenia Wells, is your dream still alive?"

One day, I somehow connected to a video call with my husband from five years ago. “Madison, you said yes to being my girlfriend today! I couldn’t be happier! “We’ll still be this happy five years from now, right? I have promised to spend the rest of my life treating you right.” On screen, Julian Lorde smiled with such confidence. With downcast eyes, I didn’t say a word. I quietly flipped the camera toward the bed. The man tangled in the sheets with another woman was my husband, Julian—just five years later. The sounds of their affair filled the air. Paying no heed to the young man’s stunned expression, I ended the video call and sent a text. “See that? “We won't get our happily ever five years later. The only thing waiting for us is the divorce papers.”

The night I confessed my love to my boyfriend, he wept so hard he could barely breathe. He said he had seen the future and in that future, he had done something he would regret for the rest of his life. He couldn’t remember everything he’d seen. Only one thing was clear: no matter what happened, I had to give him three chances. “Don’t ask me why,” he whispered through his tears. “Just promise me. No matter what I do, give me three chances.” I was hopelessly in love with Jared Lockwood, the heir to the most feared mafia empire in the city. So I promised. Years later, that promise became the cruelest mistake of my life. The man who once swore he’d die for me became a stranger. By the time he placed his signature on our divorce agreement, I had stopped hoping he would remember the man he used to be. Then I heard a familiar voice. “Don’t.” I turned. Standing before me was Jared at nineteen—young, terrified, and still hopelessly in love with me. His eyes filled with tears as he stared at the man he would become. Then he looked at me and whispered, “You promised me three chances, didn’t you?”

On the cruise for our high school graduation trip, a woman who looked exactly like me appeared out of nowhere. "Hello, Vesper Monroe. I'm you, ten years from now." Her voice was clear and steady. Shock and joy hit me all at once. I quickly signed back, "You can talk now? No, wait. You mean ten years from now, I can talk? Who cured me? Was it Aiden Tyson?" She smiled and nodded. Happiness flooded through me, and I eagerly pressed her for more. "So, ten years from now, did I marry him? How did our life turn out?" "Very happy. Ten years from now, he cured your illness and gave you your life back. Not only did you marry him, but you also had a beautiful daughter. Your family is whole." I felt as if I'd fallen straight into a jar of honey. I ducked my head shyly. "So, should I confess to him now? Or should I wait for him to tell me how he feels?" The face before me suddenly turned cold. "No. What you need to do now is give up your college choice and get as far away from him as you can. "Even if it means staying mute for the rest of your life, you need to cut him off completely."

“Shawn, Ethan and Wendy are engaged. Stop trying to come between them. We’ve already booked your flight. Stay abroad for a few years, then come back after their wedding.” Shawn Yates looked at his parents’ faces, at the way they seemed so sure they were doing what was best for him, and realized he had been reborn. He had returned to the day his parents forced him to leave the country and give up Wendy Stone for good. In his previous life, his parents talked him into leaving, but he couldn’t accept it. He told Wendy again and again that he was the one she loved. He begged his parents to tell her the truth and stop letting his brother, Ethan Yates, take his place. All it did was make Wendy despise him even more. When a car accident left him close to death, she even told the nurse on the phone coldly, “What’s he trying to pull this time? Tell him to stop trying to ruin my wedding with Ethan.”

The coming-of-age ceremony had barely ended when I received a prophecy crystal from my family. Inside it, I saw myself ten years from now. "Ella, stop trusting Noah." "He only applied for the Healing track to keep you tethered to him." "In the end, you became an ordinary wolf. You never got the chance to study the moon phases and prophecy again." I stared hard at the version of myself trapped in the crystal. "And Noah? His heart always leaned toward Mira. He said he loved you, but his love was the cage that trapped you." The crystal shattered. The vision ended. I ran back to the academy and found it. The contract Noah had submitted on my behalf. The one that would keep me on campus. I withdrew the application. Then I booked the earliest flight back to my family's pack. This time, I wasn't giving up my future for him.

Three months after I died, Jack Carter became one of the youngest colonels in the United States Marine Corps. At the promotion ceremony, every person in the room stood up and applauded him. He had a war record, he had money, he had a house that looked out over the woods, and he had the kind of future everyone envied. But only I, already dead, knew that the one person he had truly wanted his whole life was never coming back. The year he turned eighteen, he rebuilt a beat-up old Ford and put the spare key in my hand. He said, "After prom, come find me. I will take you to California." I said yes. But that night I walked down the steps on another man's arm and told him, in front of everyone, that I had never loved him. He did not know that my family had forced that lie out of me. They used Jack's freedom and his future to threaten me. If I dared to leave with him, a forged felony statement would put him in prison and disqualify him from ever enlisting. So I chose to deceive him, and I watched him leave hating me. Later, in the service, he was bullied and framed, and he nearly lost everything. He believed a total stranger had saved him. He did not know that the person who tracked down the witnesses, paid the lawyers, and handed the evidence to the military was me, from the beginning. Later still, he went from a small-time punk out of the harbor district to a decorated officer. Meanwhile my family went bankrupt. I lost the house, the trust, the health coverage, and in the end I died alone in an apartment with a leaking roof. On the day I died, he was standing under the lights receiving a medal. On the screen, everyone was applauding him. On my side of the screen, I was holding the car key from the year I turned eighteen, the one we never used, and I stopped breathing. It took three months for my letters to reach him. Only then did he know. The cruelest words I ever said were said to protect his future. Every kindness in his life that he thought came from a stranger came f

The day we moved into the run-down apartment, I started seeing comments floating in the air. They said my husband, Ethan Grant, was the male lead in a tragic romance novel. And I was his first wife, the one who died young. The woman he'd once loved deeply and could never get over. The comments told me what would happen after I died: Ethan would spend years unable to move on. His grief would last until a woman named Chloe appeared. She was gentle and cheerful, like a ray of sunshine breaking through the darkness in his life. Chloe would be the one to finally help Ethan move on from my death and find happiness again. I stared blankly at the words floating before my eyes. Maybe I should let him go.

I'm a wolf-less she-wolf, yet I'm the fated mate of Alpha Kayden of the Frostmoon Pack. Every time he stayed out late at night, I couldn't help but worry, and I'd reach for him through the mind link. But to Kayden, that was just proof of my weakness—that I could never handle the duties of a Luna. So he refused to acknowledge me. In front of the elder council, his voice was ice: "Ella has no wolf spirit. Low bloodline. And she's far too clingy. How could she possibly carry the weight of a Luna?" "Only when she stops jumping at shadows and can stand on her own as a Luna—only then does she deserve to wear my ring and bear the honor of a Luna." Half a year passed. I really did stop reporting every worry to him. I stopped chasing him down for proof of his love. Kayden was pleased. He thought I'd finally learned to obey. He announced to the entire pack that he would hold a coronation ceremony for me, making me his Luna in truth. But I no longer wanted to be his Luna. I'd already decided to leave him—for good.

When my sister, Vesper Rowe, begged us for help, my mate, Alpha Sterling Blackwood, and I traveled for three days and nights to reach the neighboring Cloudwolf Pack. Vesper's in-laws made her life as hard as they could. I out-argued every wolf in the room, and Sterling backed me up with brute strength. Once her mate bond was finally severed, a smile finally appeared on Vesper's haggard face. "Moon Goddess bless you both. Don't ever split up, okay? Otherwise, I won't know whose house to go to anymore." Sterling ruffled her hair, then looked at me with open affection. "Don't worry about us. The Moon Goddess chose Livia and me as the most compatible mates in the entire werewolf world. Everyone else could split up, but we'd still be together. "What matters now is figuring out what kind of life you want for yourself." After we brought Vesper home with us, I took even better care of her than before and made sure she got out and met new people. Whenever Sterling saw me preparing a plate of fruit for Vesper, he'd pull me into his arms, acting jealous. "Livia, your sister is a grown woman. I'm your mate, and I'm the one who needs more of your attention right now." I laughed and popped a slice of apple into his mouth, my heart brimming with happiness. When I returned from a month-long training retreat, they were both there to pick me up. Sterling opened his arms to hug me as usual, but I spotted a lipstick stain on his collar. When I confronted him about it, Sterling, who'd always answered every question I asked, remained silent. My heart sank, and I decided I'd break the bond the very next day. But when I reached for Vesper to take her with me, my hand closed on empty air. She gave me one reluctant look, then turned and walked to Sterling.

I was born with a gift: the rare ability to bear powerful hybrid children for a vampire. I should have been cherished for it. Instead, my mother died young, her inheritance seized by my stepmother, my father's affection stolen by my stepsister. Only Ryan, heir to the vampire King, treated me with gentleness. When I was young, he fell for me at first sight and was secretly in love with me for two years. Later, at a gala, someone pushed me into a frozen lake. He was the one who pulled me out. He bent close, his eyes soft. “Marry me. Let me protect you.” I said yes without hesitation. Because no one had ever stood beside me so surely. I loved him with everything I had. When assassins struck at our wedding, I even stepped in front of the bullet meant for his heart. But after I dragged my weakened body through childbirth and gave him his child, he appeared before me with my stepsister Vicky in his arms. “You have no use to me anymore.” Ryan's eyes were cold and foreign. “The person I love has always been Vicky.” He had chosen me only for my bloodline, purer, better suited to produce an heir. Vicky smiled and drove the knife into my chest. Ryan stood to one side and watched me die. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the night Ryan proposed. Vicky was crying, begging to take my place and marry him instead. This time, I closed my eyes. “All right. I agree to the exchange.”