Devotion Healing Short Stories & Novels

Nathaniel Reid had always despised being bound by our engagement. To spite me, he recklessly raced cars and caused trouble, indulging in all sorts of reckless behavior. And every time, I cleaned up his mess. Then, a girl named Joanna Smith appeared in his life. On the night of my birthday banquet, he scoured the entire city for a simple breakfast wrap for her and never even bothered to show up. I had already prepared for this moment. That night, I approached my family and asked to change the engagement. "It didn’t have to be Nathaniel." I thought of the distant, composed man from my dreams—the one who had always hidden his quiet, unwavering love for me. A smile flickered across my lips as I said softly, "Didn’t he still have an uncle?"

At the banquet, the most wanted bachelor of Rivenport announced that my stepsister was the woman he truly wished to marry. Without hesitation, I stepped aside and married Simon Barker, who had been pursuing me for years. Our married life was filled with love and happiness. That joy lasted until I finally became pregnant, when I discovered he had been slipping contraceptives into the milk he gave me every night. I also found a custom diamond necklace he kept in his safe that was labelled "For proposal", but the engraving bore my stepsister's initials. It became clear that I had only ever been an obstacle he needed to remove for the woman he truly loved. All those years, he had pretended to love me, but he was just using me as a stepping stone for my stepsister's bright future. No matter how blind I had been before, now I was fully awake to the truth. With a consent form for abortion and a divorce agreement in hand, Simon and I became strangers forever.

After I died, the Moon Goddess chose me and gave me a second life. But I had crossed over into a world of werewolves, and my mission was to win the heart of Soren, a notorious charmer who left a trail of admirers wherever he went. He brought me to the rooftop of the tallest building in the city, where countless fireworks bloomed across the sky in unison. "Surprised? I arranged this fireworks show just for you. Do you like it?" The barrage scrolled across my vision: [This is when you pretend to be shy. That's all you have to do.] Shy? Of course I could do shy. I gave him a demure smile, reached up to brush my fingers along his cheek, and gazed at him tenderly. "Surprised, yes. But fireworks are dazzling one moment and gone the next. You're the lasting surprise in my life." With a wave of my hand, the fireworks in the sky rearranged themselves to spell out Soren's name. The air went still. Not even the boom of the fireworks could drown out the hammering of Soren's heart.

There's about half a month to our wedding when Daniel Bradshaw and I get into a horrible fight. The reason? He wants to have a child with his mentor's daughter. "We're only going to do IVF—it's not like we're doing anything else! My mentor is gravely ill now, and his only wish is to see Phoebe have someone she can rely on!" Daniel sounds indifferent, but my blood runs cold. "It's half a month to our wedding, yet you're going to have a child with another woman. Don't you find that ridiculous?" I watch as he storms off and slams the door shut behind him. Then, I update my social media. "I'm getting married in half a month, but I need a new groom. Is anyone up for it?"

After her first love died, Sophia Hayes hated me for ten years. I tried to win back her favor every day, but she only responded with cold sneers. "If you really want to make me happy, why don't you just die?" Her words were like daggers to my heart. It was a shock when she died in a pool of blood while trying to save me from an oncoming truck. With her final gaze fixed on me, she whispered, "If only I had never met you." Her mother was inconsolable with grief at the funeral. "I should have let Sophia be with Ethan Brooks. I never should have forced her to marry you!" Her father also looked at me with hatred in his eyes. "Sophia saved your life three times. She was such a wonderful person. Why couldn't it have been you who died instead?" Everyone regretted that Sophia had married me—myself included. I was driven away from the funeral, completely devastated. Three years later, I traveled back to the past after a time machine was invented. This time, I chose to sever all connections with Sophia, giving everyone the version of history they truly desired.

Maya Beckham was Oscar Francis's first love. After four long years abroad, she had assumed any feelings he once held for her had turned to dust. Yet when she returned to Elminas, he proposed. Everyone swore Maya was the love of his life—his one true love, his everything. Touched beyond words, she finally gathered the courage to say yes. …Until the day she discovered Oscar secretly marrying her half-sister, Diana Beckham. She stormed toward him like a woman possessed, her voice trembling with rage. "Explain." Oscar met her fury with infuriating calm. "You vanished without a word four years ago. Diana stayed. Now she's dying—this is her last wish. How could I refuse?" Maya's lips curled into a faint, unreadable smile. What Oscar didn't know? She was the one diagnosed with a difficult illness back then. Later, Maya got into an accident and forgot Oscar entirely. Oscar broke down. Day after day, he pounded on her door like a madman, begging her to remember.

In my ninth year of being with Tyler Freeman, he flaunts his relationships with other women while I'm only allowed to come and go from his bedroom. He doesn't acknowledge me as his girlfriend, yet he allows his friends to address me as such. I have a name but not an identity. His friends are bored during a private party and want me to perform a strip dance on stage to liven things up. I expect Tyler to at least turn them down on my behalf, but all he does is sip his wine and say, "Go on. You're the owner of this place, aren't you? Aren't clubs supposed to satisfy their patrons' needs? Don't let my friends down!" I look at him emotionlessly. I don't cry or throw a fuss. Instead, I splash a glass of liquor in his face. The following day, I trash the club. Three months later, Tyler finally thinks of calling me. "Where are you? Aren't you gonna get the hell back here? Do you really expect me to beg you to come back? Do you think you're worthy of that?" I pull my newlywed husband to the camera. "Sorry, Mr. Freeman. I'm getting married. You don't need to come, but do get me a wedding gift." Unexpectedly, he threatens to show my husband intimate videos of me when he sees me in a wedding gown.

When I learned that the villain was a merman who dropped pearls whenever he cried, I took out the discarded pregnancy test stick from the trash can and headed toward the rooftop. "Well, how many babies do you merfolk have in one pregnancy? Do they eat fish food or baby formula?" Theo Atwater, who was attempting suicide, slipped and almost fell from the 18th floor. I shook my head with a sigh. "Forget it. I'll just throw the baby into the sea after giving birth." Later, when the baby was born, Theo was too scared to sleep, fearing that I would release the baby into the sea. When the female lead, Melody Carlisle, and the male lead, Reagan York, were arguing and came to see us, he was looking at our baby’s swimming results and roaring, "You're one of us merfolk. How could you be afraid of water?"

For three months, I’d been in an online romance with a stranger, a werewolf named "Lykos." We were falling hard and fast. Every night, his deep, husky voice and fiery texts made my whole body burn. "I want you, sweetheart." "I can feel it. You're my fated mate." "Dreamt of you again last night. Your scent was everywhere, and you were wrapped around me, begging me to make you mine." Just as I was fantasizing about meeting him, something in one of his daily photos caught my eye: the silver wolf sigil of the Blackwood Pack. And I, a Beta, work for a corporation owned by the Blackwood Pack. I'd been dating a pack member for three months—someone who could be right under my nose! As I frantically tried to guess who he was, I saw it, and my blood ran cold. My boss, the Alpha's brother, Liam, was wearing the black obsidian and silver ring I’d picked out for "Lykos."

The first thing I did after rebirth was follow my husband, Franklin Wallace, to the island for his military deployment. In my previous life, as a spoiled rich heiress from a wealthy family, I looked down on Franklin, the commander my family had arranged for me to marry. We fought constantly, huge arguments every few days, small quarrels in between. After having children, I grew to resent our two kids simply because they carried Franklin's blood. Later, when Franklin was ordered to be stationed on the island, I was the first to stand up and object to going with him. Since I opposed it, Franklin did not force me. He took our two kids and his widowed sister-in-law, Elsie Faulkner, to the island instead. Meanwhile, my spoiled and rebellious self could not wait to throw myself into the arms of my first love, Reuben Sandoval, once Franklin left. However, it did not take long before I discovered Reuben was nothing but a gold-digging scumbag who only wanted my money and body. He gave me an STI and drained my family fortune completely. When Franklin returned from the island with our children, they no longer recognized me as their mother and affectionately called Elsie "Mommy" instead. He even told me he had fallen in love with Elsie during their time together on the island. Eventually, I ended up homeless on the streets and starved to death. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day Franklin was about to leave for his island deployment.

Having dated for five years and been married for seven, she had never missed his birthday in the past 12 years. The 12 gifts from previous years were carefully placed in the storage closet. However, this year's birthday gift...

My period is delayed once again, so I need to visit the gynecology department. In order to avoid embarrassing myself in public, I specifically ask for a doctor with a feminine name. That's how I make an appointment with Dr. Jessie Lloyd. But it turns out that Jessie is a man! After the initial embarrassment, I realize that Jessie is looking at me weirdly.

I'm a succubus who gathers energy by clearing System missions, adept at the game of love. One day, right after completing a honey trap mission, I was sent to a SSS-level horror game at the very next second. The boss was invincible and bloodthirsty, watching coolly as other players rested in pieces before turning to the rest of us. "Now choose—how do you want to die?" While other players were wetting their pants and trying to find a loophole to survive, I picked up on something different. A handsome, powerful target beneath that cold, horrific exterior. Hence, when he reached me, I smiled enigmatically as I told him my wish. "I wish to be conquered by a truly powerful Entity, dominated from soul to flesh, and to die in pure ecstasy." I watched him pause in shock and added, "Oh, and you must do it yourself."

When the heatwave apocalypse hit, the world turned into a literal oven. It was 140 degrees outside. The water dried up, and the power grid went completely dead. We had no choice but to make a run for the underground bunkers. Luckily, my boyfriend, Hudson, awakened ice powers. He is a man of few words, but he caters to my every whim. One day, I was being my usual spoiled self, begging him to waste his precious energy to make me some ice cream, when a sudden memory flooded my brain. It was a plotline. I realized I was living in a romance novel, and I was nothing but the useless, high-maintenance side character. All beauty, zero survival skills, and a constant burden to Hudson. According to the plot, he would eventually leave me behind, and I would die a gruesome death at the hands of some wasteland raiders. Meanwhile, Hudson would meet the REAL female lead—a woman as strong and capable as him. Terrified, I decided to pull away and stop weighing him down. But I didn't expect that the moment I distanced myself, Hudson would snatch the back of my neck, kissing me with a vicious, uncharted possessiveness. "Are you bored of me? Trying to shake me off?" he growled against my lips. "I'll never let that happen."

I woke up staring at divorce papers—from the guy I'd crushed on all through college. My name. His. Right there on the page. He said I cheated. Last thing I remembered? Getting ready to finally tell him how I felt at our graduation party. Now suddenly, we've got a four-year-old. And him? He looked at me like I was some rando off the street. No trace of the sweet, soft guy I used to know. Just ice. What did I miss? What the hell happened in the last five years?

Tristan Moreno and I are asked when we're getting married when we attend a class reunion. "We're undecided." "1st of October." Our answers come simultaneously. His head shoots up, and he looks at me with anger and disbelief. I ignore him and explain to my classmates, "I'm getting married on the 1st of October. You're all invited." I know what Tristan wants to ask me. He and I have dated for eight years, but he's never discussed marriage with me. He drags me to a corner, looking furious. "Didn't we agree to put marriage on hold? Do you take pleasure in forcing me into this?" I pry his fingers off my wrist and say, "You can put it on hold for as long as you want. That doesn't stop me from getting married." He's long since gotten bored of me—he's found a younger woman but thinks he's done well in keeping it a secret. Fortunately, he's not the man I'm marrying.

"Dad, Mom, I've decided—I'll go through with the marriage arrangement with the Kingston family. I'll be back by the end of the month." Daphne Wharton made the decision in the middle of a camping trip with Luke Hardy. She curled into herself, pulling her scarf higher against the chill. For a moment, there was only silence on the other end of the line. Then, her mother's voice came through, thick with tears. "Daphne, we know this isn't fair to you. Our company is struggling, and the Kingston family is willing to help—but only if you marry their son. We've failed you as parents…" Her father let out a heavy sigh beside her mother. Daphne listened, her gaze unfocused. A faint, bitter smile tugged at her lips. "It's okay, Mom, Dad. This is what I should do. I'll be back in fifteen days—when their son returns to the country."

It’s been five years since my mother married into the Sterling crime family, and my relationship with my stepbrother, Louis, is still ice-cold. He’s arrogant, aloof, and wouldn’t give me the time of day. I know better than to even try. Until I saw it: a birthmark on Louis’s body, identical to the one on my online boyfriend, Rowan. I thought about the messages Rowan had sent me every night for the past two years, the ones that made my face flush and my heart race: Baby, I can only fall asleep thinking of you. I need to see you. I’ll show you how much I want you. I’m going crazy thinking about you… I just couldn’t square the man in those messages with the cold-as-ice Louis. To make matters worse, I had just lied to Rowan, telling him I’d failed to get into Harvard and wasn't good enough for him, before breaking up with him. If he finds out it was me who dumped him, I’m pretty sure he’ll tear me to pieces. I was already packing my bags, ready to bolt. But then Louis appeared, blocking my path. He leaned in, his low laugh a menacing rumble in my ear. "Think you can play me and just walk away? Who gave you the balls?"

Just as Justin proposed to me, a phone call interrupted him. Standing close by, I clearly heard the voice on the other end of the line. “Justin, I’m hurt. My leg hurts so much!” Justin snapped the ring box shut and looked at me. “Alice is injured. I’ll have to do this another time.” With those words, he sprinted away, leaving everyone around us staring in astonishment. I had never met Alice, but her presence lingered in every corner of our lives.  At meals, Justin would mention her fondness for sweet desserts.  When I dressed, I came to know her love for soft lavender hues. I argued, I wept, I lashed out, but Justin always countered with the same line. “You’re so jealous. Everyone has their first love. She’s my past, but you’re my future.” So, I turned to a man who had once called me his first love—Quentin—and made a bold proposition. “Let’s get married.”

I am Charles Grant’s crush, and everyone said that he was really loyal to me. But on our third wedding anniversary, I found out that he had gotten a replacement for me. They even had a three-year-old child. I caressed my belly and tore apart the pregnancy report that I had brought to give him as a surprise.