Cerita Pendek Familial Bond & Novel Devotion Marriage

From my earliest memories, my entire family is cold and distant toward me. When my parents look at my younger sister, Claire Lloyd, their eyes fill with warmth and joy. Yet, when they turn to me, only disgust remains. Claire's life is filled with applause and excessive love, while mine is filled with disdain and suffering. When the explosion erupts at the street corner, I save the stranger beside me. Later, I learn he is Byron Whitmore, a mafia family's Don. He begins pursuing me after I rescue him. Later, I quit my job and move to a new place, but he finds me and proposes in 100 different ways. "Why me?" I ask countless times. "Because it's you," he always answers. The wedding causes a sensation throughout the city. I truly seem to have transformed from an ugly duckling into a swan. That is, until I'm five months pregnant, when Claire needs a transfusion of rare Rh-negative blood after a car accident. The blood bank has a shortage. Because of that, my parents knock me unconscious and send me to the hospital. In my daze, the blood extraction machine hums continuously. As two thousand milliliters of blood leave my body, I see Byron. Tears well up in my eyes. I begin thinking he's here to save me. Instead, I hear him say, "We can't take any more. Sharon and the baby will die." "But Claire has lost too much blood. She'll die, too..." My mother pleads. "No one wants Claire safe more than I do." Byron's voice is thick with pain. "She's my first love. I've never forgotten her. I only married Sharon because her face looks so much like Claire's. "But I can't trade her life for Claire's. Trust me—I'll find another way." So, that's his reason for marrying me. The blood extraction machine continues running, but my heart has already stopped beating. The affection I see in his eyes has never been for me. He's always looking through me at someone else. Everyone in the world loves Claire, and Byron is not the exception that I foolishly believe him to be. That grand wedding is nothing but an ugly duckling's self-deceiving fantasy.

I was the sole heiress to the Alpha King of the Northern Territory, yet I fell in love with Caine, the Alpha of the Silver Moon pack in the East. Our territories were sworn enemies, so I kept my identity hidden and stayed by his side in the shadows. For ten years, I was his secretary, his weapon, and his only woman. I helped him transform the Silver Moon pack into one of the most powerful forces in the East. I had always hoped he would propose. After all, every night in bed, he would fuck me hard, his voice rough against my ear as he whispered over and over that I belonged to him. Then one day, after we made love, he said casually,”Starting tomorrow, you'll handle the schedule for the engagement.” I lay there, still trembling in the aftershocks. “Caine.” I sat up, my voice shaking. “Are you... asking me to marry you?” He turned and looked at me like the question surprised him. Like he hadn't expected anything so naive. “Marry you?” His tone was lazy. “The engagement's for Celina.” Celina. The daughter of the River Pack Alpha, next territory over. Something closed around my heart and dropped it straight through the floor. “You're marrying her.” My mind went blank.”Then what am I?” “Sophia,” he said. “You're an Omega. For ten years I've given you the best of everything. Protection. Status. My time.” His thumb stroked along my jaw. “But you know you can never be Luna. Don't go telling yourself fairy tales.” That's when I knew he had never considered me his mate. For his ambition, for that princess, he chose to sacrifice me. So, I chose to destroy everything I had ever given him. I dialed a number I hadn't called in ten years. “Dad.” “Sophia. My little princess. You've finally come to your senses?” The second I heard his voice, my throat locked up. “You were right, Dad. I want to come home.” I forced down the catch in my voice. “Come for me in five days.”

I needed money, so I sold myself to that cold, handsome man for seven nights. He left behind a black card and an ice-cold eggshell, then vanished. Three months later, a doctor found six coiled serpentine shadows inside my womb. I discarded every trace of my identity and fled to a snowbound cabin, hoping to stay alive. But the day I gave birth alone in a blizzard, what crawled out weren't monsters. They were six babies with golden slit pupils who called me "Mama." My children were not priceless treasures. To the powerful guys, they were research subjects. To the other species, they were "filthy half-breeds." When cold needles pressed against all six of my children's chests, I heard the blast door torn from its frame. The man who had vanished three years ago stood in the smoke. Six golden threads glowed from his palm, each connected to a child, and black blood still seeped from the wounds he'd torn open breaking through the blockade. "Get your hands off my family."