Tragic Love 短篇故事與 Devotion Regret 小說

On the day Zachary Lake stands at the pinnacle of global technology, accepting his award, I'm lying in a hospital bed, abandoned by doctors because I can't afford treatment for kidney failure. On TV, the host asks him to call the person he's most grateful for. Without hesitation, he dials my number. "Shannon, do you regret leaving me?" he asks. I clutch the astronomical medical bill in my hand, the paper crumpling beneath my fingers. Forcing a light tone, I reply, "Can you take me on as your kept woman now that you're a big deal?" On screen, his face remains expressionless as he hangs up without a word. Then, his cold voice pierces through the broadcast. "Now, I have nothing to feel grateful for." But what he doesn't know is that when he was on the brink of death years ago, I was the one who gave him my kidney.

I came to Chicago with my friend to visit her boyfriend. Three days in, her boyfriend said he'd show us "something fun." The car kept driving—farther and farther out. By the time we realized something was wrong, we were locked inside an abandoned factory. My friend was gone. Her boyfriend shoved me into a room and threw me a line: "Your friend sold you for twenty grand. Stay put and wait for arrangements." I scanned the room. A few men in black suits leaned against the doorway. Silver-gray pins on their chests. Shield-shaped. Dark red thorns. An inverted dagger. The family crest of Caleb Richardson—don of the New York mafia. I was held captive by him for three years. I barely escaped with my life— And now I've been handed right back to him.

When I see Reese Chapman again, it is exactly three years after I sever our mate bond. It is also the third year since I completely seal my wolf and hide at the edge of the Shadow pack territory, living as an insignificant healer. Tonight, the air in the clinic feels heavy and icy under his overwhelming aura. He carries a lightly injured female companion in his arms and forcibly takes over the best VIP ward in the clinic. During my shift, he summons me three times through his guards. The first time, he coldly orders, "There are wolfsbane fragments on the bedsheets. Change them." I send an apprentice herbalist to handle it. Two hours later, he has a nurse relay another order. "The smell of medicine is too strong. Change it again." I suppress the urge to suddenly break down and arrange for someone to take care of it. At 2:00 am, he reaches me through our mind-link. "The sheets are dirty. Come up and change them." I instinctively block him and refuse calmly. "Sorry, Alpha Reese. The staff responsible for cleaning have already gone to rest." In the darkness, a cruel chuckle comes from the man. In a tone that allows no refusal, he murmurs, "Then you come and change them yourself."

I’m the Chief Counsel for Donatello Vexille, the Godfather of the Vexille family. I’m also his secret wife. At night, he’d pull me close, take me with a ragged violence, leaving his marks on me, a brutal claim I couldn’t refuse. But by day, I was just his lawyer. All he had for me were cold commands. We lived like that for three years. I decided I was done. But he couldn’t know. When I handed him the divorce papers, disguised as a bill of lading, and he signed his name, a breath I didn’t know I was holding finally escaped me. I chased him for seven years and was married to him for three. Whatever was left of my heart finally flatlined. I knew I could never have his. Because it already belonged to someone else: Angelina, his underboss’s sister. He remembered her favorite restaurant. He got blind drunk with joy when she filed for divorce. He even posted his personal guards outside her door. Those were honors I never had. So I tricked him into signing the papers, packed my things, and vanished. What I didn't expect was what he did after I left. He put a king's ransom on my location, and even announced to the whole world that I was his wife.

Bertrand Callum was a well-known lawyer in our circle and my fiancé. We had agreed to go on our honeymoon right after registering our marriage. But he broke that promise again and again. He took his secretary to every place I had dreamed of visiting. On my birthday, he brought her to Saltorlini, the place we had planned to go together. Later, he gave up our marriage registration just because she had sprained her ankle. Even when I was in a car accident and on the verge of death, he hung up on my call for help because of something she said. After I recovered, I went alone to Acreatic, a place I had always longed to see, and moved out of the home we once shared. A week after I left, Bertrand called to scold me. "Annie, you need to stop overreacting. Are you really going to divorce me over something so trivial?" I wanted to remind him that we had never actually registered our marriage. But ultimately, I shut up and said nothing. After all, there was nothing between us anymore.

My husband, Don Axel Thorne, died protecting me in a mob war. I was his widow for six years, until I turned thirty. The old guard of the Family told me it was time to move on. My friends told me to let him go. Even in my dreams, his bloody hands would cup my face, begging me to live again. So I agreed to an arranged marriage. But first, I went to his grave for one last goodbye. I’d just left the cemetery when a post appeared in my feed. [Thanks, hubby, for the six-year anniversary gift! A fifty-million-dollar penthouse in Miami!] My blood ran cold. My hands shook. The phone nearly slipped from my grip. In the photo, the man I buried six years ago was slipping a massive diamond onto another woman's finger. The background was a lavish penthouse. His style. I put my people on it. We had the location in minutes. Drove straight there. I knocked, the door opened, and I froze. The woman standing there was Seraphina. His adoptive sister. The one the Family exiled six years ago for her obsession with him.

Seven years ago, I turned my back on my powerless fated mate, Soren, and chose a powerful Alpha instead. Now, I’m dying alone in this shitty apartment with seven days to live. The Moon's Glow is fading inside me. Without the Final Rite, my soul will be chained to this earth, a ghost doomed to an eternity of torment. And no Alpha will perform it for me. Coughing up another mouthful of blood, I dialed the one number I swore I’d never touch again. Soren. The mate I rejected. Now, the most powerful Alpha in the North. I begged him for the Final Rite. Moments later, his engine screamed down my street. But the boy I once knew was gone. The man staring back at me now held nothing but pure, undiluted hatred in his eyes. "Well, well. Look what we have here," he sneered, his voice dripping with venom. "The fallen princess. When are you going to finally drop dead? The second your heart stops, I’m dumping your corpse in the Feral Lands for the scavengers."

Leonard Burton and I are childhood sweethearts, bound by a family-arranged marriage. After we marry, we live a loving, harmonious life. In a terrible accident, he even gives up his only chance at survival to save me. After Leonard's death, we find a journal among his belongings. In it, he records the three years he was missing after falling off a cliff—years spent with another woman he deeply loved. But his parents had forcibly separated them and arranged our marriage instead. Unbeknownst to anyone, he had continued to protect that woman from afar, silently and faithfully. At the funeral, Leonard's mother, Charlotte Newman, is inconsolable. "Leonard, it's all my fault. Would you still be alive if I'd let you marry Yelena back then?" His father, Samuel Burton, glares at me with hatred. "He fell off that cliff saving you. He died in that crash shielding you. Why do you bring him nothing but harm? Why aren't you the one who's dead?" Yes, why is it not me who's dead? I look at Leonard's familiar, smiling face on his gravestone before running at it and smashing my head on it. When I open my eyes again, I'm taken back to when he just returned from that small fishing village. This time, I choose to let him go and give him what he wants. Finally, I see Leonard again.

Four years ago, at my mating ceremony with Alpha Damien, a witch publicly prophesied: "The powerful Alpha will betray the mate bond." Damien unleashed a terrifying wave of Alpha dominance on the spot, forcing the witch to her knees. He gripped my hand tightly and declared before the entire pack that I was his one and only mate. For three years of our marriage, he was flawless—devoted, attentive, beyond reproach. Until a year ago, when he was gravely wounded during a border patrol and rescued by a stunningly beautiful rogue Omega named Selene. Selene fell for Damien at first sight. She even knelt at his feet in front of me, crying: "I don't want anything in return. Just let me stay near you—I'd be your mistress with no title if that's what it takes." Damien shoved her away without hesitation and coldly ordered her placed at the edge of the territory, never allowing her within arm's reach. In that moment, I trusted him completely. I believed our mate bond was unbreakable. Selene asked seductively. "Alpha, who's better in bed—me, or your dignified little Luna? Your cock fucks me so good every time." Damien's low, ragged breathing filled the audio. He slapped her ass and warned coldly: "Don't get ideas above your station. Elena is my only Luna. You're just a bitch I use to blow off steam." Selene pouted with a coy whine: "I'll happily be your bitch as long as you keep fucking me." The video ended. Immediately after, an anonymous text popped up: "You sit in the Luna's seat. I'm in the Alpha's bed. Now we're even." I sat there all night, silently printing out a termination agreement for our mate bond. Since that's how it is, then I'll grant your wish. But after I left, the powerful Alpha went mad.

Five years ago, on our third anniversary, I rejected Matteo's proposal in front of the entire syndicate. I pointed at my stomach. I sneered at the man who used to worship the ground I walked on: "Don't be naive, Matteo. You're just a stray dog from the gutter. I'm carrying the rival boss's heir." It poured that night. He was shattered. He walked away from everything. Five years later, he climbed over a mountain of bodies. He ruled North America as the new Don. He returned to New York and bought out every single debt my family owed. Then, he brought his pregnant fiancée along and kicked down the rusted door to my run-down apartment. He looked down at me with cold eyes. "What's wrong, Princess? Hiding out in a dump like this now?" He had no idea. My body was already in the final stages of transplant rejection. Every single day I stayed alive was just to see his face one last time before I died.

I stayed by William Gavin's side for three years and proposed to him three times. He rejected me each time. With a look of utter disdain, he said, "Every time I see that scar on Whitney Spencer's stomach, I remember the baby that died in there. It just makes me think she's dirty." The words pierced my heart like a knife. And yet, I still asked him to marry me a fourth time.

In the VIP lounge of an underground casino, Maeve, the Falcone family's princess, had been plied with too much hard liquor. Fueled by alcohol, someone goaded her into revealing the most shameless thing she'd ever done to win over the Don. She swirled her glass, pointed at me dealing cards behind the table, and threw her head back with a laugh. "Seven years ago, when Declan was in a coma after a shootout, I took his private phone. And I deleted the distress message that bitch sent him. Every last trace of it. Then I replied in his name: You're a burden. Go die." "You'll never guess what happened next. That idiot stood outside the safe house all night in a downpour, like a stray dog. I almost died laughing…" The room erupted in crude laughter. Only the man enthroned at the head of the table remained silent. The crystal whiskey glass in his hand shattered with a sharp crack. Blood mixed with the amber liquor, trickling over the veins on the back of his hand before dripping onto the carpet. His murderous, bloodshot eyes were locked on me. I calmly dealt the last hole card in front of him and offered a clean, white silk handkerchief. "Don Declan, you should wipe your hand. Blood on the felt is bad luck." After all, some stains never wash out.

The year my family goes bankrupt, I cling to Ewan Rivera for one last night. When I wake up, I throw my final bit of money at him. "You can go cozy up to some other sugar mommy now. You don't need to degrade yourself by serving an ugly woman like me." I'm kicked out by the people liquidating our assets, and everyone points and laughs at the birthmark on my face. Meanwhile, Ewan's friends are busy celebrating his fresh start. "With a face like yours, tons of wealthy, gorgeous women are lining up for you. Why torture yourself with that ugly chick?" "Now that she's bankrupt, she won't cling to you anymore, right?" Five years later, Ewan has gone from being a broke campus heartthrob to a rising star in business. In the interview room, he flips through my application and pauses on my photo. He asks coolly, "You're 28? You already have a child?" I meet his probing gaze and introduce myself. "Yes. I'm Ingrid Landeau. I'm married with a daughter." I've changed my name and removed the large birthmark on my face. Ewan can't recognize me anymore.

Johanna Thorne and her sister, Allison Thorne, marry into the Silverplume family, the most prestigious werewolf family in the Northern Wolflands, on the same day. Their husbands are the only pair of pureblood Alpha twins in the family—Carlin Silverplume and Uriel Silverplume. Throughout the continent's long history, fewer than ten such twin pairs have ever been born. They are seen as blessings from the Moon Goddess herself, a source of pride for the entire family. Johanna is wed to the calm and stoic younger brother, Carlin. Her sister becomes the mate of the elder twin, Uriel, the family's strongest warrior Alpha. But during a mission to hunt down rebel wolves, Uriel is tragically killed. His body is never recovered. With his death, his bloodline ends. The news devastates the matriarch. She weeps before the altar, crying that this is punishment for the Silverplume family. With Uriel gone and no heir left behind, one of the family's two remaining pureblood lines is now severed. The future of their legacy hangs by a thread. Three days later, the matriarch summons Carlin and Johanna to the council hall. Before the gathered elders and priests, she solemnly proposes a solution. "Carlin shares the same blood and bone as Uriel... In the name of our ancestral spirits, I ask that Carlin form a breeding pact with Allison to fulfill Uriel's unfinished duty." Johanna's hands clench tightly. She turns to look at Carlin. In that moment, she doesn't know whether she's still his Luna or just a sacrifice offered up to preserve the family's bloodline.

I spend ten years helping my fiancé fight and claw his way to the top. Finally, he becomes the head of the local mafia. But once he has everything, he falls for another woman. Suddenly, he wants nothing to do with the promise he made to marry me. Just as he boasts about throwing her the wedding of the century, one of his men can't hold back his confusion. "Olivia stood by you through everything. Weren't you crazy about her? And now you're marrying someone else?" Joshua Harding snuffs out his cigarette, slowly turning the silver couple's ring he shares with Abigail Mauser between his fingers. "Olivia?" He scoffs. "She's got blood on her hands. How could she ever compare to my sweet, innocent Abigail?" The subordinate hesitates. "But Olivia's sharp. If she finds out and turns against you, then what?" Joshua frowns before smirking coldly. "Belcove is completely under my control. It's not like I'll lose it without her around." Little does he know I'm standing outside and listening to every word. I drop the medicine I brought him into the trash and pull out my phone. I text his biggest rival, Michael Sheridan. "Want Joshua's turf and his life? I'm handing them to you!"

The day my girlfriend’s condition worsened and she needed urgent surgery, I publicly called her a burden in front of everyone. Despite her pleas, I abandoned her cruelly. Seven years later, she became a formidable international tycoon and returned home with great fanfare. To exact her revenge on me, the heartless man, she poisoned my mother into silence and sent my father to prison. Eager to see me beg for mercy, she mobilized every connection to track me down. At this point, her parents could no longer bear to watch. With tears streaming down their faces, they revealed the entire truth. “He died seven years ago to donate his organs to you!”