Nouvelles Familial Bond & Romans

Mom had taken me to a psychological examination for depression. When I filled out the questionnaire, I checked the option saying I felt down and hopeless nearly every day. She frowned and reached out to correct my choice. "How could you possibly feel down and hopeless? Aren't you happy with your life?" The furrow between her brows deepened when she noticed I described myself as having trouble establishing connections with other people. "You've been an outgoing child since you were young, don't you remember? Come on, you need to consider each statement more carefully." If she said so, I would not argue with her. Next, she reminded me that I had never experienced negative thoughts about myself, and I obeyed her. Following that, she told me that I slept like a log at night, so my answer on the questionnaire was that I had no trouble falling asleep at all. I filled out the questionnaire. Almost every answer had easily matched her wishes. Mom picked up the papers to review them. Finally, she nodded in satisfaction. "That's more like it. You should fill it out with more care from the beginning. You don't want to confuse them and have them diagnose you as unhealthy, don't you?" Lastly, I came out as having minimal depression. Mom breathed a sigh of relief. On our way home, I could not help but keep touching the scars hidden under my sleeve. All I could hear was my heartbeat pounding in my ears. My vision blurred, and everything began to fade from my consciousness. Everything had gone blank in my mind. And all that remained was a dead, suffocating silence.

For ten years, I lived as an invisible daughter in my own family. My parents and brother never forgave me for the death of Emily, the adopted daughter they truly loved. They gave me a room, money, and their last name—but never their affection. When our cruise ship sank, they sacrificed themselves to save me. For one foolish moment, I thought it meant they had finally chosen me. Then my brother spoke his last words. “We’ve regretted bringing you home for years. If we hadn’t found you, Emily would still be alive.” “If there’s another life, please don’t come looking for us again.” Only then did I understand. They hadn’t saved me because they loved me. They were only repaying the daughter they wished they had never found. So I released the life ring and let the ocean take me. When I opened my eyes, I was back before the day I reunited with my biological family. This time, they remembered our previous life too. Certain I would still beg to become their daughter, they offered me money, a house, and a place in their lives—as long as Emily remained their only daughter in public. They thought I would eventually accept. They didn’t know I had decided to give them exactly what they wanted—a life in which I never became their daughter.

Moving day. My parents passed out keys like candy—one for my brother, one for his wife, one for my younger brother's girlfriend, even one for Maria the housekeeper. Everyone except me. No explanation ever came. Not even as I dragged my suitcase out the front door, my family's laughter fading behind me. If a house had no place for me, it wasn't worth staying in. Three days later, at the airport, about to board my flight, I spotted them. Panic. All over their faces.

My daughter and my husband’s godson were diagnosed with acute leukemia at the same time. The doctors said a banked cord-blood unit could save a life. His foster sister, Rebecca Sloan, knelt in front of me with her son in her arms and begged until her voice gave out. “Claire, please, let Leo have the cord blood. His father died right after he was born and I never banked any of my own. Have some pity on the two of us. “Leo is the only child I have. I’m begging you. Save him.” I refused outright. I was not going to gamble with my daughter’s life. Then, on the morning of my daughter’s treatment, my husband, Ethan Hale hit me with his car and left me critically injured. The wheels went over my thigh and back again. The pain nearly took me under. He stood over me while I struggled in the blood on the pavement, and I couldn’t read anything in his eyes. “Claire, I’m sorry. For Leo’s sake, this is the only thing I can do. “You shouldn’t have fought Rebecca over the cord blood. Leo is far sicker than our daughter. If anyone gets saved first, it should be him.” They rushed me into surgery. He turned around, took the cord blood, and gave it to Rebecca’s son. By the time I woke up in my room, the only thing waiting for me was my daughter’s death certificate.

In my past life, Mom and Dad force me to jump into a freezing lake to fish out the necklace Ramona Stone, their adopted daughter, dropped. I end up running a 104-degree Fahrenheit fever, lying in bed barely conscious, while my whole family flies off to Solara for a vacation just to cheer Ramona up. I call Mom, trembling and barely holding on, only to be met with impatience. "Ramona is finally in a better mood, Harper. Do you really have to be so inconsiderate? You should just take some medicine yourself." I have no choice but to drag my weak body downstairs to look for medicine. I accidentally fall down the stairs and lose my life. I open my eyes and find myself back on the first day of summer vacation before my junior year of high school. Ramona dangles the necklace in front of me, then leans close. "You wouldn't refuse to help me retrieve it, would you, Harper? Mom says we need to help each other out, after all." I dodge her and hurl the necklace straight into the middle of the lake this time. "Screw you! I'm done with this family!"

My twin sister and I were born with the same face and nothing else in common. Elara was gentle enough to step around an ant. I was vicious. Cross me and I'd take your skin off and never lose a night's sleep over it. The year we came of age, the Crown Prince chose Elara. But the old court held that royal twins brought ruin. If Elara was to be Crown Princess, I had to die. So our parents wept and begged me to drink a death-simulating draught and disappear forever. Before I left, I made three demands. First, my Shadow Guard would pass to Elara. Second, she'd have a dowry worthy of a princess and a wedding no one could sneer at. Third, if the Crown Prince ever wronged her, they'd bring her home. They swore to all three. They told me that once I was gone, Elara could take the throne beside him without a whisper against her, and never want for anything again. I drank the draught and rode north to the frontier. I thought one life of mine was a fair price for a lifetime of hers. Three years later, pain tore me out of sleep. Twins share what the other feels. Something had happened to Elara. I rode for the capital through the night, and my sister was gone. A woman I'd never seen was being crowned Empress in her place. And our parents sat below the dais, smiling. Three years, and they'd forgotten one thing. Elara was the only one who ever kept me on a leash. And she wasn't there anymore.

On the fifteenth of every month, Rowan Hawthorn and I would swap homes. Eighteen years ago, a hospital accidentally swapped our embryos during IVF and put them into the wrong mothers. When the truth came out, my biological parents, Frank and Ronnie Hawthorn, wanted to keep Rowan. But his biological parents, Eugene and Rowena Cooper, wanted him back. They decided that he would live with each family for one month. Then, we would switch on the fifteenth of every month. I, on the other hand, became the unwanted burden. Wherever Rowan went, the house would be fully stocked with snacks and drinks. He would receive a thousand dollars as his monthly allowance, and the sunlit room would always be reserved for him. Wherever I stayed, there would only be a little food in the fridge, and I would get a dark storage room as my bedroom. Eighteen years later, I was diagnosed with uremia, and Rowan turned out to be an exact match for me. Eugene and Rowena threw a refusal of treatment form at me. “We raised you, and that’s enough. Ask your biological parents for money. Don’t even think about taking our son’s kidney.” Frank and Ronnie pleaded with me as they said, “We know we’ve failed you. But if you die, so be it. Rowan is our whole life!” Just then, I received a call from the hospital. “Mr. Cooper, we’re sorry, but we mixed up your records again. The one with uremia is actually Rowan Hawthorn.” A sudden sense of clarity washed over me. After that, I sold the old house my grandfather had left me. Then, I got myself a camera and some gear I needed before leaving. From that day on, I became a lone wanderer and traveled wherever the wind took me.

I was born into a family where beauty was everything. My father was an Oscar-winning actor, and my mother was a Grammy-winning singer. They had built their lives around beauty, fame, and the image of a perfect family. Then I was born premature, frail, and with a large birthmark covering part of my face. I wasn't the daughter they wanted the public to see, so they left me with my grandmother in the countryside and raised my younger sister, Vivian, instead. Grandma sent them letters and photographs every year. They never answered. Now Grandma was moving into assisted living, and my college dorm wouldn't open for another few days. With nowhere else to stay, I went to my parents' house for the first time. Dad looked at my hat, sunglasses, and mask with open disapproval. "Why are you covering yourself from head to toe? Are you ashamed to be seen?" Mom gave a mocking laugh. "She's probably seen all the photographs of us taking Vivian to premieres and award shows. She doesn't want her first meeting with us to become a comparison with her prettier sister." Vivian took my hand and smiled. "Don't worry, Skye. Looks aren't everything. You don't have to feel insecure around me." My hand froze on the edge of my mask. Grandma had been writing to them every month for the past two years, practically begging them to come get me. "Come pick up Skye already. She's grown into such a beauty that people keep climbing the fence just to take pictures of her!" So not one of them had ever seen what I looked like now?

My mother makes three million dollars a month overseas, yet my monthly allowance is only ten dollars. When my father confronts her about it, they nearly get a divorce. My brother, Peter Thorne, takes pity on me and secretly gives me some money. However, he is punished for his actions. Hence, every time I get so hungry that my stomach feels like it's digesting itself, sheer resentment wells in me toward my mother. I hate her for being so ruthless and cruel, for giving birth to me yet being unwilling to take care of me. And then, one day, I receive a video call from myself ten years into the future. I eagerly ask, "How is life for me ten years from now? Did I finally cut off all ties with that wicked and terrible woman I call my mother?" However, my future self's eyes immediately redden as she yells at me furiously, "Just so you know, that 'wicked and terrible woman' you speak of donated her kidney to you without any hesitation when your precious father and brother caused you to get kidney failure! "Not just that either! She spent her entire fortune on paying them off so that they would leave you alone and cut off all ties with you! Due to that, she didn't even have enough money to afford anti-inflammatory drugs after the operation and died from the pain on the hospital bed!" As my future self takes in the disbelieving look in my eyes, her lips curl into a smile that is even uglier than a grimace. "Your monthly allowance is actually supposed to be 100,000 dollars, but they skimmed off 99,000 dollars of it and gave it to Dad's illegitimate daughter. If you still don't believe me, just head over to Botanic Villas on the east side of the city."

Mom and Dad always disappear at midnight and don't come back until 8:00 am the next day. Even when I'm forced onto the roof because of a flash flood and try calling them 99 times, they still refuse to show up. I've tried clinging to them like glue as it gets close to midnight once. As the clock hands creep toward midnight, they hit me for the first time, lock me in my room, and then vanish once more. That all changes when a prestigious family comes knocking because of an old marriage arrangement and the fake heiress, Suzanne Weston, walks out through a secret door. Only then do I find out that ten years ago, Mom and Dad didn't actually send her back to her real parents. Instead, they secretly bought the villa next door and set up a whole second home there. Mom and Dad push the fake heiress forward before blocking me. "We've only spent eight hours with her every day for the past ten years. She's already had to put up with enough, so don't even try to fight her for this, Danielle Weston." I can't believe what I'm hearing. I try to storm next door and trash the place, but Suzanne shoves me into the man-made lake. As I'm drowning, I catch a glimpse of myself ten years from now beneath the water. She's skin and bones, and all her hair has fallen out. After Mom and Dad pull me out of the water, I speak up before they can say anything. "Mom, Dad, I'm not fighting for the engagement anymore." And I'm done fighting for your love, too.

"Dominic, Julian, guess what I wished for?" A cheap, marked-down cake sat on the table. I closed my eyes and made a wish. When I opened them, the two chairs across from me were empty. That was when I remembered: my brothers didn't want me anymore. When I was ten, my brothers brought Leah Morgan home. She was the daughter of their late mentor, Professor Andrew Morgan, and they told me to treat her like a real sister. But little by little, Leah stole all their affection from me. I grew anxious, then competitive. I thought that if I were good enough, they might love me a little more. In the final round of a piano competition, Leah burst into tears after losing to me. Dominic comforted her. "In my heart, you play better than Heather ever could!" I ranked first in my school and won a scholarship, which cost Leah her place among the candidates. Julian went so far as to force the school to investigate whether I had cheated. At my eighteenth-birthday party, Leah fell from the second-floor balcony into the pool. She pointed at me. "Heather pushed me!" My brothers were furious. Without an ounce of mercy, they dumped me in the worst part of town. "We indulged you for too long, Heather. That's why you became so competitive. Now it's time you learned to rein in your jealousy." They even sent local thugs to my door to harass me and steal what little money I managed to earn. They thought I would learn my lesson. What they didn't know was that I had received an email offering me a full scholarship to the University of Zurich. I was about to leave for Switzerland, and I was never coming back.

The year I turned fourteen, Grandma and I were crammed into a beat-up trailer on the edge of a desert town. She couldn't afford paint, so she mixed colors from the cheapest red clay pigment at the general store. When a frame broke, she hammered it back together herself. When canvas tore, she patched the back with old cloth and sealed it with a paste she boiled from leftover church wax and cheap resin. Grandma never went to school. She painted out of pure love, and she kept at it for thirty years. Then one summer, a gallery owner named Evelyn Hart crawled into Grandma's leaky shed and examined every painting, flipping each one over to study both sides. The next day, every last painting was gone. Finished oils, sketches, pigment records, old photographs, frames. Everything cleared out overnight. Three months later, Grandma walked into Evelyn's gallery and saw her own painting, Madonna of the Red Rock, hanging in the brightest spot. But the brass nameplate beside it bore Evelyn's name. She lunged for the painting. The security guards pried her fingers loose and dragged her out the door. That night, a blizzard sealed off the roads. She pounded on the glass, but no one came. The next morning, when I found her outside the gallery, her body was already frozen solid. After the funeral, I went to clean out what was left of the burned shed. Inside the lining of an old brush pouch, I found a small scrap of painted canvas. It was a piece Grandma had trimmed off while repairing Madonna of the Red Rock. The thief had missed it. I tucked it away and kept it. For twenty years. Twenty years later, I was the compliance director at an international art marketplace. A young woman submitted an auction application for a series of paintings. The Desert Madonna Series was about to be sold to collectors and private museums around the world. The collection was valued at more than $150 million. I opened the file. In the artist field, I stared at the name for a long time. "Application denied."

When I was eight, a prank by my little sister, Alice, left silver poison eating away at my heart. To save me, my dad knelt at the Temple of the Moon Goddess for ninety-nine days. Only then did he win two moonstone pendants from the Goddess, enough to hold the poison at bay. After that, Alice became the family pariah. They stopped speaking to her. They wouldn't even let her smile. For my sake, my father traveled far and wide searching for a cure for the silver poison. My mom quit her work as a healer to care for me, because the moonstone pendants needed her at the Moon Temple every day to replenish their magic. I always believed the Moon Goddess watched over me, blessing me with the best family in the world. That belief lasted until the day registration for the Imperial Academy closed. Three minutes remained before the Imperial Academy's registration portal closed. Then a sudden thunderstorm drained the portal's power crystal. Without hesitation, my mother ripped the pendant from around my neck and poured its magic into the portal. I clutched at her clothes, my lips turning blue. "Mom... I can't breathe..." But she looked at me with nothing but disappointment. "Grace, you've already taken all the love and resources that should have been Alice's. Now you want to rob her of her future too? "You still have the backup pendant, and yet here you are playing the victim! I'm so disappointed in you!" She shoved me into my bedroom and locked the door. But she didn't know. Alice had borrowed the other pendant for her graduation ball.

In the sixth year of my relationship with Niklas Berg, he spent three hundred days a year in Inari, in northern Finland, doing fieldwork on Sámi culture and traditional crafts. I stayed behind in London, looking after his mother, Helena Berg, who had been bedridden since her stroke. The day I miscarried from sheer exhaustion, I was shaking all over with pain. I called him. Before I could say a word, he cut me off. "Signal's bad up here. The project's at a critical stage. Stop bothering me with every little thing at home." Then he hung up. I had always believed he was simply too consumed by his research to understand the needs of an ordinary relationship. That belief lasted until late one night, when I came across a promotional video for a Nordic traditional crafts exhibition on social media. In the video, Niklas, always so reserved and composed, was leaning down, fastening an heirloom silver brooch at the collar of a radiant young Sámi woman. The silver caught the light against her red-and-blue shawl, and his hands moved with such solemnity it looked like a ritual only the two of them understood. Someone off-camera teased him, asking if he planned to stay in the north forever. He looked at the girl, his voice low and tender. "Aila says this brooch is only given to the person she wants to share her life with. I'd gladly stay here for her." I closed the video. I didn't cry, and I didn't confront him. I simply signed the Helsinki transfer confirmation I should have signed long ago, then left my flat key and engagement ring behind in our home. His beliefs had never left room for me. So I would go and find a world of my own.

Ten years ago, I brought my distant cousin Sofia to New York after finding her cornered by her stepfather's creditors in an old Sicilian port. I taught her English, etiquette, and the laws of our world. I even introduced her to my fiancé, Alessandro Moretti. On the eve of our wedding, I found a secure family thread on my brother's computer—a thread that excluded me. My mother had written, "Sofia is pregnant. Are you really going through with tomorrow's wedding?" Alessandro replied, "The legal marriage is hers. The ceremony and the Moretti name will be Isabella's." That was when I learned they’d already gotten legally married. Our wedding was meant to seal a truce between two Mafia families after twenty years of bloodshed. I would not humiliate my father or the D'Angelo name in front of every major family in New York. So the next morning, I still took the Don's arm and walked down the aisle. Instead, when the ceremony ended,I’d signed on for a seven-year closed research program. When it ended, I had no intention of returning to the life they had chosen for me.

When I was six, a car crash wiped out most of my memory. My foster parents told me my parents had died that night. They said they had taken me in, given me their name, their home, and the protection of one of New York's most powerful families. So I spent twelve years proving I deserved to stay. I cleaned up my younger sister Bianca's messes, handed her the credit for my work, and locked every trophy I earned in a wooden archive box because my success made the family's real daughter uncomfortable. Then, at eighteen, I ordered a certified birth record for my student visa. The clerk looked at me and said, "Your parents have always been Vittorio and Elena Romano. There's no adoption on file." I had never been an orphan. Bianca knew. My relatives knew. The family attorney knew. Even the old butler who carried me home from the hospital knew. For twelve years, everyone had played a part in the same lie. So I hid the birth certificate and kept playing the grateful adopted daughter. I fixed Bianca's speech, prepared her heir's gala, and smiled while my family erased my name one last time. They had no idea I'd already booked a one-way flight out of their lives.

Adrian Mohr and I had been together for seven years. We'd tried to register our blood bond eight times and failed every single one. The first time, his father said the Mohr clan's nighttime shipping routes had been targeted by vampire hunters, and Adrian needed to attend an emergency family meeting. The meeting ran from dusk until the following dawn. He never showed up before the registry closed. The second time, my mother said she'd found hunters' silver markings outside our front door and insisted that leaving the house would expose the entire family. She blocked the doorway and even threatened that if I insisted on going, she would pull back the blackout curtains and step into the sunlight. The third time, my best friend, Claire Donovan, called me in tears, saying hunters were following her and she was hiding in a bell tower, too afraid to come down alone. I rushed to her side, and by the time we confirmed the area was safe, the registry had already closed for the night. ... The ninth time, we took care of everything ahead of schedule and got into a car with UV-tinted windows, heading to the registry through the underground tunnel. We had barely crossed one intersection when a black sports car shot out from a side street and slammed into us. The side window shattered, and a sliver of silver-coated glass lodged in my left shoulder. For most vampires, a crash like that was nothing, but silver suppressed healing. The wound burned immediately, and the bleeding wouldn't stop. Lillian Hart stumbled out of the sports car in a panic. She was my sister, a newly awakened vampire. She rushed to our car door, her face drained of color. "Oh God, I didn't mean to! Adrian, Eve, are you hurt?" Adrian grabbed her wrist first, checking whether she'd touched any silver. Only after confirming she was completely unharmed did he turn back to me. "Eve, looks like we won't make it to the registry today either." "Yeah. I guess not." I pressed my hand against my still-bleeding shoulder

At my bonding ceremony with Liam Jones, the pack witch appeared and dropped a bombshell—my long-lost sister, Victoria, was still alive. She could bring Victoria back, but there was a catch. She turned to my parents and asked: “Are you willing to trade Margret Davis for Victoria Davis? The two will swap bodies.” My parents' faces lit up with excitement. They didn't hesitate for a second. Yes. They said the only reason they had me was because Victoria had vanished, and their mind-link with her had gone silent. I'd spent twenty years living a life that was never mine, while my sister suffered for over a decade. This was what I owed her. Then the witch turned to Liam. Victoria had gone missing because she saved him—I knew that. But if he could just say no, even if it was a lie, even if he was just pretending… Then at least there'd be one person in this world who wanted me to stay. One last reason for me to hold on. A long silence stretched between us. Finally, he spoke. "She went missing because she saved me. I have to bring her back." He gave a firm nod. "Yes." Then the witch sprinkled a vial of purple liquid over me. She looked at everyone with a cold smile. "The potion takes time to work. In one month, Victoria and Margret will swap."

My father disappeared for seventeen years. The first time he surfaced, it was to offer me fifty thousand dollars for my bone marrow to save the daughter he'd had with his lover. My mother slapped me twice right there, demanding I refuse his dirty money. But I got into the car the Alpha had sent, handprints still burning on my face, and walked into his multimillion-dollar estate. They all thought I was so desperate I'd sell my own blood for cash. That changed when I pointed at the most expensive car in his garage and told my father, "Either restore my name to the Blackwood family registry or give me the car's value in cash: three hundred thousand dollars." "Your daughter needs my bone marrow to survive. My mother needs three hundred thousand dollars to stay alive." "If you can't part with the money, then watch her die." After that, everyone thought all I cared about was money. Only I knew the truth: I was selling my own blood to buy my mother a chance at life.

I’m the reincarnation of a lucky charm. As long as I’m happy, my whole family prospers. To keep me smiling, my billionaire grandfather built me a palatial bedroom and hired a whole team of housekeepers and nannies just to keep me company. Then, on the day the long-lost real heiress was finally brought home, everything changed. Holding a livestream rig, she stormed straight into my room and sneered at the camera, “Everyone, this is the fake daughter who stole my place and lived my life of luxury for eighteen years! “She knew I was coming back and still tried to fool everyone with this ridiculous nonsense about being some kind of lucky-star reincarnation? Fine. Today I’m exposing her for who she really is.” Then she slapped me across the face. Everyone was stunned. I covered my burning cheek as tears spilled down before I could stop them. At that exact moment, Zimmerman Group’s stock began to crash.