Cerita Pendek & Novel Fantasy Romance

After my cold, distant husband returned from overseas, his personality completely changed. Every night, he kept me up until dawn. The man who had been too busy to even touch me during our three years of marriage suddenly became obsessed with my body. I thought it was just that absence made the heart grow fonder, but then strange pop-up comments appeared in front of me. [I can't wait to see the male lead, Trevor Blackwell, lose his mind when he gets back in a month and finds out someone is sleeping with his wife.] My blood ran cold. Trevor was my husband. If he had not come back yet, then who was this man in front of me who looked exactly like him?

Whenever I was on a video call with my online boyfriend, I carefully angled the camera, terrified he might see my shabby rental. One day, the ‘curtain’ behind him slipped, revealing an original Picasso. I said, “Nice edit. It looks like the real thing.” He angled the camera and showed my doodle next to the Picasso. “Yeah, my dad said that this one’s worth the most.” When the day came for us to finally meet in real life, I lugged two sacks of potatoes, ready to help him out. The butler, dressed in a sharp suit, opened the door. “Ma’am, Mr. Rigsby has been waiting for you to pick out an engagement ring.” My knees gave out. “Um… Are these potatoes enough to make a pot of stew?”

After rejecting the 999th consort candidate my master, Madam Freya, had introduced to me, she finally reached her limit. "What the hell are you waiting for? You're the once-in-a-lifetime genius of Nymphomist magic, and yet you've never gone through the Great Rite! You're not getting any younger, girl. At this rate, how are you supposed to improve your spiritual power?!" I sighed. Of course I wanted to find a consort and perform the Great Rite already. But every single one of those candidates looked like shit. Unfortunately, my absurdly high standards for men ended up stalling my spiritual power for too long. I failed to survive the Trial of Lightning and died... Then I opened my eyes and realized I was in another body, in another world. The beauty standards here were completely different from those in the elven world. I looked across the room, and my eyes immediately landed on the most perfect man I had ever seen. He was 6'2", with sharply defined washboard abs. His face looked as though the gods themselves had sculpted it. I ran straight toward him and threw my arms around his waist. Oh, he's the one! To my surprise, this god among men narrowed his eyes and grabbed me by the neck. Rage burned in his expression. "You would throw yourself at a man as hideous as me just for my money?! You disgust me!" What the hell was he talking about? Honestly, all I could focus on was the way his sexy, seductive lips moved against each other whenever he spoke. Please. Just let me bite them already!

When I wake up, I find out that my childhood friend, Brandon Moore, is the one lying next to me instead of my husband, Jake Watson. Angrily, I berate Brandon for betraying his wife, Rachel Schneider. But he asks me in confusion, "Aren't you my wife? Are you rambling drunken nonsense, or are you having a fever? "Rachel is already married and has a child of her own. Don't go around pinning the bigamy crime on me for no reason!" I'm stunned, to say the least. Brandon and Rachel are a loving married couple, and yet here he is, telling me that they aren't married at all. Just as I'm about to call Brandon a jerk, I raise my head to see the wedding portrait. It features me and Brandon. Cold sweat soon rolls down my forehead. I ask Brandon tentatively, "Then… do you still remember my husband, Jake Watson?" In the past, Brandon used to be best friends with Jake. Both families even have a betrothal pact with each other. But Brandon angrily accuses me of cheating on him with another man. He even claims that he doesn't know Jake at all. The thing is, Jake and I have been married for ten years. How the hell is it possible for Brandon to not know Jake at all? Thinking that Brandon is lying to me, I show Jake's photo to my parents and everyone around me. They all tell me that they've never seen Jake before, and they even claim that Brandon is the one I've been married to for ten years. I refuse to accept this reality, which causes me to go dazed all the time. Gradually, I go crazy overtime. Because of that, Brandon files for a divorce from me. My parents soon admit me into a mental hospital. After dying a terrible death from the electric therapy, I open my eyes to see that I've returned to the day Brandon becomes my husband.

I was the man Empress Seraphina once swore she would marry. But on the eve of our wedding, she believed my brother's slander and cast me down to the mortal realm with a wave of her hand, condemning me to suffer through ten lifetimes of reincarnation. After endless torment, I finally returned to the Celestial Realm. Yet the moment I met her cold eyes, terror seized me, and I apologized again and again. "Your Majesty, I am a sinner. I know my wrongs. "I should never have defied my brother. You and my brother belong together. I only love a pig demon from the mortal realm..." Later, I severed my immortal core and willingly entered the Underworld. But Empress Seraphina, who supposedly hated me to the bone, lowered herself and brought the immortals of all three realms to the Underworld, begging me to return to the Celestial Realm.

My best friend and I were pulled together into a steamy dark-fantasy romance novel, where we became the Demon King's newest sacrificial consorts. As someone who had actually read the original book, Elodie went pale. After all, this was the raunchiest, most over-the-top novel the two of us had ever read. She grabbed my hand, trembling. "Camille, if I'd known, I never would have wished on my birthday a few days ago to die of pleasure in some gorgeous man's bed. Now it looks like that dream is actually coming true—except the price is my life..." What she didn't notice was the drool sliding down the corner of my mouth. As the highest-ranking succubus, I'd spent years disguised as a human in the modern world, starved of nourishment and all but withering away. Now I'd crossed into a world with no morals and no rules to hold me back. It suited me perfectly. So the moment I laid eyes on the Demon King in front of me—blisteringly hot to the touch and devastatingly handsome—I didn't hesitate for a second. I lunged forward and sank my mouth into his veined, muscled chest. "Sorry, Elodie. A blessing like this, I'm claiming for myself!"

To save the man she truly loved, the princess locked me in our room and cut out my heart's blood. The last time she drew blood from me, I finally reached the end of my strength and died. But without a shred of pity, she drove the knife into my chest again. "Alec, just bear it a little longer. Stephen's illness came on so suddenly. I need you to give one more bit of your heart's blood." She thought I would struggle in pain. Instead, I lay motionless on the bed and let her take what she wanted. She finally froze, then softened her voice and said, "I'm glad you've come to your senses. I'll make it up to you some other day." But she didn't know there would be no other day. Because I was already dead. What lay before her now was nothing more than a ghost without pain or feeling. In seven more days, I would disappear completely.

Lately, I've been having a weird dream consistently. In the dream, a man with a mole near the corner of one eye keeps telling me, "I miss you so much." But whenever I try to take a good look at him, I wake up from the dream. That is, until I spot the man in my dreams on a pop-up window featuring an advertisement that promotes chatting with AI bots. There, I personally craft every inch of that man, making him my perfect AI boyfriend. But right after I uninstall the app, he appears in my apartment in person.

Yale Xenford was the Divine Son of the Ninth Heaven and carried the responsibility of saving all living beings. When the Heavenly Tribulation descended, my master, Emma Carter, heartlessly pushed me forward to face it on everyone’s behalf. She sent me to die in Yale’s place. The Heavenly Tribulation put me through endless agony. I lost all my cultivation before I managed to survive by the narrowest of margins. After I returned to the Ninth Heaven, my wife, Snow Lockwood, promised me a grand wedding. But on our wedding day, Yale left behind a letter and went to challenge the Demon Queen, Grace Sullivan, to a fight to the death. He lost the battle and fell into her hands. Snow could not bear to see him suffer. She joined forces with Emma and offered me to Grace in exchange for Yale’s freedom. In the end, Grace tore out my heart, and I lost all five of my senses. Only then did the people who had always protected Yale start to deeply regret their actions.

My name is Mabel Lloyd, and I make a barely decent living repairing household appliances. Two weeks ago, on a night when the rain came down heavily, I found a soaking-wet stranger huddled outside my apartment building. He was ridiculously handsome, an incredible cook and had only one glaring flaw — he was painfully shy. Whenever anyone asked his name, he would blush so hard his ears turned bright red, then stand there in complete silence, unable to get a single word out. I could not bring myself to leave him out in the rain, so I rented him the spare storage room in my apartment. Everything was fine. Until today. I heard knocking at my door and, when I went over to check who it was, the building manager was standing there with three men in black suits. The one in front flashed a badge, his expression unreadable. "Routine inspection. Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. "We have reason to believe an unregistered fox shifter may be hiding on these premises." Before I could even process what he had said, a loud clang rang out from the kitchen as a frying pan hit the floor. The very next second, my painfully shy tenant cautiously peeked around the kitchen door. A pair of fluffy white fox ears twitched nervously on top of his head and, when he spoke, his voice shook so badly it sounded like a washing machine caught in the spin cycle. "Mabel... don't open the door. They're here to drag me home for an arranged marriage."

For an entire year, I'd been in an online relationship with a guy named Gravano. We were deep in the honeymoon phase—every night, his messages would light up my phone like clockwork, sending my pulse racing and my cheeks burning. [Thinking about you, baby.] [Had another dream about you last night. You were on top of me, begging for more.] [Promise me we'll never be apart. Okay?] I was about to suggest we finally meet in person. Then he sent me a picture—and the man in it was my boss. The most notorious playboy in the entire city. I decided to break it off, convinced he'd been playing me for a fool. But just days after I sent Gravano my breakup text, a man who looked exactly like my boss cornered me against the wall and asked, his voice low and dangerous— "Didn't we promise each other... forever?"

When I woke up, my right hand was clutching a pair of men's Calvin Klein underwear. Two letters were embroidered in gold thread on the inside of the waistband: J.C. A push notification popped up right on cue. Number three on TikTok's trending page: Dalton University's hockey captain loses five pairs of underwear in one week; roommate reveals the victim has been forced to go commando. In the video, Chase Jacobson's roommate, Tyler Brooks, held an empty drawer up to the camera and tearfully demanded justice. And under my pillow, a suspicious little bundle bulged. I slowly reached over. One pair, two, three, four. Plus the one in my hand: five. The underwear thief the whole school was hunting... turned out to be me.