Contos e Romances de Female Growth

The witch's prophecy crystal showed me my future. My fated mate, Alpha Adam, would betray me before our bond was ever sealed. The one he chose instead? My own sister. And me? I gave up my healer trials for him. Became nothing. Lost every right to ever stand as this pack's Luna. In the end, my sister shoved me off a cliff with her own two hands. I didn't want to believe it, until I saw them at the border. Tangled. Kissing. Unmistakable. Then it all clicked. Adam made me quit the healer trials just to keep me trapped in this pack, where he could control me. And he used that pathetic excuse, "protecting the pack," "calming your sister's wolf," to screw around behind my back. The sister I spoiled rotten. The one who wanted what was mine. I took a breath, turned, and walked away. The healer trials came right on schedule. I walked into that hall, calm and ready— I was going to become the Chief Healer. And I was never, ever giving myself up for anyone again.

My roommate Sophie is a stunning beauty who is popular across the entire school and serves as its beloved cheerleading captain. So when my online boyfriend asks for another photo, she suddenly snatches my phone out of my hand. She puts on a worried expression, as if she is only thinking of me. “Are you sure you want to send one now? You’re almost two hundred pounds. I’m just afraid he won’t be able to handle it once he sees you.” Then she tilts her head and adds, “Why don’t you send him one of mine first? At least I won’t scare him off.” The girls beside us burst into laughter. “Two hundred pounds and you’re still dating online? Isn’t that basically catfishing?” “If he ever sees you in person, he’ll probably block you on the spot.” I lower my head and pinch the soft flesh around my waist, hesitating over whether I should send him my roommate’s photo instead. Then, out of nowhere, a line of translucent text flashes before my eyes. [Don’t send it! She already knows your online boyfriend is the heir to a fortune worth millions.] [Sophie is pretending to help you, but she’s the one who wants you to send her photo first.] [Once you two arrange to meet in person, she can easily take your place and steal your boyfriend.] I freeze for only a second. Then I snatch my phone back and pull up a photo from three years ago. “No need.” “After all, once I slim down, I’m much prettier than you.”

My dorm mate, Chloe Dawson, had a sweet voice, but she wasn't very pretty. She loved online dating and had four online boyfriends at the same time. She looked at me with a smug smile. "Ivy, no guy ever wants you. How about I give you one of my boyfriends? He wants to meet me today anyway." I was about to refuse when strange words suddenly appeared in front of me. [Heroine, don't give the villainess the male lead's contact info! Sure, you used her photos to get his attention online, but he's not that shallow. He loves you for who you are!] [The villainess is just a poor student on financial aid. How could someone like her ever take the heroine's place and date the male lead?] [Exactly! Heroine, don't do anything stupid! The male lead is Nathan Ashworth, CEO of the Ashworth Group! You can't just hand a great guy like him over to someone else!]

At the Alpha Summit, my younger brother Felix accused me in front of everyone. "I grew up crushed under my older sister's thumb. If I so much as ate a piece of candy, she'd pry my mouth open and dig it out." I swirled the red wine in my glass and gave a cold laugh. "That wasn't candy. It was a pill made from wolfsbane. If I hadn't saved you, you wouldn't even have the chance to stand here talking to me." Felix's face froze. Refusing to give up, he said, "When our cousin Toby came to stay with us, you gave him every single moonstone I'd worked so hard to find. I'm your own brother, and you played favorites with someone else?" I sighed. "Your cousin had it rough. A big fire burned his family's house to the ground." "What does that have to do with me? Just because he had it rough, I'm supposed to give in to him every time?" "You set that fire." The room went dead silent. The reporters hammered their shutter buttons, capturing Felix looking as if he'd swallowed something foul. "Well, didn't I find him a job afterward? I went out of my way to help him, but the second you found out, you beat me up. Do you have any idea how badly that scarred my fragile young heart?" His eyes reddened as he spoke, while the memory made my blood boil all over again. "You shipped your cousin off to work in a mine in the Wastelands. How is that any different from exile? "You locked him into a five-year contract when you sent him there, so he's still serving hard labor in the Wastelands. You're telling me you didn't deserve that beating?" The viewers watching the livestream didn't know whether to laugh or cry. [Poor Toby. He still hasn't escaped that family?] [See, no beating is ever wasted.] [Just get a new brother. This one's a lost cause.]

When I turned eighteen, I awakened my wolf. That was also when a strange System appeared in my mind. It told me that if I won over Matthew Reed and survived his betrayal-and-groveling arc, I would receive $32 billion. That was the only reason I agreed to keep our marriage secret. But the night Matthew won Best Actor, he posted a photo on Instagram of himself feeding Hellfire Wings to his childhood sweetheart, Layla Bennett. The caption read: [After all this time, this is still the flavor I crave most.] Immediately afterward, he exposed our secret marriage and posted evidence that I had paid him to mark me against his will. The trending page crashed on the spot. My hands shook as I reached for him through our mind-link, but Matthew didn't sound sorry at all. "Layla's been diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. This is her last wish. "She can't be labeled a homewrecker. You've had me for three years. Can't you show a little compassion for a dying woman?" The entire internet called me a homewrecker who was destroying their true love. Some of his fans even made black-and-white memorial photos of me and plastered them across my front door. They demanded that I, the "vicious mate," break our bond and step aside for his true love. I sat there in silence, tears running down my face, when the System suddenly roared inside my head: [Hostile betrayal by target detected. Host bears no responsibility. Groveling Protocol disabled.] [Mind-link backlash blocked. Switching to: Maximum Savage Comeback Mode!] The moment the System fell silent, my head snapped up, every trace of tears gone. I went live to the entire internet, grabbed a megaphone, and planted myself right outside Layla's VIP hospital room. "Terminal stomach cancer, and she's still stuffing her face with Hellfire Wings? Is she trying to die even faster?"

Ever since I was brought back to the Colonna Famiglia, my adopted younger sister, Ilaria Colonna, has kept trying to push me into the arms of Luca Balzano, Don of the Balzano Famiglia. 99 times, to be exact. Every single time, she chokes out the same words to him. "The true Principessa of the Colonna Famiglia is the one you're supposed to marry. I'm nothing but an adopted daughter." She dumps every piece of jewelry Luca gives her into my room and keeps arranging opportunities for the two of us to be alone. She even drugs us both and locks us in a room together. Yet every single time, Luca pushes me away, choosing to spend the entire night soaking in ice-cold water rather than lay a finger on me. The satisfaction of triumphing over me, along with Luca's obvious preference for her, feeds Ilaria's ego until she grows bolder and more reckless. Then comes the 100th time. At a high-society gala, Ilaria has Luca publicly announce their upcoming marriage. But as prominent guests offer their congratulations, she pushes me toward Luca once again and repeats the same speech about how she's only the adopted daughter. "Luca, I'm not worthy of you. Rosalia is the woman you should marry." That very night, she boards a flight and flees to Vestrand, certain that everything will play out exactly as it has the previous 99 times. But this time, when Luca takes in the gathered elites and the rival families waiting to watch him make a fool of himself, he looks down at me in his arms. "Rosalia, will you be my wife?"

The Blackwood Pack had a rule: no outsider was ever allowed to touch a newborn pureblood pup. So when my fated mate Damon Cross's childhood friend Yvonne Morgan reached for one of their sacred cubs, I stopped her. Yvonne decided I was being petty, that I was trying to humiliate her in front of everyone. So she ran off crying, tripped, and fell into a bog. By the time anyone found her, she was gone. Damon was convinced I'd done it on purpose—that I'd planned to get rid of Yvonne Morgan. He had me bound and locked in that basement dungeon for three days and three nights. Every hour felt like a year. "This is all your fault, you jealous witch. If it weren't for you, Yvonne would still be here!" "You're going to pay for what you did. Rot in there and think about it." I clawed my way out—dug a tunnel with my bare hands. I was so close. The night I finally broke free, Damon gave the order to have me thrown into the No-Man's-Land wolf pit. Then I opened my eyes. I was back. The night of the Full Moon Gala.

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

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.

The day I discovered Sean's affair, I cornered him and my stepsister Tina in the company warehouse. A fire broke out afterward. Tina died saving me from the flames, and Sean was injured when a pillar collapsed on him. His shoulder was wrapped in bandages. "Joanna, are you happy now?" His ragged scream that day echoed in my ears for a long, long time. Two months later, the company went bankrupt because of the fire. To pay off the debts, Sean and I moved to a run-down neighborhood. I worked three jobs a day, all to ease the guilt eating me alive. A few years passed, and our relationship seemed to find its way back to what it once was—right up until Valentine's Day. That was when I spotted the supposedly dead Tina at the supermarket, shopping for seafood with Patricia, my mother-in-law. "Patricia, thank you. Without you, Sean and I wouldn't be this happy." "Don't mention it. If we hadn't gotten rid of that crazy woman back then, what would've happened to my precious grandson?" Patricia smiled and patted Tina's hand. "It's Valentine's Day. Sean reserved that rooftop restaurant just for you two. Go enjoy yourselves." My first instinct was to call Sean, but before I could even dial, a text from him came through first. "Babe, picking up a coworker's shift tonight. Night pay and the bonus come out to almost two hundred dollars. I'll bring you something good on my way back." I froze where I stood. So that was it. Three years of hardship, and all of it had been a lie they'd carefully woven around me.

Caine Black and I were in love for seven years. From our first meeting at the Imperial Academy to being officially recognized by both packs as promised mates, I thought we would be together forever. That certainty lasted until the day before our marking ceremony, when I canceled it. The priest stared at me in shock. "Eileen, the marking ceremony is in twelve hours. Are you sure you don't want to wait for Caine to come back?" I gently unclasped the pendant from my neck, the one that symbolized the Luna's status, and shook my head. "No. "He's under the northern lights on the Ice Plains right now, completing a marking ceremony with his first love."

My little sister Vanessa was obsessed with werewolf lore, convinced she was destined to marry a powerful Alpha. When Rex, the Alpha of the Firwood Pack, saved her during a riot, she thought fate had finally set its gears in motion. What she didn't know was that Rex saved her simply because she resembled what his fated mate had looked like in her youth— Helena, the Luna of the Firwood Pack. Any sane woman would've walked away. Vanessa saw it as her golden ticket to the top. She secretly mapped out Helena's usual routes, hired outlaws to stage a brutal car crash, and sprinkled silver dust—lethal to wolves—across the wreckage. Her plan? Wait for the esteemed Luna to draw her last breath, then step in as the "first witness who risked her life to help," climbing over the body to claim her place. Vanessa was convinced that once Helena was gone, she'd be the next Luna. In my past life, I snatched the keys before she could move, locked her in her room, and begged her to come to her senses. Rex wasn't some lovestruck wolf from those cross-species romance novels—he was the iron-fisted Alpha who ruled the entire territory. A wolf's mate bond was carved into the soul. If he ever uncovered the truth, he wouldn't just tear her apart—he'd reduce our entire human family to ash. Vanessa nodded through her tears, swearing she'd let it go. But that night, she drove a silver blade straight through my heart. As I lay dying, she leaned in and whispered: "You ruined my chance to be Luna, Eileen. So you had to die." When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the moment she made her move.

For seven years of my marriage to Damian Moretti, my daughter and I were so poor that every night we collected empty bottles from the alley behind a bar. Every time Ella traded the bottles in for change, she would ask me, "Mommy, do we have enough saved to go to the aquarium with Daddy yet?" Damian always said we had no money. Then, on the day I finally saved enough for three tickets, I arrived at the aquarium only to find him at the entrance holding his ex-girlfriend's hand, with her son in his arms. A staff member stopped us. "Sorry, Mr. Moretti has reserved the entire aquarium for a private event tonight." A bodyguard in black stepped up beside Damian and bowed his head. "Don, the car is ready." The truth was that my supposedly penniless husband, the man who claimed he could not afford his own daughter's ticket, had reclaimed the Moretti Family long ago and become New York's new Don. It was not that he had no money. He simply refused to spend any of it on us. Later I took my daughter and left New York, and the Vitale Family found me. I inherited the family's ports, took control of the Atlantic Shipping Alliance, and became a Donna before whom countless mafia families bowed. Damian, eyes red, begged me to come home. I only pushed the divorce papers across to him. "Damian, I am already home. And you were never my family."

After our pack lost the war, the survivors spent two years on the run. In the third year, the Wolf Council passed a decree allowing us to be absorbed into new packs. But there was a catch—we had to pass the Trials, a specialized test designed to test our physical fitness, reflexes, and overall abilities. Those who passed would be accepted. Those who didn't would be cast out as rogues for good. One month before the Trials, Vera Cross burst into the gathering, her voice trembling with excitement. "Everyone, stop preparing! I got a spell from a witch—just chant it in your head during the Trials, and you'll pass for sure!" She grinned and pulled out a record. "My friend Lily already took these exact Trials during her pack's routine check last month. She didn't prep at all—just chanted this spell in her head. And guess what? She passed." The record got passed around. Cheers erupted. Last life, I tried to warn them. Told them the official Trials would block all spellwork—that using it would flag them as anomalies, get their qualifications revoked on the spot, and dump them straight into rogue status. No one listened. So I reported the situation to the Council. Vera got her membership revoked. Died out in the wilds. Back then, every single pack member said she deserved it. Thanked me for saving them. But after we settled into the new pack, they cornered me. Doused me in gasoline. Burned me alive. "If you'd just kept your mouth shut, she'd still be alive!" When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the exact moment Vera was rallying everyone to give up on prep.

My wedding to Dante Moretti, the Don of the Chicago Mafia, was only days away. When I got home from my final dress fitting, I found he had made the house over into something painfully romantic. Flowers, candles, stacks of gift boxes... Excited as I was, I could not help wondering why. Today was not a special day. He pulled me into his arms and fed me a mouthful of wine from his own lips, his eyes smiling. "I knew you'd forget the anniversary of the day we got together." My stomach dropped. The anniversary was not today. While he was in the shower, his phone went off. A calendar alert popped up on the screen. "Today is your relationship anniversary." I frowned, opened the calendar, and scrolled back through a few pages. Every date he had marked, I realized, traced back to Camille Ricci, his first love. Her period, her birthday, her lucky days... Twelve months, hundreds of entries, packed so tight there was barely any space left between them. I gripped the phone, and the cold went all the way through me. Dante came out with a towel around his waist, saw me still standing there, and teased me with a grin. "Why are you just standing there? Want me to carry you to bed?" I did not call him on it. I said I needed to go over the wedding schedule, and I left. That night I returned the dress, canceled the wedding, and accepted the offer from the university in New York.

I'm the head cheerleader for the Westbrook High football team. I couldn't walk through the front gate without a crowd closing in around me, and one candid photo could set the entire school message board on fire. Then I woke up one morning inside the body of the two-hundred-pound girl in my class, the one everybody called ugly. Our souls had traded places. She sent me a message. [Your good days are over, Corinna Vale.] [And let me be clear, this swap is permanent. From today on, everything people ever envied you for belongs to me!] [As for you, go rot in that body for me!] But I looked at the girl in the mirror and laughed out loud. She had only seen the shine on the outside. She had no idea I'd paid for that beauty with my life. From the age of six, every meal I ate was a diet plan measured out to the gram. To keep my figure, I was put on an operating table and had a rib taken out. I could still picture the ugly looks on my parents' faces. To them I was not a daughter. I was a pretty piece of merchandise to be sold to a rich family. I tightened my grip on the phone. She wanted to use my face to steal my boyfriend, take my place in my family, and turn me into a joke. But I had no intention of letting her have any of it. Getting beautiful and fit again was only a matter of time for me. But that hollowed-out body and that loveless family were hers for life.

My boyfriend, Julian Vance, always said that people in relationships shouldn't use their partners as emotional dumping grounds. So he set a rule. I got ten minutes a day to unload on him. He said his job wore him out and he hoped I'd understand. I agreed. I even thought he simply had strong boundaries. Then my grandmother died, the woman who had raised me on her own. I came back from the funeral home still gripping the reading glasses she never got to put on. All I wanted was for Julian to hold me for a while. He sighed instead. "It isn't that I won't stay with you. It's that you've used up your quota for today." I asked through tears, "Can't today be an exception?" He said, "Once there's a first exception, there's a second. I have a meeting in the morning, and you need to learn to process things on your own." But at two that morning, the woman he had never gotten over called him in tears, saying her boyfriend had dumped her. Julian threw on a coat and talked her through it on the balcony until dawn. I watched him through the glass for a long time. So the ten minutes weren't his boundary. They were only the ceiling he had set for me. In that case, I would stop taking up his time. I turned around, packed away my grandmother's things, and left my key on the table. Whoever he gave his time to from then on had nothing to do with me.

My family was the most famous line of witches at the royal court. My sister, Lilith Seyler, was famous for her lofty principles. I was the only one who knew she was a complete fraud. When the royal marriage decree arrived at House Seyler, she shut herself in her prayer room out in the woods and refused to come out. "Duke Edmund, your wealth and your power are dust to me. A proposal from a duke is no different than a proposal from a farmhand." Then she laid out three conditions for Duke Edmund. The Duke was to build a prayer room on his estate, since she needed quiet meditation and practice with the elements to keep her magic stable. Before the wedding, the Duke was to wash in mountain spring water, burn dragon's-breath incense for three straight days, and abstain from meat and strong liquor so he could come to her purified. And the Duke was to agree not to share her bed for three years, both to protect the source of her magic and to keep her perfectly focused and clear-headed for her studies. Duke Edmund Ashbourne gave a furious laugh. "I think I have come to the wrong place. Is this House Seyler or a convent? "If no one accepts this decree today, House Seyler is defying the King, and every last one of you will answer for it!" My father, Alistair Seyler, dropped to his knees in terror and begged Edmund for mercy. But no matter how my father and my stepmother, Cordelia Seyler, pleaded, my sister would not bend. She would take the decree only if the Duke agreed to her terms. "Duke Edmund, everything that happens in time and space is already decided. Two people with no destiny between them are meant to pass each other by. Why force me to say yes?" The Duke turned to leave in a rage, ready to bring the King's punishment down on House Seyler. I huddled in the corner, took a deep breath, rushed forward, and dropped to my knees. "I am Rowena Seyler, the second daughter of House Seyler. I will accept the decree in my sister's place!"

To teach me independence, my parents enforced a fifty-fifty rule from the time I was little. Half the rent for my room. Half the cost of a breakfast sandwich. Even when a high fever sent me to the ER, they added half the bill to my debt and reminded me, "Get a summer job. Don't make a habit of owing people money." I always believed they just wanted me to become independent. Then my younger sister, Chloe, was born. Whenever she broke something and owed Mom money, all she had to do was give her a kiss. "All right, sweetheart. Debt paid." When Chloe wanted piano lessons, she made Dad breakfast once, and he happily paid for an entire year. But every dollar spent on me went straight into the family ledger. On my eighteenth birthday, I looked at the cake and quietly asked Mom, "Can I mow the lawn to cover my share?" She frowned. "Sophie, you pay what you owe. Don't look for shortcuts." "You still owe us $1,704.08 from last month. When are you going to pay it back?" I didn't answer. I only tightened my grip on the letter in my pocket offering me a full scholarship to New York University. Soon. Once I paid it off, my debt to this family would be settled. After that, I would never owe them another cent.