Multiple Identities Imagination Short Stories & Novels

My dad was a zombie. My mom? Even scarier. She was an uber-powerful mutant. At the crack of dawn, she was already yelling, "Derick Olson! Don't make me come over there! What kind of zombie are you? Glued to your headphones all day—are those audiobooks really that captivating?" I rolled over in bed and promptly fell right off. Scrambling to my feet, I started tidying up my room in a flash, terrified she might actually make good on her threat. "Look at Mr. Hoffman next door," she hollered. "He roams the streets day and night, probably gobbled up more brains than you've read books!"

I was Byron Estrada's doormat, always there to fulfill his every whim. But Byron hated me, ridiculing me at every turn. It was all because three years ago, I ran away the day before our wedding. Now, three years later, I had returned with a child—whose real father just so happened to be Byron's brother.

The day I went to the Shifter Mating Registry, I discovered my wolf-shifter boyfriend, Liam, hadn't registered me as his mate. He wrote Maya’s—his sister-in-law. Seeing me freeze in disbelief, he just chuckled and ruffled my hair. "Don't overthink it. Maya is pregnant with my dead brother's pup. The pup needs a legal guardian for the bloodline records." "It's just a temporary mating contract. In three months, once the pup's lineage is certified, I'll break the bond and marry you." He assumed a powerless human girl like me had no choice but to wait for him. But he was wrong. In the system, his highest compatibility match was indeed me. But my highest match wasn't him. That very night, I accepted a mating request from a Dragon shifter with a 100% match rate, and I left the city for good. Three years later, my mother fell ill, forcing me back to North City. My mate—Kaelan, the Supreme Dragon Chancellor—was delayed by a meeting. He contacted the local Shifter Guards to pick me up first. I didn't expect to run into Liam. He took one look at the crystal key in my hand and scoffed. "I heard the Dragon Chancellor gave his mate the key to his treasure vault. There's only one in the world. Yours is a convincing fake, I'll give you that." "Alright, three years of throwing a tantrum is enough. Maya's health is failing, and the pup is a handful. You're just in time to come back and help her." I looked down at the crystal key in my palm. A fake? This key? It only unlocked the North City branch—the smallest of Kaelan's many private vaults.