Independence Rebirth Short Stories & Novels

I fell in love with a man I should never have touched—my brother-in-law, Lucas Zahn. The first time he came to our home with my sister, Quincy, they looked like the perfect couple. He smiled at me, held out a peace talisman bracelet, and said it would keep me safe. I wore it like it was the most precious thing in the world. When the old injury in my ankle flared up, he would scoop me into his arms and rush me to the hospital without a second thought. When thugs tried to harass me, he made them scatter with a single look, then spoke to me in a voice so gentle it made my heart tremble. I told myself I understood—that everything he did was only because I was Quincy’s younger sister. Even so, I clung to those rare moments when I could be near him. Until the night Lucas was drugged by an enemy, his life teetering on the edge. If no one acted, he would die. So, I acted. On that reckless, desperate night, my sister walked in. The sight struck her like a lightning bolt, and she collapsed, her weak heart seizing on the spot. What came next was madness. In a frenzy of rage and panic, Lucas tied me to an operating table. His hands—those hands I once longed to hold—cut open my chest and tore my heart out for her. “When the avalanche hit, Quincy nearly died saving me. I swore I’d treat her well for the rest of my life. That means loving her family, too. I never thought you’d be so shameless. “This is what you owe her!” He never knew that I was the one who saved him in that avalanche. So, I died in agony, my love carved out of me—literally. When my eyes opened again, I found myself back on the night he was drunk.

Our cruise ship got into an accident, but there was only one seat left on the lifeboat. The three of us drew lots, and I got it. I wanted to give Zac Xavier the chance of survival that I won. However, while we were arguing, his childhood sweetheart got on the lifeboat first. Just as we thought our lives would end, the rescue team arrived in time and brought us back from the boundless deep sea. After that incident, Zac and I walked down the aisle. Unexpectedly, his childhood sweetheart returned to that sea on our wedding day and jumped into it. When Zac got the news of her death, he was struck by grief and blamed everything on me. He imprisoned the pregnant me in the basement and made my life a torture. I bled profusely on the day I gave birth. He had the doctor save the baby, asking him to give up on my life. My only child was named Rory, something he thought up based on the name of his childhood sweetheart—Aurora. Even when I died, I was consumed by hatred. When I reopened my eyes, I had returned to the day he proposed to me after the cruise ship accident. Watching Zac hold my hand as he had done in my past life and promise to grant my every wish, I calmly withdrew my hand. "Zac, let's break up."

My husband's protégé boasted she could disarm bombs blindfolded, relying on her so-called intuition. Her reckless misjudgment triggered a bomb's secondary detonation sequence, endangering an entire building. I intervened, using the dangerous liquid nitrogen condensation method to save the day. As a result, Rita Smith was removed from frontline duties and placed under investigation. Patrick Munoz tried to defend her, but I stopped him cold. "If you back her now, you won't just fail to save her. You'll be dragged down with her." Crushed by the pressure, Rita staged an accident that killed her, leaving a letter blaming him for abandoning her in her hour of need. He said nothing, only preserving her letter in his study. Years later, he became a nationally renowned bomb disposal expert. During a terrorist attack, I was strapped to a timed explosive. He arrived to defuse it but repeated Rita's fatal mistake. As the timer ticked down, he gave a bitter laugh. "Rita was just nervous back then. If I'd supported her, she'd be a hero today." The bomb detonated, leaving nothing of me behind. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the point when he tried to defend Rita. He didn't know that the building housed the nation's top-secret core server.

In my previous life, my brother and fiancé teamed up to sabotage my company for the sake of my so-called best friend. After I went bankrupt, they stood beside her watching me collapse in the pouring rain, laughing mockingly at my pathetic state. "Linda Turner, you look as pathetic as a drenched dog!" they sneered. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the project bidding meeting three years earlier. In my previous life, when my company was just starting out, my brother and fiancé had warned me against using the Turner and Peterson family connections. They claimed it wouldn't be fair to others, but then turned around and handed projects to my best friend under various pretexts, just to see her smile. Now that I was back, I watched them secretly manipulating things just like before, giving my projects to my best friend. I finally gave up on them completely. When they found out I was leaving the country, my brother and fiancé set off fireworks all night, celebrating that they'd finally gotten rid of me, the burden. But three years later, at the Trada Corp's bidding meeting, I took the stage as the CEO's wife—and they couldn't hide the redness in their eyes.

The seven Jennings sisters were all born unusually fertile, while I was born extremely virile. My grandmother wanted me to marry a woman with high fertility so we could have lots of kids and thrive as a family. In my previous life, I followed her wishes and chose Kara Jennings. But she joined forces with her six sisters to steal my family estate, locked me in a basement, and tortured me until I died. Now that I had come back to life on the day I had a banquet to announce my bride-to-be, I chose Michelle Cooper, the powerful CEO rumored to be sickly and infertile...

Before the SATs, everyone had filled in their dream colleges they'd like to apply to. Now that the results were out, my boyfriend, Sheldon Miller, and many of my classmates had successfully gotten into Astraeus University, which happens to be their dream university. In order to celebrate the success, Sheldon's childhood friend, Winnie Frost, decided to invite Sheldon and the classmates over to the tattoo parlor her family ran for celebratory tattoos. I grabbed Sheldon's hand and reminded him that students in aviation majors weren't allowed to have tattoos of their own, only to get slapped by him instead. The classmates around me even started mocking me relentlessly. "Just how shameless are you, Cassandra? Sheldon and Winnie are the actual childhood friends here! You don't want him to get a tattoo at her family's parlor out of jealousy, right?" I was so pissed that I could feel a headache coming. For the sake of Sheldon's future, I forcibly dragged him away. But what I didn't expect was that Winnie would secretly carry two barrels of gas to my residence. Just like that, she set my residence ablaze. That fire ended up killing my parents and me. Sheldon and our classmates even forged Winnie's alibi just so they could wash her off the police's suspicion. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day Sheldon is about to walk into Winnie's tattoo parlor. Sheldon shakes my hand off ruthlessly and begins berating me angrily. "Aren't you just being jealous because Winnie and I are close to each other? I'll have you know that not only do I want to get a tattoo with Winnie, but I also want to have her name tattooed on my body!" This time, I just flash a wide smile at him. "Go on, then. You'd better have her name tattooed on an obvious spot."

The Sutton heir was using a wheel of fortune to pick a wife. In my last life, the wheel landed on me. On my wedding day, the woman he had loved his whole life threw herself off a cliff into the sea. That was when I learned. Fifteen years of him chasing me had been about getting her to look back at him. There were thirty-six other names on that wheel. All of them were there to push her into a corner. After she went, he came apart. "I only wanted to make you jealous. Why would you leave me like this?" He blamed all of it on me. He took apart what was left of my body with his own hands. In my last minutes I saw her come back, untouched, and tell him it had only been a test. They held each other and kissed. I went into a jar nobody noticed. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the day of the wheel.

On our fifth wedding anniversary, my husband, Damian Pyke, once again left me for his first love. He said, "Taking care of a child alone isn't easy for Waverly. You're both women—can't you show her some understanding?" Not only was I willing to understand Waverly Benson, but I was also ready to step aside entirely so they could raise her child together. So, I packed my bags and applied for an overseas architecture program through my workplace. However, he eventually regretted it, crying and begging me not to go.

My husband's first love ran off to a nightclub. She was drugged and assaulted there, and a year later returned with a child. Without a word, Bryson Tanner dragged me to the courthouse to file for divorce. "In this world, widows and orphans are easy prey. I can't just watch Christina get hurt. I'll acknowledge her child as mine." I held my own child in my arms and calmly filled out the paperwork. Just because I was reborn. In my previous life, I had refused to divorce at all costs. I'd also publicly exposed Christina Floyd's tangled affairs with men. She endured scorn and humiliation, and in a fit of anger, left her son behind to escape… only to die on that train. When Bryson heard of it, he showed no expression. Yet a month later, he watched coldly as I was drugged and assaulted, and accused me of cheating and giving birth to another man's child. It wasn't until my child and I were driven to death that I realized the depth of his hatred. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day Bryson asked for a divorce.

After being reborn, I decide to return my fiancé to his true love. When he holds a singles party for her and doesn't want me to disturb him, I go to Faldora alone. He says I'm an annoyance, so I quit my job without hesitation. He doesn't feel good being in the same country as me, so I immediately migrate abroad. In the end, he tells me he wants to make his true love feel secure. I nod and accept someone else's proposal. Why am I so obedient and compliant? It's because of my past life. In my past life, his true love ended her life after I married him. He blamed me for separating them and subjected me to inhumane torture. This time, I just want to live my life. Later, when I'm taking a stroll with my family, he kneels before me and sobs in earnest. "I promise I'll be with you as long as you leave them, Audrey."

I was reborn. Right back to the day I adopted Peter. The wind cut sharp, baby cries slicing through the cold. That's when it hit me—this was the day Stuart Pete, my oh-so-loving husband, dumped his illegitimate child right in my path after work. He knew me too well. The second I picked the kid up, he'd spin it into an adoption, making the boy ours. Last time, I fell for it. This time? I walked away without a second thought. Later, I heard the kid got pneumonia from being left out in the freezing cold—fever so bad, it wrecked him for life. I laughed until my stomach hurt. What I didn't see coming? Peter was reborn too—about to experience the life he was meant to have.

My husband sends me a photo of our obedient daughter holding a plate of food. He writes, "Thanks to my patient guidance, our sweetheart has finally made her first dish! We're waiting for you to come home and taste it!" The exhaustion I feel from work is swept away when I see that. No one expects that I'll reach home half an hour later and kill him.

In my previous life, my sister, Clarissa Smith, and I were adopted at the same time. She chose the Newmans, a prestigious family of scientists, leaving me with an impoverished divorcee. But later on, the Newmans kicked her out, and her reputation was completely ruined. Meanwhile, I'd married rich and had tens of millions of dollars from the government's relocation compensation package. Clarissa couldn't accept how differently our lives turned out, so she stabbed me to death. When my eyes open once more, I find myself alive again. I've gone back in time to the day Clarissa and I were adopted. To my surprise, I can hear her thoughts. [This time, I'm going to be the one who gets rich overnight!] As it turns out, she has been reborn as well. Well, this time around, she can be the one who gets to endure the torment instead.

I died giving birth. I gave George Norris ten children in seven years and died with my last child during childbirth. Everyone said I was unlucky, but no one knew that I saw the comments on the screen as I was dying. [The cannon fodder is pretty pitiful. Now the female lead gets ten healthy babies for free.] [The female lead is so clever. She likes children but doesn't want to give birth to any for the male lead, so she added fertility pills in the cannon fodder's food.] [Tsk, tsk, tsk, the cannon fodder probably won't even know she gave birth to the male lead and female lead's children.] The comments made me so angry that I dropped dead right then and there. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back, right after I had married George. [Tsk, the female lead is so ruthless; she added three fertility pills to the chicken soup.] [Is the female lead not afraid that the cannon fodder will give birth to triplets and die on the operating table?] Watching the chicken soup Cheryl York handed me, I grinned, grabbed her mouth, and poured the soup down her throat. If she liked having children so much, she could have as many as she wanted!

My fiancé and brother hated me for ten years. They firmly believed I had bullied their beloved Linda Lowe. At my engagement party, they exposed my crimes to the world. "She's nothing but a bully who tormented her classmate!" In the viral livestream video, Linda smiled through tears: "I've already forgiven her." "What's done is done. The past is behind us now" She became an overnight sensation. Meanwhile, I was condemned by thousands, attacked with acid by fanatic fans, and in despair, I took us both down together. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in my senior year of high school. Linda was pouring water over her own head while smiling, asking me, "Have you thought about how you'll apologize to me?" I lost it right there. Grabbing her by the hair, I dragged her into the bathroom, shoving her head into the toilet. "Let me show you what real bullying looks like. Since your mouth is so filthy, make sure to wash it clean before you go telling tales."

My sister, Yvonne Jones, tried to murder the childhood friend of a rich heir in order to seduce him. Yvonne poisoned the woman's drink and pulled out her oxygen tube after she was sent to the hospital. When the rich heir arrived in a rush, Yvonne cried in his arms daintily. "I'm so sorry. This is all my fault. I failed to protect her." I witnessed everything in the ward but didn't say a word about it. In my previous lifetime, I stopped Yvonne from poisoning the woman. I knew the rich heir would never let her get away with it if he found out about it. Yvonne was forced to give up her plan and even praised me for my foresight. However, she ended up poisoning me instead and stabbed me in the heart with her dagger when I got dizzy. "This is your fault! Die! If you hadn't stopped me, Sean Graham would've been mine!" When I opened my eyes next, I had returned to the day of the poisoning.

The moment my best friend, Patrick York, rushed ahead of me into the convenience store and asked for a lottery ticket with that specific string of numbers, I knew he was in the same boat as me. We were reborn. In the past life, Patrick and I were shortlisted for an interview at a Fortune 500 company, but there was only one opening. The day before the interview, I had a sudden urge to buy a lottery ticket. However, because of that, I missed the interview and Patrick got hired. Surprisingly, I got the winning ticket and won 50 million dollars. After my graduation, I enjoyed an easy life by living off interest from the bank. Meanwhile, despite getting hired, Patrick was paid a low wage and suffered daily abuse from his colleagues. In the end, he took out his frustrations on me by pushing me off the rooftop, killing me on the spot. After my death, my girlfriend, Emily Hayward, committed perjury for his sake. She claimed that after a prolonged period of staying home with nothing to do, I was in a bad mental state and leaped off on my own. The two of them profited off my death and became trending influencers, making it big. When I opened my eyes once more, I realized I was back to the day I purchased the lottery ticket.

My best friend, Elise Moore, comes across a reel that shows someone being able to see the answers for the Math test during the SAT exam after ingesting poisonous mushrooms. So, she buys a bunch of poisonous mushrooms at a high price before using them as ingredients for a mushroom stew. I advise Elise to not eat those mushrooms, for she will get poisoned instead. Hence, Elise dumps those mushrooms out of fear. But after the exam is over, a classmate claims that he's able to see the answers during the math exam after getting poisoned by the mushrooms. He's confident that he'll ace his exam. When the results are out, it appears that the classmate is eligible to apply for any prestigious college out there. Meanwhile, Elise's results indicate that she's one mark away from getting into the threshold that qualifies her for prestigious colleges. Later on, Elise stabs me 18 times in a row at my graduation party. "You filthy loser! If not for your meddling, I'd be the one qualified for prestigious colleges!" When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day Elise brags about the poisonous mushrooms benefitting the consumers at the SAT exam. "Once I eat the poisonous mushrooms, I'll be able to see the math answers during the exam! Do you think I should try the mushrooms out?"

After ten years studying interior design overseas, I came back to my hometown to do work that mattered to the people who raised me. I offered the full package, from site survey to soft furnishings. The materials were chosen by hand. The price was fair to the bone. The town had just gone through a redevelopment. Everyone was getting new units. With the new family policy, every family wanted a third bedroom too. My business was good. Customers from the next county were driving in. Then a girl just back from a city college kicked open my studio with her phone on a livestream and her neighbors at her shoulder. "This is the dishonest one. Look at her. She has been ripping the village off." "In the city, an eighty-square-meter unit can be done for twenty thousand dollars. She is charging eighty." "That's a sixty-thousand-dollar margin. Sixty thousand. Right out of our pockets." The village fell in line behind her. They demanded the difference back. When I refused, they smashed my studio. They beat me into a coma. The pile-on online killed me. When I opened my eyes again, I knew exactly what I was going to do. I would refund every single one of them. And then I would tear out every single thing I had installed. Let's see what twenty thousand dollars actually buys you.

My husband had a heart attack on his way to work and died. All I could see was his body when I rushed to the hospital. I was heartbroken and bedridden. When I was about to die, I saw on the news that he won a lottery ticket worth 300 million dollars. My bestie cashed the prize money with him. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day when my husband faked his death. But I wanted to make his death real this time! “Are you from the funeral home? My husband is dead. We need to plan a cremation for him right away!”