Ruthless Melodramatic Short Stories & Novels

In a fit of bravado, I save someone's life, only to sustain a head injury. Jenna Newson, my girlfriend of eight years, comes to visit me at the hospital. In order to pull a prank on her, I pretend to be amnesiac and ask who she is. While Jenna is momentarily stunned, she soon answers calmly, "I'm a classmate of yours."

As the only daughter of the Hawthorne family, I entered an arranged marriage with Adrian, the heir to the vampire ancient clan. Adrian was attentive, gentle, and deeply devoted to me. Until that day. His childhood sweetheart, Elara, became pregnant after getting involved with a lower-class vampire and turned to him for help. To protect her baby from being rejected by the ruthless vampire families, Adrian publicly claimed that Elara’s baby was his. As for me and the child I was carrying, Adrian told us to wait. At least until Elara could give birth safely, he said, he couldn’t acknowledge me or our child. His parents accused me of infidelity, saying I had disgraced the vampire bloodline and dishonored the Hawthorne name. They forced me to terminate my pregnancy. Meanwhile, Adrian was on the other side of the world, caring for Elara. By the time he finally returned, I had already disappeared from his world.

For ten years, I was Vincent's blood bag and his sharpest blade. I offered my rare blood to sustain his ancient power. I offered my loyalty to secure his throne as the Vampire Lord of this territory. I thought my devotion might earn me the eternal embrace of the turning. Instead, I received the announcement of his marriage to Lilith. A princess from a powerful European vampire clan. He said it was a necessary alliance. He said my blood was still precious. But when the sanctified silver tearing through the car,he used my body as a shield, to ensure his bride remained unblemished. That's when I knew. I was never his lover. I was just a consumable resource, a blood bag to be used and discarded. So, when I was ordered to become his blood servant under the title of his fiancée, I made a call to my father. “In seven days,” I said, my voice clear and final in the dark, “make the name Elena Rossi disappear from this city. From vampire’s world. Forever.” In seven days, when Vincent finds his precious living blood bank gone, he went insane. And this decade-long game of predator and prey… will have a new set of rules.

When I was having a heart attack, my parents, my brother, and my fiancé were all at our family casino—celebrating Eva, our adopted daughter, at her twenty-first birthday, her official debut into the mafia world. The doctor refused to operate without a legal guardian’s signature. So I called them. My father’s assistant answered. “Sorry, Miss. The Don is in the middle of a toast.” My brother and mother let it ring until it went silent. Finally, my fiancé, Adam, picked up. Music roared behind him. I could hear laughter, glasses clinking. “Cecilia,” he said, impatient. “If you can’t even show up for Eva’s party, stop causing trouble. Today is Eva’s debut. Every Don from three territories is here. Whatever drama you’re playing can wait.” I lost count of how many times they chose her over me. So after this call, I stopped calling. I signed my own name. My family thought I’d finally learned to be obedient. But they should’ve known that in our world, silence only means one thing—I was preparing to disappear for good.

Three days before my blood oath ceremony, someone planted a silver crucifix in the bridal shop and set it ablaze while I was inside trying on my ceremonial gown. My fiancé — Vampire Lord Damien — had the arsonist thrown into the silver prison, sentencing them to the harshest punishment our laws allowed. I lay in the healing chamber, my body covered in severe burns, refusing to wake fully as the reality of my disfigurement sank in. In my semi-conscious state, I heard Damien speaking with the coven's apothecary. "My Lord, we can still heal her completely with the ancient blood rites. If we wait any longer, Serena will bear these scars for life! You just want Miss Vivienne to be your Consort at the blood oath ceremony. This is cruel beyond measure!" "Let her keep the scars. I'll provide for her for the rest of her life, but if she's healed, she'll definitely cause trouble at the ceremony." "I promised Vivienne that her child would be welcomed into the coven with full honors. Only when Serena is completely disfigured will she be grateful enough to raise Vivienne's child as her own. The scars are necessary - at least this way, she won't dare mistreat the boy." In the corner of the room, where no one was watching, a tear slid down my burned cheek. So this was the truth. The blood oath ceremony I'd dreamed of was nothing but a lie. The blood bond I longed for would be my death sentence. If that's how it had to be, I would give him what he wanted.

My pup Asher had been sick for six months. Every time I personally cared for him, he became even sicker. I finally believed the witch's prophecy: I was cursed. My very existence would harm my own pup. I went to the moon temple and prayed that the moon goddess would lift the curse and ensure my pup's safety. From then on, my Alpha mate Damon brought Asher up the mountain every day to see me. Hundreds of miles of mountain road. They made the trip over a thousand times. Our bond never faded with the distance. Until today. A group of rogues broke into the Sanctuary and pushed me down the stone steps. I called Damon all night. No one answered. Then I received an anonymous video. Damon knelt in front of a woman, kissing her swollen belly. Asher stood next to them, grinning ear to ear. "I'm gonna have a brother! Aunt Serena, your pregnancy must have been so tough. Me and Dad will be your knights forever." He turned to Damon, his young face bright with pride. "Dad, I faked being sick pretty well, right? Pretending to feel awful every day, tricking Mom into taking me to the Healer over and over. They never found anything wrong, and she really believed that curse stuff. Went up the mountain all on her own." "But what if Mom finds out? Won't she be mad?" Damon didn't seem worried. "Don't worry. I've got the whole mountain sealed off. She won't find out." Only then did I understand. Everything had been a lie, planned by my mate and my son. I turned around and knocked over the Hope Flame that I had lit for Asher without hesitation. This flame was lit at the cost of my wolf’s strength, offered to the Moon Goddess so that she might bless Asher with health. Through the flames, a familiar figure sprinted toward me.

I was once the Alpha's adopted daughter, but I took the fall for the man I loved and spent three years in the Pack prison. Then I had his pup before we were ever mated. This was the ninety-ninth time I'd asked for a mating ceremony. He swept his arm across the desk and sent everything crashing to the floor. "You really think you deserve to be mated to me? You've done time. You're nothing." "I've been too good to you. You've forgotten your place." But he was the one who'd promised. He said once I had the baby, we'd have the ceremony and be mates. He slammed the door on his way out. He didn't come home for three months. He cut me off completely. The power and water were shut off. My pup Lily had a fever that wouldn't break. I had no choice. I carried her to Pack headquarters to find him, and that's when I heard him talking to Serena. "Babe, when are you finally going to leave that trashy Ivy? We're the ones who actually went through the ceremony. We're the real mates." His voice went all soft and indulgent, and it made my skin crawl. "I want to cut ties with her too. It's her fault — she couldn't give me a son." "She's done time. How could she ever be worthy of me?" But he seemed to have forgotten — the reason I was locked up in the first place was because I took the fall for him.

The house was on fire. My husband–a firefighter–rescued our son first. And the kitten his first love had left behind. Then, to comfort the frightened woman, he rushed off without a second thought. When his colleagues asked my son if anyone else was still inside, he glanced in my direction… and shook his head. "There's no one else." I was later found screaming for help, barely alive. Outside my hospital room, my son looked at me with disappointment. "Why didn't you just burn to death in there? "If you were gone, Aunt Maya could be my mom."

My Alpha mate's childhood sweetheart was a witch. She told everyone my blood carried a Cursed Bloodline — that bonding with Damon would kill him. On our anniversary, she drew a Curse Circle outside my door, claiming it would suppress my dark energy. At our Mating Ceremony, she disguised herself as a server and swapped our Bonding Tokens for a Curse Rune. Every single time, she'd kneel in front of Damon and cry: "I'm only trying to protect you from the curse. Everything I do is for you!" And every single time, Damon went soft. He said she just cared about him too much. Until the eve of our Marking Ceremony, when she drugged me, put on my Luna ceremonial gown, and crawled into Damon's bed. I woke up just in time and reported her to the Pack Enforcers. Damon went straight to the Enforcers' station to get her out, then turned to me and said coldly: "Serena was just trying to protect me. Do you really have to make such a big deal out of this?" Until I bled out during labor and fell into a coma, and she stood over me with tears in her eyes, telling Damon: "Choose me and let her go — this is the will of the Moon Goddess.." I left this world together with the child still in my belly. Then I opened my eyes again. I was back on the day of the Mating Ceremony, and she was about to slip the Hex Rune into our token box. This time, I didn't hold back. I ripped open the box in front of everyone and slapped the rune onto her forehead: "I think the one who needs cleansing is you!"

The day I buried my mother, my husband, Luca, the Don Ricci, conveniently disappeared. Later, my best friend, Annie, sent me a video. In it, she stood beside Luca in a hospital room while a doctor confirmed her pregnancy. Luca looked… happy. Radiant, even. The baby was theirs. Then another message came. Annie’s voice, “Sis, looks like you failed—just like your mother did against mine.” I had always known my father cheated on my mother and had a child out there somewhere. I just never imagined… it was Annie. That night, Luca came home—with Annie by his side. I said only four words. “I want a divorce.” Luca refused, saying I wouldn’t survive without him—but it was just gaslighting. In truth, he couldn’t afford to lose me or my family’s power. So I called one man Luca hated most in this world—his uncle, Stefan Ricci. The man who once stood equal to Luca in the race for power… If Luca believed he could humiliate me and still keep me tethered to him—his perfect little guarantee to the Don’s seat.… Then I could just as easily make another man take his place.

During the holidays, I get home in advance, hoping to surprise my wife, Zara Hudson. But the moment I open the front door, I find out that an unfamiliar young man has already taken over my villa and is in the middle of hosting a party. The spot where my wedding portrait used to be now features an intimate photo of that man making out with Zara. "Where the hell did a loser like you come from? How dare you trespass on private property!" I'm shell-shocked for the first few seconds. But soon, I explain, "That woman in the photo is my wife. This villa is mine, too." All the guests begin jeering and making fun of me instead. "You must have gone insane from daydreaming! That woman is Mr. Barrington's wife! Mr. Barrington, go ahead and teach him a lesson!" The man, Alan Barrington, and I get into a huge fight afterward. Furious and humiliated, Alan calls Zara and demands that she get home just to prove that he's her partner. What everyone doesn't expect is that the moment Zara shows up, she gets down on her knees in front of me and begins bawling her eyes out. As I gaze at her pallid complexion, I just chuckle coldly in return. "Zara Hudson, I want you to scram out of my home with that boy toy of yours! Also, you'd better come up with a way to pay off those loan shark loans!"

I was pregnant and due any day. Austin Revelstone, my husband, had a sugar baby named Tawny Sully. Each time they renewed their arrangement, money came into my mother’s special care account. One day, he stayed a little longer to talk to me. Because of it, he was one minute late for his date with Tawny. Tawny was upset. She threw a tantrum and threatened to terminate their agreement. She would only stay if I aborted my baby. So, Austin slid the abortion form and a check for three million dollars across the table to me. “Please, just sign it. We can always have another kid. If Tawny cries anymore, she’ll get wrinkles.” He looked calm and unbothered. It was as if he were just talking about the weather. I raised my head and looked at him in disbelief. I trembled for a long time. Then, I finally signed my name on the abortion form. I wiped my tears and gave the check back to him. I made one additional request. “Let’s make that fake divorce certificate real this time.” I no longer needed his financial support for my mother’s surgery.

A priest has shown up at my first birthday party. He claims that I'm a cursed soul—that my presence will bring doom to those close to me, and my existence itself can snatch everyone's luck. The only way to counter this is to give me up to an orphanage and let me live a life of poverty and suffering. Without a family, I'll be able to overcome my fate as a cursed soul. Daddy has the priest cast out of our home immediately. Meanwhile, Mommy hugs me tightly. "My son is the luckiest boy in the whole wide world!" But everything has changed when my younger brother, Andy Lawson, has fallen off the 20th floor. His body is completely shattered from the fall. I can only stand by the window uneasily. Fear is evident in my eyes as I wave my hands with all my might. "It wasn't me! It really wasn't me!" The wind that day is very strong, but it can never drown out Mommy's cries. Daddy hoists me up and stuffs me into Andy's coffin. I keep latching onto the sides of the coffin to the point my fingers are all bloodied and trampled over. At the same time, I keep screaming for Mommy. Mommy stares at me blankly at first. But her hollow gaze is soon filled with hatred. "Why aren't you the one dead? That priest told us that you'll have to stay in the coffin for seven whole days and nights just to atone for your sins! Only then can Andy's soul rest in peace! "This is your fate and your sin, Adam!" The heavy lid slowly covers the coffin, soon sealing my hoarse cries and screams away. A long time later, a few voices ring out amid the sorrowful melody played by the organ. "Why is there a tiny gap in the coffin? Hurry up and nail it shut! We can't afford to have misfortune spread to us!" When the final nail is bolted onto the lid, I close my eyes. Mommy, Daddy, I'm no longer a cursed soul.

I was born with a gift: the rare ability to bear powerful hybrid children for a vampire. I should have been cherished for it. Instead, my mother died young, her inheritance seized by my stepmother, my father's affection stolen by my stepsister. Only Ryan, heir to the vampire King, treated me with gentleness. When I was young, he fell for me at first sight and was secretly in love with me for two years. Later, at a gala, someone pushed me into a frozen lake. He was the one who pulled me out. He bent close, his eyes soft. “Marry me. Let me protect you.” I said yes without hesitation. Because no one had ever stood beside me so surely. I loved him with everything I had. When assassins struck at our wedding, I even stepped in front of the bullet meant for his heart. But after I dragged my weakened body through childbirth and gave him his child, he appeared before me with my stepsister Vicky in his arms. “You have no use to me anymore.” Ryan's eyes were cold and foreign. “The person I love has always been Vicky.” He had chosen me only for my bloodline, purer, better suited to produce an heir. Vicky smiled and drove the knife into my chest. Ryan stood to one side and watched me die. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the night Ryan proposed. Vicky was crying, begging to take my place and marry him instead. This time, I closed my eyes. “All right. I agree to the exchange.”

After my son was abducted, my husband took me to an adoption center to bring home a baby boy born the same year as the child we'd lost. I poured every ounce of love I had into raising him. He had a sensitive stomach, so I pushed through my chronic back pain to cook him special meals every single day. When he spiked a fever in the middle of the night, I carried him twenty miles through the rain to the nearest hospital. When he couldn't focus in school, I was constantly at his classroom door, flattering his teachers and bringing them gifts, just to get them to pay a little extra attention to him. Fifteen years of grinding sacrifice, and it all came down to one moment at his college acceptance party. "I couldn't have gotten into Harvard without my mother's love and hard work," he said into the microphone. He raised his glass, eyes drifting toward where I was sitting. The cameras flashed as I started to rise from my seat, matching his silent lip movements. And then I heard a name I didn't expect. "She is Rachel Lynch." I froze. That was my best friend's name.

After visiting Grandpa at the care home, I got a text from my boyfriend, Lucas Mercer. “Sofia, come to the office tomorrow at ten. I’ve got a surprise for you.” I thought of the proposal plan I’d spotted on his laptop. I smiled to myself and booked the first available flight. But when I walked into that office, I froze. Lucas was down on one knee, holding out a diamond ring to my cousin, Ashley. Ten years ago, she’d hired someone to drive a car into my parents and kill them. Then she’d trapped me in the fire that followed. “Ashley, I’ve been practicing for five years. Will you marry me?” His eyes were full of nothing but her. I dug my nails into my palm. This year also happened to be the fifth year Lucas and I had been together. “Yes.” Ashley smiled and produced a document. “Since you’ve been loyal to me for five years, my father decided to throw in an extra five million as a bonus!” The room erupted. I stood there watching the celebration. The Harlow Group investment agreement I’d been holding was now a crumpled ball of paper in my fist. I turned and dropped it in the trash, then called my assistant. “Lucas Mercer. Cut him. Pull up the updated list of fiancé candidates.” Ashley had no idea I’d already returned to the Harlow family as the heir apparent. Lucas had no idea that by chasing five million, he’d just walked away from fifty.

I was born a half-blood vampire, the daughter of a vampire father and a human mother. I inherited a vampire's power, yet I could walk in sunlight without harm. On the day it happened, my beloved fiancé Adrian had been gravely wounded by hunters and lay collapsed in the burning light. I was the one who ran to him, and I was the one who took the bullet. But when he came to, he was certain the person who'd saved him was my stepsister, Sophia — because her arm bore the mark of a sunlight burn. I tried to explain. I wept and begged him to believe me. Adrian only looked at me with cold, distant eyes. "Elena, stop trying to steal Sophia's credit." Sophia was cherished in his hands, while I was trampled repeatedly. Adrian sealed my bloodline power, stripping me from half-blood to nothing. Our engagement was annulled, and he watched, cold and unmoved, as I was sent in Sophia's place to marry the noble vampire everyone whispered about: that ancient, monstrous lord. Then came the day of his and Sophia's betrothal ceremony. The vampire hunters struck again. Stripped of my power, I threw myself in front of a young girl to shield her. Sophia, meanwhile, abandoned Adrian's side and fled behind the elders. Only then did Adrian understand: the one who had saved him in the sunlight had always been me. He went mad with it. He blocked my carriage, desperate to stop me from leaving, from marrying another man. But I reached out and took another man's hand. "Adrian," I said. "I don't love you anymore."

All I did was reach for a pastry Lila had her eye on, and my childhood sweetheart Luca, the Don's heir of Galvani family, had me thrown in the estate cellar for three days and three nights. His voice was as cold. "I've told you before, Lila is like a sister to me. Why can't you just let her be?" This time I didn't cry or beg. I just looked at him. I had been half out of my mind over this man for more than a decade. I had even slashed my own wrist in front of his father, just to force him into marrying me. Luca looked at me like he was disappointed all over again. "With a temper like yours, how could you ever be the Donna of Galvani family?" "Get down to the cellar and think about what you've done. Come back when you've come to your senses." Then, as if he couldn't quite help himself, he dropped his voice: "Look, as long as you come around and stop making Lila's life difficult, everything goes back to how it was. Okay?" I clenched my jaw. It felt like a blade pressed against my chest. "Okay," I said. Next month, the Don of the Ferrara family will marry me as his Donna. This time, I am done with Luca.

The night before the World Cup, Reid Callister made a post on social media. In the photo, he wore a Portugal jersey and was smiling at the woman beside him. He had written something sweet: [Officially done with Argentina. It's all Ronaldo from here.] Our mutual friends all went quiet. Everyone knew that the night Argentina won the championship four years ago, he had cried in my arms until dawn. That was also the night he slipped a ring onto my finger. He said, "Messi got his fairy tale. Let's go get ours." Someone in the comments section asked what happened to his Messi obsession. He replied, "I was young and stupid back then. Now, I know who's worth rooting for." I stared at the post for a long time. I did not comment. I just set down the divorce papers on the coffee table. Before I left for my flight, I tucked the ring into the pocket of his blue-and-white jersey. This time, I would not be watching the game with him.

In my previous life, my husband Kael Drayne, heir to the Beast King's throne and full-blooded dragon, cut open my belly with his own hands on the day I gave birth. He pulled our child out and dashed it against the floor in front of me. That was the moment I finally understood. The one he truly loved was my stepsister, Ivy Wren. Because she couldn't bear to watch the man she loved marry someone else, Ivy had staged a dramatic exit on our wedding day, slipping out alone, only to run into a gang of rogue beastkin. She vanished without a trace. Kael blamed every last bit of it on me. He hated me for it with everything he had. "Just because you're the only pure-blooded white wolf, you think you had the right to come between me and Ivy? She's gone because of you. I'm going to throw you to the horde — let you feel exactly what she went through." But he was the one who'd pursued me. He was the one who'd confessed his feelings. It was because I chose him that he was able to claim the throne at all. None of it mattered to him. There was nothing left in his eyes but hatred. Kael hurled me into a frenzied beast horde, and I was torn apart. In those final moments, I saw three figures, Kael's three unremarkable bastard brothers, charging toward me through the chaos, trying to drag me out. But the numbers were too great, the gap in power too wide. In the end, they died there alongside me. I thought my story ended there, full of regret. Then I woke up. I'd been reborn to just before Kael and I were to marry. This time, I wasn't going to choose him. And that, apparently, drove him out of his mind.