Nouvelles Ruthless & Romans

On the twelfth anniversary of our mating ceremony, my Alpha mate gave me a ten-million-dollar Moonlight herb. Fresh from the healing clinic after my miscarriage, I calmly dialed his number to request the severing of our mate bond. On the other end of the line, his secretary—also his childhood sweetheart—apologized through tears: "Sage, Moonlight herb is a sacred healing herb for most werewolves. I didn't know your mother died from Moonlight herb poisoning. I didn't know you despised it most. It's all my fault for making the decision myself. Please don't be angry with the Alpha." Marcus spent a long time gently comforting her, only saying to me: "If you want to sever it, then sever it. Don't regret it later." But when I really cut off the mate bond, the powerful Alpha went crazy.

My husband's first love was scalded by boiling water. To punish me, he forced me into a customized steamer half my height, turned the heat to its highest setting, and sealed me inside. "I'll make you feel the pain Jessica suffered a thousand times over!" Trapped in the suffocating space, my breath came in ragged gasps. Heat seared my skin, and my body felt as though it would melt. I sobbed, begging him for mercy. "Please! I'm going to die!" But he didn't look back. Holding his beloved in his arms, he walked away. He even locked the door after he left the room. "Don't worry, you won't die. This is the only way you'll understand Jessica's pain." Despair swallowed me whole. I screamed, my voice raw, but the boiling water beneath me splashed up, scalding my skin, stealing even the strength to cry. He left the country with Jessica that same night. A week passed before he finally remembered my existence. "That wretched woman must have learned her lesson by now. Let her out." What he didn't know was that the water had long since boiled away, the heat had faded, and inside the steamer, my corpse lay rotting—swarmed with maggots.

When the university announced a nine-day break, my roommate started booking their tickets home on their phone while I was busy answering trivia questions on mine. This was my family rule. I had to answer questions to earn my allowance. There were ten questions, and every correct answer would get me $2. There were four levels for the trivia, which were Beginner Level, Intermediate Level, Advanced Level, and Expert Level. I did the trivia for seven years, from high school until my second year of university. One morning, my father, Norm Livingston, texted in the family group chat. [Whoever gets all ten questions correct, I'll pay for the ticket home during Thanksgiving.] I tried hard to suppress my excitement as I focused on answering the questions, but I got one wrong. I texted the results to Norm with clenched teeth and begged, [Dad, the questions this time were really difficult, but I got nine right. The train ticket is only $50. Can you cover it for me?] However, Norm replied right away with a voice note, and he berated me. "The rules are the rules. Look at your brother. He got all ten questions right and won himself the flight ticket. You should work harder to improve your knowledge. Stop thinking about having fun all the time." My younger brother, Ezra Livingston, texted the group with a screenshot of Norm transferring him the money for the ticket. [First-class ticket worth $1,000 to come home to your family.] The text was followed by another text from my older sister, Edith Livingston. [I specially set your questions at Beginner Level for you.] I stared at their texts and looked at my questions, which were at Expert Level, and I called my counselor after that. "Is it too late to submit my application to Gerasia as an exchange student?" I no longer wanted to reunite with my family during Thanksgiving.

To celebrate my first New Year after reconnecting with my biological family, everyone dragged me into signing up for a Tranvego tour. The moment we got off the plane, my parents completely changed. They just stood there while my brother tore up my passport. Then they shoved me into a bus headed for Draconville. The whole way, I begged them to take me back. Because I realized the place that the bus was going was the very same home I had spent ten years trying to escape. And the so-called big bosses they kept talking about? One was my foster father, the director of the compound. One was my foster mother, the head of the transplant center. One was my foster brother, the chief of the landfill district. They were famous for protecting their own. But under the excuse of "loving" me, they locked me up and tried to force me to become one of them. I had fought so hard to get away from them. I never thought I'd be sent back again!

My boyfriend's tablet, left behind at my place, suddenly lit up with a group chat notification. "Ron, that gold digger's totally hooked, right? When are you taking her to the luxury boutique so we can humiliate her in public?" "Everything's ready. We're just waiting to film her fawning over the designer goods like the greedy little gold digger she is. The guys are gonna love it!" The group chat was called "Exposing Gold Diggers." And my boyfriend Ron was the one who'd created it. I opened the tablet and scrolled through the message history. Screen after screen of vile, disgusting garbage. My blood boiled with every word. So that so-called love at first sight at the designer boutique had been a setup from the very start. He'd spent the better part of a year carefully worming his way into my life, showering me with attention, all while treating me like prey, waiting for the perfect moment to humiliate me for an audience. What a joke. I was the real deal, a genuine heiress from one of the wealthiest families in the country. The gifts he'd gone to such lengths to give me? I couldn't have cared less about any of them. If he was so obsessed with playing people, then I'd give him a taste of his own medicine! Let him see what it felt like to be the one getting played!

My husband's childhood sweetheart kills my parents in an accident due to drunk driving. I want to call the police, but my husband blindfolds me and takes me to the cellar. I'm tormented and subjected to inhumane treatment for the next three years. After each torture session, an icy male voice will ring out in my ear. "Do you still hate her, Sabrina?" One day, I finally cave and submit to the icy voice. "No, I don't. I don't hate her anymore!" I hear my husband's joyous laughter on the other end of the line. On the day he welcomes me out of the cellar, I avoid his embrace. Yet he loses his mind when I ask him for a divorce.

There is a medical dispute at the hospital. A patient's family member comes at us swinging a knife. Without hesitating, I push my husband, Maxwell Conner, out of the way. But then, he grabs my hand and pulls me in front of his beloved junior, Karina Burton. The knife plunges straight into my abdomen, killing the baby I had just conceived. As my horrified colleagues cry and rush me toward the ICU, Maxwell violently pulls me off the gurney. He barks, "Save Karina first! If anything happens to her, I'll fire every last one of you!" The doctors are stunned and furious. "Maxwell, have you lost your mind? Karina only suffered a minor injury. Your wife is the one in critical condition!" Clutching my bleeding abdomen, I nod slowly. "It's fine. Just forget it." Maxwell, I owe you nothing after this.

As part of our wedding-day tradition, my family hid me away in a closet. “Follow the tradition, and stay hidden! The wedding kicks off when your husband finds you!” My heart was full of happiness as I waited for him to find me, but suddenly, a fire broke out downstairs. Smoke filled the air. The closet was locked from the outside. I screamed and begged for help, only to hear my older brother shouting from outside. “Get the bridesmaid out first! She has asthma and can’t handle the smoke. My sister’s in a safe zone. She can wait a little longer!” The fire grew more intense by the second. I fought with all my might to break open the closet door. In my rush to save the bridesmaid, I broke one of my legs and collided head-on with my husband. He was a firefighter who had rushed in to rescue us. However, he frowned impatiently and stepped aside, avoiding me without hesitation. Then he scooped up the bridesmaid in his arms. “Stop making a fuss, Tammy! There are so many people watching outside. As captain, if I rescue you first, tomorrow everyone will accuse our family of abusing our authority for personal gain. Wait a little longer. The other team members will be here soon.” Thick smoke poured into my windpipe, scorching my throat. With the last of my strength, I called emergency services. But my mother, who was the director of the emergency dispatch center, decisively switched channels and secured a priority transport route for the bridesmaid. “Tammy, as a family member, you’ve got to be understanding. Don’t hog the priority route. Amelia was so frightened that she had an asthma attack. Her condition is more serious than yours. We can’t let personal feelings or favoritism interfere with our duty. Just wait patiently.” To avoid any suspicion of favoritism, they all considered it perfectly reasonable to put me last. What they didn’t know was that I had already suffered extensive, severe burns. I wouldn't survive.

When I practice standing at attention during the freshman orientation program, my mom, Jasmine Miller, decides to lock me up in a car with fully sealed windows just because I'm the first one who wipes sweat off her brow. "You were never able to stand properly ever since you were a kid! How dare you embarrass me in front of everyone with that slump of yours! In that case, you might as well reflect on yourself in the car!" The temperature in the car soon rose to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. I could only grip my throat, which is closing up rapidly, as I bang on the car window and plead to Mom to let me out. But she merely glances at the temperature shown on the monitor inside the car before locking all the doors with a jab of the remote control. "It's only 96.8 degrees inside the car! Heck, it's even a degree lower than the temperature outside! Keep putting on that act of yours, why don't you?" But what Mom doesn't know is that the car's system has already gotten disconnected from the Internet a long time ago. Seeing as the temperature inside the car is still increasing, I have no choice but to ask my orientation leader, Edwin Styke, for help. But he actually agrees with Mom's approach to things. "If every parent were as strict as Ms. Miller, none of the youngsters would grow up fragile and whiny!" Driven by sheer despair, I can only slump in the backseat. Soon, my consciousness fades away completely. Some of my peers try to plead on my behalf, only to witness the way Mom tosses her car key into the dumpster. "Kate really is enjoying her break, huh? Now that she's lying inside the car, she refuses to even move a muscle! Well then, she can lie there all she wants!" But Mom, I don't need you to free me anymore. After all, I can feel myself ascending slowly from the car. Finally, I'm free from this sauna! As I stare at Mom's furious face, I can only grip the hem of my sweat-soaked shirt uneasily. I'm sorry for embarrassing you in front of everyone again, Mom…

On April Fool’s Day, my CEO husband cut out my heart to save his childhood sweetheart's son. After the surgery, he tossed me into a cold rental apartment, where I died in agony. Three days after my death, my five-year-old daughter played in the room as usual. Walking by the sofa, she wrinkled her little nose and mumbled, "Mommy, there's a weird smell in here." She touched my face and murmured, "Mommy, are you pretending to be Snow White? Why are you so pale?" She shook my arm harder and raised her voice, "Mommy, it's my birthday today—get up and blow out the candles!" Confused, she picked up the phone and called her father. “Daddy, did I make Mommy mad? I lit the candles, but no matter how much I call her, she won’t wake up.” On the other end of the call, Patrick Hart’s voice was cold and impatient. “What could possibly be wrong with her? She’s just pretending to be asleep for sympathy. It’s Johnny’s birthday, I’m busy. Don’t bother me! Tell your melodramatic mother to stop playing her little tricks. I don't have time to humor her." My daughter removed the candle from her bun, pinched off a piece of the bun, and fed it to me. "Mommy, I made a secret wish… I really wish you could hold me again, just like before."

My wife has an emotional breakdown after being violated. She insists I'm the one who orchestrated it, but both our parents know her true love is the actual culprit. Still, they don't object to her insane retaliation. They even have me locked up in a prison abroad. As I'm tormented, she sells my company to help her true love get away scot-free. Ultimately, he's set free, but I die without even having a final resting place. When a judge informs her to collect my body, she sneers and says, "I've had enough of this nonsense. Does he think he can get away with a fake corpse? I won't even bat an eye if his body is flushed down the drain! He's nothing but a disgusting criminal!" Later, she realizes that I've truly died. She's delighted, but her laughter soon turns to tears as she holds my corpse.

Everything runs perfectly at my grilled‑fish restaurant until a famous food‑blogger Brandon Cooper turns up unannounced to film a review. To my horror, the moment he gets a good look at the fish in my tanks, his face goes pale. "Look, everyone! This is an endangered fish. Eat any one of these, and you could end up behind bars!" Overnight, my restaurant's shut down, I'm under investigation, and my entire family's being harassed online. Everything I've built over the past ten years is nearly destroyed. Once the investigation findings came out, the truth finally came to light. I got my chance to turn the tables. "I've lost at least two million dollars since my restaurant was shut down. It's time for you to pay up!"

It had been six months since I died in a car accident, but my wife, Susan Young, still thought I was throwing a tantrum and waiting for me to come home and apologize. Then one day, she suddenly couldn’t find a watch. Her childhood friend, Julian Lane, gave it to her. When it broke, she asked me to take it to a watch repair shop. She called and said angrily, “Quentin, are you finished making a scene? If you don’t want to be with me anymore, we can get divorced. What are you trying to prove? “Where did you put the watch I asked you to get repaired? “Did you hide it from me? After all these years, you still haven’t stopped being jealous of Julian!” Then my sister’s voice came through the phone. “Congratulations, Susan. Quentin is dead. He’ll never be jealous of Julian again.”

While I was nine months pregnant, the apple of my husband’s eye moved into our house. Whenever she saw me, she would make a sad face. My husband was sure that I was flaunting my pregnancy to make her angry. “Rachel is frail, and she can’t get pregnant, yet you’re walking around making her upset?! Do I seriously have to teach you a lesson?!” He ordered the bodyguards to lock me in the attic that had not been in use for a long time and told them not to give me food. I pleaded for mercy and told him that the ultrasound scan showed that the twin babies were too big. I told him that the doctor had claimed that I had to be hospitalized while I waited for my delivery. But he laughed as if he had heard the world’s greatest joke. When he spoke, his voice was as cold as ice. “You’re still three days away from your delivery date! Enough with the pitiful act! Repent while you’re in the attic! This is what you get for making Rachel upset!” The contractions hurt so much that I clenched my fists to the point that my nails broke, but no one unlocked the door to the attic. My piercing screams echoed in the attic for a long time until my whole body was soaked in blood, and one of my babies was stuck between my bloody legs. Three days later, my husband ate his breakfast that was not up to his taste and said, “Have Jane make breakfast for me, then have her apologize to Rachel with a gift. If she’s sincere enough, I’ll send her to the hospital to deliver the babies.” But no one dared go up to the attic because the blood that flowed down from it had already reached the second step of the stairs.

At my coming-of-age ceremony, I confessed my feelings to Uncle Daniel, who wasn't blood-related to me. Yet, he sent me overseas to study. Later on, I was diagnosed with brain cancer. The headaches were brutal. Left without a choice, I turned to him for help. Yet, his first love accused me of being wasted abroad. Said I got into stuff. Claimed my pain were just withdrawals. He believed her and dragged me back home. He locked me up in the family's abandoned villa atop the mountains, guards watching me around the clock. With treatment delayed, my headaches grew worse. It was a complete nightmare. One night, I couldn't take it anymore. I quietly slipped out of the window and jumped. One year after my death, he finally remembers me.

Just because my sister, Yvonne Lindell, claims I swapped Grandma's medicine with sugar pellets and caused her death, Mom locks me inside the cremator. I kneel and beg, but Mom spits at me in disgust. "You wretched girl, stay still! You killed your grandma by secretly switching her medicine. Now go repent to her properly!" Dad hesitates, unable to bear it. "Maybe we should let her out. What if—" "What are you afraid of? Don't forget that she killed your mother! If we don't teach her a lesson this time, who knows who she'll kill next!" The voices outside the door gradually fade, and my heart sinks to the bottom. The flames slowly begin to lick at my body. In despair, I clutch Grandma's cold hand beside me. "Grandma, I'm sorry. I should've taken better care of your medicine. But I swear, I didn't replace it with sugar pellets. Maybe only in death, can I truly atone for this sin…"

Damon Westbrook was kidnapped and held in the mountains for three months, subjected to every kind of humiliation. Three hellish months ground away every bit of fight he had. After his rescue, he developed severe PTSD. He hurt himself. He tried to end his life. Nightmares came every night. Through it all, Eleanor Carrington never left his side, holding him and comforting him again and again. "Damon, I'll always be here. When you're better, we'll get married." To help him heal, Eleanor brought back Marcus Keane, a former upperclassman of hers in college, who was finishing his doctorate in psychology overseas. The first time Damon met Marcus, he seemed calm and gentle, considerate in every way. "Don't be afraid. Eleanor and I will make sure you recover completely." Damon was deeply grateful. He cooperated with every treatment. Even when the sessions left him wishing he were dead, he gritted his teeth and endured. He believed everyone was doing everything they could to save him. Until tonight. The sliding glass door to the balcony hadn't closed all the way, and two low voices carried clearly to him. Eleanor and Marcus. Marcus took out a cigarette, his tone light. "When my research hit a dead end, I had no choice but to come to you for help. I never expected—" Eleanor turned her back to the wind and lit it for him. "Once the experiment is done, your dissertation is guaranteed to win the top international award." Marcus exhaled a stream of smoke and chuckled. "I only said in passing that a real case would be nice. I never thought you'd arrange a kidnapping yourself—let alone the kidnapping of the man you're about to marry."

To help my student, Stanley Johnson, win the chemistry competition, my fiancee, Yelena Quincy, replaces my experimental materials with a hazardous substance. She leaves me a note. "Hank, you've already won plenty of awards and honors. Stanley's mother only has a few days left, and this is his last chance to fulfill her dying wish. Just let him have this one. "Besides, you're Stanley's advisor. Helping your own student win the championship makes you look good, too. "Once he wins, I'll say yes to your marriage proposal right away, okay?" But she doesn't know that I no longer have a chance to marry her. The hazardous substance causes a massive explosion, and I burn to death along with the three thousand students and faculty in the building! She faces relentless demands for justice from the families of all three thousand victims.

My wife, Rochelle Willoughby, went on a business trip for five months. When I picked her up at the airport, she showed up with her true love instead. I noticed her baby bump and was about to ask some questions, but she shoved me away like I was some disgusting piece of trash. "Don't touch me with your grubby hands. I'm pregnant with Samuel's baby. If you hurt it somehow, I'll kill you!" Then, she gently held Samuel Riverson's hand. "You must be exhausted. Let's go home." She left me at the airport without so much as a glance. I saw them off and quietly rubbed the part Rochelle shoved. Then, I contacted my divorce lawyer. Ten years. This marriage finally came to an end.

Mark Carlson and I had been a secret couple for three years. He was nothing but my boss at work. But at home, he treated me however he pleased, with no regard for my feelings. One day, I noticed him researching marriage. My heart leapt with joy. I prepared my proof of identity and other relevant documents, thinking he was finally ready, but he went to the marriage registration office with another woman. "You're married now. You should clean up things at home quickly,” one of his friends said, grinning. "Yeah, I should. But honestly, she does not have to leave entirely,” Mark replied with a smirk. I watched as everyone laughed, their faces filled with delight. Tears streamed down my face as I turned away. I pulled out my phone and called my childhood friend, Andy Selton. "You wanted to marry me, didn't you?” I asked, my voice trembling. Later, two weddings were held on the same day. Mark's face filled with regret as he stared at my wedding photo with Andy. In the middle of his ceremony, he left his bride behind and drove to find me. But by then, I was already married to my husband!