قصص وروايات قصيرة عن Tragic Love وتضم Scumbag وتدور في Countdown

There was a strict rule in my pack. Any female werewolf at the age of twenty‑nine who had not gone through a mate bond had to return to the pack for the Moonpick Ceremony, where the Alpha would personally choose her mate. When I showed the chairman of the Werewolf Council, Jonah Gregot, my pack’s notice to return, he gave a low laugh. “Is Sovereign Moon Pack still stuck in the olden days, Jade?” He leaned back in his leather chair and spoke in a casual tone. “I told you we would have our mate bond ceremony, and I promise it will happen. Do not try to use your pack’s law to force me into anything.” He took a ring box from the pocket of his suit and tossed it to his secretary, who stood beside him. The young woman caught it in a panic, and the tips of her ears turned red. “I planned to make our relationship official tonight, but it is clear that you care more about legitimacy than us. Maybe we need some space.” Jonah shrugged and walked out of the office. Silence filled the room. I stared at the ring box and did not know how to react. I could not believe he had thrown our mate bond ring to another woman so easily. Sapphire Kane hesitated as she held the ring box out to me. “You should take this, Jade. Jonah bought it for you.” I did not reach for it. “You should keep it now that he gave it to you.” Sapphire’s eyes widened. I stood and left the office with my pack’s notice. “Tell Jonah that I will not wait for him anymore on the day of the Moonpick Ceremony.”

There's a rule in Pine Ridge—women are only allowed to leave the mountain seven times in their lives. If they aren't able to marry a foreigner who's not from Pine Ridge, they can only marry a local mountaineer and become a guardian of the mountain. Because of that, I've borrowed some cosmetics from my grandma seven times in a row. Every time, I'm often wearing my prettiest dress and waiting for the man, who has promised to whisk me away from Pine Ridge, to marry me. But despite having crossed the mountain and reached the same town seven times in a row, Joseph Kingsley is never there. In the village, the village chief, Arthur Langley, has a smoke pipe dangling from his lips. "This is your seventh time leaving Pine Ridge just to get your marriage registered. That director boyfriend of yours has gone over to the next village just to shoot more footage of the lass who has a really pretty smile. "Caroline, your boyfriend is already behaving like this. Why are you still waiting for him?" I clumsily pull out the phone Joseph has given me before keying in his number. The dial tone goes off three times before the call goes through. Only then does Joseph explain the truth to me. "When Gemma took us on a foraging trip, she got trapped by one of the bear traps in the mountain! You do realize that if a woman from Pine Ridge were to get crippled, no villager would want to marry her at all because she'd be a burden to them! "If I were to leave Gemma alone, her life would be ruined! This is the last time, Caroline! Once I ensure that Gemma's leg gets healed, I'll come marry you right away!" Joseph has been in Pine Ridge for four years so far. Throughout these years, I've hiked the mountain and braved the elements for him seven times in a row. But Gemma Watson keeps getting into trouble. Whenever that happens, Joseph will abandon me without hesitation. As I gaze at the phone, which shows that the call has gotten disconnected, I wipe away my tears quietly. There won't be a last time anymore. In three days, I will be marrying someone else.

At the Thanksgiving dinner, Raphael's assistant Daphne was sitting in my seat. I frowned at Raphael. “Why is she in the Donna's seat? Doesn’t she know, and don’t you?” Raphael clicked his tongue, impatient. “You're the one who showed up late. People sit where they want. If it bothers you, leave.” I opened my mouth to argue, and his thoughts reached me before I could. [Scarlett, get angry. Fight back.] [Tell me you're my wife, the Donna of the Sterling family, that no one else has the right to sit at my side.] [Prove you love me. It's the only thing that makes me feel safe.] This time, I didn't give his thoughts what they were begging for. I slid the wedding ring off my finger instead. “That's the Donna's seat. If you've decided she belongs in it, I won't argue.” “Let's get divorced.”

My husband can't find his way anywhere. He can't read a map, and turn-by-turn directions only confuse him more. He got lost on our wedding day and turned up so late the ceremony had to be pushed back three days. He got lost on our anniversary while a table of food I'd cooked went cold. Eight months pregnant, I fell in the bathroom and called him for help. He sounded frantic on the phone, and then he got lost on the road home, the one he'd driven for five years. By the time he reached the hospital, our son had already been taken to the funeral home and cremated. I couldn't climb out of it, and everyone around me took his side. "That thick head of his can't hold a road. He wasn't late on purpose. Don't start a fight over it. You'll have another baby." I nodded, numb. Then, on the way to my son's funeral, I found out my husband had sent the driver away and taken a long detour to his assistant's house without a single wrong turn. "Grace, the service won't start for a while. I'll run Paige to the airport first. She's got to get back home." Before I could say no, we were already at her door. His assistant slid into the front passenger seat like it belonged to her, and every word out of her mouth landed somewhere tender. "See how well I've trained you? You forget the way to my place and I'll pull your pants down and deal with you." It was only when she noticed me in the back seat that she stuck out her tongue, embarrassed. "Sorry, Ms. Ellison. I was joking." I swallowed it and said nothing. And after Owen dropped her off, he lost the route to the cemetery again, and my son's service started half an hour late. Holding that small urn against me, I stopped hoping. So there was someone he could make an exception for. It just wasn't me, and it wasn't our son.

A polar research expedition ran straight into a catastrophic blizzard, and Chris Hanks and I ended up trapped together in an ice cave. When our supplies were nearly gone, Chris pressed the last bar of chocolate and the emergency blanket into my hands. His own lips had already gone purple with cold, but he still managed a smile as he told me not to worry — the rescue team would be here any minute. Todd Carey, who'd made the trip with us, rubbed his hands together and sighed, "Professor Hanks really does love you to death, Mrs. Hanks." Even I believed it. Ten years together, and I'd thought what we had was unbreakable. Then, just as I leaned in to warm myself against his chest, a wall of blood-red, half-transparent text came screaming across my vision. [Run! That man is a hypocrite through and through!] [He's handing you supplies now so you'll stay put as bait when the avalanche hits!] [The rescue chopper only has two seats left, and he's already decided he's taking his first love out with him!] [Last time, he left you locked in that cave. You froze solid, and he flew home to collect the award with his little protégée on his arm!]

Luca Moretti was the heir to the Moretti family, and my childhood sweetheart, the boy I had loved for five years. He always said I would be his wife once he took over the family. Then one night, with his arms still around me, he asked for another woman’s number. “Bella, we’re going to get married sooner or later.” “But do you really expect me to spend the rest of my life with only one woman?” “I won’t let anyone touch the position of Mrs. Moretti. You’re smart enough not to make trouble over this.” That was when I finally understood. He wanted my loyalty, my patience, and my silence. But he had never planned to give me the same. The day I moved out of his house, Luca blocked the door. “We’re not over. I can have fun, and so can you. Why are you acting like this?” I picked up my suitcase. “No.” “I’m traditional.” Later, when he finally came back for me, his eyes bloodshot and his voice breaking as he begged me to give him one last chance, I looked at the ring on my finger and smiled. “Sorry.” “I don’t take back what someone else only remembers after letting go.”

The night before our courthouse wedding, I was working late behind the scenes on a lawyer’s legal advice livestream. My best friend, Monique Baum, called in anonymously. “My boyfriend is marrying his fiancee tomorrow, but I’m the one he loves.” “Then, why is he going through with it?” the lawyer asked. “Because she’d fall apart if he backed out. He spent five years pretending to be broke, and she stayed by his side through it all. She lost their baby and even sold her parents’ only home for him.” Clutching our marriage paperwork, I suddenly found it hard to breathe. Sean Loker and I were getting married the next day. Then, Monique chuckled and said, “Sean said he’d send her a fake appointment confirmation to string her along, then gradually find a way to back out.” I pulled out my phone and entered the confirmation number on the county clerk’s website. There was no record of our appointment.

The year Daniel went broke, I swallowed every last drop of pride.  I took a job as a dancer at a shady nightclub just to pay off his debts. We lived in a forty-dollar-a-night basement room, surviving on stale energy bars and tap water.  I became the laughingstock of everyone we used to know. Eight years later, he pulled off the ultimate comeback and clawed his way back to the top. His very first move?  Bringing his high school sweetheart, Mia, straight into our home. At his victory party, in front of a room packed with people, he laid down three rules for me. "First, keep your distance in public. Mia’s a total germaphobe. "Second, Mia is sensitive. From now on, tell people you’re my assistant. "Third, never bring up your nightclub days again. It disgusts me." Mia clutched her tea glass and added timidly, "Maddy, I’ll be in your care." The room erupted in laughter.  The looks thrown my way were a mix of pity and mockery. I just smiled and nodded. "Of course." The next day, I moved my things into the maid’s quarters and handed over the master bedroom.  When she complained that the doorknobs I had touched were filthy, I hired a deep-cleaning crew to sanitize the entire house. When Daniel came home that night, his eyes were bloodshot. He grabbed my wrist, shaking with rage. "Maddy, what the hell is this drama? Do you still think you're some spoiled rich girl?" I didn't have the energy to fight back, let alone answer. Eight years of pouring cheap liquor down my throat had burned through my body. Hidden in my nightstand drawer, buried beneath a stack of old mail, was a late-stage stomach cancer diagnosis. In three days, I would be gone from his world forever.

My husband, William Yore, falls off his horse on our wedding night and damages his eyesight. For the next three years, I become his eyes. I read official documents for him, identify medicinal herbs, and test the roads on snowy nights. One day, bandits attack Cohill Church. When one of them swings a blade at us, I reflexively shield William with my own body. However, William circles me and lunges at the bandit who's grabbing Nancy Jenning's sleeve. "Close your eyes, Nancy!" He uses his own sword to deflect the bandit's knife before pulling Nancy into his arms, leaving me to collapse into the snow. "You can see, Will?" Nancy asks, her voice trembling. "Then why did you make Julia support you when you're walking, read your documents, and test your medicines on herself for the past three years? Why did you hide this from her?" William looks down and wipes the snow from her face before calmly saying, "She's too bossy. She bombards me with questions with every step that I take, asking if I can see, if I'm hurting, or if I'm tired. I just want some peace and quiet. I was going to tell her after she stopped bothering me." A few snowflakes land on my eyelashes. The cold stings my eyes. I suddenly think about how I hold William's hand every time it snows. I'm scared of him falling down and getting cold. I'm scared that he can't see the snowy paths. But it turns out that William can see everything. He's just unwilling to look at me.

My boyfriend, James Hendrick, had an obsessive need for personal space. It took me five years of pleading before he finally agreed to let me move in with him. As I dragged my luggage and waited downstairs at his apartment building for five hours, his phone remained switched off the entire time. Just as I was shivering from the cold, I looked up and noticed the lights in his apartment were on. Thinking he had gotten home early, I asked the security guard to let me in. After the doorbell rang three times, the door finally opened. However, the person standing there was not James. It was Serene Alison, wearing one of his oversized shirts. "Maria? What brings you here?" Serene asked innocently as she wiped her half-dry hair. Then she explained, "James said there would be a hurricane in the next few days. He was worried my apartment might leak, so he left me his keys and told me to stay here for half a month." Through the crack in the door, I saw the entryway shoe cabinet stuffed with her high heels. I froze where I stood. Just then, James' WhatsApp message popped up on my phone. "The company suddenly sent me on a business trip. Let's postpone moving in until next month." At the same time, I saw Serene's post from ten minutes earlier. "Having a caring big brother is the best. He even changed the bedsheets to my favorite pink by himself." The attached photo showed James making the bed for her. Only then did I finally understand that his so-called obsession with personal space had only ever applied to me.

Ten years into our secret relationship, Alex pulled out a ring at a yacht party. He leaned against the deck railing, his tone lazy. "Actually, I'm planning to propose tonight. " The crowd erupted instantly. Someone whistled, someone pounded on a table telling him to get down on one knee, and guessed who the mystery woman he'd kept hidden for ten years might be. I stood at the back of the crowd, so nervous my breathing came in ragged bursts. For ten years, Alex had never publicly acknowledged our relationship. During the hardest days of his startup, he said investors didn't like founders weighed down by romantic attachments. Then, once he became New York's most sought-after biotech rising star, the excuse became that the board and the media loved scrutinizing his personal life. Time after time, I believed he just wasn't ready yet. For him, I gave up a research position at Harvard, lost our child, and didn't even make it to my mother's bedside before she died. And now, he had finally pulled out a ring. Without even thinking, I reached for the pair of dark blue cufflinks in my pocket. I had spent three months of my savings to craft them as a tenth-anniversary gift. But he didn't stop in front of me. He brushed past me, walked up to Lillian, who had just returned to New York after ending her second marriage in Europe, and dropped to one knee. The deck fell silent for a heartbeat, then erupted into even louder cheers. Alex slid the ring onto Lillian's finger, and smiled carelessly. "See? Told you she wouldn't dare make a scene even after seeing the ring. Ten years, and when has she ever really stood up to me?" Lillian looked past his shoulder at me, undisguised triumph gleaming in her eyes. So the proposal hadn't been spontaneous. They had bet on whether I would make a scene. I wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes and turned to leave. So ten years really could be worth this little.

On my birthday, I found a hidden playlist on Adrian Beckett's phone. It was called "Lost." The cover image was a photo of his ex-girlfriend. He had lost the woman he loved most. In the three years we had been together, Adrian had never once let her go. I was simply the person he turned to when loneliness caught up with him. I was a compromise. I was a habit. Right in front of me, Adrian deleted the playlist, then looked at me and asked in a flat voice, "Satisfied now?" I said nothing. Adrian reached over and gave my hair a halfhearted ruffle. "That's enough. Hayley, be good. I'll take you home to meet my parents over New Year's, all right?" But Adrian, I was going home to have a blind date on New Year's.

Before my abortion, my best friend asked, "You're pregnant with Zeke's baby. Why do you suddenly want to break up with him?" I handed her my phone. "Because of one message." The conversation was still open to the text I had sent around noon. I included a picture of my lunch and complained about how terrible the takeout was. Four hours later, Zeke Evans replied with two simple words. [I see.] But when I checked social media, I saw that he liked a picture of Hailey Moore's lunch and commented, [Takeout isn't good for you. I'll cook for you from now on, like I did today.] Underneath, the two of them exchanged more than a dozen pointless comments, chatting as though they never ran out of things to say to each other. I stared at the post for a long time before deleting the message I had started typing, asking what he'd had for lunch. Then I scrolled back through our old conversations. For seven years, I shared every little detail of my life with Zeke: flowers I passed on the street, weeds pushing through cracks in the sidewalk, the stray cat that hung around outside my building. In the beginning, he was just as excited to tell me about his day. Over time, his replies dwindled into distracted, simple answers. It started when Hailey came back. When you love someone, you want to share your life with them. Everything Zeke stopped telling me, he was now telling her. "Ruby, they're ready for you." The nurse was calling my name. I looked out the window at the evening sky, then got up and followed her. The sunset was beautiful that day, but for the first time, I had no desire to take a picture and send it to Zeke.

In the seventh year of Julia Fenner's marriage to Colonel Everett Warden, she carried her family papers to the housing office to buy a subsidized faculty apartment and was told the record in her hand was a forgery. How could that be possible? Certain the clerk had made a mistake, Julia politely asked her to check again. "My husband transferred my records after we married." The clerk checked the county and military-family registry again, her patience visibly thinning, and looked at Julia with something close to scorn. "There's no mistake. Everett Warden's lawful record lists two other people: his wife, Lydia Warden, and their son, Peter."

For generations, every she-wolf born into the Frostmoon Pack has been an Omega. We aren't fighters, but our bloodline can stabilize an Alpha's power and produce exceptionally strong heirs. When I came of age, our pack's centuries-old tradition dictated that I should bond with Lucas Grant, the Alpha of the Blackstone Pack. My parents had always put pack law above everything else. Yet for the first time, they urged me to defy tradition and refuse. But I was already in love with Lucas. I ignored their warnings and bonded with him anyway. On our tenth bonding anniversary, I came home to find another she-wolf in our bedroom. She lay in our bed, carrying the unmistakable scent of a pregnant she-wolf. The same scent I carried. But Lucas forcibly shut down the link between us and shielded her. "Evelyn, I'm sorry. Vivian just found out she's carrying my pup. Her wolf is restless, and she needs my scent to calm down. Sleep in another room tonight. If you're upset, I can apologize." Even his apology sounded polite, as though he were simply telling me about a change in sleeping arrangements. He probably expected me to cry and cause a scene like I used to, demanding to know why he kept bringing other she-wolves home. But this time, I said nothing. I was already exhausted. What Lucas didn't know was that a mate bond without true love would eventually disappear. Ten years was the limit. At last, I was free to leave him.

After Heath Renwick abandons me and our daughter for Celeste Worthing's dog for the seventh time, we finally learn our lesson. He parades around with Celeste and the dog, trending online, landing magazine features, and I don't say a word. He even tears up our daughter Maisie's favorite sketchbook to line the dog's bed, and she doesn't cry or make a fuss. Then the dog chases Maisie down a flight of stairs. She hits her head and ends up in the ER with a concussion, and only then does Heath bother to show up. "Raven! Why didn't you tell me? I'm Maisie's father too!" I spend the whole night sitting outside the emergency room. I look at him, my voice perfectly calm. "It's nothing serious, just a mild concussion. She'll be out in a couple of days. We know you're busy, so Maisie will understand." Heath freezes. "A concussion is serious, and you're telling me it's nothing? What kind of a mother are you?" He wants to blow up, but the whispers around him stop him short. "Mr. Renwick really is better suited for Ms. Worthing. If she hadn't gone abroad back then, a small-town woman like Raven would never have had a chance." "Exactly. She can't even keep her own child safe." Heath frowns. "There's nothing going on with Celeste. She's like a sister to me!" I nod. "I believe you. "Maisie fell down the stairs because Prince chased her. I know that dog means everything to Celeste, so I didn't bring it up. I didn't want to put you in a difficult position." A flicker of shame crosses Heath's face. "I'll find the best doctor for Maisie. Prince is everything to Celeste, you know that. She has mental health issues." "Mr. Renwick, I understand. Maisie doesn't need to call you Dad anymore." He panics. "If you're upset, just say so! Stop putting on this act and dragging the kid into it!" I nod. "Okay. I got it." I'm not planning to make a scene. I already have plane tickets to Eraly. In five days, we'll have nothing to do with each other anymore.