Short Stories & Novels

On the fifth year of our hidden marriage, I died on the operating table of a hospital belonging to Allen Jones. Before I died, I called him ninety-nine times, begging for help. The last time, he finally answered. His voice was heavy with impatience. "Enough already. First, it's pregnancy, now it's liver cancer. Can you stop making a scene? I'm exhausted from work. "Mia, when did you learn to lie? Do you know how disgusting you are right now? "I'm warning you—if you keep this up, I'll divorce you. Don't even think about coming back home until you admit you're wrong." But this time, I could never go back. Just before the call ended, I heard him comforting Sadie with a gentleness he had never shown me. "Don't be afraid. The surgery will be over soon, and you'll be fine. Once you're out, I'll take you to see your favorite movie and eat at your favorite restaurant. I promised you, and I'll make it all come true." After he hung up, I called him for the hundredth time. He didn't answer. Later, when Allen saw my body on the operating table, he broke down completely.

My mafia boyfriend, Silas Vale, didn’t recognize me when I dragged myself back to him after being tortured and shot by his rival gang. He was too busy holding Amy—his childhood sweetheart—in his arms. “Get this woman away from me,” he snapped at his guard. “Amy’s afraid of blood.” I’d lost so much blood I genuinely thought I might die that night. But luckily, a stranger passed by and rushed me to the hospital. When I finally recovered enough to walk, I went home—only to find Silas there, completely unconcerned about the fact that I had disappeared for almost a week. And Amy was there too. Her clothes were scattered across the floor. I didn’t confront Silas or say anything. I just pulled out my phone and called my brother. “You said you are moving to Italy? I’m coming with you.” If Silas couldn’t cherish me the way he was supposed to… then I’d vanish from his world for good this time.

I used to think my husband was the angel who saved me from the depths of hell. Five years ago, I would have died for my ex-fiance, Marco Lombardi, but his carelessness caused Mom's kidneys to fail. He ignored 99 of my calls, and with an empty bank account, I couldn't even afford the surgery to donate my kidney to her. Only later did I discover that during that time, he was having romantic getaways with my stepsister, Penny Rossi. When I hit rock bottom, mafia Don Leon Costa showed up. He got me the best doctors, handled everything when Mom died, and even proposed to me when I was a complete mess. In our five years of marriage, he has spoiled me rotten. I've almost forgotten how much Marco and Penny hurt me. Then, today, I overhear his phone call with Penny. "Leon, thank you for giving my sister's kidney to my mother back then." My beloved husband just brushes it off. "Don't worry about it. I'll look after your sister. She won't ever know." He laughs quietly, and his voice is full of warmth. "You know I hate seeing you cry."

I was prepping the ceremonial cloak for our seventh mating anniversary. The front door suddenly banged open. My son rushed inside, tears streaming down his face. "The teacher yelled at me," he sobbed. He shoved the wrinkled drawing into my hands before burying his face in my shirt. I smoothed out the paper to see what the drama was about. It was a sketch of a faceless woman titled: The Substitute Mom. My heart stopped as I read the scribbles underneath. "Daddy said she is the backup." "She does the chores but gets no wages." "The Real Mom is responsible for being beautiful and guarding the treasury." My fingertips turned ice-cold against the paper. My mate, Ethan, had just returned from a patrol. He kissed my forehead. "What did our pup draw?" The next second, his smile froze when he saw the content. His voice tightened, and he reached out to snatch the book. "He watches too many cartoons! He's writing nonsense!" I stared at the man I had shared a den with for seven years. He looked like a stranger now. If I was the substitute. Who was this beautiful real mother? And where had my true son been all these years?

On my 50th wedding anniversary, I took my worn, crumbling marriage certificate to City Hall to renew it. The clerk glanced at it—and froze. “This certificate is fake. Our records show you’ve never been married.” I stared. “Impossible. I’ve been married to Damien Slater for fifty years.” The clerk pulled up his file. “Well…Yes, Mr. Slater is married—but his wife’s name is Vanessa Grant.” Vanessa. His widowed sister-in-law. A military doctor who’d spent decades living among the troops. My hands shook as I returned home and confronted Damien. He didn’t even try to deny it. “I’ve treated you well all these years. Isn’t that enough? Vanessa is my true love. I only ever wanted her—our children, our life.” My son counseled me and said, “To spare your feelings, my parents kept it a secret their whole lives. You’re getting old now. What more do you want?” Only then did I learn the truth. The child I had raised with my own hands was never mine by blood. Decades ago, Vanessa and I gave birth on the same day. To ensure her child would grow up with intellect, privilege, and a future that I could provide, Damien switched our children. My own son? Damien drowned him in the pond the moment he drew breath. And I—fool that I was—raised Vanessa’s boy as my own. I even got him all the way to Claremont University. The truth broke me, and I collapsed. When I opened my eyes again—I was back. Back to the day I went into labor.

It was the holiday season, so I took my foster daughter, Megan Delgado, to our mansion for a vacation. However, I found out that the property had been occupied by someone else. The woman who opened the door looked at us with an impatient expression. “What do you want? You’re interrupting my daughter’s birthday party. Are you asking for trouble?” For a moment, I thought I might have the wrong house. That was until I noticed the clothing and jewelry the woman was wearing. Every piece was an exact match with what I kept in my wardrobe here. The timing could not be more telling. Just a week ago, my husband, Richie Delgado, said he was planning a surprise for me and Megan. He asked for the spare key to the mansion. I glanced past her at the crowd of party guests in the living room. “So, you’re saying you’re the lady of the house?” She sized me up and noted my simple outfit. “Who else if not me? You? You’ve ruined my daughter’s party. You’d better beg for her forgiveness now!” she said in a condescending tone. When I did not move, she warned, “My husband will be home any minute now. Do you know who he is? He’s the CEO of Beran Corp! A nobody like you can’t afford to cross him!” They were using my mansion to throw a birthday party for his illegitimate daughter. It was quite the surprise indeed!

My best friend and I go to a music festival together. There, my brother's girlfriend locks me in the toilet. "Young women these days are so shameless—I can't believe you had the nerve to seduce my CEO boyfriend! I'm going to teach you a lesson today since your parents obviously didn't raise you right!" She refuses to listen to my explanation. She pours dirty water all over me before slapping me in public and stripping me. Then, she brands me with an insult. By the time my brother arrives, I'm tormented beyond recognition. "I can explain, Spencer! I thought you were lying when you said she was your sister!"

I begged Dylan Leveson three hundred and four times to take my dying dad on one last trip out to sea. Guess what? He bailed. I stood on the shore, watching the warmth fade from my dad's body, breath by breath—alone—while Dylan played Romeo in the highlands. Millie Stone—his forever flame—posted a cozy little selfie: [Far from the world, as long as I have you.] I accidentally hit like. Dylan popped up instantly. [How many times have I told you to leave Millie alone? Can't control yourself? We're getting a divorce!] Oh, the classic divorce threat. I'd lost count. [Cool. Divorce it is.]

I have a secret about my body. When I'm intimate with someone, my private part emits a fragrance. Despite being married to me for a decade, my live-in husband has never smelled it. One day, my family goes bankrupt, and I'm forced to become an escort. He looks at me imperiously as I kneel on the floor. He says coldly, "I'll pay you a hundred thousand dollars to let me smell you once."

Daisy Truman's childhood crush, Corey Sager, threatened to jump off a building on our wedding day. She ignored him and went ahead with our wedding. Daisy started to panic when he leaped off the building. From then onward, Daisy moved into a church and became a pious person everyone knew of. She aborted our baby and made me kneel in confession to repent for this so-called sin. I tried to escape, but she ordered my legs to be broken and even used my family to threaten me. I lived a life of misery and torture. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to my wedding day. This time, I would push her into Corey's arms. As for me, it was my turn to become the love that she lost.

25 years ago, a maternity nurse secretly switched me out for her daughter. Unfortunately for her, my six-year-old brother saw this and secretly switched me back. 25 years later, the maternity nurse comes knocking with her actual daughter by her side. She accuses me, the heiress of Crawford Group, of being an impostor. The company's janitor starts insulting me and insinuates that my lipstick is a cheap imitation. Even my boyfriend humiliates me with her. "And here I thought you were the heiress of the Crawford family. You can't even compare to a hair on Pammy's head!" When the DNA test results are out, everyone is stunned. "That wretch bewitched me, Lori! Please forgive me—give me another chance!" my boyfriend cries. I look at him icily. "Another chance to do what? To clean the toilets?"

I decided to choose a new husband after being reborn. I looked at Asher Vance, the boyfriend I'd devoted five years to, and I turned away without a second glance. Instead, I let my soft form lean into the solid, reassuring strength of his uncle, Alexander Vance. In my past life, I'd ignored the powerful CEO who wanted to marry me and insisted on loving the wild, free-spirited Asher. It wasn't until a sudden miscarriage ripped through me that I uncovered the truth—he'd been lacing the tonic he fed me every single day, without fail, with abortifacients. And his reason? He believed I wasn't as refined, as pure, as my sister Celeste Lockwood, and didn't deserve to carry his heir. Memories of our tangled moments in bed rushed back, how he'd so often whispered Celeste's name against my skin. Only then did I piece it together: every loss I'd suffered had just been a sick, flirtatious game between the two of them, a cruel inside joke at my expense. Fine. If that's how they wanted to play, in this new life, I'd just marry someone else. But on my wedding day, the ever-arrogant Asher collapsed in tears right at the ceremony.

I give birth to my child after accepting a sperm donation. Later, my CEO husband passes away due to an illness. After I take over the company, I take five years to strike a balance between work and caring for my daughter. On her birthday, a shrew makes me out to be a mistress. "Look at how scantily clad you are—you're doing it to seduce my husband, aren't you?" I explain that I'm single, but she slaps me and snarls, "How dare you claim to be single! Your daughter looks just like my husband! I'll show you today what the consequences of wrecking someone's family are!" She drags me away like I'm a dog before the kindergarten's entrance as my daughter watches. The shrew isn't satisfied with that. She laughs cruelly and says, "I'll show your daughter what a shameless woman you are." Then, she throws herself into a man's arms. "How are you going to reward me for getting rid of a woman who thinks she can have you after having your child, honey?" I look up to see the doctor who helped me with my test tube baby back in the day. He's now my subordinate.

Everyone is jealous of Scarlett Meyer's perfect marriage because her husband is so in love with her that it's literally carved into his bones. However, it isn't until the day she finds out she's pregnant that she realizes her husband, Joachim Davidson, has been cheating on her for the past two years. And the person he's cheating on her with? Katrina Greene, Scarlett's college bully. Katrina even has a pair of twins with Joachim. Katrina won't stop provoking Scarlett, and Joachim also continues lying to her face to be with Katrina. To get back at her cheating husband, Scarlett decides to abort her baby and fake her own death. But just before she leaves for good, she puts the abortion report and proof of Katrina's provocation in an envelope and gifts it to Joachim, telling him that he can only open it a few days later.

I was born with a strange condition. I couldn't recognize faces and could only identify people by their clothes. Vincent Lancaster, my boyfriend, never minded. He said it didn't change the way he loved me. That was, until our wedding day. He answered a phone call. His childhood friend, Grace Langley, was in labor, life hanging by a thread, and she demanded he come immediately. My voice shook with despair. "Vincent! If you drive away now, we'll never be husband and wife!" But he left anyway, not looking back. Grace had always loved seeing him in white, so he threw aside the black suit I had sewn for him with my own hands and changed into white. A year later, Vincent returned. By then, my belly was swollen with life, and I was holding onto another man while hosting a baby shower. And the man wore the black suit Vincent had thrown away. Vincent went mad, claiming he was my husband, but no one believed him.

On the day I was in heat, my childhood sweetheart stood me up. He only sent me a voice message, which said, “Willow, what do you mean you’re in heat? You’re just desperate for a man. Have some self-respect. Stop calling me!” Just as my fever spiked, pushing me to the edge of delirium, spectators watching my story flooded my vision with comments. [Sweetie, there are plenty of fish in the sea! Don’t be sad!] [Honey, look who’s walking in front of you. It’s Douglas Simus, the university heartthrob. He has the whole V-line and abs package, and he’s still a pure virgin boy!] Who? A V-line and abs? He should probably be able to satisfy me then. I struggled to open my eyes and saw a handsome man appear. Not bad. He smelled clean. I stopped him. “Do you want to hook up with me?”

My elder sister, the crown princess, died on the road while searching for medicinal herbs to save me. The obsessive merman, cunning fox spirit, and unhinged lion shifter she had entangled herself with all came looking for her. Each one believed he was her true love, and they immediately began fighting among themselves until all three were gravely wounded. When they learned that my sister had died because of me, they turned their fury to me, seeing me as the root of all their suffering. The merman brutally ripped out my spiritual core. "You killed her, so you don't deserve to live either." The fox spirit forced deadly poison down my throat. "Simply dying would be far too merciful for you." The lion shifter imprisoned me and tortured me daily. "That face of yours that looks like hers is the only reason you're still breathing." I carried the guilt of my sister's death, and I suffered in silence to keep my parents safe from their wrath. Three years passed, and I had become nothing more than a broken shell. I fought desperately to escape and return to the royal palace, only to hear familiar laughter echoing from the inner chambers. It was my sister's voice. "Thank heavens you came up with this brilliant plan, Mother. I certainly wasn't about to keep dealing with those disgusting beastmen forever." Rage consumed me. I burst through the doors, determined to kill us both, but her personal guard cut me down with a single strike. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day my sister staged her own death.

I was ten years old when I lost my hearing saving Adrian Falcone's life. After that, I couldn't survive without my hearing aids. He held my hand afterward, his eyes red-rimmed with guilt, and made me a promise in front of his entire family. "Serena Lombardi, I'll protect you with my life," he said. "I'll marry you." But when I turned eighteen, everything changed. Adrian needed to pass some test set by Daniela Moretti—the daughter of a rival family—and he chose the cruelest way to prove himself. He ripped the hearing aids from my ears in front of everyone and laughed. "You're just a deaf, useless burden," he said, his voice cold and cutting. "I've been sick of you for years. Honestly? I wish you'd died in that explosion when we were ten and saved me the trouble." I gripped the rehabilitation report the doctor had just handed me, and my fingers crushed the paper's edges. The diagnosis was precise—my hearing had fully recovered. That night, I burned my hearing aids and convinced my parents to cut all ties with the Falcone family. Adrian Falcone, we're done. Whatever we had, whatever you owed me—it's over now.

My elder brother, Dexter Ashford, makes an offhand remark to a welfare student whose studies he has been sponsoring. "What a coincidence! You share the same birth date as my younger sister. Even the timing is the same!" Ever since then, the welfare student, Candace Ashford, becomes convinced that she and I were switched at birth, and that she is actually the true heiress to my family. So, she hires two thugs to abduct me, planning to kill me so that she can take my place. In the face of danger, I quickly call my fiance, Liam Hilton, to save me. However, he speaks to me in a very impatient manner. "Denise Ashford, you stole Candy's life from her. This is your karma. You deserve it." Just as I'm thrown into the river, Liam's uncle, Jonah Hilton, suddenly appears and jumps into the river, trying to save me. However, he quickly runs out of strength, and we both sink to the bottom of the river. When I wake up again, I realize that I have been given a second chance at life. It's still the same day when I get abducted by the two thugs. This time, when Candace tells me to pick someone to call and deliver my last words to, I call Dexter immediately.

My husband, Jaxon Murray, was a renowned medical expert and owned a big company. He was participating in a clinical drug trial when someone tampered with his medication. Under the influence, he ended up entangled with an intern—ninety-nine times, right there on the lab table. When he regained clarity, he rushed home, locked himself in the bathroom, and submerged himself in the tub without food or water as he waited for me to return from work. "Lauren," he said, "my medication was switched during the trial. I made a terrible mistake. But I paid her off and had her dismissed. She'll never appear before me again." I wept miserably, clutching my belly that had once again failed to carry life. And in the end, I chose to forgive him. Several months later, he crashed into a guardrail while answering a phone call, causing me to miscarry. The injury left me unable to conceive for life. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, his voice choked with remorse. "Darling, I don't deserve you. I'm so sorry… We don't need children. We have each other, isn't that enough?" One day, I went to bring him lunch, only to find him in the next hospital room, cradling and feeding the woman he swore he'd never see again. "She's too weak to eat by herself," he said. "She has early-stage stomach cancer. There's no one else to take care of her… she's all alone." I chose to believe him. Again. Until one day, a pair of twins appeared in our home. Sophie Dixon knelt before me, wearing the postpartum gown he had once lovingly picked out for me, clutching my hand with tears streaming down her face. "It's all my fault. Please don't blame Jaxon. If you say the word, I'll leave with the children immediately." Jaxon grabbed my other hand, desperation thick in his voice. "Lauren, you've always been the kindest person I know. The children are still so young. How could Sophie possibly raise them alone? You wouldn't be that cruel… would you?" I looked down at the hands gripping mine from both sides, and suddenly, I laughed. "Jaxon, let's get a divorce. I wish you both a lifetime of happiness."