Short Stories & Novels

After being married for five years, my husband, Harvey Jepson, brings his first love, Debbie Grayson, home after a six-month business trip. Debbie is over three months pregnant. Harvey says it's hard for her alone, so she's temporarily living with us. I say no, and Harvey warns me to know my place. His scornful tone seems to hint that he's forgotten this villa was a wedding gift to me. He and his family have been leeching off me for the past five years. This time, I'm cutting all of them off. I smile and call my assistant. "Draw up a divorce agreement for me now. To think a live-in husband would have the nerve to bring his mistress home so boldly."

At the university Ball, Ada ripped my necklace from my throat in front of everyone. Emeralds skittered across the floor. She planted her hand on her hip and jabbed a finger in my face. "Elena, you thief! How dare you steal my necklace? My brothers had it custom-made for me. You had no right to touch their gift!" The ballroom went silent. Her favorite lackey, Louise Parker, swept toward me with her chin high. "Ada is the Costa brothers' little sister. You're dead this time!" A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. "The Costa family? The one that controls the weapons pipeline along the entire Eastern Seaboard?" "Everyone knows the three Costa brothers guard their sister like their lives depend on it. The last guy who tried to get close to her supposedly had his arms and legs cut off before they threw him into an underground fighting pit full of starving wolves." "She's really their sister? Elena is in serious trouble this time!" I stared at the emeralds scattered across the floor, and a disbelieving laugh escaped me. The Costa brothers did have a cherished younger sister. That was me, Elena Costa.

On the night I add my new girlfriend, Celia Spencer, into my group chat with my friends, my college roommate, Kevin Wright, suddenly posts more than a dozen screenshots in the group chat. Those screenshots feature the fragments of daily life I occasionally post on my social media feed. "Now here's where things get confusing. We only earn thousands of dollars per month. Where on earth did you get your money from in order to live such a lavish life? "I've been holding my tongue for far too long. At first, I intended to protect your pride. But now that you're dating such a wonderful, beautiful, and rich woman, I don't have the heart to see her getting lied to." In the end, Kevin tags Celia in the group chat. His words are filled with regret and pain. "Ms. Spencer, you're a rich scion, so you might not know anything about the bottom feeders' tactics. A fake scion like Luke who has racked up a huge online debt and brands his social media feed to look rich is very common in society! You have to keep your eyes open, you know! Take care not to get tricked by scammers!" As I suppress my anger, I respond with, "I never stole nor robbed from others! What's wrong with me spending my own money?" Kevin quickly retaliates with a lengthy audio message. "Your own money, you say? Your net worth isn't enough to afford even one segment of that luxury wristwatch in the photo! Why are you still pretending to be rich?" I just laugh in response. Does Kevin really think that rich people don't wear cheap stuff? What he doesn't know is that Celia, the so-called rich and beautiful woman he's trying so hard to kiss up to, is actually just someone I've hired to play the part. I'm the actual scion here, whereas Celia is just a fake heiress.

The first thing my fiance's childhood sweetheart—Eve Hodgson—does after returning from abroad is make me sign a bet. It states that if my fiance—Holden Lane—chooses her over me nine times, I'll have to step aside willingly and let her have him. I agree. On the ninth time, she calls him in tears. "If you don't marry me, Holden, I'll be forced to marry that notorious Croft heir from Jedburgh!" He ends the call in a frenzy and leaves me behind yet again. With his identification documents in hand, he rushes to marry her right away. They announce their marriage to the world on the same day. Elites of Jedburgh strain their necks, eager to see me and the Crofts humiliated. That's when Ryland Croft comes to me, smirking with that careless arrogance of his. "Since your fiance stole my bride, it seems only fair that you pay the debt. So, how about you marry me instead?" I nod and say, "Fair enough. When's the wedding?"

On the day of my mate-bonding ceremony, my parents suddenly brought my mate home and told me the marking ceremony that day would be with someone else. “Your sister was poisoned by wolfsbane. There's no cure, and her dying wish is to become David’s mate.” “You’re her older sister. Can’t you be kind and help her out?” My mate also tried to persuade me. “Don’t worry, it’s just for show. After she dies, we’ll still be each other’s one and only.” Still, I refused. However, my parents forced me to drink a potion that blocked my mind link, tied me up, and threw me into the silver mine behind our villa. “We’ll untie you once the ceremony goes smoothly,” they said. But soon after they left, I was attacked by a vicious rogue wolf. After endless torment, I was killed. It was only when my body started rotting that they remembered I was still bound in the mine.

It's the fifth year since I eloped with my boyfriend, Leonard Goodman, and he has gone bankrupt again. My father has tried his best to separate us. He has cut me off financially and left me to fend for myself. In the past five years, I've worked as a janitor and a street vendor. It has been an extremely rough time. But I'm doing all this to help Leonard start his business. I'm rooting for him to stabilize his income so that my father will give in and bless our marriage. However, throughout the past few years, all his attempts to start a business have ended in failure. This time, he's ten million dollars in debt. He looks at me with eyes full of remorse. "Rena, I'm so sorry for dragging you through five years of hardship without making you my wife." I shake my head and tell him it's okay and that I'm willing to go through everything with him. To help him pay off his debt, I secretly take on side jobs at a massage parlor without telling him. Today, I'm attending to a wealthy socialite. She earnestly instructs, "Make sure to watch your pressure during the massage. My body is naturally sensitive and delicate, so my skin bruises very easily. "My husband is a possessive man, and he only allows his marks to remain on my body. Last night, he couldn't control himself and left 108 hickeys on my body. He'll definitely be counting them later." When she finishes speaking, her phone on the table suddenly lights up. On her lock screen, the man holding her in a deep kiss is none other than my boyfriend of five years, Leonard himself.

When Sylvia Reed postponed our wedding for the fifth time, I found a pregnancy test report in her bag and decided to force the issue. Then I saw a trending local post. A woman rolled up her sleeves, baking cookies. Beside her, a man bent down to tease a child. One look was enough. I recognized the scar on her wrist. It was in the exact same spot as the one Sylvia got years ago when she took a knife for me. The scarf draped over the man's shoulders was one I'd custom-made for Sylvia. Our initials were stitched into it. The sight burned. I thought about how Sylvia had been glued to her phone lately, and how I'd heard a baby crying through it. Ten minutes ago, she'd sent me a voice message. "Luke, something urgent came up at the company. I can't make it back to try on the suit with you. Maybe we should postpone the wedding again? Next year. We'll definitely do it next year." But I'd already waited seven years for this wedding. I took off my groom's suit and cut it to pieces. Then I wiped my eyes, pulled out my phone, and dialed a number I hadn't called in seven years. "I'm short a bride for my wedding. Interested?"

On the day of my divorce, my ex-mother-in-law updates her social media with a photo. It's my husband's mistress' ultrasound—she's pregnant. Their friends and family congratulate her. Meanwhile, I share a premarital medical report. It belongs to her son, Owen Wade. It also clearly indicates he has congenital necrospermia. There's no way I'll want a man who can't have kids!

Once, I posted a photo of Eugene Chapman and me. He stopped me right there on the street, his face cold as he pushed my phone down. "Louisa, I don't like putting my private life online for strangers to gossip about. Delete it. You don't need to be that desperate for attention." People streamed past us as I fought back tears and deleted the post. Only when the photo disappeared did his expression finally soften. He sighed and pulled me into his arms. "Come on. We just need to live our lives. We don't have to post everything online just to prove something to other people." After that, I never posted about him again. For the next three years, there wasn't a single trace of him anywhere on my social media. When my best friend asked if I even had a boyfriend, I laughed it off and told her Eugene was just a private person. Even our wedding invitations for next month only had a scenic photo on the front. Then last night, a pet influencer's video popped up in my recommendations, and Eugene was in it. He had one arm around a girl and was grinning at the camera, his eyes crinkling at the corners. The post had more than ten thousand comments, almost all of them gushing about how cute Eugene and his girlfriend were together. I went through the account, post by post. The first video of him went up just eight months after Eugene and I started dating. The girl's pinned comment read, [He insists on filming us every single day. It's so annoying.] So Eugene never hated having his life all over social media. He just hated having me in it. I closed the app and texted the wedding planner. [The wedding is canceled.]

Three years into our long-distance relationship, my daily conversations with Evan Crawford turned into a three-person group chat. He said the company was busy preparing for its IPO and that he didn't have time to check his phone. If I needed anything, I should tell his "buddy," Nicole Pearce, and she'd pass it along. From then on, everything came through Nicole: what time he left the office, when he traveled for work, what he took for his stomach pain. She knew every moment of his day. Every message I sent him just sat there on "unread." On my birthday, I asked in the group chat if he could spare ten minutes for a video call. Nicole replied, "The launch event is right around the corner. Don't distract him." And yet somehow he had time to like her latest Instagram post. The night the company went public, I took an overnight bus to the celebration dinner and arrived in time to hear him raise a toast. "I owe these past six months to Nicole. She took care of all the little things for me." When he spotted me, he frowned. "Why didn't you check in through the group chat first?" Nicole took the gift from my hands. "He's exhausted. Whatever you need to say, I'll pass it along." A wave of helplessness hit me. I pulled my hand back and left the group chat. If even missing him had to go through her, I had no reason to report my life to him anymore.

My father's adopted daughter was only locked in the cramped storage closet for around fifteen minutes, yet he punished me by tying me up and throwing me inside. He even sealed off the ventilation with towels. "As Wendy's older sister, if you can't take care of her, then you should also experience how scared she was," he declared coldly. He knew I was claustrophobic, but my desperate pleas for mercy, my terror, were met with nothing but heartless reprimands. "Let this be a lesson on how to be a good sister." As the last sliver of light disappeared, swallowed by the oppressive darkness, I struggled helplessly. A week passed before my father finally remembered my existence and decided it was time to end my punishment. "Let's hope this week served as a good lesson for you, Jennifer. If this happens again, you will no longer be allowed in this house." He would never know that I had already taken my last breath in that suffocating room. My body had begun to rot in the darkness.

When our two packs were at war, I secretly injected myself with the deadly Silverthorn Toxin to save my Alpha mate. But when he woke, Fenris hailed another she-wolf, Vanessa, as his savior, and condemned me as his enemy. "Freya, you are here to repay a blood debt. Your Silver Crest pack owes me the lives of my entire pack." He obliterated the last remnants of my family in this city. He imprisoned me on his private territory, tormenting me daily, his Alpha presence a constant, crushing weight. He dressed Vanessa in the Luna's gown and announced that she was carrying his child. And to everyone else, I was nothing more than a canary in his gilded cage. The tearing agony of our rejected mate bond was more lethal than any torture. He gripped my jaw, forcing me to watch as the landmarks my family had built were torn down, one by one. "Did you really think one mating ceremony could wash away the ocean of blood between us?" he sneered, his eyes devoid of any warmth. "You slaughtered my people. Do you think sending just one of you could ever atone for that sin?" Every time I tried to end my own life, he would dig up the bones of one of my kin from their graves and grind them to dust right in front of me. "I told you, you don't get to die without my permission." I stopped struggling. Let him hate me. After all, I only had three days left until the Silverthorn Toxin in my veins ran its course.

My younger brother and I shared one body, but we had two different souls. Ever since we were little, my family used a lottery draw each month to decide who would stay awake and who would fall asleep. The long straw was mine. The short straw was his. Whenever my brother was awake, our parents and older sister took him on vacations, road trips, and around the world to see places I had never seen. Whenever I was awake, they locked me inside the house and forced me to study day and night. I was the one who took the SAT. I was the one who faced every challenge life threw at us. But every time I succeeded, they would make sure my brother woke up next, so he could enjoy all the praise and rewards I had earned without lifting a finger. Everything changed the day my brother beat a local bully's son so badly that the boy ended up in the hospital. Carla made her decision without hesitation. "Tomorrow is the first day of the month anyway. Since we decide who gets picked, let's wake Harry and have him take the blame for Simon." My parents agreed without a second thought. Trapped deep inside our shared soul, I could only smile bitterly. Watching them protect my brother while turning me into his scapegoat filled me with despair. What they didn't know was that I had one chance to choose eternal sleep. With a broken heart, I made my decision. I would never again be my brother's stepping stone and scapegoat.

My father is one of the wealthiest men in the country, a name everyone knows but almost never sees. My mother is the devoted wife standing behind him, the one who actually raises me. She always tells me my father looks down on us for being country people, that he calls us ungrateful dogs who can never be won over no matter how well they're fed. He sends me only 200 dollars a month for me to live on. I hate him for it. Then one day he shows up at my university without warning. He points at the tray in front of me and frowns. "I send you 50,000 dollars a month, and this is what you eat?"

Everyone said Colton Jones loved Whitney Thompson more than life itself. He had spent ten years pursuing her and cherishing her. If she furrowed her brow, he would worry over it for hours. Yet this same Colton betrayed her three times. The first time, he was drugged by a business rival at a corporate gala and spent the night with a female college student. The day Whitney asked for a divorce, he arranged for the young woman to be sent overseas overnight. Then he stood outside Whitney's apartment building in the pouring rain for three days and three nights. "I was wrong, Whitney," he said. "Please, forgive me just this once." Whitney looked at his pale face, and her heart softened.

When my ex-wife, Blaire Sutton, rushes her childhood friend, Malcolm Pierce, who has suffered from a papercut, into the emergency room, I'm in the middle of saving a patient, whose heart has stopped beating. Upon noticing that I'm not rushing to treat Malcolm's cut at once, Blaire lashes out at me furiously. After that, she lodges a complaint about me intending to get revenge on her due to our relationship problems, which means I have very poor ethics as a doctor. I don't even bother explaining myself to anyone. Instead, I just take off my white coat and accept the suspension and investigation notice that the hospital has issued to me. Soon, Blaire uploads a photo of Malcolm's finger, which is taped with a plaster. The caption absolutely reeks of her smugness. "Only narrow-minded men tend to get revenge for the pettiest things at work. His white coat should've gotten ripped off him a long time ago. That way, he'll definitely learn his lesson." Five days later, Malcolm suddenly suffers from a ruptured aortic dissection, leaving him in critical condition. The thing is, I'm the only one capable of performing this surgery in the entire state. Blaire keeps sobbing to the point that she's suffering from an emotional breakdown over the phone. She begs me to save Malcolm's life. I merely cut her off coolly, "Sorry, but I'm serving my suspension notice and reflecting on my mistakes at the moment. I don't even have the right to prescribe Malcolm any medication. You should find someone else to save his life."

At the company's celebration dinner, the new HR guy slapped a bill on the table—$860 for A/C and venue costs from our last all-nighter. I shot a look at Sherry—my girlfriend, my boss—thinking she'd have my back. Nope. She latched onto HR's arm and said, "Quentin, this isn't your daddy's company. Quit freeloading." And just like that, nine years of busting my ass for this company, and turns out—I was the discount item on the menu.

The mother of Mr. Burr, the hospital director, was critically ill and needed emergency surgery. My wife, wanting to help her beloved crush, Cedric Grey, take the spotlight, deliberately kept the surgery time from me. By the time I finally arrived—late, Mr. Burr stopped me from entering the operating room and scolded me harshly for being unprofessional and unethical. Once I realized what my wife was doing, I handed the lead surgeon position over to her beloved crush. “Well, since you're so eager to shine,” I said coldly, “you’d better not screw it up.” The nurses tried to talk me out of it. They said I was being impulsive, that this was a rare chance to prove myself. However, none of them knew that I was the only doctor in the entire country capable of performing this rare and complex heart valve surgery. Even if Cedric managed to buy time with some miracle drug and made it look like the patient was improving, without my diagnosis and surgical skills, the operation was doomed to fail. And when that happens, he’d be held responsible. As for my wife, her blind favoritism would come back to haunt her.

"Alexia, don't take any of the company's holiday bonus boxes. You're not one of us—there's nothing for you." My manager, Kevin Davis, delivered the notice coldly, as if he were commenting on the weather—routine, impersonal. My hand stilled on the mouse. "The rest of you, come with me. We're heading to the company gala to collect your million-dollar bonuses!" My colleagues filed out in high spirits. I watched their retreating backs and answered with a bitter, "Okay." I was a contract worker. For seven years, I had always been the odd one out in the department. Our ID badges said it all—blue for full-time employees, gray for me. Time off was no different. Full-time employees had weekends; I got one day off a month. As for pay and benefits, they enjoyed meal allowances, housing subsidies, team outings, afternoon snacks, holiday gifts, year-end bonuses… I received a fixed salary of three thousand dollars a month. I sat down, opened my computer, and returned to the candlestick charts of my stocks. They didn't know that I was the company's largest anonymous individual shareholder. And they certainly didn't know that tonight, at the company gala, I would step onto the stage as the new Chairman—and my very first proposal would be to lay off their entire department.

I was a rarity. A wolf born with two hearts. My parents paid a fortune to rogue healers to implant the second one when I was just an embryo. All because my sister, Cora, was born with a defective heart. They waited for me to grow up, just so I could give my second heart to her. Later, I met my mate, Alpha Rhys. He treated me so well. I really thought he was different from my parents. But the day Cora’s heart failed, my mate held my hand. His touch was terribly gentle. "Baby, just give Cora one heart. You have a spare, right?" He didn't know. I only had one heart left. I gave my spare to him years ago.