Bittersweet Short Stories & Unattainable Love Marriage Novels

My father had always been against my marriage to Ryan Kane, a vampire of noble birth. He believed that as a human, I had no place in the vampire world. He warned me that if Ryan ever changed his mind, without his protection, my half-blood child and I would be nothing more than walking blood bags in the eyes of vampires. But I believed in Ryan—and in our love. My husband had always been gentle and attentive. He had even defied everyone to make me, a human, his vampire bride. That was before Ryan's human ex-fiancée had her engagement called off and returned to the country seeking his help. I went to the hospital alone. While I was learning that my pregnancy was high-risk, Ryan was there attending her prenatal checkup, even introducing her to the doctor as his wife. All he had for me was one cold line: "Keep pushing me and I'll file for divorce." I pressed my hand against my stomach and dialed a number I hadn't called in years. "Dad, you were right... I want a divorce." Two weeks. That was all it would take for me to disappear from his life completely. But later—that same vampire who had discarded me like I was nothing showed up at my wedding to another man, trembling all over, calling my name in a broken voice.

The tenth time one of my paintings appeared under my sister Rose's name, I handed Adrian the divorce papers. He raised an eyebrow and tossed the agreement aside without a second glance. "Don't be dramatic. Your hand is ruined -- where would you even go without me?" I said nothing. He smiled, his tone dripping with casual indifference. "You should be grateful. Rose was the one I was supposed to marry. A few paintings is a small price to pay. A little gratitude wouldn't kill you." He blew a ring of cigarette smoke directly into my face. I choked, and the sting brought tears to my eyes. Through the blur, I was transported back to the moment my tendons were severed for his sake -- a pain that had drilled straight to the bone. He thought I had no choice but to take it. What he didn't know was that I'd already accepted an offer from the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Soon, I would be free of him for good.

I had been married to Derek for six years, and we had a three-year-old son. He was poor, earning only $2,000 a month, but I had no complaints; I took care of everything at home for him. After getting dinner on the table for the whole family, I finally had a minute to check my phone. A video popped up on my feed: a twenty-two-year-old girl from a rural area whose hands, roughened by years of hard labor, looked like they belonged to a sixty-two-year-old woman. I looked down at my own hands, just as worn and scarred, and stared at them blankly before tapping into the comments. I expected people to feel bad for her. However, to my surprise, the comments section was flooded with a single sentiment: "Why would anyone marry a penniless loser?" One of the top-liked comments came from a couple; in their photo, they were pictured holding hands—fingers tightly intertwined—with the girl sporting a massive diamond ring. The accompanying caption read: "A man who truly loves you would never bear to let you suffer." I felt a pang of envy. Given the choice, who wouldn't want a glamorous life? As I was about to close the app, I accidentally tapped on the couple's photo, enlarging it. In the background, previously too blurry to make out, was a face I recognized. It looked exactly like my husband, Derek Sterling. I froze, and almost against my will, I tapped into the account's profile. Post after post of lavish photos of them together flooded my screen. And then I saw him clearly. The scar above his brow, the one he got when a shelf fell on him while protecting me, was still plainly visible. It was my husband. It was Derek.

I used to be a top ballet dancer. The year I was diagnosed with a spinal hemangioma, my boyfriend Julian Blackwood said, "Wherever you go, I go." We'd been together three years. He walked beside me as I went, step by step, from the most luminous dancer on that stage to a woman in a wheelchair. Every time the nerve pain hit and I collapsed, he was the one who lifted me off the floor. Every round of electrostim and acupuncture, he sat in the corridor outside the therapy room and waited for me to come out. Before I got sick, he promised me—the night I finished my final performance of Swan Lake, we'd sign the marriage license. He'd bought tickets for that show three months in advance. I never stood on that stage again. And the marriage license never came up. Until the morning I noticed the collar of his white dress shirt carried a smudge of lipstick that wasn't mine. I heard him on the balcony. A woman's voice on the other end. "Mr. Blackwood, you left your jacket at the hotel last night. I'll bring it over." I stared at that smear of red, and something in me snapped. I laughed. "Send me to Westbrook. The locked-down rehab facility. I don't want to drag you down anymore." Something flickered in his eyes—a brief, animal panic. Then he nodded. He thought I meant rest. He didn't know I'd already signed the papers to donate my body to science. I was going there to die.

I gave Evan Cole six years. I changed my name, walked away from the Moretti family, and became the kind of woman he could handle: quiet, useful, easy to overlook. I paid the bills, fixed his proposals, opened doors he thought had opened by luck, and waited every time he said we were almost ready. Then Maracame back. His first love. The woman he swore he hated until the second she needed him again. After that, I became the problem. Too jealous. Too dramatic. Too hard to please. Evan thought I would break down and beg for my place. While he played house with Mara, I saved every receipt, every post, every lie. Then I cut off the money behind his perfect little life and called my family. On Christmas Eve, he asked if I would wait. I smiled and let him believe Leah was still waiting. By the time he learned my real name, Alessia Moretti was already gone, and the mafia princess he never knew had finally chosen herself.

I was born into the noble Valerie family, gifted by blood with the rare ability to bond with vampires and bear them powerful hybrid children. Since I was a child, I had been secretly in love with James, the vampire noble I was betrothed to. Everyone knew his heart belonged to one person only — his childhood companion, Vicky. But she was engaged to James's older brother. The night of their engagement banquet, James accepted my confession. He said we could try. I nodded and told him I didn't mind. I was willing to wait until he let her go. Then he gave the wedding I had designed with my own hands to Vicky. He stood in the groom's place, holding her hand through the rehearsal. And I stood below the stage, the laughingstock of the entire room. That night, he got drunk. He held me and said he loved me. I thought he had finally laid down his obsession, so once again I forgave him and let go of my pride. Until he called out Vicky’s name. In that moment, I finally understood. The one James loved would never be me. I had stored up enough disappointment. The next day, I disappeared from his world for good. Five years later, I ran into him by chance, a hybrid boy in my arms. He came rushing toward me like a man gone mad, eyes red, begging me to come back.

My best friend Caleb and I mated with the most beautiful and strongest female Alpha twins of the Creek Pack. Everyone said we were the luckiest guys in the territory. But the pack didn't know that Victor, their stepbrother, was the one the female Alpha twins truly loved. My best friend Caleb and I planned to sever the mate bond, but the night before we were due to leave, Caleb was poisoned with wolfsbane. I called his mate Selene, but she sneered, "Ryan, my sister says your and Caleb's little tricks are getting really old. Are you going to tell me tomorrow that Caleb accidentally fell off the cliff?"

It was at our engagement banquet that I finally learned the truth. I wasn't the true heiress of a noble human family. I wasn't the "fated bride" destined to bear a half-blood child for the vampires. I was just the wrong baby someone had brought home from the hospital. A fake. I'd thought that Alexander, the boy who'd risked his life to drag me out of a burning house, the boy I'd grown up beside, would love me the same as always. Instead, in front of everyone, he let go of my hand and looked down at me with cold eyes. "Without that bloodline, do you really think you deserve to stand beside me?" Then he reached out and slid the engagement ring off my finger himself. He turned, and led the true heiress up to the high platform. Everyone laughed at me. The fake heiress, delusional enough to think she could marry the vampire heir. I was thrown out of the only home I'd ever known. The only kindness left to me was Alexander's, a scrap of charity that let me stay at his side as the lowest thing a vampire could keep. A blood slave. And then, later, I died in an explosion. Saving him. Alexander knelt in the blood and lost his mind, screaming at everyone around him to save me. But there was something he didn't know. I hadn't died. Later still, at a vampire banquet, he saw me again at last. I walked past him on another man's arm, smiling. And this time, it was his turn to lose his mind begging me to look back at him.

The cocktail hour had just ended when I picked up a video call in the bridal suite. It was Ethan, three years from now. By then, time‑travel tech had matured enough to let him contact me three years into the past. After enough specific details, I finally believed it. The man on the screen really was Ethan, three years older. I rubbed my aching ankle and pouted at him through the screen. "Ethan, smiling at all these guests is exhausting. But the second I remember I actually married you today, I'm happy all over again." "We're still happy three years from now, right?" He was leaning back against a headboard, and he didn't answer. His face was flat and unreadable. Then I heard it: a woman's voice from his end, low and breathy, asking to be kissed. I froze for a second, then covered my mouth and laughed. "Is that future me? In broad daylight? Get a room." Ethan turned the camera into the bed. My maid of honor was lying there, naked, sprawled across his chest. Her body was covered in hickeys. He looked straight at me as I started to break, and his voice didn't shift at all. "As soon as the reception ended, I told you I had a client meeting. I went to her room instead." "Jo, now you know what's coming. The guests haven't gone home yet. If you want a divorce tonight, you can have one. Up to you."