Contos de Werewolf sobre After Death e Romances com Bias e Regret

When my stepsister, Kate Lawrence, is poisoned at the full moon ceremony, my father, Jack Blackwood, condemns me at once, convinced that I am the one behind it. He clamps silver chains around me and drags me into the manor's dark underground cell. His eyes burn hatefully as he snarls, "You wretch! How could I have a daughter like you? Rot in here!" I drop to my knees on the cold floor and try to explain, but the sentence he throws over his shoulder as he turns away snuffs out the last of my hope. "Even if she dies in there, no one shall go in! Whoever lets her out will die with her!" The cell severs the mind-link completely, so no one hears me screaming. Seven days later, he finally remembers me, not knowing that I'd already died on the fourth day when the silver burned through to the bone.

My mate is Ryder Blackwood, Alpha of the pack. As the approaching bonding ceremony, he tells me that his "savior", Isabelle Morrison, is dying. She took a silver dagger meant for him three years ago. Now she is terminal, and her days are numbered. Her last wish, he says, is to leave behind a pup bearing the strongest Alpha blood. I tremble. "What about me? I'm your only mate." His voice is cold, emptied of feeling. "Don't worry. I'll always be your mate." Two days later, I receive the pregnancy test results. Isabelle is five weeks along. Turns out there was never a choice. All I get is a belated notice. What he doesn't know is that I'm the one who took the silver dagger meant for him three years ago. The healer tells me I have, at most, a month to live. I neither weep nor protest. I cancel the bonding ceremony I've dreamed of and quietly book a flight out. It leaves on the very day of the ceremony. Ryder stands at the venue of the canceled ceremony when my message reaches him. It's my unwavering rejection of him as my mate. That's when he finally breaks. For the first time, the Alpha who controls everything tastes a fear that tears the soul. He searches for me frantically, only to find every trace of me erased from his world.

To save my family, I was dying of silver poisoning, my fiancé Marcus, the Alpha who had promised to never abandon me, now wanted to harvest my healthy kidney for my parents' adopted daughter, Celeste. Nobody cares if I live or die So I refused the conservative treatment plan. I injected myself with the witch's life potion. The price? In 72 hours, I would die from complete organ failure. In those three days, I gave my private healing center—the one I'd built with my own hands—to Celeste. Mom and Dad beamed with joy. "Good girl, you've finally grown up. You're taking care of your sister now." Marcus wanted to postpone our wedding to care for Celeste. I accepted it calmly. He praised me for finally being understanding. I even gave up my position as the pack's chief healer to Celeste. My parents and Marcus were so excited they planned to throw her a grand celebration ball. They invited every important person with status in the pack to honor her new role. I was just curious about one thing. After I died, would they shed a single tear for me?

I know that I don't have much time left after getting poisoned by wolfsbane. I don't want to have any regrets, so I travel to the Sacred Crystal Lake, a place I have always wanted to visit. I don't tell anyone that I plan to end my life there. I didn't expect to run into my ex-mate there. We haven't seen each other in ten years. He has become the Alpha that he has always wanted to be, and he's wearing a ring that has another she-wolf's name engraved on it. As for me, I've already thrown away our token of love and erased him from my heart. We're exchanging pleasantries when he suddenly asks, "Do you still hate me, Giselle?" I shake my head. My life is about to end, after all. I don't need to hold on to anything anymore. In the last moments of my life, I just want to see the sea of irises that the Moon Goddess has blessed.

To save the three most important men in my life, I made a deal with the Moon Goddess. Trade my life for theirs. If I could make any one of them truly love me within five years, I'd get to live. But on the final day of the countdown, all three still had negative feelings toward me. According to the rules, I'd failed. My life was about to be erased. "Moon Goddess, could I send one last message? One final try?" Maybe out of pity, she granted me this last attempt. This message was my final shot. I hit the voice button in our group chat, fighting to keep my voice steady. "Could you guys love me just a little? I'm really going to die." After a moment of silence came their merciless laughter. "You'll do anything to compete with Lidia for attention, won't you?" "Cut the lies. This just makes us hate you more." "If you're so desperate to die, then just do it already." Mission failed. I gave them exactly what they wanted. But when I was about to die, they all freaked out.

For the 100th time, my Alpha mate, Ryker, used his command on me, threatening to reject our bond if I didn't sacrifice myself for my twin sister, Ivy. I didn't cry or protest. I simply signed the mate bond rejection papers. I surrendered the Alpha I had loved for ten years to my sister. A few days later, Ivy caused a scene at the Pack Alliance Banquet, humiliating the Silvermoon Alpha's daughter. Once again, I stepped forward to take her place, enduring the pain of a disfiguring silver brand. Later, when they demanded I test the safety of the Wolf Spirit Regeneration Ritual with my own body for my sister, I accepted with a smile. My Beta parents, their eyes red-rimmed, told me I was finally being the older sister I was supposed to be. Even Ryker, who had always been so distant toward me, stood before the cellar. He gently stroked my cheek for the first time in ages and said softly, "Harper, don't be afraid. As soon as the trial is over, I'll take you to see the auroras at Moon Goddess Lake." But he didn't know that, regardless of the trial's outcome, he would never see me again. My wolf spirit was already fading. Nothing could save me. This time, when I closed my eyes, it would be forever.

When I'm on the verge of dying, the kidnapper who has kidnapped me calls my fiance, Connor Weston, who's also the youngest patrol officer in the pack. The call goes through, only for us to hear Connor's voice, which is filled with suppressed rage. "Sylvia Kline, I'll give you three seconds to stop bothering me. Vivian's initiation ceremony will take place at night three days later. If you dare pull off another one of your tricks again—" "Connor…" Blood gushes out of my mouth as soon as I open it. My voice is so hoarse that I don't sound like myself at all. "Save… me…" "Your acting's pretty good," Connor cuts me off, his tone filled with disdain. "Listen, if you dare skip out on the ceremony and embarrass me in front of the entire pack, you can forget about going home." After that, the line goes dead. In the end, I die from mutilation. It's fine, Connor. I can't go home for real this time.

I was the princess of the Blood Moon pack, the little sister my Alpha brothers cherished. But that all changed when they brought home Lily, the human girl they adopted. They threw me in the dungeons for three days to “reflect.” My crime? Taking Lily into the forest and “accidentally” letting a rogue wolf attack her. I tried to explain, to tell them I was innocent. But my three brothers just looked at me with disgust and disappointment. “Aren't you just jealous that Lily’s getting our attention? Freya, when did you become so vicious?” Then, without a second thought, they severed our sibling mind link, cutting off my pleas for mercy. What they didn’t know was that the weakening wolfsbane in my cell had been swapped for lethal wolf's venom. Three days later, my oldest brother, Ethan, asked the butler, “Has Freya learned her lesson?” By then, I was already dead. My body was already starting to rot.

I was born broken. My Alpha mother was the one who branded me. She said emotion was a sin. A weakness. Especially for a werewolf. Especially for an Alpha’s heir. The day we were born, she clamped emotion-suppressing collars around our necks. Mine and my twin sister's. The slightest flicker of emotion, and the collar flashed red. My mother would then push the button, injecting me with a diluted "silver solution" to suppress my feelings. But my sister Cassia's collar? Always a calm, steady blue. Even when she shattered Mom's precious moonstone, it just pulsed gently. And me? I’d just whisper, "Mom, the thunder scares me," and my collar would erupt in a violent red. Then came the sting of silver poison burning through my blood.. I used to argue. But Mom always said the same thing. "The data doesn't lie. Pain is a teacher. This is for your own good." After thousands of these injections, I started to believe it, too. That I was born out of control. The night of the alliance's Moon Goddess Festival, Mom was taking my sister to the rooftop party. Something scared me during the day. The collar flashed red, and my mother started the punishment. But this time, the collar malfunctioned. It shot a dose a thousand times stronger into my neck. I collapsed on the carpet, begging, "Mother, the collar... it hurts so much... help me." My collar was flashing a frantic red. My mother just looked down at me, drenched in a cold sweat, and pressed the button for the maximum dose. "You'd lose control like this just for attention? You're a lost cause." She turned, took my sister, and slammed the door. I couldn't help but think, Mom must be right. The collar is red. It doesn't really hurt. I'm just being dramatic, looking for pity again. I'm sorry, Mom. In my next life, I'll be the perfect daughter you always wanted.

A pack of rogues tore me apart on the very day I went into labor. Instinctively, I reached out through a mind-link to my mate, Alpha Keith Martin. "Keith," I called out in my mind. My voice trembled from the pain. "Help m–" I hadn't even finished when he cut me off. "Can you stop being so annoying? Are you doing this just because you're jealous of Madison? Why don't you just go to hell?" He blocked the mind-link completely. The world dissolved into agony. Darkness swallowed me whole. 'Congratulations, Keith. You got exactly what you wanted. I really did die, and I'll never bother you again.'

I was dismembered and thrown into an abandoned warehouse. Before my consciousness faded away, I used the last bit of my strength to send a message via mind link to Timothy Russell, the Alpha heir that I had loved for six years. "Timothy, I'm in so much pain..." The next second, a cold mental barrier crashed down between us, cutting off all communication. That was his response to me. I knew I had been too presumptuous. I had disturbed him while he was at an auction helping his foster sister, Rochell Lucas. The moment my heart stopped beating, Timothy, who was helping Rochell put on a bracelet, felt his chest cave in. While everyone watched, the future Alpha knelt on the ground as countless bone-deep wounds appeared across his body out of nowhere. He convulsed in agony, screaming my name. Only then did everyone notice a glowing blood pact mark appearing on his tongue. I remembered. Once upon a time, he swore an oath to the moon. "If I ever betray Leah, every bit of suffering she has endured will return to me tenfold."

My name is Elena, and I died at twenty-two. My parents forced me to take my foster sister’s place and traded me for a territorial alliance. My mate was the most volatile heir of the wolf packs. Beaten bloody and fading fast, I made my eighth call for help. At my adopted sister Seraphina’s birthday party, she played the recording of my final, groveling plea—and laughed. My parents listened to those desperate calls with nothing but irritation, dismissing each one as theatrics, an inconvenience unworthy of their time. My brother snarled over the phone, “Then just die already!” So I did. In the end, it was my three-year-old daughter who made the final call—using her smartwatch to video my mother, live-streaming the freezer where my severed head lay. Now, my spirit watches from above as they all, one by one, begin to unravel.

For the Christmas holiday, my family sets off to the Christmas holiday camp up north. Along the way, my younger brother, Jamie Hale, says he needs to use the restroom. Mom tells my older sister, Ava Hale, and me to go as well. "It'll be a while before we reach the next rest stop, so you two should go with Jamie. I don't want anyone fussing to go to the restroom again on the way. And be quick! Don't waste time dawdling." I run to the restroom at once. But when I come back out, I see the familiar SUV slowly driving away. I'm left standing outside, in -4 degrees Fahrenheit weather, while a snowstorm sweeps through the rest stop. Mom and Dad have forgotten all about me, their Omega daughter. I've been left behind at the rest stop, with no one else around. I run as fast as I can, shouting, "Mom! Dad!" But the SUV turns the corner and disappears into the traffic along the interstate.

As Gamma of the Creed Pack, I'd held the Northern Border alone for three full years. Every time I called in to ask when I could come home, my mate — the Alpha of Creed — picked up the phone himself. He told me the rogues weren't cleared. He told me the rival packs were still circling. He said, "Nora. One more year. Once we have completely eliminated all our enemies, I will hold the grandest mating ceremony for you. I swear it on the Moon." I believed him. When I dragged myself out of a pile of dead rogues with a silver arrowhead still lodged an inch from my heart, bleeding too fast for a medevac, my warriors had to shift and run me back in wolf form all the way to Creed territory. The moment we crossed the border, I saw fairy lights strung from every streetlamp along the road to the pack house. Pack wolves on the sidewalks were talking loud, smiling at each other. "The Alpha's Mating Ceremony is tonight. He's taking the Elder's daughter as Luna. Three years of peace on the border. It's a good time to be Creed." I coughed dark blood into the fur on the back of my warrior's neck and laughed, short and bitter. He hadn't needed me holding the border. He just hadn't wanted me home.

The ninety-ninth time my mate, Valeria, the pack's Alpha Female, blocked our mind-link, I dragged myself, ravaged by Soul-Decay, into the Hall of Covenants. The cold marble steps bit at my bare feet, each one sending a lancing pain through my chest. In the final stages of Soul-Decay, I'd lost my healing abilities. Even the simple act of walking was agony. "I'm here to request a severance of my mate bond." The covenant official took in my pale, gaunt frame, his gaze softening with pity. "Sir," he asked quietly, "don't you have a pack to support you?" I've been invisible to my parents ever since my father brought home my adoptive brother, Silas, when I was ten. And while Valeria was my mate, it was in name only. We had never held a public marking ceremony. She rarely brought me to pack gatherings. Most of the pack wouldn't even recognize me. I wiped away the blood welling at the corner of my mouth. "That doesn't matter anymore," I told the official. "A dying wolf needs no pack."

The woman in Eden's arms should have been me — but I died on the marking ceremony night. The life that I had planned properly since childhood was ripped away without mercy. My supposed mate and twin sister danced around in glee, looking very happy. If only they knew I was standing before them right now as a ghost — watching every smile, every touch, every stolen moment. Quietly waiting to watch them fall from their high pedestal.

The rogue wolf Beck had kidnapped me and stabbed me ten times with a silver dagger. Now he was forcing me to call my brother, the Alpha of Sterling Pack, and trade the entire northern border for my life. I knew Cain wouldn't care. But I dialed anyway. The line rang for a long time before he picked up. His voice came through, raw with irritation. "What stunt are you pulling now?" "Cain, help me. I've been taken—" I didn't get to finish before he cut me off, cold and clipped. "You'd really stoop to faking a kidnapping to ruin Selene's Chief Healer ceremony tonight? Iris, I swear to god, if you don't show up, you're out of this pack for good." Click. The line went dead. Beck let out a low laugh. Then he drew the silver blade across my throat. Pain swallowed everything. My heart stopped. But my soul drifted up, light as smoke, out of my body. You don't have to throw me out anymore, Cain. I'm never coming back.

One week before I died, my mate’s childhood sweetheart returned to the Silver Ridge Pack. Damon Thorn stayed out all night. The next morning, he called me. “Serena is back. I’m rejecting you. Come home and accept it.” I coughed into my palm. “I’m at the healing center.” His voice turned cold. “What, are you going to say you’ve been poisoned and you’re dying?” He laughed once, sharp and cruel. “Save your lies, Aria. Even if you’re really dying, you still need to come back and end our bond.” I smiled bitterly and said, “Okay. I’ll come home now.” He didn’t know I was truly dying. I thought once I was gone, he would finally be happy with the woman he had loved all along. But on the day of my funeral, Damon abandoned his new bride. He came to my grave and fell to his knees.His hands shook as he touched my name on the stone. “Aria, open your eyes.” “Didn’t you say you were dying just to trick me?” “Then get up and lie to me again.”

My younger sister’s wolf was unstable from birth. The pack healers called it frenzy sickness. Loud noises, blood scent, anger, fear, even a sudden shock could push her into a violent episode. So my whole life was put on silent mode. I could not laugh too loud. I could not cry where she could smell it. I could not even scream when I was hurt, because pain had a scent, too. My parents always held me with guilty eyes. “Nova, your sister’s wolf needs the whole family to stay calm. You are strong. You are steady. You can handle more than she can. Just this once, okay?” But “just this once” became my entire life. That day, I accidentally knocked over a tray of metal parts in my father’s forge. The crash echoed through the house. Iris screamed at once. Her eyes flashed red, and her claws tore through her palms. Father shoved me aside and rushed over to protect her; I hit the edge of the forge table so hard that something cracked deep beneath my ribs. There was no blood on my clothes. No wound they could see. I curled up on the cold floor and whispered, “Mom, it hurts.” My mother looked at me. For one second, I thought she would come. Then Iris screamed louder. Everyone ran to my sister. They thought the quiet daughter could wait. They did not know my broken rib had torn through my liver. They did not know I was bleeding where no one could see. By the time they finally remembered me, I had already died alone on the floor.

When a rogue kidnapped me, my dad, a renowned werewolf warrior, and my mom, the pack's only healer, were attending my younger sister Eve's wolf spirit awakening ritual. Seeking revenge after being defeated by Dad years ago, the rogue injected two doses of wolfsbane venom into my neck. He then used my phone to call Dad. All that came through the line was Dad's cold, furious voice. "I don't have time for this lame prank. If you aren't at Eve's wolf spirit awakening ritual within an hour, I'll disown you!" The rogue sneered. "Looks like they love their adopted daughter more than their own flesh and blood." At the crime scene, my parents stared at the corpse that was decomposed beyond recognition before sighing in pity. Neither of them realized the body that had been mutilated beyond recognition was their own biological daughter.