1945 Pulitzer Winning

My mate, Alpha Ryan, started skipping my healer's appointments after I got pregnant. He always blamed pack business. But I found him at the clinic anyway. He was with another pregnant she-wolf—his childhood friend, Bonnie. He held her with a tenderness he no longer gave me. "I'll take responsibility for this child," he promised her. "He'll be safe." His words shattered my world. Their child? I stormed in to confront them and saw it: his temporary mark on her neck. He swore the pup wasn't his. He claimed a rogue attacked her and the mark was only for protection. His lie was a knife twisting in our mate bond. I was carrying his pure-blooded heir. But he let the pack brand my child a bastard, while hailing her half-blood pup as his true heir. To protect Bonnie, he locked me in a silver-laced cell. The silver was a living death. He didn't realize his mistake until I took the forbidden herbs, sacrificing our child and collapsing in a pool of my own blood. Only then did he cradle my broken body, begging for a forgiveness I would never give.

I’m getting married, but my CEO fiancé, whom I had been engaged to for ten years, had no idea. Thanks to his new personal maid, the man has no time to spare for me. The two of them always shadowed one another, and they might as well be sleeping in the same bed. My fiancé even bought a yacht and brought her to the Arctic to see the aurora when she was in a bad mood, completely forgetting that we were supposed to be picking out wedding gowns that day. I spent the entire day waiting in that bridal shop, waiting for a man who would never show up. So I called my dad, “I’m marrying someone else.”

During the exchange of tokens in the Marking Ceremony, I presented the wolf tooth ring I had carved myself, as a witness to our marking. But my Alpha mate, Frendo, remained completely indifferent, not releasing any marking aura, as though he had entirely forgotten that today was the day of our spiritual bonding ceremony. At that moment, Lily updated her Instagram, saying she would be returning to the Sliver Lake Pack in an hour. The air immediately filled with the restless scent of wolves, and before I could react, my Beta brother, George, stepped onto the ceremony stage and emotionlessly announced, "The Marking Ceremony is canceled." Frendo and George, in perfect synchronization, turned and left the altar together, leaving me standing alone, under the watchful eyes of all the Pack members. They wanted to see how a one-person marking ceremony would proceed. It wasn’t until I held back my inner frustration and awkwardly finished the ceremony with some semblance of dignity that I opened Lily’s Instagram. In her latest photo, George and Frendo were both surrounding her, releasing intimate signals. One was holding a silver moon festival gift box, while the other offered her a moonlight rose, her favorite. I bitterly smiled and wiped away the tears from my eyes before calling the one family that truly mattered, my flesh and blood. "Dad, Mom. I want to go home."

A young, beautiful she-wolf moves into the house opposite mine. She always strikes up conversations with me, her tone filled with enthusiasm. "You and Mr. Howl have such a great relationship. Even after seven years of marriage, he still kisses you goodbye when he leaves. It’s so sweet." She blinks playfully before continuing, "I have a friend who constantly complains about his mate. He says every time he kisses her, it feels like he's kissing a fat pig. Her scent disgusts him, and he can't even get hard when she's around. "And at night… just the sight of her belly rolls and sagging skin makes him want to throw up." I don’t particularly like this she-wolf, but I still offer her a polite smile. That night, however, when my mate kisses me, he suddenly freezes—then pushes me away and runs to the bathroom to vomit.

After being in love with Dylan for seven years, I planned to propose to him at his birthday party. But then I overheard him speaking to his friend in Italian: "You like Lydia? I'll give her to you. I'm tired of her anyway. Sarah is better—she's a dancer, young and sexy." He thought I couldn’t understand, but he didn’t know that I had learned Italian for him. I threw away the ring I had designed for him, tore apart the wedding suit I had sewn and left. Our friends were all speculating how long it would take before I came back. Dylan sneered with disdain, "She’s just an orphan with no family. Where could she go without me? Three days at most." But to his surprise, I never returned and found a new home.

My fiancé proposes to my stepsister Thalia Yates in front of everyone at our engagement party. Furious, I pack my stuff and leave home. That's when Jude Pearson, heir to an international medical group, entered my life. He's a surgeon rumored to have zero interest in women. Yet he pursued me passionately for six months. Eventually, I accepted his proposal. For seven years after our wedding, he's been gentle and considerate, always putting my needs first. Then, I overhear his phone conversation with his mother, Helena Roberts. "Jude, it's been seven years, but you still have no kids. It's time for a divorce." "Since I couldn't marry Thalia, it doesn't matter who I married instead. I'll keep playing this role forever. As long as I'm around, she'll never be able to intrude upon Thalia's happiness." That's when the truth hits me—Jude has given up the family business to become a surgeon just to treat Thalia's heart condition. Our years of marriage are actually his way of protecting Thalia from afar. If that's the case, then I'll disappear from their world and let my absence be their happy ending.

The boy, George Larson, whom I once saved as a child, when he was struggling with asthma, repaid my kindness by imprisoning me for seven long years. "Luna, you're my everything. I won’t let you out of my sight," he said, his voice filled with obsession. He tied my hands and feet, keeping me bound to the bed like a helpless doll, but I did not love him; I wanted to escape. In his madness, he set fire to my family’s ancestral home. The last traces of the Sachs burned to ashes, disappearing into the wind. He said that since my home was gone, I could just live with him and that it would be my new home. However, because I refused to let him touch me, he found someone else—a girl with a beauty mark under her eye, just like mine. The girl, drunk on his affection, thought I was trying to imitate her by faking the same tear-shaped mark. In a fit of jealousy, she gouged out my eyes. My face was covered with tiny, bleeding holes, blood streaming down my body. When George came home, the girl gleefully stuffed me into a trash bag, proud of her handiwork. “George, look! I caught some trash that broke into the house!” George did not even glance at me. He just loosened his tie, his voice calm and detached. “Just toss it where trash belongs.”

On the marking ceremony with my Alpha mate, Sebastian Cole, my world falls apart. A pack of Rogue werewolves kills my mother. The one responsible is Sebastian's stepsister, Cassandra Cole. The security footage captures everything. Cassandra runs out of the cemetery, with a group of Rogues hot on her heels. She bolts into my mother's house, desperate to hide. My mother steps in to protect her and fights back, but in the struggle, her silver rifle is knocked away and lands right at Cassandra's feet. Cassandra could pick it up and kill those Rogues, but she doesn't. She just stands there with a faint smile, watching as the Rogue leader drives his claws through my mother's heart. Later, Sebastian tries to justify her actions. "Vivian, Cassandra was wrong this time... I promise I'll punish her." But I know what I saw. I believe it was murder, and I am bringing charges against Cassandra at the Elder Council Court. However, Sebastian begs me to drop the case. "If Cassandra goes to prison, it'll destroy her! Vivian, don't do this." I can hardly believe what I'm hearing. I refuse him without hesitation. So, he makes another choice. The night before the hearing, he locks me in the basement, trying to stop me from testifying. That's when it finally hits me. No matter what happens, Cassandra will always matter more to Sebastian than I do.

Right after Ethan and I announced our mating ceremony, his childhood sweetheart from the pack, Sophia, came rushing back. And she flat-out demanded I go through a "bloodline trial." "Someone like you, a wolf outcast, you're definitely up to no good. You have to pass this month-long bloodline trial before our pack will accept your mating!" With Ethan basically giving them the nod, Sophia and her pack betas put me through hell. They deliberately messed with my moonlight alchemy circle, almost tore my mind apart. The backlash from the moon energy tortured me until I almost broke. My body felt like it was being ripped to shreds. They contaminated my sacred water potions. The choking fumes nearly suffocated me. The betas were cruel and vicious. "She's just a lone wolf anyway. If she dies, no pack will back her up." Then, Sophia stole the Moon Goddess sacred artifact my grandma left me—the Moon Alchemy Cauldron. She taunted me, all cocky. "If you've got the guts, try summoning the Moon Goddess's power on the blood moon night to take it back! Otherwise, I'll use your family's crappy old cauldron as a chamber pot!" I’ve had enough. I’m so sick of these ‘trials,’ and there’s no way in hell I’m mating with Ethan.

After being saved from Mr. Stone, the one who used her as his personal slave, Clair faces days of PTSD. However she is too shy and anxious to share her problems with her well wishers. And to make things worse, she meets Levi, some one who she falls for. However, she refrains herself from dating him because she fears ruining it. Levi is adamant on winning the girl of his dreams, despite the hurdles in front of him. There was one moment that he thought he had won her. That his dreams had finally come true. However, life had other plans for them. Will they ever be able to over come her fear and face her troubles? Will they be able to overcome the troubles that life throws at them and finally be together?