2nd Times A Charm Novels & Stories

I assured her. "Thank you so much. Now let's go talk to your handsome friend." Her sassy self was back. "He's not my friend." "Keep telling yourself that." …………… For sixteen days now, I have been going through gruesome exercises. I didn't think I would survive but I did.

“Charity was using me all along, then? She couldn’t bag the alpha, so she went for the next best thing.” Charity is a conniving bitch from hell. I can’t believe I was so stupid to fall for her antics. I was about to tell Xachariah about Xeraphina and me when ‘Uptown Funk’ by Bruno Mars started blasting away. My ears pop because the music is way too loud, so I run over to turn the speakers down. As I’m walking back towards Xachariah, I’m hit full force with Xeraphina’s scent. Glancing up, I see her and Tilly bobbing their heads to the beat, with their intertwined hands in the air as they enter the space.

She thought it was her charm that had kept me around, but it was my blind love that made me back down every time. Rebecca spent an entire lifetime wearing away at the love I had for her. Now, in my eyes, she was nothing more than a disgusting stain. I shot her a glance of contempt and imitated her annoyed tone. "The one who needs to figure things out is you. Do you want to stay here with Freddie in this miserable place, or go back to the Hales' residence and enjoy wealth and luxury? It's up to you. But I'm sure someone as loyal as you wouldn't dream of abandoning Freddie, right?"

She could’ve been there for a while now. Allen expressed a second of hesitation. A sharp pain shot through my chest as throbbing agony spread through my entire being. We shared a birthday. It was on our seventeenth that she ingested the silver poison by accident. That day, the first thing that came out of her mouth when she woke up was, “If Sasha hadn’t tricked me into eating the poisoned berries, I wouldn’t have lost my wolf.” For once, Terence and Camile looked at me with sheer disappointment.

Secretly married for two years to a man the rest of Dublin fears. A child wasn’t in the equation. I open the box with fingers that keep trembling. I follow the instructions like they're an experimental protocol—timer on my phone, exactly three minutes, binary result: yes or no. When the two pink lines appear in the plastic window, the world stops spinning. I sit on the cold bathroom floor for a time I can’t measure, staring at those two lines as if they might change under enough observation. They don’t. Two lines. Unequivocal. Rewriting every variable of my life in a single second.

The connection snapped, but not before understanding took root. A voice echoed through the void, low and resonant, threaded with something almost like amusement. “So,” it murmured, dark and melancholic, “you are stronger than I thought.” The tone shifted, not anger. Not frustration. Caution. “The second attempt,” the voice continued softly, “will not be so simple.” The connection faded. Back in Fiato, Mia exhaled and finally turned to face the twins. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I felt it, I couldn’t let it breach further.”

Every item on it was something I'd been forbidden from doing for the past ten years and desperately wanted to do. "1. Order a frappuccino with extra syrup." With the bank card in hand, I walked into the busiest coffee shop on the block and ordered the largest frappuccino on the menu. As the warm sweetness slid down my throat, I closed my eyes in happiness. So this was all it took to be happy. "2. Go to an amusement park and ride a roller coaster." I went alone and bought an all-day pass. I rode the carousel, the bumper cars, and finally, after gathering all my courage, I climbed onto the roller coaster.

The idea that a virtual stranger could do that to her, could make her nearly frantic with need, did not please her. Maybe there’s something in the air, she thought suspiciously, taking a discrete sniff. Maybe it’s not me at all, but something to do with that thing he calls me. What was it, a charmer? Glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, she asked, “What is this charmer business about, anyway?” He looked at her; obviously surprised she would choose to speak to him. He took a moment to answer. “A charmer makes men want her. It’s the special pheromone she produces that makes the Haunt male wild.”

Was she so blinded by his charm that she couldn’t see him for who he indeed was? These thoughts only fueled his anger. Deciding that he’d had enough of her lies, he reached for her chin and slowly tipped it up until their eyes met. He stared into her big honey-brown orbs, seeing how scared and vulnerable she looked beside him. It made his dark feelings of possessiveness surge through him and the need to claim her, mark her and show her who she truly belonged to overtook his rational senses. All he wanted to do was stake his claim and he was going to do it in a way that when next that deranged bastard set his eyes on his wife, he’d see his marks clearly and boldly on her flawless skin and he

She had been betrayed once before, and she refused to let it happen again. As she walked out of Ethan's life, Lily felt a sense of sadness but also a sense of relief. She knew that she had made the right decision, and that she was finally free to find someone who would truly love and respect her. She had learned that sometimes, "a second chance with someone new was the best thing you could ask for".