Abandoning

On the day of the mating ceremony, I'm supposed to be marked by William Ernst and become the Luna of the Shadow pack. However, Annie Denver, my younger twin sister, suddenly comes back from abroad. Dad, Mom, and William end up abandoning me, choosing to pick her up from the airport. While Annie posts a family photo on Facebook, flaunting how everyone in the family loves her, my family cuts me off whenever I try to contact them through mind-link. They end up closing the mind-link. After calling countless times, William finally accepts my call and asks me to stop rushing him. He tells me that today's mating ceremony is canceled and will be rescheduled on another date. My dearest parents, brother, and the man I love the most all turn me into the laughingstock of the entire pack—and the most ridiculous bride of all. Despite being laughed at, I didn't cry or make a scene. After taking care of everything, I write a number in my journal—the 99th time. This is the 99th time they have disappointed me. From this moment on, I won't beg for their love anymore. I fill out an application for Arcetic expedition, ready to leave them. They all think that my silence and constant compromises with Annie mean I've matured. They fail to realize that I'm disappointed to the core. I am leaving for good.

At first, I believed that the worst thing that could happen was my father abandoning me in that store, but I was mistaken. I was kidnapped, sold, and betrayed by the only man I trusted: my father. And I was bought by Lucian Moretti, my childhood love, Luke, who I thought was gone. "Do you remember me, Jules?” His voice was velvet over steel, low, threatening, and hauntingly familiar. Julia hadn't heard Lucian Moretti's name in almost a decade, since the boy next door disappeared without a goodbye, leaving her with only a stolen summer and a thousand unsolved questions.  Now he was no longer the boy I used to know. He was Lucian Moretti, the man who had just taken control of her life.  Julia is lured into the shadows to settle a debt she never owed, and she ends up confined in the home of the city's most feared mafia don.  BCaptivity is just the beginning.  Lucian isn't just after her body; he's seeking the truth that she is unaware she is concealing. This truth has the potential to destroy his empire.  Their reunion is not nice; it is nasty.  His smile is not tender; it is poisonous.  And what games are they playing?  It concludes with one of them kneeling. But in the dark, the line between revenge and passion blurs, and Julia is unsure if she is his prisoner... or his obsession.  Lucian desires more than just retribution; he wants "her." This time, he won't let go.

My husband's protégé boasted she could disarm bombs blindfolded, relying on her so-called intuition. Her reckless misjudgment triggered a bomb's secondary detonation sequence, endangering an entire building. I intervened, using the dangerous liquid nitrogen condensation method to save the day. As a result, Rita Smith was removed from frontline duties and placed under investigation. Patrick Munoz tried to defend her, but I stopped him cold. "If you back her now, you won't just fail to save her. You'll be dragged down with her." Crushed by the pressure, Rita staged an accident that killed her, leaving a letter blaming him for abandoning her in her hour of need. He said nothing, only preserving her letter in his study. Years later, he became a nationally renowned bomb disposal expert. During a terrorist attack, I was strapped to a timed explosive. He arrived to defuse it but repeated Rita's fatal mistake. As the timer ticked down, he gave a bitter laugh. "Rita was just nervous back then. If I'd supported her, she'd be a hero today." The bomb detonated, leaving nothing of me behind. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the point when he tried to defend Rita. He didn't know that the building housed the nation's top-secret core server.

Fiona thinks she has it all-love, loyalty, and a secured life-until her mate, Alpha Kael, leaves her for his first love, Laila. Abandoning her at the altar on the day of their bond reaffirmation before the moon goddess, Fiona watches helplessly as Kael dotes on Laila from the shadows without knowing how else to claim back her mate. Fiona soon discovers she's pregnant and hopes the news will finally bring Kael back to her. But her world shatters when Laila, also carrying Kael's child, pushes Fiona down a hill during a heated fight, causing her to have a miscarriage that left her broken and desperate for revenge. Just when all hopes seems lost, Fiona crosses path with Alpha Derek, the blind yet most powerful Alpha in the Eastern region. He offers revenge against her unfaithful mate and his mistress in exchange for becoming his Luna for a year. She agrees. But Derek is no savior. He hides behind his dark shades and darker secrets. Worse still, he’s the very architect of her pains. Yet the closer she gets to him, the more her heart betrays her...because the most dangerous thing about Derek isn't his power or his schemes but the way he makes her want him, even when she swore she'd never risk her heart again.

"I will give you time to adjust to this, and when it is time, you will want me, you will want this thing between us, and you will carry my seed and do your duties as my wife should." *** Nikolas Stavros, is the human definition of power, wealth, and beauty. He is determined to never fall in love again, and when it is time to marry, it must be for duty. A woman he can control who will breed heirs for him. Elaine Kyros knows duty all too well. After her mother died with a broken heart because of her grandfather disowning them, it is now time for her to take care of her twin brother as her mother requested on her dying bed. She will do anything, including marry herself off to the richest man in Greece to pay off her brother's debt. With wide blue eyes and an innocent heart, Elaine finds herself in a twisted relationship with a much more mature man, breathtakingly gorgeous in every way. Abandoning her college dreams she must learn what it means to be sold and bound by contract to her husband. She has no choice as she promised her mother to take care of her brother on her dying bed. Nikolas has sworn never to forget all about the past that tore his heart out a few years ago, but his little Bride is close to tearing down all his walls. Till the past comes calling and he ends up destroying his present.

My boyfriend is trapped in the mountains, and I head there alone to search for him. However, I don't find him despite a night of searching. Instead, I end up falling off a cliff and passing out due to severe blood loss. When I open my eyes again, I hear laughter coming from outside my hospital ward. "Sonya's such a fool! She fell for it again!" "This is our 99th time tricking her, right?" "When you pretended to fall into the water, she jumped into an icy lake to save you in the middle of winter. When you pretended to be poisoned, she went to dig up the herbs that you'd need for the antidote… "This time, you pretended to be trapped in the mountains, and she ran there without a care for her life! She's truly head over heels for you!" I struggle to sit up. That's when I see my boyfriend, Austin Miller, standing at the ward's door. He stands out among the crowd and has a bright smile on his face. He doesn't look like he's lost his way at all. His friends continue talking. "It's her fault for abandoning Austin when he was down on his luck!" "She deserves to get played like this! When this is all over, we can throw the invitation to Austin and Dion's engagement party in her face!" It turns out Austin is already engaged. Yet, to this day, he has no idea why I broke up with him in the first place.

My family was the wealthiest in River City, with assets worth trillions. On my eighteenth birthday, my brother, Calvin Chester, gifted me an entire jewelry production line while my parents built a private museum and named it after me. The greatest hardship I’d ever faced? Learning how to spend my inheritance. Then I met Dario Darwin. For him, I cut ties with my family and helped him build his empire from scratch. But when I was three months pregnant, he demanded I drink on behalf of his assistant, Fran Fallon, a woman “slumming it” as an intern while secretly being the heiress to another fortune. “Stop pretending,” he sneered. “You’re not like Fran, raised in pampered luxury. You’re older, so act like it and take care of your juniors!” Then, to the clients leering around the table, “My wife’s just being dramatic. She can hold her liquor. Don’t hold back—pour her another!” Amid their jeers, he left with Fran, abandoning me to a room of drunken men. Years of sacrifice, only to be humiliated. I scheduled an abortion and called him. “We’re done.” Through the phone, Fran’s simpering voice chimed in, “It’s my fault that Clea is upset… I should quit and go home to my family’s billions.” “Ignore her. She’s faking it,” Dario cooed back. On the day Dario signed the divorce papers, my parents and Calvin came to take me home. Our marriage came to an end, but his tragedy was about to begin.

Seraphina's world shatters the night she finds her beloved Kaelan, the future Alpha, in bed with her best friend. She ends their relationship without a second thought. But fate delivers a cruel blow when Seraphina discovers on her eighteenth birthday that Kaelan is her destined mate. Seeing a chance for vengeance, she publicly rejects their bond, ignoring his desperate pleas to save his face in front of the pack. Her vengeance is short-lived. Seraphina soon uncovers a devastating truth: her best friend, consumed by bitter jealousy; had drugged Kaelan and staged the entire scene. He was innocent. Shattered by her catastrophic mistake, Seraphina searches for Kaelan to apologize, but he has vanished without a trace, abandoning his pack and his old life. For ten years, Seraphina is shackled by guilt, while her pack weakens and crumbles toward ruin. As a last resort, her father secures an alliance with a mysterious and powerful pack rumored to be ruled by a ruthless Alpha known only as Lucifer. To save her people, Seraphina is forced to sign a contract, binding her fate to this feared stranger. Her doom is sealed when she comes face-to-face with the legendary Lucifer and finds the boy she rejected is gone, replaced by a cold, formidable, and terrifying man. Kaelan makes it clear he is back to claim what is his, and his intentions are laced with vengeance. Although, Seraphina is determined to atone for the past, Kaelan is a wall of ice she cannot melt. To survive, she must unravel the secrets he guards so fiercely. But the truth he’s hiding is more dangerous than his hatred, and her discovery of it will not just break her—it will destroy her completely and threaten to burn their entire world to the ground.

Hera Delacruz thought she had escaped the shadows of her past. Once a fearless soldier, she sacrificed her career, her family, and her freedom to marry Mateo, the man she thought was her salvation. But love turned dangerous when rumors surfaced that Mateo, the feared "savior of the mafia", orchestrated her father’s death. Pregnant and heartbroken, Hera fled. Five years later, Hera lives a quiet, nomadic life with her daughter Mila, a bright, spirited child battling diabetes. Constantly on the move to evade Mateo’s relentless pursuit, Hera works as a waitress in a sleepy town, keeping her past hidden and her daughter safe. She’s a survivor, hardened by military training and sharpened by heartbreak. Mateo Delacruz is as ruthless as he is determined. Known as a savior to the criminal underworld, he has spent years hunting the only woman who dared defy him. When he finds Hera, he is prepared to bring her back into his world, but nothing prepares him for the revelation that she has been hiding his daughter. Now, with two Delacruz women to protect, Mateo will stop at nothing to reclaim his family. But the mafia doesn’t forgive easily. Mateo’s family and men resent Hera for abandoning them and leaving them in the hands of their merciless boss. As Hera fights to shield her daughter from the danger that follows Mateo, she must also confront her unresolved feelings for the man she once loved, and the truth about what happened to her father. Can they find a way to trust each other again, or will their pasts destroy the fragile bond between them?

I married my vampire husband ten years ago and gave him a half-blood heir, abandoning my career as a painter to become a full-time mother. Fortunately, my son inherited my talent. At just six years old, he held his first solo art exhibition, inspired by the theme "My Mother." But he never let me attend, and he never let me see his paintings. My husband said my presence would make Luke nervous---that I should stay home and do the housework as a good wife and mother, and wait for them to come back. I told myself he was just young and didn't know better, that he was only pushing back against my discipline, not truly rejecting me. Until the day I snuck into the gallery wearing a surgical mask pulled low. In the center of the crowd, my husband held our son's hand while tenderly pulling a woman in a red dress into his arms. He turned to the guests and announced: "This is Luke's mother---my wife." The three of them stood together, beaming with perfect happiness. And I---the one who'd stayed up all night setting up this exhibition---stood before the paintings while not a single person recognized me. That was when I finally understood. My seemingly gentle, caring vampire husband had long ago given our son a replacement mother. And I was nothing more than the human nanny who'd served her purpose by producing an heir.