After Hardin Novels & Stories

Thirty years of marriage. Thirty years of sacrifice. Thirty years spent believing she had built a happy family. Until the day her husband died. At the reading of his will, seventy-four-year-old Nora Sinclair discovers the cruelest truth imaginable—her husband had always loved another woman. His final wish is to be buried beside his first love, Vivian Cross, while their son demands Nora erase herself from the Whitfield family forever. When Nora refuses, the son she raised pushes her down the stairs. She dies with only one regret. She should have chosen herself. But fate gives her another chance. She wakes up fifty years in the past—on the day of her engagement party. This time, Richard publicly humiliates her by canceling their engagement to marry Vivian. Instead of begging… Instead of crying… Nora smiles. “If the Whitfields still want an alliance… then I’ll marry someone better.” Enter Nathaniel Whitfield. Richard’s impossibly wealthy uncle. America’s most feared billionaire. The man who has never been interested in love. Their marriage begins as nothing more than a business deal. But as Nora rebuilds her empire and leaves her unfaithful ex behind, Richard slowly realizes the greatest mistake of both his lives… He never lost his fiancée. He lost the only woman who truly loved him. And by the time he wants her back She already belongs to the billionaire he can never surpass.

I am the lawfully wedded wife of Don Jones—the Donna of the Jones Family—and the founding CEO of his medical empire. I stood by Vincent's side as we built it up from a two-room surgical clinic into the crown jewel of European private healthcare. Then, in my eighth month of pregnancy, dying on the operating table, Vincent pulled every surgeon out of my maternity ward for the sake of his mistress. He killed our child with his own hands. He stripped me of the right to ever be a mother. He thought I was a homeless orphan with nowhere to go. He had no idea I was the sole blood heir of the Belmonte Family. After the divorce, I came home to command a global medical empire. He knelt and begged. I watched, cold-eyed, as he fell into hell.

The day Dad’s hypnosis stopped working on Mom, she slit her wrists. I ran crying to find Dad. My brother just stood there laughing. "Sis is such a liar. That water's just red food coloring. She and Mom are putting on a show for you." Dad's face flipped from worried to furious. "How long are you going to keep this up?" "Vanessa's depression can't take any more stress. Are you trying to drive her to her grave?" "If you hadn't stolen her parents from her, if you hadn't drugged me and crawled into my bed pretending to be her, I never would have ended up with you." "Pull this act again and I'll throw you back to the slums!" My brother clapped his hands in delight. "Yes! I want Mom gone! I want Aunt Vanessa to be my new mommy!" Mom closed her eyes, all the life draining out of her body. I stood there, jaw clenched, watching Dad walk away with his arm around Vanessa Bennett. A cold, mechanical voice of my mother suddenly echoed in my mind: [Mission failed. Host will be terminated. Countdown: three days.] Dad wouldn’t even have the right to beg her on his knees anymore.

I fell in love with my wife the moment I met her, and we eventually got married. She got pregnant not too long after that. Blessed me, but barely a week later, she suffered from excessive bleeding and was taken to the hospital. We lost the baby. The doctor yelled at me because he thought I didn't hold back my urges. That was why we lost the baby. I was flabbergasted. I had never slept with my wife ever since she got pregnant.

My boyfriend and his godsister were caught by the vice squad at a scandalous party. When I went to the police station to bail him out, he was disheveled, his exposed skin marked with dried candle wax and whiplash scars. His godsister, Sonia, clung to him, sobbing into his arms. “The light in Sonia’s house was broken. It was too dark, so I went to accompany her,” he said. I couldn’t help but wonder, Did he accompany her all the way to the police station too? In the past, I would’ve demanded an explanation, but I was too tired now—too drained to argue. Without a word, I signed the papers. The vice squad officer looked at me and asked, “Are you Anthony Leeman’s family?” I shook my head. “No, I’m not familiar with him. Just a colleague.” Lowering my gaze, I typed out a message to my father: [I agree to get married. Give me three days, and I’ll marry him.]

To save his childhood sweetheart suffering from a congenital heart condition, my mate Ethan—the storm pack’s Alpha—forced me to remove my heart to be given to his beloved. "Don't worry, you are the rarest white wolf with the strongest healing ability. I have prepared an artificial heart for you, and you will be fine." Ethan said. I tried to explain to my mate Ethan that my healing ability has become very poor in the past year, so that transplanting my heart would kill me. My mate snarled at me with disgust, "Selene is so gravely ill, and here you are, jealous and fighting for attention! She saved my life when I was suffering from silver poisoning a year ago! You won't die anyway, so why can't you help her?" Under the mandatory order of my mate, I was sent to the pack healer for the heart transplant. He didn’t know that I was the one who had exchanged my rare white wolf's healing ability with a witch to save him from silver poisoning. In the end, with my healing abilities gone, I died miserably in a forgotten corner of the empty healer's cabin.

I died five years ago. Now my husband, the Don of our Mafia family, wants me to take the fall for his sister again—this time for accidentally killing a British noble's heir during an arms deal. He's holding a fake confession letter with my forged signature, storming into my old apartment in the rust district, only to find it empty. Frustrated, he grabs the corner store owner downstairs, demanding to know where I am. The owner pauses, wiping his hands on his apron, calmly tells him: "Serafine? She died five years ago." "Heard it was retaliation from a rival family during the gang war. They ambushed her in an alley... shot her over a dozen times. She died immediately." My husband, Lucien, refuses to believe it. Convinced the owner is on my payroll, hiding me to help me escape his reach. He scoffs, his eyes filled with scorn: "Oh, so what? Because I called her out for messing up that last job, now she's throwing a tantrum?" "You tell her, if she doesn't come back and take the fall in three days, I'll revoke her grandmother's 'special family protection'! Let the old woman rot!" With that, he storms out, his rage still simmering. The owner watches him leave and sighs, shaking his head. "There's no grandmother left to protect... That woman passed away not long after Serafine did... couldn't survive the winter without our family's medical supplies and protection..."

I'm an heiress who's been bound to a gossip system. Everyone reads my mind on my first day back home after being reunited with my family. "Mom sure has done a good job of maintaining her beauty. It's no wonder she became an OnlyFans streamer after divorcing Dad." My mother is about to berate me for something, but she pales and stops when she hears my thoughts. I glance at the fake heiress, who's weeping pitifully. "My, she's pregnant. Is it John's or Zach's?" My two brothers exchange odd looks. Then, my father arrives. I cluck my tongue. "Oh, it's Dad's."

I was just the mate of the Alpha fated mate and the nanny to my child, not his Luna. I dedicated my life to him, but he never loved me—this was all because I was just a wolfless omega. Until his ex returned, everyone, including my mate and even my child, looked down on me. Everyone believed she should be the Luna. I turned and walked out of the house, choosing to live for myself. Three months later, I became the world’s most renowned white wolf healer, appearing on television. Son (shocked): "Dad, is that... my mom on TV?"

I am the most secret Principessa of the Sicilian "Shepherd" Mafia. For my safety, my identity was a closely guarded secret since birth. I lived in the shadows, leaving the outside world entirely ignorant of my true standing. On my wedding day, my mafia fiancé allowed his female bodyguard to feed my family's heirloom token to his dog. He mocked me for coming from some "backwater" family, claiming I wasn't worthy to be his bride. He even threatened to wipe my family off the map.. Looking this, I simply made a single phone call. Moments later, armored vehicles crashed through the estate gates, and our family’s chief Consigliere knelt me in front of the terrified crowd:"Principessa, your father sent us to bring you home." It was only at that moment that my arrogant fiancé finally understood. The woman he had humiliated was the sole heir to the "Shepherd" family that controlled the European arms trade. But it was too late for regrets.