Anguish Pear Novels & Stories

My Mating Ceremony with my fated mate, Alpha Ronan, was supposed to be the biggest event of the year. Broadcast live. Worldwide. Every wolf would witness the union of the Black Moon Pack's Alpha and Luna. But right before my ceremony, I was staring at a video on my phone. Tears streamed down my face. "Harder, Ronan. It'll be so hard to see you after your ceremony." A she-wolf, pinned beneath Ronan as he slammed into her. He growled, going harder and sinking his teeth into her neck. "Don't you worry, you little minx. I've already got a potion to dull the bond. I can sneak away to fuck you, even on our mating night." I saved the video. Shut my phone. I contacted an agency that specialized in faked werewolf deaths. "Seven days from now. At my Mating Ceremony. I need you to stage an attack. I want to fall from a cliff into the sea, in front of everyone."

The day after I marry the powerful Don Lucio Ferrari, news breaks that his childhood love, Bella Bianchi, has died by suicide at home. When he hears the news, he locks himself in his study for three days and three nights. When he finally reappears, he walks straight up to me and says, "You will never replace her." For ten long years, he acts as if I don't exist, refusing to speak to me. During the chaos of a mafia shootout, when a gun is aimed straight at my heart, he instinctively throws himself in front of me. "Viola, the biggest regret of my life is marrying you. If there is a next life, please let me go." In the end, he is hit by multiple bullets while saving me and dies of blood loss on the way to the hospital. At his funeral, everyone points fingers at me, saying I bewitched their Don and caused his death. The day after his funeral, I take my own life at his grave. When I open my eyes again, I am reborn three days before our wedding. This time, I decide not to cling to him, choosing instead to let him be with the person he truly loves. But now, he seems to regret it, and I can feel it.

"Are you sure you want this?" The witch slid the vial across the table. "Once I cast the unbinding spell, your Fated Mate connection will dissolve over ten days. On the tenth day, it's permanent. No reversals." I didn't hesitate. "Your name?" She picked up her pen. "Mara Voss." Her hand froze. Everyone in New York's vampire community knew that name. Conrad Levin — the Prince of the New York Dominion, an eight-hundred-year-old monster who had never shown a flicker of attachment to anything — had three years ago announced to the entire supernatural world that he'd found his Fated Mate. A human girl carrying the rarest blood type in existence. Golden blood. Her name was Mara Voss. I held out my wrist. The witch began her work. I opened my phone and booked a one-way ticket to Prague. Departing in exactly ten days. This time, Conrad would never find me.

On our seventh wedding anniversary, my wife, Blair, the daughter of the city's richest man, straddled my lap, her kiss deep and intoxicating as she toyed with my lower lip. The same night, we just announced our pregnancy to the world. Just then, Blair's best friend, Chloe, asked in French, her tone suggestive: "Blair, you're absolutely glowing. But tell me honestly, how does it feel to get railed by another man while carrying a baby?" Blair let out a soft laugh, a familiar sound that sent a chill down my spine. She replied, also in French: "It feels absolutely incredible, Chloe. He's like a wild wolf. Just yesterday, he had his head buried between my thighs, using his mouth to bring me to tears before taking me so deep I forgot my own name." Her fingers were still toying with my collar, but her gaze was already distant. "But remember, keep this from Kevin. If he finds out what I've been doing behind his back while pregnant, it will be a disaster." The socialite sisters gathered around them shared knowing chuckles, raising their glasses and promising to keep the secret. The warmth in my veins turned to ice. My fervent passion to welcome a new life was instantly reduced to a pathetic joke. They had all forgotten that I spent my childhood in southern France. I understood every single syllable. I forced myself to remain calm, my face fixed in the perfect smile expected of a blissful husband about to welcome his first child, but the hand holding my champagne glass was trembling. I didn't fly into a rage. I didn't smash everything in sight. Instead, I took out my phone, found the invitation I had received a few days prior for the Aegis Agency, a highly classified organization on the other side of the world, and clicked "Accept." In three days, I would vanish from Blair's world.

I hid behind the study curtains, heart racing with a fragile, trembling joy. In my hands: an ultrasound photo—two heartbeats—and a no-limit black card. Alessandro had given it to me last night, his lips on my neck, calling me his Donna, his queen. Tonight, I was going to tell him about the twins. "The Petrov family needs to see my good faith," his voice drifted in, smooth as velvet. "Vittoria arrives Thursday. I’ll announce the engagement then." My blood froze. "What about Elena?" someone asked. "She’s been with you three years. She manages the books, dug that slug out of your side herself. Is this fair to her?" "Elena?" He leaned back in the leather chair, cigar smoke curling around his jaw. "She’s like a trained hound, Salvatore. After the Rossi family got wiped out, I pulled her from the gutter, gave her a gun and a bed. Have you ever seen a hound leave its master? I could kick her, and she would lick my boot and ask for another." My nails sank into my palms, crumpling the ultrasound. "Aren’t you afraid she’ll leave?" Marco, his Capo, asked. Alessandro paused. Then he said: "She would die for me without question. How could she ever leave?" Those words struck my chest like two 9mm rounds. I didn't wait. I ran through the cemetery, past the tombs of dead Dons, and hurled that card into the Hudson. I vanished into the night with his heirs in my womb and three years of lies in my throat. "I'm sorry, my babies," I whispered to my belly. "Mommy was a fool." But I wouldn't be a fool anymore.

"Are you absolutely certain you want to purchase this Bond Severance Potion? Once consumed, it will gradually dissolve your mate bond over fifteen days. After that, the connection will be permanently broken. There's no reversing it, no room for regret." I nodded without hesitation. "Your name?" she asked, preparing to record the sale. "Sierra McKnight." The witch's hand froze, her eyes widening with recognition. Everyone in our country knew that Damien Blackwood, the Alpha King of the Northern Territory, had an Omega mate he'd cherished and pursued for years before their wolves finally bonded. Her name was Sierra McKnight. Without hesitation, I drank the Bond Severance Potion in one swift motion. Opening my phone, I booked a one-way ticket to Europe departing in exactly fifteen days. This time, Alexander would never find me anymore.

My sister Emma and I were mated to the most powerful Alpha twins in the North—Evan and Lucas. After the marking ceremony, they spoiled us rotten. Every she-wolf in the Pack was jealous. But they didn't know that in my previous life, when I was five months pregnant and attacked by rogue wolves on my way to a prenatal checkup, my mate Evan was taking care of another sick she-wolf. I contacted Evan ten times through mind link, but he said impatiently: "Aria, how many more times are you going to play this trick? Sophia just had a premonition this morning that there would be no rogue wolf attack today! Sophia has already coughed up blood from overusing her precognitive abilities! As the Luna, you're not helping, and instead you're here being jealous?" Sophia was a she-wolf that he and Lucas rescued three months ago while patrolling the border. She was delicate and pitiful, claiming she could foresee the future. Soon, she successfully warned of several small-scale attacks. Evan and Lucas treated her like a treasure, doting on her. My sister Emma saw this scene on her way to pick up her three-year-old nephew Noah from school. She rushed forward without hesitation to save me. She and Noah begged Lucas for help, but Lucas was even colder: "You two sisters are really something. It's bad enough you conspired to put on a show to force us to come home, but you even taught a three-year-old child to lie!" Finally, the rogue wolf pack caught up with us. Three-year-old Noah was brutally bitten to death, and my child was ripped from my womb. When I opened my eyes again, Emma and I were back an hour before the rogue wolf attack. This time, Emma and I had only one thought: to sever the mate bond.

On the night Valen Varesi's dying first love went into labor, his parents stationed armed men outside my suite to make sure I stayed far away from the private maternity floor and the birth of the Varesi family's heir. I never gave them the scene they were expecting. Not when Sabina Orsini was taken into surgery, not when the baby's first cry carried through the corridor, and not when the whole family finally relaxed. His mother sat beside Sabina's bed, clutching her hand with relief. "As long as we're here," she said, "that barren wife of his won't get anywhere near you or the baby." Valen stood at Sabina's side, wiping the sweat from her forehead with a tenderness I had once believed was mine. "Don't worry," he said. "My father has men covering every exit. If Nerina tries anything, she'll be gone before the night is over." Only then did he finally let himself breathe. As far as Valen was concerned, he had done nothing unforgivable. He had granted a dying woman one final wish and secured the bloodline his family had demanded for years. I was the one refusing to be reasonable. He had even decided that if I came later, apologized to Sabina, and stopped fighting him, he might be generous enough to let me raise the boy in name and keep my place as Mrs. Varesi. What never crossed his mind was that I had already made my decision. By the time Valen finally opens the "gift" I left for his heir ceremony, I will already be gone. And the only thing waiting for him inside is a divorce notice, a twin pregnancy report— and the truth that the children carrying his real bloodline will never call him father.

When Emma's sister vanishes, she's thrust into a deadly game of cat and mouse. A mysterious figure, hidden behind a mask, demands Emma play a twisted game of puzzles and clues to rescue her sister. With time running out, Emma must use her wits to unravel the mysteries and face the sinister forces behind the game. But as the stakes grow higher, Emma realizes the game is designed to test her limits, and the truth about her sister's disappearance may be more terrifying than she ever imagined. Will Emma solve the puzzles and save her sister, or will she become the game's next victim?

"Mommy, you have to be the first person to come pick me up, okay?" These are my daughter Dorothy Grant's final words to me when she walked me out of the house this morning. But when I stand at the kindergarten's entrance with a box of Dorothy's favorite strawberry shortcake in my hands, the security guard just stares at me as though I lost my mind. "Ma'am, this place might be where Sunflower Kindergarten is located, but it has already closed its doors for three years. This place is now a retirement home." I rush into the "kindergarten" instantly. The spot where the slide used to be is now replaced by a row of flowerbeds. The room that used to be the classroom now hosts a bunch of elderly people, who bask in the sunlight. With trembling hands, I call my husband, Chester Grant, on the phone. He sounds very exasperated and exhausted over the phone. "Honey, we've been married for five years, and we choose to be childless. You've never given birth before."