Before We Drowned

I was being sold. I shuddered. Whoever would buy me… “Raise your number again, and I will rip out your throat.” Whoever it was, they were violent. I heard a hiss of pain and gasps around the room. Soon after, I was dragged off the stage and down the hall again. Then, I was tossed onto something soft like a bed. “I’m going to untie you now, okay?” “You smell so good…” he groaned and placed a hand on my thigh. “What’s your name?” Staring at the two twins in front of me, I cannot find a word to say. They even told me about a world beyond my understanding. “You’re a hybrid. There are things you need to understand about our world before we take you back to the pack. Thousands of years ago, the Old Moon Goddess passed away.” “When she was alive, we were one large pack, but when she died, we split up. Currently, there are the Black Moon, Blood Moon, and Blue Moon packs. The Blue Moon Pack is the most powerful.” ******Lucy, a hybrid of human and werewolf from White Moon Pack, the second goddess of the moon, the only survivor of the White Moon Pack. She has the power to unify the wolves, and because of her special identity, her parents died at the hands of the alpha of another pack.

I check on family businesses in the countryside with my girlfriend, Mildred McClure, in tow. At noon, we stop by my uncle, Barron Cortez's, place for a simple lunch. Just as we are getting ready to leave, his new wife, whom he married just six months ago, Hilda Ross, rushes out and demands that we settle the bill. "Elden, you two just had the Supreme Farmhouse Set Meal, which is 1,888.80 dollars, and your girlfriend picked three organic, pesticide-free tomatoes in the garden. That's 199.80 dollars. "With an 80% service charge, your total comes to 3,800 dollars." Mildred is stunned. "Elden, do we have to pay to eat at your uncle's place?" I start to feel embarrassed, and my expression darkens as I look at Hilda, my supposed aunt, who's barely any older than me. "I've grown up eating at my uncle's place and never paid a single penny. Besides, your prices are downright outrageous!" Hilda calmly whips out a price menu and righteously declares, "That's all ancient history. Now, we're running a farmhouse business where all prices are clearly marked, so everyone pays the same rate. "Barron said you're some big boss in the city. Surely you're not going to stiff us over a little bill, are you?" She steps in front of the gate to block the exit with her body and shoots me a contemptuous look. "Even family settles their accounts. If you don't pay up today, don't even dream about stepping through this door!" While Mildred panics, I laugh in disbelief before taking out my phone and dialing Barron's number. "Uncle Barron, Hilda wants to settle accounts between family, so don't you think it's time we settled our accounts too?"

The night my father collapsed, I learned some men negotiate with money… but Noah Thorne negotiates with lives. I never planned to marry a billionaire CEO, especially not the man my father owed $50,000 to. But when the hospital demanded an $80,000 deposit before surgery, life made the choice for me. While my mother sobbed in a cold hallway, Noah’s bodyguard arrived with an offer, an arranged marriage, a contract marriage that would clear the debt and cover every medical bill. When I confronted Noah, he presented the terms without cruelty: one year, no intimacy, public appearances only, and freedom after. He believed he was offering mercy but I felt like beautifully packaged captivity. Desperation crushed pride, and I signed. Our “marriage” was a seven-minute formality, no vows, no meaning. Moving into his penthouse was like stepping into a museum built to contain silence. Publicly, we were the perfect romance. Privately, we were strangers navigating a fragile arrangement thick with unspoken tension. Complications followed us: Noah’s elegant, smug ex who treated me like a placeholder, and my own ex-boyfriend, whose sudden reappearance triggered jealousy in Noah he couldn’t hide. Arguments, silences, and late-night moments softened something between us. Slowly, painfully, the man behind the empire emerged, the lonely boy shaped by loss, abandonment, and guarded walls. We began to care. We tried to deny it. Feelings weren’t in the contract but feelings don’t read contracts. Near the end of the year, Noah pulled away. I thought he wanted freedom. He signed the release papers with steady hands and a breaking heart. I was almost gone when he whispered the truth: “Please don’t go.” We tore up the contract. A year later, we married again, this time for love, not survival. This time, I chose him

Follow along with Anne, Liam and everyone else when we see how her biological mother makes the toughest decision of her life. Elizabeth needs to decide if they will be keeping both the twins or only one as Arnold wants and manipulates her to do. She finally decided to keep the boy giving up the girl and setting her life in motion. We meet Donald and Juliet in their toughest time and we experience joy when they receive a baby girl. Anne grows up as a daddies girl and a start singing and makes a career out of this. She meets Liam, the love of her life and want to introduce him to her parents only to have her dad's plane crash on an island. Throw in Genetic cancer to the mix starting Anne's journey searching for her biological parents to warn them not knowing they have met before when she came for training at Jones Incorporated. Years later at the wedding of Alexia, Anne and Liam's daughter, by miracle Donald comes back from the dead to find Juliet happily married to Harold. He later on meets Rachel and remarries happily. Alexia and Luke happily married with their son and Darren meets the love of his life Natasha. Follow along with Anne as we explore her life story of love, happiness, sadness and most importantly of all drama, the twists and turns. Shedding tears along with her when she is sad and being happy along with her in times of happiness. Through the hardships and happiness bestowed by fate on to her path of live.

I have always been treated as an outcast by my father and even the lowest ranking members of my pack. My name is Skylar, I am from the Crescent pack and my father is the Alpha. I have never shifted before and this has been a major stigma in my life. People see me as weak, shameful and unworthy to be a member of my pack, and even more on worthy to be the Alpha’s daughter. I keep trying my best to prove myself but it’s never good enough. When it seems like things couldn’t get worse for me, everything spiral’s out of my control, not like I had any control over my life anyway. After a masked one night stand with the Alpha of a rival pack, who is known for being ruthless, things become more tormenting for me. I keep trying to beat all odds but it seems like they’re never in my favour, I keep trying to survive but it keeps getting more and more difficult. My only chances of survival are to escape with the little I have. I’m lucky enough to meet other outcasts like myself but like always I am drowned in waves of problems. I keep wondering when I will ever have peace and if destiny has anything good in-store for me. My journey is long, painful and tedious but it will make me discover who I am and how much I am needed to bring stability, not just to my pack but the world. Life may beat me down repeatedly but it can’t break me and I will take my rightful place and everything that belongs to me. I will do everything I can to fulfill the prophesy about me.

In everyone's eyes, my husband, Jake Payton, was the perfect man. Three years have passed since the day of our wedding, but we have yet to have a child because he wanted an 'extended honeymoon'. One day, I chanced across a message he sent to his friend. [I'm not Mindy's first, and God knows whether she's had an abortion before! The thought of having a baby with her just makes me sick!] Unable to hold back my tears, I turned around and shelved my medical report.

I was only 17, dreaming of building a life far away from my suffocating town, away from my dishonest family. My mother lived off scams, and I refused to be part of it. But just before I turned 18, my world fell apart. I was pregnant! And not just by anyone, but by the richest, cruelest man to ever set foot in my small town. The worst part? We had never even met. Now, I have to fight for something I never had: a chance to rewrite my own fate.

After getting back together with Peter Palmer, I stopped caring about where he went or what he did. He spent all our savings on Julia Sharp, and I didn’t even bother asking why. Maybe he realized something, because before leaving me once again to be with her, he said, “Julia’s leaving to live abroad tomorrow. She won’t be coming back. Once she’s gone, we’ll get married.” I gave a casual reply. After all, I was leaving too.

“Just...I have one question before this,” I pretend to not see his hurtful look, keeping my eyes on his chest, “...Please.” Would it change anything if I’m pregnant? I want to ask, I don’t know how. Taking a deep breath, I look up, just to catch him rolling his eyes with a sigh: “I don’t have time for your games, Scar.” Home? I laugh bitterly. We don’t have a home anymore, Sebastian. I built one for us, and you broke it.

For our college graduation trip, I spent a whole week glued to various travel apps, finally snagging a half-price couples' train package. I was just about to share the good news with my boyfriend and call it a night when his message came through. "Anna's going through a breakup. She needs to get away and clear her head. We're gonna use those tickets." "See if you can grab yourself another single ticket. It's not that much anyway - like five or six hundred bucks." For a moment, I was speechless. Before he received the scholarship my dad’s pack had specifically established for him, five or six hundred dollars used to be his entire monthly allowance. After a moment of silence, I picked up my phone: “Dad, prepare a private jet for me. I want to take a trip alone before graduation.”