Calmly Antonyms

I hid behind a thick tree trunk and watched silently as a grizzly bear attacked my husband. In my previous life, I was a guide. I led my husband—an environmental photographer—and his female colleague into a nature reserve to film wildlife. While scouting the route, I discovered a nursing grizzly bear and immediately warned them not to take any photos and to retreat slowly. To my shock, they intentionally bumped into me, causing my right leg to be cut and bleed. The scent of blood enraged the bear, and it charged straight at me, sinking its massive jaws into my abdomen. After the bear left, my husband calmly stripped me of all my equipment. Then, wrapping his arms around his female colleague, he kissed her. He turned to me with a sinister smile creeping across his face. "Kate," he said, "I'll be honest. I never loved you. You're dying. Now, all your assets will be mine." I bled out and died. When I opened my eyes again, it was the morning of the day we entered the mountains.

At my best friend’s marking ceremony, another shewolf tried to snatch the bouquet. It bounced off her hand and landed right in my arms. Everyone in the room looked in unspoken agreement at Alpha Derrick Anderson. They started egging him on. “Mark her! Mark her!” “This is the Moon Goddess’s will. Alpha Derrick, mark your Luna!” Derrick was pushed forward by the crowd until he stood in front of me. My cheeks turned red. My heart pounded as I waited for him to say 'will you be my mate'? Instead, he calmly took the bouquet from me, turned around, and handed it to the shewolf beside him. I froze. He reached out and ruffled my hair. His voice was as gentle as ever. “She got it first. Come on now. We’ll get it next time.” I looked at the shewolf next to me. Her face lit with surprise and quiet delight. My own face turned pale in an instant. What Derrick didn’t know was that there wouldn’t be a next time, as my marking ceremony was next week.

I once believed Sarah Weller was the love of my life. For her, I planned a once-in-a-lifetime wedding; for her, I launched a “True Love” jewelry collection worth over a billion. However, with only seven days left before the wedding, she calmly told me that she needed to fulfill her first love’s late mother’s final wish to marry him first, and only then marry me. As if it were a matter of fact, she said, “For Tim, all of this can be sacrificed. If you can’t even bear to lose that little bit of money, you can find someone else to marry right now.” Only then did I understand. In her world, I and everything I had built could be pushed aside at any moment for her so-called first love. So, I turned around without another word and called home. “Penelope,” I said to my sister-in-law, “the wedding will proceed as scheduled. Just do me a favor and replace the bride.”

On the third day after my death, my body was sent to the police station in different packages. Jonathan Walsh, my husband, and Frank Stone, my junior at work, saw my corpse and frowned. “If only Elena were here, she would have been able to find some clues.” Frank sighed as he stared at my horribly mangled remains. “Don’t mention her. She’s not even worthy of being a forensic scientist!” I stared at my husband with a conflicted look. He analyzed each part of my body and deduced the manner of my death with familiar ease. “The murderer is a monster…” Frank’s face turned pale, and he sighed again. Jonathan calmly used all that I had taught him and perfectly pieced out the entire process of my death based on the clues from my dismembered body. I could not help but feel proud. Unfortunately, he was still a little off the mark. He did not manage to figure out that this body belonged to me, his wife.

My mother is gravely ill and needs a million dollars for surgery. I run all over the city, desperately trying to borrow the money. Just when I'm at my breaking point, my childhood friend shows up, holding a check for one million dollars. His condition? He wants to marry me. Everyone's waiting for me to say yes, but I calmly refuse. Because in my last life, even after I married him, my mother still died. Her surgery failed. Later, I accidentally overhear a conversation between him and a doctor. "Christopher, you sabotaged the surgery just to transplant Alice's mom's kidney into Jennifer? Was it worth it? If Alice finds out, you’re done." "I just want Jennifer to live. And honestly, marrying someone like Alice? My life is already over." That's when I realize our entire marriage was nothing but a carefully woven lie. He did it all for the woman he truly loved.

My fiancée and I had been together for ten years. In everyone's eyes, we were the perfect couple. After she saved my life, with tears in my eyes, I made her a promise: "In this lifetime, I'll do 100 things for you." On the eve of our wedding, we decided to climb a snow-covered mountain. An unexpected avalanche struck, and we were stranded at a local farmhouse. Her first love, who was the expedition leader, was injured while trying to save her. In the confusion, he accidentally took an aphrodisiac rather than a painkiller. My fiancée, who had always seemed so traditional and reserved, did not hesitate. She began taking off her clothes, saying she needed to "help" him. Everyone waited for me to explode in rage. Instead, I calmly stepped aside. Three promises remained. Once they were fulfilled, Yvette Jenkins and I would owe each other nothing. However, then it would be time for me to return… and take over my mafia family.

On our third wedding anniversary, I went out of my way to host an anniversary party. But my husband and Alpha, Johnny, took his assistant Amy to the seaside for a vacation instead, leaving me alone at the party as the subject of everyone’s mockery. I called the resort and even thoughtfully booked out the entire area just for the two of them as I calmly faced the crowd. Then, I slipped the mate bond dissolution application in with the paperwork for Johnny to sign. In my previous life, I forced him to stay to save face for both Johnny and the pack. That led to Amy leaving alone and dying in a car accident. Johnny didn't blame me—until I carried his pup that he tied me in a car, telling me that he wanted me to feel the pain Amy went through. When the car exploded, I finally realized that Johnny had hated me all along. Now that I had been reborn, I would make sure he lost everything!

At the wedding, just as I was about to exchange rings with my fiancée, her conniving boyfriend intentionally pushed his son toward her. Right in front of everyone, the boy looked up with teary eyes and asked, "Mom, why are you marrying this man? Don't you want me and Dad anymore?" My fiancée, who never lied, smiled, took the child's hand, and said, "I was only pretending with this man earlier. Now I am going to marry your father." The banquet hall buzzed with whispers. Everyone expected me to get jealous and blow up. Instead, I said the child came first and calmly handed the ring to the boyfriend sitting below the stage. Seeing how cooperative I was, my fiancée grinned and promised she would give me a healthy baby boy someday as a thank you. However, she seemed to have forgotten that we had not officially tied the knot yet. Truth be told, I had no intention of ever doing so.

Seven years after registering our marriage, my husband Gaius and I finally decided to hold the romantic wedding ceremony we had missed back then. That day, I wore the wedding gown I had designed myself and walked toward him with hopeful eyes. Before I could deliver my carefully prepared vows, an incident interrupted the moment. Amid the stunned murmurs of the guests, Gaius dashed toward the woman who had fainted—again—at my wedding. His voice trembled with urgency, eyes burning red. "Call an ambulance! Now!" He didn't even look back as he left the wedding hall. When the wedding bell rang seven times, I calmly pulled off my veil. Facing the guests who had yet to disperse, I smiled and said, "As you can see, today marks the divorce ceremony between Gaius and me. Please, eat and drink to your heart's content. Don't let the trip go to waste!"

The day Ken Bowen and I finalized the divorce, I walked out wearing only the outfit I had worn on our wedding day. I let Ken keep the house, the cars, the money, and the kids. He looked genuinely surprised, then let out a mocking laugh. "Are you sure about this? You raised the girls yourself, and you're just giving them up? If you really don't want anything, then you won't need to pay child support either. That's fair, right?" I signed the papers without hesitation and said calmly, "Yeah. That's fair." Ken paused, then slowly signed his name. "If you regret this later, you…" I lifted a hand and cut him off. I didn't look back as I walked out. Ken used to say I married him for money and status, that I used our three daughters to tie him down. Whatever. The day he saw my dead body, he would finally understand.