Good To Great Novels & Stories

Having an Awakenist as my wife meant enduring her monkish attitude toward sex. We could only be intimate on the sixteenth of every month. Every detail—my position, rhythm, even my expression—had to follow her rigid rules. If I showed too much pleasure, she would immediately rise and leave. We had been married for five years. Was I ever tired of this? Yes. Still, I always gave in. I accepted these limitations because I loved her. "The Saintess loves me too," I told myself. That faith shattered the day I was sent to extinguish a hotel fire. Amid the flames, I found my wife pressed close to a man in disheveled clothes. Between their arms was a young boy.

I had been with the company for eleven years. One day, the boss’ son was abruptly planted as my immediate superior. In order to establish his power, he started to humiliate me. He splashed coffee on my face in front of our client. “Why are you serving our most prestigious client this nasty drink? You’re embarrassing the company!” I was furious. However, I held my anger back for the sake of the company. During our townhall meeting, he threw my proposal to the floor. “We’re not an old folks’ home. We don’t take care of useless pieces of shit like you.” I did not leave the next day. Instead, I asked my personal assistant to publish a notice on the digital display at our office building. [Due to the tenant’s unstable emotions, the lease on the 17th floor of this office building will not be renewed when it expires next month.]

"I didn't marry you because I wanted a wife, Elara, and I certainly didn't marry you because I loved you. I married you because the elders told me that children born of fated mates are the strongest, and I needed that power for my lineage. It was a genetic transaction, nothing more, and you were just the most convenient vessel available at the time," he said, and his words felt like physical blows. ​I felt the tears stinging my eyes, and I pulled the pregnancy test out of my pocket, but my fingers were shaking so much I almost dropped it. "I’m pregnant, Silas. I came here to tell you that we’re having a baby." ​"So you finally did your job," Silas said, his voice completely devoid of any warmth or joy. "That’s fine, you’ll carry the heir, and the pack doctors will look after you, but don't think for a second that this changes your status. You are an orphaned rogue with no standing, and you are utterly unworthy of being a Luna, so don't get any ideas about sitting on a throne next to me." ******* ​Three years of marriage to Alpha Silas Blackwood were a living nightmare for Elara. As an orphaned rogue, she was treated as a servant in her own home, a ‘vessel’, married only for the superior power of a fated-mate heir. The night she finally discovered she was pregnant, Silas shattered her heart for the last time, publicly humiliating her in front of his ex-girlfriend and his pack. ​But a near-fatal car crash changes everything.

What do you do when the mate you love gets another she-wolf pregnant after a drunken night? This is my new reality. In the face of this, he firmly said, "Keep the pup, and we can still go back to how things were." I could not believe my ears. Shaking my head, I asked him to choose. "Between me and the pup, who do you choose?" I said to him. All I got was silence. His blank face broke me. I could not believe he couldn’t answer. But his silence was enough of an answer for me. So I left, and he regretted it.

After my mother shot down my pleas to cover my medical bills the 100th time, I clutched my bone cancer diagnosis papers and trudged to the crematorium. "Hi, I'd like to reserve a cremation slot ahead of time," I muttered to the clerk. Half an hour ticked by before my parents and adopted brother arrived in their car. My dad, a forensic pathologist, cracked me across the face. "You're pulling a fake-death stunt now, just to steal the spotlight from your brother?" My mom, a hospital director, snatched the papers from my hands and shredded them into confetti. "Faking records using my credentials and tying up hospital resources? You've crossed the line!" My brother cried, tugging at their sleeves. "It's all my fault. I'll skip the amusement park forever. I don't need a thing. Just quit riling up Mom and Dad." I spun around, my hand pressed against my throbbing chest, and begged the crematorium staff. "Please, when it's time, cremate me and scatter the ashes in the river. I've got no family left in this world."

On our wedding day, Carter Hall's father took his own life in our new home. He left a suicide note, blaming me for his death. From that day forward, Carter despised me to the core. He said, "Lindsey Thomson, you deserve to rot in hell, atoning for your sins for the rest of your life." Eventually, just as he wished, I wandered the streets, mute and half-insane, living a life worse than a stray dog. But then, he regretted it.

My husband, an anesthesiologist, deliberately increases the sedative dosage on an accident victim so he can get a new heart for his first love, Selena Quigley. After her operation, he cares for her and celebrates her rebirth. He only remembers to contact me after she's recovered. "It's been three months since we saw each other, honey. You shouldn't be mad anymore, right? Why don't you book a flight for tomorrow so you can come home? I'll pick you up at the airport." I won't be going home anymore, though. Not now, not forever. I've already died on his operating table.

By the third year of my marriage to Daniel Hawthorne, the war had already taken more than it ever returned, and this time it took his younger brother, Thomas Hawthorne. My sister-in-law, Eleanor, collapsed, and in the weeks that followed she tried to follow her husband into death— once with sleeping pills, once by the river beyond the officers’ quarters— only to be dragged back both times, each time clinging to me afterward as though I were the last thing keeping her grounded. I stayed with her, wiped her tears, and whispered that Thomas would want her to live, until the day she received the test results confirming she was three months pregnant, and the grief of losing her husband was slowly softened by the arrival of new life. I smiled too, believing grief had finally loosened its grip. That night, holding my own pregnancy test in my hand and thinking it was finally time to tell Daniel, I passed the study and heard his friend say quietly, “She’s carrying your child. You convinced the doctors to adjust the timeline so everyone would believe the baby belonged to your brother. Aren’t you afraid Margaret will find out?” Daniel didn’t hesitate. “She won’t,” he said calmly. “She loves me. She wouldn’t leave. I won’t let her know.” I didn’t step inside. I didn’t confront him. Instead, I opened the letter I had received weeks earlier— an official deployment order from the international medical corps, assigning me to a frontline war zone— and tapped Accept.

On the night I discovered my husband, Charles Lockheart's affair with the secretary, Whitney Keaton, both of them ended up dying in a fire. I was left with a pair of twins. Despite my family's objections, I decided to adopt the twins. For the next 18 years, I put in all of my resources, blood, sweat, and tears to raise them. Finally, they are accepted into Hallwood College, a globally prestigious college. But on the day the twins get into Hallwood College, Charles and Whitney, who are supposedly dead, make a shocking appearance before us. Whitney links arms with Charles, a wide smile on her face. "As expected of our biological sons! They really are amazing for getting accepted into Hallwood College! It's all thanks to you raising our sons that we got to spend so many years in our honeymoon phase!" Charles wears a victorious and smug look. He doesn't feel guilty in the slightest for faking his death. "Let's get a divorce, Brittany. Now is the best time for the twins to be reunited with Whitney and me." Everyone turns to look at me, waiting for me to have an emotional breakdown. But I remain cool and composed as I reply icily, "What a coincidence. I feel the same way."

On the night of her fifth anniversary, Natalia Russo thought she would be cherished. Instead, she was betrayed, stabbed, and left to die by her very own mate and her stepsister. But death wasn’t the end. She wakes up five years in the past, a day before her wedding; alive, unbroken, and no longer the fool they once used. This time, she refuses to love blindly. She rejects her mate, shatters their plans, and begins a ruthless game of revenge. But what happens when she starts falling for the Alpha who made her childhood miserable…her worst bully who has a secret of his own. And why does her heart race whenever he’s near?