Hercules Tenth Labor Novels & Stories

On the night of the full moon, both the widowed Omega, Natalie, and I went into sudden, agonizing labor. The pain brought me to my knees on the cold floor. Clutching Kaelen’s hand with the last of my strength, I begged him to take me to the hospital. But my pleas fell on deaf ears. Within the pack, everyone believed I was finally getting exactly what I deserved. After all, five years ago, I had cruelly played with Kaelen’s feelings and publicly rejected our mate bond. Now, with my pack on the brink of decline, Kaelen had risen to become the Supreme Alpha, forcing me into a partnership. Yet, while he claimed my body night after night, he bitterly refused to give me his mark. Even when he brought the pregnant Natalie into our home, I merely turned away and walked back to my room without a word—an indifference that only fueled his volatile rage. Until tonight, when Natalie and I went into labor at the exact same time. In my agony, I finally broke down and confessed that I loved him. But Kaelen only saw it as another calculated lie. Scooping Natalie up into his arms, he looked down at me with cold, unyielding eyes. “Natalie was right about you. You’re just staging a premature labor to orchestrate your escape and abandon the pack again.” He sneered, turning his back on me. “If you really love me, you’ll wait until she safely delivers. Don’t even think about running from me this time.” With the Alpha’s absolute command issued, the pack members did everything in their power to stall my delivery, ignoring my fading pulse. By the time Kaelen finally remembered me—deciding he would perform the marking ritual the moment our pup was born—it was already too late. My pup and I were already cold.

Madeline Sanders had always been aware that her marriage to Trevon Gibson was merely a contract. When his first love breezed back into town, Trevon wasted no time in asking for a divorce. Clutching the results of her pregnancy test, Madeline was at a loss for words. She was stripped of everything and left to fend for herself. She decided to start anew as an artist and a single mom. However, Trevon couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. He inexplicably suffered pregnancy symptoms. Madeline's morning sickness became his, her cravings for pickles turned into his own, and her labor pains echoed through his body. Afterward, Madeline declared, "The baby will carry the name Sanders!" There stood Trevon, juggling a bottle and a diaper, "Sanders it is! Darling, when do you say I join the Sanders crew?"

"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.

When Dylan Sullivan took a new type of hallucinogen, I was forced to give myself to him to curb the effects. Innately fertile, I got pregnant, giving birth to fraternal twins—a boy and a girl—after marrying him. However, Dylan refused to let them call him daddy, drinking away the nights while staring at the picture of his one true love. Then, on our tenth anniversary, he locked us up in the basement and burnt us to death. As it turns out, he remained hung up on that moment when I saved him all this time, stubbornly convinced I intervened when he was vulnerable to satisfy my ambitions. That in turn drove a rift between himself and his one true love, whose heartbreak led to psychosis and the accident that killed her. But I somehow opened my eyes to find myself alive, returning to the day Dylan took the hallucinogen by mistake. This time, I let his one true love have him, while I headed towards the study…

During the live boyband auditions, I won the popularity vote by a landslide and was given the position of the main singer. Another member of the boyband suddenly laughed as he patted me on the shoulder. "Jordan, I was the one who accompanied you to get stamina supplements after you overdid it in bed with your rich married lover. Now that we're in the same boyband, please look out for me!" Immediately, the phrase 'The Boyband's One-Minute Man' was seen everywhere online. Even our mentor chimed in, trying to get me kicked out of the band. I had no choice but to call my mother when I was unable to prove myself innocent. "Mom, I don't want to debut in a boyband anymore. Let me go solo and send the rest of them off to labor away their lives at the factory!"

On the tenth day of my postpartum recovery, my husband, Deputy Commander Harvey Wyatt, uploads a photo of me breastfeeding my newborn in a disheveled state to the department's group chat. Obviously, that photo was taken without my knowledge. "See? After having a kid, she's as loose as a sack. It makes me sick just looking at her. I much prefer my side piece, who's nice and tight." A few female colleagues send sweating emojis to the group. The majority of the chat, however, consists of the male colleagues' perverse silence. While I continue to burp my baby with one hand, my tears land on the screen. In order to give birth to this baby, my pelvic bone was sawn in half, which causes me so much pain that I can't even walk properly. But all I get in return is my own husband body-shaming me in front of hundreds of people. I don't bother arguing with Harvey at all. Half an hour later, I drag my broken body all the way to the commander's office with a divorce agreement as well as the chat history over the past ten days, which has been printed out, in my hands.

At gatherings in our circle, people always bring up a joke. "The Snow family's worthless son-in-law cannot have children, so he keeps sending other men to Grace Snow's bed. How I wish my man had that kind of awareness." What they do not know is that all of those men are arranged by my father-in-law in my name. Grace throws the first one out and has a huge argument with me. Then, she buys me a luxury watch worth over a hundred million dollars to cheer me up. The second time a man is sent to her, she immediately feels sick after only touching his hand. We argue again. This time, she buys me a manor, saying that I'm the only one she wants by her side. But when it comes to the tenth one… She closes the door and does not come out all night. We stop arguing, and we stop speaking to each other. Everyone thinks I will do anything to secure my place in the Snow family and will cling to them for the rest of my life. But when I take out the divorce agreement, no one believes it—including Grace herself.

On their tenth wedding anniversary, Aysha Dalsin spends the entire day preparing a surprise for the man she has loved for years. Candles, flowers, his favorite meal, and a promise to herself that this night will save their broken marriage. Instead, she watches her husband, Adrian Damascus, bring another woman into their home. Hidden in the shadows, Aysha hears the words that destroy everything she believed in. “I never loved her. You are the only one that’s real.” Humiliated and heartbroken, she walks away from her marriage, only to be forced off the road hours later in what everyone believes is a fatal accident. The world buries Aysha Dalsin. But five years later, a mysterious billionaire known as Seraphine Vale rises to the top of the business world. Beautiful, untouchable, and feared by everyone, she has built an empire from the ashes of the life they tried to destroy. When Seraphine finally steps into the same room as Adrian and his new wife, Mira, the couple freeze in shock. The woman they buried is standing right in front of them. This time, she isn’t back to beg for love. She’s back to take everything they have. Because revenge is sweeter when your enemies never see you coming.

When an earthquake strikes, I'm trapped under one end of a collapsed slab. On the other end is the student I've been sponsoring. My husband, Sebastian Chesson, tells the rescue team to save the student first. The rescuers hesitate. "The other victim might not make it if we do." Sebastian replies coldly, "The other one is my wife. I'll sign a waiver—she's not that easy to kill." I survive, but the three-month-old baby in my womb doesn't. Later, a rescuer hands me a card. "Mr. Chesson said this is five million dollars in exchange for your life." Meanwhile, Sebastian and the student's fairytale romance dominates the trending charts, praised by the internet as the epitome of true love. On our tenth wedding anniversary, I return home to find the student lounging on my bed, wearing my pajamas, playfully teasing Sebastian. Just then, a call comes in from Sebastian's student, who's been eyeing me for a long time. His voice is low, flirtatious, and sinful. "Ms. Sinclair, you always remind me to get to bed early… If you really care, why don't you move in and make sure I do?"

Robert Blackwell promised to marry me, then postponed it thirty-eight times. The fifth time, a car crash broke eight of his ribs, and I signed seven critical-condition notices. The tenth time, on the way to get our marriage license, he and the car were thrown into the sea, and his suit was torn apart by sharks. By the thirty-eighth time, his heart disease had worsened and his life was hanging by a thread. Eight months pregnant, I changed flights three times and flew twenty-three hours across half the world to find him. When the door opened, a little boy who looked exactly like him lifted his face and said, "I thought Mom was back." Robert rushed out barefoot, panic written all over his face. I turned around and saw my best friend of twelve years standing behind me with a key in her hand. The little boy ran to her and threw himself into her arms, calling her Mom. So the fiance I had waited seven years for was my best friend's secret husband all along. "I will not wait through these thirty-eight near-death weddings anymore." "Robert, I do not want you either."