Left 4 Dead

For three agonizing years, my mother struggled with kidney failure. Finally, after all the waiting and the constant dialysis, she was next in line for a transplant. Hope seemed so close. But then, my husband, Zachary Levi, an esteemed nephrology professor, did the unforgivable. He surreptitiously gave his lover's mother the kidney that was intended for my mother. He said almost dismissively, "Ella's mother couldn't wait any longer. Your mother's been on dialysis for so long, she's not going to die anytime soon." Later, my mother passed away. I called Zachary one final time. Yet, it was a woman who answered. "Margaret, right? Zachary's in the shower. Is there something you need?" I stared at my mother's smile on the gravestone, and an overwhelming emptiness spread through me. "It's nothing. Just wanted to talk about the divorce."

The underprivileged student I've been sponsoring suddenly shows up at my birthday party, swaggering in and waving around a pregnancy report. "Look—Pheebs is pregnant with my baby! You'd better be smart and divorce her already!" I point at the report, stunned and confused. "Are you sure it's Phoebe who's pregnant with your child?" Victor Thompson, my beneficiary, smirks proudly as he fiddles with the pregnancy report. "Duh! We conceived the baby last month on our cruise trip!" The entire room falls into a stunned silence. My ex-wife, Phoebe Jackman, has been dead for three years.

I was the Luna who gave everything to her Alpha—my heart, my loyalty, my dignity. Ethan repaid me by sleeping with other she-wolves, over and over again, and every night our mate bond slowly poisoned what was left of my soul. On our third wedding anniversary, when he suggested I could "try" sleeping with someone else too, I finally broke. My childhood friend, a young Alpha, called me when he heard the news and proposed to me over the phone. His gentle voice healed every wound Ethan had carved into me, so I said yes. Now I've decided to give Ethan moonbreak herb and sever our bond forever. But Ethan never bothered to ask what I gave him to drink. He was too busy running off to his favorite she-wolf's bed. He has no idea that in thirty days, when the moon breaks, our mate bond will shatter completely, and the "chains" that bound us as fated mates will be gone. This time, I'm really leaving.

When the college admission notice arrived, I suddenly developed a high fever and was bedridden. My sister encountered a kidnapping on her way to help me collect the notice, and her life was uncertain. My parents hated me deeply. After tearing up my admission notice, they forced me to give up my studies and work in a factory. Later, I experienced a kidnapping as well. After narrowly escaping, I hid in an abandoned factory and sent them a message for help. My dad called me and shouted at me without restraint, “Lena, are you even human? How could you play such a joke on us on Jessica's memorial day!” “Do you have any idea how much your mom and I wished it had been you who died back then?” In my last moments before death, their insults echoed in my ears. I was tortured and killed, turned into a monster, and my body was thrown into a stinking ditch for three full days. Even my father, the most experienced forensic expert, couldn’t recognize me. When my sister returned home with the guy she eloped with years ago, my dad had just restored my appearance through technology. They knelt before my decaying corpse and cried until they fainted.

Three years of marriage. Three years of hell, humiliation, and being compared to a ghost. To Alexander Hale, the ruthless CEO feared by all Abigail was never a wife, only a woman that desperately wanted her best friends lover. He didn’t know that Abigail was the real pen pal who healed him with her letters... the same woman whose heart he crushed beneath his arrogance. Until the night she vanished. Declared dead after a brutal car accident, Abigail left behind only her wedding ring and a diary that shattered every illusion Alexander ever had. But fate is far from finished. Months later, Alexander attends his cousin’s wedding, only to see his dead ex-wife again. Alive. Pregnant. And standing beside another man.

After my sister's death, I signed a five-year contract marriage with her mafia husband, Horton Falcone. I became the stepmother to my five-year-old nephew, Luca. On my birthday, I wore my late sister's diamond cross necklace, not realizing what it was. At the family dinner, Luca walked up to me with a glass of red wine and threw the wine in my face. The red wine dripped down my cheeks, its sharp scent stinging my eyes and staining my white dress. He tilted his head back to look up at me, his eyes as cold and cruel as his father's. "Don't think you can replace my mom just because you married into the Falcone family," he said with a malicious grin. "You're the reason she's dead." "I wish you were the one who died. Then I could smash your gravestone instead of celebrating this stupid birthday." "I swear, when I grow up, the first thing I'll do is dump you in the Hudson River myself!" The memory stung as sharply as the wine, and all I could taste was despair. I stared at the child I had spent five years raising as my own, a sharp pain pulsing in my chest. I had thought I could devote myself to the Falcone family, that I could win him over with my love. But now, I was just so tired of it all. It was a family with no love, a child who saw me as his mortal enemy. I stopped deluding myself. It was time to let go. But after I left, that arrogant father and son came crawling back to me like whipped dogs, begging for my forgiveness.

On my 18th birthday, my stepmother, Sheila Coleman, teams up with her secret lover, William Lynch, to kill me in cold blood. After that, she carves my femur into a bone sculpture and presents it to my dad as a gift. Dad loves the sculpture to no end. Thanks to Sheila slandering me in the past, he doesn't give a damn about me at all, even after finding out that I've gone missing. In fact, he even declares that he wants to cut off all ties with me. "Don't bring that brat up in front of me from now on! I hope that she dies out there!" But when he finds out that I'm really dead, he goes crazy from remorse.

[WARNING 18+] This book contains descriptive intimate and violent scenes. There could be triggering content like self-harm, drug addiction, and depression. [TROPES] Billionaire. Revenge. Second Chance. Escape while pregnant. - When Mellow Fanning married Zeath Lupin, the cold chairman of Lupin Group, she thought their love was forever. But everything crumbled when he introduced his pregnant mistress at a family dinner. Angry, Mellow sought to make Zeath restless by kidnapping the mistress. However, that resulted in a tragedy that nearly claimed her life and that of the child growing inside her—a child Zeath didn’t deserve. She faked her death and ran away, bound to return as Zeath’s only means to remain as the chairman of Lupin Group. Would he recognize her? Would she accept his apology if he ever gave one? And what would happen when the threat she once fled from rekindled, endangering her and her child’s lives once more? >>>>> “Do you know how much I wished you wouldn’t come near me, or even... touch me?” Zeath drones on. “All those cuddles and kisses, all the affection, made my skin crawl—like a troll embracing its victim before gobbling them. One can only imagine how much it stinks. You are no different from that troll. You merely caught my attention because you were a self-absorbed twonk, and we needed to test if you even had the heart to love another.” “We?” I croak out. Then Zeath’s fingers trail gently along my face, his eyes glinting with pure poison, and his voice is no better. “Poor Mellow, it is all a dare, a gratifying one. Divorce or not, it’s your choice.”

I waited five years for him to love me. But love never came. Instead, she returned, the girl Brandon never stopped loving… and a little boy who looks just like him. A child I should have given him. I married Brandon Langford to save my father’s company. I gave him everything—my loyalty, my heart, my life. And he repaid me by suspending me from work and handing my project to her. Clara, his first love, is back, taking everything I built, everything I thought I owned. I’m done being a placeholder. This time… I’m claiming my life.

My blood-bonded vampire mate left me while I was pregnant to be with his "first love" in the human world. When danger struck, he abandoned our son to protect her human child, who was not in any danger. While our son was struggling with lethal UV burns and calling for his father through a high fever, he was celebrating under citywide fireworks with that human boy, who only had a common cold. He even took the life-saving serum I had prepared for our son, just to use it for the boy’s "pre-transformation conditioning." He coldly stated, "Vampires are resilient; he’ll endure it. Human children are too fragile." After four years of raising our son alone, I finally decided to leave. I officially cut our blood ties and moved away with our son. Only then did he find out that his "first love" had been lying to him all along. After learning the truth, the arrogant vampire prince wept and begged for us to come back.