Our Thing Nicci Harris

To get rid of our pup and date with his assistant on Valentine's Day, my mate Marcus forced our injured pup to go rock climbing and poisoned him. When I rushed my dying pup to the hospital, I unexpectedly saw my mate accompanying his assistant for a prenatal checkup. Our terrified pup lay convulsing from the poison, but Marcus didn’t even care about him. "He's just an Omega. If he was a proper wolf, he'd heal instantly!" I clutched the $100 million Moonlight Blessing herb in my pocket. I accidentally found it in the forest this morning. I was planning to tell him the good news today. But now? It was time to break this five-year mate bond.

I worked as a waitress in a small-town diner, but I put my husband Tom through Harvard Law School. But after he graduated, when I was eight months pregnant, he divorced with me and married my best friend, Sarah. On their wedding day, I didn't cry or make a scene. Instead, I went to work as their housekeeper. Tom thought my love made me easy to control. Sarah treated me like dirt, thinking I was born to serve. I never complained – I just prepared a surprise for them. But when their daughter was admitted to Harvard, they opened the surprise and went crazy.

After my daughter, Mia Powell, was declared brain-dead, my husband, Liam Powell, urged me to sign the organ donation consent form. I was drowning in grief and my mind was on the verge of collapse. That was when I accidentally discovered that her attending doctor, Blair Lincoln, was Liam’s old flame. They had lied about Mia’s brain death, just to trick me into signing the form and steal her heart to save Blair’s daughter, Sophia. I watched as Liam picked Sophia up from the hospital. The three of them smiled together, like a perfect, happy family. When I confronted them, they pushed me off a building, and I died from the fall. Given a second chance, I had returned to the day I was supposed to sign the organ donation form. As I stared at Mia lying in that hospital bed, I silently vowed. This time, that scumbag and that wretch would pay with their lives for what they did to Mia.

The day after we set our wedding date for the tenth time, my fiancé reached past me to kiss his adopted sister. He presented crimson roses to her as she descended from the stage. "My princess, in this lifetime, I'll only ever be your protector." I stood quietly beyond the cheering crowd, then turned and walked away without looking back. After five years of engagement, this was the moment I finally gave up hope.

At sixteen, Freya thought she had escaped the loneliness of the orphanage when she was adopted into the powerful Sutton family. Instead, she was sold into a loveless marriage with Malum Sutton, a greedy womanizer twice her age who needed a wife to claim his inheritance. But across Dubai’s glittering skyline and the Modern-day United States (Chicago, New York), another truth is unfolding. The Harrison family — wealthier and more powerful than the Suttons—reveals their matriarch once gave birth to a quadruplet, not triplets. Their long-lost daughter was stolen at birth, Three brothers, Kai, Rowan, and Sage, begin a desperate search for their missing sister. When business brings Sage to the Sutton estate, he notices something odd: Malum’s wife flinched at his touch, her silence screaming of abuse. What Sage doesn’t yet know is that this fragile woman is the sister he’s been looking for. Malum, terrified of losing control, fabricates DNA tests to present his secretary as the missing Harrison daughter. Until betrayal turns on betrayal. Odessa, the woman who once delivered Freya into Malum’s hands, exposes the scheme. But Malum does not give up so easily. Manipulating their son’s innocence and stoking Freya’s insecurities through jealousy of Harrison's wives, he lured her back into his grasp. He binds her with a cruel contract, one designed to strip her of everything unless she can prove his infidelity. This time, however, Freya is no longer alone. With her brother’s love and her own newfound strength, she turns Malum’s trap against him. From orphan to outcast, from victim to heiress, Freya claims her place as the true Harrison daughter.

All because of Leo Cullen’s words, I gave up a place at a top-tier university in Ceres and stayed behind to retake the entrance exams with him—three times. By the fourth year, a girl arrived at our cram school, and Leo forgot the promise we made. He started skipping class, picking fights, smoking—doing everything but studying. One day, I stood at the school gate, blocking his path with a textbook in hand as he tried to ditch class. He smirked, unimpressed, and blew a bubble with his gum, letting it stick to the ends of my hair. “Naomi…,” he began, “who still cares about studying these days?” So I stopped caring and avoided him entirely. When he fooled around in the classroom, I went to the library. When he played basketball, I sat in a quiet corner with my books. Even when I craved noodles from my favorite shop, I’d scan the room first to make sure he wasn’t there. “Are you avoiding me, Naomi?” he asked later, his face in a frown. I shook my head. “Why would you think that?”

The things we want are so very rarely the things we need. Clifton Heights, a modest Adirondack town, offers many unique attractions. Arcane Delights sells both paperbacks and hard-to-find limited editions. The Skylark Diner serves the best home-cooked meals around, with friendly service and a smile. Every August, Mr. Jingo’s County Fair visits, to the delight of children and adults. In essence, Clifton Heights is the quintessential small American town. Everyone knows everyone else, and everyone is treated like family. It is quiet, simple, and peaceful. But shadows linger here. Flitting in dark corners, from the corner of the eye. If you walk down Main Street after dark, the slight scrape of shoes on asphalt whispers you're not alone, but when you look over your shoulder, no one is there. The moon shines high and bright in the night sky, but instead of throwing light, it only seems to make the shadows lengthen. Children disappear. Teens run away. Hunters get lost in the woods with frightening regularity. Husbands go mad, and wives vanish in the dead of night. And still, when the sun rises in the morning, you are greeted by townspeople with warm waves and friendly smiles, and the shivers pass as everything seems fresh and new... Until night falls once more. Handy's Pawn and Thrift sits several blocks down from Arcane Delights. Like any thrift store, its wares range from the mundane to the bizarre. By daylight, it seems just another slice of small town Americana. But in its window hangs a sign which reads: We Have Things You Need. And when a lonely traveling salesman comes looking for something he desperately wants, after normal visiting hours, after night has fallen, he will face a harsh truth among the shelves of Handy’s Pawn and Thrift: the things we want are rarely the things we need. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

Ruth Abellana is egocentric, self-centered and ambitious. She never values anyone except for herself and her sister, Tina. Loves money and materialistic. On the night of May 25th, Ruth involved in an unfortunate event. In the halfway of a calm and tranquil night, an accident occurs in the bridge. Due to it, she was lying in a coma for a couple of months. After 6 months long, Ruth was finally awake, but something odd happened, she sees the soul of an unknown man, asking for help. He can't remember anything except the tragedy of his death, which was the accident on the bridge on the night of May 25.

On our wedding day, Jon Zeller flies to an island for a trip with his childhood sweetheart. I'm greeting our friends and family when I receive a notification to pay for their bills at an expensive hotel. When everyone doubts the authenticity of our relationship and mocks me, all Jon says is, "A wedding is just for show. You can handle it yourself." He hangs up without another word. My father is so enraged that he ends up in the hospital after getting a heart attack, and I'm in desperate need of money for his surgery. Yet Jon uses the money to pay for a romantic fireworks show for his childhood sweetheart. When my father wakes up, I tell him I'll marry the man he's picked for me.

Love has so many faces, but there's only one meaning. It depends on a situation you had. Delmond loves his sister so much. He does everything for her, even risk his own life, even the person he loves the most. "You need me, but my sister needs you more!" Delmond says. How painful it was for them to overcome the struggles and trials they had gone trough? And those all lies make turns into reality. Who destined them for each other? Read and follow their love life story here at, "Nothing but to lie."