Pokkle Death

I plan a family trip at my mother Lucia Sweeney's request. While avoiding the danger zones, my sister Linda Harper and I are ambushed by rogues. To protect her, I throw myself in the path of their claws and get driven into a silver mine. As I fall, my back is slashed open to the bone, and shards of silver embed deep into my right leg. The searing silver poison spreads quickly, burning through me and my wolf. My wolf is whimpering—she's close to death. However, as the pack's chief healer, Mom gathers all the healers around Linda to give her a full check-up over a few minor scrapes. I sob and beg her to save me first. "Mom, the poison has almost reached my heart. I can't hold on anymore." She turns around impatiently and yells, "Are you seriously still fighting with Linda now? Do you have any idea how close she came to getting clawed in the face by a silver claw? Our pack doesn't have a wolf as heartless as you!" And in that moment, I hear my wolf's final whimper, saying goodbye. I finally fall asleep in the cold wind, never waking up again.

In the third year of our marriage, Adrian Jones made me play a game of truth or dare—and when I lost, he told me to take the place of a nightclub hostess and perform a striptease. "Macie's too timid," he said. "You dance for her." Laughter erupted around us. "Adrian's a real sport—letting us watch his wife put on a show!" "Liliana's got a body to die for. I'm burning up just looking at her." Drenched in humiliation, surrounded by crude stares and filth, I finally cracked. My voice shook. "Adrian… I want a divorce." Before I could say more, a glass of red wine hit me square in the face. Adrian scoffed, "The Shaw family's already bankrupt. Where exactly do you think you'll go without me?" However, this time, I meant it. I was done.

When my appendix bursts, my parents, my brother, and even my fiancé are all too busy celebrating my sister's birthday. I'm outside the operating room, frantically calling every family member I can think of to sign the consent form, but every call is either ignored or hung up on. After hanging up on me, my fiancé, Joel Graham, texts back. "Sophie, stop being dramatic. It's Yvette's 18th birthday today. Whatever it is can wait until after the party." I quietly set my phone down and sign the consent form myself. It's the ninety-ninth time they've chosen Yvette Norton, my sister, over me. This time, I choose not to care. I'll stop letting their favoritism hurt me. Instead, I'll do everything they ask of me without complaint. They'll all think I've finally learned to be obedient, and they'll never realize that I'm preparing to leave them for good.

I volunteer to be the mate of Carl Wood, the Alpha of the Nightfall pack, as a direct measure to resolve the conflict between our two packs. He marks me on a full moon night. His gaze is so fervent in that moment that I interpret his look as a genuine sign of his attraction. Carl personally leads the elite fighters across the border two years later. He grabs my head, making me witness the gruesome dismantling of my mother, father, and brother by the pack; his gaze is alight with vengeful satisfaction. "Did your father show mercy during our youth when he destroyed my pack, Aria? Do you truly believe that having you here is enough to make up for this vengeance?" Carl assumes the position as the most powerful Alpha of the northern region, with Selena Hall established at his side as his Luna. I am kept barely alive, imprisoned in the depths of the dungeon in the pack. If I attempt to end my life, Carl retrieves the bones of a relative from the cemetery and incinerates them right in front of me, bellowing with bloodshot eyes, "You're not allowed to die unless I allow you to, Aria!" I immediately cease all resistance after that. Carl's heart was pierced by a silver-tipped arrow during his escape years ago. I had to implore the dark witch to use dark magic and substitute my sound heart for his. There are only three days left before the poison completely takes hold of me.

I have been dating my manager boyfriend, Caleb Frost, for five years. He calls off our wedding 52 times for Gina Lowe, an aspiring actress on the set. On the day I am ready to give up on him and walk away, Gina falsely accuses me of using expired makeup on her that caused an allergic reaction. So Caleb shoves me into a sealed cellar and locks me inside. As he pushes me down, his face is twisted in disgust. "It's one thing to pick on Gina, but to use expired makeup on her and cause an allergy? Do you know how important an artist's face is? "Stay down there and think about your wrongdoings." With that, he drags the crying Gina to the hospital. The cellar's air vent is blocked. Every breath I take grows harder until I suffocate to death inside. Three days later, Caleb remembers me only after attending a gathering with Gina. But little does he know, I am already dead from the lack of oxygen in that dark cellar.

Just for brushing against the hem of Eva Lawson, the heiress’s custom couture gown, Lucy Quinn's mother had her limbs broken, then thrown into the sea to die. The day Lucy dragged the arrogant heiress to court she thought that justice might finally be served. Eva was declared not guilty. Why? Because the defense attorney representing her was none other than Wyatt Grant, founder of the most untouchable law firm in River City, and Lucy Quinn’s husband. When the trial ended, the elegant and aloof man stepped down from the defense table and placed an apology letter in front of Lucy. "Lulu, sign it. You don’t want to be sued for defamation and end up in prison, do you?" His tone was calm and coaxing, but behind the lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses, his gaze was cold as ice. Lucy, tears stubbornly clinging to her eyes, looked up at him and said with a trembling voice, "Why, Wyatt, Why?"

After Cynthia Musich causes a surgical accident, my husband of eight years, Xavier Goodwin, forces me to take the fall for her. "Being suspended won't have any effect on you, but Cynthia's just starting out! Leaving a mark on her record this early in her career will ruin her!" The accident victim's family cause a scene and stab me thrice in my pregnant belly. I call Xavier and beg him to save me, but he says coldly, "Cynthia was stabbed, and her life is at stake, so can you please stop making trouble? Just come out on your own." Later, when my dead body is brought to his department, Xavier loses his mind.

Everyone in the Titanus region would have heard the older generation tell them this—during sky burials, the vultures wouldn't eat the corpses of people who'd committed heinous crimes. My husband is the sky burial practitioner who buries me. The vultures circle my corpse in the air above the burial site, but they don't prey on me. My husband frowns at the sight. "It looks like this person must have committed crimes when alive. They deserve this." Suddenly, I remembered him pointing at me, his eyes ablaze with flames of rage as he shouted, "Nancy wouldn't have lost her baby if not for you! Someone like you doesn't even deserve to get a sky burial!" It looks like his words are coming true. But later, he falls to his knees before my grave and weeps. He begs me to forgive him.

The night before our Mating Ceremony, my fated mate, Alpha Ryker of the Howling Moon Pack, ordered me to give him the Moon Soul Crystal—the very thing that protected my pack, the Willow Creek Pack. He said he needed it to power up the Howling Moon Pack's Blood Moon Altar. He also promised he'd keep me and my people safe. But he didn't know that we, the healers of the Willow Creek Pack, can only create one Moon Soul Crystal in our entire lives. Making one takes a crazy amount of moon energy. It's the treasure that keeps our pack alive. My mother, worried about me using up my moon energy while I was pregnant, gave up her own Moon Soul Crystal instead. But just three months after Ryker and I were mated, she got sick, fast. She was dying. I knelt in front of Ryker, crying, begging him for the Silverleaf Herb from the Howling Moon's forbidden grounds. It was the only thing that could save my mom. But he just looked at me, his eyes full of disappointment, and kicked me away. "I asked for the Moon Soul Crystal to test you," he snarled. "And just as I thought, you married me for our pack's treasures! Your mother's not sick. You're making it all up!" "You don't deserve to be the Luna of the Howling Moon Pack!" It wasn't until after my mother died, when he was arguing with me, trying to kick me out of the pack, that my mother's things fell and scattered everywhere. Her Soul Stone, the symbol of a wolf's spirit, shattered. That's when he finally realized he was wrong. He fell to his knees, begging me not to leave, crying for me to forgive him.

Five years after I mated to Alpha Derek Blackwood, his childhood sweetheart broke her mate bond with another Alpha and returned to our pack. Even worse, I had depleted my life force saving Derek when he was mortally wounded, and now I was dying. In the less than six months I had left to live, I continued to play the role of Derek's good mate. Until I passed away. And Derek, after reading the journal I left behind, completely fell apart.