The Abandoned Wife's Second Chance

On the day Raina Whitmore makes the Helios Rich List, she smiles for the cameras and declares, "I wouldn't be here without my secretary, Kieran Vale. He's the most important person in my life." While she confesses her love in the interview, I lie in a hospital bed, worn out and fading. I'm her husband, the one who's held her company together all these years. But I don't get a single word of thanks. My daughter, Talia Hart, even looks at me with pure disdain. "Dad, you've held Mom and Uncle Kieran back long enough. It's time you let go and let them be together." Rage surges through me. My chest tightens, and everything goes black. When I open my eyes, I'm back 30 years earlier, standing in the Whitmore residence to choose my fiancee. This time, I don't hesitate. I skip right over Raina and choose her aunt, Elara Whitmore.

On my 28th birthday, I announced that I was pregnant. But my husband told everyone that he was sterile. Together with my best friend, they said that this was proof that I cheated on him. I tried defending myself, but in the end, I, along with my baby, died while burning with hate. When I reopened my eyes, I returned to the moment three hours before my death.

One of Ethan Sterling's closest friends got drunk and humiliated me. Called me a nobody orphan who married above her station, said I'd never be accepted by the Sterlings, that I wasn't fit to sit at their table. Ethan smashed a bottle over the man's head. He announced in front of everyone that if anyone ever disrespected me again, he'd make them pay. When I was pregnant and the morning sickness was so brutal I couldn't keep anything down, he went and scheduled a vasectomy. He didn't want me to suffer through another pregnancy. This was a man who loved me like I was his whole world. And yet — when I was lying on the operating table about to give birth, he was standing right in front of me with his arms around Iris, putting on a show for anyone watching. Iris was the daughter of another old-money family and she'd donated bone marrow to save Ethan's mother's life. The night before her own engagement, her fiance betrayed her, and the trauma wiped her memory clean. Now the only thing she knew for certain was that Ethan Sterling was her husband. In her world, I was the homewrecker — the scheming woman using the bastard in her belly to force her husband into a divorce. Ethan promised me it was all an act. Just repaying the debt for his mother's life. Once Iris recovered, he'd walk away from her immediately. But when I picked up the surgical consent form for him to sign, and his first instinct was to pull Iris behind him — to shield her — I knew. His heart had already drifted off course. The fairy tale of a Cinderella marrying into high society was over. Time to wake up.

I collapsed at work and rushed to the hospital. When I saw the pregnancy test results, my heart filled with joy. Finally, something to save our loveless marriage. But my billionaire husband Ethan didn't ask if I was okay. He yelled at me for missing work. I noticed a Tiffany box in his car and my hope returned. Maybe he does care. Maybe he bought me something special. That night, his stepsister Mara came home after years abroad. She walked into our dining room wearing the necklace from that box. The one I thought was mine. She smiled at me while touching the diamonds around her neck. Then she took my seat in his car. My project at work. My place at the dinner table. Even my bedroom felt like hers. When the elevator crashed and we both screamed for help, Ethan came running. He pulled her out first. He held her like she was his whole world. He left me bleeding on the floor, begging him to save our baby. I heard them talking through the hospital wall. Mara asked if he loved me. The silence that followed broke something inside me I can never fix. His grandfather kept them apart because they're stepsiblings. Now he's dead. Now she's back. And I'm just the wife standing in her way. I'm pregnant with his child, but I'm starting to realize the truth. I was never his first choice. I was never even his second. I was just someone to fill the space until she came home. The question is, will I stay and watch him choose her over and over again? Or will I finally choose myself?

Morning was a young she wolf with a dream to lead her pack. She was the strongest wolf around but she also had the greatest weakness. When she is betrayed by her fated mate and sentenced to death she gives up. But a life is given for hers and she escapes only to fall into the hands of the ruthless hunters. But a certain hunter takes her for himself. As his silver is turned upon her she knows that her life as she knew it was now over.

A 22 year old witch who just moved away from her coven didn’t know what to expect of her new life, but it certainly wasn’t a vampire mate. Excited about her new mate, she soon realizes it wasn’t the happily ever after she was searching for, and after she learns she has another mate out there – a wolf, sworn enemy of vampires – she must decide what her future will be. Should she stay with him, or betray everything they have built together on a small chance at real happiness?

…He caresses my check and I close my eyes and lean close so as to get more of his touch. "Catania, why is your pheromone doing this to me?" He asks calmly and this time around, I open my eyes. "Because… because you don't want to accept the…" my sentence is caught off by the feel of his lips colliding with mine. A thunder of emotions strike within me as he kisses me passionately, like he owns me, loves me. I return the kiss with all my might as I decide to forget everything that is going on and enjoy the moment. Without breaking the kiss, he gently pulls me into his big muscular arms and further intensifies the kiss. His lips are warm and soft. They are partly sighted, allowing my tongue to slip inside. Our bodies are pressed together heatedly as I our lips joined with each other's. I can taste our shared breath and feel the taste of our combined heartbeat. Warmth blossoms in my chest, igniting it as Alpha Nolan leans in close, with his lips brushing tentatively. This is my first kiss ever. The smell of his perfume is dizzying and it causes butterflies to dance in my stomach. My eyes are close and they seem to have gotten stuck. I want to open them, I want to get a better look at Alpha Nolan's dark brown eyes, I want to admire his crazy vampire hairline. I have the feeling this is never going to happen again and that this might even ruin what is left in my life, so I want to open my eyes and bear some witness but I can't, because I am so tired and his mouth is so soft… He cannot ignore the connection even if he wanted to…

The words echoed, a promise she wore like a blindfold. “Give me a chance to prove to you that love is beautiful.” Kensington Darley had believed him. At twenty-six, she was the beautiful, trusting daughter of a gilded cage, and she had willingly traded her own life’s map for the one drawn by her boyfriend. His choices became her destiny; his whispered needs, her sacred law. Until the moment his love demanded her degradation. He didn't ask her to empty a savings account. He didn't ask her to sell the family jewels. He asked for her body, for her dignity, to be sold piece by devastating piece. The debt. It was a cold, unforgiving beast, and the only currency powerful enough to silence it was Kensington's unwilling performance in front of a camera. Every forced smile, every feigned moan, was a knife-edge decision she made in the name of love. She despised the spotlights, the sterile sets, the shame that clung to her like cheap perfume—but she did it. Because she loved him. But as she watches the man she is saving—the man who allowed her to be lost—a single, poisonous question begins to bloom in the darkness of her despair: Does he love her back? If the answer is no, what becomes of a woman who has sacrificed everything for a lie? And how will Kensington Darley ever learn to trust a single word, let alone love, again?

Connor Greene, a golden boy in Brookhaven, is unwittingly drugged, and I end up being the cure for his "predicament". It's exactly a month later when I discover that I'm pregnant during a routine medical examination. Upon learning the news, Connor offers me 50 million dollars to carry the baby to term, and then another ten million dollars to take full custody of the child. It's then that Julie Sutton, my so-called righteous friend, persuades me to terminate the pregnancy, saying, "You ought to know that money isn't everything, Queenie. If you throw away your dignity for just 60 million dollars, then you're no better than those women who entertain men in clubs!" In my past life, I had an abortion at Julie's suggestion and pursued legal action against Connor, accusing him of assault. I later sought financial assistance and support from Julie after my parents fell gravely ill, but Julie slapped me hard across the face instead. "Your parents are seriously ill, and instead of figuring things out on your own, you come running to me, huh? You're truly shameless, Queenie!" Julie broke off our friendship right then, and I also lost the lawsuit against Connor. I couldn't afford the treatment, so my parents' lives were cut short by their illnesses. In the end, the grief of losing them was too much, so I decided to take my own life by jumping off a rooftop. When I open my eyes, I find myself returning to the day Julie tried to persuade me to get an abortion.

Have you ever been rejected by the one person who was supposed to love you forever? That's exactly what happens to Elara Vance in The Abandoned Luna's Return. Mocked as the 'human defect' who can't shift, abandoned by her Alpha mate during their mating ceremony, betrayed by her own sister... she was supposed to disappear into the river. But fate had other plans. Rescued and awakened to her true power as the last scion of an ancient dragon race, Elara returns—not as a victim, but as vengeance itself. Weak to strong. Betrayal to badass. Werewolf world meets dragon fire.