Unattainable

My husband’s first love had a miscarriage. He insisted that it was my doing and forced me to give my daughter up. “If it weren’t for you, Becky wouldn’t have a miscarriage! You should let her have your baby! You must pay for her pain of losing her baby!” I begged for mercy and resisted him. However, he grabbed my hair and kicked my belly even though I had just delivered my baby. He tied me up and locked me up in the basement for fear that I might run away. But I was dying. He even made a nice excuse. “You’re petty and jealous. You harmed Becky too. Since you feel no remorse, I’ll punish you and lock you up in the basement to reflect on your mistakes!” Seven days later, his first love found the baby too noisy and got annoyed by the baby. Suddenly, he thought of me. “Let her have the baby. And see if she’s behaving herself.” Little did he know that I was rotting in the basement with maggots eating away at my body.

The tenth time one of my paintings appeared under my sister Rose's name, I handed Adrian the divorce papers. He raised an eyebrow and tossed the agreement aside without a second glance. "Don't be dramatic. Your hand is ruined -- where would you even go without me?" I said nothing. He smiled, his tone dripping with casual indifference. "You should be grateful. Rose was the one I was supposed to marry. A few paintings is a small price to pay. A little gratitude wouldn't kill you." He blew a ring of cigarette smoke directly into my face. I choked, and the sting brought tears to my eyes. Through the blur, I was transported back to the moment my tendons were severed for his sake -- a pain that had drilled straight to the bone. He thought I had no choice but to take it. What he didn't know was that I'd already accepted an offer from the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Soon, I would be free of him for good.

Three days before our engagement, Zach Jefferson called me. “We’ll need to postpone the engagement party by a month. That day is Sienna’s first concert since she returned, and I need to be there. “It’s just a postponement. It’s no big deal.” He had postponed our engagement three times that year. The first time was because Sienna Lynch had been hospitalized with appendicitis. He said he had to take care of her and rushed over. The second time, Sienna said she was feeling down. He was worried she might get depressed and immediately booked a flight to see her. It was the third time. I simply said, “Okay.” After hanging up, I turned to the good-looking and refined man beside me. “Are you interested in marrying me?” Later, during Sienna’s concert, Zach left her without hesitation. With red, teary eyes, he rushed to my engagement ceremony. “Yulia, are you really getting engaged to this man?”

My husband, Adrian Cross, was a high-profile lawyer. We'd been married for seven years. I'd always wanted a child of our own, but he had never touched me because his heart belonged to someone else. Not long ago, I got into a car accident trying to save him. He promised he would grant me any wish. Everyone assumed I would ask him to have a child with me, but I calmly asked for a divorce. Adrian laughed, a cruel, public sneer on his face. "Don't pretend," he mocked. "I've never met anyone as shameless as you. You'd risk your life for me, yet you think you could ever leave me?" My heart, long hardened, turned even colder. He had no idea that I had been given a second chance. … In my previous life, I finally became pregnant with his child. But his obsession, the one he couldn't forget, took her own life. All his rage fell on me. On the day I went into labor, he locked me in the basement and forced me to swallow a massive dose of abortion drugs. As blood gushed from me, he laughed like a madman. "Ella died because of you and that wretched child you're carrying. For the pain she endured, you will pay twice over!" I died from hemorrhaging. And he went on to hold a wedding at the grave of his lost love. But reborn, I returned to the day of the car accident, ready to see their doomed love come to its bitter end.

I was trapped in a sea filled with icebergs, clinging to life alongside Elsa —the sweetheart of my mate, Alpha Luke, and her son. After a long hesitation, Luke chose to save me, the one carrying his unborn twins. After he brought me to shore, there wasn’t enough time for him to go back for Elsa. All he could do was watch her drift away, swallowed by the freezing waves, until she disappeared from sight. He never forgave me for it. He said I delayed him—that if not for me, he could have saved her. For five long years, he hated me. He wouldn't even let my twin pups call him “father.” Then came the day the witch brewed a time machine that could turn back time. Luke gave up everything—his title, his pride, even his sons—just for the chance to go back. “Aria,” he said before leaving, “did you really think I saved you because I cared? If I hadn’t saved you first, the whole pack would’ve blamed Elsa. That’s the only reason.” After he was gone, his mother looked at me with eyes full of disdain. “This is all your fault,” she said. “If Luke had saved Elsa first, he might’ve been happy now.” Even my own children resented me. “You're the reason Father hates us,” they said. “You're the one who killed Elsa. Why couldn’t it have been you who died that day?” Despised by everyone, I drank the potion without a second thought. This time, I would go back. This time, I would save myself. And I would owe Luke nothing.

My mother fell critically ill and was rushed to the hospital. Desperate, I knelt before my fiancé—the department's chief surgeon—and begged him to take charge of her operation. But outside the ICU, he was carefully tending to a scraped knee. Lucy Wendell's scraped knee, to be exact. Just as I was drowning in hopelessness, Cameron Mitchell—the hospital director and my childhood friend—pushed open the operating room doors and handed me a marriage proposal. "Marry me, and I'll personally perform your mother's surgery." With trembling hands, I signed my name, clinging to the last shred of hope that she could be saved. But she never made it through that stormy night. Cameron handled all the funeral arrangements himself, and our wedding proceeded as scheduled. Seven years later, in the hushed silence of the hospital archives, I overheard Cameron speaking with the deputy director. "Cameron, why did you transfer your mother-in-law's organ to Lucy's mother during that surgery? Weren't you afraid of getting caught?" "I owed Lucy," he replied. "If I hadn't hesitated back then, Lucy never would've chosen medical aid work in Africa… and her mother wouldn't have fallen ill from the grief."

After a car accident, my wife loses her memory. She throws herself into her first love's arms and frantically aborts our child. When I confront her in despair, she looks at me with nothing but contempt. "Why would I keep some child when I don't even know who the father is? You're really shameless, pulling this stunt just to avoid splitting the assets." What she doesn't know is that I have made a deal with the system to bring her back to life. By the time she remembers everything, she's already searching desperately for me all over the world. But I can never return.

After my death, I found myself inside a romance strategy game, where the system assigned me three male leads. If I followed its instructions and successfully captured the heart of any one of them, I would return alive and well in the real world. Drawing on my experience, I crafted careful scripts to win their affection. Yet, every attempt ended in failure. The reason was simple: each of them had already fallen for the dazzling heroine of their world. They hurled cruel words at me, as if wishing I would just drop dead. In the end, I fulfilled their desire—when my strategies failed, the system erased me. But the moment I died, they all regretted it. One by one, they begged the heavens to return me to them.

My Alpha mate Kieran ordered our eight-year-old son to burn my mother alive because his Omega assistant accused me of killing her pet dog out of spite. Kieran's eyes were filled with impatience and disgust. "You're supposed to be our pack's respected Luna. Why would you target an innocent Omega? Whatever harm her pet suffered, your mother will endure the same. Your mother is paying the price for your jealousy!" I fell to my knees, begging Kieran to spare my mother. But he commanded our seven-year-old son Owen to light the fire himself. My son didn't hesitate for a second as he threw the torch into the pile of wood. "That's what you get for always going against Aunt Sera!" I screamed and cried, desperately begging them to help me put out the flames. "Please, I'm begging you, take my mother to the healing center..." "Enough, Aria. Your mother is still lying in the hospital bed. That's just a training dummy. Stop putting on this pathetic act." After saying that, father and son walked away without looking back. They didn't know that it really was my mother burning in those flames. But when I finally gave up on them and left, why did they both come crawling back, begging me to return?

It was the day of our marriage. We were supposed to meet up at the City Hall, but my fiancee stood me up. I waited for her the whole day, and the only answer I got was a picture from her assistant. My girlfriend sat astride on his lap, and her arms were wrapped around his neck while they were locked in a deep kiss. "Sorry, Mr. Terraton. Sophie insisted on comforting me. You don't mind, do you?" I demanded answers from my girlfriend, but that only made her impatient. "He donated his blood to me. Yeah, I was with him, but so what? Man up, will you?" That killed any love I had for her, and I called my soon-to-be ex-girlfriend's sister. "Hey, Sylvie. Yeah, about your proposal. So will you marry me?"