Unattainable

At our tenth engagement party, my girlfriend crushed my heart again, leaving my proposal ring dangling in the air. She had been chasing the ghost of her first love, and I was done being her fallback guy. When I finally opened my heart to someone new, she realized what she'd lost. Ten years together, ten engagement parties, and still, she wouldn't take my ring. Every time we reached the moment to exchange vows, she'd stare at the door, waiting for that man to swoop in and rescue her. She swore she'd only marry me if he crashed the party, claiming it would prove she'd truly chosen me. This time, I couldn't hold back. "If he never shows, are you just gonna keep stringing me along forever?" She shot back, "He still loves me. He'll show up to stop this. Besides, we've been together a decade. Does a ring even matter at this point?"

Oscar Miller was Shirley Bishop's personal bodyguard, but when she got attacked on her birthday, he shielded her foster sister, Myra Bishop, with his own body. Shirley got cut three times—once across her face, once on her arm, and a third that stabbed her lower abdomen, leaving her unable to have children ever again. But even after all that, she still wanted to marry him. Later, Oscar did marry her—but he never touched her, not even once, all the way until his death. At his funeral, the insurance company showed up. "Mr. Miller purchased a large insurance policy before his death. The beneficiary is Ms. Myra Bishop." That was when Shirley realized that after all these years, Oscar had never gotten over Myra. Now, she had been reborn to when her father asked her to choose from four men she had grown up with to be her husband. This time, she decided to fulfill his wish and picked someone else.

On our fourth wedding anniversary, I waited at home in vain. Ethan set off fireworks across the entire city for his first love. I was burned by the sparks and ended up in the hospital. Seeing my blackened wounds, he shielded his first love from the doorway and said coldly, "Don't look. It's disgusting." After returning home, I found lace lingerie in the washing machine on the balcony. I calmly took it out, folded it, and placed it on the living room table. Closing the lid, I booked a flight to London.

I was the stand-in who looked most like my husband's first love. He put me through countless plastic surgeries, both major and minor ones, until I became her exact likeness. But then, she came back from the dead. All it took was her saying, "I don't like anyone looking like me," and he sent me right back to the operating table once more. I begged him, telling him that my body couldn't handle it anymore. Alas, he only looked at me with irritation. "Seeing that cheap imitation of her face just disgusts me," he sneered. "No matter how close you come, you'll never be her." In the end, I died on that operating table. Yet, he went mad, trying desperately to recall what I once looked like.

I've been in a coma for six months after a car accident. When I finally wake up, the first thing I hear is something sloppy in my hospital ward. My girlfriend, Quinn Simpson, is in here. She's kissing Chad Scott, her true love. Chad looks uneasy as he glances at me every few seconds. "Quinn, don't do this. I heard coma patients can still hear things. If Mateo hears us—" Quinn scoffs, completely unbothered. "So what? He's a vegetable. Probably won't wake up for the rest of his life. It's better this way, isn't it? Didn't you say you liked living on the edge?" They talk trash about me right in front of my face. I can even feel the contempt in Quinn's eyes. When the two of them finally leave, they don't notice the effort it takes for me to crack my eyes open. But the nurse who walks in next does. She sees it immediately and slams the emergency button. Once I start regaining strength, the first thing I do is send a message to my parents. "Mom, Dad, I'll do the arranged marriage."

Anastasia Kain and I were childhood sweethearts, but we resented each other for a lifetime. She blamed me for making decisions without her consent. I had awakened her memories and driven her first love to jump off a building. I blamed her for breaking her promise. She once swore she would love me forever, yet after losing her memory, she fell for someone else. We were married, but we lived like strangers who happened to share a roof. However, when I was diagnosed with ALS and the whole city urged her to divorce me, Anastasia carried me on her back and climbed 3,000 steps to reach a cathedral, praying day and night just for me to live a little longer. When the end finally came, she stayed beside my hospital bed all night, her forehead pressed gently against my cheek. In a trembling whisper, she said, "Mason, I've done everything I could for you in this life. If there's a next one, please don't make me remember again. Let me be with him." Tears slipped from the corners of my eyes. Only then did I realize I should never have chained her to me with the love we shared in our youth. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day I first found Anastasia. This time, I chose to let her memories stay buried so that the girl I loved could run freely toward the man she had always wanted.

Ten years to the day we were mated, Eric came home wearing the scent of his first love. He wrapped me in his scorching heat, his voice a hoarse whisper against my ear. "I want you, Lyra." He hadn't marked me on a full moon in so long. But right now, the scent of another she-wolf on him was a bitter ache in my chest. The dinner I'd prepared for our full moon ritual was swept off the table by our cub, River. He looked at me with his father’s cold expression. "Mom, your cooking doesn’t even come close to Auntie Aurora’s." Aurora. The first love Eric could never forget. The one he'd brazenly appointed as CFO of our pack's corporation. They were the perfect pair, flaunting their connection for all to see. And I, his true mate, had become the pack's laughingstock. For ten years, I played the part of the perfect mate and mother, only to become a shadow in my own home. That night, I filed the request to the Elders. I would sever the mate bond。 Later, under the brilliant Alaskan aurora, I received Eric's frantic mind link. "Lyra, what about River if you leave?" I let out a small laugh. " River only needs you." "Your first love is back, isn't she? Let her be the mother. I'm free."

At eight months pregnant, my younger sister, Reina York, pushed me down the stairs, causing me to go into early labor.  At the hospital, I called Xavier Morales, but he answered with an impatient scoff. "What do you expect me to do about it? Stop bothering me." Xavier hated me, and he never wanted our child. Our baby girl was born, but despite the doctors doing everything they could, she did not make it. I called Xavier repeatedly, but he coldly hung up on me every time. Then, just moments later, I saw Reina's latest social media post. Xavier was there with her, smiling like he did not have a care in the world. He had completely abandoned me just to be with Reina. Even when our baby was cremated, they were still posting about their love like nothing had happened.  I did not scream, nor did I cry—I just packed my bags and left.

While accompanying my husband, Austin Lockhart, to his class reunion, we run into his true love, Leticia Gomez. After the gathering, Austin learns that Leticia's been having a tough time. He corners her against a wall and says, "How much do you still owe? Be with me, and I'll give you a hundred grand a month. Is that enough?" I stand quietly at the street corner, capturing their touching reunion on camera. Then, I send the photos to my lawyer. I also forward them to Austin with a simple message. "Since you two are so in love, why not go ahead and marry her?"

On the day of my wedding, my fiance suddenly announced that he had already registered his marriage with my sister. The system declared my mission a failure and sentenced me to be erased in a car crash. Just as despair closed in, Wayne Kinsey threw himself in front of me to save my life—and lost the use of his legs because of it. Later, I was given another chance to choose a new target, and I accepted his proposal. But five years into our marriage, I overheard a conversation between him and a friend. "Wayne, your crush already has a husband and children. Your legs are healed too. Aren't you going to come clean with Arden?" "No. Arden will always be a risk. Only if she keeps feeling guilty will she stay away and let Naomi have her happiness." As his familiar but cold voice echoed in my ears, my tears fell like beads of a broken string, and that was when I finally realized the so-called salvation Wayne had given me had been nothing but a lie through and through. In that case, there was no reason for me to keep holding on to this sham of a marriage.