Various Data Structures

Anathea Jacobson has had a crush on Gregory Sinclair for ten years. She thinks marrying him is a dream come true. Even if he's just a block of ice now, she'll surely be able to melt him over time. However, all she ever gets is his ice-cold treatment. He's gentle and tender to his true love, but he scorns and neglects her. He also mistreats and humiliates her… Anathea endures it all because they have a son. For his sake, she's willing to cling to her title of Mrs. Sinclair and cage herself in this loveless marriage for the rest of her life. This changes when she's abducted. Gregory spends the night with his true love, and even her beloved son abandons her—he wants to have Gregory's true love as his mother! That's when Anathea sees sense. Her husband will never love her, and her son will never appreciate her. If that's the case, she doesn't want them anymore. She wants to live for herself! … After the divorce, Anathea picks up floral art again. She sets up a company, makes big money, and wins various awards. She wants to give herself all the love she deserves so that she'll go back to being the lively, vivacious woman she once was. Gregory panics when he sees the men surrounding her and vying for her affections. He falls to his knees before her, his eyes rimmed with red as he pleads, "I love you, Nat. Please don't leave me." Anathea sneers. "Your love is too little, too late, Mr. Sinclair." Her son clings to her legs and wails. "Don't abandon me, Mom!" She pushes him away impassively. "Don't call me that. I'm not your mother."

Na véspera do meu casamento, cheguei cedo à nossa catedral para me familiarizar com o lugar. Em vez disso, encontrei meu noivo e minha meia-irmã, Isabella, transando no altar. No nosso altar. Eu os flagrei. Ele nem sequer se desculpou, apenas me expulsou na tempestade. Eu desmoronei sob a chuva torrencial. Foi então que ele me encontrou. Alistair, o Príncipe Vampiro. Ele se movia pela tempestade como um deus. Ele me tirou da lama e me deu um palácio. Ele contou ao mundo que eu era a sua alma gêmea. Aquela que ele passou séculos procurando. Sua única e exclusiva. Por cinco anos, sua devoção me tornou a inveja do mundo sobrenatural. Eu acreditava ser a única exceção em sua vida eterna. Até eu encontrar seu quarto secreto. Meus dedos tocaram um pergaminho antigo. A escrita era em sangue. A primeira linha era o nome dela: Isabella. Logo abaixo, na caligrafia de Alistair: “Prioridade absoluta. Acima de tudo.” Abaixo disso havia um registro de cura que eu nunca tinha visto. Um registro de cura de vampiros. A data era da noite em que descobri que estava grávida. A noite em que fui atacada por lobisomens. Eles me trouxeram de volta ao castelo, coberta de sangue. Os curandeiros nunca vieram até mim. Acordei sozinha. O bebê tinha desaparecido. Nosso filho. O sangue dele, o meu sangue — desaparecido. E minhas roupas estavam encharcadas com o que restara. Eu limpei cada vestígio. Quando ele voltou para casa, desmoronei em seus braços. Nunca contei a ele. Eu não suportaria que ele sentisse a dor que eu senti. Agora eu entendia. Naquela mesma noite, Isabella também estava sendo atacada por lobisomens. E a ordem de Alistair ao conselho foi: — Enviem todos os curandeiros. Isabella é a prioridade. Meu coração parou. O desespero corria como veneno nas minhas veias. Se eu nunca fui a escolhida… então você pode ficar com sua eternidade. Eu não quero fazer parte disso.

During the holidays, Ellie Harper, my wife who's a hospital director, tells me once again that she has taken on a few operations at the last minute, so she can't go home with me to spend time with my parents. But soon, I see her assistant, Jaiden Roth's social media feed. Apparently, Ellie is slaughtering pigs at Jaiden's village in preparation for a holiday party. The caption writes, "Dad says having a daughter-in-law who works as a doctor is amazing. To think that she's this skilled in slaughtering pigs as well!" With a cold smirk curling on my lips, I leave a like on the post. I also comment, "That's her major, after all." My colleagues keep gossiping among themselves in various group chats. They all think I'll definitely get into a huge fight with Ellie this time. Ellie wastes no time in calling me. I can already imagine the impatient look on her face and the way her brows are drawn into a tight frown. "Jaiden's village is hosting a huge party for the holidays, so I'm there to lend them a helping hand! What's with that passive-aggressive tone of yours, huh? "There isn't anyone who can help out in his household, you know! Do you know how badly it'll reflect on his family if no one from his side helps out at all? I was just helping him out as a friend! What's there to kick up a fuss over? "Hurry up and remove the like and the damn comment! Don't make life difficult for Jaiden at the hospital, you hear me? "Once I get back from the village, I'll pick a good date to go back to your hometown with you, okay?" Another empty promise from Ellie, it seems. All she does is making empty promises that she can never keep nowadays. I'm completely stuffed with those promises, and I can't afford to wait for her anymore. Once the holidays are over, I'll receive the divorce certificate marking the end of our seven-year marriage once and for all.

After I get abducted to an underground auction house belonging to a mafia family based in Aleroth, I become the most popular commodity ever in the live stream hosted on the dark web. As the live comments flood the screen and the viewers keep tipping the live stream, I feel my legs being forced open inch by inch. The electric chair beneath me keeps pulsing me with jolts of electricity, making me tremble uncontrollably. Men keep rearranging my limbs however they want in various positions. Then, they put me through all sorts of torture, as if I'm not a human being at all. Once everything is over, I can only curl into a small ball in a corner of the iron cage. My clothes are completely disheveled, and my gaze remains hollow and lifeless. That's when I hear someone speaking in Elythran, a language I'm familiar with. "Haha! That chick still thinks she can escape from this place!" "To think that the mafia princess of Elythra ends up getting lured to this place and reduced to a common whore for us to toy with! Those brothers really are ruthless!" "I heard the brothers did this just to appease their adopted younger sister, Emilia Ricci. That's why they ordered us to put up a show. Even the people tipping on the live stream are actors they've hired to make this show perfect." "This idiot is still waiting for her brothers to come rescue her! Last night, she kept crying out to them in her sleep, begging them to save her!" As the henchmen speak, they open the door to my room, only to be stunned by the blood-stained floor. Immediately, they dig out their phones and begin dialing numbers anxiously. The moment I make out one of the numbers, I feel my blood turn into ice. It appears that the so-called abduction is just a show that my brothers have put on just to appease Emilia… I can feel blood rising in my throat. As my vision goes blurry, I think I see another man's gentle expression. That's the memory that I've kept buried deep inside my heart—the memory of my actual older brother, Silvio Gallo.

I'm a medical miracle by nature. My blood is a natural antidote that can cure various poisons. When Miriam Wiley, the unmaterialistic heiress of the upper crust, gets bitten by a venomous snake, her life goes into countdown. At the critical juncture in my previous life, I slit my wrist and bled in order to help her cure the poison. After saving Miriam's life, I found out that whoever saved her would become the future son-in-law of the Wiley family. But the first thing Miriam did after inheriting her family fortune was to drain me of my blood. "Back then, Cedric was already rushing to me with a special drug! If I could wait for five more minutes, I'd be able to marry him! "You just had to interfere with my plan by stealing the position of the son-in-law from him! You made him slit his wrist and take his own life out of despair! "You claimed that your blood is an antidote to all the poisons in the world, right? I'd like to see how many antidotes I can actually produce from your blood!" After I got my blood drained, I was tossed into a cage filled with predators. My corpse ended up being battered and broken. As for my parents, they took some poison and ended their own lives after the Wileys forced them into bankruptcy. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day Miriam gets poisoned. Her mother, Verna Seymour, looks at me expectantly. "I heard that you're a medical miracle. Are you willing to save my daughter's life?" I quickly turn her down. "Those are just rumors, Mrs. Wiley. Besides, it's unsanitary to use blood as a form of antidote. You don't have to worry, though. I heard that Mr. Campbell is rushing toward this place with a special drug as we speak. Surely Ms. Wiley will live to see the day!" I'm starting to look forward to the outcome. Without my antidote, Miriam can forget about inheriting her family fortune. In fact, it'll be a miracle if she can live for an extra month.

Winifred Jaeger comes from an ordinary family. She meets Timothy Stringer, a rich heir who falls for her at first sight. He immediately starts pursuing her with gusto. Winifred knows they're from different worlds, so she keeps rejecting him. He doesn't give up, though. When she wants to have food from her hometown, he steps into the kitchen for the first time ever. He cooks for her, relishing in it despite getting scalded. When she wants to have candy, he lines up in the dead of winter to get it for her. The iciness and sharp wind don't faze him. She likes fringe tree flowers, so he gets seeds from all over the world. He covers a mountaintop with them for her. She likes making desserts, so he buys ingredients for her from various places. He's more than happy to test her finished products. When she's in a bad mood, he makes sure to cheer her up despite being sick. When Winifred graduates from college, Timothy spreads 99,999 roses on the field to propose to her. She finally realizes she's long since fallen for him, so she says yes. Everyone says she's lucky to have met a man who loves her so and thinks of her as his only one. Yet it's precisely this man who cheats on her when they're about to get married. He tells her he loves her, yet he almost manically tries to have a baby with his mistress. Heartbroken and devastated, Winifred chooses to leave. It's only after she's gone that Timothy searches for her like crazy. When he finds her, he does everything possible to beg her to go back to him. He paces outside her door and begs her incessantly, his eyes red-rimmed. However, she turns him down calmly. "It's too late—you're a closed chapter in my book, and I'm already on a new chapter." Winifred turns to look at a tall, handsome man standing nearby—Timothy's childhood friend, Cyrus Littrell.

I, Daphne Thorn, am an impoverished woman from the slums. William Blackburn, on the other hand, is the son of the richest man in Wylland. Unexpectedly, the two of us who share such vastly different identities end up being together. So far, we've tried out various difficult positions in our bouts of passion during our secret rendezvouses in secluded areas. Like the madman he is, William often torments me in every session. I'm so exhausted that I'm about to fall asleep. That's when a notification pops up on William's phone, which is sitting next to me. So, I take a peek at it. "William, my stomach hurts a lot! I'm suffering so much right now!" It's a text from someone named "Ellie". All the exhaustion in me disappears. I can feel my chest tightening up in discomfort. Once William is done with his shower, he leaves the bathroom and picks up his phone. "You should sleep first. I'm heading out," he says. When I see William turning his back on me, I blurt out, "Are you going to meet that childhood sweetheart of yours?" William wheels around to look at me. Suddenly, he moves to lift my chin. There is a trace of wariness in his eyes. "Don't go around sticking your nose in my business, Daphne. I like my woman docile and obedient." But I end up stalking William all the way to Royale Hotel, where I witness him visiting Elaine Moore, his childhood sweetheart. He coaxes her as though she's the most precious treasure in the world. I don't have the courage to question William in person. But still, I want to know who he thinks is more important to him—me or Elaine? So, I give him a call. "William, my gastritis is acting up again! It hurts so much! Can you drive me to the hospital?" I said. I use the same tactic that Elaine had used earlier. That night, I keep waiting for William, and yet he never returns to me. That's when I decide to not love him anymore.

I was a stray pup. At five years old, several elite warriors captured me and threw me in front of the Alpha heir, Lucas. I heard his wolf talking to Lucas in his mind. "Lucas, this damn little thing is a hybrid of a werewolf and an evil witch. The prophecy shows she will be extremely vicious in the future, even killing your Mate. For the Moon Goddess, you must kill her now to protect your future Luna." Lucas agreed carelessly. But when he saw me, he froze. "Seriously? Dude, you’re saying this tiny thing is a homicidal maniac? How vicious can she be? Cursing the future Luna with a lollipop?" I tugged the corner of Lucas's expensive shirt, and looked up. "Big brother, I'm so hungry." He looked at my body, starved to just bones, and hesitated. "Anyway, the mate hasn't appeared yet. Might as well let her eat first. Even when we execute rogues, we usually let them eat their fill before killing them." His wolf replied, "Makes sense... but after she's full, you can't hesitate again!" From that day on, he raised me, this mixed-race brat, like a little sister in his pack. For over a decade, he and his wolf plotted countless times how to kill me, but always found various excuses to postpone the execution. Until I was 16, my brother was injured and lying in the healing center, but his wolf, having lost its will to live after being rejected by its mate, was unable to heal itself. The healer said my brother was going to die. I didn't try to stop him; I just found that playboy from school who had harassed me. I forced him to send my brother a mind link. "Alpha, I just wanted to say, Emma's body is really... really banging. I'll take good... care of her for you." I even chimed in through the mind link with a flirtatious whine. "Jason, don't be like that, Lucas will get mad... stop it." Less than half a second later. An earth-shattering roar came. "Son of a bitch! Jason, get the fuck away from her!" "If you touch a single finger on her, I'll tear you to shreds!"