Blood on the Snow, A Lost Life
On our sixth anniversary, I found my fiancé Carter had given my grandmother's heirloom locket to his "fragile" colleague, Carmen.
When I confronted him, he slapped me across the face.
He then dragged me out into the snow, forcing me to my knees to apologize to Carmen for upsetting her. The stress and his violence triggered a miscarriage. I was losing our baby right there at his feet.
He never even noticed the blood staining the snow. He was too busy comforting the woman he chose over me and our child.
I left that night and never looked back.
Three years later, after building a new life and a successful bakery, he showed up on my doorstep, a ghost of a man, dying of cancer.
He collapsed, coughing up blood at my feet, begging for a forgiveness I no longer had to give.
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Chapter 6
I woke up to a world bleached of color, stark white walls, white sheets, and the sterile scent of antiseptic. My body felt heavy, hollow, an empty vessel adrift in a sea of pain. I blinked, trying to clear the fog from my mind, and my gaze drifted to the ceiling. A faint, brownish stain marred the pristine white, a grim reminder of the blood that had flowed, the life that had been lost.
A nurse, her steps soft, entered the room. "You're awake. How are you feeling?"
I tried to answer, but my throat was raw, dry. I just managed a raspy whisper. "What… what happened?"
"You had a severe miscarriage, Ms. Delaney," she said gently, adjusting the IV drip. "You lost a lot of blood. You're lucky to be alive, actually. For a while there, we were worried." She paused, her gaze softening. "You're in a private room. We had to move some things around because the ER was so busy. Your… partner tried to come in, but we had to restrain him."
My partner. Carter. The name felt like ash on my tongue. I closed my eyes, a fresh wave of pain, emotional this time, washing over me. I didn't want to see him. I didn't want to hear his name.
I lay there for what felt like an eternity, my body stiff, my mind numb. Through the window, I could see bare tree branches, heavy with fresh snow, bending under the weight. They looked as fragile as I felt, waiting for the inevitable snap.
The nurse returned, checking my vitals. "Are you from Aspen, Ms. Delaney?" she asked, her voice kindly. "Do you have family here? You don't sound like you're from around here."
I managed a weak smile, a grimace that barely touched my lips. "No. I'm not from here. And no, I don't really have family here." I paused, a sudden clarity cutting through the haze of grief. "And I don't like it here."
"Oh?" she asked, surprised.
"No," I repeated, firmer this time. "I hate the cold. I hate the snow. I hate everything about this place." A deep, unwavering resolve settled in my heart. "I'm leaving. I'm going back home." Home to Austin. To rebuild my real home.
The nurse nodded slowly, a knowing look in her eyes. She picked up an empty pill bottle from my nightstand. "Well, that's a big decision. But sometimes, a fresh start is exactly what you need." She paused at the door. "Your partner… Mr. Rodgers… he asked me to give you a message. He said he had to go help Carmen with something. Some emergency with her son, Leo. But he said he' d be back as soon as he could. He was very worried about you."
My stomach, already a knot of pain, recoiled. Carmen. Leo. Even now, even after everything, he chose them. A bitter, ironic laugh caught in my throat. I felt nothing. No anger, no sadness. Just a profound, liberating emptiness. He was no longer capable of hurting me.
My phone, miraculously unharmed, lay on the bedside table. A flurry of notifications flashed across the screen. Missed calls from Carter. Messages from Carmen. I opened her chat, my eyes scanning the words.
Carmen: "Haven, I'm so sorry. I didn't know you were pregnant. Please, tell me you're okay. This is all my fault."
I deleted the message without replying. Then I opened Carter's.
Carter: "Haven, please answer me. I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me. I'll make it right, I swear. We'll get married. We'll try again for another baby. Please, just hold on. I love you."
Another baby. The words twisted the knife in the still-fresh wound. He thought my pain was just "sadness." He couldn't even comprehend the depth of the betrayal, the loss. Sadness was too shallow a word for the chasm that had opened inside me.
My fingers, surprisingly steady, flew across the screen. I deleted every single message from Carter. Then, I blocked his number. And Carmen's. And anyone else associated with them. I purged them from my digital life, a symbolic cleansing.
Then, I booked the earliest flight to Austin I could find.
With a newfound surge of adrenaline, I ripped the IV needle from my arm, a sharp pain, but nothing compared to what I'd already endured. I swung my legs off the bed, my muscles stiff and weak, but my resolve iron-clad. I gathered my few belongings, pulling on my blood-stained clothes, not caring how I looked. I had to get out. Now.
I crept past the nurses' station, my heart pounding, a desperate fugitive. The hospital corridors, once a place of fear, now represented a prison I had to escape. I pushed through the automatic doors, the cold Aspen air hitting me like a slap. I hailed a cab, giving the driver the airport address.
The snow fell softly, silently, covering the tracks of my broken past. Aspen, you were too cold. I decided right then I would never come back.
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8.5
He bought her womb. He never expected to lose his heart. Athena was sold like an animal to a ruthless Alpha who wanted an heir-not a wife. Marked as his breeder, she was his to touch, to hold, and to use. Athena suffered in silence, hiding the truth that she was his fated mate, hoping he would one day love her. But when she could no longer endure the pain, Athena fled-taking with her the one thing Alpha Raphael truly wanted: his child. And she vowed to make him pay for treating her as nothing more than a slave. Can the man who once shared her bed and haunted her dreams win her back?Or will Athena fall for the new Alpha who offers her something she never had-freedom and love?
7.2
"I reject you as my mate, Omega." his angry voice growled, shocking me.
"I-Is this because I am your stepsister now?" I asked, feeling an unfamiliar pain in my chest.
He scoffed at me, gave me a glare, and replied, "Even if you weren't my stepsister, I would never accept you as my mate. Because you are ugly, weak, and vulnerable."
I fell to my knees as tears streamed from my eyes. All I wanted was to die from the shame and pain of rejection.
-
Elara was a young omega whose fate collided with her two Alpha stepbrothers. She found herself trapped between them.
The Kingston brothers, Trevor and Kevin, were the dream of every girl. Kevin was wild and aggressive while Trevor was cold and calculative.
They were the two dominant Alpha brothers who possessed everything other boys desired. But when fate connected Elara with one of them, they rejected her. When she chose the other one, the rejected mate wanted her back.
They had no idea that their one wrong decision would set off a chain reaction of feelings.
This is a tale of a love triangle, shocking betrayal, and the unexpected path from hate to love.
9.4
She only wanted to protect the man she loved... but she changed him instead.
Rena never imagined that her creation would turn into something powerful, something dangerous yet still deeply tied to her heart. Beneath the darkness, he still remembers her... still wants her... still loves her in a way only a monster can.
Now, caught between fear and a love she can't let go of, Rena must decide can she save him... or will she fall for the monster she created?
8.0
My father raised seven brilliant orphans to be my potential husbands. For years, I only had eyes for one of them, the cold and distant Caspian Vance, believing his distance was a wall I just had to break through.
That belief shattered last night when I found him in the garden, kissing his foster sister, Lyra—the fragile girl my family took in at his request, the one I had treated like my own sister.
But the true horror came when I overheard the other six Ashworth Fellows talking in the library.
They weren't competing for me. They were working together, orchestrating "accidents" and mocking my "stupid, blind" devotion to keep me away from Caspian.
Their loyalty wasn't to me, the heiress who held their futures in her hands. It was to Lyra.
I wasn't a woman to be won. I was a foolish burden to be managed. The seven men I grew up with, the men who owed my family everything, were a cult, and she was their queen.
This morning, I walked into my father's study to make a decision that would burn their world to the ground. He smiled, asking if I'd finally won Caspian over.
"No, Dad," I said, my voice firm. "I'm marrying Silas Blackwood."
8.0
To the outside world, I was the envy of every she-wolf as the fiancée of Alpha Kael. But inside the gilded cage of his pack house, I was a ghost.
I molded myself into perfection for him, wearing the colors he liked and suppressing my own voice.
Until I walked past his study and saw him with Lyra—the orphan he called his "sister."
His hand rested intimately on her thigh as he laughed, telling her, "Elara is just a political necessity. You are the moon in my sky."
My heart shattered, but the physical blow came days later.
During a training exercise, the safety cable snapped. I fell twenty feet, shattering my leg.
Lying in the dirt, gasping through the pain, I watched my Fated Mate run.
Not to me.
He ran to Lyra, who was burying her face in his chest, feigning terror. He comforted her while I bled.
Later, in the infirmary, I heard him whisper to her, "She won't die. It will just teach her who the real Luna is."
He knew. He knew she had sabotaged the rope with silver, and he was protecting her attempted murder.
The final thread of my love incinerated into ash.
The next morning, I walked into the Council Hall, threw a thick file on the table, and looked the Elders in the eye.
"I am dissolving the engagement," I stated coldly. "And I am withdrawing my family's silver supply. I will starve this Pack until you beg."
Kael laughed, thinking I was bluffing. He didn't notice the lethal Beta from the rival pack standing in the shadows behind me, ready to help me burn Kael's kingdom to the ground.
9.4
I was recovering from surgery for a stress-induced ulcer, the price I' d paid for building an empire with my husband, Braden. He said he was at a work dinner. He lied.
From my hospital bed, I found his anonymous online confession: a sordid tale of his affair with a young intern while his "sick" partner was away. The details were a perfect match.
But the true horror came later. His mistress, Kandy, in a fit of rage, shoved me so hard I fell. The fall caused a miscarriage, ending the life of the child I was secretly carrying-the child he had begged me for.
He later saved me from a fire, leaving him with a mangled leg. In the hospital, he pleaded for my forgiveness, then begged me to spare Kandy from the consequences.
"She's just a kid," he pleaded.
He wanted me to save the very person who destroyed our baby.
In that moment, the woman he married died. I decided I wouldn't just leave him. I would systematically destroy everything he had ever built.