1945 Pulitzer Winning

Zac Jesselton and I grew up together. From the time we were little, we never went more than three days without seeing each other. Ever since I confessed my feelings to him, he started avoiding me. He even went as far as hiring bodyguards to monitor my every move. “If Nancy ever shows up within half a mile, remind me to leave immediately.” That was the sentence he said most often to his bodyguards and friends. I did as he wished and stopped chasing after him. I married someone my parents introduced me to. However, the same man who had once insisted on keeping his distance started clinging to me and refused to leave me alone.

Alpha Jakob gave me the grandest bonding ceremony five years ago. I became the world's most envied woman. Five years later, I received a provocative voice message from Jakob's first love, Molly. "I just got back to the pack, and all I needed to do was to play coy with Jakob, and he came right over. Tonight, he originally prepared blue fireworks for me. I don't like blue, but I decided to give it to you since I never liked to waste. You can use it during your anniversary." The day during our fifth mate bond anniversary, I looked at the blue fireworks blooming in the night sky, quietly waiting in my seat as I faced the empty seat opposite me. Molly's provocation came again. A photo of her having a candlelight dinner with Jakob. I didn't cry, and simply submit the application to terminate my mate bond with Jakob to the pack's Elder Council. At this time, my personal assistant told me she saw someone had applied for a grand bonding ceremony. "Luna Cynthia, the bonding ceremony is prepared by Molly for herself and Alpha Jakob. It will take place seven days later. Do you wish to stop it?" "There's no need to. If this is what Jakob wants, I'll make their wish come true." Jakob was still promoting how deep his love for me was, saying that I was the woman he loved the most in his life. But he didn't know that seven days later, I would leave the pack and never return again. That night, he collapsed.

After getting back together with Peter Palmer, I stopped caring about where he went or what he did. He spent all our savings on Julia Sharp, and I didn’t even bother asking why. Maybe he realized something, because before leaving me once again to be with her, he said, “Julia’s leaving to live abroad tomorrow. She won’t be coming back. Once she’s gone, we’ll get married.” I gave a casual reply. After all, I was leaving too.

I made a deal with Sonia Quindt—the billionaire CEO. After I'd proposed to her ninety-nine freaking times, she swore she'd finally show up for the hundredth. Spoiler: she didn't. She was out there at some concert with her boy toy. And, of course, someone caught them on livestream. Big kiss. Big viral moment. Meanwhile, my face was plastered all over the internet too—lonely guy number one, waiting for a bride who never existed. Everyone online started making bets. Who was the mystery woman? How long until I came crawling back for the hundred-and-first proposal? Sonia, apparently struck by some last-minute guilt, promised she'd make it right next time. Said she'd actually show up. And she did. Wedding dress. Perfect makeup. Cameras ready. She got a text from me: [Sonia, there won't be a hundred-and-first proposal. We're done.]

Bethany Cole and Shane Stafford were supposed to get married in two weeks, but Shane was thinking about postponing the wedding again. It was all because his stepsister, Yelena White, had another episode and was crying for him to drop everything and take her to Maldivea to see the ocean. The wedding had been planned for two years, and Bethany had had enough. If Shane did not want to get married, she would find someone else to take his place.

The day before my wedding, I went to our cathedral early to get familiar with the place. Instead, I found my fiancé and my stepsister, Isabella fucking on the altar. Our altar. I caught them. He didn't even apologize and just threw me out into the storm. I collapsed in the pouring rain. That’s when he found me. Alistair, the Vampire Prince. He moved like a god through the storm. He pulled me from the mud, and gave me a palace. He told the world I was his soulmate. The one he’d spent centuries searching for. His one and only. For five years, his devotion made me the envy of the supernatural world. I thought I was the one exception in his eternal life. Until I found his secret room. My fingers brushed against an ancient scroll. The script was written in blood. The first line was her name: Isabella. Beneath it, in Alistair's own hand: “Absolute priority. Above all else.” Underneath was a healer's log I’d never seen before. A vampire's healing log. The date was from the night I found out I was pregnant. The night I was attacked by werewolves. They brought me back to the castle, covered in blood. The healers never came for me. I woke up alone. The baby was gone. Our child. His blood, my blood—gone. And my clothes were soaked in what was left of it. I cleaned every trace of it. When he came home, I broke down in his arms. I never told him. I couldn’t bear for him to feel the pain I felt. Now I understood. That same night, Isabella was also being attacked by werewolves. And Alistair’s order to his council was: “Send every healer. Isabella is the priority.” My heart stopped. Despair was a poison in my veins. “If I was never the one... then you can keep your eternity. I want no part of it.”

After my divorce, I went to the southwest mountainous regions to volunteer for rescue work, where two years passed in the blink of an eye. One day, our daughter gets diagnosed with aplastic anemia, and her life can only be sustained through a bone marrow transplant from me. It's only then that my ex-wife thinks of me. She heads to the mountains with a group of bodyguards and searches everywhere, but she can't find a trace of me. She thinks I have deliberately hidden myself from her. "As long as you're willing to donate the bone marrow, I'll promise you visitation rights to see our daughter in the future." However, the townspeople tell her that I have long since passed away. She frowns slightly, her expression full of impatience as she says, "I never thought that, after all these years, he would still play these childish games." In the end, she searches high and low, only to unearth my bones.

At the wedding, I immediately recognized that the woman under the veil wasn't Selene, but an impostor. But I still went through with the ceremony as if nothing was wrong. In my previous life, Selene had been forced to return and complete the wedding with me after I exposed the fake bride in front of everyone. That very night, however, her childhood sweetheart was rushed to the ICU with acute alcohol poisoning. When Selene heard the news, she didn't shed a tear. Instead, she cursed him, saying he got what he deserved. … After we married, Selene and I appeared to be a loving couple on the surface. I kept funneling money from my family to save her family business from collapse. But on our first anniversary, my wife—with not even a sliver of warmth in her eyes—tied me to a helicopter with her own hands. "If you hadn't forced me to come back and marry you that day, Chase wouldn't have ended up like that," she snarled. "What right do you have to live so happily? I'll make sure you feel the pain he went through before he died." She threw me from ten thousand yards up, and I hit the ground as nothing more than a broken heap of flesh. So, this time, I pretended to know nothing and went through with the wedding alongside the fake bride. I wanted to see just how Selene would manage to save the crumbling Liraine Co. without the Schreiber family's support.

It is the final day for the high school students to submit their university application forms, and I find out that someone has swapped out my and Ned Nicholson's application forms for Jafferton College instead. In a panic, I hurry off to find Ned to tell him about it, but I end up overhearing a conversation between him and one of his friends instead. "Ned, you promised Miranda Montez that you would both apply for Hale University together. Why did you secretly swap out both your application forms for Jafferton College instead? Aren't you worried that Miranda's going to make a huge fuss about it?" Ned sounds confident as he replies, "She won't. She'll listen to whatever I say. She'll be fine with it as long as she's still in the same college as I am." He pauses for a while before continuing in an impatient voice. "Scarlett Jordan can't get into Hale University. It's beyond her. She's going to be really scared if she has to go to Westward to study on her own, so I promised her that I'd go to the same college she was going to. "I mean, Jafferton College isn't that bad. Miranda wouldn't mind it at all." I stay silent for a long while before leaving quietly, pretending that I never heard a thing. I withdrew my application form for Jafferton College and submitted a new form for Dayward University instead. We made a promise to each other that we would start dating after getting into university. But since he's breaking his promise for someone else's sake, I decide to leave him quietly and go after my own dreams instead.

When a ferocious storm tore through our town, Frank Turner risked his life to save me from being swept off our balcony's edge. Grateful, I finally said yes to his relentless marriage proposals. From then on, he treated me like royalty, fussing over every sniffle. To the world, he was the gold standard of devotion. But two years into our marriage, his warmth faded. When crippling stomach pain left me doubled over, he brushed it off, claiming work demanded his night. I went to find him, only to catch him in a steamed-up car with a girl, both stripped bare. My fairy-tale marriage shattered like glass. Turning around, I booked a flight and left the country. Frank tore the city apart looking for me, but it was too late.