Tragic

"Callum, why don't you spend more time with me?" As Callum Kilbourne's Beta, Lena Morrison keeps using sending documents to him as an excuse to badger him. Her voice is sickly sweet to the point I feel like puking. Thanks to my sharp sixth sense as a werewolf, I know immediately that Lena has feelings for Callum the first time she follows him into this house. At first, I thought even if this mate bond started from a mistake, at least my daughter, Mia Kilbourne's presence would serve as an anchor for both Callum and me. We'd at least make an effort to keep things peaceful on the surface. But when my five-year-old goes missing, I spend the whole night calling Callum on the phone. All I can hear is a cold, repetitive dial tone in return. The next day, Callum finally comes home, reeking of alcohol and carrying the faintest trace of an unfamiliar perfume. Suddenly, I feel exhausted. I don't even have the energy to fight with Callum anymore. A moment of silence later, I look up at him. "Let's break the bond, Callum." The Alpha, who's used to keeping everything under control at all times, suddenly glares at me with bloodshot eyes. He grabs me by the neck and pins me on the wall immediately, his claws soon tightening around my neck. "Break the bond, you say? What right do you even have to bring that up, Ayla Townsend?"

When Steven Baxter, the heartthrob of the school, admits that he loves action movies the most, my childhood friend, Lisa Thornton, has my limbs strapped to four huge drones. During the flag-raising ceremony on Monday morning, the drones lift me high up in the air in front of the entire school. The students' laughter is deafeningly loud. The videos they take quickly go viral, too. I only get to return to the surface once the drones finally run out of power and make their descent automatically. With a wide grin on her face, Lisa unties me from the drones. "Steven loves action movies, so we had you cosplay the main character from the most popular Tom Cruise movie. "We grew up together since we were kids, Dominic. Surely you don't mind, right?" As I sit on the ground, Steven pulls Lisa into his arms before he starts guffawing at me. Tears soon streak down his face from all the laughing. "I can't believe you actually peed yourself!" "Ahahahaha!" I get up to my feet and walk away. From then on, I don't return to Lisa's side. But Lisa soon loses her mind. "We've known each other for ten years! Must you really do this to me?"

My fated mate, Alpha Horton, didn't love me. He loved another omega, Chloe. In my past life, Chloe took her own life in despair over him, and Horton was convinced I had driven her to it out of jealousy. He hated me to the bone. Even bound by our mate bond, he refused to touch me. But when a rival pack’s silver bullet flew toward me, he shielded me with his own body. As his life drained away, he wrenched his cold hand from mine, his golden eyes filled with nothing but regret and disgust. "Sienna," he said, "my one regret is not rejecting you from the very beginning." After he died, the pack fell apart. Every member cursed me, screaming about why it wasn't me who died, but their great Alpha. It felt like my heart had turned to ash. I swallowed a vial of liquid silver before his grave. When I opened my eyes, I was back ten years in the past, shortly after we were mated. The cold voice of the Moon Goddess echoed in my mind. "Child, I will give you one more chance. Fulfill the three deepest wishes in Horton's heart, and in exchange for your life, your soul will earn its true freedom." I knew his wishes. To break our mate bond. To be with Chloe. To ensure the survival of the Snow Moon pack. This time, it wasn't too late. The freedom he craved, the woman he loved, the pack he swore to protect. I would give it all to him, using the very life he loathed to do it. But when I granted his every wish, in return, he wept with regret, calling me his only fated mate.

At eight months pregnant, I was in a car accident and delivered a stillborn child. My husband, who had always been so gentle, turned on me. He called me useless. He said I couldn't even protect our baby. He forced me into a divorce and, without looking back, rushed into a hasty marriage with his long-lost first love. Just as despair threatened to swallow me whole, Grayson Brooke—my childhood friend who had been overseas for years—returned. He confessed his feelings and promised to cherish me for the rest of my life. But in the third year of our marriage, I accidentally overheard a conversation between him and his closest friend that turned my blood to ice. "That car accident you staged—just to get the cord blood—killing Lydia's innocent baby in the process… it was too cruel, even for you." "It was a necessary evil. Only her child's cord blood could save Kayla." "But Lydia had just one month left. Kayla could have held on a little longer—" Grayson cut him off, his voice sharp and absolute. "If there was a way, why would we wait? I couldn't stand by and let Kayla suffer for one second more."

My husband and his employees went on a camping trip, and his assistant posted on social media. [We drew lots for the tents, and guess who ended up with the handsome CEO!] The post showed a selfie she took. Behind her, my husband was taking his shirt off. Someone left a comment. [A man and a woman alone together? Sounds juicy.] The assistant quickly replied with a smirking emoji. [I like a little excitement!] After I liked the post, it was deleted right away. Soon, my husband called me on video. In front of his crying assistant and several employees, he scolded, “Why did you like the post?! It was just a game! Don’t be so close-minded!” As I watched him hold the assistant in arms and comforted her, I quietly hung up. After ten years of loving Caelan Sullivan, I decided then and there to let go.

I once believed Sarah Weller was the love of my life. For her, I planned a once-in-a-lifetime wedding; for her, I launched a “True Love” jewelry collection worth over a billion. However, with only seven days left before the wedding, she calmly told me that she needed to fulfill her first love’s late mother’s final wish to marry him first, and only then marry me. As if it were a matter of fact, she said, “For Tim, all of this can be sacrificed. If you can’t even bear to lose that little bit of money, you can find someone else to marry right now.” Only then did I understand. In her world, I and everything I had built could be pushed aside at any moment for her so-called first love. So, I turned around without another word and called home. “Penelope,” I said to my sister-in-law, “the wedding will proceed as scheduled. Just do me a favor and replace the bride.”

The rules of the Lawson family prevented their heir from marrying women who were from an ordinary background. But the eldest son of the Lawson family, James Lawson, just had to fall in love with a woman named Laura Jackson, who was a fish seller. He gave up his right of inheritance just to be with her. He was punished by his family by being whipped 99 times. He was also forced to kneel for three whole days. His shirt was covered in blood, but he still said to Laura with a smile, "It's alright, Laura. I just want to be with you." In the end, the Lawson family finally allowed James and Laura to be together, but on one condition: James had to leave the Lawson family an heir. After that, what James said to Laura the most was, "Just give me a little more time." The first time he said that was when he wanted Laura to wait for him to get another woman pregnant.

Alice Long and I were caught in the crossfire. When my boyfriend—a combat medic responsible for saving the wounded—came to our rescue, he pushed me aside. Gently cradling Alice, the girl I had shielded, he shot me a cold glance and said, "Crystal, I'm deeply disappointed in you. She needs immediate care to avoid infection!" What about me? Was I meant to die instead? When my flag-draped coffin arrived home, he had the nerve to weep openly at my memorial. This once-renowned combat medic, celebrated around the globe, never set foot outside his room again.

Daddy brought me to Aunt Jenny’s party. As I was eating a piece of cake, I tasted a cherry between the layers and hurriedly spat it out. Once, I broke out in rashes after eating a cherry and nearly died, so I was deeply traumatized by that flavor even as a young child. However, Aunt Jenny looked heartbroken. “I hid a cherry in the cake as a little surprise, just like it’s good luck to get a bay leaf in a pie. How could you be so rude, Kenny?” Daddy did not even let me explain. He chased me out in the yard and made me stand there as punishment. Mommy said it had been more than a hundred degrees out lately, so she told me to stay home and not go out to play. Now I knew just how hot 104 degrees could be! My body was all itchy, too. I was finding it hard to breathe. I wanted to ask Daddy to forgive me, but he refused to open the door no matter how hard I knocked. He glanced at me coldly through the floor-to-ceiling window. He was not going to let me back in.

I've been looking forward to my and Kael Bennett's mating ceremony. Unfortunately, he gets attacked by Rogues, resulting in him getting poisoned with wolfsbane. He remembers everyone else in the pack. Ironically, he has forgotten all about me, his fated mate. I try to awaken his memories time and again. But not only does Kael hate my guts, but he also allows another she-wolf to rob me of everything. He merely watches as said she-wolf, Maya Walsh, kills my beloved dog. He even stands by idly when I suffer from a miscarriage and lose my uterus. In the end, he believes the slanderous gossip surrounding me and exiles me from the pack while I'm still in a weakened state. When I'm granted a chance in a new life and completely forget about the past, Kael suddenly regains his memories. He looks for me everywhere like a lunatic just so he can tell me that he remembers everything. As I stare at the remorse-filled Alpha before me, I ask, "Who are you?"