Childhood Sweethearts

At our wedding, my fiancé slapped me in front of both our families—all because of his bridesmaid.
That same day, I took off my engagement ring and called off the wedding.
Everyone thought I was just acting out in the heat of the moment.
After all, Charles Harrow and I had grown up together. I'd been in love with him since I was little, following him around for twelve whole years.
But this time, I ...

For eight years of our hidden marriage, Caelen never publicly acknowledged my existence, nor our daughter Harper's.
On our daughter's eighth birthday, he threw a spectacular, city-wide welcome banquet for his childhood sweetheart, Seraphina, and her son, Leo.
Watching the glaringly perfect picture they painted as a "family of three," I suggested to my daughter that it was time to leave.
Harper, he...

To stop my fox clan from being hunted to extinction, I decided to step beyond the barrier and draw close to Derrick Carter—my childhood friend, now a top geneticist.
He hadn't forgotten me after all. For those few days, he held me locked in his arms, as though trying to make up for all the years of longing at once.
I thought there might still be a trace of warmth left in this tangled affair.
Until...

My pre-wedding party was in full swing.

 

Yet, the center of attention wasn't me, but Julian's childhood sweetheart, Blair. She had just announced she was auctioning off her "first kiss."

 

My fiancé, Julian, bought that kiss without a second thought.

 

Amidst the roaring cheers of the crowd, they locked lips. They looked like the perfect match, made in heaven.

 

In that moment, I didn't c...

For the third time, Kael fled before the wedding—this time to deliver medicine to the neighbor girl he grew up with.
As compensation, the pack elders offered me two chests of rare ore and the deed to an island.
Someone, still hopeful, called Kael on speakerphone.
His careless voice echoed through the hall:
“Why bother with compensation? Ella loves me so much; she’ll come around as soon as I go bac...

Everyone said I was the happiest woman of the Northern Plains Clan, blessed with the purest love from Eric, the Wolf King.
Then my wolf let out a tormented howl.
Through the soul bond of fated mates, I felt it clearly—
my husband held my maid in his arms, drowning in desperate lust.
That nourishing tonic I’d drunk for three years, which I’d believed was filled with his affection, had only been bre...

They thought that by forcing me to my death, they could devour everything.

My father jumped off a building, and I became a destitute young master whom everyone could bully. To pay off debts, I married into the Hawthorne family and became their sharpest knife.

After my father-in-law died suddenly, my wife immediately brought her childhood sweetheart into the house and forced me to divorce him.

M...

Alpha Geirolf once fought his entire Ulvarr Pack just to mate me.
But Anniken's arrival turned all his sweeping vows to ash.
He let her take over the manor, shatter my mother’s moonstone bracelet, and lock me—burning with a high fever—in the dungeon to be thrown into freezing water.
The biting cold silently stole the baby in my womb. He saw the crimson pooling on the floor, yet turned his back to ...

That wedding in Rome was the last time I ever saw him as his “stepsister.”
I was the Roxie family’s only daughter. After my father remarried, my mother and I moved into the Corleone estate, and from that day on, Elias became my stepbrother—also the one obsession I should never have touched.
Out in public, he was always calm and controlled. At home, though, one line from him “Don’t call me brother”...

Preston Ashford and I made a promise to get into UCLA together.

I held onto that promise through all of senior year, surviving on four hours of sleep a night. Then results day came, and I found out someone had logged into my application and changed it.

I only ever gave Preston my password.

I storm over to confront him and catch Vanessa Ashby, the daughter of an old family friend, the one everyo...

My childhood friend was a tech prodigy.

To comfort his influencer girlfriend who was suffering from period cramps, he wanted to forfeit the National Hackathon we had spent the entire year preparing for.

I tipped off his father.

Consequently, he was dragged to the competition, won first place, and secured a straight path to Stanford.

Years later, his startup succeeded, making him a ...

Since I was ten, he told me to call him brother. But brothers don't look at you like that.
My life had only Daniel Wilson in it. He was my guardian, my savior, my world.
"Call me brother," he said, but he forbade me from dating anyone else. He kept me in his manor like a bird in a gilded cage. He promised that when I turned twenty-one, the title of "sister" would change to "wife."
I waited. I obey...

My boyfriend Tyler, his childhood sweetheart Chelsea, and I went on a road trip through the Australian Outback in the Northern Territory.

A few scrawny, yellow-coated dogs lingered by the roadside. Chelsea insisted on getting out to feed them.

I warned her they were dingoes, vicious predators that ruled this desert.

Her eyes welled up and she called me heartless. Tyler jumped in too, saying I g...

I had just arrived abroad for a legal conference when my best friend sent me a video.
An unfamiliar woman was chatting while pushing Dexter’s mother, Jenny, around the neighborhood, claiming to be Dexter’s wife.
My hand, holding the phone, froze.
If she’s Dexter’s wife… then who am I?
I immediately called my husband and asked,
“Did you change family doctors?”
He paused for a second, then replied w...

They left me to freeze to death in our basement freezer.

The night before prom, my foster sister Leila came crying that I'd burned her Ivy League recommendation letter. My birth parents didn't even listen to one word of explanation—they threw me into that frozen hell in forty-five below.

I beat on that door until my fingers were shredded, screamed until my throat tore apart, but all I could hear...

At the celebration party, everyone was egging them on.
To kiss ass with the so-called "investor's daughter," James, started playing some flirty card game with Vivian right in front of me, feeding her chips and making out.
I stood in the corner holding his jacket like some pathetic coat-check girl.
When I confronted him, James looked pissed. "Sophie, it's just an act! Vivian's got the company by th...

My boyfriend pulled off a drone-sky proposal that lit up the entire city.
Crowds cheered, “Congratulations to Mr. Gunson and Mrs. Gunson—at last, true lovers become family.”
But the woman curled in his arms was his secretary.
The “me” in their mouths had long since turned to white bones beneath a mound of earth.

Dad was in critical condition and had just been wheeled into the operating room.
My husband—also Dad’s attending surgeon—was nowhere to be found.
I stood in the corridor in my pajamas until past midnight, hands shaking as I kept calling Jason.
When the call finally connected, a sweet, girlish voice spilled through the speaker:
"I’m watching the Eiffel Tower lights with Jason!"
A male voice followe...

Everyone in town said I dumped my blind boyfriend because I couldn't stand being poor.
Five years later, I'd become a blind drifter myself, relying on handouts just to eat.
And he'd become one of Silicon Valley's hottest rising tech moguls.
He recognized me, but pretended he didn't.
He wanted me on my knees. Wanted me begging. Wanted me to pay for "abandoning" him.
Until he found out the person wh...

During our first month at university, my half-vampire boyfriend, Darien, claimed he couldn't adapt to the human campus. The bright lights gave him vertigo, the sensory overload wrecked him, and even a drop of a classmate's blood pushed him to the brink of losing control.
For him, I promised to drop my elite program so we could transfer to a dreary, isolated northern town together. To keep him stab...