My boyfriend had a serious problem with procrastination. In all our time together, the word I heard most was "wait". He would promise to clean the place, but even when flies swarmed the takeout containers, he would tell me to wait until the trash can was full so he could take care of everything at once. He would promise to wash the dishes, but long after the grease had dried, they would still be sitting untouched on the table. Every time, I would end up cleaning up for him because I couldn't stand the mess anymore. I'd always thought there was no need to keep such a strict tally of who did what when you shared a life. Then I ran a fever of 104°F and begged him to take me to the hospital. He agreed, but stayed in his room playing video games. He didn't call an ambulance until I passed out, and even then he was in no hurry. By the time I woke up, I'd developed pneumonia. What had started as an ordinary fever had become much more serious. He complained that I'd picked the worst possible time to get sick. I'd distracted him and made him lose his game. When a nurse brought my medication, she asked him to go to the billing desk in the inpatient wing. He didn't even look up. His fingers flew across his phone screen as he played. "Just wait." He'd barely finished speaking when a girl's playfully sulky voice came through his phone. "This is all your fault. You kept me playing, and now I've missed the last bus. What am I supposed to do?" He immediately grabbed his car keys and stood up. "It isn't safe for a girl to go home alone at night. I'll come get you right now." I froze. I recognized that voice. It was the very same voice as the one in Desmond Voss's ringtone.

An exquisite four-flavor mousse cake sat on the table at my 24th birthday dinner. My fiancé, Jimmy Lishman, deftly cut four slices, served one to each of our three friends, and kept one for himself. Then he pushed the empty cake board, smeared with a little jam, in front of me, the birthday girl. "The bakery said they couldn't make one with five flavors." Jimmy pulled out a napkin and handed it to me. "You're always trying to lose weight anyway. Just try a few scraps. Don't be such a baby." My best friend took a bite of strawberry mousse. "Exactly. We came to celebrate your birthday. It's the thought that counts." Our friend Derek Foster laughed and agreed. "The birthday girl's the guest of honor. You ought to set an example and share." But I'd seen the personalized cake card at the bottom of the box. It clearly read, Celebrating 5 years of friendship for the Four Musketeers. At every gathering for the past 5 years, I'd been the fifth person, there to pay the bill, keep the conversation going, and clean up afterward. I stood, picked up the local delivery receipt, and tore it to pieces in front of them. Then I lifted the bowl of scalding tomato soup off the table and poured every last drop over the cake. Happiness had always been hard to find and harder to hold on to.

The ninth time I asked Fred for a divorce, he finally gave in. On the way to the clerk's office, a speeding car came at us. Fred wrenched the wheel to the right and shielded me. In that crash, I got off with a few scrapes. Fred hit his head, and his memory stopped at 22, at the age when he had eyes for no one but me. After I found out, I said nothing. I checked myself out of the hospital alone and didn't go to see him. My phone was bombarded nonstop. Fred's parents said he would starve himself if he couldn't see me. My parents said he refused treatment if I didn't come to the hospital. Shey, my best friend of ten years, called me in tears. "Mia, please come to the hospital. Fred is on the roof. If you don't come, he'll jump. You know he'd do anything for you." I rushed to the hospital. Fred ran over joyfully and pulled me into his arms. "Mia, you're finally here. I have so much to tell you. You've lost weight, and you look pale. Are you unwell?" When he noticed my coldness, he looked hurt. "Mia, why aren't you happy? Did I do something wrong?" I lowered my head, finished a text, confirmed the offer abroad and the flight three days later, then looked at Fred. "What exactly did you want to tell me?" Fred's smile lit up again. "Mom and Dad say I lost my memory and forgot I'm already 29, but I still want to do what I'd planned to do for you on my 22nd birthday. Mia, will you marry me? I love you." The devotion in his eyes was warm as the rising sun, but I felt no warmth at all. I rubbed the deep scar on my wrist, lifted my chin slightly, and pointed at Fred and Shey. "But you two already have a two-year-old child."

Not long ago, relationship quizzes were all the rage, so I jumped on the bandwagon and sent one to my boyfriend, Fabian Edwards.   Five minutes later, he texted back.   Fabian: Done.   I was pleasantly surprised. I opened it and found that he had answered only two questions.   The first one read, Do you ever find me annoying?   His answer: Occasionally.   The second one read, Is there any bad habit of mine you want me to fix?   His answer: Be more independent. Don't be so clingy.   Before I could even confront him, he sent over another completed quiz.   This time, every one of the hundreds of questions on the form was filled out completely, with no blanks left.   I scrolled through the answers one by one, and every answer showed the unmistakable affection of the person who had filled it out.   When I reached the end, the name in the "quiz creator" field was unmistakably my younger sister's.   A second later, the quiz was abruptly unsent.   It turned out that I hadn't been imagining Fabian's coldness lately.   It turned out that while I had been giddily counting down the days to our wedding next month, he had already had a change of heart.   At that moment, every last scrap of hope I'd held on to died.   If that was how things were, I wasn't going through with that wedding.

On day 7 of my undercover reporting assignment, I made it out of the scam ring alive. I checked my phone. My fiancé, Ryan Sterling, hadn't called or texted once in 7 days. My cheek still stung where they'd slapped me. Furious, I called him three times. He didn't answer. I clenched my jaw and typed. Hannah: Come see me before midnight, or we're done. He didn't reply. 5 minutes later, our four-person group chat, Friends for Life, lit up. It was my best friend, Megan Brooks. Megan: Hannah, why aren't you answering? Today's the anniversary of my sister's death. Did you forget? Megan: It's okay. It's been 5 years. I guess people forget. At least Ryan and Daniel are here for me. You go ahead and work. In the photo, Ryan had his arm around Megan's shoulders. She was crying against his chest as he looked down at her, his expression tender. Megan's older sister had died in an accident 5 years earlier. Ever since, Ryan had protected Megan, and my brother, Daniel, had indulged her. Somehow, I was the outsider. While I was being chased and beaten on assignment, they were helping her blow out birthday candles. While I was trapped with scammers who could kill me, they were taking turns in the group chat asking if her cold was any better. I stared at the photo for 3 seconds, then switched off my phone. Of the four of us, I was the one they could live without. Back in the newsroom, I put my request for an overseas assignment on my editor's desk. "I'll go as your war correspondent."

At my engagement dinner, my younger sister, Renee Whitcomb, laid a marriage certificate on the table with a bashful smile. "I'm sorry, Nadia. Patrick and I got married last month." My grip tightened around my fork as I turned to Patrick Langford. He looked perfectly at ease. "Renee doesn't believe in marriage. She just got curious about what it's like." "This is only for show," he added. "We'll get divorced whenever she gets bored. Don't read too much into it." My stepmother chimed in. "She's made her first marriage a rehearsal for yours. You should be grateful." Dad scowled at me. "Renee's a child at heart. You're her older sister. Don't be petty and ruin everyone's evening." Everyone at that table was family. Everyone had known. And not one of them was on my side. I stared at Patrick. "Then what am I to you?" He frowned impatiently. "Our wedding is still next week. You'll still get your big wedding and all the pomp that comes with it." "We're family," he added. "Don't make a scene in front of everyone." Slowly, my anger drained away. I pushed the hurt aside and texted Malcolm Hollis under the table. Nadia: You asked me to marry you. My answer is yes.

The moment Richard stepped through the door of the run-down rental apartment, Mom broke down completely, frantically trying to scrub her skin in a state of distress. "If I get clean, it'll all be okay. Once I'm clean, Richard will come find me," she babbled blankly to herself.  Richard, dressed head to toe in a custom-tailored suit, face twisted with simmering rage, shoved her away violently. "You were the one who was only after my money back then!" he snarled. "The second you heard I was bankrupt, you grabbed every cent you could and bailed. You've got some nerve playing the crazy card now? Shameless gold digger! Don't think for a second I'm gonna feel sorry for you!" A soft-spoken, elegantly dressed woman stepped out from behind him, reached into the run-down closet where I'd been hiding, and dragged me out roughly by the arm. "This must be Elena's child with another man, right? Look how grown she is already," she said, her voice dripping with fake sweetness. "Don't get so mad, Richard. She was with you for seven years, after all. We can just take the two of them back to the manor and take good care of them, yeah?" Richard's face turned thunderous. "Do whatever you want. But one's a lunatic and the other's a bastard. Neither of them deserves to be treated as members of the Mercer family. They only get to live there as servants." He stormed out, slamming the door behind him with a deafening bang that made the walls rattle. The woman's nice mask slipped instantly. She leaned in to me, a vicious, triumphant smirk tugging at her lips. "Hey, little bastard, let me tell you a secret," she whispered. "I was the one who targeted your mom all those years ago, you know? Now it's your turn. Scared?" I blinked up at her, no tears, no outburst. The funny thing is, I had a little secret of my own to drop on them. I'd already found my grandpa, Arthur Garrick.  And get this, he's the country's richest man. If someone so much as lay a finger on me, they better run it by him first and see if he signs off on it, huh?

The whole city knew that Theron Strathmore had married a flawless wife. I could make my cruel stepmother spend a fortune on me, and I could make my sharp-tongued mother-in-law hold my hand while scolding her own son. I was born to be the perfect woman to turn to for comfort. I was sweet with words, thoughtful in every detail, and always knew when to step forward and when to hold back. Yet even I had met my match in my husband, Theron. We had been married for two years, but he used his busy work schedule as an excuse to sleep in a separate room. He had never even touched me. He kept a stack of worn-out letters from the woman he had always loved locked away in his study as if they were priceless treasures. He would often stroke my head and judge me in a gentle yet distant voice. "Elarisse Strathmore, you're too understanding. You're so understanding that it makes people feel like it doesn't matter who treats you well." So he took my patience for granted and trampled all over my boundaries. That day, a series of heavy rainstorms swept through the city. I had a dangerously high fever and began having convulsions. I needed to get to the hospital immediately. But because Odette Morcant, the woman he had always loved, said she had forgotten her umbrella, he forced me out of the car without offering a single explanation. "You're so understanding. Just get a cab to the emergency room yourself." I didn't cry or make a scene. Wrapped in my soaking-wet coat, I stood in the rain and smiled as I dialed another number. "Mr. Dashiell Solmere, you said last time that you needed someone who could make your mother happy. Does that offer still stand?" If I could never warm Theron's heart, no matter how hard I tried, then I would simply find someone else to please.

Bzzzt. Bzzzt. Bzzzt. It was my wedding day, and we were just seconds away from exchanging rings when every single phone in the venue buzzed all at once. A blaring alert flashed across every screen: a 9.9-magnitude earthquake would strike in one minute. Panic seized me. I reached out blindly to grab Declan Aisley, my fiancé, standing right next to me—only for my fingers to close around nothing but empty air. I whipped my head around, and my blood turned to ice. He, along with my own parents, was already sprinting full-tilt toward my sister in the audience, yanking her into their arms and crowding around her to shield her with their bodies. I was left all alone up on the stage. The longest sixty seconds of my life ticked by. Then a new notification popped up on every screen: the seismological bureau was apologizing for a false alarm. Everyone else breathed a huge sigh of relief. Everyone except me. My sister finally seemed to snap out of it. She wiggled free of Declan's arms and shoved him gently toward me, her voice sweet and apologetic. "Marielle, I'm so sorry, don't get the wrong idea. Declan and Mom and Dad only fussed over me because they know I've always been such a coward, you know that." She glanced at Declan out of the corner of her eye, her face twisted with quiet, obvious heartbreak. "You two go on with the ceremony. I'm just gonna go touch up my makeup. Don't worry about me." She turned to leave, but Declan caught her wrist and tugged her right back into his chest. "Mandy, when are you ever gonna learn to put yourself first?" he said, his voice tight with concern. "How am I supposed to go through with this wedding? How could I possibly ignore you?" My sister bit down on her lip and said nothing, but her eyes immediately welled up with tears, turning bright red. I stared at the three of them, stunned, my voice shaking so hard it came out as a hoarse squeak I barely recognized as my own. "What the hell is this supposed to mean?" Right then, my mom, Margaret Ainsworth, stormed over to me and grabbed my hand, her grip so tight it hurt. "Marielle, your sister has let you have everything you ever wanted since you were little! Even the man she loves!" she snapped, her voice sharp with desperate urgency. "Mom is begging you, can you stop being so selfish for once?" All the strength leached out of my limbs, and I nearly crumpled to the stage floor right there. It hit me all at once. When it came to both this wedding and this family, this whole time, I'd been the extra one, the odd one out who never belonged here at all.

It was my dad's 60th birthday, and Howard Buckley showed up with a pack of work-grade towels that cost a measly nine dollars eighty cents as a gift. I didn't want my dad to feel embarrassed in front of everyone, so I quietly repacked the towels in a fancy velvet gift box. But right when the feast was about to start, Howard's childhood friend, Vivian Thayer, blasted a secretly recorded video up on the private room's big screen. "Nine-eighty towels in a luxury gift box? Howard, were you trying to match their aesthetic, or are you just that cheap with your new family?" The whole table of guests burst out laughing. Every snicker and snort cut right through me. My dad twisted his calloused hands caked with engine oil awkwardly, and my mom's face flushed bright red with shame. I, Maddie Wilson, bit back my fury and looked over at Howard.  Clink. He flicked ash off his cigarette like he didn't have a care in the world. "Vivian doesn't mean any harm. If your parents are really that above it all, what difference does the packaging make anyway?" We'd been engaged for two years, and this garbage "family values test" stunt? It was the fourteenth one he'd pulled on my family. Once during Christmas, he'd stuffed two expired supermarket gift cards into my mom's hands. When she didn't use them, Vivian jumped in and accused her of being a snob who turned her nose up at anyone poor and kissed the wealthy. When my dad was in the hospital for surgery, Howard deliberately only sent a 52-dollar electronic transfer just to see if we'd throw a fit. But last month for Vivian's dad's birthday? He'd dropped 880,000 dollars on antique calligraphy and paintings without even blinking. My eyes burned with unshed tears as I asked him, "Don't Vivian's family need to be tested too?" Howard let out a cold, mocking laugh. "Vivian's parents are respectable people. How can your parents' tiny auto repair stall even compare?" I stared at my dad's hunched, worn-out back, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.  The honest, upstanding reputation my parents had built over half their lives was just a punchline to him, nothing more than cheap entertainment. I snatched that pack of work-grade towels right off the table and hurled it straight into the nearest trash can. Screw this stupid rich people's game—I'm out.

On the day of our engagement, my fiancé, Callum Roskell, turned his place card face down on the table and rushed off to stop his ex-girlfriend from attending a blind date. He claimed that Nyra Caldris hated him so much that she had deliberately chosen this very day to find a man and get married, all to make sure he would never have a moment of peace. During our three years together, I heard them hurl insults at each other over the phone countless times. Yet whenever she complained of a stomachache, he could drive for two hours in the middle of the night just to bring her medicine. When she posted on social media that she no longer wanted to live, he would leave me alone with a fever and rush straight to her. I used to think it was nothing more than a man's desire to win. Until, at our engagement party, she called him on video in front of both our families and waved a ring on her finger. "Callum, if you don't come today, don't ever expect me to call anyone else, my husband." He pushed his chair back and stood up on the spot. I caught his sleeve. "If you leave, what am I supposed to tell everyone?" He frowned. "You're my fiancée. She's deliberately trying to provoke me like this, and you still want to take her side?" In the past, whenever someone joked about our engagement, he would turn cold with anger. Now that he was the one humiliating me, all he cared about was how little understanding I showed him. Every guest at the table was watching me. He turned his place card face up again and set it beside me. "Stay here, sweetheart. I'll teach her a lesson and come right back." On the phone, Nyra burst out laughing. So even when it came to hatred, they had to compete to see who could win. My engagement party was nothing more than a place for them to settle their score. The place card bearing his name swayed gently in the air from the air conditioner. Suddenly, I felt that leaving the seat empty was just fine. From now on, I, Avenelle Vexley, promised to myself that the man sitting beside me would no longer have to be him.

The day I picked up my pathology results, my husband, Vincent Hale, was teaching Bridget Sutton how to log her medication in our shared health app. We'd set it up for the two of us after we got married. Now he'd even renamed it Bridget's Recovery Log. I scrolled back through all 400 entries. He'd noted that Bridget couldn't drink ice water and recorded her medication times down to the minute. The upper endoscopy report I'd uploaded a month earlier still had a red "unread" badge. That evening, Vincent brought Bridget home from the ER after an allergic reaction and poured her water into my cup. He used my pathology report as a coaster for her medicine box. Bridget glanced at the words on the page and shifted uneasily. "Is Meredith sick?" "She's always been healthy. All she ever does is act like her stomach hurts." Vincent's face hardened as he pressed the cup into her hands. "Your drug allergy nearly killed you. Don't worry about her." I watched the water tremble in the cup. When Vincent had a bleeding ulcer three years ago, I'd checked his water with a thermometer every day and waited until it cooled to 104 degrees before handing it to him. In our house, warm water was how we said I care. He'd promised that one day it would be his turn to take care of me. Now he was soothing another woman's stomach with water at the very temperature I'd so carefully measured for him. The words suspected malignancy on my pathology report weren't a final diagnosis. Yet, strangely, I wasn't afraid. What scared me more than dying was a long life in which even my pain always came second.

At my wedding, my groom Jared Olsen's childhood friend, Leila Kemp, hopped up onto the stage clutching a handful of mystery boxes. She announced she had a special surprise just for me. Before I could react, she held up a Venmo QR code, her voice sugary. "Pay first, then you can open the boxes!" Jared pulled out his phone and transferred $1,000,000 on the spot, a grand gesture meant to say "I love you forever." The payment alert chimed through the hall, and my parents' faces fell. Leila popped open the first mystery box. Inside was a ring. She took my hand and slipped it onto my finger like it was nothing. "Jared just bought me a new one, and I'm sick of wearing this one anyway. It's yours now." Then she opened the second box. It held a remote control. She pressed a button, and the engagement photos on the big screen vanished, replaced by a photo of Leila and Jared kissing. She made a face at me. "Jared thought your engagement photos looked way too stiff and formal, so I switched it up for you two." I stood there stunned until I heard my dad gasp and clutch his chest. That snapped me out of it. "Leila! Turn that off! What the hell do you think you're doing?" She just raised an eyebrow and opened the last box. Inside was a marriage certificate. "Gloria Hines, this is the final surprise. Jared and I tied the knot in Vegas last week. Surprised?" The second she finished, Jared's drawl cut in. "Leila, isn't this a bit much? Today is my wedding, after all." Then he turned to us with an exasperated look. "Sorry, I've spoiled Leila." He looked at me. "It's a novelty certificate from a chapel, just for fun. Don't take it seriously. You're the one I'm marrying today." I looked at the contempt on Jared's face, and whatever hope I had left died. I wasn't going through with this wedding.

Noah Baker was always on my case about having garbage taste whenever I bought anything. So, after we tied the knot, he laid down a rule: I couldn't buy jack squat unless he signed off on it first. When my mom's knees flared up from the raw winter cold, I tried to buy a 200-dollar heated knee brace. He shut that down right away, no hesitation. "Country folks don't know how to use fancy stuff like this," he said. When my dad dropped his phone and cracked the screen, I wanted to get him a new smartphone. He rejected that request too. "Staring at a screen all day is bad for his eyes," he scoffed. "You're wasting your time playing the good kid."  On my birthday, I pulled up my shopping app, and blinked, my whole saved cart was gone, cleared out of nowhere. The latest foldable smartphone, a luxury pure silk duvet, and two senior packages for a five-star hot spring resort. Warmth rushed through me. Finally, I thought, he's actually acknowledging me for once. I tapped on the order details, practically giddy with anticipation. But the recipient listed was his female assistant's parents. Right at that same moment, that same assistant posted a flex of the order on her social media feed. A boss who cares this much about his staff's families? Total keeper. I'd devote my whole life to him.  Noah left a comment right under it. Noah: [Your family worked so hard to put you through school. The old folks deserve nothing but the best.] I stood rooted to the spot in the entryway, staring at the row of bright red "Paid" tags glowing on my phone screen. So it was never that I was bad at picking gifts. He just thought my parents didn't deserve nice things. I tapped a like on the post without a second thought, then wiped all his contact info from my phone just as easily.  If he's gonna go out of his way to clear someone else's shopping cart, then I'm clearing him right the hell out of my life.

My husband, Brian Walker, was severely averse to sex. In the 10 years we'd been secretly married, he'd never once laid a finger on me. On our wedding night, I'd stripped completely naked and stood before him, only for him to bolt into the bathroom and throw up uncontrollably. "I'm so sorry, Cathy. My sexual aversion is just too severe. I can't help it." After that, I never blamed him again. Instead, I spent 10 years living like a widow, despite having a husband. Over those 10 years, I'd grown used to Brian keeping at least 15 feet away from me whenever possible. We even had two separate twin beds in our master bedroom. Then one day, my best friend came over, blushing as she "complained" about her boyfriend. Apparently, he had an insatiable sex drive. He couldn't keep his hands off her every night, leaving her so sore the next morning that she could barely get out of bed. Thinking about how Brian and I hadn't even shared a hug in 10 years of marriage, I struggled to keep the smile on my face. But as I handed her a freshly brewed cup of coffee, something on her shirt cuff caught my eye. A cufflink. My eyes stung as I grabbed her wrist for a closer look. "That boyfriend you've been dating for 3 years... Is it Brian Walker?"

The night I was supposed to be crowned Luna, my Alpha, Ethan, led his childhood friend to the altar instead. The blood-oath parchment sat atop the altar. Lilia's name was written on it. To Lilia, on her coming of age. My hand froze in my bag, just as I was about to pull out my prenatal report. Wearing my wolf-bone necklace, Lilia nestled into Ethan's arms. "You're really giving me her coronation?" His cedar scent drifted around her, soothing and warm. "It's only a title. She already has me. You've just lost your mate. What's wrong with making you happy?" Lilia took the first sip of sacred water. The whole Blood Moon Pack howled a blessing for her. Only then did Ethan bring me a cup. Grit swirled in the muddy water. "Drink it. Don't ruin this for everyone." A sliver of moon shimmered on the surface. I remembered the White Wolf King's voice in my head that afternoon. "The northern packs are regrouping at the end of the month. We'll need a new queen. Interested?" I tore up the report.

Before the family recognition banquet, Patricia Radcliffe, the fake heiress, volunteered to do my hair and makeup. Then, snip! Her scissors sliced straight through my waist-length locks. "Whoops, sorry! My hand slipped, Emma," she trilled, clutching the chunk of severed hair between her fingers, her grin oozing with smug satisfaction. "But I guess that butchered haircut suits a backwoods' girl like you." Everyone in Los Angeles's elite circle knew that the real eldest daughter of the Radcliffe family was soft-spoken and elegant, with her long, cascading hair as her signature look. Patricia was clearly trying to make me a laughingstock at the banquet. I stared at my choppy, uneven hair in the mirror and said nothing. Instead, I simply took the scissors from her hand and decisively chopped the remaining messy locks into a sharp, ultra-short textured cut. Patricia thought I'd given up and resigned myself to looking awful, so she snickered even harder. That was, until the matriarch of Los Angeles's elite circle, a woman whose brutal, iron-fisted tactics even the Radcliffe family patriarch feared, pushed open the banquet hall doors with a low, heavy creak. The entire room gasped in unison, and Patricia froze in place, her jaw hanging open. As it turned out, my look at that moment, with my cropped hair and crisp black suit, bore an uncanny resemblance to that ruthless powerhouse in her prime, when she'd charged at her rivals with a blade in hand and single-handedly taken down their entire crew.

Taped to the back of our dorm room door was an unsigned sheet titled Dorm Survival Rules.   Rule 3 reads, Don't take your roommate's personal belongings without permission. On the third offense, you will be assimilated by the item you stole.   My roommate Gianna Phillips got a real kick out of swiping my stuff without asking. One day she'd use my face masks, the next she'd slip on my brand-new dress, no heads-up whatsoever.   Every time I caught her red-handed, she'd bat her eyes like she had no clue what she'd done wrong. "Come on, we're besties. You're not gonna be that petty about this, right?"   I'd bitten my tongue and let it slide every single time.   Until that day, my boyfriend had just given me a matching couple necklace, and the second I turned my back, she'd snatched it and fastened it around her own neck.   "Hey, Layla, this looks way better on me than it would on you. Your boyfriend won't mind, right?"   I stared hard at the silver chain around her neck. It was slowly tightening, already growing into her flesh.   I bit the inside of my cheek hard to hold back a smile, then took a slow step back. "Nah, I don't mind. As long as you can actually get it off."

The day I caught my husband coming out of his secretary Sophie Blake's room, the shock cost me our baby. When I woke up, he was on his knees beside me, sobbing. "It'll never happen again. I swear. No one but you, for the rest of my life." I couldn't throw away all those years together. So I gave him another chance. He deleted Sophie's contact info and started coming home on time every night. I could check his phone whenever I wanted. I thought we were going to be okay. Then he sent me a riding instructor's contact info. "Every Sunday, you complain that I won't go anywhere with you. Why don't you find something to do on your own?" I texted the instructor, and he sent me a video about his lessons, including photos of his students. As I watched, one photo stopped me cold. There was my husband, riding double with Sophie, his arm wrapped around her waist. I sent the instructor a voice message right away. "Do you teach the couple in this photo, too?" He laughed in his reply. "No, their daughter's my student. She's 5. They come every Saturday. Lovely couple. I offered them a free trial lesson last week, and they insisted on riding the same horse." I set down my phone without a tear. I didn't call Adrian Mercer. I just took off my wedding ring. I was done.

I drank boiled tap water every day. Rust flakes came out of the faucet, and chalky sediment settled at the bottom of the kettle. "Water filters are a scam," my husband, Ryan Cole, said. "Tap water's full of minerals. Just boil it. It's better for you." I believed him. Then I found out I was pregnant. My doctor advised me to filter our water. "Old pipes can leave contaminants in it. You don't want to be drinking those." I was standing outside our front door, clutching the test results and wondering how to convince Ryan, when it swung open. He stepped out carrying the most expensive water filter I'd seen advertised. My best friend, Megan Lawson, followed him. "Megan's moved in across the hall," he said, barely slowing down. "Now we can look out for each other." He turned to her, his voice softening. "Don't feel bad about accepting it. It's a housewarming present. There's so much junk in the water these days. Women have to be especially careful about that sort of thing." He opened her door and went straight to work under the kitchen sink. He shifted things around, tested the water, and adjusted the fittings. By the time he'd finished installing the filter, he was sweating. Only then did he seem to notice me staring. "You're different," he said. "You're out making sales calls all day. You don't need to fuss over every little thing." I hid the test results behind my back. Suddenly, I didn't want to tell him he was going to be a father. I didn't want to ask him for a water filter, either. He knew perfectly well why someone might need one. I just wasn't worth the trouble.

At the party the night before our wedding, my fiancé's secretary suggested a game: boyfriend swap. "Oops, looks like I'm with Lucas!" She put on an apologetic smile. "You don't mind, do you, Rachel?" Then she tipped her face up and kissed Lucas Grant, deep and slow. He held her by the waist and glanced over at me with a smile meant to shut me up. "It's a game, Rachel. We're getting married tomorrow. Let her have her fun." Everyone was waiting to see how far I'd let them push me. I'd spent 5 years chasing him and given up my career to run errands at his company. They were sure I loved him too much to leave. None of them knew I'd been CFO of a publicly traded company. I opened the job offer sitting in my inbox. A real position. A salary to match. And I clicked Accept. He could keep flip-flopping between us. I was done waiting.

When the kiss ended, my boyfriend, Jude Calder, suddenly pulled me into his arms. "Honey, your coworker has a great figure. Can you give me her contact info later?" I stared at him, stunned. He pinched my cheek, his voice a little rough. "I just want something different now and then. You understand, right?" I stayed quiet for a few seconds, then pulled away from him. "I understand, but I won't accept it." That same night, I set my engagement ring down on the table. He frowned deeply. "Bettina, what are you throwing a fit about now?" I grabbed my suitcase and walked out, never looking back. "I'm going to find something different too." Three years later, he had his fun and came looking for me again. I smiled, and right in front of him, I dialed his worst rival's number. "Honey, your rival is here to take your future wife away." 

The elevator jolted to a sudden halt. My claustrophobia kicked in instantly, and I curled into a tight ball in the corner. I fumbled for the calming aromatherapy stick my fiancé had custom-made for me, twisted it open, and took a deep inhale. But instead of soft lavender, burning pepper spray shot straight up my nose. I choked, tears streaming down my face. I crumpled to the floor in a heap, dry heaving so hard my sides ached. Outside the elevator, my fiancé's secretary let out a sharp cackle that cut right through the metal doors. She laughed. "See? Raymond, I told you she'd never even notice I swapped the aromatherapy stick." I curled into myself, my chest rattling as I couldn't stop coughing. I wanted to scream, to ask why, but the words got stuck in my raw, scratchy throat. I couldn't force them out. Then I heard my fiancé chuckle, low and casual, like this was all some harmless little joke. "Jesus, relax. Tina liked your little aromatherapy thing, so she took it. I just grabbed you a new one. It's pepper spray. No big deal." He smirked. "Honestly? It's kinda cute. You're always so damn perfect. Nice to see you rattled for once." I wiped the tears off my face with the back of my hand. I didn't even bother begging them for help. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold my phone, but I managed to fire off an email: Freeze every black card under Raymond Ford's name. Effective immediately. Then I turned to my fiancé. "Just so you know, you're the groom at tomorrow's wedding of the year."

At lunch, the department's It girl marched up to me with a crowd in tow, brandishing her phone like she was ready for a fight. "You're spending donor money to feed your vanity. Have you no shame? Broke trash will never have class!"   I narrowed my eyes and read the post on her screen.   Financial-aid students these days have no shame. Imagine demanding a brand-new iPhone worth over 10,000 dollars from a donor.   Before I could say a word, she flipped my tray onto the floor and snatched away my new phone. "Isn't this the phone you shamelessly begged your donor to buy for you? You can't even afford tuition, but this is what you spend money on? Aren't you embarrassed?"   She planted a hand on her hip and turned to the girls trailing behind her. "Come on. Let's file a joint complaint and get her scholarship revoked."   As contemptuous stares bore into me from all sides, I swallowed the bite in my mouth, and my expression hardened.   'They're messing with the wrong person. They're about to regret it.'

On the day of the mating ceremony, I arrived at the Alpha mansion of the Silver Moon Pack right on time. The plan was simple: final hair do and makeup here, family photos, then head to the ceremony hall with Damon. The ceremonial limo was already parked by the side entrance, but Damon never sent anyone to let me in. His voice drifted out from inside. "Wait a little longer." I figured everyone inside was still rushing to wrap up last-minute prep. That was until an hour later, when Leah came scrambling out of the mansion in a ratty bathrobe, hair sticking up everywhere, clearly frazzled. "Eileen, I'm so sorry. My apartment building got locked down out of the blue last night. I had nowhere else to go, so I crashed here for the night. I was only gonna crash for a few hours, but I totally slept through my alarm." Before I could even get a word out, Damon was already stepping forward, a soft smile on his face as he tucked a strand of her messy bedhead behind her ear. "I knew it. No one can rouse you once you're dead to the world." Leah rolled her eyes and shot him a playful glare. Damon just kept grinning. "Take it easy, take all the time you need to get ready. I'm not leaving you behind." I glanced down at my watch. "The mating ceremony starts at eleven. If we drag our feet any longer, we're gonna leave the elders and every guest waiting." Damon didn't even bother glancing over his shoulder at me. "Eileen, it's our ceremony today. It's not like I'm gonna dip and leave you hanging, right?" I stared at his back for a beat, cold irritation settling in my chest, then looked down to text my parents. Eileen: Cancel all the arrangements at the ceremony hall. I'm skipping today's mating ceremony.

While I was working at the coffee shop, my coworker complained, "A guy just ordered an ice cream sundae and left a note saying it was for his puppy, so no chocolate. I took out the Oreo pieces, and then he asked why I hadn't put any in. I told him Oreos have chocolate in them, too. Guess what he said? By 'puppy,' he meant his girlfriend."   I smiled. "His poor girlfriend. Imagine dating someone who doesn't even treat you like a person."   Just then, my boyfriend, Malcolm Beckett, sent me a message.   Malcolm: Almost done with work? It's your birthday today, so I bought you your favorite ice cream sundae.   A moment later, he sent a photo of a sundae with no Oreo pieces.   I froze, then asked my coworker for the customer's phone number. It was Malcolm's.   My head spun. The unlucky girlfriend I'd just been talking about was me.   Anger and hurt surged through me. I immediately took a cab home.   The moment I walked through the door, a crowd cheered, "Happy birthday!"   A second later, someone shoved a cake into my face. Sticky frosting clogged my mouth and nose, cutting off my air.   I frantically wiped away the frosting and saw a brand-new dog bed in the middle of the living room.   My breath caught. "What's this?"   Malcolm's childhood friend smiled. "It's Malcolm's birthday present for you. Aren't you his puppy? You won't be sleeping in a bed anymore. You'll sleep in this."   The whole room erupted in laughter.   Malcolm looked at my pale face, ruffled my hair, and said with a smile, "Nadine's just joking. Don't take it personally, puppy."   At that, I snapped.   I stepped forward and flipped the table laid out for my birthday dinner.

I had severe face blindness and no sense of direction. At our engagement party, my fiancé, Leander Whitlock, deliberately confiscated my location-tracking wristband. The lights suddenly went out, and a line of text flashed across the big screen. Find Leander within 10 minutes, or the engagement is off. His carefree laughter rang out over the microphone. "Ottilie loves this game of hide-and-seek. If you can't even recognize your own husband, you deserve to suffer a little in the dark." Ottilie Fenwick was his childhood friend, the woman he insisted was nothing more than a close confidante. In the darkness, I knocked over three champagne towers. Broken glass pierced my palm, and blood spilled across the floor. After wandering through the maze of the banquet hall for 30 minutes, I heard Leander's voice from the terrace on the second floor. "She's useless. She can't even tell north from south. Ottilie, you win." I looked up to see Ottilie slipping my engagement ring onto her middle finger. Leander held her close, his arm around her waist, while I groped desperately through the darkness below. I pulled a shard of glass from my palm and slammed my bloody hand against the fire alarm. As the alarm shrieked, I threw my engagement veil into the muddy water. 'If he loves playing games so much, he can play them without me. I'm not marrying him.'

I went to register the birth of my daughter, who had just turned a month old. To my shock, I was told that the space for her father's name on her birth certificate was blank. I hurriedly pulled out my Avelorn marriage certificate. Conrad Voss had told me that divorce wasn't allowed there, that getting married there meant staying together for life. But the clerk said matter-of-factly, "This is a commemorative certificate. It has no legal effect." Refusing to believe it, I gave the clerk Conrad's personal details and asked them to check. "He's already married," the clerk told me. "His son is 8 years old." I froze at the counter, a chill spreading through me. My father's mistress and their illegitimate daughter had driven my mother to her death. There was nothing I hated more than a homewrecker, and now I had become one myself. I went home in a daze. Through the wall, I heard Conrad say, "Our son is 8. We can't keep telling everyone he's my parents' youngest child for the rest of his life." My best friend, Tessa Mercer, answered in a trembling voice, "Marissa hates homewreckers. She's barely recovered from giving birth. She can't handle this. At least don't tell her today. It's the anniversary of her mother's death." I leaned against the cold wall and fought back the sob rising in my throat. On a night when families everywhere were coming together, I thought, 'It's time for this lie to end.'