Glanced Novels & Stories

After I was betrayed by my boyfriend, Cole Chapman, five years ago on New Year’s Eve, we reunited at our college reunion. Everyone pressured us to play Truth or Dare. Cole lost first. He picked Truth. Someone asked him, “What’s the most satisfying time you turned someone’s power back on them? He glanced at me mockingly and said with a sense of superiority, “I drained my ex’s savings to pay for my PhD. The day I got my permanent residency, I reported her for illegal work, which got her deported.” The crowd went wild. They thought I would break down crying. However, I just smiled and spun the bottle. When it was my turn, Cole asked me, “Do you have any secrets your ex never knew?” “Yes.” “What is it?” he asked with a smile. I smiled back and replied, “I was working illegally back then because my family cut off my credit cards after I refused an arranged marriage. “Just yesterday, my dad bought the multinational corporation that hired you as my wedding gift.”

"Mom, Dad, I’ve decided to come home for the blind dates you mentioned. I’ll be back by the end of the month." In the early spring, with the lingering chill of winter in the air, Valerie Stonecutter pushed open the door while speaking softly into the phone. Her gentle voice drifted through the rain like a thread weaving through the mist. Pulling her collar tighter against the cold, she heard her parents breathe a sigh of relief on the other end. "Val," her father began, his voice heavy with age. “Your mom and I haven’t been in good health these past few years. So now that you’ve made up your mind, that’s good. When you’re back, I’ll have your Aunt Laura arrange a few suitable candidates for you to meet." Hearing that her parents were already making arrangements for her future, Valerie’s gaze flickered, her emotions momentarily unsettled. After a few more words of small talk, she ended the call. She glanced around her home with a heavy heart, her thoughts tangled in a quiet storm. Then she retreated to her bedroom and began to pack.

My husband of five years, Eric Vale, came home drunk again. As I laid him in our bed, he murmured, “Don’t worry, my love… I’ll take care of you and our baby.” My heart stopped. Baby? We’d been on birth control since the day we married. There was no baby. I shook him lightly. “What are you talking about, Eric?” He blinked at me, confused, then smiled like nothing had happened. “Hey, babe… did I say something?” The next morning, I checked our joint account. Every month, ten thousand dollars had been wired to a woman named Bella Evers. Yesterday, he sent two hundred thousand more—with a note: I can’t wait for our baby to be born. Bella was Eric’s mistress and was now six months pregnant. So I made one call. “Papa,” I told the most feared Don in the South, “I’m getting a divorce.” I glanced at my sleeping husband. “I want him gone. And I want him broke.”

While Alpha Leon danced with his assistant on the dance floor, I sipped wine with clients. To avoid offending anyone, I let his intoxicated self brush his cold hand against my thigh. Still, Leon never glanced at me. His attention was entirely on helping the assistant brush stray hair from her forehead, softly asking if she was hungry. When the banquet ended, the assistant complained of boredom, and Leon immediately whisked her away, leaving me behind for the next round of festivities. “The young shewolf’s been busy with work lately. I’m just taking her to relax. “You don’t like bars, so don’t follow us. “Also, I won’t be back tonight. We’ll postpone tomorrow’s marking to another day.” We’d been together for five years. Although he gave me the title of Luna, he never marked me. This was the ninety-ninth time Leon Gray had unilaterally canceled marking me. So, I nodded. Since he was always busy, perhaps this marking was unnecessary.

To celebrate his female student's birthday, my professor husband brought a group of people into my laboratory without permission. By the time I rushed there, birthday candles had been stuck into my culture dishes, and my research notes were smeared with cake frosting. The only pathogen sample in existence had already been knocked onto the floor. I tried to save it, but Zack Fenton stopped me. "Clean it up later. Let Cheryl make her wish first." Shaking with rage, I pointed at the wrecked laboratory. "Do you even know what that sample was?" He casually lit the birthday candles and barely glanced at the mess. "Wasn't it just the sample for your father's treatment? Your dad's already so old. Who knows if he'll even live long enough for you to succeed? Might as well let Cheryl enjoy her birthday first." Watching him carefully shield Cheryl Smith as she leaned forward to blow out the candles, I suddenly laughed. What he did not know was this: The medicine for my father had already been successfully developed last month. The sample destroyed on the floor was the only one capable of treating Zack's rare disease.

To keep my grandmother's failing organs stable, I simmered a medicinal broth for her every day and strictly controlled her diet. Then the Whitmore family's long-lost real son was brought home. "You're feeding my grandmother something that looks like slop? Julian Whitmore, what kind of heart does a fake son like you have?" The butler wiped sweat from his forehead. "Sir, this is Mr. Whitmore's specially prepared medicinal broth. The old madam's been drinking it for years, and her health has only--" "Shut up!" Tyler Whitmore threw an all-foreign-language menu in my face. "I've consulted top nutritionists overseas. What Grandma needs now is protein!" "I've had the finest bluefin tuna flown in. From now on, I'll handle Grandma's diet myself." My grandma, Irene Whitmore, stayed silent. She merely glanced at me, which counted as approval. I forced out a smile and turned to leave. "Fine. Then take good care of her." They had no idea Grandma had been poisoned with a rare tropical toxin. That bowl of medicine was a suppressant I had prepared specifically for her. Once she stopped taking it and touched seafood or other triggering foods, the poison would backlash instantly.

I grew up abroad. My mother feared I might marry a foreign man, so she arranged an engagement for me with a talented and handsome man in Flodon. She insisted that I return home to get engaged. I came back and started shopping for an engagement dress at a luxury boutique. I selected an off-white strapless gown and decided to try it on. Suddenly, a woman nearby glanced at the dress in my hand and told the saleswoman, “That’s a unique design. Let me try it.” The saleswoman immediately yanked it out of my hands. I protested indignantly, “Excuse me, I was here first. Don’t you understand the principle of ‘first come, first served’? Or do you just not care about common decency?” The woman scoffed and retorted, “This dress costs $188,000. Do you really think a broke nobody like you can even afford it? “I’m Lucas Goodwin’s sister in all but blood. He’s the chairman of Goodwin’s Group. In Flodon, the Goodwin family sets the rules.” What a coincidence! Lucas Goodwin was my fiance! I immediately called him and said, “Hey, your ‘sister in all but blood’ just stole my engagement dress. Do something about it.”

On their third wedding anniversary, Clark Summer gifted his wife a diamond necklace named "Love Nyla," broadcasting his devotion to the world. But while the public swooned, Nyla sat alone in their empty home, staring at a photo sent by a stranger: her husband’s new secretary, Jordyn, wearing that same necklace, tangled in Clark’s arms. For three years, Nyla had been the perfect, submissive wife. In return, she received betrayal, humiliation from her mother-in-law, and Clark’s sickening justification that his affair was merely a "physical necessity" while he still loved her. He believed Nyla was trapped, tethered to him by her father’s astronomical medical bills. He thought she would swallow the insults and raise his mistress's child. He was wrong. Selling their mansion, gathering evidence, and delivering irrefutable proof of her infidelity… Nera turned and left, donning a white lab coat instead of an apron, transforming overnight into a top-tier pharmaceutical researcher who had astonished the industry. When Clark, with belated repentance and red-eyed pleading for her return, saw his icy ex-wife being gently embraced by his uncle Damon, he saw the aloof man before him. The superior man coldly glanced at his nephew, his voice low and dangerous: "What are you calling 'wife'? Call her 'auntie'."

I gasped, shocked as he pulled me to his lap in the wheelchair, roughly. “M.mr. K.king,” I stutter, afraid and surprised. He glanced up at me, his grey eyes shining in an emotion I couldn’t place. “If you are going to pretend to be a doting wife to me, cooking meals and trying to make unnecessary conversations, then you might as well strip naked, get on the bed and let me perform my duty as a doting husband by damaging those walls in between your legs and trust me, my illness won’t be a hindrance,” he whispered against my neck and for a second I forgot I was married to a literal devil. A handsome devil in a wheelchair. **************** After an accident, Dexter King got confined in a wheelchair. A once admirable man turned sour, hated by all and even his fiance left him for his brother. After a marriage proposal he couldn’t refuse, Dexter and Aurora got married and Dexter promised within himself to make her life miserable. But what happens when Aurora is hell bent on healing his broken leg? And what happens when they realize the accident was all a plan? Enemies are definitely closer than Dexter thinks, and betrayals are bound to happen, but would everyone give up on him, including Aurora, who has her share of a harsh life from her family?

I was born just one minute after Tiara, but the world treated that one minute as if it lasted a lifetime. She was the star. I was the shadow. She was flawless. I was the afterthought. She was loved. I was forgotten. Even by Reagan de Russo, heir to the wealthiest family in the country and the man I had secretly loved for the past ten years. But to him, there was only Tiara. And when he proposed to her, I knew my quiet little dream had finally died. Until that day came. The day Tiara left him at the altar. The day the world stopped turning for just a second. The day the man who had never even glanced my way, turned to me and asked me to take her place. I knew what I was. An escape. A damage control. A backup plan. And I... I was too tired of being strong. So I said yes. We married. Without love. Without a future. Just a one-year contract and a life of make-believe in front of flashing cameras and watching eyes. But the longer I stayed by his side, the harder it became to tell what was real and what was just part of the performance. Because for the first time... Reagan saw me. But can love truly grow from the ruins of lies, old wounds, and the shadow of a woman who’s always been his first choice? Or will I always be… only the second best?