Great Circle A Novel Novels & Stories

This marks the third year since Alan Cohen and I became mates, and today's finally the day of the Luna ceremony. As the ceremony begins, Alan takes my hand. But then he hesitates, refusing to move forward. I'm still trying to make sense of it when my adoptive sister, Eden Parker, suddenly breaks into the mind-link. She says she's just ended a failed mate bond with another Alpha and will be back within the hour. That's when I see a flicker of a smile on Alan's face. Then, without a second glance, he lets go of my hand and walks away. I turn to my adoptive brother, Dexter Parker, and my adoptive father, Hank Parker, hoping for some kind of comfort, only to realize they've already left the ceremony with Alan. And just like that, I became the joke of the entire pack. Eden sends me a photo. She's glowing beside Alan, her arm looped through Dexter's, with Hank beaming next to them. That's when I give up. I reach out through the mind-link to my birth father. "Dad, I'm ready to return to the Bloodmoon Pack."

On our third wedding anniversary, I went out of my way to host an anniversary party. But my husband and Alpha, Johnny, took his assistant Amy to the seaside for a vacation instead, leaving me alone at the party as the subject of everyone’s mockery. I called the resort and even thoughtfully booked out the entire area just for the two of them as I calmly faced the crowd. Then, I slipped the mate bond dissolution application in with the paperwork for Johnny to sign. In my previous life, I forced him to stay to save face for both Johnny and the pack. That led to Amy leaving alone and dying in a car accident. Johnny didn't blame me—until I carried his pup that he tied me in a car, telling me that he wanted me to feel the pain Amy went through. When the car exploded, I finally realized that Johnny had hated me all along. Now that I had been reborn, I would make sure he lost everything!

My name is Janet Chance, and I am a researcher focusing on cancer drug development. I have a blissful family life and a career worth fighting for. However, just as I am about to go save a life using my newly researched drug, I discover that the car specifically used to transport the drug has inexplicably disappeared. Upon checking the surveillance footage, I learn that my high school classmate, Melissa Lane, has driven it away. "What do you mean it's your car? This is my husband's car!" I snap back anxiously. "Give me back my car! Right now!" Just as I finish speaking, I hear a crowd's mocking laughter coming from the other end of the phone. "Do you know who you're talking to?" "Your car? This car belongs to the wealthiest man in the country!" Melissa immediately adds, "I'm about to marry the wealthiest man in Azlude! He was worried about my safety, so he specifically allowed me to take this car. "He told me it's very well protected with its bulletproof glass. How dare you say this car is yours, you penniless loser?" In order to take back the drug, I have no choice but to rush over to Melissa's wedding venue. That is when I see the man embracing her in the poster is Samuel Fuller, who is none other than the husband I have been married to for the past three years.

I'm the most overlooked Omega in the pack, yet I somehow end up as Alpha Blake Cartman's fated mate. Because of my low status, he never allows me to appear at any events we're supposed to attend together. I plan 18 grand events for him, and he doesn't even let me show up for our anniversary. Then comes the 19th time, when he finally agrees to let me attend. I'm over the moon. I get dressed up, ready for the night, only to see Wendy Lowe—another Omega—already standing by his side. They stand there arm in arm, looking deeply in love, while the memory video I've worked so hard to put together has been replaced with clips of the two of them acting all sweet with each other. With his arm around Wendy, Blake looks at me with nothing but disgust. "My Luna needs the pack's full approval," he says. "You were never officially acknowledged as Luna anyway. Wendy earned their acceptance long before you. Starting today, she's taking your place." Everyone who knows me in the pack is watching, waiting for me to break down and lose it. But I don't scream or cry. I'm not even angry. In fact, I feel like I can finally breathe now. Because in just three days, the three-year mating contract between me and Blake will officially come to an end.

In my third year of covert work along the border for Alpha Cole Grayson, the chairman of the Alliance, I was urgently summoned back to my pack by my mother. Apparently, my mom has used the pack's benefits as leverage to pick out a powerful mate for me. All the she-wolves envy me. After all, my mate is Alpha Leo Wagner of the Moon pack. He's the most outstanding werewolf among his peers, be it his identity, social standing, or capabilities. When Alpha Cole receives the news, he has a tiara custom-made before having it delivered to the venue where the marking ceremony will be held. "Thank you for your contributions to the Alliance over the past three years. I hope you'll live a happy life from now on." These are the words Alpha Cole left me with before leaving. But when I arrive at the Moon pack, I find out that Leo's secretary, Aria Thornwell, has worn the tiara. I berate her angrily, "That's the tiara representing the Luna's status! Give it back to me!" But Aria merely polishes the tiara on her head. She shows no intention of wanting to remove it. "What do you mean 'yours'? This is my tiara! Leo has already ordered me to attend the marking ceremony as your representative! "You're just a lowly she-wolf from a backwater pack, after all! You'll only humiliate everyone by attending such a grand ceremony!" I huff coldly before tearing the tiara off Aria's head. With her screams serving as the background ambience, I use my mind-link to contact Leo on the spot. "You'd better give me a reasonable explanation right now. Otherwise, I don't mind stripping the Alpha title off you."

After I announced my exit from the music industry, the public response was overwhelmingly positive. The only person who voiced his objection was my girlfriend's rumored lover, the up-and-coming songwriter Lucas Zacker. He put on a show of sincerity in front of a crowd of reporters. "It's all a misunderstanding. Matthew is an irreplaceable talent in the music industry. I sincerely hope he returns to the stage." I shut off my phone and turned a blind eye to his public plea. In my past life, one of my songs had been identical to his supposedly original single. As such, netizens accused me of plagiarism, cursing me and wishing death upon my family. Frustrated, I posted the entire creation process online, but it couldn't stand up to the timeline. His new song had been released ten minutes ahead of mine. Just because of the ten-minute difference, netizens sent me photoshopped mourning portraits of myself and even went so far as to come to my house and vandalize it with paint. The relentless cyberbullying went on for years, and it drove me into a deep depression. My parents exhausted their life savings trying to clear my name, only for crazed fans to set our house on fire, causing my parents to burn to death. In the end, when his song won an award, I jumped off a building. But who would have guessed that when I opened my eyes again, I was reborn on the very day the new song was set to release.

After a wild, drunken class reunion, I woke up next to a male model. I had no clue what I was doing since it was my first time in this kind of situation. I called my best friend for help on what to do, and while the male model was still out cold, I left my wallet and bolted. When I got home, my best friend dragged me over to show me a picture of her new boyfriend. My jaw dropped. The guy in the photo was the spitting image of the man I had just left.

While I'm off taking a mascot job at the mall just to make a quick buck, my wife, Marissa Osbourne, is accompanying her first love, Dominic Finch, on a shopping trip to buy him a suit. She even goes as far as to buy him five suits in one go just to show how generous she is. The thing is, those suits cost three months of my salary. When Marissa approaches me, she doesn't recognize me in the mascot suit. Instead, she starts jeering at me. "To think that a grown man is still dressed up as a mascot in a mall just to earn money! What a pathetic loser!" She doesn't know that I've given up on my inheritance of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of assets. As I watch Marissa leave while tittering, I suddenly realize that the marriage that I've been maintaining for so many years is hollow all along.

The day my fated mate Cole stood at the altar for the ceremony with his childhood sweetheart Kate, I was in the crowd, clapping my hands. Everyone assumed I had lost my mind over an unrequited love. Cole must have thought so too. He hurried over to me, seized my wrist tightly, and snarled a threatening warning: "This is Kate's greatest wish, the only thing she's ever asked for. She's fragile. Who knows how long she has left." "You wouldn't want her to die with that one regret, would you?" I gave a cold smile and took a sip of my champagne. "Of course not." In my last life, I had watched Kate taunt me from Cole's arms and I had screamed that she wasn't sick at all, that she was lying. I had torn the ceremony apart and forced Cole to stop it. Kate couldn't bear the humiliation. She ran out sobbing and was killed in a car accident. After that, Cole fabricated a charge of treason against my pack to avenge her. My parents were imprisoned by the Alliance and starved to death over ten days. I was exiled, became a rogue, and eventually died — cornered and torn apart by a pack of rogues, full of rage I would never be able to spend. This time around, I would give him exactly what he wanted. Every time he betrayed me, I would reclaim one privilege I had given his pack. Three betrayals. Three privileges. And then he would have nothing left.

My daughter, who'd always hated the cold, suddenly started begging to vacation in the freezing Northern Territories. I dismissed it as a passing whim and told her no. I never thought she'd actually soak herself in a tub of ice for two days straight, just to prove she wasn't afraid of the cold. I gave in. I took her north. My mate, Cassian, stayed behind to handle pack affairs. The North was bitter. After only a few days, my daughter started showing signs of cold-sickness, coughing constantly. I wasn't going to gamble with her health. I decided to bring her home immediately. But my daughter threw a fit. At the time, I thought she just loved the North too much to leave. Until I happened to overhear her conversation with my husband, Cassian: "Daddy! These last few days in the North, I put scent-blocker in Mommy's water every single day! Aren't I clever? Now she'd never find out about you and Auntie Kayla!" "Mommy is so annoying, always nagging! I wish Auntie Kayla were my mommy instead!" I stood there cold, watching the cozy little scene inside the room, gripping the vial of scent-blocker I'd just dug out of my daughter's backpack — the drug meant to numb the link between Cassian and me. Fine. If they loved Kayla so much, then let them have her. I'd give them my blessing. So why, after I gave you everything you wanted, did the three of you end up on your knees begging for my forgiveness?