Karma Akabane Novels & Stories

When I'm eight months pregnant, my husband, Levi West, becomes a donor to help his ex-girlfriend get pregnant. He even brings her and their illegitimate child home, wanting me to serve them. I refuse, and he calls me inhumane. "Audie's lost her husband—what's so bad about her wanting to have a child? You're a woman, too! How can you be so cruel?" I leave the house in anger, but Levi doesn't care. "Where can a country girl like you go when you're so heavily pregnant? You're going to come back and beg me to take you in again!" I head to the hospital to get an abortion. Then, I return to the countryside and rear pigs with my grandmother. Later, when Levi sees my flat belly and asks to see our child, I throw a handful of ashes in his face. "There you go. It's all there."

The moment I was born, I took her life. They called me a murderer. Marcus used to burn me with cigarette butts, and Dad would say it was my fate. “You’re a curse. If you had any conscience, you’d have gone to join Mom a long time ago to repay what you owe.” When Marcus was diagnosed with kidney failure, that same cold, distant father knelt in front of me. “Please… save him…” I put my hand on Dad’s shoulder. “Dad, I’ll do the surgery. But can you promise me one thing?” Dad performed the surgery himself. It was a success. He saved the son he loved most and took the life of the daughter he hated. But after I died, Dad turned himself in to the police, and Marcus lost his mind.

My husband promises to go to my hometown with me for the New Year holidays this year after I go to his. But before the trip to my hometown is due, he suddenly tells me he doesn't want to go anymore. I argue with him about this, and he pummels me with a bat. Meanwhile, his family eggs him on, telling him to kill me. Intense pain shoots through me as the blows land. I try my best to fight back, but I can't win against the majority. As the sky darkens, everyone heads home for dinner after giving me a good beating. When I regain consciousness in a corner of the garden, I see sense.

My mother is a hospital director. To give my brother, an intern doctor, more hands-on experience, she assigns him as the lead surgeon for my brain tumor operation. I beg her to let someone else do it and tell her it's my only chance at survival. But she slaps me hard across the face and screams, "How did I raise such a selfish, ungrateful child? Your brother has just started his internship—can't you help him improve his skills? Is that too much to ask?" Later, the surgery fails. I die on the operating table. And my mother seems to have aged decades overnight.

My car is parked properly in its own slot, and yet my neighbor decides to take a photo of it so that he can post it on the residents' group chat. His tone is clearly passive-aggressive. "Look, everyone! This car is parked sideways and has taken up two parking slots! Does the car owner even have a shred of moral decency? "She thinks the public parking lot is now her own property just because she's paying the parking rent!" I don't say anything at all. Instead, I just upload photos of my property deeds. "Excuse me, but first of all, these two slots are my private parking slots. Secondly, if you start counting from those two slots six times to the right, you'll find eight parking slots. Yeah, those are all mine."

In the sixth year of my mating with Kael, his Alpha brother died in a rogue attack. Kael inherited his brother’s seat as Alpha. He also inherited his brother’s Luna, Vivienne. Every time he came back from her bed, he held me and said the same thing. “Baby, I only love you. Vivienne is the daughter of the Silverfang Alpha. Our pack is unstable and we need their support. This is a deal, nothing more. The moment she gives birth to an heir, I’ll declare you my one and only Luna.” Their room was right next to mine. Every night I lay there and listened to Vivienne’s pleasure and the low, satisfied growls he never made for me anymore. For half a year I went from feeling like my chest was being carved open to feeling nothing at all. At the end of that half year, Vivienne announced she was pregnant. The same day, Kael announced he would hold the mating ceremony with her. I stopped waiting. I closed my eyes and reached for the mind-link I had not used in six years. I called my father, the Alpha King. “Dad. You were right. I regret it. Come take me home.”

During the freshman orientation, Fletcher Stone, the campus heartthrob, leads a protest in front of the orientation leader, Lindsey Quinn. As a result, Lindsey decides to make everyone run laps around the field. While Fletcher has volunteered to run everyone's laps on his own, the truth is, he has transferred the fatigue to me. He finishes his 30-mile run without a shift in his expression. After that, he tells Lindsey that he's willing to take on everyone's orientation training on his own. Because of that, everyone becomes Fletcher's fans. I, on the other hand, keep getting admitted into the infirmary because of exhaustion, which results in me being late to the orientation. My tardiness ends up affecting our class' chances of receiving a good rank. I get berated by the entire class as a result. When I try to explain my condition to everyone, they all look at me as though I were crazy. "You've barely attended the orientation for a few days, so how is it possible for you to be this exhausted? I think you're just pretending to be exhausted!" "Are you jealous of Fletcher because he's way fitter and more handsome than you? Now, he's even more popular than you!" Driven by despair, I demand answers from Fletcher. But he just changes into his uniform nonchalantly. "Please step out of my way. I need to go on a weighted cross-country run as the college's representative, so I have no time to fool around with you." Once Fletcher is done with the run in the 104-degree weather, his expression remains cool and collected. But I'm so exhausted that I suffer from organ failure, leading to my immediate death. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the first day of the freshman orientation. This time, I decide to take the initiative to report to Lindsey. "I'll take on the punishment for the entire class."

My grandma and I were on a perfect beach in Golden Bay. The sun warmed my skin, the sand was soft beneath my feet, and she was resting peacefully nearby. Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through my mind. A mind link. It was Brenda. Assistant to my mate, Gideon, the Alpha Heir. The image she sent was horrifying. An old woman in simple clothes, lying in a pool of her own blood. Deep gashes, down to the bone, from a silver-laced weapon. Brenda's voice echoed in my head, dripping with arrogance. “Cora, do you Omegas do anything but freeload?” “Gideon just bought this estate, and you’re already letting your pack-leeching relatives squat here? As the Alpha’s assistant, it's my duty to protect his land from trespassers.” “This is what happens when you trespass on an Alpha’s private property!” I froze. I looked over at the sun umbrella. My grandma, Maria, was napping peacefully. I replayed the image from the link. My blood ran cold. That face… bloody and broken, but I knew it. I would never mistake it. It wasn't my grandmother. It was Eleonora. Gideon’s grandmother. A rival pack had attacked her months ago. Her wolf was weakened. She was in a pack clinic. Her mind-link was damaged. She could only receive, not send. Today… she was supposed to come home. I pushed back against the link with all my strength. “Brenda, are you insane? Look who you hit! That's Eleonora! Gideon's grandmother!” Brenda cut the link. Her last words were cold and stupid. “Gideon made it clear. Your family is your problem. His family is his. He doesn’t claim trash like them.”

My husband, Zeke Larson, rushed to the police station at night because his childhood sweetheart, Snow Lowell, had run over my father-in-law and killed him. Snow clutched Zeke’s jacket and trembled in fear. “Zeke, I’m so scared. I didn’t mean to kill anyone.” Zeke pulled her into his arms at once and glared at me like he wanted to kill me. “You were in the car too. Why didn’t you stop her?” I almost laughed. He was the one who insisted that Snow drive. He said she had just gotten her license and needed more practice, so he pushed her to take his car and give me a ride. “Forget it. He’s already dead. There’s no point arguing now. “We’ll just say your dad ran into the road without looking, and that’s how Snow hit him. “We can settle this privately. Snow has a performance in Vienne next month. She can’t have a stain on her record.” I froze for a moment. When he repeated himself, I finally realized that he thought the person who died was my father. I looked at Zeke and saw how natural it all seemed to him. I could not help but laugh. “This is not a private settlement I have the right to be part of.”

Right after my bonding ceremony with Alpha Carlo, his first love, Olivia, died unexpectedly. For fifty years after that, I gave everything I had for Carlo and the Shadowmoon pack. We had five pups, and the pack thrived. But then, on the 50th anniversary of me becoming Luna, Carlo dragged me to the Moonlit Platform. He was going to break our mate bond himself. And after he brutally severed it, he drained all my soul power. He said he was going to use an ancient ritual to bring Olivia back to life. And I, the Luna who’d been by his side for half a century, was the perfect vessel. My desperate cries brought our children running, but they just stood behind Carlo, watching me with cold eyes. “Bringing Aunt Olivia back is the only thing Father has wanted for years,” one said. “If you hadn’t been jealous of Aunt Olivia, if you’d used your healing on her, you wouldn’t be our mother!” another spat. The children I’d poured my heart and soul into raising now just wanted me to die. I felt my soul shatter, my heart ache as if pierced by a knife, and then, nothing. I lost consciousness. When I opened my eyes again, I was back. Back to the day of my bonding ceremony with Carlo. In my last life, Carlo chose me, his Head Healer. Olivia, though, was devoured by a venom-fang spider and died from its poison. Her death had nothing to do with me, but Carlo blamed me for all of it. This time, looking into Carlo's eyes, I saw the deep disgust there, and any hope I had left died. He was back too.