Ohio Bound: With His Baby

I gave up my twenty-billion-dollar inheritance and cut ties with my family, all for my boyfriend of five years, Liam. But just as I was about to tell him I was pregnant with our child, he dropped a bombshell. He needed me to take the fall for his childhood sweetheart, Sophia. She'd been in a hit-and-run, and her acting career couldn't handle the scandal right before his company's IPO. When I refused and told him about our baby, his face went cold. He told me to terminate the pregnancy immediately. He didn't know the scars on my own back were from that same fire. He didn't know I was the one who pulled him out, not her. He had his assistant schedule the appointment and sent me to the clinic alone. There, the nurse told me the procedure carried a high risk of permanent infertility. He knew. And he still sent me. I walked out of that clinic, choosing to keep my child. At that exact moment, a news alert lit up my phone. It was a glowing article announcing that Liam and Sophia were expecting their first child, complete with a photo of his hand resting protectively on her stomach. My world shattered. Wiping away a tear, I found the number I hadn't called in five years. "Dad," I whispered, my voice breaking. "I was wrong. I'm ready to come home."

I woke up in agony after saving my husband from an explosion, only to find him standing over my hospital bed with a death sentence. Alpha Julius didn't care that I was bleeding internally. He only cared that his new "Fated Mate," Kenzie, needed a bone marrow transplant. And I was the match. When I refused, Julius didn't hesitate. He used the Alpha Command to paralyze my body, forcing me to lie still while doctors drilled into my hip. He threatened to throw our five-year-old daughter, Ava, to the feral Rogues if I didn't sign over my assets and accept his rejection. "If you die, the pack will find a use for the girl," he said coldly. He took my marrow, stole my life's work, and left me for dead in a supply closet, convinced I was just a weak human with no leverage. He thought he had won. He thought he had stripped me of everything. But Julius made one fatal mistake. He didn't know who I really was. As he walked away to celebrate with his mistress, I smashed through the mental barriers I had kept up for a decade. I reached out across the void to the one man who could burn this pack to ash. "Father," I screamed silently into the mind-link. "He's killing me." The Alpha King’s voice thundered back in my skull. Julius thought he had crushed a human. He had no idea he just woke up the White Wolf.

I walked out of the federal penitentiary with a terminal cancer diagnosis and exactly six months to live. Desperate for money to pay for a sky burial, I returned to the Vitiello family, the people who now wanted me dead. Dante, the man I had loved since childhood, looked at me with pure hatred. He thought I was the monster who killed his mother. He didn't know I had confessed to a crime I didn't commit to hide the ugly truth—that she had taken her own life. To punish me, Dante became cruel. He forced me to work as a servant, making me stand guard outside his bedroom door while he was intimate with his fiancée, Sofia. When the estate caught fire, I didn't hesitate. I ran into the inferno. I dragged Dante to safety, my back burning as debris fell on me, scarring me forever. But when he woke up, I hid in the shadows and let Sofia take the credit. I couldn't let him feel indebted to a "murderer." I thought that was the worst of it. I was wrong. On the eve of his wedding, Sofia had an accident and needed a blood transfusion. I was the only match. Dante didn't know my body was already shutting down. He didn't know my blood was poisoned with cancer markers. "Take it all," he roared at the doctors, ignoring my frail, trembling body. "Just save my wife." I died on that table, drained dry to save the woman who stole my life. It wasn't until the monitor flatlined that his right-hand man finally threw a file onto Dante's lap. "She didn't kill your mother, Dante. And she didn't just leave town. You just executed the only person who ever truly loved you."

I was Haylee Velasquez, a real estate heiress and Juilliard pianist, engaged to tech genius Joshua Cunningham. My life was a fairytale written in gold. Days before our wedding, I was kidnapped. The ransom was fifty million dollars. My fiancé refused to pay. Instead, he and my best friend, Giselle, used that exact amount to close a business deal, leaving me to be tortured for fifteen days. I lost our unborn child and the use of my hands forever. When I finally escaped and ran to him, bleeding and terrified, he accused me of being dramatic. "What in God's name are you doing?" he hissed. "Are you trying to ruin everything?" He had me committed to a mental institution for three years, stealing my inheritance and my sanity. Now, I'm out. A viral article celebrating their success just popped up on my phone, with a cruel comment from Giselle meant only for me. They think I'm still the broken girl they locked away. They're about to find out how wrong they are.

To save my father and our family's gallery, I was forced to marry the ruthless Caleb Wiley. He treated me like a commodity, his heart belonging only to another woman, Eva. When my father needed a life-saving surgery, Caleb made me a cruel offer. To get the money, I had to drink a fatal allergen during a high-stakes poker game. I drank it and nearly died. I woke up in the hospital to learn the money was never sent. My father was dead. Caleb had abandoned me to chase after Eva, later trading me to a lecherous judge like a piece of property. My life, my father's life-it was all worth less than his obsession. But then I found the proof. His mother had orchestrated everything-my family's ruin, my father's murder. My grief turned to ice. From the shadows, I began to broadcast every one of the Wiley family's crimes to the world.

The two pink lines on the pregnancy test glowed back at me, a beacon of hope after two years of trying. My first thought was David, my husband, away at a tech conference. This was everything we wanted for our future. But when I video-called him, eager to share the joyous news, it wasn't his face that filled the screen. I heard his voice, cold and dismissive, telling someone, "I' ll tell her I want a divorce tomorrow." Then came the husky, triumphant voice of Emily White, his head of marketing: "You promise, David? You' ll leave her for me?" My phone slipped from my trembling hand as he promised Emily, "Tomorrow, it' ll be over. Then it' s just you and me. And our baby." The words "Divorce" and "Our baby" echoed in the silent bathroom, each a cruel twist of the knife. I stood there, stunned, the positive pregnancy test in my hand a mockery of my shattered reality. Returning home, I found David and Emily in our bed, in our perfect suburban home. Not only was he unapologetic, but he also physically shoved me, then stood there, naked and defiant, declaring our marriage over. When I, shaking, revealed my pregnancy, he snatched the test, snarled, "It doesn' t matter. I don' t want it. I don' t want you," and snapped the test in two, throwing the broken pieces at my feet. How could the man who promised me the world, the man I poured my life into, become this cruel stranger? How could he deny his own child, especially after knowing my struggles to conceive? The betrayal was compounded when I discovered, through a chilling message, that he had been with Emily, celebrating their "first big deal," on the day of my father' s funeral. The man I loved had desecrated my deepest grief. Now, a cold, hard resolve clicked into place. He would pay for every lie, every betrayal, every tear.