Best Bias Stories & Novels Collection

I sat alone at our engagement dinner, having waited for eight long hours.

When my phone finally buzzed, Jasper sounded rushed.

"Lira? I'm so sorry. Things went sideways on my end. Your parents didn't stick around, did they?"

I stared at the melted ice in the champagne bucket.

"No," I said, my voice hollow.

He sighed. "Let's push it to next week, alright? I'll call your parents tomorrow and ex...

My coworker was so jealous of me that she found a way to switch our bodies.
She rushed toward my husband, who was posing on his motorcycle. “A tall, rich, gorgeous husband with an eight-pack? Here I come!”
Without a word, I opened the passenger door of a Mercedes S-Class.
At last. I was free of a husband whose perfect appearance owed everything to drugs and cosmetic work.
This time, I was the one ...

Three years together, and the texts I'd sent Nolan Garrett could probably fill an entire medical chart.

Pasta or salad for dinner. Rain boots or sneakers when it was pouring. I ran everything by him.

Then one night, right in front of me, he muted my texts.

"Can you grow up a little?" He didn't even look up. "Not everything has to go through me."

After that, I really did stop asking.

I signed ...

On my wedding day, my identical twin sister refused to take off my couture gown.
 
"Liora, the bridal party is here," I pleaded.
 
But my father just smoothed her tulle train. "Let her wear it. You're twins, nobody will notice the difference."
 
My mother agreed, tossing a dusty-rose bridesmaid gown at my chest. "It's just a ceremony, Elowen. Just play along."
 
It was always like this. From the l...

"You owe us for raising you. Strip off your silks, put on those rags, and work off your debt like the lowly servant you are."
To satisfy my twin sister's twisted jealousy, my parents faked a bloodline test and stripped me of my Silverthorn name. They threw me out of the estate, broke my spine, and handed me over to a feral, exiled brute. They watched me bleed, laughing it off as a "temporary lesso...

The second the graduation ceremony ended, my parents took us all to the nicest restaurant in town.

They said they wanted to properly celebrate having "two graduates" in the family.

Pierce, my boyfriend of four years, showed up last with a huge bouquet of champagne roses in his arms.

I'd just gotten up from my chair when he walked right past me and handed the whole bouquet to my friend Brooke. "...

Chase Harrington hadn't willingly spoken to me since I hit puberty and got fat.

So, when my childhood best friend actually handed me a Diet Coke on the morning of our Yale alumni interviews, I should've known it was a trap. Instead, my stupid heart fluttered. I thought he still cared.

I drank it.

When I woke up, my hair covered the hardwood floor.

Sloane Kensington, the undisputed queen bee of...

To celebrate landing our biggest client of the year, the company rented out the entire terrace of a beachside bar.

When it was time for the team photo, the only open spot left was next to my boyfriend, Harrison Kent.

I'd barely moved over when he waved toward the back of the crowd. "Lacey, come stand here."

Lacey Monroe was my best friend. She squeezed in beside him with a smile. The second the...

I was the most in-demand wedding planner in Boston. I'd run more than three hundred weddings, and not one of them had ever been off by a single second.

The only wedding I couldn't pull off was my own.

My fiancé, Graham, and I had been together for seven years, and everyone knew he was a perfectionist.

Everyone called his executive assistant, Sloane, Miss Punctual. She was also my best friend.

...

The night of my coming-of-age ceremony, Elodie asked us to sit around the bonfire and talk.

Elodie was my adoptive parents' real daughter. They had brought her home three months ago.

She smiled at me across the fire. "Wren, which academy are you choosing?"

Before I could answer, the four boys I grew up with spoke first.

One by one, they held up acceptance receipts. All four said Silverhaven.

...

"Thanksgiving's at Garrett's new place this year!"

My sister Paisley dropped a location pin in the family group chat, followed by a string of party emojis. My fiancé, Garrett, ran a real estate company, and the pin pointed to a model home they'd just finished building.

That evening, I grabbed a pumpkin pie fresh out of the oven and caught a rideshare to the address. When we got there, the driver...

One drunken night. One baby. One Don who married me out of duty.

I was the family doctor, a nobody, when I got pregnant with Don Rafael Salvatore’s child. I thought if I stayed quiet, stayed good, and made myself useful, he would eventually love me and our daughter.

Seven years later, I’m still waiting.

Rafael never let Nina call him “Daddy.” When she was two, she said it by accident in public,...

After I discovered my boyfriend, Julian Vance, was cheating on me, my anxiety spiraled out of control.
It got so bad that I would wake up in the middle of the night, pacing the entire house barefoot just to make sure he was still in the guest bedroom.
To pacify me, Julian had a custom tracking bracelet made. "This way, you can check where I am anytime," he said.
But this very bracelet became the c...

In the ten years I was with Chase Holloway, I got used to him "forgetting" things.

The night he proposed, he showed up empty-handed and said the ring was still at the jeweler's. The day we went to City Hall for our marriage license, he dug through every pocket of his coat and said he'd left his paperwork at home. On our wedding day, he didn't show up at all.

I found out later he'd been in the ba...

In my family, there was always room for Eden. There was never room for me.

At dinner, every dish was my sister's favorite: truffle risotto, seared scallops, chocolate soufflé. When she won a prize, my parents toasted her until the glasses rang. When I mentioned my own business, my mother laughed and called it a hobby.

I stopped waiting to be chosen. I learned to stand in the corner and let Eden ...

Beneath the sprawling oaks of Bramblewood University, my parents hovered like proud paparazzi. In the center of their screens stood Liora, my childhood best friend, and Kael—my boyfriend of four years.

They stood pressed together, Liora's blonde curls brushing Kael's jawline. My parents shouted directions with absolute adoration. You'd think she was their flesh and blood, or the one wearing hi...

I barely spoke a word before I turned six. Behind our backs, he townsfolk whispered that some foul thing had sealed my tongue.
The first time I truly spoke, I was pointing at our neighbor, Emily.
She was flying a kite just outside our fence. Floating right above her head was a stark, blood-red number.
"Three."
My mom poked her head out of the kitchen, asking if I had just spoken.
I nodded and poin...

My twin sister Mallory and I were the kind of girls who could gain two pounds just from smelling fries. On top of that, we both loved to eat, and we both had the same dream: walking the runway at Fashion Week.

Right before our eighteenth birthday, Grandma got so tired of us begging that she went into the woods outside town to find a witch. She came back with two glass jars.

One held a hunger wor...

“Know who you belong to.”

For three years, Levi had only one answer. Then a stranger asked her what she wanted.

She escaped the man who owned her and hid in the one place he would never look.

At 25, Levi has spent three years as mafia don Matteo Calderone’s obsession, controlled, punished and displayed. With a stolen ledger and forged papers, she crosses the river and becomes Lena Hart, a waitr...

Ninety-nine. That's how many times my family chose my sister over my life. The final time was three hours ago, on the exact day I was supposed to step out of the shadows and be inducted as the syndicate's first female Consigliere.

I was locked in our underground vault, choking on my own blood, while they hosted a lavish graduation party for Camilla upstairs. Out of everyone, only Julian—my fian...

Six months ago, a deadly dose of ricin was secretly dropped into my drink. The toxic substance has been relentlessly destroying my body ever since, and my time is nearly up.

Today, my physical strength has completely faded, leaving me with only seventy-two hours to draw breath.

On the brink of my impending death, I gave in and consented to give my remaining kidney to my sister. Overflowing with ...

After five years of mopping floors at Harrington Tower, I finally had enough saved for my son Theo's heart surgery.

I got off work early that day, folded my new paycheck in half twice, and tucked it into my inside pocket. I practically ran the whole way to the hospital. I wanted my husband, Beckett Reid, to be the first to know.

The door to the family lounge wasn't shut all the way, and I could ...

Love wasn't free in our family. It was literal currency.
My sister, Stella Belle, and I both had a Kinship Savings Jar. 
It held the love and care we received from our families, which could be traded for anything in the Life Exchange Shop.

When I was six, I bought my mom’s life back from cancer by selling away the pain of her carrying me for nine months.
When I was thirteen, I bought my brother a...

On the night of my college graduation, Sloane Callahan, the biological daughter my Mafia family had only recently brought home, asked me what I planned to do next.

Before I could answer, my four childhood friends spoke up one after another.

One by one, all four showed me documents proving they were moving to California.

Then Graham Whitmore, heir to one of Chicago's most powerful Mafia families...

Five years after I walked away from Marcus, the Alpha of the Stonecliff Pack, I received an invitation to celebrate the birth of his heir.
Just as the guard reached for my invitation, Marcus's voice sounded behind me.
"Don't bother. Let her in."
He strode past without a backward glance, already heading toward his guests.
I handed the invitation to the guard anyway and waited until he'd checked e...

The seventh time my mate walked out on our daughter for a wolf cub, I finally stopped counting.

His dead Beta’s sister, Savannah, came home with a rescued cub named Duke. She said he’d die without her. She said her wolf was fading too. Damian believed every word.

So Duke tore up my daughter’s sketchbook for a bed, and Damian laughed. Duke chased six-year-old June down the stairs, and Damian arri...

When I was ten, my parents faked a messy divorce and turned my life into a sick reality show.
They split up me and my twin sister, Romy. She got the Alpine mansion and my mother's luxurious lifestyle.
I was dumped in a moldy basement, scrubbing diner plates and clinging to my physics books to survive my father's "gambling addiction." 
For eight years, I starved to pay off his staged debts. Then, ...

I was ranked first in my class, which made me this year's valedictorian.

Years ago, my dad served overseas, and a war correspondent wrote a story about him. He cut the article out and kept it in the inside pocket of his old jacket for twenty years.

I read it for the first time when I was twelve, and ever since then, I'd wanted to be a reporter like that.

But I almost turned down Northwestern's ...

On the day Carter and I remarried, our son Finn had been in the hospital for forty days.

The line at City Hall was long. Carter spent the whole time with his head down, texting, wearing a smile I hadn't seen on him in years.

The person on the other end was Wren Dalton, an art student getting by on a scholarship and part-time jobs. She'd turned Carter down three times. When he sent her a full set...

All my life, whenever I wished for something, my younger stepsister got twice as much. One doll for me meant two for Chloe. One bedroom meant she got a bigger room plus a study. Even my own mother seemed to love her twice as much.   Then a strange interface appeared on my phone and confirmed the rule.   So I stopped wishing for good things.   I wished for a twenty-six-year-old boyfriend. Chloe got...

The day we moved into the new estate on the hill, every bedroom had a name next to it. The master suite for my parents. The east wing for my brother, Luca. And the best room in the house, the south suite overlooking the Hudson, was labeled Sofia's Room. My name wasn't anywhere. Out in the hallway, a workman was screwing brass nameplates onto every bedroom door. None of them said Chiara. Ten years ...

My sister Vivian dated men the way other people taste champagne — a bright sip, then set the glass down before anyone could ask her to finish it.
Never enough to satisfy anyone. Never long enough to be held responsible for the empty glass.
When those men discovered one another, they did not punish her.
They chose me.
Attention I had never received became flowers, invitations, and late-night calls...

Ten years into my marriage, I'd traded my paintbrush for a spatula and turned into Mrs. Holloway.

Ever since my sister Brooke moved in, my husband Bennett and my daughter Lucy had picked up a habit. Anytime Brooke and I disagreed, they put it to a vote.

On my birthday I wanted steak. Two hands went up for the salad bar Brooke liked. When I hadn't slept in weeks and wanted to see a therapist, the...

For seven years, I dreamed of carrying my Alpha mate's child. But when the day finally came, Caleb didn't celebrate. Instead, he gave our pup's birthright away.

To save his childhood friend Brenna from being executed for carrying a rogue's pup, Caleb publicly swore a blood oath claiming her unborn child as his heir.

He swore to me it was just a temporary lie. He promised I was still his only mat...

For years, I'd covered everything for my mate's family. The house, the car, the bags, the clothes.

So when they planned a family vacation, I thought I'd finally earned a spot.

Instead, they booked tickets for the whole family, plus Sloane, the childhood sweetheart who never quite left my mate's side. Even the dog had plans.

I was the one they expected to stay home and keep working. They called ...

Three years after being discarded by her husband and the small town of Hartlow, Lena returns as Vivienne Ashe — beautiful, wealthy, unrecognizable. She doesn't come back for revenge. She comes for Nana Birdie, the dying librarian who was the only person who ever mattered. But Nana holds the secret that built Dean Calloway's empire on fraud, and the town that once threw Lena away is now desperate f...

I killed myself because I couldn't survive another day inside Adrian Vale's hatred.

At the funeral home, he took my urn, smiled and said I didn't deserve a grave, or a headstone, or a single person standing over me pretending I'd been worth something.

Then he opened his hand and let me fall. He walked through my ashes without looking back.

Less than a week later, the same man would return to...

The last time Adrian and I fought about Sophie Bennett, we didn't realize our daughter was standing right outside the door.
 
"Don't forget how Ellie got here in the first place. If you hadn't trapped me with a pregnancy, there wouldn't have been a wedding. So yes, goddamn it—I wish Sophie's boy was mine."
 
After that night, Ellie stopped asking for Adrian. She invited George to her preschool fie...

I was cleaning coffee from my husband's suit sleeve when the news alert lit up my phone: Vivian Lane had come home, and Adrian Shaw had gone to the airport himself to meet her.

In the photo, he wore the charcoal suit I had pressed that morning.

He held her suitcase with one hand and looked at her with a smile I had spent three years trying to earn.

That was the first time I understood I had not...

My wolf was damaged the day I first shifted, when I was ten. I’ve healed slower than other wolves ever since, and a wolf like that can’t inherit a pack.

I grew up mocked and bullied for being the weak one.

My sister, Seraphina, shifted on the same day and came through it perfectly. She became the Alpha heir, the prodigy my parents poured everything into.

I thought they loved her more because sh...

I woke up at twenty-seven again, still tied by a sacred mate bond to the most powerful Alpha in the Northwest. We had twin cubs. Everyone said I was lucky.

Before my first life ended, that bond had helped destroy me.

This time, I took the contract that could dissolve it to my mate's first love.

“Ronan's yours,” I told Vanessa. “The cubs, too. Get his Alpha mark on this, and after the bond-break...

On my twenty-second birthday, I cut my wrists and texted the undertaker I'd hired to collect my body.
My family was across town celebrating my sister— – the daughter they loved, believed, and chose every time. I expected to die alone before they remembered I existed.
Instead, the undertaker came running.
Elijah Hayes was supposed to bury me. He became the first person who asked me to stay. He took...

My father is a Mafia don. He splits everything down the middle between my brother and sister. All I get are their chores, their deadly errands, and the blame whenever they fight. He calls it fairness.

When he froze my accounts, I pawned the last thing I owned to get out. On my twentieth birthday, he taught me one final lesson about fairness, and the last of my hope in him died. I’m the daughter h...

A month before we made our engagement official, Blake, the man I planned to marry, suggested taking a trip to the Rocky Mountains with his friends.

His close friend Brooke handed out bottles of bear spray she claimed had cost her a fortune.

The sickly sweet smell seemed wrong to me. I warned everyone not to use it, but they accused me of being jealous of her. To defend Brooke, Blake sprayed the ...

In my first life, I provided free designs and materials at cost, only for my hometown to brand me a greedy fraud.
They destroyed my studio and left me with nothing—all because another woman promised to renovate their homes for twenty thousand dollars instead of eighty thousand.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day they surrounded my studio and demanded refunds.
This time, I didn’t ex...

My family ignored my calls while I was dying in our basement. They thought I was trying to ruin my younger sister's graduation.
That night, my brother finally came looking for me. My sister wanted the cookies I used to bake for her.
I was right beside him when he demanded that I come home.
He couldn't hear me. My body was still downstairs.

Dominic once told me he loved me—then leaked my intimate photos to the entire school, all to avenge his dead first love.
Seven years later, he discovered that I had given birth to his son, a child suffering from a failing heart.
He ended his engagement, found our son a donor heart, dragged everyone who had ever hurt me to my feet, and finally proposed as death closed in on him.
I put on the weddin...

My sister and I married the twin Alphas. Everyone in the pack called us blessed.

When rogues attacked me five months into my pregnancy, our mates cut off our calls for help. Their stepsister needed them.

My baby died. My sister saved me, but the silver blade that struck her left her unable to shift again.

From my hospital bed, I told my husband I wanted our mate bond severed.

He ignored me for...

The first time the system appeared, I thought it was a scam.
One wish per day, it said. Anything I wanted.
So I tested it with a hundred dollars.
That night, my mother handed me one bill. Then she smiled and told me she had bought my stepsister Mia a jacket worth two hundred.
That was when fifteen years of “coincidences” turned into math.
Every wish I had ever made came true.
And every time, Mia g...

In my last life, I needed five million dollars to pay for my mother’s treatment. So I signed a three-year marriage contract with Everett and became the Mrs. Thorne everyone envied.

But throughout those three years, his heart belonged to Celeste, the woman he had never gotten over after she left for Europe.

She came back the day we buried my mother.

The day I was diagnosed with terminal cancer, ...