Howard
ABOUT ME
ABOUT ME
STORY BY Howard
Did Your Whole Order Have to Come?
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The morning after my mother chained Sir Julian Rook to my wrist with a spell neither of us had agreed to, his younger brother stormed into my family's cliffside fortress with a sword in his hand. "Witch! Let my brother go!" he shouted, right up until I turned around. Then Finn Rook forgot the rest of his speech. He had reason to. Before I became the daughter of the woman the Lantern Order called a monster, I had been the apprentice healer who dragged him out of a burning hospice and vanished before he could learn my real name. Now he and his brother were trapped inside Witchhold, my mother's bargain was closing around all three of us, and the only way to free Julian might cost me the one thing I had spent my life protecting. If Finn remembered who I used to be, could he believe who I was now?
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Don't Use Family to Guilt Me, I Won't Keep Funding My Relatives
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My mother slid a refinance packet across the breakfast table at the Driftwood Court and told me that if I loved my family, I would sign before the bank's deadline. The packet put my home, my savings, and the small accounting firm I'd built on the line to rescue a seaside motel my brother had been draining for years. When I asked why the employees' retirement contributions were missing from the books, my mother said I was turning a family problem into a business one. I had spent years paying to keep the doors open, believing every promise that the next season would be different. Now I had to decide whether protecting my family meant protecting them from the consequences of their choices, or finally refusing to pay for them.
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Seventeen Fathers
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When the city posted an eviction notice on the shelter that raised me, my seventeen fathers did what they had always done when someone threatened our family: they showed up, took up space, and refused to be ashamed of needing a place to sleep. They had once been the men Greyhaven stepped around on its way to the waterfront. They had also taught me to read, fixed my bike, packed my lunches, and made sure I knew I was loved. Now the shelter's board planned to sell the building to a developer, and I was the only person who knew there might be a way to stop it. But saving the place meant asking the men who had spent their lives protecting me to put their names, their histories, and their choices in public. Could I call them my fathers and still ask them to risk everything?
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Once I Let Go, the Whole House Fell Quiet
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My sister told me she was pregnant with my fiancé's child while I was checking the seating chart for our wedding. The band was already booked, the invitations were on my desk, and a dozen guests were due at my inn for our engagement dinner that night. Mae stood in the doorway with one hand pressed to her stomach and asked me not to make her say it twice. I didn't. I asked how long, and she said long enough that Grant had already helped her choose a doctor. By the end of the evening, my family wanted me to keep the wedding on the calendar, the inn staff wanted to know whether their jobs were safe, and Grant wanted me to believe that the timing was complicated. I owned the inn, the contracts, and the choice to walk away. I still had to decide what walking away would cost, and whether Mae expected me to make room for her in the life she had taken from me.
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After the Idle Songbird Stepped Down, the Harbor Heir Regretted Everything
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At the Vale Foundation's winter gala, Julian asked me to sing while he announced the sale of the theater I had spent three years saving. Then he introduced the woman who would help turn it into a luxury hotel. I set down the microphone, walked off the stage, and told the man who had called me his songbird that I was done performing for him. I had always preferred a quiet room, a soft couch, and a day without plans. Julian had mistaken that for a life I could be bought into. He was about to learn what my leaving would cost him. But the theater wasn't the only thing he stood to lose, and I wasn't sure whether I wanted the man who finally came looking for me.
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Rowan and Celia: My Wife Asked Me to Indulge Her Protégé. Cute. You Think I'm Immature?
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At the opening presentation for Bellwether House, my wife put Noah Bell's name above mine on the project I had spent three years designing. Then she leaned close and told me he was young, inexperienced, and needed me to be patient. The room was full of investors, contractors, and people who knew exactly whose work they were looking at. I could have swallowed the insult and let the presentation continue. Instead, I asked one question about the plans—and watched my wife choose her protégé over me in front of everyone. The project was worth millions, the studio was built on my designs, and my marriage was already coming apart. I had to decide which part I was willing to lose first.
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Rugged Hunter, Delicate Heiress
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The night I married a mountain hunter, I told him he smelled of sweat and could forget sharing my bed until he learned to bathe. I had just lost my family's fortune, my home, and the future I'd spent my life expecting. Cal Mercer had offered me a roof and a way to keep the last piece of my father's land out of a developer's hands. I accepted because every other choice came with a price I couldn't pay. But Cal wasn't the obedient, grateful husband I'd imagined, and the harder I tried to make our bargain feel like a rescue, the more I wondered what he had given up to make it. Was I his wife because he wanted me, or because I was the last thing standing between him and the land he loved?
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Don't Push Around the Quiet Girl at Work
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The first time my online boyfriend asked to meet, I said I had a deadline. The second time, I said I had a migraine. The truth was harder to type: I was born without most of my left hand, and I had spent years learning how to disappear before anyone could decide what that meant about me. Online, with my camera off and my sleeves pulled down, I could be funny, capable, even wanted. At work, I was the quiet communications associate everyone handed the tasks they didn't want and the blame they didn't expect me to fight. Then my manager asked me to sign off on a safety report I knew was wrong. I could stay small and keep the job I depended on, or make myself impossible to ignore. If I finally let my boyfriend see all of me, would he still want to meet?
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Six Ramen Chefs Quit Together to Force My Hand, So I Switched to Rice Bowls
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At 8:12 on a Friday morning, six of my ramen chefs laid their resignation letters beside the stockpot and told me none of them would work the weekend unless I gave them a share of the restaurant. Their timing was deliberate: the Harborlight Festival opened in two days, our biggest weekend of the year, and the broth for five hundred expected guests was already simmering. I could sign away part of the business, close the doors, or find another way to feed the town before the festival crowd reached my counter. I chose a menu none of them had helped create. The rice bowls kept Lantern House open, but they also put my father's legacy, my only remaining staff, and the chefs' livelihoods on a collision course. When the festival ended, would the people who had built the restaurant with me still want a place at my table?
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After I Stopped Clinging to My Contract Husband, He Became a Wounded Puppy
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On the night I learned the Vale family had never been mine by blood, I stopped following my contract husband from room to room—and adopted a scruffy little dog he couldn't stand. I expected the silence between Adrian and me to feel like freedom. Instead, the less I asked of him, the more often I found him waiting outside my door, carrying excuses and looking at my new companion as if the dog had stolen something personal. But my marriage had begun as a business arrangement, and the family that raised me was already deciding what I was worth without their name. If I stopped reaching for Adrian, would he finally tell me why he had married me?
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