Versebound Fiction ad: My Five Relentless Bullies

I never stopped wanting my husband. The desire was all still there - the dryness was the problem. For about two years I told myself I was just tired. The truth was harder: I’d got dry enough that intimacy had started to hurt, and “not tonight” had quietly turned into a habit I never actually chose. It was never about him, and it was never about me losing interest. My body had simply stopped keeping up — and I didn’t yet understand why. I did everything you’re meant to do. Lubricants — I lost count. Moisturisers. A cream the doctor suggested. They all did the same thing: helped for the few minutes they were on, then nothing. Because they sit on the surface. And the surface was never really the problem. HRT wasn’t on the table for me. Some women can’t take it. Some are told not to. Some try it and it barely helps. And almost none of us were ever told there was something studied that wasn’t a hormone. Here’s what finally made sense to me. After menopause, oestrogen drops and the tissue itself changes — it thins and loses some of its ability to hold moisture. The cells in that tissue are built partly from fats. A lubricant can’t change that. It’s like misting a houseplant’s leaves while the roots stay bone dry. The dryness is on the surface. The change is in the tissue. Senora is a daily softgel of sea buckthorn oil. You swallow it like food. Its omega-7-rich fatty acids are absorbed and used to support the lipid-rich cell membranes and mucosal tissue — the layer that’s meant to hold moisture in the first place. Not wetness on top. Support underneath. And not just any sea buckthorn. he omega-7 lives in the fruit — the pulp oil — not the seed. Senora is built around the fruit-oil fraction, which is why a cheaper “sea buckthorn,” often seed oil or an undisclosed blend, may not have done much. And it isn’t a hunch. In a 2014 randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in Maturitas, 116 postmenopausal women took 3g of sea buckthorn oil daily for three months. They were 3.1 times more likely to improve their vaginal tissue integrity than the women on placebo. Not surface moisture — the integrity of the tissue itself. I’ve been taking it three months now. It wasn’t a switch flipping. It was quieter than that — one evening I realised I wasn’t bracing. The dread went first. And then it was just us again. If the desire is still there and your body just isn’t keeping up, this is worth understanding properly. I’ve put the study, the dose, and how it works below. P.S. It’s non-hormonal — no oestrogen — which is exactly why it’s worth a look if hormones aren’t an option for you. P.P.S. Three softgels a day. Nothing to apply, nothing to time, no cream living by the bed. P.P.P.S. Give it the full twelve weeks the study used — Senora backs it with a 90-day money-back guarantee, the same window, so the trial’s on them, not you. Individual results vary.

I watched my own funeral from the back row, and my husband didn't shed a single tear. But when she walked in—the woman who poisoned me—he wept like a child. "Sienna," Adrian Cross choked out, pulling her into his arms in front of my casket. "I'm so glad you came. Today's been unbearable." I stood three feet away, invisible, dead, and somehow still capable of feeling my heart shatter all over again. Three days ago, I was alive. Three days ago, I drank the tea Sienna handed me with that sweet, trembling smile. "You look exhausted, Nora. Let me take care of you." I trusted her. God help me, I actually thanked her. Now I'm a ghost watching my widower comfort my murderer over my dead body. "She brought this on herself," I heard Adrian whisper into Sienna's hair. "If Nora hadn't been so jealous, so cold, none of this stress would've happened. Her heart just... gave out." My heart gave out. That's the official story. The one the coroner signed off on after Adrian made a single phone call and a very generous donation to the hospital's new wing. I drifted closer, screaming words no one could hear. It wasn't my heart, you fool. It was the digitalis she crushed into my chamomile. Check the cup. CHECK THE CUP. But there was no cup anymore. Sienna had washed it herself, weeping prettily, insisting she needed to "keep busy" to cope with her grief. The grief of the woman who killed me. Adrian guided her to the front pew, his hand pressed against the small of her back the way it used to rest against mine—back when he still pretended to love me. "I don't know how I'll survive this," Sienna murmured, dabbing her dry eyes. "You won't be alone," Adrian promised. "I'll take care of you. I should have protected you from her a long time ago." I let out a hollow laugh that echoed through a room that couldn't hear it. Protected her. From me. The wife who gave up her career, her family, and three years of her life for a man who only ever saw me as a placeholder for the woman he really wanted. I'd married Adrian Cross knowing he didn't love me. I told myself it didn't matter. I told myself I could earn it. I was wrong about so many things. But here's the one thing I was finally, terribly right about: The card tucked inside the white roses on my casket—the roses he sent—wasn't addressed to me. I floated forward and read it. "For Sienna. Stay strong. This will all be over soon. — A." This will all be over soon. The words burned into whatever was left of my soul. He'd written my funeral flowers' card to her. He'd planned for this. For an end. A cold certainty settled over me, sharper than death itself. My husband didn't just fail to save me. My husband knew.

The night my daughter Lily stopped breathing, my husband was in a penthouse suite with his secretary. I know this because when I called him—screaming, begging, my hands still shaking from performing CPR on our three-year-old—his secretary answered. "Damien's in the shower," she said, her voice lazy and satisfied. "Can I take a message?" My daughter was dying. And she was asking if she could take a message. Lily had been born with a congenital heart defect. She'd had two surgeries before her second birthday. Every day with her was borrowed time, and I treasured every single second. But Damien Sterling, my husband—CEO of Sterling Industries, heir to a billion-dollar empire—treated our daughter like an inconvenience. No. Worse. He treated her like she didn't exist. He never visited her in the hospital. Never held her hand after surgery. Never once read her a bedtime story. The only time he acknowledged Lily was when he accused me of "using a sick child to trap him." Trap him. As if I wanted to be trapped in this nightmare of a marriage. Our union was an arrangement—my family's pharmaceutical company, Voss Pharmaceuticals, merged with Sterling Industries, and I was the collateral. A contract bride. Damien made it clear on our wedding night that he would never love me. "Don't touch me," he'd said, still in his tuxedo, pouring himself a drink. "This marriage is business. You are business. Nothing more." I accepted it. I accepted all of it. Because I was twenty-two and stupid and believed that if I was patient enough, kind enough, good enough, he would eventually see me. He never did. But when Lily came along—an accident he blamed me for—I thought maybe she would soften him. Maybe holding his own child would crack through that wall of ice. Instead, he looked at our newborn daughter and said, "Get a DNA test. I want proof she's mine." She was. Of course she was. He was the only man I'd ever been with. But even after the test confirmed it, he never bonded with her. He never tried. And now she was gone. I sat in the hospital hallway, Lily's tiny body already growing cold in the room behind me, and I stared at my phone. Damien hadn't called back. Three hours later, he still hadn't called back. By dawn, I had signed every document the hospital required. Alone. I arranged the funeral. Alone. I picked out a white casket small enough to carry in my arms. Alone. When I finally returned to the Sterling mansion, I found Damien in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading the Financial Times as if it were any other morning. He glanced up. "You look terrible." I stared at him. "Lily died last night." He set down his mug. Blinked. "What?" "Your daughter. She's dead." The silence that followed should have broken something in him. It should have shattered the world. Instead, he frowned—confused, almost annoyed—as if I'd told him about a stock that underperformed. "Why didn't you call me?" he asked. I laughed. It was the kind of laugh that comes out when your soul has finally cracked in half. "I did, Damien. Your secretary answered. She said you were in the shower." His jaw tightened. Not with grief. With embarrassment. And that was the moment I knew—with absolute, bone-deep certainty—that I was done. I walked past him, went upstairs, and began packing my bags. He followed me, leaning against the doorframe. "What are you doing?" "Leaving." "Don't be dramatic, Vivienne." I zipped my suitcase shut and turned to face him. "Our daughter is dead. You were sleeping with your secretary. And you're calling me dramatic?" For the first time in our marriage, Damien Sterling had nothing to say. But I did. "I want a divorce. And I want back everything you stole from me." His eyes narrowed. Because he knew exactly what I meant.

I let the supply contract with Whole Foods expire. I also “forgot” to prepare the ranch’s financial statements for the next quarter. The water rights renewal, the document that was the very lifeblood of our ranch, I buried under a pile of junk mail. I’m Ava, Caleb Walker’s wife. I’m the woman who used her own money and ten years of her life to turn a failing family ranch into a modern business empire. And now, I was going to destroy it with my own hands. At last week’s barbecue, Caleb put his family’s century-old cowboy hat—the symbol of his legacy—on his illegitimate son’s head in front of everyone. His mistress, Briar, stood beside him, proudly announcing to the crowd that the ranch hands all took their orders from her now. In that moment, something inside me died. I didn’t make a scene. I just calmly finished my beer. But Caleb didn’t know that from that moment on, his reign as the “cowboy king” was on borrowed time. He finally came to me when the......