I Lost a Husband, But I Gained an Empire
Chapter 5
His voice was unusually anxious.
“Blair, James is extremely drunk. His Alpha form is unstable—he needs someone to watch him.”
But I only replied lightly:
“If he’s drunk, let him sleep at your place.
If that doesn’t work, ask Aria whether she’s free.”
Heaven and earth knew—I said that entirely for his sake.
But the James who was supposedly too drunk to stand,
who should’ve collapsed into his beast form,
somehow managed to force himself home—
only to throw a cold face at me the moment he walked in.
He sat next to me, stiff and silent, pretending to watch TV.
That icy attitude appeared every day afterward,
right on schedule.
And yet strangely, he never once failed to come home.
Not a single day.
More than that—
for an entire week straight,
he had someone deliver 999 moon-roses to my office in the Clan Affairs building.
In the past, even a small charm from him would’ve made me rush to post a dozen updates, flaunting my joy.
But this time, no matter how often he refreshed the clan network,
he never saw even a single petal.
James seemed to have completely forgotten about “divorce” and “dissolving the bond.”
Meanwhile, I followed the clan lawyer’s advice
and simply waited quietly for the best opportunity.
“Ningning, where are you? Yes, we’re in Private Room No. 8—come quick!”
Lynn’s voice sounded through the mind-link.
I was heading to the private club to sing with her.
Walking through the dim corridor lit by moon-halo lamps,
I hadn’t yet found the right room
when someone pressed a hand on my shoulder from behind.
“Blair—how did you know I was here?”
Even in the sultry, ambiguous lighting,
the excitement and joy in James’s eyes were unmistakable.
His Alpha scent even warmed instantly upon seeing me.
“I told you I’d be back soon, didn’t I?
But since you’re here, perfect—come in and say hello.”
He practically half-dragged, half-held me into the room.
Aria was the first to come forward.
The moment she saw me, her smile faltered noticeably.
“Didn’t expect Blair-sis would come to a place like this.”
She playfully glared at James,
then swept her gaze over me with thinly veiled disdain.
“James-ge always says you’re fussy and shy.
See? I knew he was lying. Blair-sis is definitely not the silly kind of woman he described.”
In that moment,
I noticed the custom-made coat draped over her shoulders—
The exact coat I had gifted James for our anniversary last year.
Recently, I had asked him to wear it to accompany me to the Gu Family banquet.
He told me impatiently that the coat had been lost during a field mission.
All I had done was murmur, “That’s a pity.”
Yet the man acted like something in him snapped,
exploding with rage:
“It’s an ugly old coat! Of course I tossed it!
You interrogate me like a criminal!
Blair, should I take you to the healer right now and have your brain examined?
You really should fix that pig-brain of yours!”
At that moment, his Alpha suppression was unrestrained—
treating me not as a partner,
but as property.
James then dragged me toward his so-called “old friends,”
making me greet each of them one by one.
While the werewolves joked about him being “tightly controlled by his mate,”
James laughed contentedly,
his eyes glinting with the smugness only an Alpha felt
when surveying what he believed was his territory.
He stared at me—
as if I were still the little wolf cub who used to orbit around him.
When they began egging us on to sing a duet together,
Aria suddenly stepped forward and draped the coat over my shoulders.
She said sweetly,
“Blair-sis wore so little—I don’t want her to catch a cold.”
But I recognized it instantly.
The coat was the same anniversary gift I gave James.
The same one he claimed to have “lost.”
The same one I recently asked him to wear to accompany me to a banquet.
Seeing me wearing that coat—
James stiffened.
His breath hitched, even grew unsteady.
He grabbed my wrist, speaking carefully:
“On the last mission, the temperature dropped suddenly…
Aria didn’t bring anything warm…
So I… had no choice but to lend her my coat…”
I didn’t bother looking at him.
I simply continued replying to my friend’s message.
“Mhm? It’s just a coat.
Lending it to her—or even giving it away—doesn’t matter.”
And right at that moment,
Lynn sent a blurry side-profile photo with a single caption:
“Your ex-husband is here.”
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