The Divorced Military Queen Awakens (by Sadie Baxter) novel Chapter 482

Chapter 482 The Embrace

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To win thirteen consecutive rounds, every move had to be calculated with surgical precision. He had to predict not only his own strategy but the path his opponent might take several turns ahead. During those hours, the gears inside his mind had never stopped whirring. No wonder the man was bone–deep tired.

“If you’re truly tired, close your eyes for a bit. I’ll wake you when dinner’s ready,” Quinn suggested.

“No,” Julius murmured. “Just hold me like this. That’s enough.”

He loved the way her arms wrapped around him, weaving a safety net that settled him more surely than any fortress of logic ever could.

After a quiet minute, a spark of recollection flashed across Quinn’s eyes. “Oh, right—there’s something I’ve been meaning to give you,” she said.

“What is it?” Julius asked, puzzled.

Quinn loosened her embrace, pulled out her phone, and queued up a short video, then placed the screen in Julius‘ hands.

The moment the woman’s face appeared, Julius froze.

It was his mother–young, radiant, exactly as she had looked before death claimed her. On the screen, her lips moved, repeating the very words he had once heard spilling from the armed drone over the sea.

“I generated this with AI,” Quinn explained. “I fed it photos of your mother and the voice memos she left behind.”

Gavin had supplied the raw material she needed–archived images, stray recordings, forgotten snippets of conversations.

Quinn had built the file as a just–in–case weapon, believing that Julius‘ mother was Joaquin’s deepest weakness and that one flicker of distraction could tip the scales. In the end, the gambit had worked.

“The file’s yours now,” she said. “Keep it or erase it–your call.”

Because the footage touched his mother’s memory, Quinn wanted the decision to rest solely with him.

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Chapter 482 The Embrace

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Julius kept his gaze locked on the glass, watching the younger version of his mother come alive, speaking as though the years had never taken her away.

“Leave it,” he said softly. “No need to delete anything.”

“If you ever miss her terribly,” Quinn offered, “I can craft an interactive AI so she can hold simple conversations with you.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Julius replied. “A replica is still a replica. Having you beside me is more than enough.”

She was real, warm, and unmistakably present–nothing synthetic could compete with that.

“But-” He hesitated, a flicker of uncertainty softening his features.

“But what?” Quinn prompted.

“Quinn, do you truly plan to have a family with me someday?” Julius asked, the question bursting out before he could rethink it.

Quinn frowned in mild bewilderment, her lashes fluttering as she tried to read his mood. “Why would you ask me something like that?”

She thought her affection for him was evident. More than once, right in front of him and Everett, she had spoken openly of bearing his children someday.

“Your uncle said it himself—the Whitethorns are obsessive, the world calls us mad. No doctor has proved it, yet what if it truly is in the blood? If we have children, could you live with the chance they inherit that madness?”

“I don’t believe the rumors have anything to do with genetics. If you carried an inherited illness, you would have known long ago.”

Julius fell silent, the argument lodged in his throat like broken glass.

She continued, “In my eyes, this is more about how someone grows up than any strand of DNA. Your father lost himself because of what happened to your mother, and you–because of your childhood–learned to shut the world out and fight it. Our child will become whatever we and the child decide together.”

“Even if the child truly grows up to be crazy, would that still be all right with you?” he asked carefully.

He dreaded the possibility that a flawed, visibly scarred child might repel her. He dreaded even more that she would blame him for passing on such a stain.

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