The Divorced Military Queen Awakens (by Sadie Baxter) novel Chapter 318

Chapter 318 Intruder In The Night

She snapped her head toward the corner. A lone figure sat in the armchair beside her bed, half–shrouded in shadow.

Julius Whitethorn.

The lights were off, yet a slice of moonlight through the curtains carved his profile clearly enough for her to know him without doubt.

“Bad dream?” His familiar voice drifted across the stillness.

Quinn exhaled shakily and flicked on the bedside lamp. Warm light flooded the room, and Julius‘ face came fully into view.

“Why are you in my room?”

“I wanted to drop off a file,” he said, eyes fixed on her as though memorizing every line of her face. “You were already asleep, so I waited.”

There had been a time when he saw her every day–could hold her, kiss her, fall asleep beside her with their fingers intertwined.

Since their separation, even drifting off unaided had become a luxury; more nights than not, he relied on pills to force the silence to close over him.

“So you asked the hotel for a key card to my room?”

“I’m sorry.”

“If you truly were, you’d never have come in without my permission.”

Julius‘ eyes flickered, the light inside them dimming as though someone had drawn a curtain across his soul. “All right. I understand. It won’t happen again.”

Quinn tipped her head, the edge of curiosity sharpening her voice. “What file are you handing me?”

Julius rested a slender folder on the low glass table, then nudged it toward her with two deliberate fingers. “It’s everything we have on the man you ran into in the elevator.”

Quinn snatched up the folder, pressed it to her chest for a breath, and then lowered her gaze to the first

page.

A glossy photograph stared back at her. The face was identical to the stranger she had met between steel walls and halogen light only hours earlier.

His name, it read, was Leander Fane–eldest son belatedly reunited with the powerful Fane family of Celosia three years ago. An illegitimate heir who had somehow risen inside the clan’s empire with startling speed.

Anything before those three years appeared scrubbed clean. The summary merely noted that he had grown up “in a small provincial town,” adopted only after the Fane heir died suddenly, leaving a vacancy no legitimate branch could fill.

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Chapter 818 Intruder In The Night

Quinn lingered over the document, her thoughts tangling into knots she could not loosen.

An illegitimate son… reclaimed three years ago.

Anything Julius uncovered carried the weight of near–certainty, and that alone made her pulse quicken

On paper, Leander shared not a single connection with Rowan–her vanished brother.

Yet the blank stretch of his earlier life clung to her thoughts like burrs, refusing to be shaken off.

She raised her eyes. “Could you hunt down photographs of him from five years ago–or even earlier?”

If Leander’s current features mirrored Rowan so closely, older images might confirm–or shatter–her fragile hope.

Julius spread his palms. “Everything publicly available is from the past three years. Digging further into his history will take more time.”

Quinn bit the inside of her cheek, tasting impatience like iron on her tongue.

But how could she be patient when her brother’s fate might hang on the next clue?

“Where is he living now? I need to see him–face–to–face.”

No matter the cost, she had to look Leander in the eye and know whether Rowan still breathed behind that unfamiliar name.

Julius folded his arms. “There’s a gala tomorrow night. Leander will attend. I can bring you as my guest. You’ll have your chance then.”

“All right.” The word left her lips like the click of a safety being released.

He added, almost casually, “Your official role at the gala will be my date.”

!

The stipulation startled her, but only for a breath. “Fine,” she answered, firm as stone.

Compared with Rowan, every other consideration faded to smoke.

“Anything else? If not, I’d like to sleep. I need all my strength for tomorrow.”

Julius‘ next words landed like a pebble in still water. “May I sleep beside you–just hold your hand, nothing more?”

Quinn shook her head. “That isn’t right for us anymore.” Gratitude could not override the line she no longer wished him to cross.

“Very well.” His smile was faint, resigned. “I’ll return to my own room and keep my distance from now on.” Turning, Julius slipped through the doorway, the soft click of the latch echoing in the quiet room. Quinn’s voice caught him at the threshold. “Julius–thank you for helping me.”

He lowered his voice to a husky whisper. “I told you before–whatever your heart longs for, I’ll place it in your hands.”

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19:53 Fri, 15 Aug

Chapter 318 Intruder In The Night

Anything, that is, except letting her walk away from me.

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Back in the shadowed hush of his own room, Julius opened the bedside drawer, shook two chalk–white tablets into his palm, and pressed them past his tongue. The dosage had been creeping upward night after night, yet sleep felt ever farther away, like a door that refused to stay shut.

Pills swallowed, he stretched out on the mattress, fingers locked around a photograph of Quinn. He stared at it, unmoving, as though the glossy rectangle were a portal; in the image, Quinn smiled–sunlit, carefree, forever mid–smile.

“Quinn, may tonight bring me rest–let me find you in a dream,” he murmured, the words cracked and weighty in the still room.

Even if it happened only in sleep, he prayed she would greet him there, smiling that same gentle smile, speaking his name with the softness of spring rain. He clung to the fantasy that they had never parted, that time itself had looped back to the golden days when her world and his were one.

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