The Divorced Military Queen Awakens (by Sadie Baxter) novel Chapter 563

Chapter 563: Facing Joaquin

Back at Whitethorn Manor, the atmosphere was heavy with tension as Julius finally broke the silence. “What exactly did my father say to you on the phone?” he asked, his voice low but edged with curiosity.

Quinn’s eyes flashed with a mixture of anger and defiance. “The usual nonsense from someone who can’t bear to see us happy,” she replied sharply. “I didn’t hold back—I fired every word back at him. If he had been standing right in front of me, I probably would have punched him again without hesitation.”

Julius raised a single eyebrow, intrigued. “Was it because of me?”

“No, not just because of you,” she said firmly. “I was standing up for your mother as well. He claims he loved her, but he treated her like a trapped canary in a gilded cage. That’s not love—it’s selfish possession. Men like him don’t deserve to be called lovers.”

A flicker of discomfort crossed Julius’s face, his lashes trembling slightly as unease settled over him. Quinn reached out, gently cupping his cheek with her hand. “What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell?”

He hesitated before admitting quietly, “I was just thinking… if you had never loved me, maybe I would have ended up doing the same things he did. Would you have hated me then?”

“You’re not him,” Quinn said softly, her voice steady and sure. “If you were, you wouldn’t have taken me to that island after we broke up, only to let me go. You wouldn’t have hesitated when I flew all the way to Celosia to find you. Julius, can’t you see? You and your father are completely different.”

His lips pressed into a thin line, the weight of his thoughts pressing down. Since he was a boy, he had vowed never to become the man he despised most—his father. Yet as the years passed, a quiet, unsettling realization crept in. So many of his instincts—the way he held his chin, the judgments he passed on strangers—were slowly morphing into reflections of Edward’s mannerisms.

He could still hear his father’s voice, chuckling from behind the heavy oak desk in the study, the air thick with cigar smoke. “Julius, the man you are now is the man your father was before he met your mother—walking through life as if nothing could touch him. I worry that when love finally finds you, it will consume you just as brutally as it consumed me.”

“I have no intention of falling in love,” Julius had replied coldly, as if sheer logic could lock away his heart forever.

After witnessing the stormy, suffocating marriage between his parents, he expected nothing good from romance. To him, love looked like a fragile chain, ready to snap at any moment.

Edward had only sighed deeply. “Whether you fall in love or not isn’t really up to you. If it were, this world would have far fewer broken couples.”

At the time, Julius had found the warning almost laughable—until he met Quinn.

The more time he spent with her, the more he longed to explore every flicker of emotion in her eyes. The harder it became to resist the feelings he had sworn would never take root inside him.

That’s when he truly understood the helpless, fierce power of a heart that refuses to be controlled.

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