The Divorced Military Queen Awakens (by Sadie Baxter) novel Chapter 683

Chapter 683 Familiar Stranger

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Every click of his heel felt less like crossing a foyer and more like traversing the full five years that had separated them.

At last, he stopped before her, looking down from his greater height. In the dark sweep of his phoenix–shaped eyes, she found no excitement, no joy of reunion, none of the tenderness that used to bathe her like early sunlight. Instead, there was the cool appraisal one gives a vaguely familiar stranger–the very same detached stare he had worn when they first met.

“You are Quinn Bridger, my wife?”

Quinn felt her heart dip, as though an unseen hand had pressed it deeper into her chest.

Is this the “illness” Fabian tried so hard to hide? Has he lost his memory–lost me? Or is it something even

worse?

“Yes. I’m your wife. Quinn Bridger.” She took a deep breath. Despite the storm in her heart, she tried her best to remain outwardly calm.

Julius‘ eyes narrowed to a calculating slit as he studied her face.

Within the Whitethorn household, her name had become forbidden.

Everyone knew better than to mention Quinn near him; once, the mere sound of it had driven him into madness.

Hypnosis had eventually steadied his mind, but it had also wiped clean the love he once bore her.

He knew the bare facts: a pregnant wife, three months along, vanished after an accident.

He had heard, secondhand, that the man he used to be had loved her fiercely, yet the stories landed on him like pages from someone else’s biography. Nothing in those tales stirred recognition.

Why, he wondered, would that former version of himself have loved such a woman?

After witnessing his father’s suffocating devotion to his mother, he had concluded that love was a peril he would never court.

If a little hypnosis could erase his feelings so effortlessly, then surely they had never run very deep: All that troubled him now were the headaches that arrived in the silence afterward.

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Chapter 683 Familiar Stranger

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Whenever his thoughts so much as brushed against the memory of Quinn Bridger, a sharp, involuntary stab lanced through his skull, as though some hidden needle had been left inside his head.

On the worst nights, that stab swelled into a splitting migraine, stealing sleep and dragging him toward bursts of ungovernable emotion he would later struggle to explain.

In time the name Quinn itself became forbidden–first for him, then for everyone beneath the Whitethorn roof.

Yet here he was, speaking with the woman sitting opposite. They had already said Quinn’s name more than once, and still his head remained clear. The absence of pain unsettled him, a quiet shock humming beneath his composure.

Also shocked were Fabian, Gavin, and Rowan, who stood a few steps away, sharing a quick, uneasy glance.

The three men knew better than anyone that Julius had once been hypnotized.

Gavin, a seasoned psychologist and Julius‘ personal physician, understood every contour of the condition.

He had witnessed the fallout each time Julius merely heard Quinn’s name.

Now, however, Julius remained composed. He did not seem to be in pain.

Is it because Quinn is finally standing right in front of him?

Whatever the reason, it felt like progress.

Only moments ago, Gavin had feared that a sudden reunion might trigger his friend’s condition.

Julius and Quinn locked eyes in a silence so taut it seemed to reshape the air, neither willing nor able to look away until a small, tremulous voice broke the spell.

“Mom, is he… is he my dad?” Dawn asked in a whisper so soft it quivered like paper in the wind.

“Yes, darling. He is your father,” Quinn replied, forcing her voice into a calm warmth that belied the hurricane inside her chest.

She drew a breath and began, “I don’t care what has happened to you or whether you remember me. Dawn is your child; I nearly died bringing her into this world. So please, Julius, treat her kindly and do nothing today that will make you regret tomorrow.”

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