Serpent Husband Pursued Me Again After Losing His Memory novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Form Has a Blank Line

Caspian brings the consent form for the mate mark; Carys strikes clauses with a pencil, his tail wraps her ankle without him noticing, and he leaves the reason for the divorce blank.

Five weeks had passed since I last saw my husband standing up.

He stood in the bedroom doorway and did not step inside.

I put the phone down on the bed.

His gaze moved from my neck to my ankles and back.

I tightened the belt of my robe.

"Hello, Caspian," I said.

"Ms. Winslow." His voice was still a little hoarse. "My brother tells me I used to be fond of you."

Used to. Tells me.

Something in the way he said it made me angry, and I couldn't have said why.

"That's what I hear," I said. "Is this the part where you tell me you find your old self ridiculous?"

He did not answer.

His eyes went to the nightstand, where a photo stood in a silver frame.

In it I was hugging a rock the size of a washing machine in the sapphire mine, and Caspian was in the background pretending not to smile.

He looked at it for a long moment.

Then he took a folded document from inside his coat and held it out.

"This is the consent form for dissolving the mate mark. The Elders require your signature before the hearing."

I took it and sat down on the edge of the bed.

"I'll need a minute," I said.

I opened the nightstand drawer and took out a pencil.

Caspian watched me do it.

"It is a standard form," he said.

"My father also had a standard form," I said. "He lost the shop to it."

I read the first clause.

It said the mark was dissolved "at the voluntary request of both parties."

I drew a neat line through the word voluntary and wrote pending above it.

"You marked me in front of three Elders without asking," I said. "I'm not signing that I volunteered."

His jaw moved.

"That is a clerical matter."

"Then it won't take you long to initial it."

I turned the page toward him.

He hesitated. Then he took the pen from his pocket and initialed the margin.

I read clause two, and the line that said the dissolution was "without liability."

I struck that too and wrote: with receipts.

"Ms. Winslow, the mark cannot be itemized."

"Everything can be itemized," I said. "That's the only thing my father ever got right."

He initialed it.

By the fourth page he had stopped arguing and begun reading every line before I changed it, which I found more unsettling than the arguing.

On the fifth page I wrote a sentence of my own at the bottom.

It said: Signed by a party who has no memory of the original transaction and waives any claim of fraud.

He read it twice.

"I do not remember the transaction," he said slowly.

"I know," I said. "That's why it needs to be in writing."

He picked up the pen again.

Under the lamp, I saw a long gold thing slide out from beneath the hem of his coat and cross the carpet.

It was the tip of his tail.

It did not hurry. It went around the leg of the bed, found my ankle, and wrapped itself there twice, warm and heavy.

Caspian kept writing.

I looked down.

He followed my eyes.

His face lost every bit of color, and the tail released me so quickly it left a faint line on my skin.

"That does not," he began.

"It's fine."

"It has never done that without instruction."

"Caspian."

"I will have it examined," he said stiffly, and gathered his coat around his legs.

I sat very still, because my ankle was still warm and I did not trust myself to say anything.

He signed the last page, laid it on the bed between us and stepped back to the door.

"The hearing is in two weeks," he said, without looking at me. "My brother will arrange it."

"Okay."

"Good night, Ms. Winslow."

He left.

I heard his steps go down the hall, quick and uneven, and then the front door closing.

I picked up the form and turned through it.

Every margin had his initials in tight black ink. He had signed away the fraud claim, the liability and the word voluntary without arguing once.

The last page had a line near the bottom that said: Reason for dissolution.

He had left it blank.

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