Serpent Husband Pursued Me Again After Losing His Memory novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: One Billion, No Questions
Carys takes her husband's divorce billion and the gem vault without a second of hesitation, until his brother begs for two more weeks and the bedroom door opens: "So you're my mate."
"Mrs. Draven, one billion dollars has been deposited into your account," the banker said.
"Could you put that in an email?" I asked.
The line went quiet.
"I can read it to you again," he offered.
"Reading it isn't a receipt."
He sent the email.
I opened the bank app anyway and looked at the balance.
I traced the zeros with my fingertip, nine in all.
Then I called the number on the back of my card and asked a tired woman whether the money was real.
She said it was.
"Thank you," I said. "Could you say it one more time?"
She hung up on me, which I took as a yes.
The first banker was still on the other line, and he had one more message from my husband.
"Mr. Draven asks that you cooperate with removing the mate mark on your neck."
"He regrets that his illness prevents him from asking you himself."
His illness was that he had lost five years of memory five weeks ago, and I was in those five years.
"Mr. Draven also feels the rarest purebred serpent alive could never have married a human," the banker added carefully.
"The billion is compensation. He does not want it returned."
"That's very generous of him," I said.
"All marital assets will pass to you as well. If you wish to leave Serpent territory, someone will help with the move."
"No problem," I said. "Sounds good."
The call ended, and I stood in the middle of our bedroom with the phone against my chest.
Then I ran to the vault.
My father was a pawnbroker, and he taught me one rule at his counter.
Trust nothing until you have held it in your own hand.
So I held it.
There were rubies, sapphires, a tray of green tourmalines and an emerald the size of a plum.
Caspian had bought every stone because I once said I liked shiny things.
I took out my loupe and checked the emerald. Real.
I checked a sapphire. Real.
I checked six more, and then I stopped, because the fourth one was a better color than anything my father ever owned.
"Heh," I said to the vault. "Heh heh heh."
I had a billion dollars, an estate the size of a small town and enough stones to bury a dragon.
All I had to do was let a man I no longer knew take his mark off my neck.
I rolled across the bed, already planning.
Step one, sell the gems one at a time and get a receipt for each.
Step two, find a gentler husband in a quiet clan with a good school district.
Absolutely no more serpents.
I loved Caspian, and I want that on the record.
But he was a purebred serpent, and a serpent comes with two of everything that matters below the belt.
I once needed a cushion to sit in the car after our anniversary.
One is plenty.
I had thought it for five years and never found the right moment to say it.
My phone rang. It was Leo, Caspian's younger brother and the clan's famously polished second-in-command.
He did not sound polished. He sounded close to tears.
"You cannot divorce him because he got hurt," he said.
"Leo, he's the one who insisted."
"He forgot!" His voice cracked. "Carys, the first time he saw you, he marked you in front of the Elders."
"It is a crime to mark a human without leave, and they punished him for a month. He nearly died, and he would do it again."
I sat up on the bed.
"He built the starlight dome because you said you liked the night sky. He emptied half the clan treasury, and I signed the paperwork."
"I know, Leo."
"Last month he told me you had agreed to try for a baby," he said. "I built the crib."
"You built a crib?"
"It's in my spare room. It has a mobile."
I did feel guilty then, a little. I really did.
Then I remembered last Tuesday, when I woke next to a husband who had been awake since four, planning a seventh round.
The guilt thinned.
"Two weeks," Leo said. "Please. I will find a way to bring his memory back. Wait until he sees what he lost."
I looked at the lock screen on my phone.
It was one of our few photos together. Caspian was stone-faced, with his arm locked around my waist.
I thought about the last night he walked out of this room as himself.
I had been tired and cranky, and I had said it out loud: "Go. I mean it. Sleep at your brother's."
He went.
He never made it to Leo's.
"Okay," I said quietly. "Two weeks."
Behind me, the bedroom door clicked.
It was the sound of the highest clearance lock on the estate accepting a hand.
I turned around.
A tall man stood in the doorway, golden-haired and green-eyed, looking straight at me.
"So you're my mate," he said.
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