Chapter 1
Chapter 1
The call ended.
Jiang Xu didn’t go back inside.
As if to steady his emotions, he stood quietly in the courtyard and smoked a menthol cigarette.
Only after he finished did he return to the bedroom and slowly sit on the edge of the bed.
I kept my eyes closed, breathing evenly, still looking sound asleep.
Like always, he watched me in silence.
His soft, fluffy wolf tail unconsciously draped over my foot that had slipped out from under the quilt.
His cool fingertips gently smoothed the messy strands by my temple.
This gentle, lingeringly tender Jiang Xu only appeared when I was asleep.
Most of the time after we got married, he was distant with me.
He followed all my orders, but when he looked at me, his gaze was nearly indifferent.
It was the look you give a counterfeit. I understood.
His true love was my twin sister.
And when I slept, I looked the most like her.
“Wen Ning.”
His fingers halted as they brushed my brow.
Then he bent to my ear.
In a low murmur, as if swearing an oath, he whispered, “I will never betray you.”
“It’s just… I like her too much.”
So much that the moment he thought about seeing her, his tail would start wagging on its own.
Feeling the wolf tail lightly swaying against my foot, I curled my hand into a tight fist.
I fought to keep my own heart from pounding out of control.
Jiang Xu’s breath was right by my ear.
He said, “Wen Ning, the one you loved when you were young but couldn’t have becomes a person’s lifelong obsession.”
“But I don’t want to be trapped by that obsession.”
“I want to live the rest of my life properly with you.”
“So I have to see Wen Lin once.”
As a spouse.
Some things can only be laid to rest after you’ve truly had them.
I understood.
Marrying Jiang Xu was, in every sense, fate’s malicious joke.
Back then, he first mistook the person who saved his life.
When he proactively applied for a partner, he filled in my name by mistake.
And I, after only glancing at the photo the Center sent, agreed to the match immediately.
We didn’t meet for the first time until the day we went to register.
With a single look, I saw a huge surge of confusion and blank disbelief spill into his eyes.
We registered in the sweltering heat of September.
That day, the sunlight behind him was so bright it was almost dizzying.
But the wolf tail that had been wagging happily slowly drooped.
And the eyes that had been burning with anticipation turned to ice the instant he saw me clearly.
“You…”
Jiang Xu clenched the marriage application form, hesitating, staring at me for a long, long time.
But in the end, he never asked the question:
“Why is it you?”
We both knew perfectly well that once a match was finalized, there was no turning back.
In this beastman world, there is no divorce-only widowhood.
So Jiang Xu could only swallow it.
He would pay for his own stupidity and carelessness with the rest of his life.
Maybe it was because I’d never gotten the things I wanted growing up.
So I could let go more easily than Jiang Xu, and I moved on faster.
Sometimes, I even felt a subtle, complicated kind of relief.
Jiang Xu looked almost exactly like him.
Unlike my sister and me-though we looked like identical twins in photos-in real life you could tell us apart at a glance.
I was a little shorter than my sister, and I didn’t have her bright, bold presence.
I was slow and wooden, my eyes always lowered.