Chapter 735: Natasha Volkov

"My name is Natasha Volkov. For the past three years, I have been in a relationship with Magnus Ashborn. Sorry." She corrected herself. "Magnus Morvane."

— 44xStorm: THREE YEARS???

— SinnerDevotee: Hold on!!!

— BastetThrone: A mistress. He had a mistress while married to Vespera Ashborn.

— GigaAsh: bro this man is cooked beyond recognition lmao

— NyxWife4Life: While married to THAT woman he was sneaking around with an Instagram model??? Men are unreal

— DarkLancer99: Why are you blaming all men for one guy being trash? Women and sexism, tale old as time.

— NyxWife4Life: Yeah, yeah. It’s always One Guy who’s at fault and there are millions of him...

— BastetThrone: Kai would never. Say it with me.

— DarkLancer99: Here we go...

— NyxWife4Life: Kai is the only man we can trust...

— GigaAsh: Doesn’t he have five chicks lol?

As the chat descended into its usual gender warfare, Kaiden’s expression hardened.

"Three years," Kaiden repeated as his free arm - the other holding the phone with Natasha’s face visible in the call - tightened around his mother’s shoulders.

Three years. His father had been sleeping with another woman for three years, cheating on his mother. Kaiden knew better than anyone how loveless that marriage of theirs was, but still.

Despite what the general public might think, his mother was still a human being capable of being hurt.

Kaiden looked down at Vespera.

She didn’t open her eyes.

"Are you okay?" he asked softly.

Vespera was still. The smile had not left. Her breathing had not changed. She was resting against her son’s chest with the same easy warmth she’d worn since the shadows cleared, and either she had not heard what Natasha said or she had heard it and it had not touched her.

Then Vespera opened her eyes.

Red. Deep, ancient red, the color of dried blood in low light. They fixed on the feed where Natasha’s face filled the frame. Big, innocent eyes, mascara tracking, silk robe loose at the most ideal of spots. Everything about the woman was soft and warm and approachable.

Vespera stared at her.

On the other end of the call, Natasha stared back.

The color drained from her face so fast it looked like someone had pulled a plug. Her lips parted. A bead of sweat rolled down her temple, then more followed. Her throat worked around nothing. The big innocent eyes went very, very wide, and for three seconds Natasha Volkov looked like a woman who had just remembered that the wife existed and the wife was watching.

Vespera’s expression did not change. She studied the woman the way one studies a stain on a tablecloth. Briefly, without interest, already thinking about something else.

"I am not surprised," Vespera replied to her son after a few seconds of silence, and her eyes closed again. She said nothing more.

Alice’s head rose from behind Kaiden’s shoulder.

"Oh, I have a LOT to say about this!"

Kaiden glanced backward. "Alice-"

"No, cruel big brother, let me talk! I’ve been very quiet!"

That much was true, because she’d been busy rubbing her nose in his hair or just generally basking in the reality that she could appear by his side from today onwards whenever she so desired.

Kaiden’s mouth twitched at the corner but he didn’t stop her, and Alice took that as the permission it was.

"Listen up, men and women who need to hear the truth of adulthood!" Alice turned to the camera and the teenage girl released wisdom many were not ready to hear.

"There is NOTHING wrong with having multiple lovers if everyone involved agrees to it! If you have a big enough heart and everyone consents, then love is love! Look at big brother! Every single one of his women turns smiling and giggly the second he walks into a room because he treats them with respect and honesty!"

She was gesturing wildly from Kaiden’s back, one arm still hooked around his neck.

"They say the son will surpass the father." Alice’s voice dropped. "But surpassing means they were ever on the same wavelength! They weren’t! The distance between my brother and that hideous thing is so vast that the universe would need to invent new units of measurement just to quantify how far apart they are! Scientists would weep! Mathematicians would retire! You would need to fold space itself just to get them in the same sentence!"

She jabbed a finger toward Natasha’s feed.

"Look at what Magnus has! A wife he cheated on, and a gold-digging, Insta slut-"

"Alice."

Kaiden’s voice was low and immediate.

Alice froze.

"That’s enough."

"But-"

"My sister is a graceful young lady." He said it without turning around, flat and final. "Not a crude woman."

Alice’s eyes widened and her hands flew to cover her mouth, both of them. Her big brother simply wasn’t permitted to think of her as a crude woman!!!

"I’m not crude!" she squeaked through her fingers. "I’m an S-tier awakened who kills monsters en masse! I have every right to curse every once in a while-"

"Graceful. Young. Lady," Kaiden repeated.

"I’m graceful!!!"

She pouted furiously while simultaneously clinging tighter, as if physical proximity could erase the last ten seconds from his memory.

— 44xStorm: Little sis went from war criminal to baby girl in 0.2 seconds.

— NyxWife4Life: NO ALICE KEEP GOING YOU WERE COOKING

— BastetThrone: The S-tier awakened slapped her own mouth shut because big brother scolded her. 😭

— SinnerDevotee: She was spitting facts though. every word was correct and he silenced her 😭

— VesperaFearless: We need a camera crew following this family around 24/7.

— BastetThrone: The Ashborns. Sundays at 9. I would never miss an episode.

Then Alice pulled back. Her hands came down. The fire hadn’t left.

"Excuse me, Miss Natasha," she said, and the forced politeness was so transparent it was almost worse than the insult. "I apologize for my word choice."

Natasha’s mouth curved. Wry, tired. "I probably deserve that one."

...

In his office, Magnus was on his feet.

His phone was in his hand before the thought finished forming. He’d pulled it from the desk drawer the moment Natasha appeared on screen and his thumb had found her contact in less than a second, muscle memory from three years of calls made at hours no married man should be calling.

He dialed.

On the stream feed playing in his interface, Natasha was talking. Composed, soft-voiced, telling the story the way a woman tells it when she’s rehearsed it in her head a hundred times. Mid-sentence, her eyes flicked downward. Her thumb moved against the phone she was holding for the video call. A single tap.

Magnus’s phone beeped. Call declined.

He called again.

Natasha didn’t even glance this time. Her thumb moved and the call died before the first ring finished. She kept talking without breaking stride, and the motion was so smooth that no one watching would have noticed anything except a woman adjusting her grip.

Magnus noticed.

"You dare oppose me, whore?!" he screamed before initiating a third call. Natasha’s thumb tapped before the notification fully appeared. Muscle memory of her own.

Magnus’s hand closed around the phone.

The screen splintered first. Then the frame buckled, folding inward like paper, and the battery ruptured with a sharp pop as his fingers crushed through the casing. He opened his hand and let the remains clatter onto the desk in a shower of fragments.

’She’s been bought.’

The thought was immediate and absolute. Vespera had gotten to her. Paid her, threatened her, promised her something worth more than Magnus’s attention. Or all three. It didn’t matter which. The woman on that stream was not speaking for herself. She was a weapon someone else had loaded and aimed.

The thought opened a door he didn’t want to walk through.

Natasha Volkov was a model. She was warm and soft and available in all the ways Vespera wasn’t, and that had been the point. She was also a commoner, a civilian with no connections to the awakened world, no knowledge of guild politics, no reason or ability to orchestrate her own appearance on a stream this size and prepare a speech that hit every pressure point with clinical precision.

Someone told her when. Someone told her what to say. Someone handed her ten thousand Chronos and a script.

Magnus looked at the feed.

Vespera was still leaning against Kaiden’s chest. Eyes closed. Smiling. The picture of a mother resting peacefully against her son while her husband’s mistress dismantled his reputation in real time.

’You’ve known.’

The certainty settled into place like a key into a lock.

Vespera had known about Natasha for years. The entire affair. The visits, the calls, the nights he’d spent in that apartment telling himself his wife didn’t care.

She’d known all of it, and she had never once looked at him differently, keeping her expression exactly as empty as it always was, giving him nothing to read, because there was nothing personal to read into.

She simply couldn’t care with even a single atom of her body.

He’d taken that as confirmation. The marriage was what he’d always believed: a merger. Two aristocratic bloodlines pooling resources. Vespera didn’t care about Natasha because Vespera didn’t care about him, and that arrangement had suited Magnus perfectly.

On the feed, Natasha was still talking.

"Young miss, you’re right in a sense," she said. Her voice was too innocent and timid, Magnus realized. "I heard the name Magnus Ashborn and I lost my mind, becoming a dumb girl with starry eyes who thought she was special because a powerful man chose her."

She paused. Her fingers adjusted against the phone.

"He told me that Miss Vespera didn’t care and they lived separate lives. I believed him because it was easier than asking questions I didn’t want answers to."

The chat was moving fast.