Wooing My Ex-wife Again Novel by Natalie Winter

Julian

I stared at that photo for a long minute, my eyes glued to the happy me, the content husband and his lovely wife who always loved him no matter how rash or ill tempered he was. The wife whose life revolved around the love of her life. The wife who was now standing a few feet apart from me felt like a thousand kilometers away.

The memories of the day when this picture was taken slammed into my mind out of nowhere. It was a nice summer day with equally pleasant weather and she was wearing a bright yellow summer dress as well.

I tore my gaze away from the photo, the only bright spot in the otherwise dim and dull office littered with papers and maps. I stood to the side and let her take in the surroundings.

Slowly, she made her way forward, examining the newspaper clippings, photos of the forest, and a few tribal people wearing some very weird

costumes.

She spent a few minutes looking around the room and the walls whose every inch was covered with all the research I had been doing before her gaze finally fell on me.

I had been standing on the side, leaning against a pillar, a hand in my pocket and just observing my beautiful wife, trying to commit every little detail of her to my memory. The way her eyes flared when she saw something that sparked her curiosity, the way her cheeks flushed when her gaze fell on the photo frame, and the stray hair fluttering over her face. My hands were itching to just push that lock of hair aside and kiss that beautiful face.

But then her attention snapped to me as if she had sensed what I was feeling. When our eyes met, I immediately straightened my back and walked towards one of the many desks.

“So, see this. I scourged libraries from human cities and werewolf packs too, paid exorbitant prices to some libraries just to get my hands on books containing any mention of an ancient tribe that was matriarchal and I collected them all.”

I said, slapping the hardcover of one of the many yellowed tomes stacked upon each other on the desk.

“Matriarchal?” She asked and I nodded.

“Werewolves follow a patriarchal hierarchy. Males are given a lot of importance and all decisions related to the pack business lie in their hands. In short, men hold all the power, and women are considered lesser compared to men. However, I discovered that a few ancient tribes have the opposite hierarchy. They are matriarchal and women hold all the power and leadership positions in such tribes.”

“I see” She mumbled and came to stand beside me as I flipped a few pages of the books open.

“Now, the tribe that we are specifically looking for is a little hard to research. They are very, very secluded, don’t even mingle much with other tribes, and have a very strict protocol. The matriarch of the tribe has been alive for decades already and she is extremely powerful.”

I pointed to a piece of text in one of the books that she scanned through as I reached for another book.

“And here, you can see…” I continued, pointing at another paragraph, “that she also can do some very powerful and maybe, dark magic.”

She blinked and went ahead to read the texts I was pointing at. Her expressions told me that she found the proof concrete enough.

“That still does not explain how Vivian came in touch with them.” She mumbled.

my

“Ah, right,” I said and went to open the drawer of the desk. Grabbing something from it, I held a small piece of wood in hand. Simultaneously, I shuffled a few pages and pointed to an image of the object I was holding.

She looked at it and then at the image in the book. Both looked eerily similar.

“May I?” Anastasia asked and I handed that small piece of bamboo to me. It was cylindrical and looked like a short piece of cane at first.

But then she noticed that the upper part of it was a lid. There were some carvings throughout the entire thing and when she opened it, she mistook them for small matchsticks at first.

However, they were small, sharpened pieces of wood with a pointed tip.

“What is it?” she asked, not able to understand what it could be.”

“That is what I assume to be a tribal quiver filled with darts. The tips are mally laced with some very dangerous poisons derived from plants, insects, or whatever natural poison they can find.”

She pulled her hand away from the tip as if she had touched a hot stove but I chuckled, “Don’t worry. I spent weeks getting rid of any poisonous coating they might have. All they might give you is a painful sting at best

With that reassurance, she held one of the small darts that was no longer than my middle finger and asked, “Where did you find this?

“Somebody dropped this a few years ago at the spot I found Mom injured and passed out. I believe she was hit with one of these darts and whatever poison they used on her is slowly messing with her health

Her eyes went wide at that

“So..these Keldriths, they hurt your mom with one of these darts? But why?” I shrugged, “I am not sure about the reason. A week before you walked away from me, Mom was found passed out in the forest. I went to get her and the pack doctor checked her but there were no visible signs of anything amiss. Mom was sure that she had accidentally tripped her feet against a large root or a boulder maybe, and hit her head. She kept saying she was fine and I too believed it. But then I began to notice odd things?

Anastasia had a concerned look on her face. “What odd things?”

“I couldn’t quite put a finger on it but Mom’s behavior changed. She began to be eccentric, very moody, and downright pissed for no reason at random times of the day. I brushed it off as old age or mood swings but then her health began to deteriorate as well. Her memory was turning foggy and at times, she would forget who she was or if she knew me. She would not eat for days altogether and just sit in a chair and stare into nothingness all day. or just eat as if she had never tasted food before then puke everything out.” Anastasia placed a hand on her mouth as I narrated my ordeal.

“I started to ask for other pack doctors to check her, did countless tests, and spent a fortune on getting her fit and fine but no doctor could figure out what was wrong with her. They simply gave up at one point and said that it was some unknown virus or something that she might have contracted in the forest or got bitten by some insect.

I raked a hand through my hair, recalling the helplessness I felt in not knowing what was happening to my mother.

“When they all gave up and just asked me to spend whatever time I had with her. I decided I would conduct my own research. Thus, I started with the spot I had found her lying in. I spent hours combing through that patch of forest. trying to understand what direction she would have taken and what type of insects were found there. I brought back everything I could find and my own beta and gamma began to think I was losing my mind too, just like my mother.”

Anastasia’s face scrunched into worry. I could see that she was feeling pity for me. At least, she found me worthy of that.

“You….you didn’t tell me any of this,” she whispered.

“I know. But you had been very sad those days. If you remember, you had just gone through a miscarriage.”

Her eyes went wide. It was one of the most painful memories for her, maybe even more hurtful than what I had done to her. It was a secret of ours. We had not told anyone and decided to share with our families only -after a month because the doctor had said that it was a risky pregnancy.

However, less than ten days after we learned of the pregnancy, she miscarried.

“But…that….that happened six months before I…before you….”

“Before I cheated on you, yes,” I said, shame coating my words.

“A week after we found out about the miscarriage, the doctor asked me never to put you in any stressful situation for a few months. I wanted to tell you about Mom but her health only started really deteriorating after you left. The poison, whatever it was, took effect extremely slowly. The first six months we did not even notice anything major. Or you would have noticed it too.”

Anastasia had a faraway look in her eyes. “So…that time when Vivian got angry at you for not letting her watch some TV show, that was the effect of this poison?”

I stared at her. I had not expected her to recall this tiny detail that I myself had forgotten.

“You remember that?”

She nodded, “It was unlike Vivian”