Transmigrated Into The Body Of The Cursed Prince Wife-Chapter 334: DNA test

’Sometimes, love is not about holding on but about letting go—giving up everything, even the people you love, to save what your heart cherishes the most. Sacrifice is the cruelest form of love, for it demands pain in exchange for another’s peace.’

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"The favor you are asking of me is something I cannot grant, Rosette. He would go unpunished after all the pain he has put me through. Ask for anything else but that. He doesn’t deserve to have a child after taking mine."

She clenched her fists as emotions overwhelmed her, and she stared at the Goddess—once her best friend before she met the man she loved. "You can’t grant me this much? I have already sworn to you that he will be punished this way. All I want is for you to let me take our child with me and let him off of your watching. I will live away from him and keep only a part of him with me—our child. I won’t have our memories nor anything that will make me want to go back on my promise to punish him. He would live his life without me or our child. That’s all I ask."

"It’s not the favor of you punishing him and taking your child that I cannot grant. It is you asking me to stop keeping my eyes on him and let him be. What if I do that and something brings you back to him, just like Lyria had done?" the Goddess said with a bitter notch in her voice as she stared into her old friend’s eyes.

"That will never happen. I give you my word that no one can bring me back against my judgment. This time, no power on earth can take me back but mine, and if I don’t remember—and even if I do—I give you my oath this time around that I shall not break it."

The Goddess didn’t want to take a chance, thus she said, "Fine. You have my word, but I also have something to lay out for you, Rosette. If you break this oath and go back to him because I can’t watch him... your first child shall suffer the same curse as your mate. Your first child will take on his curse and suffer just like he had. Do you accept this?"

There was a long, miserable silence that made Ave’s eyes well up with tears. She nodded her head. "Yes. I accept it."

---

Ave could not believe it. The DNA test results slipped from her fingers as she fell back onto the sofa behind her. How was this possible? was the only thing she could ask herself as the words in the results swirled before her eyes. She had waited for the results all week while she tried her best to avoid Lucian as much as she could after what Ian had told her that day in the hospital room.

"Mom, I want Mr. Pendragon to be my Daddy. Can you marry him?" her son had asked—something the boy had never done. He would always tell her he didn’t need a father, even though she knew how much he secretly longed for his non-existent father. And when he had realized she was considering accepting Daniel’s proposal at her grandfather’s request for his sake, Ian had strongly opposed it, saying he didn’t want a father and didn’t want her to ever marry anyone.

Any male in her life—her son had never liked them for her. It had come as a surprise when he told her to marry Lucian because he wanted him to be his Daddy. That was the first time he’d ever admitted to wanting a father, and she had rejected it. Not that she’d told him no—she had quickly tried to distract him with the excuse that Lucian needed to go home and rest and that they also had to go and have dinner with her grandfather.

Hearing that Lucian needed to go and rest at home, Ian had looked somber but had tried to smile as he said to Lucian, "You will marry my mom, won’t you?"

Lucian had then looked at her. She had told him with her eyes to say no, but the damn man had smiled down at her son and touched his hair. "I will marry her all over again if she wants me to."

Ave had wanted to claw his face because Ian’s eyes had brightened at those words, and he’d jumped up and down as he beckoned for Lucian to bend so he could hug him. "Can I call you Dad from now on then?" he’d asked as he hugged Lucian.

Lucian briefly looked at her again. She shook her head no, but yet again, he smiled and told her son, "You can call me whatever you please, son." He then gathered the boy in his arms and stood up.

"Move closer to Mom, Dad!" Ian had said with the brightest and happiest smile she’d ever seen on his face. And Lucian looked every bit as happy as her son at his words. He moved closer to her, and before she could step back, Ian had reached out his hand, pulled her forward, and wrapped one arm around her neck while the other still clung to Lucian. He hugged them both and said,

"Thank you, Mom. I love you."

He hugged them together in a way that made Lucian’s arm snake around her and pull her to him. She felt his lips press against the top of her head, and her throat burned with emotions she couldn’t place a finger on.

That night, Ian had insisted that his new Dad drive them home. Inside the car, she’d been emotional to watch her son act his age, knowing his happiness would not last once she told him she would not marry Lucian. Ian took ice cream when Lucian offered it to him, forgetting his promise to never have one again. He chatted all through the drive home until he fell asleep, his head on Lucian’s lap and his bare feet sprawled across the comfortable seat of the fancy limo.

The car had been awfully silent after Ian fell asleep, and though she was looking out at the night streets, she had felt Lucian’s eyes on her the whole ride.

Finally, when the car came to a stop, she decided to speak and face it before the man began to harbor any belief that she would ever consider marrying him when she barely even knew him.

"Thank you for making my son happy, Mr. Penn. He’s never laughed this much or talked this much, but I—"

"You won’t marry me," he said with a bitter smile and a knowing look. "I know. I saw it in your eyes. I only said those words because I wanted to make him happy."

Ave had begun to thank him for his understanding, but he wasn’t done talking. He continued, "Besides, we are already married, and I consider you my wife, even if you don’t."

She didn’t reply to him because she knew it was useless when he’d already believed so strongly that he was a man from the past and she was his wife.

However, she’d wanted to be far away from him, but then her son was sleeping, and she could not carry him. Lucian had carried him into her house even though she hadn’t welcomed him in. She had shown him to Ian’s room and watched him tuck the boy into bed. Then he straightened up after kissing his forehead and saying, "Good night, son."

Before he left, she’d been taken aback when he grabbed her by the waist, kissed her hard on the lips, and then smiled and wished her goodnight. He was gone before she recovered from the kiss to warn him never to do it again.

Since that day, Ave had avoided him. She didn’t go to the construction site and told her grandfather to send his assistant in his place, and whatever meeting required their presence. She had watched the ribbon-cutting event on her phone, and she’d caught a glimpse of Lucian on the screen. His expression was dark and gloomy; he did not smile even when the camera flashed in his direction. He wore another set of gray sweatpants and a shirt and said nothing when the paparazzi and press people tried to press him for answers to their questions.

Many of the questions had been about them. For all the hours they had been together after they left Ian’s school that day, hidden paparazzi had taken their pictures, and the scandal she had tried to avoid so much broke off the next day. Rumors had it that they were secretly dating and that that was why Lucian was investing in her family’s business.

And at the construction site, they tried to get him to reveal and confirm the rumors, but if he heard their questions, he didn’t say a word and stared dead at the camera. Tired, he shoved the camera away from his face and walked away from the site.

She’d not expected he would come to her after leaving the site, but he came straight to the hospital. She refused to meet him and made them tell him that she was out of town. He had not believed it, of course, and decided to wait out in his car until she came out.

Many ways he tried to reach her, but she never met him. And Ian—he asked her about him all the time, and she told him Lucian was busy. She had hired a tutor to homeschool him, and whenever she went back home, the first thing he did was ask about his "Dad."

Now, a week later and two days, the DNA results she had looked forward to had been submitted to her in her office. She had dreaded opening the DNA report and kept it on her desk as she went through some medical reports of one of her patients, trying to avoid the inevitable.

She didn’t open it until the last hour before she would leave the hospital. She had held her breath reading it, and when she saw the results were 99.9% paternal match, her knees had gone jelly, and she lost her balance and fell back on the sofa in her office. How could he be the father of her son? How was it possible?

All this while, she’d believed her son was a miracle baby without a father, but suddenly she found out he wasn’t fatherless, and the man she least expected was the father. She’d never been with him in the past, and when she found out she was pregnant, she had not known who Lucian Xander Penn was, at least not personally.

This could only mean that whatever he’d claimed, there was truth to it. He’d said his wife had been pregnant before she disappeared, and if that was the case...

Ave got up and hurried out of the office without bothering to take her bag or anything. She needed air, cool natural air. Everything wasn’t making sense to her at this point. She had lived all her life here and could remember her childhood and everything else—how could she also be his wife? Ian was the only evidence that she was and that something had happened between them in the past.

She wanted to deny it, but there was no denying when the DNA had matched. She had wanted to also deny it before, but now that the truth was out, she realized how similar they were. Though Ian looked so much like her, his nose was Lucian’s and his chin and hair—not to mention that heart-dropping smile and the way they sat in a nonchalant way. They had so many similarities that she had wanted to overlook.

But now... how dare she get angry at Ian when he’d repeatedly asked her about his Dad yesterday? She had tried not to think so much about how she had hurt her dear son, but she’d lost it and yelled at him that Lucian wasn’t his father and would never be because she would never marry him. She had not meant those words, but he had pushed her to the corner with his questions and his constant request to see his Dad.

She’d tried to coax him afterward, but her son had refused to talk to her. He’d treated her coolly and didn’t so much as touch his breakfast. She wouldn’t have shown up today at the hospital and spent some time with him if she wasn’t needed urgently. She’d had to leave him sulking at home when his tutor arrived. He did not kiss her goodbye or even look at her as she left; he kept his head down.

Now that she realized how she had not only hurt him but wronged him by stopping him from seeing his father, she felt terrible. She didn’t bother to take her car as she left the hospital. She began to walk aimlessly down the night street, if only to clear her mind and decide on what to do.

Should she first go to her son or go and look for Lucian? She had pushed them both away from her. Her son was angry at her, and Lucian... she didn’t know, as she had not seen him come today like he did every day to wait for her, but in the end, she never showed herself to him.

Had he also given up on her? She wouldn’t be surprised if she’d pushed him away as well. She was a master at shutting out people who cared about her; that was why she had no close friends—because she’d pushed them all away. Even her own son didn’t want to talk to her anymore, and Lucian... she wouldn’t blame him if he had already given up.

She had so many questions she wanted answers to, but she didn’t know whether to seek them out. He isn’t Xander but a man from the past—she believed that now, but what she didn’t understand was herself.

Who was she, really? She didn’t know which of her identities was real—Eleanor Hart or Aveline, his wife, the one he claimed was a powerful witch who had loved him enough to leave him. Was she so into Pendragon history because of her life there? Were those faceless, weird dreams also a life she’d lived with him?

Why wouldn’t everything be clear to her? Lucian had said her life here was a lie and that her present should be with him in 1304. How could she believe everything here to be a lie and his the real one?

She was still walking down the night street when she heard a whistle from the side street and approaching footsteps. She snapped out of her thoughts as she realized she had wandered off too far at this time of the night.

"Hey, sweetheart. Do you need escorts?" came the laughing voice of men who were obviously drunk. She was standing under a streetlight, and they were in a shadowed part. She decided to ignore them and keep walking. But then, the men obviously didn’t take the hint that she wanted to be left alone.

They came after her, whistling and catcalling her. Before she knew it, two of them blocked her path. They could barely stand on their feet because of their drunkenness.

"Trying to play hard to get, are we now, sweetie pie?" slurred one of them as he approached her, but Ave stood her ground and looked him dead in the eyes.

"Move out of my way," she warned as he came to stand in her breathing space, causing her to breathe in his filthy body odor. He laughed and gave his lackeys a head signal to hold her, but what happened next surprised even Ave herself, as she had no idea she was capable of even doing it. Her emotions were too high for her to feel fear at men like this blocking her.

She grabbed the man by the neck. She had no idea why she grabbed his neck, but when she did, a purple light emitted from her hand, and his head snapped off his neck like that of a doll, the blood splashing on her face. She froze as his lifeless body fell away.

The rest did not wait to be next; they called her a witch and scattered away. She, however, was too shocked to move a muscle. She’d killed someone. She’d killed so easily with her hand, and the body and severed head lay at her feet. She began to walk backward, shaking her head and looking down at her bloody hand.

From a distant part of her mind, she thought she heard the sound of a car stopping, but she couldn’t see anything beyond the fact that she’d killed—not until she was enveloped in a warm embrace, where strong, large arms wrapped around her and pulled her into his chest. She did not know how she knew who it was, but she did, and she found herself clutching onto him.

"Take me away from here, please..."

Lucian bent and gathered her in his arms and into his waiting car, where he had been slowly following her at a distance since she walked out of the hospital. When he sat inside the car, he put her on his lap and held her to his chest as he told Cal where to take them.