The Dragon Lord's Rejected Wife

“For five years, I held House Ward together with my own two hands-a Dragonless wife managing an ancient dragon-blooded estate, counting the days for my husband to come home from the war. He came home with a pregnant mistress on his arm and a son who wore his eyes. He petitioned the Dragon King to make her his legal co-consort, and entered their bastard into the bloodline registry as his heir. His family doted on the boy and treated me like a ghost-until the boy shoved a bowl of scalding soup onto my hand at dinner. "A Dragonless woman is worthy of a physician's time?" the matriarch sneered, hugging the grinning child. So I summoned my own physician. Paid from my own gold. And I smiled. Because I finally saw the game they were playing. I handed every key and every ledger to his clueless mistress-the very ledgers that prove House Ward is a gilded, crumbling shell held upright by my dowry alone. I accepted his co-consort. But I set one condition: the Rejection Ritual. A severance more final than divorce. They think I'm surrendering. They don't know I've already lit the fuse. Let the glittering house burn. I'm done being his wife.”