After Rebirth, I Refused to Marry the Major, and He Panicked Chapter 01

After Rebirth, I Refused to Marry the Major, and He Panicked Chapter 01

I was twenty years old on the day my husband, Colt Sterling, killed me.

In my past life, he was the Sterling family’s most promising grandson, a young rising star in the military.

But he carried a poison in his blood, a hereditary genetic affliction that had plagued every male in his line for decades.

He married me to break it.

But on our wedding night, Penelope Shaw, the military doctor he loved and the woman who claimed she could save him, jumped from a building.

At that point, I had only just cured Colt and restored him to perfect health. When he heard the news, he injected a lethal drug directly into my carotid artery without hesitation.

“Then you can join her in death,” he murmured, his eyes like ice.

No trace remained of the warmth he’d shown me just hours before, when we’d shared that military-issue wool blanket in the cold night. That same blanket became my shroud.

After I stopped breathing, my body was dumped in the southern swamp forest, devoured by insects and scavengers until nothing was left.

Then I opened my eyes again.

I was back in the Sterling family’s living room. General Harrison Sterling himself had come to ask for my hand on Colt’s behalf.

I looked at the young man sitting rigidly on the sofa, his jaw tight with barely concealed contempt for the whole arrangement.

And I smiled.

“General Sterling, I’m not sure I can cure your grandson’s condition.”

“And I don’t want to marry him.”

At my words, a gentle-looking woman nearby—pale and anxious—lifted her head sharply, her eyes suddenly bright.

“Dr. Vance,” she said, her voice trembling with urgency, “if you truly don’t wish to marry Colt…”

“Would you consider my son instead?”

***

Inside the base’s briefing room, the tension was suffocating.

General Sterling’s face was grim. The officers accompanying him sat in dead silence.

Everyone knew the Sterling family’s affliction: a genetic degradation that passed exclusively through the male line.

It began decades ago, during a covert border operation, when General Sterling’s team raided an illegal genetic research facility. The lead scientist, in his dying breath, had injected a gene-altering toxin into the general’s bloodstream.

Since then, Every male Sterling had to marry a woman with a specific purifying genetic trait before his twentieth birthday.

Otherwise, his genome would undergo catastrophic failure, his organs shutting down one by one.

For a family built on military honor and iron will, it was a death sentence.

The general himself had come to me because my family, the Vances, carried the rare gene that could neutralize the toxin.

He hadn’t expected me to refuse.

For a long moment, he just stared, lost for words.

Then Colt shot to his feet, pointing at me, his voice sharp as a blade.

“Elena Vance! Who do you think you are? You think I actually want to marry you?”

“Let me make this clear—I never wanted you!”

He wheeled on his father, his chest heaving. “Do you hear this? She’s nothing but a fraud riding on family rumors! That ‘special constitution’ nonsense—she cooked it up just to latch onto us!”

His jaw was clenched, rage flickering behind his eyes.

“That’s enough, Colt! Watch your mouth!” the general barked.

Colt’s chest heaved. He shot me one last venomous glare but said nothing more.

The general signaled his aide, who brought forward a sealed metal case.

“Colt’s temper gets the better of him when the toxin takes hold. Please forgive him, Dr. Vance.”

He paused, choosing his words carefully.

“The military archives confirm your family’s ability to neutralize our genetic defect. You’re the only Vance of compatible age.”

He gestured to the metal case. “Inside is the core data of our latest tactical mech prototype—a gesture of goodwill.”

He let the weight of the offer settle.

“After the marriage, the family will secure you a top-level research position and a full commission.”

My ability was real. I could cleanse that poison.

But I wasn’t about to save him again.