Return of Black Lotus system:Taming Cheating Male Leads

Chapter 477: Chapter-477

Heena’s jaw practically hit the floor. ’’Since when did he start calling him Grandfather?!’’

She glared at Samuel, her eyes silently screaming, ’What the hell did you do?!’

Samuel just looked back at her with an incredibly innocent, helpless expression, as if to say, ’What could I do? They forced me.’ But the triumphant, smug little glint in his dark eyes gave him away completely. He was absolutely loving this.

"Sit down and eat your porridge, child," the grandmother ordered, tapping the table. "The imperial tailors are arriving at noon. Since the Emperor has suddenly appointed you as the Royal Tutor to the Ninth Prince, all the noble factions are going to be watching you like hawks. We need to officially solidify your position and your household immediately. A grand wedding will send a clear message: the Marcuset family is united, and our heir is untouchable."

Heena practically fell into her chair, her mind spinning wildly.

Deep in her mental void, the System was rolling on the floor laughing. ’[Oh my god, Host! He completely bypassed you! He went straight to the final bosses and got their approval! This is brilliant!]’

’’Shut up!’’ Heena snapped internally.

But as she stared blankly at the bowl of porridge a maid set in front of her, a sudden, suffocating wave of cold reality crashed over her, completely drowning out the comedy of the situation.

’A wedding.’

She looked up, her gaze landing on Samuel. He was smiling warmly at something the grandfather had just said, looking devastatingly handsome in the magenta silk. He looked so happy. He looked like a man who finally had a family, a home, and a future.

Heena’s hands slowly tightened into fists under the table.

She only had six months to a year left to live.

If she went through with a massive, highly publicized official wedding, she wouldn’t just be playing a role anymore. She would be permanently binding Samuel to her. In this empire, the surviving spouse of an aristocratic head was not allowed to easily remarry, and they were often targeted by political rivals.

If she married him, she would make him the official Lord Consort of the Marcuset family... and then, in less than a year, she would drop dead and leave him as a grieving widower surrounded by political wolves.

’’No,’’ Heena thought, a sharp, bitter pain twisting in her chest that had nothing to do with her tumor. ’’I can’t do that to him. I have to stop this.’’

"Grandma," Heena suddenly spoke up, her voice dropping its shocked tone and returning to its usual cold, authoritative calm. "Cancel the tailors."

The cheerful atmosphere at the table instantly vanished.

Samuel’s smile faltered, his dark eyes snapping toward her. The grandmother paused with her chopsticks in mid-air.

"I am not marrying him," Heena lied, forcing her face into a mask of pure, pragmatic indifference. "It was just a temporary arrangement for convenience. I have no intention of taking an official husband right now."

The dining hall plunged into a suffocating, dead silence.

"Also, Grandma," Heena continued coldly, desperate to build a wall between them. "He is not a soldier. He doesn’t even know how to hold a sword properly. He is a scholar, not a swordsman. He doesn’t belong in the vanguard. And besides... we are already divorced."

’CRASH.’

The old Marquis dropped his heavy silver fork onto his porcelain plate, shattering it. The grandmother’s eyes widened in absolute, unadulterated horror.

In this era, in the high aristocratic society of the empire, the word "divorce" was practically a death sentence for a woman’s reputation. Uttering it casually over breakfast was the equivalent of asking someone to take their own life. It was a massive, unspeakable taboo.

Samuel, however, didn’t even flinch. He carefully set his teacup down, his dark eyes locking onto Heena with a terrifying, unyielding calm.

"We are not divorced," Samuel stated, his voice ringing with absolute authority. "I have never signed that document. And I will ’never’ accept it."

Heena gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles turning white. She glared at him, clinging to her last legal loophole. "Samuel, our wedding was a private contract. It was never officially filed in the Imperial Registry. So, in the eyes of the law and the empire, we are not actually married right now!"

Samuel tilted his head slightly, a dark, victorious glint flashing in his eyes.

"The very day I married you," Samuel said smoothly, his voice dropping an octave, "I already sent our marriage documents directly to the Imperial Registry. The seal was stamped. We are already officially, legally, and permanently married."

’SNAP.’

It was the sound of the absolute last thread of Heena’s restraint violently breaking.

Driven by the sheer panic of her terminal illness and the suffocating realization that he had permanently chained himself to her sinking ship, Heena moved before she could even think.

’SLAP!’

The sharp, stinging sound of her palm striking his face echoed like a whip-crack across the grand dining hall.

The grandparents gasped, completely paralyzed by the sudden violence.

Samuel’s head was thrown to the side by the force of the blow. A bright red mark immediately bloomed across his pale cheek. But he didn’t raise a hand to touch it. He didn’t even look angry. He slowly turned his head back to face her, his expression completely unfazed.

"Have you gone completely crazy?!" Heena screamed, her voice trembling with a mixture of raw fury and hidden terror. "Where the hell did you get the permission to do that?! Did you even think to ask for my consent?! You didn’t even tell me!"

She slammed her hands onto the table, leaning forward, her chest heaving as she glared at him. "It was an arranged marriage! It was a marriage of absolute convenience! How ’dare’ you register it without telling me?!"

Samuel looked up at her, entirely calm, completely absorbing her rage without taking a single step back.

"I am a scholar," Samuel replied quietly, yet his voice carried an undeniable, crushing weight. "I am a prominent, top-ranking scholar of this empire. As a man of the law and a man of my word, it was my absolute, undeniable duty to register my wife’s name into the Imperial texts."

He didn’t break eye contact, the intensity in his gaze stripping away all of her defenses.

"Convenience or not, Seera," he whispered, entirely ignoring the stinging red handprint on his face. "You are my wife. And you will remain my wife."

The exact fraction of a second her palm struck his face, Heena regretted it.

An icy, suffocating wave of shock washed over her, freezing the blood in her veins. This was wrong. This was entirely, fundamentally wrong. Heena ’never’ lost her cool. She was a master manipulator, an agent forged in calculated indifference. She never acted out of blind, impulsive rage.

Then, the horrifying realization clicked into place.

’Emotional dysregulation.’ It was another symptom of the brain tumor. The mass was growing, pressing against her frontal lobe, actively stripping away her emotional barriers and impulse control. She wasn’t just dying—she was rapidly losing command over her own physical vessel.

The sheer weight of that realization, combined with the sudden spike in her blood pressure, made her vision swim. Her knees buckled.