My Ex-Boyfriend Gave Birth to My Child? What Does That Mean? - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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My Ex-Boyfriend’s Child Was Born to Me—What Does That Even Mean? Episode 001
Suddenly, my husband looked younger.
“Good heavens?”
I rubbed my eyes.
It felt as though color had suddenly flooded into a blurred memory.
My husband’s face, which I’d been staring at across from me during our quarrel, bore not a single wrinkle. His brown hair was so full and lustrous it didn’t show a hint of fading.
That’s right—he used to look like this, long ago.
I forgot the words I’d been about to hurl at him and instead scrutinized his face carefully. Only a moment later did it dawn on me that my surroundings had changed.
The place where I stood now was not the Merchant Company Office where I’d spent over ten years and grown accustomed to.
Faded silk wallpaper. A drab painting barely dusted clean. Old furniture arranged merely to fill the space. It was the reception room of my natal family home.
‘Did it feel like this?’
There was no longing in me. Only confusion. I turned my head this way and that like someone dazed.
At least, that was true until the man across from me pointed at my face and raised his voice.
“Irina, don’t be so sensitive. Betrothal Annulment? Do you think you’re in a position to even speak of such a thing?”
“……Pardon?”
A betrothal annulment, out of nowhere?
We’d been married for ten years already. If anything, it would be a divorce, not an annulment.
He continued to lash out as though he hadn’t noticed my bewilderment at all.
“Or should I go find Baron Autrehe right now? When he learns you must repay the debt alone, your brother will clap his hands with glee, won’t he?”
Wait.
This situation feels oddly familiar. As though I’m facing something I’ve already lived through once before.
After marrying Pascal, I recalled this very scene countless times.
If only I had annulled the betrothal back then…… I would think.
“Irina Autrehe. If it hadn’t been for the investment from your late father, I myself would have found it difficult to accept such an engagement.”
Pascal sighed and continued as though he’d set out to wound me.
“You are an excellent woman, but you are not beautiful enough to easily obtain such generous terms.”
It was not something one said to the woman about to become his wife.
Generous terms, indeed.
Pascal had never lost from our marriage. A union with the Baron’s house was his stepping stone to higher rank, and I was a mage who could aid his company.
He was simply trying to shake me, to toy with my naivety.
‘But at that time, I didn’t understand that.’
So I bowed my head and gave in to him. Not knowing how many times afterward I would recall this conversation and beat my chest in anguish.
The very quarrel we’d been having just before stemmed entirely from this moment, this place, where it all began.
“Pascal. I don’t think this is the time for you to be holding onto me like this.”
“And yet you grab hold of a busy man and work yourself into hysterics over annulments and such?”
“Didn’t you know? The young lady of the Bestin Family is carrying your child.”
The color drained instantly from that odious man’s face.
“That’s absurd!”
He erupted in anger like a man gravely insulted.
“Lea and I are as clean as full siblings! I’ve told you not to harbor such ridiculous suspicions—how many times must I say it?”
That was a lie.
Looking at his shameless face, I knew I had to be precise about the true cause of our marital conflict.
‘Mrs. Ocker.’
A boy with honey-gold hair and pristine white skin.
My husband introduced to me, his wife, a small boy who looked far more refined than the young gentlemen of any noble house—claiming the child as his own.
There was no need to ask who the child’s mother was. Save for his distinctly dark eyes, the boy bore a startling resemblance to Lea Bestin’s beautiful face.
‘What is his name?’
‘It’s Emil.’
I asked the child, but it was not the child who answered. Lea Bestin, standing gracefully beside the boy, smiled like an angel as though I didn’t exist in her world and added her words.
‘Emil Ocker. It’s a name that Madam gave him personally when he was still in my womb.’
She rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder and added something that made my skin crawl.
‘She was so grateful that she provided her own physician to care for me directly.’
As if I wouldn’t recognize a show of superiority when I saw one.
After ten years of marriage, I had miscarried twice.
Each time, my mother-in-law had treated my pregnancy and loss as though they were someone else’s affair. And yet that very mother-in-law had personally given this woman’s child a name. A fresh wave of betrayal, unsurprising though it was, welled up in my chest.
Moreover, unlike me, whose eyes had already begun to show fine lines, Lea looked far younger than her years. So young that she could never be mistaken for a mother of a child so grown.
Unwilling to be diminished, I glared at Lea. At that, my husband stepped forward protectively in front of her, and his firm voice drove a nail through my heart.
‘I will have Emil adopted under your name. Emil is a very clever and good-natured child. He will please you.’
‘You cannot humiliate me like this!’
For a moment I raised my voice, but then I remembered the child standing before us, and I lowered it.
‘My family would never permit it.’
‘Baron Autrehe has already given his consent.’
‘What?’
‘Your brother has approved the matter.’
In that instant, everything fell into place.
Why Pascal had dared to bring Lea Bestin into the house and present her with a child so brazenly.
My natal family had cast me off completely.
What had they received in exchange? Money? Land? A manor house? They wouldn’t have demanded a high price. The family, which amounted to nothing without the baron’s title before marriage, had grown increasingly destitute after I came here as a bride—they were desperate for every last coin.
I looked toward Lea, standing rigid and composed between the child and my husband, shielded by both of them.
‘……How old is the child, exactly?’
This time, Emil answered of his own accord.
‘Ten years old.’
The breath left my body. Pascal and I had only just celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. This child had been born before we were even married.
All the sorrow that pressed down on me whenever he neglected home for business—I had borne it because he was a generous man who had cradled me with tenderness after two miscarriages left me barren.
But the truth was different.
It hadn’t mattered to him that I couldn’t bear children.
His real family had always been elsewhere.
Then what was I?
‘……I cannot accept this!’
‘Irina. Lower your voice.’
‘Why didn’t you marry that woman instead? Why did you propose to me? You’ve both lied to me all this time. Shameless!’
And then my husband said something.
‘If you insist on being difficult, we’ll divorce. I don’t understand how you have the nerve to complain when you’ve given me not a single child.’
A month passed after that.
Time moved with agonizing slowness, as though I were trapped in hell itself.
I could only watch helplessly as each of my rights was stripped away one by one, as if my fingers were being severed.
Should I give up?
It was the moment that thought occurred to me.
In the Merchant Company Office, standing before the Adoption Documents with nothing left but his signature, I met my husband’s cold, empty gaze and heard a sound like a window shattering in the void.
With the sensation of falling, countless scenes flickered through fragmented, scattered memories.
At the end of a splitting headache came the last thing I saw: eyes that were blue, and blue, and unbearably blue.
And the moment a high-pitched ringing filled my ears,
my husband had grown younger.
I pressed a hand to my chest and drew a deep breath. I didn’t yet fully understand the situation, but one thing was certain.
Throughout our entire marriage. Especially during this past month.
I had revisited this moment countless times and regretted it with a terrible, consuming ache.
I had to correct that regret.
Striving to appear as resolute as possible, I managed to open my mouth.
“How do you mistake a pregnancy? The belly doesn’t lie.”
“Are you trying to damage that child’s reputation?”
Perhaps Pascal truly doesn’t know the child exists.
Though he should remember doing the sort of thing that makes children—which is precisely what infuriates me.
“Well then. Why don’t you ask your mother’s personal physician what they have to say? By now, they ought to be attending to the baby in Lea Bestin’s womb.”
“Such a lie…….”
“Why tell a lie so easily exposed?”
Pascal’s face had gone white as bone. He was beginning to sense that something was wrong.
I smiled at him.
I tried to mimic Lea Bestin’s innocent smile, but honestly, it was beyond me.
My ex-lover had borne my child—what kind of thing is that to hear?
Mangdungi3ho Novel
Author
: Mangdungi3ho
Publisher
: Kwon Tae-wan, Woo Cheon-je
E-book Release Date
: 2026-08-11
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: 100 won (Episodes 1–5 free)
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: CL production
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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