Divorced by Five Beast Wives, I Awakened Godly Powers

Chapter 1

Maxver Cole opened his eyes to a ceiling that didn't belong to him.

White metal panels stretched above, humming with a faint blue glow that pulsed like a heartbeat. The room smelled like recycled air and something chemical he couldn't name. His body felt wrong, too tall, too heavy, like wearing a suit made of someone else's skin.

Then the memories hit him. All of them. Every ugly, pathetic moment of the man whose body he now wore.

A transmigrator. He was a transmigrator. Thrown into a futuristic America he'd only read about in some trashy web novel, stuffed inside the skin of a minor villain whose entire purpose in the story was to be humiliated, broken, and discarded. The original Maxver Cole was a lovesick fool who spent every waking moment chasing five beast wives who openly despised him while they drooled over some neighboring pretty boy named Wesley Grant.

"Maxver."

The voice came from the floor. He looked down.

A woman knelt at the foot of his bed, her crimson hair falling like a curtain of blood around her shoulders, her red eyes burning with something between hatred and impatience. She was beautiful the way a blade was beautiful. The kind of woman who could snap a man's neck and look bored doing it.

Scarlett Voss. First wife. S rank Crimson Fox beast.

"I'm only going to say this once, so clean out your ears and listen." Her jaw was tight, her fingers pressing into her own thighs like she was stopping herself from reaching for his throat. "Either you sign the divorce papers today, or I swear on every ancestor I have, I will bring Wesley into this house and let you watch. Your choice."

Maxver stared at her.

The old Maxver would have fallen apart. He would have cried, begged, crawled across the floor and wrapped himself around her ankles like some desperate animal. He would have screamed about love and loyalty while she looked at him the way someone looks at a cockroach that won't stop crawling out from under the fridge.

But the old Maxver was dead.

"Divorce?" Maxver let the word sit in the air for a second, then shrugged. "Sure. Let's do it."

Scarlett blinked. Her red eyes narrowed, searching his face for the trap.

"What did you just say?"

"I said sure." He swung his legs off the bed and stood up, rolling his neck like he'd just woken from a good nap. "Go get the other four. Tell them to start packing. I want all five of you out before lunch."

Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"You're lying."

"Do I look like I'm lying?" He met her eyes without flinching, without the desperate trembling that used to live permanently in his expression. "I'm done, Scarlett. You want Wesley? Go get Wesley. You want to be free? Congratulations, you're free. I'm not going to beg a woman who treats me like dirt on her shoe."

Something flickered behind her red eyes. Not relief, not yet. Suspicion.

"If this is another one of your tricks to guilt us into staying, I promise you, I will rip this house apart board by board."

"No tricks. No guilt. Go pack your things and bring the others." He turned his back on her and walked toward the washroom. "I want to be at the Matching Center by noon."

He could feel her staring at the back of his head, trying to figure out who this person was and what he'd done with the pathetic man she married. He didn't bother explaining. Let her wonder.

Twenty minutes later, the living room sounded like a war zone.

All five of them were there now. Scarlett had spread the news, and they'd come running like someone had announced free money. Which, technically, someone had.

"He's bluffing." That was Mira Duval, the second wife, a tall woman with silver hair and wolf ears that twitched whenever she was irritated. She stood with her arms crossed, looking at Maxver like he was a dog that had suddenly started speaking English. "He pulled this same garbage three months ago and then locked himself in the bedroom crying for two days when we actually started leaving."

"I packed one bag. One." Petra Hale, the third wife, held up a small silver case, her green tail swishing behind her with barely contained excitement. "If he changes his mind in five minutes, I'm not unpacking again."

"He won't change his mind." Scarlett leaned against the wall, still watching him with those burning red eyes. "Something is different about him today. Look at his face. That pathetic dog expression is gone."

"Maybe he finally grew a brain cell." Nadia Voss, the fourth wife, Scarlett's younger cousin, laughed from the kitchen doorway. The sound was sharp and cruel. "One whole brain cell. We should throw him a party."

"Don't waste the confetti on a worm." Kira Ozen, the fifth wife, barely looked up from her communicator. Her dark blue ears lay flat against her head with pure boredom. "Just get the papers signed before he starts sniveling again. I told Wesley I'd be free by tonight and I am not going back on that."

Maxver sat on the couch, listening to all of it. Every insult. Every comparison to animals and insects. Every casual cruelty they threw around like it cost them nothing.

And he felt absolutely nothing.

That was the strangest part. In the original story, these words would have destroyed Maxver Cole. They would have sent him spiraling into another week of begging and sobbing and making grand romantic gestures that only made them hate him more. But sitting here now, wearing this man's skin but carrying his own mind, Maxver felt like he was watching five strangers argue about someone he'd never met.

Other people's unfaithful women were not worth a single second of his time.

"The papers are on the table." He nodded toward the stack of documents his butler robot had printed that morning. "Federal law says each of you owes me financial compensation, a share of joint property, and ten thousand contribution points per divorce. That's fifty thousand points total."

The room went quiet.

Mira's wolf ears stopped twitching. Petra's tail went still. Even Kira looked up from her communicator.

"You already checked the law?" Scarlett's voice dropped low.

"Read the whole thing this morning." Maxver leaned back, crossing one leg over the other. "Turns out this country actually protects men in divorce proceedings. Funny how none of you ever mentioned that."

Nadia's smirk disappeared. "You're seriously going to take money from us?"

"I'm going to take what I'm owed." His voice was calm, flat, completely unbothered. "You spent six months treating me like garbage while chasing another man. The least you can do is pay your tab on the way out."

Nobody argued. Nobody could argue. The law was the law.

Within fifteen minutes, all five women had their bags packed and loaded into their flying vehicles. Maxver watched them move with a speed they had never shown during any moment of their marriage. Funny how fast people could move when freedom was on the table.

"Sir, the vehicle is ready." His C rank butler robot, a squat chrome unit with a pleasant mechanical voice, held open the door of his flying car.

"Good." Maxver climbed in and settled into the leather seat, looking out the window at the five vehicles hovering impatiently behind him. "Take me to the Matching Center. Downtown New York."

The car lifted off the ground with a smooth hum, rising above the rooftops and merging into the stream of aerial traffic that cut across the silver skyline.

Behind him, five impatient beast wives followed so close they nearly bumped his rear stabilizer, terrified he might change his mind at any second.

Maxver watched the city stretch beneath him, all glass and light and impossible technology, and for the first time since waking up in this strange body in this strange world, he smiled.

No more chasing women who hated him. No more playing the tragic fool from someone else's story. The original Maxver Cole was supposed to waste his life obsessing over five women who would never love him, spiraling downward until the plot chewed him up and spat him out.

But that story was over now.

The Matching Center grew larger through the windshield, its golden dome gleaming under the midday sun, and Maxver Cole leaned forward in his seat, already tasting the freedom waiting for him on the other side of those doors.