AFLBRR Chapter 2 (Part 3)

I knew he was trying to placate me, but it only made my insides burn.

“I told you not to do things that make my blood boil! Either get hit or dodge it! How is nothing different from twenty years ago? It’s been twenty whole years!”

“I apologize for catching something you threw with all your strength.”

“Don’t apologize for that. Apologize to Alexei for trying to kill him, Duke Slavatov.”

I tapped his forehead with my finger as I scolded him.

Without a word, Dmitry held out a bowl of porridge instead.

It was enough to drive me mad.

No matter how much the northern dictionary lacked the phrase ‘apologize first to another alpha,’ did that really have to apply to one’s own child too?

I kept nagging him as I ate.

Only then did he reluctantly admit that Alexei was alive and hadn’t lost any limbs.

After I fainted, the fight had fizzled out, and he had carried me back to the room we used to share.

“Have you seen him since then?”

“Why would I meet that bastard when you haven’t even woken up?”

I had been unconscious for three days.

For those same three days, the two of them hadn’t exchanged a single word, treating each other as if the other didn’t exist.

They were, quite literally, worse than strangers.

I let out a deep sigh.

“Why are you so harsh with him? He’s my child. My other half. Can’t you at least try to be kinder, for my sake?”

“I tried, but he commits behavior I simply cannot comprehend.”

At this point, I was genuinely curious what kind of ‘behavior’ Alexei had committed.

Even sneaking into another lord’s territory and setting it on fire wouldn’t justify this level of coldness.

Of course, if it were because he brought another household’s omega into the castle and treated them carelessly, I could understand, but that seemed unlikely.

Judging by how the alpha servants in the castle treated omegas, that kind of misconduct would have been unthinkable.

“What exactly did he do? Tell me. I need to know the circumstances to decide how to deal with him. I can’t keep living crushed between the two of you.”

“Do you really need to hear it now? I worry you might collapse again.”

After being subjected to a forced pheromone bath at our first meeting, was there really anything left that could shock me?

I waved both my hand and head, telling him I was fine and to just say it.

I wanted to know what had happened over the past twenty years that made them so desperate to tear each other apart.

Then I would understand why Alexei reacted the way he did.

“If you insist… very well.”

Dmitry buried his face in his hand and finally spoke.

“I should begin from not long after you left us first.”

---

Dmitry Slavatov bent forward so deeply that the scabbard in his hand dragged against the stone floor.

Each step felt as heavy as a thousand weights.

Within a single week, he lost everything.

Everything that made up his world vanished from it forever.

That alone was miserable enough, yet he could not even properly see off his other half, the one more precious to him than his own life.

Before his wife’s body had even gone cold, he had to head for the capital.

In the capital, he had to guard his greedy half brother.

Because that was what the Emperor wanted.

“Dmitry, what happened to your omega is truly unfortunate. But you must come down to the capital to celebrate my coronation anniversary. There is no one I trust more than you to act as my escort, and frankly, I have no desire to look for anyone else. If circumstances make it difficult, you may send the child instead. Surely having one alpha present at the funeral is sufficient, is it not?”

The child had not yet manifested.

To tell a child barely five years old to come alone while speaking of traits not yet determined was the same as saying that if Dmitry did not come, the Emperor would take the child to the capital himself.

The child was the only blood his wife had left behind.

Her blood flowed through that small body.

And so, the moment his wife’s body was laid into the earth, he was already standing at his half brother’s side. Bile rose in his throat, but he bit down on his tongue and endured.

‘I have to endure.’

If he did not, he would lose even the last trace of the one he loved.

The emotions he forced down surged back through his eyes instead. The blood vessels in his eyes burst, staining the whites completely red.

The Archmage pressed close at his side and whispered.

“This is a day meant to commemorate His Majesty’s important occasion, yet your complexion looks quite poor. You should smile. It would not do to appear disrespectful and offend him.”

That the Archmage involved himself in political strife on the Emperor’s behalf was an open secret.

He received intelligence from the provinces even before the Emperor did, so he would surely know that Dmitry was drowning in grief over Noe’s death.

It was blatant mockery.

“Archmage. At this very moment, my wife is likely being buried alone beneath cold soil. How could I possibly smile? My other half is heading toward the dragon in solitude.”

At the mention of the dragon, the Archmage’s complexion turned ashen.

But Dmitry stubbornly fixed his gaze on empty space. There was no reason to concern himself with the Archmage’s expression. He had long since fallen out of favor anyway.

It was an inexplicable hatred that had persisted ever since Dmitry was as young as Alexei now.

“If you do not wish to send even the child that omega left behind to the dragon, then smile. His Majesty is looking this way.”

The threat was vicious.

Dmitry forcibly pulled the corners of his mouth upward. The emotion etched into his twisted expression was difficult to name.

The Emperor took in his younger brother’s forced smile, then turned away.

Then, brimming with bravado, he declared that he would provide bread and meat in abundance to all the citizens gathered in the square.

It was a proclamation born of his rising mood, fueled by the illusion that he had crushed his arrogant younger brother’s pride.

The Archmage stood beside Dmitry and sneered.

“It seems the concept of a national treasury does not exist in His Majesty’s mind. Even now, protests are pouring in from every territory, saying they can barely bear the current taxes, yet such wasteful spending…… Perhaps if he met a fine omega like Duke Slavatov did, he might come to his senses.”

“My omega is no longer in this world.”

The man who had just lost his wife spoke through clenched teeth.

‘Should I kill him?’

He had always wanted to kill Chort.

He believed he could. That confidence had a basis. Compared to the countless monsters he had slain, a mere human was laughable.

The mage smiled breezily, his complexion far brighter than before.

The neatly folded curve of his eyes was revolting.

Dmitry wanted to slice this treacherous man in half on the spot, but he endured. The child Noe had begged him to protect until her final moment was alone in the castle. Veins bulged prominently across the back of his clenched fist.

The mage did not miss it.

“Oh my, I misspoke. She was an omega from House Horus, wasn’t she? I saw her often in the capital. She was refined, with an air of dignity and purity. Her constitution, however…… did not seem particularly strong.”

The Archmage covered his mouth with his hand and chuckled softly.

Dmitry struggled desperately to keep his hand from reaching for the sword at his waist. His teeth ground audibly.

Of course he had seen her often.

To see whether she was worthy of the Slavatov name. To find out why there was still no child. To check whether the heir in her womb was growing well.

With one excuse after another, the Emperor summoned Noe to the capital. Already weakened from failing to adapt to the frigid North, she was subjected to frequent long journeys. That was why she died so young.

To incite all of that from the side and then feign ignorance.

‘How dare the true culprit!’

“Duke Slavatov, your expression is terrifying. Might that be the reason you only managed to produce a single heir despite your long marriage? Is that not why His Majesty sought out more omegas from House Horus? For all his faults, he does dearly love his younger brother.”

The mage laughed, gesturing toward the Emperor with his chin.

It was an insolent gesture, but the Emperor failed to notice. He was intoxicated by the sight of starving people devouring food and praising him. He preferred dispensing cheap pity to the poor rather than solving poverty itself.

Dmitry despised his foolish brother.

And he loathed the mage at his side, subtly releasing pheromones as he clung close.

That he had to submit to such people made his position feel all the more humiliating. Yet long years of subjugation had worn him down.

“You are an omega, yet you cling so closely to the Emperor.”

It was a timid jab at best. The other did not miss his weakened momentum.

“Is that all you meant to say, after glaring at me so fiercely? Truly, you are nothing like your brother. His Majesty, when presented with fruit, peels it first without hesitation. I have had the pleasure of tasting it with him a few times myself. He shared it personally. He regretted deeply that he never had the chance to offer that sweet flesh to the deceased.”

Archmage Chort Smirnov smiled with narrowed eyes.

Thick veins bulged along Dmitry’s neck. He could no longer endure it. He chose to leave.

To confront him further would only invite harsher mockery.

Even after he disappeared beyond the curtain, the coronation celebration continued. One alpha’s furious roar was perfectly drowned out by the crowd’s thunderous cheers. No one questioned why the Emperor’s younger brother failed to attend the long banquet.

“Damn it!”

Back in the North, Dmitry hurled his sword, still in its scabbard, at the wall. It rebounded, the blade slipping free and clattering onto the floor, but he did not bother to pick it up.

What he wanted was not a bloodless sword, but his mate.

With a weary body, he opened the door to the room where his wife had stayed until the very end.

“Dad! You’re back? It’s strange. It smells like Mom in here. I like it……”

He could not look kindly upon the smiling child. That innocent face felt more contemptible than ever.

“Ah!”

“Get out. Now!”

For the first time in his life, Dmitry struck his young son’s cheek.

Alexei had been sprawled over his wife’s pillow, writhing. The movement of his lower body made the act unmistakably clear.

The rage he had suppressed since the capital exploded.

A voice whispered deep within him that it was all right to be angry. The northern wolf, stripped of reason, eagerly swallowed the faceless being’s temptation.

“How…… how dare you! Where did you learn to commit such filthy acts!”

The child went into convulsions and cried.

He grabbed his sobbing son by the arm and dragged him out of the room, then shouted himself hoarse for the servants.

“Ilya, Ilya! You lazy bastard! Why aren’t you here yet! Even a headless monster would be faster than you!”

“Dad, Dad!”

The attendant came running, his face drained of color at the young master’s cries. He threw himself forward and caught the child as he was flung down.

The loyal servant saved the young heir from smashing against the hard floor.

But the master, who had nearly severed his own family line with his own hands, merely clicked his tongue in disappointment and shut the door.

The child’s anguished sobs echoed through the wide corridor.

But the tightly closed door did not open.

It was the beginning of a long, long winter.

---

“So that’s what happened.”

Good heavens. I stared up at the ceiling and groaned.

‘The timing could not be worse…….’

Did they really have to summon a husband who had just lost his wife, only to force him into petty power games? There were things a person should do and things they should not.

But if it was the Emperor, then yes, he was more than capable of doing exactly that.

Everything had been done to humiliate Dmitry.

Tracking down an omega like me, a noble in name only, and forcing me into marriage.

Summoning me to the capital at the slightest excuse just to torment me.

Even showing me a naked omega, drugged with hypnotic incense.

All of it was meant to demean Dmitry.

And since it was after my death, there would have been nothing to hold him back.

‘But that voice bothers me.’

Dmitry was not the type to act recklessly while drunk on self justification.

If a man like that had followed a voice he heard in his head without even a sliver of doubt, then there was a strong chance the Archmage had played some malicious trick.

Still.

“Mishka, even so, you shouldn’t have taken it out on Alexei.”

“A headsman grinding his hips against my mother’s pillow. Was I supposed to be more merciful than that?”

“He was only five years old. He probably didn’t even know what that action meant. That was exactly the moment a father should have stepped in and corrected him properly.”

“There’s an old saying. Beasts are ruled with a blade, mad dogs with a club.”

“I never once hit you during our entire marriage, even when you acted completely clueless, you know?”

Haah.

I tried to hold it in, but a sigh escaped anyway.

That something like that happened the moment I died.

And that twenty whole years had passed since then.

Was the resentment carried in Alexei’s blade really aimed at Dmitry?

I desperately hoped it wasn’t, but given the circumstances, nothing else came to mind.

‘Did he really want to cut Mishka down that badly?’

What Alexei did wasn’t exactly easy to accept.

Doing something like that to my pillow before even manifesting as an alpha.

‘I’d only ever seen things like that in books.’

But it was something that could happen.

When I was young too, before I even understood what traits were, I had acted on instinct and fidgeted with my hands before. I didn’t know what it meant. I just did it because it felt good.

Alexei must have come into the room out of loneliness, chasing after the traces I left behind, and leaned into the familiar scent while doing something that felt pleasant in his own way.

“So? That one incident made you sulk like this for decades? You do realize you’re thirty five years older than him, right?”

“If it had only been once, I would have apologized later and that would have been that. But every time I wasn’t in your room, he was doing it.”

I bit my tongue.

It was something that could happen.

Emotionally, it was hard to accept, but still.

It really was something that could happen.

Telling a five year old not to do something only makes them want to do it more. Even after being scolded and chased out, it was still the room I had stayed in, so of course he wanted to come back. At that age, what could be more exciting than doing something forbidden in a place you loved?

‘And there weren’t any places for kids to play in this castle either. I should have built a playroom before I died. I was too sick and out of my mind back then. I never thought that would lead to something like this.’

One thing I learned firsthand while growing up again with memories from my previous life was that children had their own ways of acting.

It wasn’t something adults should judge from an adult’s perspective and punish blindly.

“Mishka. That wasn’t Alexei’s fault. It was just because he was five. You were the one who was wrong.”

“Even when he turned six. Seven. Eight. He kept doing the same thing.”

‘Alexei Slavatov!’

You obnoxious little five year old!

I buried my face deep in my hands.

Dmitry gently stroked the back of my head as I bowed forward.

“There’s more than just that. I don’t know if I should tell you.”

“Please tell me the rest. I’ve already heard this much.”

There were still eighteen years of their lives I didn’t know about.

I was almost afraid of what might come next, but I had to hear it all.

“I didn’t hate Alexei from the start. No matter what, his eyes looked exactly like yours. In a world without you, he was the only one who made me think of you.”

Seeing me in Alexei’s face took some real talent.

I corrected Dmitry in my head.

If you put Alexei between the two of us and asked who he resembled, a hundred out of a hundred people would point to Dmitry.

“Everything except his eyes is your spitting image. The only part of him that looks like me is his eyes.”

“That’s true. If he took after you, he wouldn’t have turned out so deficient. The tutors and knights my brother sent all fled after dealing with that bastard.”

So even the Emperor had paid attention, since Alexei was the sole heir.

They were called tutors, but in truth they were closer to watchers.

How did Alexei, all on his own, manage to drive away people who were practically the Emperor’s subordinates?

“He barged into history lessons wielding a sword, and during swordsmanship lessons he would strip naked and collapse in the training yard.”

“In this weather? He rebelled like that? Why didn’t you stop him?”

The blizzard rattled against the windows.

Broken branches slammed into the glass with a loud crack before snapping apart. The branches clung to the window, making a bleak scraping sound, then were swept away again by the wind.

That fingers and toes exposed to such cold were still intact to this day was nothing short of a miracle.

“He always made sure to wear gloves and shoes before causing trouble, so I left him be. Driving away the Emperor’s lackeys was something I welcomed as well.”

“Isn’t that even more dangerous in a way? A child smart enough to identify enemies on his own and protect himself from frostbite, doing things like that?”

“That’s why I called him insane.”

“That insane person is your child…… ha, forget it.”

Reeling from the shocking past, I pressed a hand to my forehead and grabbed the back of my neck as my body rocked, causing my clothes to slip loose.

Dmitry discreetly caught my bare shoulder and straightened my disheveled clothing for me. As he fixed my collar, he leaned in and bit lightly at my neck, leaving a faint mark.

‘He really has no intention of reading the room. Damn bastard.’

It was an unspoken signal to drop the talk about that ill fated child and move on to married life, but I ignored it. Instead, I jabbed him in the side with my elbow, urging him to continue.

I took a sip of the cold tea I had been holding. My throat was dry.

“He beat the tutor half to death, locked him in a room, and then set it on fire. I didn’t care about him hitting the tutor, but arson couldn’t be swept under the rug. I had to do something to stop my brother from taking Alexei away and executing him. That was when I delegated control of the territory to the Archmage.”

The tea I had been holding spilled straight back into the cup.

‘Imprisonment and arson……!’

In the dry northern climate, a single mishandled fire could ruin everything in an instant. Arson? And with someone locked inside?

“Why on earth!”

“I want to know too. I beat him, tried soothing him through other servants, but he wouldn’t say a word, so I locked him in the basement for several days. Even then, he truly didn’t make a sound. In the end, I was the one who had to back down.”

Because he was your child, I couldn’t bring myself to kill him.

Dmitry grumbled discontentedly, but I couldn’t overlook that last part.

“Wait. You beat him? And locked him in the basement? How old was Alexei back then?”

“Thirteen. Among ordinary northern alphas, it’s common to be holding a sword and bearing responsibility for one’s family by that age.”

“You absolute……! This is exactly why northern alphas all grow up with personalities in the gutter!”

The very person who had raised Alexei into an alpha capable of locking omegas in basements was standing right in front of me. I really should have lived five more years at least.

Proper upbringing builds a proper territory. The foundation of a strong and prosperous nation is a harmonious household.

‘That might be going a bit far.’

It was fortunate that the two of them rarely showed their faces outside the castle. I offered sincere prayers of thanks to the dragon. If word had spread that both the lord and his heir were insane, other houses would have swarmed like rabid dogs to seize our land.

Even the servants working in the castle were servants in name only, practically spies from other families.

‘Wait. Seizing the castle? I’ve definitely heard something like that before…….’

Ah.

I threw the teacup I was holding to the floor. Shards scattered across the ground, but now was no time to worry about something so trivial. I threw off the blanket, jumped out of bed barefoot, and clung to Dmitry’s arm.

I had completely forgotten. Why I had been in such a hurry to return to the castle from the tavern three days ago. How could I forget something this important?

“Pack up immediately. We have to leave the castle!”

“Noe, calm down first. I can handle at least Alexei……”

Dmitry tried to hold me and soothe me, but I roughly shook off his hand.

“Alexei isn’t the problem! Do you even know what the small noble houses under our territory have been up to?”

Instead of answering, he turned away with a frown. Of course he wouldn’t know. A man who didn’t even understand the heart of the son living in the same castle wouldn’t know the state of lands hundreds of ars away.

“I heard it at a tavern three days ago. The minor houses have formed an alliance and are preparing to invade our castle. With the severe winter approaching, they’re pushing their stockpiling of supplies to the extreme, even training private soldiers. This isn’t the scale of a routine procedure. If we stay like this……”

My voice trailed off. It was something I couldn’t bring myself to say aloud.

“It wouldn’t be strange if a rebellion broke out at any moment. They might even be gathering at the ringleader’s territory right now.”

“I will protect you.”

“Just my body? You want me to live as a defeated survivor who barely escaped with their life? After losing you?”

“I won’t die, and I won’t turn you into a loser.”

“That’s not realistic. You’re human. You’re old. If you try to protect me with that body, I’ll lose you no matter what, and then I’ll be left alone with nothing but memories…… I don’t want that……”

He stubbornly repeated that he would protect me.

Yet even as he made that empty promise, he couldn’t deny the invasion or swear to prevent it from happening. He knew too. Drawing a dull blade too late wouldn’t overturn the board.

“It’s already been three days since I heard the news. I don’t know how much further things have progressed since then. We can’t run anymore. We can’t keep living like this……”

We had to wake from a sweet dream. Turning away from cruel reality wouldn’t make the threat disappear on its own. Saying we couldn’t live like this anymore was as much for myself as it was for Dmitry. Not that I had a brilliant solution either.

A frontal confrontation was impossible. If we wanted to live, we had to run.

And yet, part of me wanted to remain intoxicated by illusion in a warm room until the very end, rather than freeze to death while fleeing.

‘Then we could die together on the same day. No one would be left behind to feel lonely, and the pain would only last a moment.’

But I had a duty not to make that choice.

I couldn’t turn the people of the territory, who had nowhere else to go, into sacrifices for the rebels. I was the ruler of the northern lands. Even if they cursed me as a kept woman who only knew how to spread her legs, they were still members of the territory Dmitry and I governed.

And.

‘I can’t let Alexei and that innocent omega die.’

There was family I had to protect. It was fine if Alexei misunderstood me for the rest of his life as an imperial spy and treated me as an enemy, as long as he lived.

Clinging to Dmitry’s chest, I pleaded. As long as we lived, we couldn’t avoid war. If that was the case, then something had to die. Everything we had been until now.

“I know you’re attached to this castle. It was the first place that was truly yours since birth. It’s where you lived with me. And I know you’re the lord of the North, that you have a duty to this land…… but.”

Tears slid down to my chin, dripping one by one onto Dmitry’s arm.

“I don’t want to be separated from you again, Mishka……”

Emotion surged and my body trembled. To calm myself, I lifted his hand to my face. His rough, calloused palm pressed against my cheek.

The thought of losing this hand again, of a moment when he would never be able to touch me anymore, was horrifying just to imagine.

He was the root cause of Alexei’s ruin, yet I couldn’t hate him completely. I loved him. I loved the lingering traces of youth on his aged face, and the layers of aging that had piled up with the passing years.

“So let’s run away together. Abandon the name Slavatov, abandon your status as the Emperor’s brother, abandon all that past fame about being the northern wolf…… become an ordinary person. And run away with me. For me, can’t you become a nameless human?”

I was demanding that he throw away everything he had built in his lifetime for my sake. If he loved me, it was no different from telling him to die for me.

Dmitry revered the name Slavatov.

Because of that name, he had been persecuted on the grounds that he could threaten the Crown Prince. But because of that same name, he had recognized his aptitude for knighthood early and allowed his talent to blossom. Even after being exiled to the frontier, he had followers, and in his youth he had been able to devote himself solely to slaying monsters, all because he was a Slavatov.

The shackles that bound him were also his pride.

“Noe, because I met you, I was able to believe that I had worth not just as a Slavatov, but as Dmitry.”

“So the loyal knights of the North would weep to hear that the Northern Wolf considers himself useless.”

“Before you, I am not the Northern Wolf. I am simply an alpha who loves one omega. You are the one who made me that way.”

If I were gone, he would die honorably as the lord of the North. Even if history judged him an incompetent ruler, he would still be remembered as one who fought to the end on his own land.

But I wanted him alive in disgrace rather than dead with honor.

The safety of the people was, in truth, nothing more than a convenient excuse. It was merely a justification I used so I would not feel ashamed of myself. Would war truly not break out if the lord of the land disappeared? No. A war would erupt precisely to plant flags on empty ground. And no matter what, many would die. It would be blamed on the former lord’s negligence in governance. And that was……

‘My fault.’

For failing to fulfill my role, for standing in a place beyond my station. I myself was the poison sickening this land.

‘Can your love overcome the man called Dmitry Slavatov?’

He loved me enough to recognize at a glance that I had changed.

But even so, could he willingly abandon everything he possessed in the face of a threat that was not yet certain? Could he choose a paltry future over status, land, and renown?

“Please love me again, even if I have nothing…….”

People often define themselves by what they possess. But sometimes, there are people who define themselves through love. That was why I believed in Dmitry.

At the same time, I was not foolish enough to be blindly optimistic about my situation. My half formed reason tormented me.

Would it have been better if I were an ignorant fool who knew nothing at all?

“Noe, I……”

The moment Dmitry began to speak, someone pounded on the door in quick succession.

“Duke Slavatov. Forgive the intrusion, but I have something to report.”

It was a voice I had never heard in this castle.

‘Has the attack already begun?’

While my body stiffened with tension, Dmitry strode toward the door with a grim expression. I hurried after him.

He flung the door open and blocked the entrance with his body so the uninvited guest could not step inside.

“I already said I would not be meeting anyone.”

The man standing outside had a goatee slicked with oil, carefully groomed. His languid, slippery demeanor was far too relaxed for a messenger of an allied force. Still, I could not lower my guard. One could not judge everything by first impressions.

“I know this is discourteous, but I beg your forgiveness.”

The man did not waver before Dmitry’s ferocious presence. That was what made him frightening. I tightly gripped Dmitry’s arm. My palm was damp with sweat.

“Three days ago, there was a mass murder within the territory. There is something I need to confirm with the omega behind you.”

“With me?”

The unexpected words slipped out of my mouth. Three days ago was the day I had gone home to check on my parents. If a murder had occurred then……

‘Oh no.’

I had completely forgotten. The fact that Alexei had killed five people.

Given everything that had happened, it had slipped my mind, but to others it was a serious crime. Unintentionally, I had added myself to the flow of illegal migrants.

‘I’m really ruining the entire country all by myself.’

Seeing how pale my face had gone, the alpha at the door lit up with interest. He shoved Dmitry aside and stepped into the room.

“What’s your name? Where were you on that day, three days ago?”

“I, I’m Ivan Sidorov. Three days ago, that day…….”

“Why can’t you answer? Is there something you’re hiding?”

The longer I hesitated, the more triumphantly he pressed me. He placed a hand on the handcuffs at his waist, letting them clink, as if he had come fully prepared to arrest me. He looked down at me and fired questions without pause, ready to drag me away the moment I let slip a single incriminating word.

My head bowed like a criminal’s. When I trailed off uncertainly, he failed to hide his delight.

“Ivan Sidorov. Why were you unconscious for three whole days? What did you do?”

“Well, three days ago, at the castle……”

“Didn’t you leave the castle that day to visit your parents?”

The man, who had been stroking his beard, grabbed my chin and forced my head up. His face was so close that the smell of the oil in his beard stung my nose. The alpha scent mixed with it was nauseating.

“Your face……”

“The more guilty a person is, the more they avoid meeting another’s eyes.”

Even when I tried to push him away with both hands, he would not budge. His damp breath brushed my cheek. Unable to watch any longer, Dmitry stepped between us.

“Isn’t that interrogation excessively harsh for someone who just regained consciousness?”

At Dmitry’s openly displeased tone, the alpha stepped back. He raised both hands to his chest, kneading the air in a brazen gesture, and continued speaking in an overbearing manner without taking his eyes off me.

“Harsh? An omega who can handle the Northern Wolf wouldn’t tire from this much. Besides, an omega lively enough to wander outside the castle and drop their cloak everywhere.”

‘My clothes.’

The cloak I had lost three days ago was in his hand. He dangled it in front of my eyes. The blood soaked cloak, frozen stiff, began to thaw in the room’s air. Rotten blood dripped onto the carpet.

“On such a cold day, why would an omega discard their outerwear and return to the castle only to fall ill? I cannot help but investigate. Was it perhaps because you exerted yourself cutting up large chunks of meat with that fragile omega body?”

With a confident sneer plastered across his face, he snapped the handcuffs around my wrist.

“I’ll take you with me, have a proper talk, and return you afterward. I’ll make sure to return you in one piece so you won’t be inconvenienced. I ask for your understanding.”

“Who do you think you are, talking about returning me like that? I’m not an object!”

I dug my heels into the floor to resist being dragged away. I could not be taken by some alpha I did not even know.

Annoyed, the man yanked hard on the chain in his hand. With my hands bound, I could not brace myself and fell forward. He grabbed my hair as I lay there and shouted.

“I manage this territory with the permission of the great Archmage Chort. Every incident in this land falls under my authority, so stop talking back and come quietly!”

That cursed name surfaced again. Damn you, Archmage.

‘That bastard Chort was active twenty years ago and he’s still alive? Why won’t he die? He’s been working since before Dmitry was even born.’

Just as I was about to be dragged across the floor by my hair, the alpha suddenly rolled on the ground like I had.

“There’s no need to take Ivan. He’s been with me the entire past three days.”

Dmitry kicked the alpha’s shoulder again as he bent over. With one hand, he lifted me from the floor. Wrapping an arm around my waist, he tore open my nightshirt without hesitation. Buttons scattered everywhere.

“Wait, there’s someone here……!”

“Didn’t you say you wanted to know what he was doing for the past three days? I’ll show you directly.”

The goateed man was still crawling on the floor, dazed. In front of him, Dmitry rubbed slickness along the cleft of my hips. I could feel the hard column unmistakably. On my exposed lower abdomen, the handprints Alexei had left three days ago were still visible.

Dmitry covered those marks with his hand. When he lifted his hips slightly, my whole body shook. Shame flooded me, heat rushing to my head.

I had never once imagined him taking me in front of another person. Why was he doing this?

“No, stop. Don’t. Mich, ngh.”

Thick fingers filled my mouth, cutting off my protest. A stifled moan escaped my parted lips. The thing rubbing between my hips grew harder by the second, and a sharp ache spread from where my nape was bitten. Dmitry whispered rapidly into my trembling ear.

“The investigation is just an excuse. Chort came to see how I treat you. Please endure it, just a little.”

“Ah, ngh, ah…….”

He had said the Archmage had taken over control of the territory. With tears clinging to my lashes, I nodded.

Having received my consent, Dmitry licked my nape wetly and released his pheromones. Alexei’s pheromone bath could not even compare.

“Aah!”

I screamed as the sensation of my internal organs twisting forced me to bend forward.

The hand pressed against my lower abdomen was unbearably hot.

Without that hand, I would have collapsed, but instead I thrashed in an attempt to escape, my eyes rolling back halfway as I gasped for breath. Tears and saliva fell to the floor at the same time. The fingers that had filled my mouth were gone before I realized it.

“It’s been a month since you entered this castle. I thought you’d grown sufficiently accustomed to me by now, but it seems I pushed you too far.”

A wet finger traced leisurely down my back. The ticklish sensation made me rub my thighs together and rise onto my toes. The touch itself was meaningless, merely teasing, yet even the fabric brushing my skin felt stimulating.

Before I knew it, I was desperately trying to pull down my pants. But I was too frantic, and my hands grasped nothing but air. I felt like I was going to lose my mind. I clawed at Dmitry’s arm with my nails and cried. Even my tears were hot.

“Ah, hngh, Mich, ka. Aaah……!”

“Once an alpha makes up his mind, he can’t easily let an omega go. And leaving an omega like this alone wouldn’t be proper for an alpha either. Tsk. Now, Ivan. Shouldn’t you mind your manners in front of a guest?”

I was bucking my hips on my own when a large hand struck my backside. It wasn’t painful, but my overly sensitive body couldn’t endure even that.

“Ahhk……!”

He hadn’t even done anything yet, but I had already gone over the edge. Even so, the pheromones didn’t stop pressing down on me. Heat pooled, leaving a sharp ache below. My belly clenched on its own, my thighs trembling. I bit my lip and blinked, spilling the rest of my tears.

As my vision cleared, I saw the goateed man rolling on the floor. If Dmitry hadn’t been holding me, I would have been the same.

The man was trembling violently, his legs spread indecently. Even through my heat blurred vision, I could see foam clinging to his lips.

“That’s why I couldn’t show him to you for three days, after indulging too greedily in my omega. Naturally, it’s embarrassing to say something like this myself. Isn’t that right, Ivan?”

Dmitry’s hand brushed down the side of my face. The way he wiped away my tears was unnecessarily gentle, making me cry even more. I licked his palm and clung to him sweetly. It was something I could never do in my right mind. I had already been half out of it for a long time.

“So that cloak has nothing to do with my omega. Any further questions?”

As if driving in the final nail, Dmitry released his pheromones even more strongly.

I slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor. Even the impact of hitting the ground became an overwhelming stimulus, forcing a ragged breath from my lungs. Even breathing drove me mad.

No matter how wide I opened my eyes, my vision stayed blurred. Saliva pooled in my mouth, my throat tingling painfully. I lay facedown on the floor, hugging my arms tightly as I trembled. Even staying still, my toes curled. The air was cold, yet the blood rushing through my veins felt like lava.

Dmitry removed the long cape he had been wearing and handed it to me. It was saturated with his scent. I clung to it as if it were my savior, burying my nose in the soft fabric and breathing in deeply. I knew it was poison, but I couldn’t help myself. A dark, round stain spread across the fabric at the center of my pants. The harder I panted, the larger it grew.

“Ah, ahh…… aaah…… don’t, go…….”

“Just a moment. Only a little while. I’ll be right back.”

Dmitry moved away from me. Resentment flared so strongly that I reached out and grabbed at his retreating ankle.

He smiled gently, bent down, pressed a kiss to my fingertips, then turned his back on me again. No matter how I scraped at the carpet with legs that no longer held strength, my body wouldn’t move forward.

Dmitry dragged the alpha who had fainted with foam still at his mouth and tossed him outside the door. There was a sickening sound as his head struck the floor, but Dmitry closed the door as if it were nothing. Then he rushed back to me.

“Are you all right?”

“No. You’re really…… a bad person.”

“I’m sorry. I want nothing more than to kill him, but I can’t guess what kind of tricks Chort may have placed on his subordinates. I’m sorry.”

“That’s not it. That’s not what I’m blaming you for…… don’t say things like that. Right now, here. Please do something about this…….”

I climbed onto his thigh as he crouched and began rocking my hips. My head was too overheated to think properly. Unrelieved desire tormented me, tears streaming down my face. My soaked thighs felt uncomfortable and sticky.

I licked Dmitry’s lips and begged for a kiss. He was the only one who could ease this pain, and knowing that while he only spoke words made me resent him.

“……I promise. I’ll take care of everything afterward.”

“Don’t think about that. Give me what I want right now. What only you can give.”

Dmitry bit savagely into my nape. Sweet pain bloomed from the bite.

Our union after three days was relentless and persistent.

---

It took a long while after my mind returned to normal before I could properly talk with Dmitry again. Nestled in his arms, I shifted and spoke.

“Mishka, have you thought about it?”

“About what?”

“What I said.”

“You mean telling me not to ask next time and to just do it inside?”

“Don’t remember only that!”

I bit into Dmitry’s chest. The nerve of him, remembering only the good parts. There had been another proposal before that.

“That’s not it. I meant…… leaving together.”

“Ah.”

That. Dmitry nodded calmly. He didn’t seem ready to reject the idea outright, which eased me a little.

“Abandoning the name Slavatov and becoming an ordinary person……”

Sweat gathered in my clenched fist.

Please. Let me live this ordinary life with this man too.

“If that’s what you want, I can do it easily. Do I seem that unreliable to you? I’m sorry I failed to give you confidence. I apologize.”

Dmitry smiled brightly and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. My body melted at the way he rubbed my stiff, tense nape.

Now all that remained was to separate Alexei from the omega in the basement. Give freedom to the pitiful one who was being held against their will, and give my family a new country.

“Before we leave, apologize to Alexei and make up with him. We can’t keep running while fighting.”

“Do we really have to take him with us? I think just you and me would be enough. As for children…… if your body allows it, we can always make more.”

So that’s how you want to play it?

I shot him a sideways glare and pinched the back of the hand rubbing my belly.

Why was it that alphas always ended up hostile toward alpha children who resembled themselves? Just imagining giving birth to an omega child who looked like me was enough to make me feel like I’d die from how adorable they’d be.

I couldn’t stand how badly I wanted to meet the child growing so diligently inside me as soon as possible.

Yet Dmitry’s attitude made it clear that he loved the child not as a child, but because they resembled his wife.

How had he lived before meeting me, that he couldn’t love a child who looked exactly like himself?

‘Even in my previous life, he never really talked about the past. He couldn’t shut up when it came to bragging about monsters he’d slain or how he’d survived facing a dragon, but…….’

It took me a full year to realize that those boring war stories were his awkward attempt at courting me.

“If you came from the South, you probably haven’t even seen a monster.”

“That’s right.”

“I once wiped out a monster nest that had just given birth, all by myself. It was a day just like this, with a blizzard raging.”

Who would hear him sit stiffly beside me and suddenly start talking about monster hunting and think it was flirting? It sounded more like a declaration of war.

When he laughed grimly and said the monster’s foreleg he sliced off had been thicker than my torso, how was I supposed to take that as anything but a threat to tear me apart?

After all, we were a couple forcibly married by the Emperor.

At least because I struggled desperately just to survive, I eventually came to understand his strange way of speaking.

But Alexei had been born with Dmitry as his father from the start……

‘I died too early.’

Still, regret was regret, and the past couldn’t be undone.

So I declared firmly.

“My child is Alexei. Only Alexei. You should remember that.”

“That wastrel was born with a mother’s blessing, then.”

Dmitry narrowed his eyes and muttered before adding,

“Since you’ve said that, I’ll make an effort. But if he refuses to come, there’s nothing I can do. He has an omega he’s lived with for eight years, after all. Even if he rejects us, don’t be too disappointed. It won’t be your fault.”

An incomprehensible number slipped into the middle of that sentence.

Eight years?

An omega he lived with for eight years?

I climbed onto Dmitry’s bare upper body and grabbed him by the collar.

“Alexei is twenty five. Eight years? You left that omega tied up for eight years? And you still call yourself human? You should’ve sent them back ages ago. They were seventeen, a minor! How could you leave someone locked in a basement and do nothing? Are you two insane as a pair?”

“Noe, I didn’t just abandon them. That omega wasn’t always in the basement. Each time, I gave them some of the clothes you used to wear so they wouldn’t freeze to death.”

Ah.

So that was why the omega had been naked with my coat thrown over them a month ago.

The one who strips and binds someone, and the one who tosses them a coat afterward.

“Untie them if someone’s bound! Not dress them!”

Bastards.

I punched Dmitry square in the face, right on his proudly straight nose.

＊＊＊

“Noe.”

“Don’t talk to me. I don’t even want to look at you.”

I turned my back to him, refusing to speak. Dmitry roughly wiped the blood from his face with the blanket.

It annoyed me that even when he tried to read the room, his face was still handsome. If he was going to act like trash, he could at least not be good looking. Hearing that kind of nonsense delivered in the dignified face of a traditional northern handsome man was infuriating, and also……

‘Should I at least hear him out?’

Even so, part of me wanted to listen. I must be out of my mind.

“Fine, it’s my fault for dying early. Even so, I ran back as soon as I could because you’re my husband and that’s my child. But while I was gone, our kid was kidnapping omegas before the blood on his head had even dried, and you, the so called husband, saw an omega being held captive and did nothing. You didn’t stop it, you didn’t free them, and you let the whole household rot!”

Still unable to calm down, I lunged at Dmitry again. I jabbed my knuckles sharply into his ribs. The side of his body under my fist was hard as a tree trunk.

While I was venting my anger, he suddenly caught my wrist.

“That’s enough.”

“Does this even hurt? If it hurts, endure it!”

“It’s not my body that’ll get hurt first. It’s your hand.”

I couldn’t deny it. A dark bruise was already blooming on my fingers. The fact that I was the one bruised after hitting him made me curse the unfairness of reality.

Dmitry wrapped me up from behind as I beat uselessly at the pillow and whispered,

“I was wrong, so stop. Seeing your body get hurt pains me. I promise this. Even if Alexei doesn’t come with us, I will make sure that omega is freed. I swear it on my love for you.”

At the feel of his breath brushing my ear, all the strength drained from my body at once.

Was this alpha a fox pretending to be a bear, or just a lucky bear who’d caught a fool who wandered right into his arms?

Judging by how he’d lived, probably the latter. Still, even in my previous life, there were times I wondered if his dullness was an act meant to seduce omegas.

‘Maybe I’m just falling for it too easily because I’ve never dealt with another alpha.’

Melting completely in his arms, I thought that. Feeling his warm breath at my nape, I stroked his hair. Somehow, it felt like this man alone was more than enough of an alpha for this life too.