“So help me be even more moved. Let’s go now.”

“Where?”

“The Imperial Palace.”

It was the opposite situation of something that had happened before.

*

The Empress’s bazaar was truly only a ‘bazaar’ in name.

It wasn’t a modest sale of small items for joint fundraising.

The small but splendid Topaz Hall of the Imperial Palace was filled with various artworks from the Empress’s personal collection, which were being exhibited and sold to the nobles.

Paintings, sculptures, and artistic craftworks could be seen everywhere.

The purpose of today’s event was clear. It was to help the 3rd Prince, who had been supporting the poor by providing new medicine to slum hospitals lately, and the funds from selling the artworks were to be used for the welfare of the lowest class.

‘The intention is good, but it’s really excessive and grandiose.’

Unlike Cecilia’s bright expression, Valentin frowned as he walked through the lavish exhibition hall with her.

‘Of all places, to be in enemy territory…’

He had rushed here without considering the place or host due to his urgency, but somehow he felt uneasy.

“Valentin, hold onto me tightly.”

True to her reputation for a cheerful and generous personality, Cecilia didn’t frown once despite attending an unexpected event in a hurry. It was quite different from Valentin last time. She didn’t even complain the whole way, and rather, her expression showed she was overflowing with a sense of duty as a guardian at the thought of taking Valentin out.

She continuously supported Valentin’s arm as they carefully crossed the hall.

“I’m not a patient…”

Valentin grumbled weakly towards Cecilia, who kept checking his face as if she might end up carrying him on her back at this rate.

“No, it’s because you can’t see yourself properly. You’ve changed a lot compared to before you got married. For the worse.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I never knew pregnancy could be this hard until I saw you.”

If there was any consolation, it was Cecilia’s simple thinking that all of Valentin’s condition was due to pregnancy. Valentin secretly sighed in relief, thinking it was better that she didn’t know how depressed and struggling he had been.

“Anyway, I don’t need support. But how on earth do we find Lady Akal…?”

Valentin stretched his neck and looked around like a meerkat to see the entire Topaz Hall. He was even rising on his tiptoes.

“Why have you been so concerned about Lady Akal since earlier? Surely not because she danced a waltz with your husband… Is that why?”

Cecilia looked at Valentin with narrowed eyes, as if observing a patient suffering from neurosis.

“Isn’t a ball where you freely dance even with partners who aren’t your original one? I even only dance the first dance with Christopher, the rest of my dance card is filled with other men.”

“Ah… It’s not simply because of the dance…”

It was difficult to explain complex issues like Reynard’s unique pheromones or his own special situation related to that. This is so troublesome… Valentin furrowed his brow, nervously brushing back his fallen hair. The only explanation he could give Cecilia was this:

“I just have one thing I want to ask directly, that’s all.”

Did she really not feel anything strange about Reynard’s pheromones? Did she not find them frightening like others? He wanted to confirm that.

‘Rather, not knowing the truth and speculating about this and that is only increasing my anxiety.’

Does she have immunity to pheromones like me? Or was she right to have endured with all her might that day? It felt like he could only sleep peacefully tonight if he asked and found out about that.

“You sit here. I’ll look around and find her and bring her back.”

Cecilia said that as she watched Valentin’s face lose more and more color. And she disappeared faster than anyone else.

Valentin was left alone on one of the couches placed here and there, having been semi-forcibly seated by his friend before she left. But he couldn’t just sit still and wait quietly for Cecilia to return. Valentin looked around again among the ladies with anxious eyes to find Lady Akal. Just then, someone familiar spoke from behind him.

“Lord Valentin Dennox. Who are you looking for?”

‘Oh… shit.’

Valentin, who realized who it was just from that voice, secretly crumpled his face as if a great misfortune had befallen his family and muttered a curse inwardly. His luck was truly terrible. This person must have an incurable disease where he can’t help but strike up a conversation when he sees him.

“Your Highness the Prince, I hope you’ve been well.”

Valentin turned smoothly towards Clifton where the voice came from and greeted him. If he acted sulky like last time just because he was upset, he would only be hurting himself.

It was his own mistake to have rushed here as if entranced somewhere, without thinking about this person. Of course, even if he had thought of it in advance, he wouldn’t have been able to make any preparations. Valentin inwardly stomped his feet, blaming his chronic hastiness.

“I wanted to meet you, as a matter of fact.”

“……”

Clifton naturally brushed up the hair that had fallen slightly over his forehead and sat down next to Valentin. The couch vibrated from the alpha’s heavy weight. Dark green eyes shone strangely under manly, handsome eyebrow bones.

After maintaining silence for a while, he leaned slightly towards Valentin and said quietly:

“There was a secret I didn’t know about? About you two?”

Valentin, who had been moving his body back to avoid as Clifton’s upper body and face came close to him, froze completely at those words. He couldn’t move at all.

“To think there was such a pheromone problem…? Not knowing that, I’ve only wasted time in the wrong places until now. Mistakenly thinking you two married for true love.”

“……”

“His Majesty only just told me now. Well, given that everyone directly witnessed such a situation, what excuse could they possibly make? Right?”

Clifton, now close enough for his breath to be felt, whispered in Valentin’s ear. Despite the unpleasant feeling from the moist breath, he could only remain frozen still. The only part of Valentin’s body that could move freely now were his eyeballs. They trembled very finely like aspen leaves.

“I understood clearly from that situation then, and the explanation I heard from His Majesty.”

“……”

“You’re just a tool. The Dennox family had no choice but to choose you. What else could the Marquis do when there was only one option?”

With each of Clifton’s words, Valentin’s heart grew colder. As if his heart had been dipped in plaster water. It felt like it was moving with great difficulty, strangely hardened.

“Child, pregnancy, heir. Without these things, you are nothing to the Dennox family. So behave yourself.”

Clifton casually patted Valentin’s knee while looking away somewhere else. That action, as if offering a light pat to someone in need of comfort, was no different from a threat. He was indirectly saying don’t act up because you’re nothing.

As if no response was needed, he rose from his seat with an elegant movement.

Thump thump.

Clifton left without looking back at Valentin. As if his only business was this warning.

It felt like being hit hard on the head.

“Valentin, you stayed sitting well! I just found out that Lady Akal only greeted people today and then left. Valentin…? Are you alright…?”

Cecilia, who had hurried back thinking her friend might be waiting and was rattling off explanations like a machine gun, stopped short seeing Valentin’s pale face. And she took Valentin’s helplessly trembling hand.

“My goodness! Your hand is as cold as ice right now!”

“…Cecil…”

“This won’t do. We shouldn’t have come out according to your stubbornness. You’re really not feeling well, aren’t you?”

“I…”

“Never mind, don’t speak. Let’s go back quickly.”

Saying there was no need to stay any longer since the person he came for wasn’t even here anymore, Cecilia raised her friend’s body. Valentin had no choice but to follow Cecilia with powerless steps back out the way they had come in.

Clifton had thrown a small spark into Valentin’s heart.

If Valentin had been his usual self, there would have been no problem. If it had been his heart from back then, moist and firm like straight soil that had received plenty of rain and nutrients of love.

But Valentin’s heart now was not in the same state as the forest in May like before. With the wind and chill of doubt and anxiety, his heart was now like a wasteland in December.

A spark flew onto that rough and dry place.

That tiny thing was gradually spreading.

That night too, Reynard returned home late when Valentin was already lying in bed trying to sleep.

Valentin didn’t answer when his husband sat on the edge of the bed, stroked his hair, and asked if he was asleep. He just kept pretending to sleep with his eyes closed.

Reynard patted and stroked Valentin like that for a long time before leaving to take off his outdoor clothes.

Only then did Valentin quietly open his eyes in the darkness.

A smell lingered where he had stayed. An unpleasant scent mixed with cigars, alcohol, and alpha and omega pheromones…

Valentin’s mind was all stirred up and moving dizzily.

Was it true that he married me only because I was the only omega who could withstand his pheromones, who found them fascinating?

He was now confused about whether he had decided to propose because he fell for him from the start, or if he grew to like him and fell in love because he was the only being who could share pheromones with him.

‘Plus, I’ve given him an heir which he thought would be difficult.’

Was it because he was the only one who could continue the family line, as his vassals and rumors in high society said? And because he was already pregnant with an heir…? Valentin was losing more and more confidence.

‘Maybe this love wasn’t just pure love after all…’

The 3rd Prince’s snake-like whisper saying it was just a marriage entangled with conditions like any other political marriage, that love was a lie. That was the spark Clifton had thrown at him.

He had thought this marriage was worth giving up the future he had planned just for their hearts alone, but maybe that wasn’t the case.