“Ah!”
I reflexively screamed in surprise, but he instead put his weight on me and climbed on top of my body.
“Harry…!”
Trapped in an instant by his arms and weight, I called his name in panic. It was meant to tell him to stop, but Hereis instead brought his face close as if to kiss me. His differently colored eyes gleamed with a mysterious light as they stared directly at me.
“I need vital energy.”
“Ah, I understand. Let’s go back to the Crown Prince’s Palace first. I’ll give you an aphrodisiac incense there.”
I carefully pushed against his chest for now. If we stayed here too long, the Crown Prince’s attendants would come in. I didn’t want to complicate the situation by having others see me having an erotic dream. But Hereis didn’t budge.
“Harry…?”
“I don’t want dreams anymore. Rosenthal, give me you.”
Along with a cold yet sticky voice, his red lips approached. I reached out my hand and blocked the lips trying to overlap with mine.
“Who are you?”
I glared coldly at the man before me.
“Rosenthal, what do you mean by that? Have you already forgotten me?”
The man lowered the corners of his eyes and made a disappointed expression. I coldly snapped at the man pretending to be pitiful.
“Don’t act! Who are you? Where is Harry?”
I’d felt something off from the moment I first faced him. The sexual energy surrounding him was excessively thick and voluptuous. Hereis also had an indescribable aura flowing from him. But there was more of an indifferent atmosphere, as if he could seduce everyone but deliberately chose not to. However, the man before me was different. Sensuality and charm faithful to desire sparkled voraciously.
I thought the atmosphere could change because his magic had stabilized and he’d been reborn as a true incubus. Even when he roughly pulled me onto the bed and demanded my body, I thought it was because he lacked vital energy. But no matter how much I thought about it, it wasn’t right.
“How did you know?”
The man who looked exactly like Hereis raised the corners of his lips seductively and readily admitted the truth.
“Harry doesn’t call my name. He doesn’t kiss like this either.”
There was no way Hereis would set the mood like this and force a kiss and sex. Most of all, he doesn’t call me ‘Rosenthal.’ That’s where I was certain.
“Idiot. Can’t even kiss what’s his, can’t even call his name, what the hell has he even done?”
The man frowned deeply as if frustrated. His voice held affection for Hereis. Maybe he’s not a bad person? I loosened my guard slightly and asked.
“Where is Harry now? Is he okay? What’s with that body? Is it magic? Don’t tell me you stole his body?”
“You’re not in a position to worry about others.”
The man looked down at me with cold eyes and raised the corners of his lips. Instinctive warnings rang through my mind. I tried to escape, but the man’s hand was faster.
My hair was roughly grabbed from behind and the man’s lips approached. I wanted to avoid it, but I couldn’t turn my head. As if I’d made eye contact with Medusa, my entire body was paralyzed and wouldn’t move. His lips overlapped with mine. A cold touch and chilly breath were felt, and a creepy sensation that made even my blood seem to freeze contracted my body, then soon burned hotly.
My body is burning up.
It wasn’t in a sexual sense. The sensation of vital energy draining from my entire body, from head to toe, was vividly felt.
I’m dying.
Not a vague future of how things would be since that’s how it was in the original story. Not the fear that this person might kill me either.
Like being cut by a blade and having blood drip down, the truly vivid melody of death covered my body. Hands, wrists, arms, feet, ankles, calves, thighs… As if my body parts were being cut off one by one, sensation gradually disappeared. But I felt no pain. Rather, in a hazy, hot heat, as my energy drained away, my consciousness gradually blurred.
So this is how I die. My eyes were slowly closing when suddenly the lips separated.
“Your Grace, are you alright?”
A cool body temperature embraced me while crying out urgently. I opened my eyes with difficulty. My vision was hazily blurred and I couldn’t see well, but I could feel the hazy outline of blood-red hair and mysterious eyes.
“Harry…”
“Yes. It’s me.”
It was the same voice as the man from before, but it contained tenderness. This person is Hereis. It was definitely Hereis.
Confirming that he’d returned, I felt relieved and my eyes closed again.
***
“Your Grace! Duke Chendewden’s son!”
Hereis shook Rosenthal’s body, but he showed no reaction. His body temperature had dropped like ice, and his face was pale. His luscious lips had turned beyond blue to a purple hue.
“Ric!”
He tightly embraced Rosenthal and called the name of his younger brother who was collapsed and rolling on the floor. Deep murderous intent was embedded in his low voice.
Frision, who had been slammed into the floor by Hereis’s attack, grimaced and got up.
“Don’t overreact. I spat it all out since it was cut off before I could swallow the vital energy. Damn it, if I’d had just 5 more seconds I could have killed him!”
Hereis looked at Rosenthal. As Frision said, his purple lips were gradually regaining their original color.
Hereis cupped Rosenthal’s cheek as it began to regain color and confirmed his vitality before slowly removing his hand. Then after laying Rosenthal properly on the bed, he got up.
Frision’s complexion changed as he spat curses in frustration at missing the chance to kill Rosenthal. Except for his overflowing magic, hyung had been closer to human than demon. But in the current Hereis, not even a speck of human emotion could be found. Seeing hyung’s form filled purely with evil and murderous intent, Frision tried to flee at once, but overwhelmed by Hereis’s magic, he couldn’t move at all.
“I told you not to touch even a single hair.”
Frision had returned to the Imperial Capital right after learning that Hereis had performed a marriage ceremony. According to Jackin, Hereis was thoroughly hiding his partner. He investigated Hereis’s whereabouts with Jackin’s help. Though he struggled a bit because it was so tightly concealed, using his own bewitchment skills and Lefu’s abilities, he could deduce the identity.
Frision honestly felt deflated right after learning his companion’s identity. He’d been extremely curious about who the human was that had melted his stone-like hyung’s heart and made him reveal even his true name. But Rosenthal Chendewden? Wasn’t this too obvious?
A story about falling in love at first sight with the omega known as the most beautiful in the Keltan Empire and telling him his true name wouldn’t even work on three-year-old children. If he’d fallen for someone because they were an omega like their father, there was no hope. Frision believed that his perfect hyung wouldn’t have made such a pathetic choice. Frision tried to go directly to Hereis to confront him. But he came to find Frision first.
‘Just hurry up and say you want to kill the Crown Prince’s fiancé Rosenthal Chendewden.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Rosenthal Chendewden is hyung’s companion.’
Hereis snorted as if dumbfounded.
‘Rosenthal? That’s out of nowhere. Even excessive delusions won’t help when writing novels.’
There was no awkwardness in his expression or voice. As if he truly had no relationship with Rosenthal whatsoever. Well, he didn’t expect him to readily admit it anyway.
Frision leisurely raised the corners of his lips.
‘Really? Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve wanted to have a taste of him anyway. Since I’m in the Imperial Capital, I should try that famous omega.’
Though it was to test Hereis, it wasn’t just empty words. He really intended to take Rosenthal. What hyung has, I have too. Besides, if he’s such a famous skilled lover, I should at least taste him once before killing him. I don’t mind doing it to a corpse either. Frision was thinking that as he tried to head to the Imperial Palace, when Hereis grabbed him.
‘Don’t touch even a single hair.’
You’re admitting it this easily? Frision’s beautiful face crumpled spectacularly as he watched hyung lose his composure in an instant and reveal his emotions as they were. And he resolved: he would kill that bastard no matter what.
However, Frision couldn’t leave for the Imperial Palace.
Hereis blocked the way before Frision as he tried to go kill Rosenthal. The covenant’s poison had spread through Hereis, and he hadn’t consumed his companion’s vital energy either. A normal incubus should have collapsed immediately, but that monster-like magic power’s owner stood blocking him like an impregnable fortress and wouldn’t let Frision go.
The two confronted each other for three days. Then Lefu, who had run away sulking at Frision, returned. Lefu was a child that Frision, who treated everything except Hereis as toys, had uniquely raised with affection. Though he was somewhat put off after learning his identity when he thought he was an ordinary child, he continued keeping him around as a pet since he liked his cute appearance.
And with the appearance of the pet with extremely abundant magic power, the tense balance between the two collapsed.
Frision handed Hereis over to Lefu and headed for the Imperial Palace. He’d heard Rosenthal Chendewden was staying in the detached palace. But whether there was an error in that information, the bedroom was completely empty. As he pondered where Rosenthal might be while looking at the window, his prey appeared on its own.
‘Harry…!’
He tried to kill him right away. But watching Rosenthal approach him, a small question mark formed in Frision’s mind. Is this Rosenthal? Frision had seen Rosenthal several times. In his gait, gaze, gestures, and voice, he was a human dripping with sexual pheromones in every aspect. But the man now before him radiated a beautiful yet virtuous light.
Corrupting a pure soul is simple. But could a crystallization of lewdness become so cleanly purified in two years? Is this one a twin too? Frision looked Rosenthal up and down. But it was unmistakably Rosenthal Chendewden.
And bewilderment soon turned to anger. Did he toy with our hyung while pretending to be so innocent? Frision pounced on Rosenthal.
And five seconds—if there had really been just five more seconds, he could have killed him.
“That bastard betrayed hyung!”
Frision shouted with rage, but Hereis didn’t withdraw his murderous intent. His cold hand strangled Frision’s throat. Feeling the magic power surging as if about to burst at any moment, Frision’s eyes widened.
Hereis was truly trying to kill him.
