That place was the only location in the mansion’s main building that I liked.
The corner room at the eastern end of the irregularly shaped old mansion. It was my mother’s second bedroom.
My late mother had kept a separate room. The mansion had a room that had been traditionally reserved for the lady of House Meyer for generations, but Mother preferred that place over the grand and splendid countess’s chamber. I heard she enjoyed furnishing it cozily and sleeping and waking in that modest room.
Mother, who had suffered from an illness of unknown cause, passed away when I was six years old.
As a child, whenever I missed Mother, I would enter that room. It seemed to carry the warm fragrance I’d felt whenever I was held in my healthy mother’s arms.
‘Mother was a female omega. I heard she was born with particularly powerful pheromones, so they might still remain.’
When I shared such sentiments, Mikhail said that.
If you think about it, it’s complete nonsense. It contradicts common knowledge about pheromones. But Father was complete nonsense too.
‘Isn’t this what happens when you hole yourself up in your omega mother’s room!’
Whether it was because of the loss of the alpha he had cherished so much, or whether he lost his composure when I couldn’t control my pheromones—Father came to think very disapprovingly of me entering Mother’s room.
If I was ever caught entering Mother’s room, I’d be dragged away by Father and beaten. Mikhail’s tendency to throw things and hit me when he couldn’t control his anger must have been influenced by Father.
The dream flowed quickly. Before I knew it, it had begun flowing to that memory when I came to avoid Mother’s room. Rilke and Prince Benedict were together in Mother’s room. No. When I said I didn’t want it, the scene changed.
I went back to the past again.
‘It’s because of me!’
Rilke appeared once more.
That child said while crying.
‘Joachim, he violated my maid.’
“Joachim… Joachim, wake up.”
The reason I couldn’t distinguish between reality and dream was because Rilke was right before my eyes.
The face I’d seen in my dream was before my eyes. I felt terrible because of the nightmare, and my half-awake head was in a daze. The hand shaking my bare shoulder was annoying.
I pulled something warm in my arms closer, avoiding the unpleasant touch.
“Y-young master…”
A frail voice came from within my arms.
“W-wake, you need to wake up.”
My eyes snapped open. Before me I saw someone’s back covered in a thin slip.
Whether it was morning or not, the room was filled with pale yellow sunlight. I saw Rilke’s rigid face. Even though it was morning, he was neatly dressed.
And beyond him,
“Deina. At least you should leave quickly.”
Rilke said, trying hard to remain composed.
I blinked anxiously. Even if Mikhail became a noona, it couldn’t be more bewildering than this.
“Y-young master,”
Deina squirmed in my arms.
Her bright red face was right in front of my nose.
“Young master, your arms… p-please let, let go,”
What kind of melodrama is this.
Only then did I realize that in my surprise, I had hugged Deina even tighter.
As Deina hurriedly climbed down from the bed, I also sat up abruptly. But that was all. As if trapped, I remained sitting there, unable to move.
Pat pat, only the sound of Deina’s urgent footsteps disappeared.
“…”
Rilke silently tossed me the top of my pajamas that had been lying scattered. As I put it on, I glanced again at what was beside Rilke. I hadn’t seen wrong. Unlike Rilke, someone in comfortable attire… I couldn’t even raise my face and bowed my head.
“I greet the Light of the Empire.”
I barely swallowed my groan.
Rilke had come with Prince Benedict.
‘You ruined everything! You!’
That was the first time in my life I’d been beaten so much.
‘In front of His Highness the Prince, such a thing, how dare you do such a thing!’
I don’t have accurate memories of what exactly happened.
After drinking the tea Rilke gave me, my insides became burning hot, and then it was a blackout for two days.
When I came to, I was tied up. When the news that I’d awakened was delivered and I saw Mikhail who seemed to have rushed over, I was just happy to see hyung. With my head still dazed and hot, he seemed like the Mikhail from when I was little.
Seeing hyung’s terrifying face, I thought he was playing another mischievous prank. I thought he was just teasing me. I greeted him happily, but I just got beaten endlessly.
‘It’s because your pheromones are irregular.’
The attending physician who was alive then diagnosed that my irregular pheromones were the cause of what triggered an alpha-style rut manifestation.
‘You must be aware that some alphas and omegas occasionally experience impulsive manifestation phenomena. It is unusual that it manifested in a delayed rather than precocious manner, in an alpha style rather than omega style, but since you were originally an alpha until age 11, I believe it’s possible. After all, you’re currently suffering from a very rare pheromone disorder.’
From the shock of being beaten by hyung for hours without knowing why, I didn’t even remember things like the tea Rilke had given me.
Even if I had remembered, the me of that time would have been uncertain too. There would have been no evidence, and no one would have believed me.
“I’m so glad to hear you’re alright!”
And now, a different situation from the past was unfolding.
“I’m grateful for the Count’s generosity.”
Mikhail, who should have been raging furiously, was grinning broadly, and Prince Benedict was calm. I sat beside Mikhail, in a position facing Rilke. That child merely leaned toward the prince sitting beside him and spoke something in a small voice as if pleased.
Spending the night with Deina, and being caught by the prince—it seemed the same as the past, yet it was so different.
There’s only one conclusion. The past was far worse than I’d thought.
“I heard our Rilke saved Your Highness.”
“Please stop, hyung-nim. I feel like I’m receiving excessive gratitude for what was actually an honor for me.”
“Indeed, of course! There’s never been a day of such glory for the family!”
Mikhail raised his teacup like a toast and acted like a devotee.
One of Mikhail’s goals was to connect either Rilke or me, both omegas, with Prince Benedict to become part of the royal family by marriage.
And Mikhail’s ultimate goal was to restore the family’s former glory and become Duke Meyer again, like our ancestors.
“But Rilke. How did you come to find His Highness the Prince?”
“I was taking a walk in the great mansion’s garden and it happened that way. I coincidentally met Joachim too.”
“Joachim, were you there too? You looked a mess yesterday.”
“Ah, hyung helped a lot too.”
Rilke answered instead. Only I noticed the slightly rushed interval at which that child cut in.
“Really? Joachim, did you help too?”
Shaking my head, I picked up the teapot myself. It was my second cup. Feeling the astringent taste, I raised my gaze and saw Rilke smiling slightly.
No matter how much I gave looks, when I kept my mouth shut, Mikhail gave up.
“Then were you out on inspection for the subjugation army celebration?”
“Marquis MacCain, the head of the subjugation army, wanted to hold a hunting competition. There are few places within the system where hunting is possible, and this is the finest among the possible locations.”
“Well, it’s not as if the royal forest can be opened. We need to prepare for the autumn hunting festival.”
For a moment, the topic shifted to the traditional regulations regarding the beasts needed for the hunting festival, one of the Empire’s great celebrations.
Prince Benedict responded briefly to the conversation but seemed fully recovered. His face, smiling politely but coldly, was the same as usual.
Suddenly, I became curious about what excuse Rilke could have used this morning to bring the prince all the way to the annex.
“If we weren’t bound by tradition, we could have provided a better hunting ground for the soldiers who worked so hard.”
I was quietly watching the prince with such curiosity.
My thoughts drifted here and there. I think he was like this when he was young too. There were so many incidents especially when I was 11, so my memories of him aren’t particularly clear.
Prince Benedict treated the men of the Meyer family courteously. The faint smile he occasionally showed was ceremonial but beautiful. I placed my gaze without reason on his small movements, the shadows cast by his long eyelashes below his still pale eyes, or on his red lips that parted slightly as he spoke.
Our eyes met. Red eyes containing pale fragments of light quietly blinked back at me.
“…”
I recalled the moment when our eyes met underwater in the river yesterday.
I lowered my gaze. The tea almost went down the wrong way. I barely managed to swallow it, but below my throat, flustered emotions murmured.
The conversation continued. Prince Benedict acted as if our eyes had never met.
After that, until the prince left, I kept looking only at my teacup.
Without taking my eyes off the flat surface of the tea, I thought it was fortunate that the prince seemed as healthy as usual.
“I heard you have manifestation syndrome.”
Mikhail spoke, leaving only Rilke and me in the reception room after sending off the guest.
The prince had a publicly known weakness.
Mikhail continued his explanation in a voice full of concern, though he was swollen with devotion mixed with emotion.
“It seems he came to the great mansion himself to prepare for the hunting competition and experienced an unfortunate incident. As is known, that symptom gives no warning.”
Omitting the preceding and following sentences, Mikhail informed me only of that.
Manifestation syndrome was a general term for the phenomenon where sexual urges arose to the point of losing reason, just as alphas and omegas did in the era before magic medicine was developed.
With the invention of magic medicine, the symptoms that had been named rut and heat disappeared, but rarely, some alphas and omegas still experienced rut and heat even after taking the medicine.
In the past, the diagnosis the attending physician gave regarding the incident with Deina was along the same lines. “Let’s keep this matter quiet for now.” Mikhail said as if quite disappointed.
But the rumors had already spread completely.
