DSB 35

It did feel like something was pricking at his body. His throat burned strangely, and heat rose throughout his frame.

But it was not unpleasant at all. He hated the cold, and warmth was something he welcomed.

Lebel relaxed his body and leaned back against Yutis’s chest.

“Your pheromones will ravage me, you say. I’ve already caught that scent of yours many times before, so I can’t muster any sense of crisis about it.”

“……!”

“And how about my pheromones? I can’t smell my own scent, so I wouldn’t know.”

“…..Flowers.”

“Flowers?”

“It’s the fragrance of sweet-smelling flowers. That’s why… that’s why…! Urgh!”

Suddenly, Yutis pulled away from Lebel. But unlike before, he could not flee far.

The two of them were alone in this room. He buried his face in his hands and shouted at Lebel.

Through the gaps in his covered fingers, Lebel spotted skin that was not human, something alien and mismatched.

“Get out! Get out now! Before I… before I hurt you!”

Lebel stared at Yutis, who had backed away to a distance. Then he calmly scanned the room.

“You’ve come to my room often, but I’ve never seen yours. If I’d known it would come to this, I should have at least taken a look around.”

This place resembled a cage designed not for a person, but for a beast.

Traces of magic etched into every corner, chains scattered across the floor, claw marks gouged into the walls like those of a savage animal, and shattered furniture strewn about.

One could excuse the furniture as having been broken today, but the scars on the walls were old, etched long ago.

Lebel recalled the words he had heard earlier. The reason the young master resided not in the main castle but in a remote one.

His room, isolated to the point where contact with others was impossible. The drastically reduced number of servants compared to the main residence. All of it pointed to one truth.

Moreover, his subordinates had said it themselves. There were several who had died by his hand.

“You… you heard it from them. I really do kill people.”

“If you heard that, then you must have heard my response too. I won’t die. And you said it yourself. You promised you wouldn’t let me get hurt.”

Yutis, who had been covering his face with his hands, slowly lifted his head.

Scaly traces had erupted across parts of his face, afflicted by some growth. But what truly captured Lebel’s attention was the pupils, elongated vertically from top to bottom.

Was this what he considered hideous? Lebel was not entirely sure.

Lebel met Yutis’ trembling gaze calmly as he spoke.

“So come here. If I give you my pheromones, won’t that make you feel better?”

He was not certain if that was accurate, but…

“Ha, haha, your pheromones on me…! Urgh! U-Ugh!”

“…Yutis?”

A sickening crack echoed in Lebel’s ears as bones twisted unnaturally. Yutis dropped to his knees as if he could no longer endure it, clawing mercilessly at his own back.

His fingers bore long, sharp nails. He was tearing through his clothes and ripping into his flesh with his own hands. Over wounds that had not fully healed, he inflicted fresh gashes upon himself in a frenzy of self-harm.

They began to knit closed moments later, but Yutis’s inability to stop scratching rendered it futile.

“Don’t scratch with your nails. You’ll hurt yourself.”

Lebel approached and said to Yutis.

Even if the wounds healed, that did not mean they were painless. At that moment, something began to slowly emerge from the gashes his nails had carved into his back.

Lebel recognized it immediately, for it was something familiar to him.

It was wings.

The wings expanded enormously in an instant.

“……”

Lebel’s mouth fell open. They were wings as white as those that chased away the night.

Not the fluffy feathers of an angel’s wings, but sleek, leathery membranes like those of a demon, except not black, but white.

“You really are a mixture of an angel and a demon…”

That explained why he found it so intriguing.

“Don’t look… Don’t look!!”

A guttural roar erupted from Yutis’s mouth, whipping up a fierce wind. The window shattered, and Lebel staggered back from the razor-sharp gusts it unleashed.

The biting wind howled with a shrill keen, mirroring the turmoil in Yutis’s heart.

“Are you still clinging to your pride?”

Even though everything had already been laid bare. He truly did not give up easily.

“Why… why aren’t you afraid…? Everyone… everyone calls me a monster and trembles in fear…”

“Tch.”

What a handful.

But Lebel could see how deeply he had been wounded.

Lebel rubbed his temples. It seemed the claim that an alpha’s pheromones were lethal to an omega was not unfounded.

His body felt limp and heavy. But there was something even more pressing to attend to.

Yutis, oblivious to his own razor-sharp nails, kept rubbing his face indiscriminately, and now even his handsome features bore scratches.

“Since you’re the one who’s afraid, I suppose I should pull myself together too. Come here. I’ll give you my pheromones. I just figured out how it works.”

What about the demonic energy? Should he transfer some? With those scratches on his face, it would probably be better to heal them with a generous amount of demonic energy.

Unlike before, the wounds were now healing on their own, which suggested that his partial demonization was allowing the energy to mend his body autonomously.

“No. I’ll… I’ll devour you.”

Lebel felt irritated at Yutis, who stubbornly kept his distance.

“They said alphas are drawn to omegas’ pheromones just as much. Since I’ve been called half-baked, are my pheromones lacking? Are they useless to you? I wouldn’t know, since I can’t smell them myself.”

To Lebel, it was merely a casual question, but Yutis’s eyes burned with fierce intensity as he shouted back.

“How could that be? If I weren’t drawn to them, I never would have… found you, or… you…”

He spoke in heaving, ragged breaths. Yutis’s pupils flickered repeatedly between the elongated slits of a beast and the round shape of a human.

It was proof that he was locked in an endless battle between instinct and reason.

“…Hm.”

Lebel wanted to give Yutis time to calm down, but oddly enough, the more time passed, the further he slipped from rationality.

Yutis hacked and choked, struggling for air, his hands inching toward his own throat as though to strangle himself.

Lebel resorted to his final measure.

[Come here.]

If he was half-demonized, then he should heed this command.

Yutis’s body twitched involuntarily. Yet his feet remained rooted to the floor like magnets.

[Husband, come here. Do you intend to leave your wife all alone? You broke the window, and now I’m a bit cold.]

It was in that instant. Yutis flapped his enormous wings and appeared right up to Lebel’s face.

Furniture collided with the massive wings and splintered apart, while the wind scattered bedsheets and pillows to the floor. Yutis growled mere inches from Lebel’s nose.

A bestial cry resounded in Lebel’s ears. But he felt no fear.

[Hold me.]

The arms that crushed around him with back-breaking force drew a small groan from Lebel’s lips. Startled, Yutis immediately loosened his grip.

And yet he fears he might hurt me.

Lebel laughed in disbelief at the absurdity. That chuckle made Yutis flinch, his shoulders hunching.

Lebel tilted his face up to better see Yutis, who had drawn so near. The massively dilated pupils remained fixed unblinkingly on him. Lebel stared back at him.

They were eyes that didn’t belong to a human, but they were beautiful. They were white with a single drop of black mixed in.

Scales grew on his skin instead of human flesh, but that wasn’t bad either. It didn’t ruin his beauty. If anything, it made him even more beautiful.

Lebel looked at the claw marks on Yutis’s face with pity, he caressed his cheek and the wound as he spoke.

“In my eyes, you’re beautiful.”

“…Ah.”

That word became the trigger. Yutis hurriedly caught Lebel’s lips.

Lebel’s eyes widened because he was startled by Yutis’s sudden action. Yutis had already crossed his limit.

He couldn’t keep his mind straight with the scent of an omega gently spreading right before him.

He was suppressing his instincts with nothing but the will not to hurt him, but Lebel’s pheromones tempted him and provoked him. Yutis wanted to bite and swallow the man before his eyes.

He wanted to crave even stronger and broader pheromones. And when he saw the red lips that said he was beautiful, he couldn’t endure it anymore.

“Ha, haa, my wife…”

“Uh, hhh…!”

Lebel knew what this act was. It was probably what people called a kiss. He knew through knowledge that lovers did it to each other.

This human was doing it to him?

If they were married, was it something he could allow?

While he was thinking, his lips started to sting. Yutis had lightly bitten Lebel’s lower lip.

When he felt pain, Lebel looked up at Yutis. Then his eyes met Yutis’s fierce gaze.

Yutis pulled his waist close to him, as if he already knew Lebel had been distracted and wanted him to focus.

Their lips met and flattened together, and Yutis licked the bitten lip with his tongue.

He licked it for a long moment, then it slipped between Lebel’s lips and entered his mouth.

Lebel hesitated for a moment, then he opened his mouth and accepted the tongue. His mouth was filled with Yutis’s tongue.

He licked the roof of Lebel’s mouth like he was savoring ripe fruit, and he wrapped around the base of Lebel’s tongue and sucked it.

Yutis’s eyes dimmed. Unbeknownst to Lebel, his pheromones were stimulating Yutis’s body, making him relax and flow out in ever-increasing volume.

Since he was also thinking of giving him demonic energy the concentration became even stronger.