DSB 61

“The wedding, and how you two couldn’t even spend your first night as a married couple, always bothered me. But this worked out well in the end. You two are newlyweds after all.”

“But Father, going alone…”

“Now, are you looking down on your father? This is the duty of the head of the house. Yutis, you’ve done enough work, so think of this as a short rest.”

He had watched his beloved son suffer every time his own bloodline turned him into a monster. So now, seeing Yutis happy after meeting Lebel, he felt pleased.

“…Thank you.”

Yutis was happy that he could spend more time with Lebel, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at his parents’ smiling faces calling it a good time.

“That’s a relief. I was worried it might happen again soon, and being alone wouldn’t do.”

“…heat?”

Damian repeated Lebel’s words.

“Whose heat? Yutis’s rut already passed recently.”

“Ah, mine.”

“Yours?”

“Yes.”

Lebel calmly dropped the bomb while drinking his tea. Yutis jumped to his feet in shock.

“Is your body acting strange?”

“Strange enough.”

“…You’re not joking, right?”

“Why would I joke?”

Lebel tilted his head at Damian’s question. His calm demeanor could easily be mistaken for humor, but they all knew better now.

Lebel was someone who said yes if it was true and no if it wasn’t. Since he had just said it wasn’t a joke, it wasn’t.

After spending the rut with Yutis, Lebel had become able to perceive and release pheromones. That meant he could naturally have a heat.

He was a dominant omega, but since he had been incomplete before, he had never gone into heat. So this upcoming heat would be his first. That meant no one knew what could happen.

Damian was the first to gather his thoughts.

“Iol, call a physician!”

“Yes, understood!”

As the sudden commotion broke out, Lebel tilted his head and explained.

“I’m not sick. It just means that a heat could start soon.”

Judging by how his demonic energy was stirring, it was certain.

At first, he thought he had simply regained strength, but it remained out of control and moved on its own. And he had seen such chaotic energy before.

It was exactly how Yutis’s energy had behaved when he was caught in his rut. So he only assumed that his own heat might come soon.

“That’s even worse!”

Damian, who was a dominant omega, felt a headache as he watched Lebel calmly say that his heat would come soon. He placed his hand on his forehead.

***

Mark examined Lebel’s condition thoroughly.

“How is it?”

“The movement of the pheromones is strange.”

“Your cycle… No, of course you wouldn’t know. It’s probably your first heat.”

Damian sighed with relief that at least they had learned about it early.

“If you feel even the slightest abnormality, tell us. Always carry a suppressant.”

He wasn’t going to take it, so what was the point of carrying it? If his heat came, couldn’t he just spend it with Yutis?

Then he remembered how everyone had tried to stop him from seeing Yutis back when he was in rut.

It seemed the same rule applied even if it was someone else’s rut.

Why though?

“You’re ignoring your heat? If you don’t want to see something nasty, take the suppressant.”

“Young Madam, as I said before, if your body gets hot and your vision blurs and you feel symptoms like a cold, you must take the suppressant.”

Damian and Mark took turns giving him warnings. Mark tried to hand Lebel the suppressant but looked worried when he saw how unconcerned he looked.

Then Mahan picked it up with a grim face.

“I’ll make sure to keep it with me.”

“Yes, take good care of it. He hasn’t experienced this before, so he doesn’t take it seriously.”

Seeing Lebel’s indifferent expression made Damian’s eyebrows furrow.

“If Yutis is here, why do I have to take it?”

“This could get serious! Do you want to end up pregnant or something? You can barely keep your mind clear during your first heat, so be careful.”

“…Pregnant?”

“Yes! Especially since this is your first heat. Don’t cause something you can’t take responsibility for. We’re saying this for your sake.”

Lebel was lost in thought for a moment. Pregnancy. Right. That existed. Omegas were called that because they could conceive when they mated with alphas.

“When omegas go into heat, their bodies become easy to impregnate. And since you’re a dominant omega, your pheromones will be strong. It’s not that we don’t trust the young master, but if you ended up knotted, there’d be no way to undo it.”

At Mark’s words, Yutis flinched slightly.

Rut, pregnancy, knotting, these were all words he had only heard since becoming human, and he had shoved them out of his mind. The heat existed for reproduction, so of course he should’ve considered pregnancy.

Humans feared intimacy because of pregnancy.

Below them, Karon jumped in shock at the word pregnancy.

[Pregnant? Lord Lebel with a human child?!]

Damian looked at Lebel, who listened quietly to Mark’s words, and he asked Mark.

“Mark, didn’t you explain this properly last time?”

“I thought he at least knew about pregnancy…”

“This kid never got any proper education. No, wait, maybe he did, but it was probably something strange…”

Damian muttered and massaged his forehead.

“Yutis will be careful, but you have to be careful too. You never know what happens. What if you end up pregnant right away? Well, you’re married, so maybe it doesn’t matter, but… you’re not in good health. It’s best to avoid it.”

“That’s right. Young Madam’s body isn’t in a condition suitable for pregnancy.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“Madam also conceived by accident the day his heat started…”

“Hey, who told you to say that?!”

So it was his own experience after all.

But wasn’t that actually good news for them? Yutis was the only heir of the Hestro family. So eventually, they would need a child. Maybe it wasn’t urgent right now.

No, beyond that, could this body even conceive? The child wouldn’t be ordinary either.

“…What’s wrong?”

Yutis sensed Lebel’s gaze fixed on him and asked. Lebel silently lowered his eyes to his own abdomen.

This was a human body. He had felt it deeply, time and time again.

“I won’t be able to get pregnant.”

When Lebel spoke firmly, Yutis’s eyes widened, and Damian replied.

“How can you be so sure?”

“This body can’t handle it.”

To hold a child that carried both his demonic energy and Yutis’s, the vessel would have to be strong enough to contain that power. So with this body, it was impossible.

The amount and nature of the demonic energy inside Yutis were extraordinary. And now, after absorbing Lebel’s demonic energy, that power had grown even stronger. And Lebel, once called the Great Demon, naturally carried power of the same level.

“I’m more curious how Father managed to get pregnant at all.”

Edmund’s demonic power was just as immense.

“What’s so strange about that? You’re the strange one here!”

Damian shouted and laughed in disbelief at Lebel’s words.

But it really was strange. How could a human body have given birth to him?

The reason Yutis’s demonic power was so dense was partly because of his father’s bloodline, but mostly because the mother’s body had been strong enough to endure it.

Because Damian’s body had been strong enough to hold demonic energy, he could sustain the fetus’s growth inside him. That meant unless the body was just as strong, no child could ever be born.

Then what about me?

“I guess I am frail.”

He had found it annoying before when others called him weak and treated him as if he might collapse at any moment, but now he had to admit they weren’t wrong.

It had been quite some time since he had taken over this human body. It was better than at first, but still weak.

The vessel’s limits were fixed, and time wouldn’t change that.

Lebel could only learn to control and use his demonic energy more efficiently within the body’s limits.

“…wife?”

Yutis’s eyes trembled slightly. He had watched Lebel long enough to notice it. The tone was calm as usual, but there he sounded a little bitter.

“You’ve been getting healthier. What Mark said only means pregnancy isn’t possible right now.”

“Y-Yes! The fact that your heat is approaching is proof that your body is recovering normally. If you continue improving, pregnancy will become possible!”

“I know I’m getting healthier.”

But not to the extent Lebel wanted. The more his soul adjusted to the vessel, the more demonic energy he released, and the body could break under the strain.

Too much power could consume its own bearer.

Mark insisted that if anything felt strange, Lebel had to report it immediately, and then he left.

“Young Master, I’m counting on you.”

“Alright.”

Why say that to Yutis instead of to me?

Lebel was displeased, but he remained quiet, since there had already been several times when he said he was fine and then collapsed soon after.

***

After the talk about the heat, Yutis fussed over Lebel for several days and urged him to rest. But staying inside waiting for something that might not come soon quickly became tiresome.

Edmund had taken on Yutis’s share of the duties and gone far away to investigate the beasts. Yutis didn’t go on campaign, but he often went down to the territory to check the progress of repairs after the damage caused by the beasts Karon had brought.

When he was away working, Lebel looked for something he could do himself.

That was managing the territory. As Damian had said before, he should learn to oversee the castle when Yutis was away, so he went to Damian and asked him to teach him.