OPDSP 16

Humans instinctively disliked and rejected anything unfamiliar. It didn’t take long for public opinion to turn negative after Fedel made a cautious remark suggesting Aeryl was “picky about people.”

Things might have been different if Aeryl had been more proactive in socializing with others. With his beautiful face and composed demeanor, it was easy for people to take a liking to him.

But Aeryl simply didn’t have the luxury. Just going into battle for the first time had been overwhelming. Then, out of nowhere, the Grand Duke collapsed. Even after nursing him through the night, Aeryl had to follow him into battle the next day and remain on edge the entire time. Whenever he could find a moment, he busied himself recording the Grand Duke’s condition and thinking through treatments.

Even two bodies wouldn’t have been enough. Naturally, he couldn’t spare the attention for others.

Even Mason, one of the few who interacted with Aeryl, had his hands full. The Grand Duke was struggling just to stay conscious—there was no one left to speak on Aeryl’s behalf.

As luck would have it, circumstances aligned perfectly with Fedel’s gossip.

“He’s discriminating between knights and soldiers? Who still does that these days?”

“We all took the same risk to join the Great Purge! He didn’t even pass the tests or training—how dare he!”

“Maybe he’s skilled, but his character? Yikes…”

Just the way Fedel wanted. Thinking of how Aeryl stood out awkwardly from the group, Fedel hummed to himself. Ronar was with him the whole time, but he neither stopped nor corrected Fedel’s remarks—just quietly watched.

***

After a short nap, Aeryl got up and prepared a medicine he could try on the Grand Duke. It was his first time making it, and the ingredients were limited, but after much thought, he managed to pull it off.

He remembered how difficult it had been learning pharmacology. That period came to him faintly now, along with his teacher’s boastful voice.

“See? You never lose out listening to your teacher! Got that, you cocky little brat?”

That signature pompous tone still rang clearly in his ears.

“Yes, yes. Thank you, Master,” Aeryl muttered.

Shaking the nagging voice from his mind, Aeryl headed toward the Grand Duke’s tent. No one else was around.

According to Mason, the Grand Duke had extremely sensitive perception, so no one was allowed near him at night. Back at the Grand Duke’s estate, they supposedly cleared out an entire floor for his bedroom. Everyone knew that, so unless it was urgent, no one even approached his tent after sundown.

“That’s one small mercy.”

Aeryl slipped quickly into the Grand Duke’s tent. He braced himself—he wouldn’t be startled even if the Grand Duke had collapsed again.

“Ahhh!”

That resolve lasted less than a second. The moment he stepped into the tent, a sword came flying at him. It dropped weakly just in front of him.

“Wh-What?”

The Grand Duke stood there, sword in hand, arms hanging limp. His black hair was disheveled and fell over his eyes, hiding his expression. But anyone could tell something was wrong. His body was trembling, and his breathing was unstable.

“Your Grace?”

Aeryl called to him, but the Grand Duke didn’t respond.

Is he even conscious?

Aeryl cautiously approached. His heart pounded with nerves, but this was his patient—he had to be brave.

“You’re not feeling well, are you?”

Aeryl placed his hand over the Grand Duke’s, which still held the sword. His skin was cold as iron.

“I’m Aeryl.”

“Aeryl…?”

“Yes. Me. Your personal physician. I’m here.”

As he drew nearer, the Grand Duke’s eyes came into view through the strands of hair. Slowly, his gaze focused on Aeryl. His face was tense with strain. His body, too, was completely rigid.

“You’ll be all right now.”

As Aeryl gently rubbed the Grand Duke’s hand, the tension drained from it, and the sword slipped from his grasp with a metallic clang. At the same moment, the Grand Duke’s body collapsed toward Aeryl.

Aeryl caught him.

He must have felt his body deteriorating so rapidly that his instincts told him to take up his sword. The same had happened yesterday—when the Grand Duke collapsed, a sword had been at his side then, too.

The weight in his arms was heavy, but not so much that he couldn’t bear it—nothing like that first time they met. Even now, the Grand Duke was trying to hold on to consciousness.

Was it because there were too many people around that he thought it was dangerous? Or perhaps it was because there were many people that he found it dangerous.

“Does he always stay this alert? That can’t be good for his body.”

Aeryl laid the Grand Duke on the bed and sat beside him to examine his condition. Though still dazed, he was far better than yesterday. A faint trace of pheromones could be detected—very faint, but there. That was likely thanks to his exposure to Aeryl’s pheromones earlier that day.

But his palm was torn up, shredded with nail marks—he must have gripped his sword that hard.

‘Was he enduring like that all day, too? I told him to rest…’

Even as he quietly scolded the Grand Duke in his mind, Aeryl understood why he’d tried to act like he was fine.

‘They panicked just from seeing a little blood. If he collapsed outright, it would’ve caused an even bigger stir.’

After all, they were in the snowy mountain—a place that made one feel nauseous just standing still. To think of someone panicking in the middle of a monster-filled forest with this many troops… it was a terrifying thought.

‘Poor guy.’

To have his first rut at this timing, of all times. The man had the worst luck.

‘Kind of pitiful, honestly.’

He wasn’t married, and didn’t have a lover either. Would anyone even know how hard he was trying? At a time like this, he really needed someone he could lean on.

After treating the wounds on the Grand Duke’s hand, Aeryl covered him with a blanket. Maybe it was the contrast with his pale skin, but his black hair stood out starkly. Maybe it was the pity he felt, but he looked unusually pure in that moment. A sudden impulse to touch his hair came over him—but he resisted.

“Ha… I must be losing it. Focus on the job.”

He quickly drew a bit of the Grand Duke’s blood and pulled a vial of medicine from his bag. The drug had a faint pink hue. The plan was to administer it and then, after some time had passed, draw blood again to compare the results.

“I made this filthy drug with my own hands.”

What Aeryl had made was an omega heat inducer.

The seductive pheromones of an omega had proven effective on the Grand Duke. If inducing sexual arousal was key to triggering alpha pheromone production, then provoking heat symptoms would likely have a similar effect.

There was no separate heat inducer made for alphas, so Aeryl had created one meant for omegas. It simply hadn’t been used on alphas before, but the mechanism of action seemed to apply just the same.

‘If this works, maybe I can stabilize him. And then I wouldn’t have to be at his side constantly.’

The ideal, of course, was to identify the root cause and treat it. But since that wasn’t possible here, he was trying whatever he could as a temporary measure.

‘It might yield some interesting results.’

To be honest, the idea of seeing the outcome was exciting. He knew it wasn’t right to feel that way with a sick person in front of him, and guilt pricked at his conscience. To ease it, Aeryl gave the Grand Duke a soft pat on the chest.

***

Hiello Asirion felt as though he were wandering through a fog. He was conscious, but all his senses were dull, leaving him in a state of deep discomfort. It felt as if a thin film had wrapped around his entire body.

‘I want to get out…’ But his body hung limp like a hunk of iron.

Amid the torment, the only comfort was a sweet scent drifting toward him from somewhere. He couldn’t feel anything else, but that scent hovered close to him—he could sense it clearly.

The sensation reached him not through thought, but directly through the skin. It was unfamiliar, but not unpleasant.

After some unknown amount of time, sounds began to return. The coarse texture of a blanket. Then warmth from a hand. As sensation gradually returned, the Grand Duke slowly opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was the hand he had been holding. It was slender and well-shaped, but stained and roughened from years of handling herbs. So that was the warmth he’d felt.

In a slightly dazed state, the Grand Duke looked up toward the owner of that hand. As he’d expected, it was his physician—Aeryl.

Aeryl was offering him one hand, while using the other to awkwardly hold a book. His face was serious, completely absorbed in reading. That sight was beautiful beyond words.

With his small face and finely arranged features, not a single part of him could be called plain—he was like a living work of art. If he were just beautiful, that would have been one thing.

But what truly held the Grand Duke’s gaze were Aeryl’s eyes. The joy sparkling within them was so dazzling that he couldn’t look away. He felt the urge to reach out and remove the glasses covering those eyes.

A beauty with a kind of magic… Even the Grand Duke—who was not easily moved—couldn’t help but be quietly impressed.

‘So this is the face he was hiding.’