The Mother's Bride Shackles
Camilla, the Knight Commander and Swordmaster who stood at the pinnacle of the blade, had her lifelong pride shattered to pieces in the secret room the night before. A design her mother had crafted for the bride’s fetters. “To think I… lost so completely to Carna, that empty shell without even a will of her own, right in front of Master.”
Camilla’s steps were heavy as she walked beneath the morning sun. Carna, the doll whose ego had been utterly castrated to suit the Count’s tastes, moved only through mechanical obedience. Camilla had gasped and writhed beneath her cousin’s service, overwhelmed by pleasure she could not endure. Even with her master Edric watching, she had screamed like a beast and surrendered without resistance. The bitter, grotesque sense of defeat—that she had failed both as a doll obeying her master and as a woman—settled heavily in her lower belly.
So the moment she rose, she threw on civilian clothes and followed her daughter Karin and her master in a bid to soothe her gloomy mood. Lost in thought, she rode the carriage until the grand gates of the Knight Order headquarters came into view.
“Oh? Commander?”
The gatekeeper knight, startled at the sight of Camilla stepping down in plain clothes, snapped into a salute, confusion plain on his face. “Ah… come to think of it, I’m on leave for the time being.” It was a long-term leave she had requested to serve at her master’s side and to train him as a knight. Yet here she stood, dazed and out of uniform, prompting murmurs from the gatekeeper and the knights passing through the entrance.
“Huh… isn’t that the Commander? She definitely took extended leave to turn that Blake brat into a decent human being…”
“Shh, keep your voice down. Look how pale she is. They say she went into the mansion yesterday. Even the Empire’s strongest Swordmaster must find reforming that mad scoundrel exhausting.”
“She came trudging here alone in civilian clothes. She must be worried about him after all. Even on leave, she ended up coming to check on the brat’s work. Haah, what sin did our Commander commit…”
Realizing from the knights’ whispers that her very existence was harming her master, Camilla gave a bitter smile and turned to leave—only for voices to ring out.
“Commander!!!”
“Lady Camilla!!!”
Dozens of knights came charging from the headquarters gates, kicking up clouds of dust. Camilla frowned and donned the stern expression of a Knight Commander.
“What is all this commotion? Has some urgent crisis arisen that requires you to run to me while I’m on leave?”
Despite her dignified words, the eyes of her subordinates burned today like soldiers before battle. The male knights who reached her first shouted as though vomiting blood.
“Commander! How could you possibly marry Lady Karin to that infamous scoundrel, that Blake brat?! No matter how close he is to you by blood, this is too much!!”
“…What?”
Before Camilla could even part her lips in shock, veteran female knights of her age linked arms with her, wearing meaningful smiles.
“Oh my, Commander! You went into the mansion saying you’d make a man out of that scoundrel, and now you’re sending Karin off to be married? Don’t tell me… you’ve met someone recently and started a late-blooming romance? So you’re trying to marry Karin off quickly?”
“Wh-what nonsense… Me, in a romance?!”
As she recoiled, cold sweat running down her spine, the young knights blocked her path with tears in their eyes.
“Commander! Lady Karin is far too precious! Getting her pregnant within a year by that filthy scoundrel—what kind of absurd condition is that?! Rather than watch that happen, we’ll storm the mansion right now and cut that brat’s head off!”
Marriage. Late-blooming romance. Pregnancy within a year. The fragmented words spun wildly in Camilla’s mind. “What on earth… what insane rumor has spread through the Order while I was away?!”
But her confusion lasted only a moment. Deep within her, as she listened to her subordinates’ excited clamor, the joy of a doll began to bloom, smothering the rationality of a Knight Commander. “Ah… Master has finally decided to take Karin as his official wife.”
The absolute knowledge the President had implanted through hypnosis: [Even among dolls, those chosen as the master’s “wife” enjoy a supreme love and the privilege of bearing heirs that ordinary dolls used merely for desire cannot even compare to.]
Though she herself was nothing more than a doll who had surrendered to pleasure, Camilla wished for the daughter she had borne and raised to receive even greater love than she had and to be perfectly happy. Imagining Karin becoming the lawful wife of the Count’s household, bearing Edric’s child and being cherished, filled her chest with a twisted maternal affection.
“But… even if the noble seat of wife who bears the heir belongs to Karin, I hope the secret, passionate affair with Master remains entirely mine.”
While wishing for her daughter’s happiness, she found herself unwilling to yield the pleasures of the night. The doll’s peculiar possessiveness stirred, sending a thrill down her spine amid the contradictory emotions. At the same time, she thought as a doll moving for her master. If it were her beloved master Edric, how would he turn this situation to his advantage?
The old Edric, the scoundrel, would have simply enjoyed the chaos and let events unfold. But the current Edric, whose intellect had awakened as heir to a magical house, would surely exploit this bewildering rumor and flip it into the most favorable board for himself. A strangely seductive and arrogant smile, eerily reminiscent of Edric’s, curved Camilla’s lips. She spoke to her noisy subordinates in the stern tone unique to the Knight Commander.
“Everyone, calm down. I understand how much you care for my daughter.”
The area before the headquarters gates fell silent, as though cold water had been thrown over it. Receiving everyone’s gaze, Camilla dropped her bombshell.
“However, if I am to truly turn that scoundrel of a nephew into a proper person… it seems my daughter and I must become a complete ‘family’ with him.”
“C-Commander? You don’t mean…!”
Driving the wedge deeper into her horrified subordinates, Camilla continued.
“In fact, last night, I spent the entire night in the secret room having a very ‘intimate and deep conversation’ with Countess Carna to discuss this important matter.”
The knights, unaware that the “intimate and deep conversation” had in truth been a grotesque tryst of two naked dolls entwined and moaning, were all left speechless in shock.
“H-Huh…!”
“The Commander has officially acknowledged it…!”
“She even finished the overnight marriage talks with the Countess!!!”
Camilla’s single statement poured oil on an already raging wildfire. The scandal, now officially recognized by the Swordmaster and Knight Commander who was also Karin’s mother, had transcended mere speculation and become an established fact throughout the entire Order. Now Karin had no choice but to walk into Edric’s bedroom of her own accord and bear a child within a year.
The moment the mother’s twisted affection fastened perfect shackles around her daughter’s neck, Karin’s shoulders trembled in the administrative office as cheers echoed from outside the building.
“Mother! What on earth are you saying?!”
Karin, her face drained of color at the horrific declaration drifting in from the window, burst out of the Third Administrative Office and dashed toward the gates. Her crimson eyes wavered wildly with bewilderment and shame.
“Marriage?! Family?! I have no intention of marrying that guy or getting pregnant at all!”
Karin jumped and waved her hands frantically, but Camilla merely gazed at her daughter with a strangely seductive smile, as though finding her adorable. It was a smile that could never be imagined on the usually stern Knight Commander—a secret, lascivious allure that only one steeped in the pleasures of the night could wear.
“Oh my, there’s no need to be embarrassed. It’s already been two days since the banquet incident that you’ve been spending nights together at that child’s mansion. The way your heart fluttered at his newly dependable appearance… Mother knows everything.”
“What…?! M-Mother?!”
“H-Huh?! Two whole days at the mansion?!”
At Camilla’s decisive words, the area before the headquarters gates plunged into a crucible of shock and ecstasy. Knights from the youngest to the veterans all gaped and began to murmur.
“They’ve already gone all the way!”
“That iron-walled Senior Karin… spent two whole days in the scoundrel’s mansion…!”
“Good heavens, there were rumors the scoundrel had changed, but he really must have. Even Karin fell for that new side of him!”
As the knights’ confident whispers poured in from every direction, Karin’s face, driven into a corner, flushed a brilliant crimson as though it might burst. If this continued, she would be branded throughout not only the Order but the entire capital as the “prospective bride” who had wildly mingled bodies with that scoundrel. Of course, a humiliating brand had already been stamped upon her lower abdomen at the womb, but confessing that to the world was out of the question.
Having completely lost her reason to extreme shame and indignation, Karin squeezed her eyes shut in the middle of hundreds of fellow knights and screamed with all her might.
“It’s not true! I’m still a virgin!!!”
The desperate, tearful declaration of chastity from the female knight echoed loudly.
“Oh dear, look how embarrassed she is!”
“Just how fiercely did that scoundrel push her every night…!”
Yet the peaceful morning of the Knight Order had already descended into a storm of madness that paid Karin’s words no heed. And in the midst of that pandemonium, with her daughter blushing and struggling, Camilla quietly raised her gaze to the window on the upper floor of the administrative building.
There stood Edric, looking down upon the entire farce. He showed no sign of panic or of trying to settle the situation. He merely gazed down with the “distant and arrogant eyes of an absolute ruler” upon the pieces dancing ridiculously across the grand chessboard he had meticulously arranged. Hundreds of knights thoroughly deceived, her proud daughter dancing in the palm of his hand and fastening her own leash—this perfect comedy. Edric’s figure, leisurely controlling it all with a faint smirk, was that of a tyrant, or perhaps the devil himself.
And the moment their eyes met through the window, that cool and absolute gaze—
Thump-. Thump-.
Camilla felt her womb, the most secret and feminine place beneath the solid abs forged by a Swordmaster, begin to pound like a beast. The blind submission of a female facing an absolute predator. The pleasure of that submission, completely imprinted upon her in merely two days, crawled up her spine with a sharp thrill.
“Ah… my master.”
Even as the entire Order buzzed with her daughter’s scandal, the Commander Camilla crossed her legs tightly and swallowed a ragged breath. The inner thighs of the woman suppressed by reverence for the absolute being were once again growing damp enough to soak through her undergarments.