The Hero's Lawful Wife, Mandarin (Finale)
Thud!
The Viscountess felt as though a hammer had been driven straight into her heart.
Kill him?
Who?
My son—Kael?
"Hah...!"
The sudden shock set her heart thrashing wildly. She had to flail like a madwoman against the abrupt difficulty of breathing. With only one lung, such moments were several times more agonizing for her than for anyone else.
Darin knew perfectly well that she could not simply stay like this—and yet her chest constricted so tightly she could barely move.
Lucas killing her son was not something that had actually been done. He had only said he would. But Lucas was the Hero, practically the strongest being in this world. If he declared he would do a thing, there was nothing that would fail to come to pass.
And so, at the threat to kill her son, Darin had no choice but to tremble from head to toe. This was no mere threat to her chastity. It was a massive invasion of terror, as if a blade had truly been pressed to her throat and her life itself hung in the balance.
"N-no. Why all of a sudden—why would you do that!?"
Darin hurried toward Lucas on small, quick steps. Then she wrapped herself around his solid arm and clung to it—a sight so precarious it defied description. Even with the naked eye, one could clearly see her small head vibrating ceaselessly with anxiety.
When the girl clung to him with her round eyes flashing, Lucas regarded her with a momentarily puzzled expression—but the brief words that spilled from her lips quickly resolved his curiosity.
"K-Kael—you can't. Please, Kael..."
Kael. Kael. That damned Kael was the problem. The Hero recalled the imperial princess who, aside from Darin, had been the only one to reject him. Even that prideful bitch had cried out Kael's name when he'd taken her.
Fuck...
No matter how he thought about it, the barbarian was irritating in every way. Not particularly better than himself, yet always playing the clean one, the refined one—that damned breed. And on top of that, he had raped the woman Lucas had thought was his fated pair, and even won her favor?
As far as Lucas was concerned, there was not a single reason to keep alive a barbarian who played at being a gentleman. From the start, during the Hero's Party days, he had overlooked every offense that had grated on his nerves. By now, he could say he had bestowed every grace he was capable of bestowing.
"Please, Lucas."
At the plaintive call, the Hero's head turned downward. The girl was lifting her tear-soaked vermilion eyes, gazing at him desperately.
It was a woman's cunning, meant to win a man's favor. Still, when a woman who had kept her guard so high came on actively, a man might well find it pleasing.
"......"
Yet the Hero's face only grew harder.
Darin had resisted with everything she had to avoid being violated by someone near-omnipotent. In other words, she was a woman who valued her chastity that fiercely.
And such a woman would casually reverse course to protect one man? To the point of sandwiching his forearm between her breasts and flattering him?
"Let go."
"Why—why are you like this? I'm sorry. For a mere woman, I acted far too rudely, didn't I?"
"......"
"Shall we play? Wh-what position do you want?"
The Hero's gaze was ice-cold. Having a woman who did not even want him offer her body this way only wounded his pride. After all, taking a woman by holding another man's life hostage was something only washed-up men did.
This way, even rape lost its savor. She looked ready to join her body with his if it meant protecting Kael.
Lucas had no desire to move as the woman who had defied him wished. He had intended to shatter her heart, ruin her from head to toe, and conquer her.
"I told you to let go, did I not?"
Lucas mercilessly peeled away her slender wrist.
"Ah—w-wait!"
Darin pleaded, parting her pitifully trembling lips. Stubbornly latching onto his arm again was a bonus.
"I'm good with my mouth too, a-and down below I'm so wet it's soft, and, and... hhk!"
The noble Viscountess bargained her body as wretchedly as a whore selling herself for money. Darin herself knew this was a cheap act that devalued her.
"Hhk, hhk, sh-shall I put your cock between my breasts? I've almost never done a titjob, hehehe..."
That pain surged as a vast shame that wet her eyes. Mid-sentence, foolish sobs mixed in. Not that she had any other way. Kael was that precious to her—more than anything.
It was simple logic.
A simple truth.
A mere woman's chastity held no value more precious than a single human life. All the more so when that person was her own flesh and blood. In a situation like this, clinging to pride would make her a pathetic mother.
The white-haired boy had been the true first family she had thought she would never have, alone in this other world. In those days, the girl's blazing heart had existed for the baby babbling in her arms.
"Ah, please... I'll do anything, so don't do that to Kael."
No matter how many years had passed. No matter how much her son had wounded her. The man named Kael was someone to whom Darin had devoted her entire youth and prime—someone utterly, incomparably special.
"Haa, aaa..."
From mana depletion and stress, her thoughts were going numb, her head growing increasingly blank. Still, as Kael's mother, she had to resist her closing eyelids with all her strength.
"Hhuu, I-I must have been crazy. I actually like Lucas too..."
"Why bother with such an obvious lie? Who would believe that when you're crying so hard?"
Earlier she had been terrified of what to do if Lucas raped her—but when she weighed it against her son's life, the former was something she could do any number of times with a glad heart. Something light.
The woman so carefully cherished by the Bayorn household had, for this moment at least, no choice but to become the loosest woman of all.
"...What does it matter if it's a lie?"
I'm a soiled woman anyway. If that man wants it so badly, there's no reason I can't give it to him. Come to think of it, I'm not even a virgin—trying so hard to protect my chastity is laughable. What is a common-born woman like me, anyway?
Swish.
Darin subtly undid her dress, revealing one breast. A lovely nipple of soft pink rose neither too large nor too small—just right.
"...Darin, what are you doing?"
"U-uhh, what?"
A smile stood out on the Viscountess's trembling lips. This bastard saw her as a female anyway. There was a limit to playing hard to get. Even that iron wall of his might change once he saw her bare flesh.
Darin felt the man's gaze boring into her nipple even as he pretended otherwise. The girl formed a bitter smile, recalling the words he had spoken to her. That they had a one-of-a-kind relationship? What did that matter? Kael was the child she had borne and raised herself.
The reality of cooing at a man who meant to kill her son was so hateful she could go mad. But expressing anger was the right of the powerful. When she had to spread her legs for Lucas right now for her son's sake, nothing would be more foolish than inviting his resentment.
Rustle.
When she next undid the sash binding her dress, all that remained to cover the girl's body was thin undergarments. And even those left one pale breast bare—a thoroughly indecent sight.
"H-how is it? Hhk..."
Like a patient swinging between extremes, the girl would try to seduce only to burst into tears mid-way. Having lived over twenty years as a lady of rank, coaxing a single man was not impossible—yet having never done anything like this, the strangeness and fear were the same.
"......"
Just as the girl's heart was being shredded to pieces, the Hero completely forgot that he ought to kill Kael, and gazed as if entranced at the beautiful female form reflecting the moonlight.
It was too alluring to force himself to ignore. Unlike what he had seen through his x-ray vision, the three-dimensional quality was extraordinary. The shape of that pure white flesh, which looked as if it would quiver at the slightest flick of a finger, seemed impossible to leave untouched.
Trickle—beads of sweat from tension gathered around her breasts and fell. Gulp. A maddening thirst rose. That was nothing but sweat—so why did it look like sugar water?
Sniff sniff.
The girl flinched as the man's breath, hungering for her skin, stirred her revulsion. But she did not step back. If all he wanted was this body, she had resolved to give it without stint.
She only tried her hardest to smile.
Am I smiling right now, or crying?
I don't really know.
Darin suddenly looked up at the moon reflected in the sky.
Tomorrow, and the day after, the moon's shape might change—but the fact of its existence would not. Then even a woman like her, even if she broke, could still meet tomorrow.
And if that form became something she could not accept—
She need only end her own life, no?
"You fucking piece of trash."
And that was when it happened.
"How dare you lay a hand on her?"
The barbarian's murderous fury rang through the private chamber.