Betrayal
Seona had no choice but to follow Miel out of the room the moment she whispered those words into his ear, pulled along by the hand that held him captive.
"If you don't want Yurin to catch on, come with me."
It was obvious she meant to violate him. Under normal circumstances she would have forced herself on him right there just to watch Yurin's reaction, yet Miel was behaving as though she actually cherished him. It was unexpected. He had assumed her talk of him being her mate was a lie, and that he would be treated as nothing more than an object.
After leading Seona out and shutting the door behind them, Miel guided him down a pitch-dark corridor and up a flight of stairs. They emerged into what appeared to be a storage room. Miel laid a wooden plank over the opening where the stairs had been, completely concealing the secret staircase, then the two of them slipped out of the storage-like chamber together.
Worry for Yurin gnawed at him so fiercely that he finally asked Miel,
"I'm worried about Yurin. Could we go back?"
"You're my husband now, so there's no need for honorifics. Just speak casually.
And you're mine—why are you trying to stick close to that bitch?"
"Still... she's my childhood friend."
He had nearly said girlfriend just now. With Miel already regarding him as her husband, uttering that word might have sent her straight off to kill Yurin.
"Is she that important? That woman?"
"Yes..."
Seona could not answer with any real confidence. Miel had threatened to kill Yurin dozens of times already, and had nearly done so once.
"Then what should we do now? Just killing that bitch seems like the best option for me."
She was trying to kill her again. It was clear she no longer needed her. Ever since claiming him as her mate, Miel had shown almost no interest in Yurin; he could no longer expect any mercy from her.
"..."
After pondering for a long while, Miel's face lit up with an amused expression.
"You said you wanted to save that bitch, right? And I said I'd grant every single one of your wishes."
"Yes..."
"Then from now on, act like you've betrayed her. As if you've completely become my man—my mate. Whenever you see her, behave as though you've lost all interest, as though you don't need her anymore."
"..."
Was the proposal too difficult? Seona fell silent for a long time. His complexion looked poor, as if he had been saddled with an enormously painful dilemma. Seeing him hesitate, Miel began to persuade him.
"It's not a real betrayal, so it'll be fine. That bitch will suffer a little, but if you want to save her, this is the only way, right? No matter how you act, as long as you don't actually betray her, it's okay."
Watching Seona continue to deliberate, Miel kept talking, pressing her persuasion further.
"From now on you'll live with me, and whenever we go see that bitch, you just act that way then. I won't make you do it twenty-four hours a day while she's locked in the room."
Seona remained silent. Knowing the depth of Yurin's obsession, he understood how much pain she had endured in her heart since being confined. But this was an act of killing her heart in order to save her body. There was only one answer. Saving Yurin came first. She would be deeply wounded, yet if they ever returned to Earth... a man like him could be forgotten, and she could find another. She was a capable woman, after all. Whether she was a good woman or not, he wasn't sure.
"I'll do it."
Miel beamed brightly, as if something delightful had just fallen into her lap.
"Then starting tomorrow, you'll have to do it properly. If she catches on that you're acting, I'll kill that bitch on the spot. It might be a little hard, but I never expected Seona would make a choice like this. What a cruel man."
Miel had proposed this only after calculating every benefit she could extract. Seona was not a male she could dominate through pleasure alone. If she killed Yurin right away, all her efforts in carving the Yin Crest and treating him kindly could evaporate into nothing. To make him completely hers with as little resistance as possible, the best method was to force him to sort out his own feelings for his former lover. She wanted not merely Seona's body, but his heart as well—that was why she had devised this plan.
Every time he betrayed his former lover Yurin, their relationship would sour further, and the fake betrayal would eventually become real, culminating in catastrophe. That was her prediction. Even if they got caught, it would not be a problem. Even if she killed Yurin herself, that soft-hearted Seona would only regret that he had not performed properly. He was probably even grateful right now that she had given him this chance.
First priority was celebrating Seona becoming hers by having their first sex together. Imagining Seona overlapping bodies with her every night and denouncing his former lover made her lower half grow wet again. Tonight was exciting, but tomorrow was exciting too. Tomorrow she planned to make that bitch watch the two of them have sex. Better not to gag her. She intended to let that bitch scream madly, cursing and denouncing Seona. That way Seona would also be wounded by her and come to want Miel instead...
Miel had been gifted at reading others' emotions since childhood. After her father disappeared, her sisters and mother had ostracized her, so without sharp instincts survival would have been difficult. By constantly catering to others simply to stay alive, Miel had become quick at reading people's gazes and emotions. If what she had told Seona worked as intended, she accurately predicted that the bitch and Seona's relationship would grow distant.
"Seona? Feeling good?"
Miel asked as she washed his body. After rinsing him thoroughly with warm water, she spread fragrant oil across both palms and rubbed it into every inch of his skin. The scent rising from her own body and from Seona's was identical. If that bitch ever discovered they smelled the same, she would foam at the mouth and completely lose her mind. Entertaining that amusing thought, Miel washed every sensitive corner of both their bodies and stepped out.
She was looking forward to her first sex with Seona more than she could express. Even just sucking his cock had produced a pleasure so intense—amplified between her Yin Crest and his—that it defied description. What would penetration feel like, then? She would probably feel so good she could die. Seona had also looked as though he were enjoying himself when he sucked her in that room. So of course he must want to have sex with her. That was what she believed.
But Seona's inner thoughts were nothing like what Miel imagined.
If I refuse... if I say I don't want to... would she listen to that too?
The fear that saying such a thing might get him violated until he was half-dead crossed his mind, yet looking at Miel's current behavior, she did not seem about to harm him. As the two of them entered the same room, Seona spoke.
"Miel... I'm sorry, but I can't. If we do this, it would be... really betraying Yurin..."
The pleasant atmosphere shattered. Anger surged up, but Miel decided not to push Seona too hard. There was plenty of time left, after all. With the Yin Crest carved into him, Seona could never leave her for the rest of his life. Besides, overlapping bodies while he still thought of another woman would not feel nearly as good as doing it after his ties with that bitch had been completely severed. Making excuses to herself, she gave up on the first night.
She could not show this angry heart to Seona. Until recently he had been terrified of her, so she resolved to respect him, determined not to reveal an ugly side.
"It's okay. We can do it together whenever you want."
"Thank you. Miel..."
There was no reason to jump him right away. Wounding the heart of a mate she intended to spend her entire life with would only leave regrets that would haunt her forever. Starting tomorrow, once Seona began treating the bitch harshly, their relationship would grow distant, and Seona would have no choice but to rely on her. This was only the beginning.
"Good night, Seona."
"Good night..."
Until yesterday Seona had slept embracing Yurin; now he was embracing Miel instead, and his feelings were a tangled mess. Confusion and complicated emotions flooded him at the sudden sense that this succubus felt like a lover. Yet the soft, plush sensation he had not felt in so long washed the accumulated fatigue over him, and he fell asleep just like that.
Miel watched the peacefully sleeping Seona for a long time. Then she too drifted off, pulling the sweetly scented boy into her arms, the corners of her mouth curved upward in quiet satisfaction.
Yurin kept staring at the door Seona and that rotten bitch had opened and walked through. It felt as though Seona would never come back here again. Why had he left holding her hand without a single word of protest? What were they doing out there? Would Seona return? What was going to happen to her now? Drowning in too many questions, Yurin wore herself out.
It couldn't be. Seona's heart, at least, must still belong to her. He would be back any moment. No matter how hard she tried to count, concentrating was nearly impossible in a room stripped of rhythm and drowned in silence. With no clock and no light filtering in, she had lost all sense of time. She had no idea how long had passed, yet Seona still did not appear. She was exhausted and desperately tired, but she could not sleep. In this anxiety and pain, without Seona, sleep was impossible.
As a little more time crawled by, Yurin's heart began frantically searching for him.
Please... Seona...
And then time passed, and the door opened.
Seeing Seona—who had been naked—now dressed was something she had not witnessed in a truly long while. But something about him looked wrong. The Seona who should have worried about her the instant he stepped inside was holding the succubus's hand and staring only at her face, as if Yurin herself did not even exist. Even when she made frantic muffled sounds through the gag, he did not look. Only when she stomped her feet hard enough to make noise did he finally turn her way.
But it was not the expression of the Seona she knew. A cold gaze, as if he were looking at trash. In the fifteen years they had spent together, it was an expression she had never once seen on his face.
"Yurin. I can't be with you anymore. My body has become one that can't be satisfied unless it's Miel's tight pussy.
Thanks for swallowing my cock with that trashy pussy all this time.
Thanks to that, I learned just how good Miel's pussy feels...."
In truth he had not done anything with Miel the night before, but because he had been ordered to pretend to betray her in exchange for saving Yurin's life, he had no choice but to lie. He had to tell a lie she would have no choice but to believe.
I can't get caught...
Seona deliberately chose the words that would wound Yurin most deeply. Knowing how obsessively she clung to sex with him, he understood exactly how humiliating these words would feel.
Hearing Seona's cold voice, Yurin acknowledged that her worst prediction had been correct. The Seona she had known was already gone. The thought that, ever since the Yin Crest was carved, he had simply turned into another person who merely resembled Seona—that thought had been right all along. Yurin realized it through a flood of scalding tears, convinced that Seona had indeed been corrupted into a male by that succubus...
Watching the scene unfold, the corners of Miel's mouth began to curl upward.