Chapter 39

Henry’s expression hardened even further. Hunting was a hobby into which he poured his heart and soul. No matter how much it was meant as a harmless joke, it was bound to scratch at his pride.

Tension hung over the dining table for a moment. Henry abruptly asked Aethlyn:

“That may be so. It’s certainly quick-witted and sharp. But… it lacks grit for such a large male dog. Don’t you think, Aethlyn?”

“You’re not wrong.”

Having received her father’s gaze, Aethlyn slowly nodded. She forced a smile by pulling only at the corners of her lips.

“It is a bit on the cowardly side.”

Saying that, she lowered her left hand and stroked the crown of the dog sitting beside her. Having even received confirmation from his daughter, the young duke pulled at the corner of one lip and continued leisurely.

“If you look closely, there’s a reason the child wraps around that thing. I briefly put it in the hunting dog kennel and it almost caused a massive incident.”

Aethlyn’s hand, which had been stroking the dog, stopped. It was uncomfortable having an incident she’d rather not recall brought up as a topic again. Yet, unconcerned with Aethlyn’s stiff face, the young duke continued his story.

“It almost got torn to pieces and killed by the other hunting dogs. If Ben hadn’t forcefully pulled them apart, it would have gone to its grave screaming…”

That was an event that had occurred precisely one month ago, as soon as the black dog—having received a clean bill of health from the veterinarian—was placed into the exact same pen as the hunting dogs.

The moment the creature was sent inside the kennel fence, the other hunting dogs stationed there suddenly flipped their eyes and lunged all at once. Seeing that, Henry had been quite startled. After all, these were dogs that fundamentally never attacked others without their master’s command.

Looking back and thinking about it now, he figured they must have felt stressed because a threatening male had suddenly entered their territory.

Anyway, let’s say up to that point was understandable. The problem was what came next.

At that moment when it was suddenly attacked, the dog Aethlyn had brought along didn’t resist ‘at all’. Far from resisting, the moment the hunting dogs bared their teeth, it tucked its tail and flattened its body straight against the ground. It was a picture-perfect declaration of surrender.

On top of that, it even pinned its ears back and whined with a piteous sound… It genuinely made him think its size was a complete waste. It even made him think this was worse than most small-breed dogs.

‘Tsk. With a temperament like that, it’s no wonder Aethlyn fawns over it so much.’

Sympathy for weak beings. Aethlyn’s obsession with the stray dog was nothing more and nothing less than that.

Just as Henry was continuing to inwardly look down on Aethlyn’s dog, his clueless younger brother innocently asked him:

“Brother. Then where does that dog live now? With a size like that, it ought to have a separate room in the house.”

“That’s…”

It was then. Aethlyn, who had been quietly keeping to herself, suddenly raised her voice and replied:

“My room…”

Before Aethlyn could even finish her sentence, John reacted in utter astonishment.

“In your room?”

Ahem. Aethlyn withdrew the hand she had been using to pet the dog. Forcibly ignoring the small whimpering sound, she answered with emphasis:

“In front of my room. It sleeps in the hallway.”

“…Isn’t that a bit much? It’s inconvenient for the servants walking back and forth, and it’s uncomfortable for the dog, too. Wouldn’t it be better to set up a separate space for it to stay?”

Aethlyn’s face flushed with awkwardness.

‘Actually, is it a bit much…?’

Perhaps because she had no experience raising pets, she couldn’t properly gauge where the bounds of common sense lay. And there wasn’t anyone nearby she could casually ask about such things, either.

The one who rescued Aethlyn from her predicament was her father, Henry.

“John. That’s not the child’s fault. That fellow sits right outside its master’s bedroom door and refuses to budge an inch, so what can Aethlyn do? Even if we arrange a nice sleeping spot elsewhere, the moment you look away, it goes straight back in front of her room.”

At the same time, the man smoothly steered the conversation elsewhere.

“Anyway, how was your trip to the Kunetz Federation?”

“Ah, yes. Brother. I saw that skyscraper thing in person, but it really couldn’t compare to the Wintercrown Magic Tower.”

“Well, naturally. Non-mages…”

From then on, the conversation passing back and forth across the dinner table didn’t enter Aethlyn’s mind at all. She looked down at the ‘dog’ crouching to her left and fell into deep thought.

‘Uncle’s right.’

Perhaps it was because she tended to frequently interact with non-mages within the family. What her uncle was saying made sense.

‘I need to hurry up and give it a name, and make a comfortable space where it can stay. Anywhere inside the mansion is fine.’

Before long, Aethlyn would be entering the Magic Academy. Once she went there, she wouldn’t be able to return to the Wintercrown estate for a while, and she felt it was dangerous for the creature to remain overly dependent on her the way it was now.

At the very least, she shouldn’t keep leaving it huddled in front of her bedroom door like this.

Gennadi advanced with staggering steps, walking and walking further.

He couldn’t even gauge how long he had walked. Whether it was day, night, or dawn right now. He didn’t know how far he’d come from the Kran Trench, nor which direction he was heading. He was solely focused on getting as far away as possible.

Right now, his cognition was focused on just two things.

To keep moving forward, and to keep the woman in his arms from dying.

The former he was managing somehow, but the latter was the problem. The woman was still clinging to life for the moment, but at the same time, she was dying rapidly. He could feel her breathing growing shallower and her body cooling by the second. In truth, Gennadi’s own condition was hardly normal either.

The very moment Gennadi saw Aethlyn take down the Red Knight, the first thing he did was return to his human form.

As soon as he shifted back into human form, a rush of blood surged up from his throat and spilled out. It felt as though the blood was draining away even faster from his torn wounds.

Judging solely by his injuries, the sensible course of action would have been to revert to his wolf form immediately and recover his body. Yet Gennadi chose not to do that. First-aid treatment had to be done by human hands anyway, and…

‘…I can somehow endure even in this state. Because I’m with my mate.’

Mate. Yes, mate.

The truth he had tried so hard not to dwell on had been summoned in that manner. The fact that Aethlyn was his mate.

‘Absurd.’

Gennadi let out a breath that was neither a chuckle nor a sigh.

Ever since his mercenary school days, all through his time in the detachment, the other werewolves had treated Gennadi like a fool. Their reasoning was that it was foolish not to take a mate among one’s comrades.

“Don’t you even know that staying close to your mate accelerates healing? If you haven’t imprinted with a mate yet, hurry up and find one within the detachment. You’re losing out like an idiot.”

“Nah. That guy already imprinted. Just what kind of amazing mate is she that he won’t even introduce her to us?”

Gennadi had pretended not to hear whenever his comrades blabbed like that, but deep down inside, he understood their fuss.

To a werewolf, a mate was life itself. Simply pressing their bodies close together healed both flesh and spirit, and made the reason to live crystalline.

‘What does it feel like to hold a mate in your arms?’

Would strength surge forth? Would fatigue lessen? Would the lingering pains gnawing away at his entire body vanish in an instant?

At last, he would be able to resolve that curiosity. Because he was about to touch Aethlyn.

Gennadi cast a final glance at the ragged scar resting upon Aethlyn’s limp hand. The imprinting mark he had created. Seeing it, an emotion he couldn’t identify as joy or pain tightly squeezed his chest.

Yet he had no time to wallow in sentimentality any longer. Gennadi began to move his body mechanically.

He first tended to his own wounds. It would be a disaster if he, the one carrying and moving Aethlyn, lost consciousness from excessive blood loss.

Fortunately, there was a dead Imperial medic nearby. Rummaging through the corpse’s pockets for an emergency medical kit yielded roughly the supplies he needed. Antiseptic, gauze, bandage, morphine.

The instructions were written entirely in the Barbaros language, but Gennadi didn’t care. He could barely read Estaian anyway, and military supplies were much the same regardless of which country made them. Especially the Imperial ones—he had looted and used their weapons and goods plenty of times before, so his hands knew them well.

He first tore open the antiseptic packaging with his teeth, then roughly poured half of the powder directly into his wound.

The snow-white powder settled onto the mangled red flesh, and an excruciating agony, as though pierced by thousands upon thousands of thorns, flared up. Completely ignoring the pain, Gennadi pressed gauze over the wound and wrapped a bandage securely around it to finish.

And then he immediately began Aethlyn’s first-aid treatment. The hands that had been moving with dry, mechanical efficiency hesitated the moment they touched Aethlyn’s snow-white, bare skin.

‘……’

There was no dramatic change. Yet, something within the man had definitely shifted.

A warm, gentle sensation pooled deep inside his chest and radiated outward through his entire body.

That was all.

The world didn’t turn upside down and his eyes didn’t magically pop open in revelation the way the detachment members exaggeratedly babbled about. He was still bleeding profusely on this damned battlefield, and Aethlyn was dying. Physiological hunger, pain, and fatigue remained right where they were.

However, even so.

Gennadi knew by intuition. The fact that he would become addicted to this warm feeling. That he would yearn for it as desperately as a northerner longing for spring all his life.

‘Naturally, it would turn out that way. Because this woman is my mate.’

Besides, he was already used to longing for things he could not have.

Gennadi quickly resumed his treatment with skillful hands.