🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter: 02
However, as a servant, there was no way she could resist following orders.
Eventually, she found herself standing right in front of the duke.
“You… huh.”
The duke frowned, exhaling slowly as if he had started to say something but stopped midway.
“Did you… by any chance, put on perfume that women use?”
At the duke’s words after a brief pause, Chloe’s eyes widened.
“Wha—? Women? No! What are you saying!”
Chloe immediately raised her voice.
Perfume. And women’s perfume, no less.
Her days were already like walking on thin ice just worrying about being discovered as a woman, and now he was asking if she’d done something crazy like putting on perfume!
The duke raised one eyebrow and stared intently at Chloe.
It seemed to be asking, Did you just shout at me?
“I’m sorry! It just sounded too strange to hear that I supposedly wore women’s perfume.”
Chloe quickly bowed her head.
“……”
She could feel the duke’s piercing gaze at the crown of her head.
During the few seconds of silence, Chloe felt a cold sweat rising at the top of her head where the duke’s gaze landed.
“If it wasn’t perfume, then what is this smell…”
The duke muttered something, and it was unclear whether it was a question or just talking to himself.
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“From you…”
Chloe lowered her head but peeked at him with just her eyes, quietly observing the duke.
From me… what?
“Well, that wouldn’t make sense anyway.”
A side effect, perhaps. The duke muttered almost inaudibly, then finally ordered her to leave.
“Yes!”
Chloe fled the duke’s office as fast as she could.
A side effect.
The side effect of a single night’s mistake?
Chloe couldn’t make sense of what the duke’s muttering meant, so she decided she must have misheard him.
“That’s strange.”
Hughgray murmured, staring at the door Klein had exited.
Every human being naturally has their own unique body scent.
That was why he kept a certain distance from everyone.
It wasn’t that he disliked all human scents, but he preferred to keep his distance and remain neutral rather than openly showing likes or dislikes.
Of course, maintaining physical distance didn’t mean his sensitive nose completely ignored the scents of those around him.
It only meant he smelled them less intensely.
But strangely, Klein Riden gave off no body scent at all. No scent meant no irritation either.
That was why…
He had allowed a newly arrived, untested servant to work so close to him.
Primarily, it was because Klein had the rare ability to speak the Tigrim Kingdom language, but even if someone met all the requirements, if their unpleasant scent had irritated him, he would never have let them serve so near.
However, after putting him to work as a servant, it became clear that he had many qualities utterly unfit for a servant.
He barely did anything—dressing, meal service, bathing, and all other duties—mostly just standing there blankly. He was like a servant who didn’t even know the meaning of “serve,” always keeping far away from the people he was supposed to assist.
Had he served elsewhere with that attitude, he probably would have been kicked out in a day.
But for Hughgray, that was precisely what he liked.
Unlike ordinary servants, he didn’t fumble around trying to serve from A to Z.
He was unobtrusive, comfortable, almost invisible.
That had been fine…
But why did that boy suddenly emit a body scent stronger than any other human?
From the moment Klein entered the room, there was a captivating scent that made every cell in him shiver. A scent he hadn’t noticed at all just a few days ago when he reported taking a vacation.
While giving instructions to Joyce, the scent mixed with hers, making it unclear, but as Joyce left and Klein brushed past him, the scent hit him with a sudden, overwhelming sweetness that made his chest tighten and head spin.
The scent from Klein was too sweet.
Ha! A scent… sweet…!?
Had he lost his mind?
Had he ever found another human’s scent captivating before?
No. Never. Except for the woman he had imprinted.
So this was truly strange.
Feeling the same dizzying thrill from a male servant that he had only felt from a woman he imprinted—what was going on?
Unless his senses had somehow gone haywire when imprinting on that woman, it made no sense to recall a woman’s scent from a man.
Regardless of gender, it was impossible to experience a sensation from someone else that was meant for the imprint.
Had the wolf blood weakened over generations, changing the imprint’s nature?
Or was the imprint’s effect causing a temporary hallucination?
If only that were the case, it would be better.
“Haa… impossible.”
He exhaled a self-mocking sigh, which he had restrained in front of Joyce and Klein.
The imprint’s trait changing—what an impossible wish.
Even if almost all other traits disappeared, the imprint trait had been stubbornly inherited.
Damn imprint.
The problem had started when the early spring rut arrived sooner than expected while heading to the villa.
Before the suppressant he took could even spread through his body, the oil in the inn room’s lamp had run out, and he went out to tell the master about it.
At that moment, a woman was walking down the dark corridor.
He couldn’t tell whether the imprint target was normally determined without warning or signs.
The woman’s overwhelmingly powerful scent penetrated his body, overwhelming him.
He lost his reason almost instantly and was drawn to her.
Yet at that time, he still had some reasoning left.
He tried desperately to avoid the woman, fearing he might pounce.
He clearly tried…
If only the woman hadn’t reciprocated his arousal and pressed into him, he might have survived that moment.
Anyway, he had taken the suppressant; if he had held on just a little longer…
But the woman deliberately pressed into him, and his instincts could not resist that overwhelming scent.
Once he started losing control, the suppressant’s effect was nullified instantly.
To avoid such disasters, he had always avoided women.
Yet secretly, he had trusted himself.
He avoided the woman to reduce risk, but he thought he could imprint only on a wolf woman worthy of love. That he had enough discernment and reason for that.
In fact, the wolf tribe had maintained powerful influence comparable to the lion and tiger tribes precisely because they preserved their wolf blood.
They had minimized human interbreeding due to the imprint trait.
So naturally, he could only imprint on a wolf.
Moreover, he was an alpha!
The leader of the wolf tribe, responsible for producing a successor alpha.
Yet that belief was shattered.
Reason and discernment—gone!
That night, he was just a rutting male, seeing nothing else.
The self-loathing he had felt countless times before surged again.
In the end, he was nothing more than a wolf cub driven purely by instinct.
Once imprinted, he could not produce offspring—or even sleep with—anyone other than that woman.
Of course, the impossibility of sleeping wasn’t a huge issue.
He could continue suppressing his rut with the suppressant as before.
The real problem was that once imprinted, the suppressant would no longer work.
When the rut came, he would feel an unbearable thirst for the imprint, enough to consume his mind.
Tormented by unfulfilled desire.
Damn it.
Even imagining that he might not find her again made his throat dry.
“I must find her.”
This was not the time to be confused by a servant’s scent.
Once imprinted, the rut wouldn’t just come once a year in spring—it would come every month.
To survive the pain without going insane or dying, he had to find the imprinted woman before the next rut.
Chloe, having returned to her room without staggering through sheer willpower, collapsed onto her bed.
Yet contrary to her expectation of immediately falling asleep, her mind was clear.
She was probably too excited or tense.
She lifted her arms and sniffed.
“A smell? What smell? Why is he acting so terrifyingly?”
At dawn, she had darted out of the duke’s room while he bathed.
In that half-asleep state, she faintly heard the sound of water buffalo—or something similar—and miraculously regained her senses.
It was barely possible to even stand, yet she had forced herself back to the duke’s residence.
At least, she thought, she could rest for a few days knowing the duke would be away for several days.
Yet strangely, the duke returned almost at the same time as she did.
Thinking back, it had been strange that he had been at Arne’s crumbling inn in the first place.
As if he had been waiting there just to get into trouble with her.
Not that it was likely.
In any case, such a coincidence could not have been worse.
“Aigo, my body…”
Her aching body felt even worse.
Mental fatigue seemed to worsen physical fatigue.
Crazy, just crazy.
Chloe ripped at her wig.
What was the point of wearing this suffocating wig, covering her face with glasses, binding her chest with cloth, layering her clothes so much that her body fluttered inside, pretending to be a man?
Especially when she had to hide it from the duke more than anyone and had spent the night like that…
She vividly recalled the duke, reduced to instinct, and her own equally aroused state.
