# 3
Two weeks before the ill-fated wedding.
In other words, one day before the world turned upside down and life’s trajectory completely derailed.
In mid-May, the imperial annex holds a series of events and banquets to welcome diplomatic envoys who visit once a year. Suffering from a subtle fever all day, Ash walked down the corridor taking out fever reducers he had already swallowed several times.
His father was busy adjusting trade conditions disguised as casual conversation with the Emperor and the envoys. He always tried to have Ash accompany him to such occasions, but for Ash, who had no interest in state affairs, it was a bothersome place.
With Adeline gone on a trip, he had no partner for the event, and his condition was completely awful, so rather than mingling with people, he wanted to rest quietly in an empty guest room.
However, due to the nature of the banquet with many visitors from foreign countries, it wasn’t easy to find an empty guest room. The place was full of people who didn’t want to miss the opportunity to enjoy secret pleasures with outsiders who would leave without complications once trade agreements were concluded.
“Ash, where are you going in such a hurry?”
Lucas, whom he met in the corridor, grabbed his arm. Ash reflexively shook off his longtime friend’s hand.
It was a moment when a crack formed in his ordinary life.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
With his hand awkwardly suspended in the air after being pushed away, Lucas examined Ash with bewildered eyes.
“No.”
Ash shook his head, deliberately ignoring the fever that was starting to rise rapidly. He didn’t know why he had just done that. It wasn’t as if Lucas was an adversary hostile enough to prompt such a defensive reaction…
For some reason, Lucas’s presence was unwelcome. His scent at close range was unpleasant. Ash frowned and covered the tip of his nose with the back of his hand.
“…Perfume smell.”
“Huh?”
“Stop wearing so much perfume. It’s nauseating.”
“What perfume?”
While Lucas was checking his own scent by bringing his arms and cuffs to his nose, Ash’s head grew faint from the heat he could no longer endure.
“But Ash, I didn’t wear any perfume today…”
Unable to bear it any longer, he passed by Lucas. Right now, he felt incapable of calmly entertaining Lucas’s meaningless talk. If it had been someone else, it would have been rude, but being friends, Lucas would understand if he explained the situation later.
All the guest rooms lined up at regular intervals in the corridor had small silver bells hanging from their doorknobs. Hanging silver bells as a sign that there were people in the room was a custom of the banquet.
Ash frantically searched for an empty guest room without that marker. Along with the heat rising from within his body, now the smell coming from all directions tormented him.
The lilac scent blowing in from outside the window, the nauseating perfume smell rising from the arm that Lucas had just grabbed, the mixed scents of various people in the corridor…
Ash, who almost grabbed a doorknob with a silver bell on it, leaned against the wall staggering. Just when he felt he was reaching his limit, an empty guest room with nothing on its doorknob finally caught his eye.
The moment he urgently opened the guest room door, an indescribably peculiar yet salvational scent filled his nostrils.
His body collapsed into someone’s arms right in front of him. Ash saw the firm arms and shoulders that caught him as he fell forward, and then the face.
“…Sion.”
Sion, dressed in the Crown Prince’s formal uniform, looked neat and clean as usual. Inconsistent with that cleanliness, blue eyes rippled with bewilderment were looking down at Ash. Ash grabbed his collar.
“I’m… something’s wrong with my body.”
Normally, they would have been acquaintances who barely exchanged awkward greetings when passing by. He was truly a most unwelcome person to encounter in this situation.
“I feel like I’m dying…”
But there was less and less room to maintain appearances. With each word he spoke, the heat intensified and now boiled inside his body.
What had been coiled like a snake inside him began to uncoil and spread through his veins. A strange sensation that could be either pain or pleasure swept through his entire body.
“Hnn…!”
The front of Sion’s formal coat, imbued with his body temperature. Between the shirt collar wrapped in a cravat and his neck, an irresistibly enchanting and peculiar scent strongly drew Ash in.
He had the illusion of entering a pristine orange blossom garden where not even a single dewdrop would form wastefully.
Without realizing, Ash tightly held onto Sion and brought his nose below his earlobe. The breath he inhaled seemed to cool the fever raging through his body.
“…Ash.”
“Hng, ugh… S-save me…”
Sion appeared to have completely sat down on the floor as Ash clung to him. Although Ash knew he was behaving not just unsightly but utterly obscene, he couldn’t stop.
Though he had never experienced it and thought he never would, he vaguely realized what was causing the fever that had overtaken his body. It was due to what he had heard from his Alpha brother, or from Lucas, or from an Omega woman he had once dated.
“Don’t cry.”
A cold hand covered his eyes. Only then did Ash realize he was crying. However, with even a handful of reason having flown away, he no longer had any dignity left to be damaged.
He really felt like he was dying. Like people facing death, Ash’s life flashed before his eyes like a panorama. But soon, pain like his intestines twisting and his dick rupturing blacked out his vision.
He desperately embraced Sion’s neck, having abandoned both dignity and decency. For a moment, Sion’s arms stiffened, but then wrapped around Ash.
“It hurts, Sion… Ah, hic, it hurts so much…”
Eventually, Ash began to rub his groin against Sion’s leg. If only, if he could alleviate this pain even slightly…
Through his tear-blurred vision, he caught a glimpse of Sion’s face as he lightly bit his lip.
“Wait, I’ll call a doctor.”
“No!”
Ash’s mind was completely occupied with the obsession that this incident must never be revealed outside.
He had lived his entire life as a Beta male. He couldn’t let his life be derailed by a mere physical change.
His father was now outside dealing with the envoys alongside the Emperor. He didn’t want to deliver unexpected news and cause a disturbance at such an important occasion, nor did he have the confidence to handle everything that would happen to him afterward.
“Please, please…”
Ash sobbed as if he might faint at any moment.
“Don’t tell anyone… hic, don’t call a doctor.”
“…Then at least someone from your Duke’s household.”
“No, Sion, please save me…”
As if it were his only way to survive, Ash desperately burrowed into Sion’s arms and begged.
“We used to get along, didn’t we? This much, ngh… you can help me with this. We were quite close… Please, for old times’ sake… Hmm? Sion, please…”
Raising his head from his abject pleading, he looked up. Sion, gritting his teeth and remaining silent, had a face whose thoughts were impossible to discern.
Ash, who had already lost his reason, had no way of understanding Sion’s distinctive gaze, which was inscrutable even when faced with a clear mind.
“…What exactly do you want me to do?”
A precariously suppressed deep voice touched his ear. Ash shook his head and shed tears continuously. His entire dick area, no, everything below felt as if it had been dipped into a fire pit and was boiling.
“Please, somehow, hng, ungh… somehow, please…”
Ash, who had collapsed with his forehead against Sion’s thigh, reflexively struggled to undo his own waistband. However, his trembling hands couldn’t properly undo even a single button and only scratched at the fabric or fumbled uselessly.
“…”
A long sigh poured down from above his head. A warm touch covered his trembling hands. Sion, who had moved Ash’s hands away, undid his waistband for him with his lips tightly closed. He looked at Ash, who was instinctively clinging to him in desperation, after pulling back the underwear that was already soaking wet.
Their wavering gazes interlocked in the air. The purple irises, with their misaligned focus, were soaked in desperation. Sion, who had been staring at him, frowned and lowered his eyes. His strong arms wrapped around Ash’s waist, making him sit completely on top of him.
“…Bear with it a little.”
Sion, who had pulled and loosened his own cravat, unbuttoned a few buttons of his shirt and cradled the back of Ash’s head. Ash was preoccupied with burying his nose in the space between Sion’s shirt and inhaling his scent, regardless of whether Sion was undressing him or not.
Ash’s vest coat and shirt were pulled down below his shoulders at once. Comfortable body temperature and a pristine scent enveloped his exposed skin.
“Aah, haah, huuh…”
Just the sensation of a soft palm wrapping around his dick made his blood vessels expand as if they would burst. The scent and breath of Sion on his bare skin, the touch of his hand—all of it was insanely good, making every nerve in his body dance wildly.
A tingling pleasure, like being completely drenched in orange juice, swept from the crown of his head to his toes. The boiling pain crumbled distantly, and a sweet thrill that made his eyes roll back soaked his entire body.
Squish, squish, the ejaculated semen made a sloppy sound as it stuck between Sion’s fingers. Ash cried, shuddering with pleasure as he poured out bodily fluid continuously like urinary incontinence, feeling the touch of fingertips gently pressing his urethral opening.
Sion’s eyes, watching him up close, shook uncontrollably. The conflict that had been layered in his blue irises peeled away one layer at a time, revealing vivid desire.
To Ash’s ear, who was mindlessly rubbing his nose bridge against the Adam’s apple that surged up and down, came a subtly trembling voice.
“Later… don’t say otherwise, Ash.”
Strong arms bound Ash’s body like a snake. A large hand with prominent green veins climbed steadily up his rigid spine and cradled his nape. Breath vibrating lowly touched below his earlobe.
“…You brought this on yourself.”
Perhaps it was a warning. However, it was a warning that Ash, with all his senses focused on Sion’s pheromones, failed to recognize.
Moist lip membranes touched below his earlobe. Soon, the most tender part of his neck was crushed under the tip of sharp teeth.
“Hngh…”
Ash couldn’t even properly perceive the sensation of being bitten on the neck.
“Ahh, ah…!”
Dark ripples spread across the purple eyes that were wide open from the climax that had thrillingly reached its extreme. The breath that burst out shortly from his weakly open mouth was suddenly blocked.
Ash trembled all over while bound in his arms. Sensation standing on end like scales rubbed in reverse, was drawn to the Alpha before him. An exhilarating thrill flowed as if the nerve strands spread throughout his body were being grafted onto him strand by strand.
It was imprinting, though the person involved did not recognize it.
The Omega instinct, which had ignited using the fresh orange scent as kindling, happily rushed toward its Alpha and deeply engraved his existence.
Milky semen poured from the reddened tip of his dick, wetting Sion’s clothes. The pupil, which had expanded widely, pushing back the purple iris, soon relaxed and was covered by the eyelid.
Ash’s head fell onto the epaulette of the Crown Prince’s uniform after letting out a pitiful moan like a death rattle.
…Well, due to fainting and suffering day and night, there was no time to feel shame.
Only Sion’s faintly trembling voice remained, like an indelible tooth mark, painfully remaining to torment his hazy unconsciousness.
The whole incident was this simple. An Omega who had lost reason to manifestation fever stimulated an Alpha’s instinct. The result was imprinting.
Ash faced the disaster that he had entirely brought upon himself.
“…How can you talk about divorce before we’re even married, Ash.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
