# 4
“Please reconsider, Sion… I don’t want to marry you.”
Sion, leaning against the window, slowly placed his hand on the windowsill. He quietly observed Ash, who sat on the bed while loosening and removing his cravat.
A long, deep sigh escaped through the gray hair that fell over his forehead. The red rose petals scattered across the sheets—as if forcing romantic notions of their wedding night—became stained with the moisture seeping from his clothes.
“Even if the manifestation couldn’t be helped… this isn’t necessary.”
A vein bulged prominently at his perfectly straight temple. Ash’s face, grinding his molars to suppress his anger, showed a complex mixture of deep frustration and despair.
Like someone pushed to the edge of a cliff, his desperate persuasion continued.
“I’ll take all the blame. Then there won’t be any stain on your reputation. You just need to play the role of the pitiful Crown Prince who unfortunately got involved in this mess.”
“…If that was your intention,” said the expressionless Sion, mercilessly crushing the other’s desperate plea.
“You shouldn’t have manifested with me in the first place.”
It was partly impulsive, but he didn’t regret his choice.
Making Ash manifest with him was both the best thing he had ever done and the most uncharacteristic action he had ever taken.
Recently, Sion had been pressured by the Emperor for a political marriage. With the legitimate first prince forming connections with influential political families and quietly increasing his power, the Emperor—who wanted to peacefully pass his position to Sion, his illegitimate son—was understandably growing anxious.
In this situation, the Rihart Duchy was a family that had never been considered for marriage before and was too prestigious to even dare approach.
The eldest son, being an alpha, couldn’t marry, and the second son, Ash, was a beta male whom many noble ladies desperately wanted as a son-in-law.
And this Ash Rihart, at the very moment he began manifesting as an omega, jumped into his arms. Sion couldn’t help but see it as an opportunity.
He was bound to enter an unwanted marriage with someone chosen by the Emperor in the near future anyway.
But if that person were… none other than Ash.
He frantically whipped his mind, trying to hold onto his rapidly fading rationality.
…The second son of the Rihart family, who were the Emperor’s right hand and rulers of the autonomous Northern Grand Duchy—politically, this would be a perfect alliance even the Emperor would approve of.
Eventually, he bound Ash to himself, and Ash, unaware of what the future held, happily manifested in his arms.
“Sion, I’m sorry… Please pretend this never happened.”
Manifested with Sion from the early stages, Ash had no choice but to crave him throughout his feverish ordeal.
“Can’t we just… pretend this never happened? I’m begging you.”
His body, having already completed its growth as a sturdy beta male, showed no trace of the delicate lines typical of omegas. Nevertheless, Ash emanated a scent that would tempt any alpha.
“You manifested with me,” said Sion, looking at him and feeling as if he were being tested to see how shameless he could become.
“Do you think you can continue having fun with women as before, with that body?”
His trembling lips, pressed tightly together, looked extremely fragile. The precariousness, as if he might crumble at the slightest touch, pierced Sion’s eyes like a minute thorn.
Did the women who hung onto him realize? That the man they had so desired had now become an omega, destined to moan beneath an alpha.
“Or… are you planning to sneak into my bedroom every heat cycle?”
The murky purple eyes wavered precariously.
“…What do you want? It can’t be that you actually want this. It must be torturous for you too.”
Sion looked down at Ash, who was clutching his sleeve and pleading, teeth gritted. Bloodshot eyes gazed at him desperately.
A scent reminiscent of something he had encountered long ago, similar to Ash’s, brushed his nostrils. A scent like golden osmanthus crushed in snow, drenched in thick maple syrup.
“Let’s get married, Ash.”
It was a scent completed in his hands. Sion swallowed it silently before speaking.
“There’s no choice, I have to take responsibility.”
From that day, Sion submitted a public proposal to the Rihart Duchy.
He felt it couldn’t be helped even if Ash condemned him as a shameless scoundrel. Ash, who had been a beta male his entire life, wouldn’t have known what manifestation between an alpha and omega meant or its significance.
Knowing this, yet biting his neck when he was terrified and out of his mind, entangling his pheromones with Ash’s heat—that was Sion’s doing.
“If it weren’t for me, you would have died that day.”
Since it had come to this, Sion decided to be a little more shameless.
“One marriage seems like a small price to pay for your life.”
Anyway, even if it hadn’t been for this incident, hadn’t Ash Rihart always looked at him that way? With that indifferent face, as if it were uncomfortable to meet his eyes.
From now on, that look would probably include disgust as well.
“Or are you frustrated because you want to play around with other alphas but feel tied down to me?”
“…What?”
Ash’s purple eyes wavered briefly as he suddenly looked up. Sion, facing the disgust he had anticipated, replied calmly.
“I doubt your casual attitude toward fidelity would change just because you’ve become an omega.”
Suddenly standing up, Ash strode over and grabbed Sion’s collar. The calm atmosphere that had been precariously maintained shattered in an instant.
With no trace of his usual elegance and composure, his voice trembled with unfiltered anger.
“How dare you say such a thing?”
“The ceremony.”
At that brief word, Ash immediately released the collar he had grabbed and stepped back. He had remembered the remaining schedule.
He was a man of intellect and reason. One person ruining a formal suit was enough. With public attention focused on today, having already caused a disturbance earlier, he couldn’t afford to damage the Crown Prince’s attire as well.
A vein bulged prominently at his perfectly straight temple. Ash smoothed Sion’s crumpled front with trembling hands and stepped back, gritting his teeth.
“What exactly do you want from me?”
Regardless of how terrible the situation was, in truth, Ash knew Sion wasn’t at fault. If anyone was to blame, it would be himself for abandoning reason in the excitement of manifestation.
Because he didn’t want the world to know he had become an omega, because he feared that the smooth trajectory of his life as a beta male would be disrupted by this sudden hormonal change.
He had clung to this alpha before him.
It was truly a foolish act.
From the moment of manifestation, his life had already completely diverged from that of an ordinary beta. Not telling his father immediately, not telling others, wouldn’t preserve that life…
In his defense, he wasn’t in his right mind at the time. His brain, confronted with a confusing and frightening situation, was boiling with fever, making rational thought impossible.
Alpha and omega traits appear only in a minority. Ash, who had lived a life completely unrelated to them, was in extreme panic just from the sudden branding of his body.
Just because of that moment of blind desperation, he had mortgaged his life to a marriage he didn’t want.
In reality, during the past two weeks of wedding preparations, Ash had been through hell.
Sorry to Adeline, but he had no mental space to think about her. Amidst the sudden flood in his life, he had no energy left to maintain manners toward the person he was dating.
During the marriage discussions, he desperately tried to persuade his father. The Duke of Rihart, although gruff, had a soft spot for his sons, and was willing to reject the Crown Prince’s proposal as Ash wished.
However, the problem was that Sion wasn’t the only one showing strong resolve for this marriage.
True to his character—having elevated his illegitimate son Sion directly to the position of Crown Prince out of excessive affection—the Emperor didn’t miss the opportunity for engagement with the Rihart Duchy, the most powerful weapon to solidify his son’s position.
An enormous dowry, eighty thousand hectares of the most fertile state land in the Estein Empire, authority to privately station troops in bestowed territories…
For the Duke of Rihart, who already ruled the vast northern snowfields and huge mines as an autonomous sovereign, these were benefits he had never sought.
Yet in the end, he had to accept this marriage. Not because he coveted the territory and wealth, but because he had no justifiable reason to refuse the Emperor’s offer.
Especially since Ash and Sion had a not insignificant connection since childhood. Sion’s proposal, using that connection as a pretext, was very earnest and had attracted explosive public interest.
The news that Ash Rihart, the “Hundred-Day Lover” who had captured many women’s hearts, had manifested as an omega, manifested with the Crown Prince, and that the Crown Prince had deeply longed for him for a long time.
The rumors spread uncontrollably.
Headlines changed daily, claiming the beautiful Crown Prince had remained celibate for a reason, that a long-standing, passionate one-sided love from childhood had finally borne fruit.
Indeed, Ash was too valuable to let go. More specifically, the Rihart name following Ash’s must have been immensely alluring to Sion.
…But even so, does one want to marry a man who was a beta until recently, a marriage without love? Is it enough to share a bed with anyone as long as the families’ interests align?
The question was, why did it have to be him? Although illegitimate, Crown Prince Sion, heavily favored by the Emperor, had many alternatives besides the Rihart family. It was completely incomprehensible…
“You, perhaps really…”
At that point in his thoughts, a preposterous notion suddenly crossed Ash’s mind.
“Do you actually like me?”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
