It was an excessively simple explanation. As a crease formed between Mihail’s brows, the physician hurriedly added more.
“Upon examination, his stomach is weak and unable to properly digest meat or coarse foods. It appears that recently he suddenly consumed a large amount of such food, damaging his stomach and causing bleeding. But the bleeding isn’t limited to the stomach—his lungs as well….”
The physician glanced sideways at Chaika and continued.
“Judging from the sound, there seems to be an ailment in his lungs. His breathing doesn’t sound good either. I suspect that from childhood until now, he’s suffered several severe colds without receiving any proper treatment, possibly developing pneumonia at some point. Because of that, even a mild cold could cause the pneumonia to flare up again, leading to hemoptysis like this at any time.”
Mihail, who had been listening in silence, drew in a deep breath. The physician swallowed hard and spoke again.
“And….”
“And?”
Mihail’s gaze turned vicious.
“There’s more than just that?”
“…Yes…. As I mentioned earlier, if I were to list everything one by one, it would never end.”
“Don’t leave out what matters. Speak.”
“Y-Yes….”
The physician trailed off apologetically, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. Then, taking a deep breath, he began again.
“From what I can see, he was born with a frail constitution to begin with, and his diet has been, um… very poor. His internal organs overall are functioning at a significantly reduced level. In particular, his heart beats slowly and weakly, and with both his lungs and stomach diseased enough to cause bleeding, even a slight decline in the quality of his diet or exposure to a poor environment could quickly turn into a serious illness. From now on, only by resting well and living with constant care might he manage to… get by….”
“Get by?”
Seeing Mihail’s reaction, the physician awkwardly adjusted his wording.
“Your Grace, as an alpha, may not know this, but among humans like us, many children are born extremely weak. Most die at birth or before reaching five years old. Some do manage to grow up safely, but even then, the majority spend their lives plagued by minor illnesses and die young.”
“Die young?”
Mihail’s previously fierce expression cooled, freezing into something hard and cold.
“When you say ‘die young,’ how long are we talking about?”
An ordinary human would have grasped the meaning well enough from the physician’s words alone. But Mihail was different. He was an alpha—moreover, a Dominant Alpha. Born with a stronger body and a longer lifespan than betas, he had never lived among them or spoken as equals. He had no sense of what age humans meant when they spoke of dying young.
Seeing Mihail’s rigid expression, the physician hesitated. After briefly looking at Chaika’s pale face, he finally spoke cautiously.
“If his body remains that weak… even if he avoids colds, fevers, and various other illnesses… perhaps ten years….”
Catching Mihail’s glance mid-sentence, the physician hastily corrected himself.
“Perhaps fifteen years… at most.”
“And if you treat him?”
“That’s assuming I treat him well this time, and that nothing like this happens again afterward, Your Grace.”
The physician spoke honestly, his face stiff. Mihail’s gaze shifted from the physician to Chaika. Even as they discussed his short lifespan, Chaika showed no surprise or fear—he only watched Mihail, gauging his mood.
“…Ten years?”
Mihail murmured while staring at Chaika. Knowing it was a soliloquy, the physician held his breath in silence.
Ten years. Fifteen years.
Mihail couldn’t feel any difference between ten and fifteen years. For alphas and omegas, as long as they didn’t die young in alpha conflicts or on the battlefield, living two hundred years was normal. Compared to that, even a beta’s lifespan—seventy or eighty years at best—was already far too short. And that was considered long. So ten years? Ten years was nothing more than… a fleeting instant.
“Find a way. Make him live longer. As long as possible.”
Mihail said it as though muttering to himself.
“I’ll do everything I can.”
The physician bowed deeply.
After watching Chaika, who had fallen into a deep sleep after taking the medicine, for a long while, Mihail left the bedroom. Ten years. Fifteen years. The time the physician had named clung to his mind and wouldn’t let go.
When he reached his destination, Mihail pushed open the door and went inside. The room was empty, its owner absent. Mihail sat on the sofa and lifted the bottle on the table, pouring a generous amount into a glass. Leaning back deeply with the glass in hand, his body seemed to finally lose all its tension at once.
He didn’t know how many times he emptied the glass like that. When the bottle on the table ran dry, he called for a maid to bring another and kept drinking. But the alcohol didn’t dull his mind or senses—it only made everything sharper.
“Mihail?”
After quite some time, the room’s owner returned.
“What are you doing here alone?”
Ilya removed his top and handed it to a maid, then sat across from Mihail and asked. Mihail silently passed him an empty glass and filled it to the brim. Sensing the unusual mood, Ilya waved the maid away. Only after taking a sip did he speak again.
“What happened?”
“Your child.”
Instead of answering directly, Mihail spoke abruptly.
“My child?”
“Yes. Your child. You said you had a beta child with a lover.”
“…I did.”
Ilya answered in the past tense.
Silence followed. A complicated glint surfaced briefly in Ilya’s eyes as he drained his glass, then slowly settled. Ilya had once had a child with a beta woman. The child had, of course, been born a beta. Ilya provided generous support for the mother and child, but he had never once gone to see them.
“It’s because of that one, isn’t it? That small one who’s Nile’s sibling.”
Mihail answered with silence.
“And after all that choosing, you ended up with a beta of all things….”
Ilya muttered as he sank back into the sofa.
“How old is he now? Your child.”
A child he’d never once gone to see since birth. No matter how cold a father might be, there would be at least a trace of feeling for his own child. In the end, never seeing his face was Ilya’s way of avoiding watching a child whose time flowed faster than his own. That beta child was, to Ilya, a fragment of pain and loss. And yet Mihail asked about him without hesitation.
Ilya let out a short, heavy sigh and began counting on his fingers. He spent a long while calculating his child’s age before finally speaking.
“Thirty-one… no, he’d be about thirty-two now.”
Having counted it out, Ilya wore a faintly startled expression. The age of the child he’d deliberately avoided thinking about now felt newly real.
“He’s grown.”
“Yeah. All grown. He might even have children of his own by now. And soon, he’ll start growing old.”
Ilya spoke calmly as he acknowledged that his child had already entered the stage where aging began before him.
“But he’ll still live for several more decades, at least.”
Ilya added that with an ambiguous smile.
“Ten years. Fifteen, if he’s lucky.”
Mihail said it. Ilya raised his brows, puzzled.
“That one. They said his body’s weak, so even with good care, he’ll live ten years—fifteen at most—before dying.”
For a moment, Ilya couldn’t find words, his eyes narrowing. Ten years. Fifteen years. Ilya, too, couldn’t feel much difference between the two.
“…Ten years, huh….”
After a long pause, Ilya murmured softly.
The two of them emptied their glasses in silence. A heavy quiet lingered in the room. Perhaps thoughts of the beta child he’d pushed aside resurfaced— Ilya’s expression darkened.
“Then send him far away. Somewhere warm and abundant, where he can be carefully cared for until he reaches the end of his lifespan. Arrange it and send him far away. Then you won’t have to watch him die.”
“Ten years is already short, and you’re telling me to throw away even those ten years?”
“Because it’s so short.”
Ilya replied curtly, draping one arm over the back of the sofa as his gaze drifted to the desk in one corner of the room. Several unopened letters lay scattered across it—letters that arrived once or twice every month from the Vasari estate, passing through the hands of the estate manager without fail.
“That one, you know. Even though I’ve never once sent a reply, he sends one letter every month. I don’t know if his mother makes him do it, if he’s worried the support will be cut off, or if he just sends them out of habit.”
After saying that, Ilya turned his eyes back to Mihail.
“I’ve never opened a single one. Never read them. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious. But the moment I start reading them, I’ll keep reading. And about ten years from now, I’ll find traces of a middle-aged child in those letters. Then twenty, thirty years later, I’ll hear news that he’s ill—or dying. And through all of that, I’ll still look exactly the same.”
Ilya paused, then let out a quiet, humorless laugh.
“I was young and foolish back then. Having a child with a beta…. I won’t do that again. From now on, I’ll only have children with omegas. Mihail. The ones we’re meant to bond with are omegas—not betas.”
“It has to be him. That one is mine.”
Despite Ilya’s words, Mihail didn’t waver at all. At the word mine coming from Mihail’s mouth, Ilya’s brow twitched slightly. If he’d gone so far as to claim that small creature as his, persuasion was meaningless.
“If only he were an omega, everything would be perfect.”
Ilya sighed. Mihail’s face twisted instantly.
“Don’t associate that disgusting filth with him. Just hearing it makes me sick.”
Mihail spoke as though the very thought made his skin crawl. Even though he met Nile fairly often and his omega aversion seemed to have dulled slightly, it clearly hadn’t improved at all.
“But think about it, Mihail. If he were an omega, he wouldn’t live ten or fifteen years—he’d live over a hundred. Don’t you want that?”
Mihail closed his mouth. An omega—repulsive and horrifying simply by existing—versus a beta who might live only ten more years. If he were an omega…. If that meant they could be together for a hundred years instead of ten or fifteen….
“I do.”
Ilya tossed the words out lightly. Then he glanced at the letters on the desk and continued.
“I want that. I want the woman who bore my child to have been an omega, not a beta. Then I wouldn’t have needed to send her away so I wouldn’t watch her grow old, and I wouldn’t have to imagine my child aging and dying.”
“…….”
Mihail’s lips parted slightly, as though he were about to say something. But whatever it was, he swallowed it down with his drink instead. Ilya didn’t particularly care to know what Mihail had almost said. Clinging to things that couldn’t be changed was foolish, after all.
