# Chapter 027
Asher tightly gripped the hem of his pants under the table where she couldn’t see. He thought he had forgotten it momentarily, but the nightmare from two days ago resurfaced to torment him again.
“But somehow they knew and cut off the trail, disappearing without a trace.”
“…”
“Because of that, Luke was running around for two days and nights trying to catch them. If you see him later, I hope you’ll personally thank him for his hard work. He certainly won’t say it himself.”
This was the moment when doubt about the children’s whereabouts turned into certainty. Asher gazed at Roxina with slow, deliberate eyes.
“I hope you’ll cherish Luke a lot. He’s a brother who grew up very lonely.”
“…I will.”
Asher’s lips drooped at Roxina’s words, which showed genuine concern for Luke. But his heart, once triggered, continued to beat rapidly, disrupting his breathing, and his fingertips became damp with sweat.
“Excuse me, I need to use the restroom for a moment.”
“Yes, go ahead.”
Shaki, who had asked for Roxina’s understanding, approached behind Asher and grabbed his shoulder. Noticing his condition, he bent slightly and whispered quietly:
“Let’s talk for a moment, Hyung.”
It seemed that despite trying to appear calm, it wasn’t enough to escape Shaki’s eye. Asher signaled his apology to her with his eyes and followed in the direction Shaki had gone.
“Asher.”
Thinking they had moved far enough from the restaurant, Shaki stopped abruptly. Without making eye contact, he stared ahead as if hurt.
“Did something happen?”
“…Pardon?”
“Actually. I was going to pretend I didn’t notice because you seemed reluctant to talk about it. But seeing you now, I’m worried because it seems worse than I thought.”
He ran his hand roughly through his hair with a somewhat dejected expression. Then, with lingering bitterness in his eyes, he continued:
“I thought I was the brother you relied on and followed the most. But I guess that was just my delusion.”
“That’s not true, Hyung. You know how much I follow and cherish you.”
“I know. But then why do I feel so upset?”
Shaki seemed hurt that he didn’t know something that even Roxina was aware of. Asher bit his lip slightly in guilt and waited for his next words.
“Lately, when I look at you, I feel a tightness in one corner of my chest. It feels like someone is gripping my heart tightly and not letting go.”
“…I know how much you worry about me, Hyung. I’m grateful for that.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t understand how Shaki felt. After all, Shaki was one of the people who cared deeply for Asher.
“I heard you met with the Grand Duke and then talked with Father late at night. But I also know you’re not the type to be intimidated by that.”
“…Hyung.”
“Surely he didn’t lay hands on you like before, did he?”
Even as he said those words, Shaki’s voice trembled at the end, as if afraid they might become reality. Asher looked at him with steady eyes and said:
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it? Are you going to keep not telling your Hyung? Seeing you turn pale and tremble like in the past, I still feel frustrated. It hurts so much that it makes me sick.”
While he understood Shaki’s feelings, it wasn’t easy to say that the Duke had tried to kill him by flooding him with pheromones. He didn’t want to recall the events of that day to explain all this. Asher continued to hold back his words, his lips pressed tightly together.
“Asher.”
Asher didn’t respond to Shaki’s call. As if stubbornly insisting on not wanting to speak until the end, Asher’s behavior made him slowly turn his steps to face Asher.
“…You.”
Shaki started to speak with widened eyes, as if surprised, then fell silent. Wondering what was wrong, Asher looked up at Shaki, who stroked his cheek with his thumb, like someone who had been hurt.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to press you.”
“…Hyung.”
“So stop crying.”
At Shaki’s words to stop crying, Asher blinked rapidly with a dumbfounded expression. Tears fell with a plop below his cheek, as if they had been waiting.
“But I’m fine…”
Then why were the tears coming out? Once acknowledged, the tears began to fall silently from his eyes. Shaki pulled him in with one arm and slowly began to pat his back.
“I promise you, Hyung. I won’t let you and Father be alone together again.”
“…”
At Shaki’s words, Asher shed tears endlessly. It was just that his words were so warm, the affection flowing from him was so tender that Asher seemed to have burst into tears without even realizing it.
“Even when you cry, must you cry like that? It breaks my heart. That’s why I keep feeling greedy because of you. I didn’t even want to compete with Braden.”
He was speaking as if he needed to inherit the title to protect Asher from the family.
*
“As expected, there was an infiltration.”
A man wearing a black mask approached the Duke to report. The Duke, who had been quietly receiving reports on the recent activities, closed his eyes intently and muttered:
“I had hoped it wasn’t true…”
At some point, his son had changed. More precisely, since the accident, he had been acting like a different person in terms of personality and behavior, down to the smallest details.
“Asher Anest. Who did you say discovered the child on the day of the accident?”
“A boy named Jan.”
“Jan… Of course, you’ve finished investigating him?”
“Yes.”
“Still, just to be sure, investigate him again and report back. And also investigate clearly whether there were any others present that day.”
At the Duke’s words, the man bowed and disappeared quickly. The Duke stared at the spot where the man had disappeared and habitually stroked his chin.
He was a child who despised vegetables to the point of disgust. But after losing his memory, he ate them well as if he were a different person, and unlike in the past when he would only watch for reactions, he now questioned the Duke’s words. Not once since childhood had he ever defied his words, and the Duke smiled meaningfully as he watched Asher, who had changed in an instant.
“No matter how much he’s lost his memory, his body would remember.”
If he couldn’t remember, then make him remember; if he forgot, then brainwash him again. That was the fate of an Omega born into the Anest family. The Duke quietly recalled Daiole Sevarni, who had married into the Anest family.
Daiole was the daughter of a declining Count’s family in the borderlands and a dominant Omega. Since the dominant trait was a gene that could only be born to those with imperial blood mixed through generations, the Count raised Daiole while keeping that fact a secret.
But in the process, he, Poltique, the current Duke, discovered the truth and brought the Count, made him drink, and had him gamble. The result was bankruptcy. Eventually, the Count’s family incurred a huge debt, and the Count became a fugitive, unable to protect her.
Taking advantage of this, Poltique proposed to her that if she married him, he would cancel all the family’s debts. But after the marriage, he didn’t keep that promise. From the beginning, she was merely a prop to him for inheriting the title.
Eventually, when Daiole learned the truth, she spoke to the Duke’s parents. But Poltique, feeling threatened by the succession of the title, killed his parents, disguising it as an unfortunate accident, and inherited the Duke’s title. The child born at that time was Asher Anest. On the day the child was born, Daiole breathed her last.
“I still don’t understand…”
The Duke still couldn’t believe that the child born from her womb was a recessive. That was because there had never been a child born as a recessive in the Anest Ducal family.
He wanted a dominant, but a recessive? The Duke clicked his tongue at the renewed anger.
“Tsk, useless things.”
It was meaningless to think about it now. She was already dead, and he was still pursuing new desires. Raising Alphas to have his own forces. That was the dream he desired, and so he muttered with a sinister smile:
“If something gets in the way, just get rid of it…”
The Duke gripped the armrest of his chair, his eyes gleaming fiercely.
*
The final event of the festival was held at the castle. As many high-ranking officials attended, Asher also had to attend obligatorily, but on that day, his steps were unusually heavy. Asher finished his preparations as slowly as possible, fidgeting, and then approached the family members who would be waiting.
“Even a worm would be faster than you.”
The Duke put down his glass, wearing a gentle expression. He surely would have known that Luke had been stirring up the capital, but his face was peaceful as if nothing had happened. Like the turbulent currents beneath the surface of a calm lake…
“Then let’s go.”
The carriages departed in two separate ones. Ember boarded the carriage where the Duke was riding, and Shaki and himself boarded the other one, departing for the castle. Perhaps because it was a magical carriage, it didn’t take long to reach the Imperial Palace.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
