The Northern Grand Duke and the Cat Are Not So Different – Chapter 108

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Chapter 108

When Ruan regained consciousness, the sun was already up.

Feeling the faint sunlight even through his eyelids, Ruan tried to lift his arm to cover his eyes. However, he couldn’t move as he intended. The moment he exerted force on his arm, pain shot through it.

The intense ache, startling enough to make him jump, instantly chased away the sleepiness that had been hazily occupying his mind. Then he realized that his arm wasn’t the only part of his body in an unusual state.

His entire body ached as if he had been beaten all over. Every joint and every corner of his body hurt.

Especially between his buttocks…

‘Hmm.’

It was truly a terrible physical state.

What he had done was sex, so why did his body feel like he had been tortured or gone through a PT session?

Ruan tried to recall the last scene he remembered from the night before.

‘Your Grace… I can’t do it anymore…’

‘No. You can do more.’

‘P-please, stop…’

‘Just once. Just one more time.’

Come to think of it, it wasn’t that different from PT, was it?

‘Hmm.’

Giving up on trying to move his body to avoid the sunlight, Ruan let out a groan and slowly opened his eyes. The sunlight seeping through the slightly parted curtains was clear. Ruan stared blankly at the milky sunlight and the shadows it cast, intoxicated by the languor.

Due to the intense night before, he didn’t even have the strength to move a finger. Knowing that trying to move in this state would result in groaning with every 1mm of movement, Ruan chose to stretch out on the bed instead of forcing himself to move.

While trying to relax his entire body to find a position that would cause the least pain, Ruan suddenly realized that something was touching his leg. Judging by the firm sensation felt on his calf and the body temperature slightly higher than his own…

It felt like someone else’s bare leg.

Somehow, this feeling of déjà vu made him chuckle involuntarily.

Burying himself in the bed, Ruan recalled a similar morning last spring.

‘Was that… already a year ago?’

He had been sick with a cold and woke up alone, only to find himself naked. How shocked he had been to find his workplace superior, the Northern Grand Duke who was said to rip people’s necks off at the slightest provocation, lying naked next to him. And then that Northern Grand Duke had suddenly gotten up and walked away stark naked.

‘Thinking about it now, he must have been moving around in his cat form. At that time, I didn’t know the Grand Duke was a were-animal, so I thought I was going to faint.’

The memory of packing his bags and moving into the Grand Duke’s castle, terrified at the thought that the Grand Duke might wander the streets naked looking for him, was still vivid.

Back then, the Grand Duke was just a terrifying Northern Grand Duke who had suffered misfortune because of him.

Ruan slowly turned his head to look at the face of the person lying next to him.

Thick, jet-black hair that could be described as dense, features so three-dimensional they were almost burdensome, and distinctly handsome features that were incomparably clearer than Ruan’s confused future right after his possession.

The appearance of the person lying there with his eyes closed was no different from what he had seen that day.

But Ruan’s feelings as he looked at him were completely different from back then when he had been bewildered and perplexed.

He wanted to reach out quietly and gently caress that handsome face. He wanted to softly kiss that innocent forehead, but at the same time, he didn’t want to disturb his peaceful sleep, so he could only look at him without touching.

The emotion that welled up inside his chest, eventually filling it to the point of aching, making him take a deep breath to expand his thorax.

Like the dust sparkling under the holiday morning sunlight seeping through the curtains, he carefully rolled the name of this softly sparkling emotion in his mouth.

‘Lovable.’

The emotion rolling in his mouth was as sweet as candy that stings the tongue.

The face before him was unbearably lovable. So lovable, and lovable again, to the point where he wondered how it was possible to find someone this lovable.

As that warm feeling bubbled up to his throat, Ruan ended up smiling drowsily.

He never thought he would come to find that fearsome Grand Duke so lovable. How did he end up feeling this way towards him, having his heart turn towards him, and finally becoming lovers who shared their hearts?

How fortunate that the person this lovable Grand Duke had given his heart to was none other than himself.

The ticklish feeling at the bottom of his chest made Ruan unconsciously wiggle his toes.

As he was looking at the Grand Duke with a big smile on his face…

Snap.

The Grand Duke opened his eyes without any warning.

His golden eyes, narrowed due to the sunlight, gazed clearly at Ruan from the moment they appeared. They were clear eyes that didn’t look like someone who had just woken up.

While thinking about how he could look so handsome right after waking up…

Ruan suddenly realized something.

He seemed to have cried quite a bit last night, but his eyes felt cleaner than expected.

‘What’s this?’

As he furrowed his brow in thought, he realized it wasn’t just that. He was sure he had been a mess of various bodily fluids when he lost consciousness, but…

“My body feels strangely fresh and clean?”

As Ruan muttered quietly in puzzlement,

“Because I licked you clean.”

An unexpected, unanticipated answer came from in front of him.

Ruan, who had been looking at his unexpectedly handsome lover’s face with trembling eyes since morning, asked again.

“…What?”

Then the Grand Duke, with an indifferent and nonchalant face, repeated the same answer in a gruff voice.

“I said I licked you clean.”

Is this cat saying… that he…

Groomed me?

Blinking his eyes for a moment in a strange feeling, Ruan tried to raise his body to check himself, but…

“Aaagh!”

He couldn’t help but scream. It was because of his miserable physical state with muscle pain in every part of his body.

Gritting his teeth at the terrible pain, Ruan glared at the Grand Duke, the culprit behind his dreadful physical condition.

“Your Grace. You’re not some beast… oh wait, you are a beast. Anyway, how could you push a person so hard when I kept saying I wanted to stop, that I couldn’t take it anymore?”

To that, the Grand Duke, who had been staring at Ruan with his bright yellow eyes, opened his mouth.

“Do you know something?”

At the Grand Duke’s question, which was not an answer to his words but another question, Ruan grumpily asked back.

“Know what?”

To that, the Grand Duke said in a voice as if reciting an obvious fact,

“Male cats don’t have a separate mating season.”

And Ruan immediately couldn’t understand those words.

“Pardon?”

No… separate mating season?

At that moment, the Grand Duke’s behaviors around the time of the Monster Wave, which could only be explained as a mating season, and the image of the Grand Duke from the night before, who looked literally like a beast in heat, flashed through Ruan’s mind.

If it wasn’t a mating season, what was all that until now?

Wondering what it could mean that there was no mating season, Ruan frowned and looked at the Grand Duke. Looking at such a Ruan, the Grand Duke explained in a calm voice.

“The mating of male cats is a concept that follows the mating of their partner.”

…What?

Ruan looked at the Grand Duke blankly. The Grand Duke’s words continued regardless of Ruan’s emotions.

“It means I go into heat when you go into heat. So yesterday…”

Ruan’s face flushed hot as he anticipated the following words.

“It means you were the one who started it.”

No. What does that mean?

So all those moments when he thought the Grand Duke was in heat until now… that is, from before that, it was…

‘Crazy.’

Ruan reflexively tried to bury his face in his hands. But his body, which had been overworked all night, screamed instead of moving as he wished. Ruan had to groan again at the muscle pain that hit him once more. Perhaps finding his condition pitiful, the Grand Duke held Ruan’s arm and licked his forearm thoroughly.

At that sensation, recalling the Grand Duke’s statement about grooming his body clean after their lovemaking, Ruan tightly closed his eyes.

‘What is all this…’

Until just a moment ago, he seemed to have been savoring the fluffy affection for the one who had just become his lover. He seemed to have been enjoying the morning after spending the night with his loved one for the first time…

He felt dizzy from the unfamiliar facts pouring in without even giving him time to indulge in such sweet emotions. As Ruan was trying to gather his thoughts, a question suddenly popped into his mind.

It was a question he hadn’t been able to think about when he first realized his feelings for the Grand Duke because the situation wasn’t good, and until just now, he was too intoxicated by the loveliness of his newly reciprocated lover.

‘What is it like… dating a cat?’

As it was a problem he had never thought about before, he couldn’t come up with an answer and was in confusion when…

Ruan noticed that the Grand Duke, who had been licking his forearm, was now licking his hand. But he felt an unfamiliar sensation on that hand.

As he turned his gaze, what he saw was…

“I hear that for humans, wearing this is like giving off the scent of a mate?”

It was a splendid ring that had somehow appeared on the fourth finger of his left hand.