Chapter 37
Episode 37. I Hate You
2023.10.07.
Blair instinctively bit her lip to stifle the moan escaping her.
In truth, she wasn’t in the mood to yield to him right now. He might be the one who had killed her, after all.
But refusing him felt impossible with the letter on the table weighing on her mind. If she didn’t offer her body, he might turn his attention back to it.
Blair surrendered her body to Herdin’s hands while blankly staring at the sunset filtering through the balcony.
At that moment, Herdin turned her body to face him and immediately captured her lips, asking,
“What are you thinking about so deeply?”
His unfathomable eyes, drawing perilously close, seemed to scour every corner of her mind.
After a brief hesitation, Blair opened her mouth.
“Knight Kalligo.”
At the name leaving her lips, Herdin’s gaze turned icy.
He disliked another man’s name emerging from the lips he had just kissed. Especially at this very moment.
But oblivious to his mood, Blair asked,
“He’s one of the subordinates you trust, isn’t he?”
“We’ve rolled on the boundary between life and death together.”
Herdin replied perfunctorily and swallowed her lips once more. Only then did she seem to grasp his intent not to discuss it further, quietly yielding her body.
Even having obtained what he desired, her compliance irked him. That utter lack of emotion, like nursing a crying child.
Yet the problem was that he, a damnable beast cub, lacked the will to refuse it.
Herdin scooped up Blair’s snowy body and headed to the bed.
Where they passed, her garments scattered one layer at a time.
After laying Blair on the bed, Herdin embraced her without delay. Unlike usual, he had no patience to wait today.
“Ah……”
Blair’s body was still somewhat tense, not fully relaxed.
Her slender arms wrapped around Herdin’s back. Though gasping from his overwhelming presence, she responded to him as best she could.
That gesture, those eyes holding only him, were beautiful.
Herdin overlapped their lips as if sharing his breath with her ragged gasps, mingling it deeply.
Yet in the end, he stole hers instead.
Before long, the room filled with the evening glow and their mingled breaths. The grandfather clock shattered that serene scene.
Ding— ding—
The grandfather clock chimed, signaling 5 PM.
Blair, lost in a haze while clinging to him, snapped to her senses and pushed against his chest.
But Herdin didn’t stop. No such rationality remained.
Blair stammered desperately,
“Medicine…… It’s time for my medicine.”
“……Medicine? Ah.”
Blair took her contraceptive pills every day at this hour.
She often drifted in and out of awareness until dawn under him and remained hazy into the morning, so mornings were unreliable. Days had their own routines, keeping her mind occupied.
Nights were impossible too—once they began, she lost all reason until dawn.
Thus, she had settled on this ambiguous evening hour.
“If I don’t take it now, I might forget……”
Blair reached for the bedside table. The pill bottle sat there, set out in advance.
Herdin’s gaze chilled at the sight. He disliked her desperate reach for it.
Was her mind truly filled only with completing this contractual marriage unscathed? Did she never consider other possibilities?
Did she have the leisure to think of such things while doing this with him now?
After he had driven her mad like this.
The fact that any thought besides him could squeeze into her head infuriated him.
“You must have the leisure for stray thoughts.”
The moment Blair’s hand touched the bottle, Herdin moved.
“Ah!”
The impact shook her body, sending the bottle tumbling to the floor.
Herdin forced her gaze from the table back to him, whispering,
“Skipping one day won’t matter.”
“N-no, it will.”
Blair’s face paled. Seeing it stirred sadism in him alongside irritation.
He sealed her lips with his to prevent further resistance. It wasn’t a moment he could stop anyway.
Blair swallowed her sounds in defiance, but Herdin wouldn’t allow it.
He growled in a voice rough as if scraped from his throat,
“Let it out.”
Under his increasingly relentless actions, Blair finally couldn’t hold back, exhaling. It was a battle with no chance of victory from the start.
Herdin pulled her even deeper into his embrace.
The woman was warm and soft. Holding her brought her fragrance, biting her yielded sweetness. Burying himself in her inescapable bog made everything fade into oblivion.
Yet alongside that fulfillment came anxiety—as if she might vanish even in his arms. Like sand gripped in his fist.
Thus, he tormented Blair even more obsessively. Her tears and reactions made her presence in his arms feel real.
At last, their held breaths burst forth.
Herdin suppressed his heat, enduring until Blair’s quaking body calmed, then slowly withdrew.
As her ragged breaths steadied, focus returned to her hazy violet eyes. They brimmed with resentment toward him.
Blair pushed against his chest as he tried to embrace her again. Though her strength was feeble, Herdin surprisingly yielded.
Blair tried to rise and retrieve the fallen bottle from the carpet below the bed. Her legs gave out, and she collapsed.
Yet unconcerned, she took a pill from the bottle and swallowed it. In her haste, even the pill she usually couldn’t take without water went down.
Only then did a sigh of relief escape her.
She couldn’t have a child now. It wouldn’t be Asiel.
‘Asiel……’
Asiel was her driving force.
Without meeting that beloved child again, this miraculous second life held no meaning.
Thinking she had nearly lost him for that reason chilled her blood.
Herdin, who had watched her silently as she sat collapsed on the carpet, scooped her up.
Blair didn’t shake off his touch, but her eyes meeting his overflowed with unconcealed resentment.
Herdin sighed and spoke.
“If by some chance you get pregnant, I’ll take responsibility—”
“……No, that won’t happen.”
Blair’s voice trembled subtly as she cut him off.
But her composed follow-up was resolute, without a hint of wavering.
“We’re divorcing. As per the contract.”
* * *
After bathing, Herdin entered the bedroom carrying a simple breakfast tray from the maid.
Blair lay facing away from him.
Her already petite frame looked even smaller buried in the blankets. She was pretending to sleep, but Herdin wasn’t one to miss that.
Herdin gazed at her coldly with sunken eyes.
She had been like that since last night.
She yielded quietly when he embraced her, but that was all. Blair didn’t resist, yet Herdin saw through it.
She was merely enduring silently until the night ended. That was her utmost resistance.
Herdin set the tray on the bedside table and pulled her up into his arms. But Blair slipped from his embrace.
“……I’ll eat later.”
“Why.”
“My stomach feels off. I want to rest.”
At Blair, who wouldn’t even meet his eyes, Herdin’s lips twisted.
Now even a hunger strike.
Herdin placed the tray before her. Her delicate brows furrowed at the sight.
“I don’t want to eat right now—”
In that instant, Herdin cupped her cheeks and overlapped their lips. Sweet strawberry juice slipped between them from the fruit atop the pancake.
Startled by the sudden kiss, Blair unwittingly swallowed it. Only then did Herdin pull away.
He wiped the juice from her lips with his thumb and gazed at her.
Her wide startled eyes now crumpled as if on the verge of tears, brimming with resentment.
But even that looked beautiful—thanks to her damnably pretty face.
Herdin placed a fork in her hand.
“Eat. Before I feed you myself.”
Though phrased as a suggestion, Blair knew it bordered on a threat.
His “feeding” meant something like what he had just done, far from the ordinary sense.
Blair alternated glances between the food before her and him, then set down the fork.
A suffocating silence fell between them.
Blair met his eyes squarely and spoke.
“……I hate you.”
“……”
“I really, really hate you……”
The deeply suppressed emotions poured out.
Her eyes, on the verge of tears, held back without spilling. Yet her hand clutching the blanket instead of the fork trembled violently.
Herdin stared at her with icy blue eyes before turning and leaving the room.
