← Marriage on the Premise of Divorce
Chapter 9
Edward frowned as he toyed with the cup of chamomile tea the attendant had brought him.
“To give me something like this to drink.”
To anyone else it might look as if Charlotte were looking after him, but in reality it was nothing of the sort. It was closer to an unspoken pressure to produce an heir quickly.
Edward let out a laugh of disbelief, then lifted the teacup and splashed its contents carelessly over the carpet.
“Why is Leian taking so long?”
He had finished his business and even had a bath, yet there was still no sign of Leian.
No, perhaps it was just as well he wasn’t in sight. Just imagining what he would have to do with Leian made his head throb.
Still, one thing about Leian today had surprised him. Not once, before so many people, had his spirit faltered.
With me he always hangs his head and fidgets, so I thought he’d crumble before others too. He was inwardly impressed by how firmly he held up, better than he had expected.
The idea that Leian would run away, frightened of the palace people, had been a needless worry. The bigger problem now was the contract.
Edward let out a deep sigh and pressed a hand to his forehead. The desk was covered with the complicated stack of documents the attendant had left there. There were papers setting out the schedule of major events, including the guest list and the visit of the delegation.
And on top of them all, most important of all, was the standard contract Edward had just received from meeting the royal lawyer.
The conditions Edward wanted were very simple. Attend every palace event for one year, refrain from anything that might disgrace the royal family, and give the bearing of a child top priority. There was nothing else in particular to add.
Then again, he had proposed this absurd contract in the first place because he knew Leian was not the sort to go around causing trouble outside.
Nor was it welcome to Edward himself, reaching out a hand to Leian. Of all things, the one thing he, perfect in everything, could not do was bear a child.
When the matter of an heir first came up, Leian was the only person who came to mind. Merely imagining a relationship with another omega made him want to retch.
From a very young age, Edward had reacted with revulsion to omega pheromones. The stronger the pheromone, the dominant ones especially, the worse the revulsion.
Whenever an omega’s pheromone hit the tip of his nose, goosebumps rose all over his body and nausea welled up in him. And now he was supposed to mix bodies with such an omega. For Edward, there was nothing more dreadful.
But fortunately, Leian was, among late-presenting recessive omegas, one of the rare ones whose body gave off no pheromone at all. It was because of that that he had been able to propose marriage to Leian without hesitation.
What was more, he had thought that Leian, at least, would be clean, having never once given his body to another person.
Even though a year apart had put distance between their bodies and their hearts, he had his own confidence that if he proposed, Leian would surely accept.
Leian, too, must be desperate for his help right now. He thought it a reasonable deal, with nothing in it to harm either of them.
Knock, knock.
While Edward was deep in thought, a soft knock sounded. From that faint sound alone, Edward could tell that the person outside the door was Leian.
He answered briefly to come in, and Leian opened the door and came in, just as he had expected.
“What on earth are you wearing?”
Edward, watching Leian approach slowly, muttered in disbelief as he took in the gown Leian wore.
The gown, a single layer of thin silk, revealed the lines of his body with stark clarity.
“Is it strange? I just wore what they dressed me in.”
Embarrassed by clothes so different from what he usually wore, Leian smiled awkwardly and smoothed his robe.
“It’s not so much strange as…”
Edward found it hard to put into words what he was feeling right now. Perhaps it was only that Leian looked different from the Leian he usually saw, and so felt unfamiliar.
Edward stared at Leian with a stiff face, then shook his head. It wasn’t as if Leian had chosen to wear it himself, so he decided to hold back a little rather than scold him too much.
“Never mind. Come here instead. We’re writing the contract.”
“Ah, we’re doing it now?”
He had boasted long ago that he would send the contract over, but he had been so busy, and worried Leian might run away, that he had kept putting it off.
“We’ll be together tomorrow anyway, so it’s better to just write it together today!”
“That’s true, I suppose.”
Leian sat down before Edward with the same docile manner as always. Edward glanced at his pale face.
His neckline was laid bare, and through the thin fabric his gaunt chest was faintly visible, again and again.
Who on earth dressed him in such a thing? Edward frowned in bewilderment. A suspicion that Charlotte must have arranged it made him all the more displeased.
It was as if she wanted him to rut his lower body like a pig in heat at an omega dressed so vulgarly.
“Read what I’ve written first, then add anything you want to add.” Edward held out the contract he had already drawn up in the proper form. Leian checked its contents carefully, then added a few more lines.
Among them, Edward turned over and over in his mind the sentence Leian had written first.
[If Leian fails to bear a child within 1 year for health reasons, he will still receive the promised property and divorce once the set period is complete.]
It seemed the condition of divorcing within a year no matter what was very important to Leian. Edward narrowed his brow again, displeased by the fact.
Was he so different from a prisoner counting the days until his release? Was this contract that harsh a shackle to him?
Edward thought this contract was a reasonable deal that benefited them both. He had naturally assumed Leian thought so too.
But seeing him dread it this much did not leave him in a particularly pleasant mood.
“Is that the end of the contract?”
Leian, having finished even the final confirmation signature, looked up at Edward with clear eyes and asked. Edward, who had been glaring at the contract with a sullen face all this time, reluctantly added his own signature.
“Yes, that’s the end. We just hand it to the lawyer tomorrow. Now there’s really no way to take it back.” Edward spoke the warning firmly as he put the contract away in a drawer. Leian nodded slightly, as if he already knew.
“Then are we starting now?”
Edward raised an eyebrow at Leian’s out-of-the-blue question.
For some reason, Leian looked frozen stiff, as if frightened. The corners of his mouth were rigidly set, and the corners of his eyes drooped.
Seeing his sorrowful yet tense expression, Edward asked in disbelief.
“Starting what?”
Leian’s eyes went round, as if to ask why he would ask such a thing.
“Making a baby.”
“Why, do you want to finish the mission as fast as possible so you can get out of here?” Edward asked grumpily of Leian, who was already looking for a way to be done the moment the contract was written.
From a while ago, he could not shake the feeling that Leian wanted to get away from him. He was desperate, like a person offered as a sacrifice to a monster.
“Her Majesty Charlotte said that His Majesty the King’s health is not good, so we must hurry to produce an heir. It would be easier for you too if you had a child quickly, wouldn’t it?”
Leian’s argument was reasonable. But even granting that he could bear it since no pheromone came from Leian, one other fundamental problem remained.
“You’re the one who has difficulty getting pregnant. You haven’t forgotten already, have you?”
Leian pressed his lips tightly shut, as if the thought had just struck him. In truth, no one would know that fact better than Leian himself.
“…Then what do we do? You had a way, didn’t you?” At Leian’s cautious question, Edward rubbed his chin with his hand.
It wasn’t as if he had made a reckless proposal with no plan at all. Whenever Edward began a new deal, he always kept various possibilities and directions in mind.
“Of course I have something in mind. A pheromone shower.”
“A pheromone shower?”
Leian tilted his head, as if hearing the word for the first time. In truth, to Leian, who had been a beta, every word besides alpha and omega would have been unfamiliar.
He had hoped Leian might have come across this or that while they were apart, but not at all. Leian had not changed in the least.
“They say that if you repeatedly douse an omega in an alpha’s pheromone, the body changes into a state suited to conception.”
It wasn’t a particularly difficult thing to say, but Leian’s face grew quite serious.
“Then will your pheromone scent come from my body?”
“Yes, and then I’ll feel a bit less disgusted myself.”
His hypothesis was that if his own scent came off Leian instead of an omega’s pheromone, Edward would be able to endure it perfectly well.
It seemed a fairly persuasive argument, for Leian nodded carefully.
“How do we do it?”
“Don’t be so nervous. It’s simpler than you think.” Edward watched Leian swallow with interest and parted his lips lightly.
“We just have to bathe together.”
Pheromones were water-soluble, so they seeped into the other person best when they touched water. It could have been made into a perfume and sprayed, but there was no time to waste trying such a half-hearted method.
“So that means we have to get into the bathtub together?”
It wasn’t a particularly difficult thing to say, yet having to explain it piece by piece was quite tiresome to Edward. How could someone so naive keep pretending to know everything?
“Yes.”
As expected, Leian’s expression turned hazy, just as he had predicted. It was laughable that, having proposed making a baby, he hadn’t even anticipated a situation like this.
“What, now that it’s come to it, you can’t do it?”
“No, it’s not that.”
Edward himself was not entirely comfortable with the situation either. It meant sitting in a narrow bathtub with their bare skin touching.
“…Are we doing it right now?”
Leian asked in a trembling voice, clearly reluctant. Edward found his hesitating manner baffling. He was the one who had just proposed having sex with him.
“Well, is there any need to put it off? Weren’t you trying to have sex with me just a moment ago?” Unable to deny it, Leian fiddled needlessly with his gown and bowed his head low.
“Wait. I’ll tell them to prepare the bathwater.”
They had both just washed a little while ago and their hair was still wet, but there was no need to put off until tomorrow something that had to be done anyway.
Edward pulled the bell cord and told them to prepare the bathwater. The servant glanced this way and that, as if sizing up the situation, then quietly slipped out.
Edward went to the bedside table and poured whiskey generously into an empty glass. He hadn’t been nervous at all, yet somehow his lips felt dry and parched.
While filling his own glass, he prepared one for Leian as well and held it out to him.
“Here, drink. It’ll be at least a little comfort.”
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