And from somewhere, the acrid smell of blood wafted toward her. Though she knew it was reckless and dangerous, her inability to ignore it and leave was simply part of her character. It was her innate nature that sometimes endangered herself but occasionally saved others, which she had come to consider fortunate.

Behind Olivia, who was groping through the darkness that remained impenetrable despite her eyes adjusting, a shadow darker than the darkness itself slowly approached. Though there should be no shadow without light, the strange presence of darkness became a large hand that seized Olivia’s nape like a predator catching prey.

“Ack!”

Her breathing suddenly constricted as a strong force overtook her. Her knees buckled, and she writhed in sharp pain as her body unexpectedly collapsed to the floor. Someone’s knee pressed down on her struggling back, pinning her to the floor. Gasping for breath under the strong pressure, Olivia barely managed to turn her head back.

The thick smell of blood and the hot body temperature against her nape. The heated, growling breath like boiling fever. And blue eyes glowing vividly even in the darkness where nothing else could be seen. Unlike the body that seemed about to melt away from intense heat, those eyes, tinted with a strange light, showed an icy coldness.

“Are, are you alright?”

Though Olivia was the one pinned to the floor by him, somehow she felt compelled to ask about his condition. The liquid dripping down and soaking her clothes carried an increasingly strong fishy smell, making it impossible to ignore the thick scent of blood surrounding him.

“Why, are, you, here?”

A low voice, unstably trembling, broke off repeatedly as it barely formed a single sentence. Traces of groans that he was barely suppressing were embedded between each word.

Though he had seized the fearless criminal wandering freely through the mansion, the beast was doing his best to suppress his dangerous instincts to avoid “accidentally” killing her. His elongated nails could pierce the delicate skin of the nape he was holding and sever her blood vessels at any moment, but his slightly trembling hand merely held her neck firmly.

“The bars suddenly, ugh, disappeared, so I was looking, looking for you……”

“You should have run away. Not wandering around here like this.”

Then I wouldn’t have needed to restrain myself and could have chased after you and killed you outright. Muttering with regret, the beast collapsed right onto Olivia’s body with a short groan of “ugh” as the heat that had barely subsided suddenly surged again, consuming his entire body.

“Beast? Beast?”

“Get out, of this room, immediately. Go back, urgh, to your prison.”

The voice, about to fade away, barely mumbled distorted words before trailing off.

Olivia called to him several times despite the heavy weight pressing on her back, but there was no answer. Fortunately, the grip that had been choking her also relaxed. Twisting her body in various ways, Olivia barely managed to slip out from under the beast and found herself drenched in cold sweat. Without time to catch her ragged breath, Olivia panted as she examined the collapsed beast’s condition.

“Light, I need light first.”

Unable to see anything in the darkness, Olivia began by brightening the room. She felt along the wall to open the curtains and lit the candles scattered on the table.

“What is all this?”

The scene inside the room, illuminated by the softly glowing candlelight, was even more devastating. Nothing remained in its proper place. The furniture had all been thrown around, lying on the floor or broken and discarded with some part damaged, and the walls and floor were tattered with all sorts of bloodstains and torn marks. Looking aghast at what seemed like the aftermath of someone locked in the room going berserk, Olivia hurriedly approached the beast.

“Huh?”

As she urgently turned over the collapsed beast’s body, Olivia sensed something strange and removed her hand from his body. Though the voice and unique eye color were identical to the beast’s, so she naturally assumed it was him, the figure she encountered in the dim light was someone she had never seen before.

First of all, he wasn’t a beast. But he wasn’t human either. His appearance seemed like a strange mixture of both, making even Olivia, who had seen all sorts of animals, hesitate to touch him.

He basically had a human form, but his limbs were covered with thick animal fur, and his hands and feet had sharp claws grown long, no different from an animal’s. His face also bore a strange appearance, half-mixed with features of both human and beast, so that even Olivia, who already knew the beast’s appearance, had to look closely to confirm it was the same person.

If there existed “a cursed form that was neither human nor beast—a monster’s appearance” that had been rumored throughout the world, perhaps it would look like this?

Recalling the description that always followed whenever the Duke was mentioned, Olivia finally deduced a possible connection between the beast and the Duke she had known.

“The beast and the Duke were the same person.”

The puzzles that had been misaligned and creaking until now smoothly found their places with this one connection. As she stared blankly at the collapsed beast, Olivia snapped back to attention when he tossed and turned, letting out a pain-filled groan.

‘This isn’t the time for this.’

Her hand, which had paused in midair, busily checked the beast’s body again. As she had anticipated from the state of the room, the Duke’s condition was terrible, burning with fever.

His already disheveled clothes slipped off naturally without the need for difficult removal. His exposed body was covered with wounds that had not yet healed, proving the source of the bloodstains abundant in the room. Far from healing, many wounds hadn’t even been properly treated with medicine, let alone stopped bleeding. Even the back of his hand, covered with fur, was completely bloodied inside, as if he had struck something with great force.

“What kind of mating season is this.”

Though he had been the one who had seized her neck like prey just moments ago, seeing his injured body still evoked human compassion, and Olivia muttered with distress. The Duke had told her to leave this room immediately, but finding it difficult to walk away, Olivia hesitated before finally rolling up her sleeves with a determined expression.

Almost dragging the beast’s body, she propped him up on a nearby sofa at an angle and emptied her bag completely. After using all her remaining medicine to treat the most urgent wounds first and neatly wrapping bandages, Olivia finally took a breather and collapsed on the floor.

“Just how long does this mating season last?”

Should she make and feed him medicine to calm his heat, though she wasn’t sure if it would work? But since his identity wasn’t clear, she had no idea what standard to use for making the medicine. He was neither human nor easily identifiable as any specific animal.

Yet she couldn’t leave him as he was—though he was quietly collapsed now, she couldn’t be at ease, not knowing when he might wake up and rampage again as he had done to make the room look like this.

“If the mating season is almost over……”

The words “that would be good” didn’t come out. Busy with treatment, she hadn’t noticed, but as she sat on the floor, her gaze inadvertently met his at eye level, and what she saw was too explicit.

“I should, just, leave it, right?”

Is that really okay? It doesn’t look okay at all? Having occasionally given medicine to animals suffering from mating season, but never directly confronted such a scene, Olivia stammered in confusion.

The front of the beast’s pants was bulging prominently. It wasn’t just slightly voluminous—something was firmly asserting its presence, filling the tight pants completely, like a thick pillar lying along the inside of one thigh, clearly outlining the shape of his c*ck. Olivia rolled her eyes helplessly at the presence so blatantly revealed that the tightly stretched pants looked pitiful.

I’ve treated all the wounds, so! Deliberately ignoring the reality before her eyes, she jumped to her feet, but…

“Huu, urgh.”

She flinched as the beast instinctively moved his hips, biting his lower lip. Clutching her hands together and muttering “What should I do, what should I do,” Olivia slightly bent her upper body with her gaze fixed on the distant void.

“I’ll just make you comfortable, and then, then I’ll leave.”

Though her hand didn’t move well as she intended since she couldn’t see, she didn’t have the courage to face it directly. With embarrassed eyes meaninglessly surveying the damaged room here and there, her hand groped for his waistband. Even though it was just flesh inside several layers of cloth, a heat more intense than the warmth filling the room touched her fingertips. With the burning sensation that seemed it might scald her, Olivia quickly undid his waistband with a tearful face.

‘This is a kind of treatment. Just treatment.’

Suppressing her faint guilt and about-to-burst embarrassment, Olivia carefully traced the shape of his firmly er*ect, constrained member. With it er*ect and hard, not to mention its imposing size, made it difficult to simply extract the c*ck from the tight underwear and pants.