Imprisoning someone and then forgetting about them or not caring would have been easy, but instead he had sent animals to bring her food, find necessary items, and even packed her bag so she could treat injuries.

Examining each action, she could be certain that despite his somewhat rough and inconsiderate expressions, his essence was not the kind of person Olivia would find terrible.

“Let’s head back now.”

“Alright. Ow!”

By now it was midnight, and a slightly chilly wind was blowing. As Olivia hunched her shoulders and took a vigorous step forward, she sat down with a short cry. Like striking a tuning fork, the pain shooting up from her injured ankle made her head fuzzy. Ugh. She groaned, rubbing her ankle which had even started to swell, when the beast approached and checked her injury, clicking his tongue softly.

Though she felt somewhat unfairly criticized right after accepting his apology and wanted to sulk more, Olivia just pouted once and carefully stood up.

“Did that hunter hurt you too?”

“No. I twisted it while trying to avoid the bear……”

“At this rate, you’ll arrive when the sun rises. Get on.”

The beast lowered his body, shaking his head at the sight of Olivia limping along slowly. Not understanding the invitation to climb on, she stared at the fluffy fur in front of her before belatedly waving her hands in refusal once more.

“Even if it takes until morning, I can manage on my own. Really, I’m fine.”

“If you don’t like riding on my back, I could also carry you in my mouth. Your choice.”

So much for being rational. Olivia climbed onto the beast’s back, crying on the inside. Having never even ridden a horse, her posture was quite unstable. The beast waited patiently until she found a stable position.

“I think you can move now?”

“You can hold onto my fur.”

“I don’t want to accidentally pull it out, so I’ll just try to hold on.”

“That’s your choice, but then try not to fall off.”

I think he’s mocking me again. Olivia gave a sidelong glance at the beast, whose back was so broad that she could only see the back of his head. I take back saying he’s kind too. But Olivia’s leisurely thoughts were all scattered when the beast began to move.

“Eek? If you really go this fast—eep! Wait a moment!”

She urgently grabbed his fur tightly. In fact, the beast was barely even walking, let alone running, but the human riding on his back for the first time was making a commotion as if she were flying through the sky, and suddenly hugged his body tightly. Since this position was more stable, this time he refrained from teasing her and kept his thoughts to himself.

Though he thought carrying her in his mouth would have been faster at this speed, the beast leisurely escorted Olivia back to the mansion himself.

* * *

After the day Olivia returned to the mansion riding on the duke’s back, her imprisonment underwent significant changes.

The first was that she finally left the tower prison at the top and was assigned a room inside the mansion. A normal room without confining bars, extravagantly luxurious to the point of being burdensome. Inwardly, she wondered if this was no longer imprisonment but rather a situation where she should be paying for lodging, but Olivia wisely just expressed her gratitude repeatedly and quietly moved to the new room.

The second was that her unofficial activities of befriending animals and treating their wounds began to be recognized as official duties. She had already noticed that the duke had been secretly sending animals to monitor and protect her, and through the incident with the hunter, she learned that dangerous situations occurred in this forest more frequently than she had thought.

“Are there many hunting humans?”

“Even before, there were occasionally one or two who broke through the thorny bushes when I least expected it. I would have quietly sent them back if they didn’t deliberately damage or attack anything, but until now, only one person has entered this place and left alive.”

“Don’t tell me that one person is……”

“Yes. The child you sent away.”

All trespassers, without exception, had either tried to freely harvest the precious ingredients growing in the duke’s forest or had attempted to hunt the animals first. Naturally, the duke had dealt appropriate punishments to those who touched what was his.

Looking at the duke’s expression, which hardened with a disgusted look as he explained, Olivia realized that merely imprisoning Kale, who had tried to steal flowers, had indeed been a form of consideration.

“Thanks to that, rumors spread ominously, and except for that child and you, there weren’t many brave souls trying to enter this forest, but things have certainly been strange lately.”

“So when animals occasionally came injured, that was also……”

“Right. Recently, hunters and mercenaries have been lurking unusually often near the thorny bushes.”

Olivia promptly raised her hand. The beast, who was elegantly sprawled on the bed while Olivia sat on the sofa drinking tea as she listened, blinked his eyes as if asking her to speak.

“About repaying the value of the linthes flower—could I do it by treating the animals instead? If you allow me, I’ll also make useful medicines with the ingredients here.”

“From what I’ve observed, that does seem to be your most useful skill.”

“We agreed to call that being capable.”

Smiling brightly while promoting her abilities, the beast finally agreed to the new debt arrangement after considering Olivia’s usefulness. There was, however, a somewhat slave-like clause stating that the timing of the debt’s cancellation would be entirely determined by the duke, but Olivia agreed to this clause, saying she trusted the duke’s conscience. After all, she was the one who had done wrong first, so she had to accept some disadvantages.

Thanks to this, Olivia was granted complete freedom to meet with animals inside the mansion and received the right to use all materials available in the mansion and forest. The contract stipulated that all medicines she produced would be used for treating animals or left at the mansion. However, being able to freely make medicines with rare and difficult-to-obtain ingredients was very interesting for Olivia as a healer.

“Wow, how did you manage to cultivate this? Mother said it was extinct……”

“It grew when I planted it.”

“Duke, you might have a talent for agriculture.”

As soon as she received permission, Olivia begged the duke to show her the top-quality medicinal herbs grown in his special greenhouse, and she gave an involuntary thumbs up at the duke’s unexpected competence. How on earth did he grow all this with that beast body? It was amazing no matter how many times she thought about it.

“May I ask a question?”

“How many questions is that today?”

“Is this the third?”

“Sigh…… Fine, go ahead.”

The third change was minor, but she had gained the opportunity to ask five questions. By pointing out that the duke’s way of expressing himself was somewhat easy to misunderstand and not honest enough, Olivia had earned the right to ask five questions that he absolutely could not refuse. It was a kind of prisoner welfare, so to speak. It was a benefit she used quite effectively, adjusting her questions appropriately when the duke seemed too annoyed.

“Last time when you changed into a human, by what principle…… You said becoming a beast was a kind of curse.”

Spending more time with the duke than expected and learning quite a lot about him, Olivia’s psychological distance from him had suddenly grown closer without her realizing it. Neither the duke nor Olivia herself had noticed this.

Questions that others might find sensitive now passed freely between them. It was always the visiting animals who would nervously look around whenever sharp questions suddenly popped up, still not used to the situation.

“Meooooow.”

Today too, a sacrificed cat quietly put down its well-kept toy and fled the scene as if escaping. I hate heavy atmospheres. The cat’s tail whipped fiercely from side to side.

“To be precise, my curse can be seen as originating from heat fever. The heat fever builds up and turns me into this beast form.”

“Ah, I see.”

“It seems that if I relieve the heat fever during the heat cycle, I can maintain human form until the next heat cycle.”

“The content of the curse is, how should I put it, a bit, well……”

Feeling awkwardly uncomfortable trying to explain, Olivia dropped both eyebrows and carefully chose her words. The beast already knew what point she wanted to make, so he calmly nodded.

“That’s how the curse was designed in the first place. It’s a curse created to make whoever is afflicted abandon reason and live as a slave to instinct. S*xual desire, appetite, violence. The basic intention is to corrupt the person so they cannot live harmoniously in human society.”

“I wasn’t going to go that far.”

“As you’ve experienced, when dominated by heat fever like that, the only options are to be treated like garbage at the bottom of human society, or to separate oneself from human society altogether.”