Dana eventually lost consciousness. She fell asleep briefly, only to wake up to a strange sensation. However, her eyes were too swollen to open properly. Her entire body ached, but the most sore and tender part was below.

She remembered how the hard man had entered her with an unstoppable force. The pain and tightness, the intensity and heat, the tingling sensation and her fleeting reason…

Becoming one with a man, forming an irreversible relationship, was an overwhelming experience. Dana thought. She had believed it would be much easier than nullifying a marriage, but that seemed to have been a misjudgment. Anyway, that process was over, and right now she just wanted to sleep more, but…

She felt fingers probing between her legs, spreading her tender flesh. Her muscles tensed below.

“Ungh.”

Dana trembled. As she felt something spreading her open and entering, Dana opened her eyes. Everything was still dark, but after a moment, she could make out her surroundings. Above her, Kaiden was looking down, inserting his fingers. A moan escaped Dana’s lips, unclear whether from pain or pleasure, as his fingers explored that place. While working his fingers inside her, Kaiden spoke.

“Dana….. Look at me.”

‘But…..’

Her body felt too heavy. Yet even though her legs had no strength at all, the sensation of something entering between them remained vivid. His fingers were stretching open her entrance, scratching at her insides.

“Mmnh…..”

An involuntary whimper escaped her.

But as he spread and probed her entrance with his fingers, Kaiden said,

“It’s still night.”

Dana thought with her not fully awakened mind. Why does it matter that it’s night…

Dana slowly blinked her eyes, which were as tender as between her legs. And then the fingers withdrew from below. Just as she felt relief, a sharp pain stabbed into her depths with a thick thrust.

“Ungh.”

Dana moaned at the thick, hot thing that filled her tender place once again. Instinctively, she reached out and embraced Kaiden above her. She gripped his hot shoulders. His skin was sticky with sweat where she touched him. His body against her below, and her own body. Everything was drenched in sweat. Or perhaps something else.

“So good….”

She heard Kaiden murmur in a low voice. That voice pierced her ears. A man’s voice thick with pleasure sent shivers down her spine.

Dana felt him begin to move again. Her body rocked. The man was beginning movements to wet her barren land that could bear no seed with his lust. Could this infertile soil become fertile ground, filled with life, if he saturated it with his heat? Dana didn’t know.

Slowly, Kaiden’s thick, hard length entered with deliberate movements, then withdrew at the same unhurried pace.

“Ka, Kaiden, I….”

“Haa….”

“I’m, sleepy….”

Dana barely managed to speak as she felt him entering deeply again. She had thought his sensation still lingered, but the real feeling of him inside her was more overwhelming than she remembered. Her hot parts grew hotter. The tingling areas buzzed with sensation.

Kaiden raised his hand to stroke Dana’s hair. Even to him, Dana seemed overwhelmed by taking him in. With reluctance, he moved his hips slowly.

“I understand…. Kuh, go to sleep.”

How?

Dana wondered as she rocked.

Kaiden withdrew with leisurely movements, then entered again. Dana swayed slowly up and down with Kaiden’s movements. Like being in a swaying cradle, she was pushed in the direction he thrust in, lowered as he withdrew, then pushed again as he entered.

Moving as if savoring her depths, Kaiden whispered as if soothing her.

“Good girl….”

However, that voice held not the gentle tone of lulling someone to sleep, but rather the suppressed intensity of a wild beast reassuring its prey before devouring it. Even in his unhurried movements in and out, his restrained desire was palpable.

“Ugh…..”

Feeling Dana’s overwhelmed insides, Kaiden furrowed his brow. Whether he was just buried inside, constantly thrusting, or moving leisurely, Dana’s insides squeezed him tightly….

“Still not enough.”

What…

In her fading consciousness, Dana wasn’t sure if she had properly asked the question. Kaiden exhaled once with a “huff” before answering as if in response.

“Me inside you….”

How much more would he need to enter before he could be embedded in Dana as deeply as her existence was embedded in him?

Unable to find the answer, Kaiden tried entering Dana’s depths again for now. Once more he blocked that narrow passage, trying to prevent what he had released from leaking out. Should he block more? Or should he release more? Uncertain, he withdrew then thrust back in forcefully.

In the midst of those sensations, Dana finally slipped into unconsciousness.

Kaiden had no idea how gently he needed to thrust to avoid disturbing a princess’s sleep. A lowborn man who had always learned through his body needed to figure everything out physically. When an inadequate man made mistakes due to inexperience, he could only hope the noble would forgive him with generous mercy.

* * *

The next day, a doctor visited the princess’s bedroom.

Dana, who had been waking up intermittently during the act, finally reached a point where she wouldn’t wake even when Kaiden’s movements became violent as he reached his peak. The beast, upon regaining his reason and returning to human form after realizing this, immediately called for a maid to fetch a doctor.

The maids who had followed from Eluan Castle had been careful not to gossip about the lack of marital relations between the Duke and Duchess, but they had naturally exchanged opinions among themselves about the matter. Various theories circulated – that the Duchess was refusing conjugal relations, that the Duke was refusing, and so on. However, since the couple had breakfast together every morning, and the Duke would visit the Duchess’s quarters to learn music, their relationship seemed good, making it impossible to determine the truth.

After passing the first few days of marriage living like complete strangers, once they started having breakfast together, the ducal couple appeared to get along well.

It was already well-known that when she was a princess, the current Duchess had written daily letters to the King expressing her desire to marry the current Duke, and while the Duke was someone who treated everyone coldly, whether knight or servant, he was notably careful around the Duchess and obviously only had eyes for her. Yet they didn’t engage in marital relations at night, which was quite strange.

And finally, the maids learned the answer. It seemed the Duchess had been refusing relations with her husband. Somehow the Duchess had foreseen her future, apparently knowing that having relations with her husband would endanger her life.

Well, it was obvious to anyone – while the Duke was a robust young man in his prime, the princess appeared very delicate, so it made sense. A romantic notion was added that perhaps the Duke had been waiting all this time for his wife who feared intimacy.

The princess, unaware of how much her husband had tormented her until dawn, couldn’t get up for quite some time even after the morning sun had risen. While the maids who had called for a doctor were cleaning the room, the sleeping princess was carried by Duke Khalid to stay in another room. After the cleaning was done, he carried her back and laid her on the bed.

The royal physician who examined the princess lying in bed left after scolding Duke Khalid, who stood there unable to say a word. In the minds of the Larnas palace maids who were keeping their ears open while observing the situation, the traces of their first intimate encounter transformed into signs of an intense relationship.

After that, Dana, who had been deeply asleep, finally opened her eyes well past noon. She saw Kaiden sitting at her bedside.

Dana just blinked with a dazed mind. She couldn’t muster any strength in her body. Her legs that she wasn’t sure were her own, and her lower body that had lost all sensation.

She couldn’t move. She wanted to know what time it was and why her body was in such a mess. She remembered Kaiden moving inside her the last time she was conscious.

‘No, after that…’

Had he entered her again? Or was he finishing inside her? Her memories were all jumbled up.

Dana tried to ask Kaiden, who would remember the same situation.

“Why am I…”

Her voice was terribly cracked. Dana wasn’t particularly surprised by this due to her heavy body.

And the culprit watching Dana in this state struggled with self-loathing, wondering how to explain it to her. However, no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t find a proper, refined explanation suitable for Dana. In the end, he had no choice but to express it in his characteristically crude way.

“…Because I thrust too much.”

Kaiden’s mouth went dry. Dana had bled, fainted, and looked very distressed. He was worried that Dana might reject him from now on because of his actions that he failed to control. Because of him losing control when his long-held dreams became reality.

But even though Dana had such a hard time, it had felt too good for him. It was so good that it was problematic how good it felt. That’s why he felt even more troubled. If she were to take away such sweetness after letting him taste it, what was this instinct-driven beast supposed to do?

After hearing Kaiden’s words, Dana, still buried in the bed, blinked her eyes that hadn’t fully recovered from fatigue and murmured.

“…You burned passionately indeed…”

To the point where it affected her the next day.

Her husband had fulfilled his wife’s carelessly thrown words about burning with passion. He had saved his wife’s dignity, in a way. No, perhaps it was the wife herself who got burned. It was hard to tell the difference.

However, Kaiden revealed the reality to Dana with a regretful heart.

“Not yet fully, burned though.”

“…”

Dana couldn’t bring herself to respond to these words.

She just thought that after her younger sister had ended up like this, her foolish older brother wouldn’t be able to say anything else now.

‘If he does, he’s not even human…’