“Ahin. But why have you been speaking so informally to me? There are people around.”

The handsome brow of Ahin, who had just moments ago been thinking about his first night with Sierra, furrowed.

“……What?”

“Please treat me as the Duchess.”

It was a reasonable enough request, and the way things were going, it seemed the conversation might drift in an unwanted direction.

When Sierra’s expression was as cold as it was right now, it was better for both of them not to provoke her. There was a chance it could quickly escalate into a fight, just like when they were children.

“I will be mindful of it going forward.”

At Ahin’s surprisingly compliant answer, a look of surprise crossed Sierra’s face.

Blinking slowly several times, Sierra asked again as though she could not quite believe it.

“Do you mean that?”

“Why would I lie to my wife. More importantly, what was it you wanted to say? Duchess.”

“I thought I might grant you the wish you have long desired.”

‘……A wish?’

One of Ahin’s eyebrows rose briefly before settling back into place.

He thought it was quite a grand way to suggest they spend their first night together, now that they were both adults.

Admiring Sierra’s courage for being the first to bring up something difficult for a woman to say, Ahin was about to ask whether tonight would suit her.

He was just parting his lips to speak.

“I will give you a divorce.”

Ahin doubted his own ears for a moment. Had he just heard that wrong?

“……What?”

“I said I will give you a divorce.”

Sierra added pointedly to Ahin, who had gone rigid with shock.

“I do not need alimony. If you insist on providing some for the sake of the Valdevern Duchy’s dignity, I will not refuse, but it is not necessary.”

The back of his head felt more numb than the time he had been struck by a flail on the battlefield.

‘A divorce?’

He had spent two years in fear, not knowing whether he would die today or tomorrow, and the moment he returned alive, she was asking for a divorce?

On top of that, Ahin genuinely could not understand why Sierra was doing this.

The compensation to be received from the imperial family would be considerable, and what wife would refuse a husband who was to be respected as a war hero?

“Sierra.”

“……”

“Are you out of your mind?”

Ahin said coldly.

Sierra, who seemed to hesitate for just a moment at his reaction, shook her head with composure.

“No. I am more clear-headed now than I have ever been.”

“……”

Ahin took one step toward Sierra. Then he drew in a deep breath.

‘She does not seem drunk……’

Sierra recoiled at Ahin’s strange behavior of drawing close and smelling her.

“What are you doing right now?”

What followed was not particularly pleasant to hear, but Ahin paid it no mind and spoke.

“Absolutely not.”

At Ahin’s firm refusal, Sierra fixed him with a sharp, cat-like glare, as though she had not anticipated his refusal in the slightest. Sierra too set aside her polite manner of speaking and asked pointedly.

“Why? Why not?”

For a moment, Ahin found himself at a complete loss for words at Sierra’s retort.

He had slept on floors so cold his jaw would have gone numb, instead of a soft bed. He had filled his hunger with bread as hard as stone, instead of freshly baked soft bread.

The comrades he had trusted with his back died day after day, and when a traitor who had colluded with the enemy emerged, he could not even trust them.

He had endured two years of that hell.

He had marched to the battlefield every day, longing to return to the ducal manor. And within the meaning of the ducal manor, Sierra was included.

‘And now, what? A divorce?’

The more he thought about it, the more his anger rose. Ahin turned sharply away from Sierra.

“……Your Grace?”

He could hear Sierra’s bewildered voice from behind him, but Ahin did not look back.

He intended to leave the bedchamber just like that. With his anger at its peak right now, what good would come of facing Sierra and getting into a fight?

“Wait, just a moment!”

Sierra rushed forward and blocked Ahin’s path, nearly at a run.

Unlike Ahin, who was trying to remove himself from the situation, Sierra had no intention of letting him leave like this.

It was right to sever things with Ahin before it became something more wretched.

She had no desire to make a spectacle of herself the way the original Sierra had, clinging to Ahin in tears, begging him to spare her, pleading with him not to abandon her.

“We were in the middle of a conversation. What kind of rude behavior is this?”

Sierra placed both hands on her slender waist and looked directly at Ahin.

Her overbearing attitude, like a teacher disciplining an unruly student, only stoked Ahin’s competitive spirit further.

“Be quiet.”

Ahin growled out the words and pressed his hand against the bedchamber door. It was an impulsive action he could not quite explain even to himself.

“……What?”

Perhaps from the very moment he had stepped into Sierra’s bedchamber, he had wanted to do this.

Sierra’s brow creased as she realized she was trapped between the bedchamber door and Ahin’s firm arms on either side.

“Ahin? What do you think you are doing?”

Their faces drew a little closer together.

When the distance narrowed to the point where their breath mingled, Sierra’s blue eyes went wide as though they might pop out of her head.

But as if trying to conceal her flustered state, she forced a composed expression and met Ahin’s gaze directly.

A woman who appears strong on the outside but is more tender-hearted than anyone within.

Someone with too much pride to like losing, yet who in truth would rather yield herself than quarrel with others, preferring to keep things amicable.

That was how Ahin had assessed Sierra when he occasionally thought of her on the battlefield.

And looking at her now, it seemed his assessment at the time had been correct.

“……”

The air inside the bedchamber settled into a suffocating heaviness, yet Ahin tilted his face toward Sierra.

He could not understand why she was bringing up divorce now, of all times.

‘……Is she sulking?’

Whatever the reason, in this moment, Sierra’s lips looked far too tempting.

Tempting enough that he wanted to take a bite.

Following the impulse that had risen within him, Ahin captured Sierra’s soft lips.

“Wa, wait……”

The rest of Sierra’s words were swallowed by Ahin and did not escape.

“……!”

Flustered by Ahin’s sudden action, Sierra squirmed and tried to push his shoulders away.

The shoulders beneath her hands were far too solid, and Ahin’s body did not give way in the slightest.

The more Sierra struggled to free herself, the closer Ahin pressed himself against her.

At first she had wondered if he was simply trying to silence her, but Ahin showed no intention of pulling away anytime soon.

The longer the kiss went on, the more Sierra’s own senses began to feel strange.

Each time Ahin grazed and teased the soft inner lining of her mouth, a shivering sensation ran through her. Against her will, her lower abdomen tightened on its own.

“……”

Only after they had been lost in each other for quite some time did their lips briefly part.

‘Kissing Ahin……’

How on earth had things come to this?

Ahin had gone through life saying he disliked Sierra since they were children, but during adolescence it had reached its peak.

Even making eye contact, even the faintest brush of fingertips, had made him recoil.

The Ahin of those days and the Ahin standing before her now seemed like entirely different people.

Even in the brief moment Sierra was trying to make sense of the current situation, the deep, lingering kiss continued.

“……?”

Then something began to press insistently against her abdomen. Something large and firm……

‘Surely…… is this because of me?’

Sierra lifted her tightly shut eyelids slightly to confirm what she was sensing.

In that instant, her gaze became entangled with Ahin’s red eyes.

Languidly softened eyes, the corners flushed red. Both cheeks faintly colored.

It was the moment she thought Ahin’s expression looked strangely sensual.

The large, firm center pressed against Sierra’s lower abdomen insistently, as though knocking, as though asking for permission to enter.

Sierra twisted her waist slightly to pull her body away from where it was pressed against Ahin.

“Hng……”

In that instant, a low, rough sound escaped from Ahin’s lips.

Her small squirming had apparently only served to encourage him further.

“Sierra, being eager is fine, but……”

Ahin pulled one corner of his mouth into a slant as he continued.

“……do not rush me.”

At his gaze, which burned intensely and carried a dangerous edge, Sierra tried to flee.

But there was nowhere to go. Behind her was the bedchamber door, and in front of her was Ahin, blocking the way.

“……No, I was not trying to……”

She was trying to say that was not what she meant, when something hot and wet suddenly invaded her mouth.

In the original story, the kiss with Claudia had been Ahin’s first. So Ahin, like Sierra, would be experiencing this for the first time now.

Yet for a first, Ahin’s kiss was far too sweet.

Was that why?

She could not easily refuse him.

—

‘Creak, creak.’

Every time Ahin drove his hips upward with force, the bed cried out with a strange sound.

The hands Sierra had wrapped around the sheets kept tensing with involuntary force as well.

Like a glass bottle swept far out by a wave and carried back again, Sierra’s body swayed and trembled repeatedly.

Each time, Ahin’s perfectly symmetrical abdomen rippled and flexed in waves.

“Sierra, relax…… a little more.”