As she reached out her arms to him, he pulled her onto his lap as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he pulled her fully onto his lap.

“…It’s you, Mc, right?”

“Yes.”

Holding her close with not a shred of space between them, McClart gently patted her back with one hand. Although he didn’t understand what was happening, he decided it was best to try to calm her down first.

Cradled in his arms, Vienny let out a trembling breath.

Ah. This is real.

This is real.

“Vieny?”

Burying her face in his chest, Vienny bit down hard on her lip. She felt as though she might burst into tears.

After being drawn back into the world of witchcraft, she’d thought she’d adapted quickly because she’d experienced it all before.

But maybe she hadn’t.

Perhaps losing her peaceful life — gentle MccClart, sweet Ivelis, and all the warmth and quiet of their days together — had terrified her far more than she had realized.

Leaning into the steady thud of his heartbeat and the warmth seeping through his shirt, Vienny swallowed the lump in her throat. Then, carefully, she spoke.

“I don’t know if it was a nightmare… but I had a very long, strange dream.”

Even though her voice was small, McClart had been listening. He responded at once.

“What kind of dream?”

“A dream where I went back into the past.”

At the word past, McClart flinched.

“A dream where you were an inquisitor of Kairon… and you locked me in solitary confinement, starved me, and let people torment me.”

Vienny felt his arms tighten around her.

She could feel it clearly, his entire body going rigid.

“…That really is a ridiculous nightmare.”

McClart ground the words out under his breath, jaw clenched.

Whenever Vienny spoke of the past, he often looked at her with an expression too tangled to name—guilt, apology, regret, and something even deeper, all mixed together.

This time was no different. Although it was only a dream, it was rooted in the past, so naturally it reminded him of his actions.

Vienny might have wanted to complain, but she had no intention of holding him accountable for something that happened in a dream.

“But it changed in the end.”

Lifting her head from his shoulder, she cupped his cheeks with both hands and met his gaze.

“In the end, it really did change.”

When she emphasized it again, the sharpness in McClart’s gaze softened slightly. The guilt in his blue eyes eased slightly, though his expression remained stiff.

Vienny tugged gently at his cheeks and pressed a light kiss to his lips. What began as a playful series of quick kisses soon turned into a lingering, passionate embrace as McClart lowered his head. Trapped in his arms, Vienny couldn’t move and could only surrender to his kiss.

After lavishing attention not just on her lips, but also on her cheeks, the corners of her eyes, her earlobe and the nape of her neck for a long time, McClart suddenly whispered harshly.

“But if it was the past… there’s no way that b*stard left you alone.”

Wrapped in heat and panting softly in his arms, Vienny let out a hollow laugh at his words.

‘That b*stard—he’s talking about himself!’

Unlike Vienny, who felt wronged, McClart was deadly serious.

“If it was a long dream, that means you were with him for quite a while. And someone with not a shred of self-control.”

McClart was a man who could assess himself objectively.

“What did you do with him? How far did it go?”

Lifting his head, McClart looked at Vienny with a suspicious gaze, like a husband staring at an unfaithful wife.

Feeling inexplicably wronged, Vienny drooped her brows and protested.

“What are you talking about?”

“So you did do something?”

Seeing that she wasn’t even trying to hide her disbelief, McClart seemed to firm up his suspicions.

Vienny’s lips parted and closed uselessly as she slowly averted her gaze.

…It wasn’t like she could say nothing happened.

“It was just a dream.”

“So what did you do, then?”

McClart now began his interrogation in earnest.

Given the way events were unfolding, Vienny couldn’t help but feel that she was being treated unfairly. Firstly, in the dream, she hadn’t realized that it was a dream.

She hadn’t pushed him away because she believed that he would one day become her husband. Besides, he hadn’t even been a stranger. He had been McClart himself.

Above all, it had all been a dream. It hadn’t actually happened. If he was going to take issue with what she had done in a dream, then McClart could not escape blame either.

“If you’re going to argue like that, then we should start with all the awful things you did.”

McClart’s eyes wavered slightly. He hesitated for a moment, then drew a clear line between himself and the version of him from the dream, speaking in a composed voice.

“Let me say this first. That b*stard was a terrible man. But since he was me in the past…It wasn’t something I did—but I’ll apologize anyway.”

Seeing how quickly he apologized despite drawing that line only made Vienny sulk even more.

“I warned you you’d regret it, and you didn’t listen at all.”

“That wasn’t me. But… I was wrong.”

“You even had your subordinates overturn my meal trays out of sheer pettiness.”

“…Yeah. What a small-minded piece of trash. Absolute scum. To torment someone over food—especially someone as fragile as you.”

“Mc. You did that.”

The more she spoke, the more resentment swelled inside her. In the dream, she kept telling herself that he wasn’t Mc; he was someone else entirely. But now, as she voiced her grievances, the man in front of her and the man from the dream began to overlap in her mind.

Once they became one and the same, her stomach churned and her sense of hurt doubled.

At last, tears welled up in Vienny’s eyes.

“Yes. I was wrong.”

McClart brushed her eyes with a blunt but careful touch, whispering again.

“It was all my fault.”

Given the extent of his apology, it was hard to stay sulky. Vienny pressed her lips together and glared at him, still resentful. Then, in a noticeably softer voice, she mumbled something.

“But later on… when we ate together, you did pick the meat off the bones and remove the fish bones for me. For that… I was grateful.”

Each time she blinked, the tears that had pooled at her lashes slipped free and rolled down her cheeks. Even as they soaked her skin, Vienny slowly began to calm. Watching her quietly, McClart asked in a casual tone.

“Don’t tell me you were won over by food?”

“And you took me on walks, too.”

“I feed the rabbits with you every day. Lately, I’ve even been looking after the squirrels.”

Seeing McClart openly competing with his dream-self was so absurd that Vienny was left speechless again. Catching the expression on her face, McClart straightened and warned her sharply.

“Vienny. We have Ivelis. You don’t want to see our sweet daughter crying while looking for her mother, do you?”

Vienny finally stopped crying and burst out laughing.

“I told you—it was just a dream.”

McClart narrowed his eyes, studying her intently, then without warning pushed her down. With a soft thump, Vienny fell back onto the bed, a massive shadow looming over her.

“Then I’ll just have to make sure you forget it right away.”

“Mc, it’s daytime!”

She didn’t need to look closely, the sunlight pouring in made everything obvious. It was broad daylight, and they should have been up for a while. However, her hurried protest did nothing to calm McClart.

Vienny recalled how unrestrained he had been on the balcony the previous night, like a colt with its reins cut. Even that failed to stop him, though. In fact, the clear marks he had left all over her body only excited him further.

“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you eat properly afterward. Unlike that b*stard, I’d never starve you—not even by accident.”

“Mc, hngh—!”

This time, Vienny cried out for a completely different reason. Her hips stung from repeatedly being slapped against the man’s solid thighs, while the thick, hard length plunging in and out of her sent waves of searing pleasure rippling through her body.

“Hh—.”

Through her blurred, teary vision, Vienny caught sight of the bright world beyond the window.

It had only been one night. Just one night had passed since she had fallen asleep beneath the red moon.

It felt like too long to have been a dream from just one night, yet even there, Vienny had won.

“Haah, Vienny…”

She wrapped her arms tightly around the neck of the man moving roughly above her. Slick sweat, deepened body heat, and bulging muscle filled her embrace completely.

Everything belonged to her.

The red moon would continue to rise, but the outcome would always be the same. Even as pleasure sent shivers through her body, she felt like laughing out loud. Her crimson lips, panting for breath, curved into a radiant smile.

No matter what petty tricks were played, she would tell him again and again, to the abandoned god watching from above the red moon.

No matter what you do, this man is mine.

You will never be able to take him away.

***

They spent the entire day tangled together in the heat, using the excuse of having forgotten the nightmare. From this union, Vienny became pregnant with their second son, Pieris, who was born with silver hair and blue eyes.

As a result, their world became a little more tender.

Or perhaps much more so.

***Special Side Story – Complete***