Iberis smiled slowly. The perceptive loyal retainer flinched at that ominous shift in atmosphere, but he did not take back his words.

“Come here.”

She called him with undisguised forcefulness.

“My faithful knight.”

“……Yes.”

“It won’t do for you to contradict yourself. Hmm?”

“Your Majesty.”

Like a dog raised by its master, the man accustomed to his sovereign’s summons drew even closer, making the distance he had put between them seem meaningless.

“Let us find out.”

She moved and deliberately pressed her lips close to the knight’s ear, whispering in a way that seemed to chew the words.

“How far you can endure. Whether you truly dare refuse this emperor’s command.”

Her eyes, brimming with mischief, curved sharply.

“Do you understand?”

* * *

Iberis whispered without pause.

“They say I must take four men into my arms, and you are among them. Is that not a welcome thing?”

She prodded at his wretched heart and stirred his body along with it. She gripped the broad shoulders of the knight who was clenching his teeth and working his throat, then pressed her fingertips into the grain of his muscles.

“What use would it be to cut off your c*ck and make a toy of it? I have no intention of losing so much as a limb of my most loyal knight.”

She tickled just below the ear of the man trembling and on the verge of crumbling, then took hold of his chin and made him look at her. She studied his expression without reserve, taking in exactly what his eyes held, and curved her own in amusement.

“How disappointing.”

Her fine fingertips touched the knight’s tightly pressed lips. The motion itself approached gently, like the flutter of a butterfly’s dance, but the force of the fingertips prying at those sealed lips was wickedly relentless. She forced open what was firmly shut and slipped her fingertips inside.

“Hmm? Look at this. When they touch your tongue like so.”

The man, unable to bring himself to bite down, slowly parted his lips, and she dragged her fingertips languidly across his tongue.

The muscles of the knight kneeling with his fisted hands resting on his thighs went rigid.

“The pain melts away.”

With a drowsy breath, her face eased into an expression of genuine pleasure, of freedom from pain, and Sirak stared at that transformation with what looked like shock, unable to look away.

Savoring every change, Iberis tilted her head to one side.

“Your tongue, your saliva, your seed, all of it.”

Of course, even as she spoke, the movement of the fingers working inside the knight’s mouth was forceful and quick. She thr*st them in roughly, the way a man’s member might be driven into a yielding opening, raking over his soft tongue, his even teeth, the smooth roof of his mouth.

“It feels this good, and you truly mean to refuse?”

Saliva trailed down her pale fingers. Sirak shuddered and wanted to pull back, but Iberis, as though that too displeased her, only drove her hand deeper.

Gck. The breath of the one choking lurched, and his tongue convulsed.

Two fingers now invaded the slick pool of gathered saliva.

“Go on and keep refusing if you like.”

Stroke, stroke, thr*st, thr*st.

“Your emperor is going to die soon. Is that what you want? Have you been resenting me all this time?”

Sirak shook his head urgently. He could not let that misunderstanding stand. Even now, he wanted to save her by any means he could.

But, but!

“You foolish thing.”

Iberis pulled her fingers abruptly from his mouth and looked down at the knight with burning eyes. The tips of her white feet lifted. Her smooth toes came to rest on Sirak’s broad shoulders.

And then. Thud.

She shoved without mercy.

“Your Ma, jesty!”

By that force, capable of shattering even stone for all its seeming gentleness, the therianthrope toppled helplessly backward.

“You foolish thing.”

“……”

“I said I would turn a blind eye.”

“……”

“I told you to use the Oracle as your excuse.”

“……”

He was sprawled on the floor, right before the emperor’s bedchamber, of all places. He tried to rise in his flustered state, but Iberis was already standing over him with perfect composure.

She stood with her legs apart, feet planted on either side of his torso, and looked down at him steadily.

“Do you still not understand?”

“……Your Majesty.”

In the breathless tension and silence, the smile on her lips was red as a crushed cherry.

“That I have given you permission.”

Watching the beast’s eyes begin to heat, the emperor’s lips curved into an arc. She placed her white foot on his broad chest.

She ground her heel against the large muscle that stood out prominently among his well-developed upper body, deliberately grazed his n*pple with a brushing touch, and tickled the underside of the clenching man’s jaw with her toes.

“Your Ma, jesty! Please.”

The man who had grabbed her ankle without thinking, unable to stop himself, quickly loosened his grip.

The bloodline of the dragon clan could not possibly be hurt by that level of force, yet at that good-natured, gentle release, the cruelty that had been narrowing Iberis’s eyes for a moment drained away.

Ha. She let out a hollow breath and swept her hair back. Then she bent forward and settled herself down onto the knight’s firm stomach. Sirak was, of course, horrified. He lurched as though to rise immediately, and she pressed him back down with her hand.

“Sirak. I was originally going to put my foot in your mouth.”

Instead of her foot, smooth fingertips touched the corners of the man’s eyes, flushed in uneven patches of red.

“So you were capable of a face like this. And yet the insolent mouth that dares say no, I wonder whose it is, and also.”

Iberis reached her other hand behind her and smiled with impish intent. She struck, with her fingertips, the part of the knight’s body she had never once, not a single time, touched in any carnal way.

“……Hk!”

The sight of him opening his eyes wide in shock was quite something. His disheveled hair, the flustered expression on the face of a man who never showed any crack in his composure, and the lower half of his body, heated and straining from her actions, were less insolent than they were funny. She was enjoying herself.

“This isn’t bad at all.”

“My lord.”

When Sirak said it with a face gone completely red, looking truly unable to bear any more, Iberis could not hold back her laughter.

My lord. That was the title the man had used when he was still young and unformed, when he had not known what to do with himself following the young master who had saved his life.

“Yes. I am your master.”

“I am, not confident.”

“I command you. Save my life.”

“You know, do you not? I carry wolf blood. If I were to, with Your Majesty, by some chance……”

“What? Are you afraid you’ll swing your c*ck around like a beast?”

She watched the man wince like he had been struck by those blunt words, and whispered slowly.

“I myself gave the command.”

She looked into his wavering eyes and drove the order into his bones. She hammered the final nail into the loyal man who had never once disappointed her.

“I will not say it again, Sirak. This is the last command.”

That day. The day she had saved him.

“Hold me, and save my life. Become the subject of the emperor’s fourth Oracle, Sirak. My knight.”

Just as she had cast that calm gaze at him, the gaze that said she would not ask a third time.

Once more, she extended to him a hand of choice.

You decide. But there is no going back.

Do you truly feel no desire? Your liege is saying she will permit you.

Was there truly not a single time? Not once?

A time you wanted to touch her as an ordinary man and woman, not even once?

Even if it is a choice you cannot take back, can you stand quietly by and watch over other men as they desire her?

Can you truly do that?

“……Your Majesty.”

At the same moment, Sirak clenched his teeth.

He truly could not win against his liege.

He had not intended to draw out this long-hidden feeling and lay bare his desire. But he desired it. The jealousy that had stabbed sharply at his heart rose to mind.

She had thrown him the justification of saving her life. And so his master stood before him, commanding him to take her hand and come to her, pretending not to know.

The sweet scent of his master sitting on his stomach, the sensation of her soft skin, and his lower body was swollen to the point of bursting.

At the touch of fingers that had grazed him almost playfully, the world had seemed to tilt halfway over.

There is no going back.

It was already too late to go back.

He squeezed his eyes shut. He extended a trembling hand. He pushed himself upright toward his master, whose fingertips were still wet from toying with him moments ago.

The body that had been sitting on his stomach slid naturally downward. The emperor’s small, soft backside pressed against the straining thing inside his clothes.

It felt devastating.

“Your, Majesty.”

The wolf who had concealed his heat, the beast-blooded man who had suppressed his rut over and over, finally lost to his own ardor.

The pillar of his life he had wanted to protect forever. The one person whose every command he had no choice but to accept.

“I will.”

The knight steadied his gaze. With the one eye that remained, burning with fierce light, he fixed it on his liege, looking like he would not let go for even a moment.

“But before that.”

Their faces drew close enough that their lips nearly touched. He raised a trembling hand toward the one who sat there without so much as blinking, as though he did not dare touch her, and whispered.

“Please confirm that your knight truly satisfies you.”