One month ago.

“What did you say…?”

Seraphina murmured blankly as she woke to find several people gathered around her bed. Surrounded by concerned faces, she parted her lips slightly.

“The Crown Princess Consort? Me?”

“Your Highness, do you truly not remember?”

“……”

When the royal physician addressed her, Seraphina remained silent, her fingers tightening around the edge of the blanket.

She was the Crown Prince’s wife.

Not only that, but she had been married to him for a year.

It was absurd.

After all, she had once been just one of the Crown Prince’s maids — one of countless indistinguishable attendants. That day, she had been carrying out her duties as usual, returning jewelry that the Crown Prince no longer wore. Then, through sheer misfortune, she missed a step on the stairs.

She fell and lost consciousness.

When she opened her eyes again, she was told that a full year had passed.

At first, she couldn’t understand what was happening. Even when the imperial physician looked at her with concern and asked her her name and age, she did not register how strange the situation was.

But then—

— when he told her that she was twenty-two, not twenty-one — Seraphina was left speechless.

It didn’t feel as though she had been asleep for very long. She thought she had been unconscious for a few hours at most.

And yet, an entire year had passed.

Before she could process this shock, something else disturbed her even more: the behavior of those around her.

They settled her into an opulent bedchamber and treated her with the utmost reverence.

They addressed her with a title she could not begin to understand.

“Crown Princess Consort.”

Crown Princess Consort.

“Lies.”

It was ridiculous.

Muttering under her breath at the physician’s words, Seraphina shook her head. If she were the Crown Princess Consort, wouldn’t that mean she was the Crown Prince’s spouse?

Her mind drifted to the Empire’s most prized possession: the Crown Prince, Damian Eisenbart.

He was the most dominant Alpha in the imperial family’s history. His pheromones did more than subdue Omegas; they drove fellow Alphas to their knees and crushed Betas — who were usually immune to pheromones — under their overwhelming pressure.

It wasn’t only his pheromones that set him apart, either.

Even among Alphas, who were already renowned for their superior appearance and physical prowess compared to ordinary Betas, Damian was unparalleled. His features were so perfectly balanced that he seemed the very embodiment of a god of beauty, and his lean, flawlessly sculpted physique was so ideal that artisans competed to use him as the model for their statues.

It was as though every ideal had been gathered and given form — an extraordinary existence from the moment of birth.

That was Crown Prince Damian.

And she was supposed to be his wife?

“Something is wrong. I—”

Just as Seraphina tried to deny the absurd claim—

“Sephi!”

Someone flung open the door and burst in.

Seraphina, who had been about to climb out of bed, parted her lips slightly when she saw the visitor.

He had brilliant blonde hair. His eyes appeared to hold the light of the deep sea.

It was the Crown Prince, walking straight towards her.