Chapter 53

The night I shared with him yesterday was not a steamy night, but a peaceful and calm night, and there was no feeling of that type of love between us.

“It’s definitely not imprinting.”

As I walked while organizing my thoughts, I found myself in front of Lanoa’s bedroom.

Knock, knock, knock.

“I’m coming in”

There was no answer. He was probably asleep anyway. I didn’t expect him to be awake, but I still opened the door without hesitation. Even though it was eleven o’clock, Lanoa’s room was dark enough for the time to be mistaken for midnight.

“I too live like this, but he’s definitely worse than me.”

He was dozing off as if he were dead. I hit Lanoa on the shoulder after drawing the thick curtains.

“Hey! Brother! Lanoa!”

“Aah, what?”

Lanoa opened his eyes in annoyance, and rubbed his shoulder over and over again, as if it hurt where I had hit him.

“Your Majesty has returned to his human form.”

“Is that wizard here already?”

“No, when I woke up, he had already become a human.”

Lanoa’s hands, which had been running through his hair in annoyance, came to a halt. The golden eyes, which resembled those of birds of prey, turned to face me.

“When you woke up…”

“Yes.”

“You woke up in bed…?”

“Oh, yes. I was so surprised. When I opened my eyes, his bare chest…”

Shiing~

A familiar sound from below interrupted my thoughts. Lanoa, who had picked up the sword from the bedside, slid it into the sheath and began acting crazy.

“What are you doing?”

“Did you say in your room… in your bed? Bare chest? Cheesst?!!”

I could hear his teeth grinding every time he said a word. Lanoa jumped up the moment I reached out to him, the sound of an alarm ringing in my head.

“Crown Prince, that bastard! I knew this would happen since he was a dog. I should not have allowed you to share your bed with him from the moment he began acting like a human.”

“Hey, hey! Nothing happened!”

“Of course, nothing should happen! I will kill him if it did. What is that rascal thinking of doing with a kid who hasn’t even come of age?”

I forced the overly excited Lanoa to sit down, and took his sword away while he was off guard and moved it to a corner.

“Calm down and go get some clothes.”

“You want me to take care of the crown prince?”

Lanoa grunted as he roughly brushed away his unkempt bangs.

“Then what should I do? We can’t just recklessly let others know about his curse.”

And there was one more issue that was just as important.

“Aside from that, what would people say if they saw a man dressed in nothing leaving my room? I’m sure there would be a lot of strange rumours.”

It was obvious people would spread dirty rumours about me. Lanoa, who had only recently realised this, spit out a light swear, rubbed his face violently, and pointed to the sofa.

“You take a seat over there and wait.”

“All right, but first you go greet him.”

“Yes, I should greet him.”

Lanoa, whose sword had been taken from him, fisted his empty hands. The ‘greet’ I asked him to do and the ‘greet’ Lanoa was thinking seemed to be very different.

* * *

Sihael leaned back on the sofa and stretched tiredly. He was faithfully obeying Rosetta’s command to wait patiently until she returned.  As he watched the clouds drifting out of the window, he bowed his head recalling Rosetta’s face.

“Pfft.”

A face as red as Rosetta’s hair glimmered in front of him.  He never expected to see her like that. Rosetta, who had always had a dignified and belligerent personality, was rarely shy.

He was taken aback by the scarlet red face of such Rosetta. He really struggled to hold back from wanting to tease her.

“She’s so adorable.”

Her green eyes were dazed as she gaped at his face. For the first time, Sihael felt the use of his handsome face and he understood how to win Rosetta’s heart in the future.

“I’ve imprinted on her, so she can’t get away from me now.”

He didn’t even want her to be away from him in the first place. Sihael hummed excitedly.

When he opened his eyes, he was surprised and bewildered to see he had reverted back to his human appearance. But after feeling connected to Rosetta, he laughed out happily.

Sihael’s mood was so good that even if the Empress made a move on him right now, he could laugh it off.

Well, it was given that his mood was good. Because the prerequisite for imprinting was love and nothing else.  Perhaps the trigger was Rosetta’s goodnight kiss.

There was love in it.

Even if it was her love for the wolf Shasha.

But Sihael was satisfied with it.

“I can start from here.”

The reason he didn’t tell Rosetta the truth was because of his ambiguous relationship with her.

‘I can’t mean anything more than a dog to Rosetta.’

It must be embarrassing for her that a dog  suddenly turned into a human, but what if she got to know that he suddenly  imprinted on her? His gut feeling that had been well honed by the war told him that she would run away from him without ever looking back.

“It’ll be difficult.”

It was an opportunity he somehow got, but thanks to that he could finally shed the wolf’s shell and appeal to her as a human being.

It was an opportunity that he could never miss. He had to approach her slowly and carefully.

When she would come to her senses, she would be already in his arms, so he couldn’t leave her anyway to escape.  No, he didn’t even want to think about her leaving.

His bright yellow golden eyes flashed with an overwhelming possessiveness.