#2. Damned Imprinting

However, as a servant, there was no way she could refuse to follow orders.

Eventually, she approached right in front of the Duke.

“You….. Phew.”

The Duke started to say something but stopped, furrowing his brow and letting out a long breath.

“Did you perhaps… spray women’s perfume?”

Chloe’s eyes widened at the Duke’s words after a brief pause.

“What? Women? No! What are you talking about!”

Chloe’s voice rose instantly.

Perfume? And women’s perfume at that.

She was already walking on thin ice every day worried about being discovered as a woman, why would she be crazy enough to spray such a thing!

The Duke raised one eyebrow and stared at Chloe.

It seemed like he was asking, ‘Did you just raise your voice at me?’

“I’m sorry! I was just surprised by the suggestion that I would use women’s perfume.”

Chloe quickly bowed her head.

“……”

She could feel the Duke’s burning gaze on the crown of her head.

During the few seconds of silence that followed, Chloe felt cold sweat forming where the Duke’s gaze fell on her head.

“If it’s not perfume, then what is this scent……”

The Duke spoke, either as a question or to himself.

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“From you……”

Chloe kept her head bowed but slightly raised her eyes to look intently at the Duke.

‘What about me?’

“Well, that can’t be possible.”

Side effects? The Duke muttered barely audibly before finally ordering her to leave.

“Yes!”

Chloe fled from the Duke’s office with her tail between her legs.

Side effects?

Side effects from one night’s mistake?

Unable to understand what the Duke’s muttering meant, Chloe decided to believe she had misheard.

* * *

“Strange.”

Hughgray muttered, looking at the door through which Clyne had left.

Every human has their own unique body scent.

That’s why he kept a certain distance from all humans.

It wasn’t that he found all human scents repulsive, but he thought it better to maintain distance from everyone rather than show his likes and dislikes.

Of course, physical distance didn’t completely prevent his sensitive nose from detecting others’ scents in the same room.

It just made them less noticeable.

But oddly enough, Clyne Liden had no body scent at all. Therefore, there was no disturbance from his scent.

That was why.

He had allowed an unverified new servant to work as his personal attendant so close to him.

Of course, primarily, it was because he possessed the rare ability to speak the Tigrium Kingdom language, but no matter how qualified he was, if he had an unpleasant body scent that irritated his nerves, he would never have made him a personal attendant.

However, after actually employing him as an attendant, that fellow showed surprisingly un-servant-like aspects in many ways.

In dressing, dining, bathing, and all other areas, that fellow either just stood watching blankly or didn’t do anything at all. He truly seemed like a servant who didn’t know the first thing about attending. Always keeping an excessive distance when serving.

With such an attitude, wouldn’t he have been fired within a day if he had worked as an attendant elsewhere?

For him, that was exactly what he liked about it.

Because he didn’t fuss about trying to attend to everything like typical personal attendants.

Because he was comfortable with him seeming like he’s present even though he’s present.

That’s how it had been, but…

Why does he suddenly emit a body scent stronger than other humans?

From the moment Clyne entered the room, there was an enchanting scent strong enough to make every cell in his body twitch. A scent he hadn’t detected at all until just days ago when he reported taking leave.

While giving instructions to Joyce, it wasn’t clear due to the mixing of scent, but when Joyce passed by Clyne on his way out, the wave of scent momentarily made his chest tighten and his head spin.

Because the scent wafting from Clyne was so sweet.

Ha! A body scent… sweet…!

What’s wrong with his mind?

Had he ever found another person’s body scent enchanting in the first place?

No, never. Except for that woman he had imprinted on.

So this was truly strange.

To feel the same intoxication from a male attendant that he had felt from that woman last night.

Unless something had gone wrong with his senses while imprinting on the woman, it made no sense to be reminded of an imprinted woman’s scent from a male.

Beyond gender, it was impossible to receive the same sensation from another human that he got from his imprinting partner.

Perhaps the wolf blood had thinned through generations, causing a mutation in the imprinting trait?

Or was the aftermath of imprinting causing temporary hallucinations?

If only it were something like that.

“Haa… this makes no sense.”

A self-deprecating sigh he had held back in front of Joyce and Clyne escaped.

The idea that the imprinting trait could change was nonsensical.

Even if almost all other traits had disappeared, the imprinting trait had stubbornly persisted through generations.

Damned imprinting.

The problem started when the spring heat arrived earlier than expected while heading to the villa.

Before the suppressant he had just taken could spread through his body, the oil in the inn’s lamp ran out, and he went out to tell the owner about it.

But at that moment, a woman was walking down the dark corridor.

He didn’t know if imprinting targets were always determined so suddenly, without any warning or signs.

The woman’s powerful scent that penetrated his body was overwhelming enough to make him dizzy.

He lost his reason unbelievably quickly and was drawn to the woman.

But even then, he still had his reason.

He tried to avoid the woman somehow, feeling the crisis that he might pounce on her immediately.

He was certain of that.

If only the woman hadn’t thrown herself at him, responding to his heat with equal excitement, couldn’t he have safely overcome that crisis?

After all, he had taken the suppressant, if he had just endured a little longer.

However, the woman burrowed into his arms as if she had been waiting for it, and his instincts had no choice but to succumb to that powerful scent.

Once the rampage began, the effects of the suppressant were instantly neutralized.

To prevent such unfortunate incidents, he had extremely avoided women.

But deep inside, he had maintained a subtle confidence in himself.

Though he avoided women to reduce risk, he believed he would only imprint on a female wolf shifter worthy of love. That he had that much discernment and reason.

In fact, the reason wolf shifters could maintain power rivaling lion and tiger shifters was because they had best preserved their shifter blood.

Because they had strived to minimize unions with humans due to the imprinting trait.

So naturally, he too should have imprinted on a wolf shifter.

Not to mention, wasn’t he an Alpha!

The leader of the wolf shifters, an Alpha with the duty to produce heir Alphas.

But that belief was shattered like this.

What discernment and reason!

That night, he was nothing but a male in heat who couldn’t see straight.

The self-loathing that had already hit him dozens of times came rushing back, neither diminished nor lessened.

In the end, he was just a wolf pup ruled by instinct.

Having imprinted, it would be impossible to not only produce an heir but even share a bed with anyone other than that woman.

Of course, the impossibility of sharing a bed wasn’t such a big problem.

He could live suppressing his heat with suppressants like he had until now.

The real serious problem was that now that he had imprinted, he couldn’t even rely on suppressants anymore.

When the heat came, he would feel an overwhelming thirst for his imprinting partner, enough to consume his mind.

While suffering from the pain of unfulfilled desire.

Damn it.

Just imagining that he might not find the woman again made his throat dry.

“I must find her.”

This was no time to be confused by an attendant’s scent.

Now that he had imprinted, the heat wouldn’t come just once a year in spring, but every month.

Before the next heat came, he had to find the woman he had imprinted on at all costs, unless he wanted to go mad or die from the pain.

* * *

Chloe, who managed to return to her room through sheer willpower without staggering, collapsed onto the bed.

But contrary to her expectation that she would fall asleep immediately upon lying down, her mind remained clear.

It must have been because she was too excited or tense.

She lifted her arm and sniffed it.

“What scent? What scent is he talking about? Why is he being so scary?”

She had fled from that room at dawn while the Duke was washing.

It was fortunate that she had miraculously come to her senses even then, at the faint sound of water.

Though she could barely stand let alone walk, she forced herself to return to the Duke’s mansion.

At least, knowing that the Duke would be away from the mansion for a few days, she thought she could rest for that time.

But strangely, the Duke who was supposed to be away for several days returned to the mansion almost at the same time as her.

Come to think of it, it was strange that the Duke was at that crumbling inn in Arne in the first place.

As if he had been waiting there to have an incident with her.

Though that couldn’t be possible.

Anyway, it was the worst kind of coincidence.

“Oh, my aching body…”

Her already painful body hurt even more.

It seemed the mental fatigue was intensifying the physical exhaustion.

I’m crazy, absolutely crazy.

Chloe pulled at her wig.

What was the point of wearing this stuffy wig, covering her face with glasses, binding her chest tightly with cloth, and wearing layers upon layers of clothes to make her body float inside them to disguise as a man?

To spend the night like that with the Duke, from whom she needed to hide her disguise more than anyone else…

The image of the Duke who seemed to have only instincts remaining and her equally excited self remained vivid in her mind.