“Haah, haah. Damn it…….”
My husband’s breathing showed no sign of calming down. He tightly shut his eyes and cursed under his breath. He roughly removed the piece and wrapped his hand with a cloth.
He leaned against the door, while I sat on the bed. We endured the silence. I couldn’t understand.
Him being here, me not running away, us facing each other.
I thought things might change if he found someone new.
“……How long will it take?”
“What?”
He snapped his eyes open.
“When will you let me go?”
When will our ill-fated relationship come to a complete end?
Maybe if I knew how much time was left, it would be a bit easier to endure.
I just voiced the thoughts that were running through my mind. But it seemed that my words had pulled the trigger on something buried deep in my husband’s mind.
“You’re really trying to escape.”
He muttered something incomprehensible. His low, murmuring voice was so cold it made my hair stand on end.
He approached me with long strides. Before I knew it, he was right in front of me, looking down at me.
I saw the blue flames of anger burning in his usually indifferent eyes.
Yes, if only he could vent it out like this. Then maybe both of us could burn out quickly and disappear.
“…..Only you, only you are trying to escape.”
He clenched his fist again. The embroidered cloth I had given him was now soaked in blood. He didn’t seem to care that blood was dripping from his hand, as he kept his gaze fixed on me for a long time. I didn’t avoid his eyes either.
“I hate you, Ezen Crawford.”
Trapped in his pitch-black eyes, I felt like prey whose throat had already been bitten by a predator.
The sound of my thumping heart felt as though it could stop at any moment, as if I had been given only a limited time to live.
“I…….”
“……I know.”
But do you know?
I hate you too. I hate you for disrupting my last bit of peace.
My husband, who couldn’t hear my whisper, glared at me. He muttered once again.
“……I hate you so much, I can’t stand it.”
Is hatred different from loathing? Strangely enough, I could agree with the former but not with the latter. This was more than just simple hatred, it was a heavier, more extreme emotion. Our gazes met as I looked up at him blankly.
“…….”
He came closer. Just when I felt the heat radiating from him, his scorching lips devoured mine.
“You- I…..”
He panted, trying to say something. But I knew all too well what words would spill from those deeply red, masculine lips.
Hatred, disgust, the indelible marks of revenge aimed at me.
“……Don’t forgive me.”
Just as he had once cut me off, I interrupted him this time and accepted his kiss. The searing heat enveloped my cold body.
I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to think about anything.
“I have no intention of forgiving you either.”
A faint scent of musk brushed past my nose, enveloping us. It was the ever-present, feral scent that clung to him.
“……Don’t cry.”
His voice seeped through the gap between our entwined lips. He kept murmuring it, repeatedly pressing his lips against mine.
The tears streaming down my cheeks vanished into his hot mouth.
He kept swallowing my sobs, and I didn’t push him away.
The scent of a beast hung heavy around us.
*
I spent the night with my husband.
My whole body ached as if I had been beaten. I had no sensation below my waist.
He thrust into me without pause, and I clung to him, incongruously, to the heat that threatened to burn me.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, clinging to him like mistletoe that parasitizes its host.
Hiding beneath him, I shut out the memories and people that floated through my world.
Every time the memories of the dead, or the innocent dreams of my youth, flickered in my mind, I clung to his arms and cried.
My husband didn’t say anything, but at least he didn’t push me away as I clung to him.
I knew morning had come when I heard the birds chirping.
Gripping my aching body, I got up from the bed alone. My husband was gone.
I sat alone in the empty bed, in the desolate room. I closed my eyes. The hot tears that flowed down from the corners of my eyes were crushed by the heavy weight that enveloped me.
I later learned that some people call that weight sorrow, and others call it loneliness.
After that, my husband continued to visit me.
He smelled of alcohol, but I knew he wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t either.
The room was filled with the dreamy scent of the candles I had chosen. When I was in his arms, the thick scent of musk would seep into my nose.
We simply couldn’t bear the fact that we had chosen to be with each other sober.
The relationship with my husband wasn’t painful, but it slowly broke my spirit.
I couldn’t accept becoming a slave to pleasure in the arms of someone I was supposed to hate. My husband, with the coldest face imaginable, held me as passionately as ever.
But, just like that night, the moment would burn brightly and then disappear without a trace.
“…..You’re pregnant. Congratulations, madam.”
The servant’s attitudes changed once my husband began spending the nights with me. At the doctor’s careful announcement, Rosalyn looked at me in disbelief.
I looked down at my belly. I felt nothing.
That night, my husband came to see me. He must have heard about the pregnancy, but he didn’t say a word.
I wasn’t expecting to hear anything from him. I couldn’t blame him either. After all, it was partly my choice.
He didn’t touch me. He just stared at me for a long time before leaving.
I had no idea what he was thinking.
Was he regretting the bloodline that would be born from his enemy? Or was he contemplating killing the child of the enemy he despised, now growing inside me?
They say it’s a woman’s instinct to protect her child, but I seemed to fall outside that category.
My husband considered this child mine, and I thought of it as his.
“You’ve truly been born into a tragic fate.”
I spoke as I looked down at my increasingly swollen belly. There was no affection, no tender caress.
I genuinely felt that something within me was fundamentally broken. Instead of love or maternal instinct, all I felt was the growing pressure in my belly and the increasing sense of helplessness.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was about to become dependent on someone else all over again.
Even so, I was too afraid to choose my own death, just as I couldn’t bring myself to harm the child.
My husband no longer held me. He didn’t rejoice over the pregnancy.
In fact, he seemed angry, as if he were trying to take complete control of every aspect of my life. From what I ate to what I wore, where I went, who I met, everything had to go through him.
Not that he hadn’t been controlling before, but he hadn’t been so obsessively determined to dominate every aspect of my life.
He watched and guarded me as if I were carrying the devil inside me.
The warmth that had briefly heated the cold bed was now completely gone.
I knew this would happen. I knew it would all vanish like a mirage, yet a hollow emptiness still settled in a corner of my heart.
Nothing could have made his intentions clearer than his sudden and complete absence after hearing about the pregnancy.
Even so, I stayed up nights, hoping he might come to see me like he used to. The misery of being alone made me strangely hopeful.
The thick scent of musk that used to cling to the tip of my nose had become extremely faint. From my husband, there was now no scent at all, as if he no longer regarded me as a woman.
I knew that we would never share warmth again.
And that was okay.
I knew he wasn’t happy about the pregnancy, that he wasn’t looking for me, that he regretted getting involved with me in the first place.
I expected it. I had to endure it. I had to put up with it, because any atonement I could make would include this.
But I could no longer endure when he mocked me by sending me expensive baby items.
