Everyone was curious what Aeplin would say.
“I love him. I married Lucent because I love him.”
“What……. Because you love him?”
Serge looked at Aeplin with a bewildered face.
“We can no longer be as we once were. To me, my husband comes before Your Highness.”
Even as Aeplin spoke to Serge, her eyes were on Lucent.
He gave a slight nod and concurred with her words.
“I have finally come to realize what the meaning of true love is.”
At Aeplin’s familiar words, Serge gritted his teeth.
He was having the very words he had once said to her returned to him.
“Then just shout at me and get angry, Aeplin.”
“I am not angry with Your Highness. Rather, I am grateful. Thanks to you, I came to realize the greatness of love……. Differences in status turned out not to be a problem. Being helplessly drawn by a strong force of fate. That was the love I had never known.”
As Aeplin spoke calmly to the Crown Prince, it was actually Lucent whose mind grew complicated.
Something felt twisted.
Why did this woman always defy his expectations?
It was the moment his doubt toward her turned into certainty.
But if the process were too easy, it would not be fun.
Watching Serge refute her mindlessly was quite entertaining.
“Are you trying to get back at me? Do not bother any longer. I can forgive everything. Since the first night was not spent, the marriage is invalid. I can embrace Aeplin’s mistake with a generous heart. So stop your tantrum and come with me.”
Serge abruptly seized Aeplin’s hand and pulled her.
At that sight, Lucent, who had been watching all along, unconsciously stopped the Crown Prince.
Soon a taut tension hung among the three.
“Take your filthy hand off!”
Serge shouted fiercely at Lucent, who had grasped Aeplin’s hand.
Only then did Lucent, who had kept his mouth firmly shut, open it.
“Even if you are His Highness the Crown Prince, I cannot overlook your treating another man’s wife so carelessly.”
“I am telling you, Aeplin was never meant to be yours from the start. Lowbred mongrels like you are meant to pick up fallen fruit gnawed by worms. If you do not want to die, let go of that hand!”
‘Lowbred mongrel.’
This was nothing more than a pointless interference aimed only at satisfying his own greed.
At the harsh words Serge spat out, sparks flew in Aeplin’s eyes.
As if her blood were reversing, her face flushed, and her breath grew short.
It was hard to believe he was the Crown Prince of a nation—Serge was the worst.
Because he was trampling on the choice of the woman he claimed to love, and on the dignity of innocent Lucent, she could never forgive it.
Not only that.
In the end, it was an act of revealing a wretched bottom and shoving the Crown Prince’s honor and dignity into a chamber pot, and it was frustrating that he did not know it.
“Your Highness, maintain your dignity!”
Aeplin flung off the two men’s hands, tangled complexly atop hers, and shouted.
It was not only Serge who was startled by her shout.
“If you demean my husband any further here, I will have no choice but to see you in court for defamation.”
“Husband……. Defamation, what?”
Serge glowered at Aeplin with every kind of grimace.
Lucent, and everyone in the lobby, held their breath in astonishment.
“Poor Aeplin. Count Hapen was in danger, and in the end it came to this……?!”
“Ha……!”
Was talking nonsense also a habit?
Or was his brain simply lacking compared to ordinary people?
He could not understand why Serge said such absurd things every time.
Just then, as if it knew Aeplin’s inner thoughts, the sound of a dog barking came from somewhere in the villa.
What had first been heard from afar drew closer and closer, and then a large white-furred dog came running and bit Serge’s leg.
“Kyaa!”
“Your Highness!”
The screams of the startled servants and Max’s calls for Serge tangled into one, and the lobby was turned upside down in an instant.
The white dog relentlessly hunted Serge, who had sprawled on the marble floor rather than in a forest.
He screamed as if his breath would give out at any moment, and people ran about in confusion, frantic to avoid the dog.
Even when people tried to pull the dog off Serge, they could not easily approach.
Just then, Aeplin sensed an unfamiliar presence and looked around.
At that moment, a camera flash burst unexpectedly.
‘Reporters have infiltrated even inside the villa?’
It was openly known that there were reporters who usually chased Serge’s every move.
Even so, to think they would brazenly intrude even into Blackakson’s villa.
That was when it happened.
Someone quelled at once the situation that had spread like wildfire beyond anyone’s control.
“Ricky! Stop!”
At Lucent’s command, the ferocious dog that had been hunting the Crown Prince stopped biting like a gentle lamb.
“Leon! Have His Highness taken to the hospital at once!”
“Yes, president.”
Well-built men rushed in and carried the Crown Prince to a car.
Thus Serge’s appearance was concluded for the time being by being taken to the hospital after being bitten by a dog.
And the reporters, to the very end, chased Serge and busily took photographs.
“How on earth is the villa being managed? Why was Ricky’s leash undone, and what are reporters doing here?”
“I apologize, master.”
Lucent sternly reprimanded the villa’s manager.
Aeplin looked back and forth between Lucent and the receding Serge with a bewildered face.
His face was no better either.
Still, when the dog had gone wild, Lucent had been the first to wrap around Aeplin and protect her.
She was grateful, but somehow it felt contrived.
As if waiting for the Crown Prince to become excited, not only did the dog leap in, but reporters also rushed in.
Tomorrow’s morning newspaper headline was already vivid before her eyes.
In that moment, a memory flashed through Aeplin’s mind.
‘It was not a ghost.’
“Lucent, you said there was a beautiful but ferocious being at the villa? Is it, by any chance, the white dog that just attacked His Highness?”
“That is right. Usually it is gentle. But it finds people harboring hostility with remarkable skill. Quite admirably, in fact.”
‘Admirably?’
Lucent was very calm, unlike the way he had been instructing the servants in a heated tone just moments before.
His tone was so casual, as if he had known such an accident would happen.
‘Surely Lucent did not deliberately set the dog……?’
She doubted him for a moment, but quickly shook her head.
Lucent Blackakson, who cared more about the world’s attention than anyone, would never plan such a great thing against the Crown Prince.
“Lucent, did you plan this miserable situation in advance?”
Somehow she felt she could only be reassured by hearing a definite answer from him.
But a peculiar smile bloomed on his face.
Seeing it, goosebumps crept up Aeplin’s spine.
“Is that not allowed? I suffered every kind of humiliation.”
“Are you…… sincere?”
It was true that Lucent had been subjected to every unspeakable insult by the Crown Prince, but if he had foreseen and prepared for such a thing, then Lucent was a frightening man.
“I am joking. I did not know His Highness would come all the way here either. Besides, Ricky is merely a dog that guards the villa.”
Lucent embraced Aeplin and patted her, whispering.
“Were you very startled? It is all my fault. I should have paid attention to the villa’s management……. I failed to do so.”
At his deep self-reproach, Aeplin regretted having briefly doubted Lucent.
Both of them had been overwhelmed by the wedding ceremony that had come so suddenly.
Meanwhile, Lucent felt delight in a fullness of satisfaction.
His doubt toward Aeplin had soon become an occasion to confirm that she had made a wise choice.
‘It is fortunate that you did not take the Crown Prince’s hand and flee from me. If you had, Ricky would have hunted you.’
Lucent softly kissed Aeplin’s forehead.
Her verdant eyes gave off a clear light.
“Will His Highness the Crown Prince be all right?”
“He will be.”
He said in a very firm tone.
“He should be……. What if the imperial family holds you responsible?”
“They will not be able to.”
“Pardon?”
When Aeplin looked puzzled, Lucent took her hand and headed for the bedroom.
For the first night they had not yet enjoyed.
