I Had the Enemy's Baby (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 16
“…Is it alright?”
Beneath the nape of her neck, chilled by the night breeze, the man’s heated gaze fell.
‘Even when I show you something good, you act so stubborn.’
If one ignored his trailing words, Kai An had, in any case, intended to show her something good.
The first night, spent enduring endless insults hurled at Vermonde.
And then the second night that followed.
Clodel had no choice.
Kai An had paid the Duke of Vermonde the bride price.
There was simply no option for her to refuse him—the authority of a household head was absolute to that degree.
Only the right to decide Clodel’s welfare had transferred from the Duke of Vermonde to Duke Kai An Temnes.
Yet he asked her this.
An impulsive question slipped straight out of her mouth.
“If I say I don’t want to, will you really not do it?”
Kai An didn’t answer; he merely fell silent.
‘See? My feelings don’t matter at all.’
Just as Clodel grew bitter—
“Fine. If you don’t want it, I won’t force you.”
At this unexpected reply, Clodel’s eyes widened.
“But the more I hold back now, the greater the reckoning you’ll have to bear later.”
Her brief flicker of emotion, thinking he was being considerate, instantly faded.
“That’s a threat.”
“You’re twisting my honest words.”
Kai An’s lips brushed against her fingers, which were still clutching her nightgown.
“Vermonde never listens the first time, after all.”
The man’s damp breath dotted her collarbone, her n, and the back of her ear.
Vermonde.
Hearing that name while held in her enemy’s arms settled sorrowfully into her ears. As if relinquishing her last defense, Clodel let the tension drain from her shoulders and hands.
Yet the pain gnawing at her heart—whether caused by the illness eating her insides or by her wounded feelings—she couldn’t tell.
Laying her down on the bed, Kai An pinned Clodel’s hands, still gripping her nightgown, to either side.
Positioned as though she herself had spread out her own clothes, she lay as he slowly lowered himself over her.
The moment his heated lips touched her bare skin, cooled by the night air, Clodel flinched.
In an unfamiliar bedroom,
the only familiar presence to cling to was Kai An.
[This is the timeline separator]The capital of the Oberon Kingdom offered the ideal environment for governance.
Situated at the very center of the kingdom, it was bordered to the south by endlessly vast, fertile plains—the kingdom’s breadbasket.
The royal palace stood on a gently rising slope, backed by sheer cliffs, forming a natural fortress.
Below it flowed the broad Shen River, the lifeblood of the kingdom.
Proudly showcasing its overflowing wealth, the palace—built of white stone and gilded roofs—shone so brilliantly at night from afar that it looked as if the sun itself had descended to earth.
King Valkyter of Oberon, the kingdom’s sovereign and its dignified, magnificent young monarch, seemed as though he were the living embodiment of that very palace.
Noblewomen and princesses from neighboring countries breathlessly praised King Valkyter’s beauty, vying for even a fleeting glance; marriage proposals inevitably followed.
His abundant, pale lemon-colored golden hair framed fair skin, and on either side of his high, straight nose lay deep, vivid blue eyes.
Despite his seemingly delicate coloring—attributed to his hair and skin—his lips bore a healthy, attractive hue.
His shirt, left unbuttoned partway, revealed a chest and abdomen thoroughly honed through discipline—contrasting sharply with his soft, beautiful appearance.
Valkyter lay half-reclined on his bed, reading through a stack of letters that had arrived from foreign lands,
when suddenly, without warning, his bedroom door burst open.
“Valkyter!”
A woman, shockingly similar to him in appearance, rushed into the room, calling the king’s name with shocking informality.
Her lush lemon-gold hair tumbled messily down her back, and her blue eyes blazed as she charged toward him as if ready to strike.
“How could you do this!”
Seeing Valkyter not even turn his head as she stormed in, she stamped her foot in even greater frustration.
“You promised to let me marry Kai An!”
“Bianca.”
Unlike her earlier tearful rush, the mere utterance of her name made her flinch and shrink back.
“You’re being ill-mannered.”
“Brother…”
Bianca was Valkyter’s younger sister by two years.
Raised as the kingdom’s sole, treasured princess and the king’s only sibling, the only groom she deemed worthy across the entire kingdom was her first cousin, Duke Kai An Temnes.
“You said you’d let us get engaged once he returned from his travels! Yet he’s married now—and by royal decree? You lied to me! You never intended to make me his duchess from the beginning, did you?”
“Did I ever say I’d engage you to Kai An?”
“But…!”
Bianca bit her lower lip in frustration.
He had never explicitly said ‘Kai An.’
She had repeatedly begged Valkyter to let her marry Kai An.
Naturally, when Valkyter said he’d arrange the engagement after this journey, she’d assumed without question that the unnamed fiancé was Kai An.
“Then who on earth were you planning to engage me to?”
Shaken by betrayal, Bianca shouted.
“Who else in this kingdom is fit for me to marry? There’s no one left to choose from—they’re all dead!”
The death of their mother, Queen Sylvia, who had ruled the kingdom, had been sudden.
Valkyter, who inherited the throne as the new ruler, was merely eighteen.
A nation governed by a king so young as to seem childish rather than merely youthful became not a partner for alliance, but a golden prize fallen from the sky.
Before proper mourning rites could even conclude, wars erupted from all four cardinal directions.
Kai An, who had lost both parents around the same time, went to battle himself and returned alive—but other families’ fates differed.
In households with multiple sons, the younger brother took on the duty and went to war in place of the heir.
But in families lacking another man to send, the household head went himself.
For those whose heirs remained unmarried, there was no time to consider propriety or family status—they hastily arranged marriages, determined to secure offspring before deployment, lest their line die out.
After five long years of such wars, both Valkyter’s reign and the kingdom had finally stabilized—but eligible noble bachelors of marrying age had dwindled to near extinction.
The distress of noble young ladies unable to find husbands deepened with each passing day.
Some quickly turned their eyes abroad, marrying foreign nobles.
But once news of the kingdom’s wartime marriage market reached foreign lands, in this new era of peace, suitors began scrupulously reevaluating family prestige and wealth.
Daughters who had once sought young, attractive foreign noblemen gradually grew older, eventually accepting even wounded, less-ideal men.
Then, some families began taking in wealthy, well-established commoners—merchants or royal administrators—as sons-in-law, preferring them over impoverished nobles.
This sparked resentment among upper-class commoners, who—though not nobles—had built solid fortunes. They resented losing their top-tier eligible bachelors to nobles merely because of status.
On the men’s side, naturally, marrying into nobility meant their children would gain noble status, so such unions were calculated carefully. As planned commoner unions collapsed, it became commonplace to see marriage brokers brawling in the streets, pulling each other’s hair.
“I already said I didn’t want to marry abroad!”
Even looking overseas, Bianca detested the idea of an old, aged husband.
Queen Sylvia had borne only Valkyter and Bianca.
Her identical twin sister, Elise, had married into the House of Temnes and given birth to Kai An.
Though the sisters shared strikingly similar beauty, their styles of adornment and demeanor differed enough that no one confused them.
Yet both sons took strongly after their mothers—thus both Valkyter and Kai An were exceptionally handsome. Many even remarked how alike they looked, perhaps owing to their mothers’ twin bond.
In any case, since childhood, the only boys of her age Bianca had known closely were Valkyter and Kai An—so whenever presented with gentlemen of a suitable age range for marriage, she recoiled in disgust.
Even on the very day of her debutante ball.
That night, after returning from her debut, Bianca scrubbed her hands raw with soap, washing away the countless kisses from middle-aged gentlemen upon her knuckles, and resolved:
She would never marry anyone but Kai An.
One might think it excessive—after all, the kisses had been through gloves, not direct contact—but that was how deeply the state of Oberon’s marriage market had shocked her.
“Your future husband,”
Valkyter began,
“I plan to start searching for him now.”
“What did you say?”
Tears finally gathered at the corners of Bianca’s eyes.
“You gave away the kingdom’s finest groom—the one perfectly suited for me—to that worthless Vermonde! Are you mad? You’re only starting to look now?”
Elise, her mother’s only sister and thus her aunt, had been Duchess of Temnes—a formidable presence in her own right—so Bianca, though a princess of Oberon, shared the House of Temnes’ disdain for House Vermonde.
“Princess Bianca.”
Valkyter called her sharply, his voice low and stern.
“Do you truly believe your current behavior befits a princess?”
By addressing her with her formal title instead of her name, he signaled she shouldn’t presume upon their closeness.
“I wish you hadn’t doubted that I’d send my only sister to be a second wife to some aging noble. Now, withdraw.”
“…I shall obey the king’s will.”
Gritting her teeth, Bianca forced a bow and turned toward the door.
But her pure-hearted resolve shattered, she couldn’t help but cry out in fury:
“A royal marriage decree can be revoked by royal decree! If it’s not Kai An, I’ll die!”
The servants in the hallway, opening the door for her, froze like statues at her outburst, eyes darting nervously toward the king.
“Yet you lack even the courage to die.”
Valkyter set aside his reading, gazing emptily into space as he muttered coldly.
“It’s been about a month now, hasn’t it? Since he entered the tomb called marriage.”
Though he’d just pushed his same-age cousin off the cliff of matrimony, Valkyter himself remained unwed.
At his age, it was unprecedented for a king not to have taken a queen.
Royal heirs typically became betrothed by ages six or seven.
His prolonged bachelorhood had a specific reason:
He wanted a wife whom everyone—without exception—would deem superior to Kai An’s.
Kai An, surprisingly thick-headed, probably hadn’t realized it—but Valkyter had despised him since they were very young.
He hated being bound to a duke’s heir just because they shared twin princesses as mothers, and he loathed constantly being compared—“who’s better, who’s worse”—in every trivial matter.
Yet Kai An had been a useful piece on the board.
The House of Temnes was naturally prolific, with numerous collateral relatives.
Kai An likely believed that in such chaos, even if something befell him, the lineage could continue through a relative.
Perhaps he’d also been confident he’d return alive—but Valkyter found Kai An’s arrogance utterly repulsive.
That smug certainty of achieving everything exactly as he wished—Valkyter found it loathsome.
Thus he’d commanded Kai An to marry into House Vermonde.
He intended to bestow upon him the most dreadful marriage imaginable.
Valkyter’s eyes gleamed as he imagined the blood-red northern gales sweeping through Temnes, and he smiled beautifully.
“I wonder if next month I’ll get to witness something entertaining. I do hope it’ll be amusing.”
Male lead reborn without memories — but he still falls for her.
The person he finds displeasing in this life turns out to be his cherished wife-master in previous life…
Xie Zhi and Fang Xianxing who had known each other for less than three days through a blind date sat in the same car in front of the civil affairs bureau. They had a disagreement and failed to get married.
Xie Zhi immediately took out his phone, slid through his contacts, and randomly selected the next marriage candidate.
The woman snatched his phone and hung up. Looking at his phone wallpaper, she awkwardly changed the subject: “An ancient painting, eh? It looks pretty good, it’s just that the person in the painting looks a bit like me.”
When he heard this, he sarcastically mocked her for being so delusional, completely unaware that, the person in front of him was the reincarnation of Wen Ru, the famous prime minister of Yuan Shun whom he most admired…
The female CEO who doesn’t want to get married with a divorce agreement in hand × The male archaeological researcher who will only get married if he’s sure he can get divorced
Every time I see the FL, I feel like crying! Also, I laughed so hard when I learned about the emperor’s feelings for the ML; I expected their relationship to be brotherly. It’s funny how he hates him.