“I want to sleep together every day.”

“…What?”

Kaian let out a dumbfounded sound.

Claude clung to him with a desperate heart.

Insomnia is something that cannot be understood by those who have never experienced it.

The premonition that she wouldn’t be able to sleep tomorrow after not being able to sleep yesterday or today sapped her vitality and gnawed at her body.

It felt as if the brain in her head had become a dry lump of bread, unable to function properly.

After shedding the agony and fear of death given by Herzol, the insomnia that came as if it was its turn made Claude feel drained.

“Tonight. Can’t you come to my bedroom?”

On the one hand, she still felt pathetic about her situation.

Kaian was the enemy of her family.

It wasn’t that she didn’t feel any aversion to Temnes, which had been ingrained in her like brainwashing for a long time.

However, the man from the enemy family who held the power of life and death over Claude didn’t seem to want to let her die, and didn’t seem to welcome the death she would face.

Although he wasn’t satisfied, it seemed he wouldn’t treat her as anything but a wife.

If there was even a little hope, she had no choice but to ask him like this.

Until Kaian got her the elixir and made her drink it, until Herzol was cured, Claude didn’t know how severe her insomnia was.

When her insomnia first started, she was only ten years old.

She was still young and didn’t know much, and rather than focusing on the seriousness of insomnia, the aftermath of the event that caused it was greater.

Because the comfortable home that raised her disappeared overnight.

Her father’s death, which came before she could understand her mother’s absence, made her feel lost and afraid.

Insomnia stemmed from those emotions, and it was hard enough just to digest and endure that sadness, and because it didn’t matter if she could sleep with Hannah, she forgot that she had insomnia for years until she came to Lowen Castle like this.

However, when the symptoms of insomnia returned after being absent for a while due to Herzol’s treatment, it was different from before and drove her crazy.

It had only been a few days without sleep, but it felt like a monster was tearing apart her brain while she was still alive, and her consciousness gradually became hazy.

The fact that she still met with the doctor and continued to have meals with Kaian was probably due to the anxiety of being thrown into the middle of enemy territory, surrounded by Temnes.

However, the intense tension harmoniously tormented her with the physical and mental exhaustion caused by insomnia, causing her to doze off like a narcolepsy patient during meals like this.

“If you don’t mind. Please?”

Kaian seemed surprised, but soon picked her up and laid her on the bed.

“We should stop eating.”

“…Will you come?”

“I will.”

Only then did Claude feel relieved.

There was no reason for Kaian to break his promise if he said he would.

“I’ll be waiting.”

Claude smiled as she watched Kaian heading out of the bedroom.

‘I’ll be able to sleep tonight.’

Now that there was hope, it seemed she could somehow endure her painfully aching head until the sun set.

After leaving Claude’s bedroom, Kaian headed to his own bedroom.

The butler, who had been waiting outside the bedroom for his meal to end, hurriedly followed him.

“Aren’t you going to the office?”

Kaian coldly ordered with a hardened face.

“Cancel the afternoon schedule.”

“No. Why so suddenly?”

The butler was flustered.

“There’s training for the elite knights this afternoon. After that, there’s a separate gathering prepared to commend those you took on the buffalo hunt before.”

Moreover, the schedule Kaian ordered to cancel was one he had paid special attention to.

The knights who were suddenly dispatched to obtain Claude’s medicine were Kaian’s elite subordinates.

They were the ones who would die if Kaian told them to die, or jump into fire or water if he told them to, with such loyalty.

Even such people were saying, ‘Was I dragged here to get medicine for that Vermonte woman?’

If Kaian, as the head of Temnes, hated Vermonte the most in the family, it was natural for the elite knight group, which was the main force preparing for the territorial war helping such a lord, to go wild at just hearing the name Vermonte.

What they had thought ‘Surely I’m not doing this to get medicine to save Vermonte’ became a fait accompli.

The marriage to Claude was according to the king’s order, so it was already done and couldn’t be helped.

All the Temnes family relatives and vassals would have expected Vermonte to be coldly treated and miserably driven out of Lowen land.

Kaian had no thoughts of divorcing her or anything like that for now.

At first, he felt displeased and even humiliated that he was forced to marry for reconciliation with Vermonte.

But that was before he knew Claude.

Not that he knows her well now either.

Was spending the night together, the act of man and woman in the darkness, special enough to make one forget years of resentment?

He thought he couldn’t let Claude die.

He could have disposed of Vermonte’s bloodline without getting a single drop of blood on his hands. He could have just pushed the enemy into the open jaws of disease, but he couldn’t do that to her.

Although Kaian himself couldn’t understand the reason well, he thought it was because Claude was too insignificant and weak.

The cunning Vermonte.

The terrible clan that butchers people with their three-inch tongues.

Because Claude didn’t have any of those aspects he had been cursing.

Anyway, as he had hurt the pride of the loyal servants of Temnes by trying to save her, as the head of the family, he needed to commend them and remind the people in the family that Claude was his wife, so Kaian had prepared for today’s event, checking with the butler several times.

Already for days, the castle kitchen had been bustling with preparations for the feast to be held after today’s training, slaughtering pigs to make sausages from the intestines and preparing alcohol.

“Hmm.”

The breath he let out between his lips felt hot enough to burn.

His heart was pounding as if he had just run a long distance without rest from somewhere.

“Tell them to wait for an hour. No, thirty minutes.”

“Then now…”

Kaian went into the bedroom and slammed the door shut.

His hands felt like they were trembling and sweating.

He roughly started to take off his clothes and headed straight to the bathroom.

Swoosh.

Cold water poured out as he turned on the tap.

Kaian put his head under it and got drenched.

He heard the woman’s breathing like an auditory hallucination.

‘Hnngh.’

The phantom of the slender arms that climbed over Kaian’s shoulders when he took Claude coiled around his consciousness like a snake trying to curl up.

‘Ugh. Ungh.’

While he was in ecstasy, she made moaning sounds as if barely enduring the invasion. But each time, it was Kaian who felt like he was being devoured by Claude.

“What on earth was she thinking saying such a thing?”

‘I want to sleep together every day,’ she said.

That was exactly what Kaian wanted, but he had been pretending not to know his own desire all along.

Because it was shocking even to himself that he had slept with a woman who was struggling for her life without knowing.

‘This is really too much! How could you, the lord who was closest to her, not have known until the madam was in such a sickly state!’

‘How could you not know when she has become so weak that there’s not a single bit of flesh on her body.’

When the doctor reproached him without fear, he thought, ‘How am I supposed to know that?’ But if he had been more attentive, if he had shown interest, it was something he should have known.

It might have been his first time with a woman’s body, but it wasn’t his first time with a human body.

Although it might not be a fair comparison, he had lived a life where he would strip naked and bathe together with well-built, muscular men regardless of status.

Even if she was a woman.

Such an emaciated state must have meant there was a problem, but Kaian thought he had done his duty by being careful and cautious when pressing down on the woman beneath him, afraid she might break.

After that, even as he saw Claude gaining weight and recovering her vitality unlike before, he didn’t know when would be appropriate.

On the other hand, he was also hesitant, wondering if she might see him as a terrible perpetrator.

He had thought the night he spent with her was amazing, but he wondered if Claude might consider it as shame, disgrace, and on top of that, unparalleled pain.

Raping a woman was something only lowlifes who didn’t know gentlemanly manners and chivalry would do.

Kaian was not unaware that there were some nobles with bad tastes who deliberately did such things, but he was absolutely not one of them.

Having grown up ascetically like a priest under the strict education and discipline of the previous head of the family, he was raised to act in a way that would not bring shame to his position as the Duke of Temnes, the Lord of Lowen, and as the son of a princess.

But no matter how much of a Vermonte she was, he had not the slightest intention of assaulting Claude, so as he mulled over what had happened while she was unconscious, he felt both gloomy and frustrated about what to do next.

Earlier, when Claude didn’t eat the dessert he was trying to feed her, he was puzzled, and then she suddenly collapsed, dropping the fork she was holding.

Catching her with his body was a reflexive action.

A fresh, tangy, and pleasant scent stimulated his nose as soon as he held her.

Just that alone almost made Kaian lose his mind, but he calmly tried to wake the unconscious woman by patting her cheek.

‘Tonight. Can’t you come to my bedroom?’

Who would have imagined that those would be the words she’d say as soon as she opened her eyes.

Her moist golden eyes were transparent and beautiful, like the dense part of amber embedded in them.

The words whispered faintly by the shy woman lingered in his ears.

“Damn it.”

He could go to the bedroom right now.

If only it weren’t for those elite knights.

Those bastards who always praised ‘My lord, my lord, our lord is the best’ had so much to say when told to follow a buffalo’s neck. Men.

Kaian cooled his unfounded anger and unabated body temperature with cold water for a long time.

He couldn’t even remember how the feast he had prepared for days ended.

When the dark-skinned men were drinking and making merry, his consciousness was already standing in front of Claude’s door.

When he finally reached the familiar door, Kaian’s heart even fluttered.

As he opened the bedroom door, Claude, who was sitting on the bed, brightened up and welcomed him.

“You came?”

To think she would wait for him and even welcome him.

“I didn’t think you’d really come. Thank you.”

Thank you? I should be the one thanking you.

The beast that had been suppressed inside Kaian was raging, begging to be released.

“I have severe insomnia, so I can’t sleep alone. I haven’t been able to sleep at all until now.”

“…Insomnia?”