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Chapter 64: She Did Not Have the Strength to Protect Love
“Dear… just a moment…”
“I like how that sounds. Keep calling me that.”
He smiled. Lara bit her lip. At last, he pressed through the narrow entrance and entered her. The tight sensation made her body tremble. Lara tilted her head back, struggling to steady her ragged breathing.
It felt as though she were hanging upside down. Holding her deeply arched body, Alec kissed her chest. Her breasts, now fuller than before, were swelling. The smooth, pale skin of her chest drove him to madness. Her slender waistline and the gentle curve of her stomach beneath it were nothing short of a masterpiece.
“You’re beautiful.”
“Ah… hnn…”
Alec, who had buried himself deep within her, exhaled a trembling breath and began to move his hips. Tears streamed from Lara’s eyes, and Alec leaned in to catch them with his tongue.
Lara clawed at his chest in desperation. But the man, consumed by lust, seemed to find even her resistance arousing, pressing into her with even more force.
“Ah! Hah… nnngh!”
Suppressed cries spilled uncontrollably from her lips. Alec clung to her body with a crazed expression, as if her presence alone could drive him mad. He was a massive man, towering nearly 40 centimeters over her. A giant, in every sense of the word.
The sight of such a large man groaning and pushing himself into her was unbearable for Lara. There was none of the pleasure she had once known.
As he hoisted her legs over his shoulders and kissed her calves, a bitter thought crossed Lara’s mind.
“He must have moved his hips like this with Valerie too.”
Revulsion swept over her, leaving her mind blank. Her thoughts were consumed by images of Eilek and Valerie tangled together, writhing in passion.
This was the same man who had been with the woman who had ruined her child. And yet, here he was, whispering that no one but her would do. The absurdity of it made her laugh bitterly.
How could he ask to start over after that vile act? Lara couldn’t accept it. If she were in his position, she would feel the same. Under no circumstance could she bring herself to lie with the man who had ruined her child.
To carry the seed of a man who had betrayed her—that alone was unbearable. Knowing what that act meant to Alec only made it worse.
Perhaps that’s why she couldn’t do it. She wasn’t born noble enough to sacrifice herself for a greater cause. But it didn’t matter.
Since the day Valerie had sent her the sheets—meant to prove there had been no deception in their night together—Alec had always been the same kind of man to her.
“Ah… Lara,”
Alec’s face twisted with pleasure as he looked down at her cold expression. He moaned as if exclaiming his delight, then leaned down to kiss the woman glaring up at him with tear-filled eyes. At that moment, her hand lashed out, striking his face hard.
“Disgusting.”
“Lara…”
“Do you remember? The night you set up a bridal chamber with Valerie?”
Alec’s face, previously twisted in rapture, was overtaken by fear. He looked as though he might shatter and crumble to the ground. Yet even as she witnessed his terror, Lara felt no satisfaction.
Because she knew she could avenge herself against Valerie but not against Alec. His way of being… the life he had led… Lara could not bring herself to condemn it.
The two other empresses aside from her, the young women in the gardens… Every ball night, these women would wear suggestive dresses, flaunting their sensual figures, and linger around him, hoping to spend a night in his embrace.
It was not the path he had wanted to live. While it might be in a man’s nature not to refuse a woman who comes to him, Lara knew Alec.
Alec was a man loyal to one woman. He wasn’t the type to go from one woman to another, noisily indulging his desires under the guise of finding someone to warm his nights.
If he had sought to elevate a woman to support him as empress, he wouldn’t have deliberately brought Gladys into his life. Nor would he have filled the garden with naïve women to provoke the empresses.
The cause of this situation was Lara. The reason he had lived such a life was because he had taken her as his empress. If only Lara had been born as the daughter of a powerful family.
If she had been able to play the role of a proper support for him, he wouldn’t have had to agonize over impregnating one woman after another.
But because Lara was nothing, because she had been of no help to him, he had likely taken in two other women as empresses just to protect her—a woman who was little more than a burden. And yet, despite knowing all this, Lara couldn’t forgive him.
“After tonight, we’ll be fine.”
He knelt before her, clasping her trembling hands in his. Lara couldn’t stop him. She wanted to hold onto him, but she couldn’t think of a reason why. Around that time, Lara had been diagnosed by the palace physician as unable to have any more children.
She could no longer bear children, and the child she had given birth to would live a life as a simpleton. Even as he grew into his twenties and thirties, the child would remain mentally a seven-year-old forever.
She had her suspicions about who had caused her child to become like this. She also knew who would benefit from her child’s misfortune.
Alec must have known as well. Even if there was no concrete evidence to dismantle Oppreese, the suspicion was clear. Yet despite knowing this, Alec had tried to embrace Valerie.
Couldn’t he have embraced another woman instead? Why her? Why that woman, of all people? She was the one who had destroyed their child…. Lara felt like she would die from the torment. It was even worse than the emptiness she had felt after losing her first child.
“For you, I can become anything, Lara.”
The man, clasping her hands desperately, whispered to her. His eyes, sharp and unyielding like polished steel, glistened with moisture.
Alec insisted it was all for her. That he could do anything to protect her and their child. That he didn’t even hesitate to reduce himself to nothing more than a stud horse if it was necessary.
He kissed the back of her hand deeply before standing up. Lara sobbed uncontrollably, her face a mess. Alec embraced her one last time. Lara clung to his neck, not wanting to let him go.
She wanted to scream that she wouldn’t let him go. That she couldn’t bear the thought of him climbing on top of that woman, caressing her chest, and settling himself between her legs just as he had done with Lara so many times before.
Thinking of him pouring his affection into that woman, as he once had with her, made her want to slit her throat.
“Just wait a little longer.”
Alec whispered, kissing her earlobe. Lara swallowed back the words begging him not to go. Alec’s face was as twisted with anguish as hers.
He was crying too. Lara let her arms fall from his neck and sat there, staring up at him in silence.
“I’m sorry.”
His lips barely moved as he mouthed the words. Alec looked down at her with the expression of a man who had lost the world. Lara turned her gaze away, contemplating who truly needed forgiveness in this situation. She thought of the man before her, his eyes like those of a beast moments before slaughter.
This was a man who had lost two children. He wouldn’t have wanted to hold the woman who had plotted against his sons. The reason he was fighting so hard was to protect Lara.
By contrast, it meant that Lara had no strength of her own.
“I’m sorry, my love….”
Lara whispered once more, then completely turned her head away from him. She didn’t have the strength to protect love. She didn’t have the strength to protect herself or her family.
So… she had no choice but to stay still. To silently watch what he had to do.
“I was thinking about that time.”
“….”
“That night… after you left that night… I couldn’t sleep. I thought I had fallen asleep, but when I came to, I found myself stabbing my wrist with scissors.”
Unable to endure it sober, she had sipped on liqueur. She thought she had fallen asleep, but when she regained consciousness, blood was flowing from her wrist. It was long before dawn.
“Even with the blood flowing, all I could think about was you. Alec. What you were doing with that woman. Could it be… were you really embracing her?”
“….”
“What words might she have been whispering into your ear? Were you panting as you touched her, the way you once touched me? Even with the blood pouring endlessly, that was all I could think about. So, my love, I… I wanted to die.”
It was something she had never confessed before. What she had done that night, what she had thought about as she waited for dawn to break. Even when Lady Rosyen had found her and clutched her wrist in trembling shock, she had felt like she was floating in a dream.
She thought that if she could maintain such a foggy consciousness, she might truly die. She hadn’t even thought about caring for her ailing son. She had no will to go on living. Just… just….
Her eyes burned. Lara swallowed dryly, staring at Alec as memories of her life flooded back.
“Your Majesty.”
The only person who had shown her any sympathy was Lady Rosyen. After calling the palace physician to treat Lara’s wrist, she made sure to silence the maids. The imperial palace was no place where showing such vulnerability would do any good.
Unless Lara had been admired and adored by the nobles as Valerie had been, it would only bring scorn. Lara was a woman who drew contempt from everyone, regardless of their status, simply because she existed within the imperial palace.
If word got out that such a woman had attempted self-harm, it would only invite further ridicule. Moreover, the fact that she had harmed herself on the night the emperor went to the second empress’s bedchamber would be met with even more mockery.
Lady Rosyen had sat Lara down on the bed, fed her medicine, and bandaged her wrist. Lara fell ill for a week. When Alec returned and tried to visit her in the bedroom, Lady Rosyen fought desperately to keep him out. Lara, in her wounded pride, meeting him in such a state would have been disastrous.
Even after recovering from a week of high fever, Lara didn’t see him until ten days later. During that time, Valerie had sent her the blood-stained sheets from the consummation night as a cruel message.
Lady Rosyen had gnashed her teeth in rage, but Lara lacked even the strength to be angry. Her fever had been caused by those sheets.
“Truly, truly….”
Her blood ran cold. Lara, with a tearless face, reached for the sheets and thought about Alec. She even entertained the idea that he might have injured himself and caused the blood.
If she was so curious, if she really needed to know, she could have asked Alec directly if he had slept with that woman that night. But she didn’t have the courage.
She didn’t want to hear it from his own lips. Lara clung to the belief, for her survival, that he hadn’t spent the night with Valerie. She told herself that Valerie had sent those sheets precisely because nothing had happened between them.
Even though she knew deep down that this was unlikely, she clung to that belief. She didn’t want to die. She wanted to live, so she kept adding to her delusions.
That Alec would never do such a thing with anyone but her. That he loved no one but her. But….
“Your Majesty, the Second Empress is pregnant.”
Not long after, everything fell apart. It was the day she had finally faced him again after much hesitation.
Alec did his best to soothe her wounded heart. He showered her with gifts: daffodils and emerald tiaras crafted from gold and pearls, exotic garden plants, and vibrant parrots. He even gave her a beautiful, smooth-furred cat. He tried to recreate their former life, building a small cabin for them to spend evenings in, reminiscent of their time in Lorange.
He visited their son, Loras, daily, showing himself as a devoted father. Then, over a month later….