“M-money—I’ll give you as much money as you want, so please put that knife away.”
“Money? Ha, do you take me for someone who wants mere trash like that? Is that kind of thing more important than my child?”
Melissa had thought she was ready to kill someone if it meant protecting Shushu, but actually holding the knife made her hands tremble violently.
Using her free hand to grip her shaking wrist, she kept the blade firmly pressed against Joseph’s stomach.
“Hk! Watch it! You’re going to actually stab me at this rate!”
“I heard there is a medicine that can allow someone to manifest as a true-blood.”
Such medicines did exist.
The awakening potions popular among the aristocracy varied slightly in their specific ingredients, but their core components were largely the same.
They contained herbs designed to stimulate the pheromone glands.
Not all aristocrats were created equal.
There was the imperial family—where only dominant types were born—and the Vesper family, a collateral branch of the imperial house, followed hierarchically by marquises, counts, viscounts, and barons.
The higher the noble rank, the greater the proportion of dominant traits born among them, leading aristocrats to deeply yearn for dominant traits.
Naturally, noble families prone exclusively to recessive traits provided every possible form of support to ensure their children manifested with dominant traits.
Thus, ‘Awakening Potions’ were developed to fulfill the wishes of countless noble parents.
However, no one could guarantee whether they actually worked or not.
Some people took awakening potions and successfully manifested as true-bloods, while others—despite being born to noble families that would naturally have manifested as true-bloods even if left alone—failed to manifest entirely and ended up as betas instead.
Consequently, awakening potions were treated as cheap shams; anyone taking them would become the butt of mockery, so families administered them to their children in absolute secrecy.
“How on earth am I supposed to get an awakening potion? Talk some sense.”
Given that she knew of the existence of awakening potions—something an ordinary commoner could never possibly know—Joseph assumed the fake Damian’s mother must be a servant who had worked in noble households for a long time.
“How are you going to explain the fact that Shushu is a beta? Does it make any sense for someone carrying the great blood of Vesper to be a beta? If things are left as they are, his faked identity will be exposed. When that happens, you, Lady Meiyue, and I will all die together.”
“Hey, seriously. Why are you doing this to me? I was just following orders, you know.”
Angered by Joseph’s unfair-sounding attitude, Melissa snapped, “Is that so? Then die,” and moved to swing the knife.
“Wait! Wait! I’ll somehow speak to Lady Meiyue about it! It’s an astronomically expensive medicine, so I can’t acquire it on my own authority!”
“If you dare to procure some bogus fake medicine… the moment my child comes to harm from taking it, I’ll cut open your belly and tear your guts out piece by piece.”
Tucking the knife away into her apron, Melissa looked down at Joseph, who had collapsed onto the ground in sheer terror.
“Contact me once you’ve got the medicine.”
The moment she left, Joseph exhaled the breath he had been holding in ragged gasps.
“Hah… hah… Insane. Why on earth are all the women around me this terrifying?”
Regardless, if he failed to secure the awakening potion, that crazy woman really looked like she would kill him.
Scrambling to his feet, Joseph ran off to report the situation to Meiyue.
Naturally, he expected that her foul temper would lead her to track down the mother who had come chasing after her child and murder her on the spot.
Instead, she just laughed uproariously in his face.
“You pathetic piece of trash. You came scurrying over to snitch to me just because some woman threatened you?”
Joseph’s face burned bright red with humiliation.
Deciding she wanted to go take a look at that bitch’s face for herself, Meiyue went to find the fake Damian.
However, Callix—who had grown remarkably close to the child while teaching him letters—flatly blocked her visit.
“Ha? Ridiculous. Does he even know what it is he’s doting on?”
Ultimately forced to turn back without catching even a single strand of the fake’s hair, she bit her fingernails in boiling irritation.
She wanted to kill Callix for utterly ignoring her.
As she pondered how to crush that handsome face of his into a miserable mess, a brilliant idea struck her.
Seeking permission from the Grand Duke, she headed back to her main family estate.
The special power possessed by Count Bastian was the ability to manufacture ‘potions’ infused with special magic.
Unfortunately, she had inherited her fire abilities from her maternal line.
Meiyue sought out her father to ask for ‘that medicine’—the very potion that had turned her into a dominant omega.
“What on earth are you planning to use an awakening potion for?”
Hearing his daughter’s explanation, the Count cursed her as a crazy bitch and flew into a furious rage.
“Have you truly resolved to ruin this family?”
“Father, don’t worry. I’ve set up a flawless fake, and since that fake is a commoner, I need the awakening potion to turn him into a ‘real aristocrat’.”
Puffing out heavy breaths, the Count’s anger subsided slightly as he asked back, “…Did you take care of the real one properly?”
“Yes, he was reduced to a simpleton and a cripple, so he probably hasn’t the slightest clue who he even is anymore. Besides, I sold him off as a slave to the Solemio Empire, so there’s zero chance he’ll ever make it back to the ducal castle.”
“Well done,” the Count praised his daughter for her clean execution. Like father, like daughter.
“Oh right, when you make the awakening potion, please make sure it manifests him as a dominant omega. I want that child to grow up extremely, extremely beautiful.”
“Why go that far?”
“Well, if a mere commoner is going to pass for a child of the great Vesper house, he at least needs to be beautiful.”
It was a bizarre logic, but because the Count doted on his daughter after a fashion, he agreed to grant her request.
However, he warned her that he had only ever successfully brewed an awakening potion into a dominant omega once before, so he wasn’t confident.
“It seems like it will take a long time. I don’t know how many years it might take.”
“That’s fine. I’ll wait.”
Meiyue stood up, telling him to contact her once the awakening potion was completed.
Seeing his daughter eager to leave almost the moment she arrived after such a long time away, her father launched into a final round of nagging.
“By the way, it’s been ages since the Grand Duke returned to the North, yet there’s still no news of a pregnancy.”
“You need to sow seeds for sprouts to grow, you know. Do you think I like being left neglected like this?”
Tossing aside his complaints, the Count handed a wooden box filled to the brim with newly crafted aphrodisiacs to his thoroughly annoyed daughter.
“Take these. No matter how formidable an impotent bastard he is, he’s bound to rise eventually. You must conceive and place your child as the heir. Understand?”
She carefully packed away the wooden box given by her father.
Having previously used these substances to bend all the alphas within the castle to her will while the Grand Duke was away at war, she knew their efficacy was guaranteed.
Recalling her passionate trysts with countless alphas, Meiyue fluttered her red, feather-trimmed fan to cool the burning heat rising within her.
Her father had claimed these potions weren’t addictive, but she had reached a point where she couldn’t live without them.
Hence, she believed more than anyone else that her plan could not possibly fail.
