Duke of the Beast and the Vicarious Bride - Chapter 85

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※ This work contains depictions of coercive relationships, explicit language, and other graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.

What did they know of Caligo, to judge him so? Did they know he possessed a name—not some derogatory epithet, but a name he clearly recognized? Did they know he was learning to speak, however clumsily, that he was capable of communion with another being?

Whatever Caligo’s nature, Fiona was certain he possessed a human heart.

And the one who breathed with him, who joined her flesh with his night after night, stood here before them.

“If he is a monster…”

She was his family.

“Then what in hell am I?”

The words tore from her, rage finding voice in coarse language.

The soldier startled at her sudden fury, but such things no longer mattered.

The treatment Caligo received here was more brutal than Fiona had ever imagined. Even if one insisted on viewing him as a beast, this was cruelty beyond measure.

He offered no resistance, did not struggle or rage—yet they led him leashed like a dog. Caligo followed the soldiers docilely, as though he were an object devoid of will.

The sight made her blood boil. Yet she wavered, uncertain how to respond to this situation.

Then, suddenly—

Caligo, who had been walking as though pulled along, devoid of any apparent selfhood, came to a halt.

As though sensing someone watching him, his vacant eyes flickered with life. He looked around.

Fiona’s heart plummeted—now for an entirely different reason.

Surely he had not noticed her watching?

“What’s this bastard doing, stopping now? Get moving!”

But even a moment’s hesitation was apparently not permitted Caligo. The soldiers shouted and yanked roughly at the halted man, but the great figure did not stir.

One soldier, his temper flaring at this unexpected defiance, raised a whip and brought it down again and again upon Caligo’s broad back.

Yet Caligo, before this merciless violence, stood motionless. He took the blows. He did not move.

Witnessing this, Fiona’s heart crumbled within her.

Only now did she truly understand the meaning of the word “beast”—the word she had thought Jayden used only as disparagement.

It was a declaration of will: to refuse utterly to acknowledge the humanity that undeniably existed in Caligo, to trample and tame his fragile sense of self, to abuse and use him as they pleased.

Such arrogance. Such presumption.

To Fiona, who had already recognized Caligo as a person, as one whose fate was deeply entwined with her own, Jayden’s intent filled her with a cold fury.

Because—

The one standing in that place might as well have been Rose.

By his own arbitrary standard—calling something human when it suited him, beast when it did not—Jayden conducted himself as though he were some omnipotent being. His arrogance had become utterly unbearable.

“H-hey! You cannot go that way!”

The moment the thought crossed her mind, Fiona rushed forward without a second thought, toward where Caligo stood.

At her sudden, reckless movement, the young soldier beside her called out in dismay, trying to stop her. But he could not hold her back.

She covered the distance in an instant, as though possessed by some unknown strength. A fierce wind rushed toward her from the front. The hood she had pulled so low was thrown back, and her red hair spilled forth, streaming in the wind.

In that same instant, her foot caught on a stone. Her body pitched forward. She fell hard, tumbling across the ground, but Fiona scrambled to her feet at once.

Now Caligo’s face was turned directly toward her. Only a few steps remained between them when, at last, their eyes met in the air between.

It was the first time she had looked into her husband’s eyes.

Her heart pounded as though it might burst. Fiona stood frozen, unable to move, held fast by that golden gaze fixed upon her.

“Fiona.”

Then, suddenly, he spoke. Caligo looked into her eyes and spoke her name without a trace of doubt.

Just as Fiona had known him the moment she first saw him, Caligo had recognized her. To hear, at last, before her very eyes, the voice that had always come to her from the darkness—it stirred something within her beyond words.

In the morning light, her husband’s eyes were golden, shining more purely than any precious metal.