For Sale: Male Lead, Obsession Included - Chapter 155

To someone who didn’t know better, Feyden, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, might have looked like nothing more than a leisurely knight slacking off.

But Feyden was more focused than ever, all his senses sharpened to their limit.

It was because Estira was at a distance he couldn’t reach. If anything happened inside, no, before anything could happen, he intended to kick this door open and go in to protect Estira.

Feyden knew very well that it was an unwritten rule that even mortal enemies didn’t draw swords on each other inside a temple, but he didn’t let go of his tension.

Because.

The man named Declan had entered that space together with Estira.

He had only told Estira, using softened words, that ‘his eyes had gone crazy,’ but from what Feyden sensed, the man’s red eyes gleamed with madness, obsession, possessiveness, and things of that sort.

From a young age, Feyden had worked as a mercenary and had met more than enough greedy, bottom-of-the-barrel humans of every kind. He knew very well what those people’s eyes looked like.

Based on that experience, the man named Declan wasn’t a safe person. Even more so if he was someone backed by the absolute power and status of a Duke’s son.

He didn’t know why someone as high-ranking as a Young Duke was shooting that kind of gaze at an ordinary girl like Estira, but right now, Feyden was worried about Estira like mad.

Although Estira hit him on the arm every day, calling him overprotective and ridiculously doting, Feyden couldn’t help it.

Because he had been with Estira for a very long time, and as her only protector, protecting that young, innocent little kid had become his everything. It was a protective instinct embedded in his blood and flesh.

And because Estira had become someone precious to Feyden, precious enough to rival even Truu…

Feyden carefully swept over the movements inside. People were beginning to rise from their seats. Just as he was about to heighten his tension even further, he sensed approaching footsteps that he guessed belonged to Declan.

Feyden immediately opened the eyes he had closed and moved away from the door. As he pretended to stretch lazily so he could draw his sword at once if necessary, a knight wearing light armor approached him.

Feyden looked at him and raised one eyebrow.

‘Did he sense his master’s presence from all the way over there and come over?’

Even he had only been able to notice Declan approaching because he had been leaning against the door and concentrating, but the knight with the ducal house’s crest on his chest had walked steadily over from far away and stood before the door.

In the end, Feyden’s guess wasn’t wrong. When the door opened, that black-haired bastard came out, and the knight immediately held out what seemed to be his sword.

Without lowering his guard, Feyden looked back and forth between Declan and his knight.

It was the procedure for confirming each other’s skill that strong people had to go through the moment they met someone.

After grasping the two men’s abilities in that brief span, Feyden bit hard into the soft flesh inside his mouth.

‘This makes no sense.’

He could admit, grudgingly, that the knight in light armor was stronger. The seasoned look on his face and the traces of training in his hands were things he, who was much younger, couldn’t possess.

However. Still.

He didn’t want to admit that he was inferior to that black-haired bastard.

Surely… when he had met him in front of the inn a few years ago, he had been a skinny, pathetic beggar bastard who made him wonder if he could even hold a sword.

Yet the height now greater than his own, the solid body that could stand comparison with his, and the aura emanating from the man were clearly… above his own.

‘…If I go at him, I’ll lose.’

The fighting spirit that had risen against the bastard who dared to covet Estira curled its tail and ran away in an ugly display.

Had Declan noticed Feyden’s presence?

Declan, who had taken a few steps forward, turned his head slightly and looked at Feyden. After a brief meeting of eyes, Declan simply turned his head and walked forward.

“…F**k.”

Declan had said nothing and made no expression, but Feyden felt as if he had heard him laugh mockingly.

…He felt like he had been thrown face-first into the mud.

It was filthy and abysmally irritating.

* * *

Declan, who finished the baptism ceremony first, met Clovin waiting outside the temple and immediately climbed into the carriage.

As soon as he leaned back against the carriage seat, a long breath burst from Declan’s tightly closed lips. His shoulders, stiffened by tension, also drooped.

Sitting across from Declan, Clovin saw that absurd sight and let out a cold, hollow laugh.

“How…”

How could he get so nervous and make such a fuss over something so trivial?

Was seeing one woman really something to get that nervous about? This was a man who hadn’t even blinked when his identity was acknowledged before the Emperor, yet he was suffering like that just because he had briefly run into a commoner like Estira, and in an open space where everyone else was present too?

Clovin knew that Declan’s clasped hands were meant to hide their trembling, so he merely pushed up his glasses to hide the look of pity in his eyes.

‘I should thank the heavens he doesn’t show that unsightly state in front of others, I guess.’