The Crown Prince’s Courtesan - Chapter 16

“Your Highness, what on earth are you thinking? I’d like to know too! Taking in a courtesan all of a sudden, and that woman of all people. She was the one who—”

“Silence.”

“Your Highness!”

“You think I don’t know who that woman is?”

Russell pressed his eyelids shut, the chamberlain’s nagging bordering on a scolding.

He was right. Of all people — her.

It had all happened in a moment of incomprehensible impulse.

“Chamberlain.”

“Yes, Your Highness. Say the word.”

Russell opened his eyes and met the worried expression the old man failed to hide. This was someone who had known everything Russell endured since childhood. And most within the Crown Prince’s court were bound to him by unwavering loyalty.

“What is she doing now?”

“…”

The chamberlain’s face turned cold.

“I’m told the head maid showed her to her room. Apparently, she arrived with such laughably light luggage it was almost absurd. What kind of woman even is she!”

She probably didn’t have anything to bring.

Russell could easily guess her thinking, but he offered no excuses on Marie’s behalf.

“Your Highness, what are your orders?”

Hearing that voice devoid of any kindness, Russell could already picture what Marie Alphrose would face.

That foolish Omega had no idea. She thought she had grasped salvation, but the hand she reached for was a trap dragging her straight into hell.

Curling his lips, Russell erased the image of Marie Alphose’s inappropriately clear eyes from his mind.

“Let her find no peace, neither in body nor in spirit.”

“Yes, understood.”

“And… make sure she doesn’t get any ideas above her station.”

“Of course! Leave it to me, Your Highness.”

Marie Alphrose. A broken dominant Omega.

That woman’s fate was quite tragic. She was the daughter of the enemy he had barely managed to track down. Or, more precisely, the accomplice of the enemy.

Ten years ago, the royal palace suffered a terrible tragedy, losing two of its most precious nobles.

The queen, who was deeply loved by the king, and the fiancée of the young crown prince, his cherished childhood friend, were both poisoned to death simultaneously.

The culprit was a long-serving chamberlain who had earned the palace’s trust, his wife, and finally their young daughter.

They searched desperately, but could never catch them. It was as if they had known this would happen, so the family had fled the capital early on.

At first, only the chamberlain was suspected, but various circumstantial evidence surfaced. There were witnesses.

It was absurd that the chamberlain had secretly brought his daughter into the palace without permission. The girl had even entered the queen and the prospective bride’s tea time.

Though there was a minor incident, the tea leaves the girl brought were eventually consumed without suspicion and entered their bodies.

Afterwards, neither their names nor their traces could be found.

Russell suffered greatly after that incident. He could do nothing but lose the two people he cherished most.

From that moment, he began to waver. Though he was an ultra-dominant Alpha who should have run a smooth path with no fear, he failed to properly release his powerful pheromones, and suffered from insomnia caused by the pheromone clumps.

That wasn’t all. The king fell ill, unable to attend to state affairs, and remained bedridden ever since.

If both the father and the heir collapsed like that, what would become of the kingdom?

Russell was dependent on all kinds of d***s.

He was disgusted. He had subsisted on nothing but vengeance and finally found the daughter of the chamberlain, the very enemy who had destroyed everything, living here in the capital.

‘Huh. What? The capital?’

At first, he was dumbfounded. He had assumed that the enemy he had been searching for had naturally fled far away to a foreign land, but never imagined she would be living openly, albeit under a new name, in the very capital of the kingdom.

The woman’s name was Marie Alphrose.

She was living quite boldly. Moreover, she was even enrolled in the Academy. Under the name of a fake noble.

‘I will not let this go.’

At first, he thought it was mockery directed at him.

Back then, the chamberlain’s daughter was ten years old. Old enough to remember things and know her name had been changed. Yet she came to the very Academy where the crown prince himself was studying?

What on earth could that possibly mean!

Naturally, he gritted his teeth and vowed to make her suffer hell. While he was writhing in pain like this, seeing her shamelessly confident face everywhere made his hatred unbearable.

That’s how it started.

But Russell never expected that brutal interest to last for as long as three years.