I Tamed the Slave Male Lead Chapter 28

I sprang to my feet with an energetic expression, wanting to show him how determined I was.

“Come on, then. Shall we go?”

“Where are you suddenly planning to go?”

Yusiliph asked with a bewildered look.

“We should start preparing to rescue Alin. First, what we need to do today is go to the Imperial Academy and—”

“Wait.”

Yusiliph stepped in front of me as I hurried to leave. A deep vertical crease had formed between his brows, as though something about this was thoroughly displeasing to him.

“Hm…? What’s wrong? Oh, right. It’s because of your arm. Then I’ll go by myself today. Don’t worry.”

“It’s not about my arm. It’s about you. After running around all day yesterday and exhausting yourself like that, you’re saying you’re going out again this early in the morning?”

He raised his voice, leaving me bewildered enough to ask,

“But… isn’t rescuing Alin urgent for you?”

In the original story, Dorothea knew how to rescue Alin but hesitated, ultimately bringing about the tragedy of Alin’s death.

That part had been an incredibly frustrating stretch of the story, drawing endless complaints from readers, and it later became one of the reasons Yusiliph could never fully open his heart to her.

I intended to execute the rescue operation immediately so I wouldn’t repeat Dorothea’s mistake.

But… Why did Yusiliph look so flustered by my question?

“Of course… I want to go rescue her as soon as possible. However.”

“However?”

“At the very least, you should finish breakfast and get enough rest before leaving in the afternoon. I’ll tell the coachman to prepare the carriage in advance.”

“But…”

When I tilted my head in confusion, his expression hardened fiercely.

“After going through the trouble of keeping you alive by feeding you my blood, are you going to keep wasting your strength like this?”

“What? That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Yesterday, I put a blade to my own hand to save you. Right here.”

As he spoke, he held out his palm in front of my eyes.

His large hand, nearly twice the size of mine, had little to show besides calluses and thick palm lines.

But imagining him cutting into it himself made my chest turn cold.

And besides, hadn’t he suffered a severe injury yesterday, with nearly half of his arm being severed?

Suddenly, I remembered the plot of the original story.

Yusiliph repeatedly injured himself to save Dorothea.

The first few times, he did it while Dorothea was asleep, but eventually she witnessed it herself. Shocked, Dorothea refused to drink his blood afterward.

When I read that scene as a reader, I honestly couldn’t understand Dorothea’s feelings.

‘His wounds regenerate almost immediately anyway. Why did she have to refuse so vehemently?’

But when I faced Yusiliph’s warm body, with blood still flowing through it, standing right in front of me, I suddenly understood Dorothea’s feelings a hundred times over.

Not only that, but when I imagined the blood flowing from his hand into my mouth, an overwhelming sense of guilt came crashing over me along with the sorrow.

‘Come to think of it, it really is cruel. To heal someone else, he has to endure pain himself. Why is your fate so miserable, Yusiliph?’

“It must have hurt, Yusiliph.”

Without thinking, I reached out and took his hand.

I could feel the hot warmth of his palm stiffen beneath my touch.

Through our overlapping palms, his gaze intertwined with mine.

The moment I felt that gaze strangely hot, the peculiar sensation left behind by last night’s dream stirred once again in my stomach.

A ticklish heat shot up my spine and spread through my entire body in an instant, raising my body temperature.

Just as I became flustered by the sudden physical reaction and hurriedly tried to withdraw my hand, something astonishing happened.

Yusiliph interlaced his fingers tightly with mine, preventing my hand from escaping.

At the same time, a gaze even more intense and persistent than the strength of his firm grip ensnared me.

“So, employer.”

“…Yes?”

“From now on, you’d better not treat your body so carelessly.”

“My body… what? What are you saying…?”

I asked again, unable to believe what I had just heard.

Yusiliph’s face suddenly drew closer to mine, and his hot breath swept across my ear.

“I’m telling you to take care of your body. Because your body no longer belongs only to you.”

I froze.

Not simply because his words were shocking, but because what he had said didn’t feel unfamiliar at all.

I had clearly read those exact same words from him in the original story, without a single word or particle changed.

Although, back then, they had been directed at someone else.

‘Do you understand, Dorothea? I’m telling you to take care of your body. Because your body no longer belongs only to you.’

‘D-Don’t say things like that, Yusiliph.’

‘Why? Your body seems to know that fact quite well already.’

What scene had followed that?

Yusiliph had boldly reached out toward the tense, frozen Dorothea. He grabbed her by the nape and pulled her toward him, and then immediately gave her a wild, passionate kiss—

‘What on earth is going on? Why is Yusiliph saying the same thing to me that he said to Dorothea?’

This was one of the major scenes in the original story where the two of them shared their first kiss, so there was no way I had remembered it incorrectly.

‘It’s just… a coincidence, right?’

I tried desperately to convince myself of that, but the moment I met his eyes, the hair on my entire body stood on end.

‘Why? Yusiliph, why are you looking at me like that?’

Was it just my imagination that the sticky atmosphere and intense gaze from the moment of their first kiss in the original story seemed to be unfolding exactly as I remembered, right before my eyes?

“Yusiliph, you…”

Unable to figure out what to do, I stammered like an idiot.

His lava-dark, crimson gaze clung to me as though demanding an answer.

“Answer me, employer.”

“What exactly do you mean by saying something like that?”

I finally came to my senses and tried to move as far away from him as possible.

But because Yusiliph’s hand was still intertwined with mine like the roots of a tree, I ultimately failed to escape his gaze.

I couldn’t decipher what his stare meant as he looked at my face, which had turned bright red.

No, right now, I couldn’t even bring myself to look him straight in the eye.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that the two of them had kissed immediately after this moment in the original story.

What if Yusiliph kissed me right now?

What if he showered me with a kiss as intense and relentless as the one he had given Dorothea in the original story, a kiss so deep that it would make me lose my mind?

Even amid my confusion, the moment I imagined it, a dizzying sense of forbidden excitement surged through me.

‘I’m finally going crazy.’

This is all your fault for being so damn handsome, Yusiliph.

I glared at him with that reproachful thought in my eyes, and he opened his mouth again.

“What do you mean, what do I mean? My blood has entered your body, so at least that much of you belongs to me. Am I wrong?”

“Ah… that.”

That’s what you meant?

At once, the awkwardness disappeared, and all the tension drained from my body.

“So I’m telling you not to treat that body carelessly. Pouring my blood into a body that is going to die soon feels like an excessively pointless thing to do.”

With those words, he released my hand and strode away.

His movements were just as swift and unrestrained as when he had approached me.

‘Is this what it feels like to be bewitched by a fox?’

Yusiliph casually met my dazed gaze, which had gone completely limp, and said,

“I’ll come back this afternoon, so get plenty of rest until then.”

“……”

“Then I’ll be going.”

Having said everything he needed to say, he left the room with his usual cold expression, as though his business here was completely finished.