I’ve Become a S*ave Bride - Chapter 7
The next day, while working, Kazen suddenly recalled the events from the night before.
“…Don’t tell me… because of me…”
“Because of me?”
When Kazen mimicked the woman’s words, narrowing one eye, she seemed shocked, covering her mouth with her hand. Her gaze dropped. Kazen followed her gaze downward and saw the bloodstained cloth.
No way. Surely not.
Did she really think she was Kus’s prey, or that she had been captured after being attacked by him?
The thought crossed his mind, but honestly, there wasn’t any other explanation that made sense given the circumstances.
After that, no more words were exchanged between them. Only silence hung heavy in the air that night.
Still, the standoff—if one could call it that—with the northern woman didn’t last long.
From Kazen’s perspective, it was easier if she misunderstood him as Kus’s prey. So, he turned away, unconcerned with her flights of fancy.
Even so, the absurdity of it lingered.
“First time I’ve been mistaken for prey.”
With a small snort of laughter, Kazen reached out and stroked Kus, who lay beside him.
The panther’s fur was sleek, almost as if oiled, yet it didn’t feel greasy—just smooth. As he ran his fingers through it, he muttered,
“You even got your meal served, right?”
Myaa.
A soft, kitten-like cry came from Kus. In truth, that delicate sound—so unfitting for his size—was his actual voice, not a wild growl like grrrr or anything beastly.
“Lord Kazen.”
At the voice calling from beyond the curtain, Kazen stopped petting Kus.
“Come in.”
He was no longer in the ‘Pond Garden,’ known as the Abandoned Palace, but in a secret hideout he had built for himself.
This place had once been created by an unknown faction. Kazen had discovered it while purchasing a few homes for people like himself—victims.
On the surface, it looked like any ordinary house. But hidden beneath the floor was a door leading to an underground tunnel, and following that tunnel eventually brought him to this cave.
At first glance, the city where the Pond Garden was located seemed like just another town in the desert. But to the west of the city, instead of roads, there was nothing but a sheer cliff—and Kazen’s hideout cave was inside that cliff.
“Among the newcomers, there are a few midwives skilled in folk remedies, but unfortunately, no one with formal medical training.”
Kazen didn’t look surprised—he had expected this kind of report. If anything, he’d been more surprised last night when he saw that woman.
“As expected, they aren’t easy to find.”
Many things are necessary for people to live as humans: food, entertainment, love, money, shelter, friends, dreams, and happiness.
But in the desert, people say three things are absolutely essential for survival:
Clothing to block the blazing desert sun, water to quench your thirst, and a shelter to endure the frigid desert nights.
Then again, clothes? You can wrap yourself in a few strips of cloth. Water? It’s a hassle to go fetch it from the river, but it’s not that hard to find. Homes? There are plenty of abandoned ones on the outskirts.
So to Kazen, the most needed thing here wasn’t clothing, or food, or shelter.
It was a physician.
Someone who could treat festering wounds and soothe an aching stomach.
Kazen clicked his tongue as he listened to his subordinate recite the list of new recruits.
“Another blacksmith.”
Skilled artisans were highly valued everywhere, but unfortunately, more than half of those residing in the cliff cave were former blacksmiths.
‘It seems that the Shadows eliminate skilled workers to prevent future problems.’
‘The Shadow.’
The sworn enemy of Kazen and all those who lived in this refuge—and their only goal.
Whether it was a person or a group, male or female, old or young—no one knew.
Because they seemed to exist everywhere and yet nowhere, like a shadow, Kazen and the others called the figure simply “the Shadow.”
“What we need isn’t more blacksmiths—it’s someone trained in medicine…”
He wondered if they’d ever be able to recruit a proper physician before they managed to eliminate the Shadow.
And it was no wonder. Learning medicine itself was incredibly rare.
It was as difficult as wielding a sword like an extension of your own arm, and just as expensive. One had to bring a fortune to a master—enough to buy all sorts of jewels—to learn even the slightest bit of medical practice.
So those who learned decent medical skills were usually the illegitimate children of noble families—people with wealth but no honor.
The problem was whether such people would ever become targets of the Shadow. From Kazen’s perspective, the wealthy were not considered enemies of the Shadow. If anything, they were more likely to receive its favor.
In the end, the chance of a capable healer joining Kazen’s refuge seemed very slim.
“What a shame.”
Kazen rubbed his neck and shifted his posture. A dull ache spread from the skin near his lower abdomen.
“Is the wound bothering you?”
“I’m fine. It’s not fatal. Just keep looking for a physician. Someone properly trained, if there’s anyone willing to join us.”
“Yes, understood.”
☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓 ☪︎ ִ ࣪𖤐 𐦍 ☾𖤓
It had already been three days since Lenette arrived at the Abandoned Palace.
Her strength, once drained from being dragged around by slave traders, had quickly returned. Maybe that was why she woke unusually early that morning.
“Hoo…”
Her body still aches each time she rises from the hard bed she hadn’t yet gotten used to.
Lenette lightly turned her head from side to side, stretched, and let out a long breath. It was her daily morning routine. After completing that brief ritual, she rose from bed.
She had already decided the day before how she would spend today. But all those plans had been ruined after encountering that man at sunset.
“To actually eat a person…”
Lenette shook her head as the memory of the scene replayed in her mind.
“He was just a beast.”
The black panther, that is.
The man she saw last night had been injured. Having never hunted a beast before, she couldn’t speculate on how the wound was inflicted, but Lenette was no ordinary person. She had mastered more subjects than she hadn’t.
To make up for her lack of noble birth and prove her worth, she had pushed herself to master every craft and field of knowledge she could. One such pursuit had been ‘Divine Medicine’, a discipline that broke from the idea of “God’s will” and focused instead on studying the human body itself.
Because of that, Lenette could estimate the man’s wound even without a close look.
“For the amount of blood, he didn’t seem to have much trouble moving…”
Which meant it definitely wasn’t a penetrating wound. He had been cut by something sharp, but the injury wasn’t deep.
“But the thing is… this isn’t a battlefield.”
What kind of “aggressive being” could cause a wound that bloody in a place like this?
“It must have been… the Black Panther.”
Muttering to herself, Lenette headed to the partitioned-off sitting area and sat down on the sofa. With thick cushions laid on wood and a few extra pillows, it looked nothing like the sofas of the Ecaron Kingdom—but it still counted as one.
“Was he really just prey?”
A black panther and a wounded man trapped in its den…
The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like the only explanation was predator and prey.
Lenette leaned back and closed her eyes.
“…He was just a beast.”
The black panther was nothing more than a savage predator that didn’t choose its prey. Was that what made the people of this city so afraid of it?
“How terrifying must it be…”
That they’d offer up brides as sacrifices and even hand over a palace for it?
Lenette let out a small, incredulous laugh at the absurdity of the city’s customs—but then shook her head.
“I’m really in no position to talk.”
She was just as ridiculous as they were.
Honestly, when you think about it, a black panther that ‘eats humans’ is far more realistic than one that ‘turns into a human.’ So why had she believed—without a shred of doubt—that the panther was some mystical being that could transform?
All the slave trader had said was that her husband was a “monster,” and that was it. How did she leap to ‘that’ conclusion?
After a moment of reflection, she furrowed her brows.
“Well, I mean…”
It ‘was’ strange, after all. For just one panther, they’d carved artificial waterways all around a mansion in the middle of the desert.
With that kind of excessive treatment, it wasn’t ‘too’ far-fetched for her to think her so-called “beast husband” was something special.
Staring up at the ceiling adorned with intricate patterns, Lenette muttered softly,
“Anyway, my husband is just a Black Panther…”
Then she sat up straight again and brushed her fingers across her lips.
“…The wedding—surely that doesn’t ‘literally’ mean I’m going to be eaten, right?”
She knew it too. All of this, every word spilling from her lips, was nothing but absurd speculation.
But from the moment Ophelia had stolen her fiancé, Lenette’s life had already veered far outside the bounds of reality—becoming something like a cruel fairytale. So she couldn’t just dismiss these thoughts as simply “unrealistic.”
Wandering through her tangled thoughts, Lenette finally stood up.
“First things first—move.”
Sitting around thinking wasn’t going to give her any answers. In times like this, keeping busy was best.
As soon as she opened the door and stepped outside, she was met with the sight of a beautiful ‘altar’ made entirely of flower petals.
“……”
An altar in front of a living person’s room. It was utterly bizarre.
As she stared at the altar, speechless, she noticed the number of candles surrounding it. it.
‘Eight.’
Come to think of it, the slave traders had said something, hadn’t they?
“Including that woman, how many is it?”
“Seven? Or maybe eight?”
Their blurry, heat-haze-like voices echoed in her mind, and Lenette twisted her lips into a bitter smile.
“I wasn’t the eighth, you idiots—I was the ninth.”
