For My Birthday, I Was Gifted Five Husbands - Chapter 82
“Your feet get tangled because you don’t trust the lead partner.”
“…”
“Why can’t you trust us after you’ve already done everything? Even the one in front of you.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust—”
That statement was hard to argue with. They had already slept together once, and in a contractual relationship, there had to be some degree of trust, right?
But Eugenie couldn’t argue back. No matter how annoying the other person was, she couldn’t deny it… She could be shameless, but lying wasn’t her strong suit.
So, she chose the easier path: change the subject and escape.
“…Forget it, I’m just made like this when it comes to dancing.”
“Hah.”
“So, you’ve never danced with me in school, right? I guess you didn’t want me to step on your feet.”
“…Well.”
Magnus answered vaguely, but his sharp gaze moved over Eugenie’s shoulder.
Where his gaze landed, Carter Livingston stood, arms crossed, looking on casually. But somehow, his expression made it seem as though he could shoot Magnus without a second thought if he had a gun in his hand. He looked like the gatekeeper of hell.
Somehow feeling amused, Magnus chuckled softly near her ear.
“If I knew it would end up like this, I might’ve asked once.”
If he had realized his feelings a bit sooner, he might have asked every year, but…
However, if Eugenie Norton ran away, he wasn’t quite ready to answer so honestly.
Eugenie didn’t bother replying, and instead chewed on her inner cheek, her mouth heating up unnecessarily.
‘I’ll have to tell him not to whisper again.’
She was already overheating from dancing five times, and his deep voice wasn’t helping her temperature control.
Eugenie glanced over the high seats in the banquet hall and frowned. Just before, she had seen Tristan suddenly get up and walk inside. And just before that…
‘Has Tristan been staring at me?’
* * *
Despite it being his own birthday, the Crown Prince spent most of the time sitting in the honored seat, staring intently at one person. When his patience reached its limit, he suddenly stood up and walked away.
“Tristan? Tristan! Where are you going?”
No matter how much his mother called out in surprise, he didn’t care.
Thanks to that, the Crown Prince’s attendant, who had been watching him closely since his birth, hurried to follow him. Years of accumulated internal knowledge signaled alarms inside the attendant’s mind.
This is dangerous.
The attendant whispered to Tristan while sweating coldly.
“Your Highness, please, you must control yourself today. Don’t forget what the Empress has said…”
“What?”
Tristan’s shadowed green eyes glared at the attendant as if piercing them with an ice pick.
‘The Empress warned… the Empress wants…’
Despite his appearance, Tristan had come of age this year and, aside from the drunken Emperor, he was a nobleman who feared nothing. Yet, every time people tried to restrain him, they mentioned Silvea Howard as if he was a foolish five-year-old.
“Do I look like a kid who still needs to listen to that noisy woman?”
“Your Highness…”
“Ha.”
His temper flared, but Tristan forced his attention elsewhere, trying to calm himself.
He wanted to kill the attendant right there, but even he had grown wiser. He couldn’t quite understand why killing him would be wrong, but he knew that even as Crown Prince, such an action would be seen as dangerous in the eyes of the public.
‘But it’s my birthday, so relieving some of this urge…’
Tristan licked his lips as he looked at the woman surrounded by the five men from across the banquet hall.
The first time he ever shot a gun as a child, it was aimed at Eugenie Norton.
‘I just missed the opportunity because of that damned Alfred Wilberforce.’
Maybe it was because his first attempt had failed. Since then, his desire to shoot Eugenie Norton had waned. But once the impulse awakened in his body, it didn’t fade easily.
So, in frustration, during a debutante ball in the past year,
He chose May Chester, who was almost as pretty as Eugenie Norton. He hadn’t killed her, but the fuss around her had been enough to make him want to rip his hair out. Even the Emperor, who had always left him to his own devices because ‘he’s the Crown Prince,’ had caused chaos that night.
‘You’re just the one I left behind because I had no choice! Damn bloody of a kid. If I had another child, I’d bury you in the dirt!’
Since then, Tristan had tried hard to imitate the boring men around him…
“Ha, damn it.”
His trousers felt tight as his body swelled with desire. But he didn’t want to fill this lust with something as simple as a quick release.
He always wanted to fill his desires with the trigger of a gun, not with something trivial, but with a real human being.
For his birthday, this time, he wanted to shoot Eugenie Norton.
