I’m The Male Lead’s Biological Daughter, But I Want To Live With The Second Male Lead! - Chapter 85

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 85
“You’re right, Lord Zigmund. The truth is, I’m not entirely certain whether Winter is a Beastman or not.”
“You’re not certain?”
“No. But, well, how should I put it? We can communicate.”
No matter how familiar one became, the other party was still the Empress.
There was no way she could tell such a high-ranking lady of the realm that letters appeared above the White Lion Beastman’s head.
“Even though it’s just cries, I feel like I might understand what it’s trying to say. I can’t quite explain it—it’s just a feeling I get.”
“Do others experience the same thing?”
“Um… it doesn’t seem like they do. I wonder sometimes if you can communicate with it at all, Lord Zigmund, but…”
Yet the more she spoke, the more tangled her thoughts became.
What if she thought I was lying?
Truth be told, with each word from Mabel, a faint shadow of disappointment crept across Lillian’s features.
‘Oh no, does she really think I’m a liar?’
She seemed like a good person, and Mabel desperately didn’t want to fall into her disfavor.
Mabel, who had been quietly fretting to herself, continued in a deflated voice.
“To be honest, I’m not sure. What I feel when communicating with it might just be my imagination.”
She added an apology, as if afraid she’d disappointed some hope the Empress harbored.
At those words, Lillian—whose gaze had begun to dim—suddenly collected herself.
“Oh, goodness. I wasn’t blaming you at all.”
Lillian hastily waved her hand, saying she’d only been asking out of curiosity.
Yet, perhaps because she had grown up with her very existence erased, ignored and forgotten—
Once Mabel’s words lost their sincerity, she struggled to recover her spirits.
‘This is my fault.’
Her own selfishness had wounded this kind child.
Lillian, her lips moving soundlessly with regret, finally spoke softly.
“You see… I was searching.”
Her voice was laden with an inconsolable sorrow.
Mabel flinched without thinking, lifting her head.
Lillian averted her gaze, her hands moving gently over the teacup.
Her face wore a distant, aching expression—as though remembering something from long ago.
“I’m sorry. So… without meaning to, I made things difficult for you. I apologize.”
Lillian bowed her head quietly.
“What?!”
The Empress herself was bowing to her!
“No, no! Please, raise your head!”
Mabel sprang from her seat.
The commotion startled Winter awake from her sleep.
“But it seemed I made you feel disrespected. I’m sorry. That was never my intention.”
Lillian apologized again, bowing even deeper.
She should not have wounded this precious child in her search for her own baby.
She felt ashamed of how she had been consumed by the sight of the young White Lion Beastman she hadn’t seen in so long.
Even Winter, looking up at her from the floor, seemed to reproach her.
Meanwhile, as Lillian would not straighten, Mabel grew flustered.
‘What do I do, what do I do?’
Her knees bouncing nervously, Mabel decided to change the subject entirely.
“Um, w-wait! That… that said, um… ah, m-may I ask what it is you were searching for?”
But was this the very question to strike a nerve?
Lillian’s shoulders stiffened.
In truth, it was the subject Lillian most wished to avoid.
‘But since I touched her wound first, I suppose I must reveal mine as well.’
Having steeled herself, Lillian drew a small breath and answered.
“A child… I was searching for a child I had lost.”
“…!”
“That child was also a White Lion Beastman. So…”
Yet even broaching the subject was difficult.
The moment she faced the wound she had kept buried, the emotions from that time rushed back, unstoppable.
The shock of when Francesca had nearly branded her with the Servitude Mark.
The moments she lost consciousness, again and again, from the resulting premature birth and difficult labor.
The sensation of another self slipping away from within her body, accompanied by a thin, fragile cry.
— Mi-yang…
It had been no more than that single, feeble cry—like a kitten’s mewl—that marked both her first and last encounter with her child.
When Lillian regained consciousness, everyone spoke in unison.
The child had been stillborn, they said.
She could not believe it.
She would not believe it.
She had heard it clearly, unmistakably.
That tiny, fragile cry announcing its own existence.
The cry of an infant seeking its mother!
How could they claim it was stillborn?
She could not accept it.
The child was alive.
Someone had taken it away, and someone was lying.
As Lillian wailed, begging for her child to be returned, Edward rushed to her side.
But there was nothing he could do.
In that critical moment when Lillian had nearly been marked with the Subjugation Mark by Francesca.
Edward had not been there.
As a husband, as a father, he had failed to protect them both.
So Edward could not speak a single word to Lillian.
All he could do was weep hot tears alongside her as she sobbed in a voice barely human.
“I asked to see the body at least. But they said it was already buried.”
Mabel’s eyes trembled behind her hands, which she held pressed to her mouth.
“They said it was because I woke up late. Because I woke after a week…….”
It was clear that Lillian’s heart had stopped in that moment.
Her voice still carried the raw shock and sorrow she had felt then, untouched by time.
What could possibly be said to someone bearing such pain?
Or rather—what could be said at all?
After a moment’s hesitation, Mabel rose from her seat.
She lifted Winter, who had been lying at Lillian’s feet, into her arms.
“Would you like to…… hold her?”
“……Me?”
Lillian’s eyes widened slightly, glistening with sudden tears.
“She is not your child, Your Highness, but——”
Mabel was hesitating through her words when it happened.
In a rush!
“……!”
Lillian pulled both children into her arms with a fierce embrace.
The chair she had been sitting in toppled backward, and the force of her grip was so strong that Mabel staggered.
Startled, Mabel caught her breath in a gasp.
‘She thought I meant Winter, not myself……?’
But she could not correct the misunderstanding and ask to be released.
Because Lillian’s body was trembling silently.
Scalding tears soaked one of Mabel’s shoulders, warm and wet.
That tender, sorrowful warmth reached deep into Mabel’s chest, tightening it with an ache.
She understood instinctively.
This was a mother’s embrace.
These were the tears of a mother’s love…….
Mabel ignored the heat rising in her own throat and carefully wrapped one arm around Lillian in return.
Lillian stiffened for a moment, then gripped the children even more tightly, her teeth clenched.
The airless tightness of that embrace only deepened the ache in Mabel’s heart.
She knew this woman was not her mother.
But just this once.
Just this one time, she wanted to pretend…….
With her face buried against Lillian, Mabel whispered, so softly it was barely audible.
“Mother……” she said.
But in the end, it was only the shape of the word on her lips.
* * *
At that same moment, Zigmund stood by the window of the Office.
Through the glass, he could see Lillian and Mabel holding each other.
Dain spoke to Zigmund, who watched the two women in silence.
“It seems…… she is still searching for her.”
“……Yes.”
In truth, Zigmund had known all along that Lillian was searching for the child.
But the child had clearly been stillborn.
During the week Lillian lay unconscious, Edward himself had confirmed the dead infant and given it a proper burial.
The grave lay in the gardens behind the Empress Palace.
“Between keeping all those cats in the gardens and eight years having passed, I thought she might have found some peace…….”
The reason Zigmund took Cat Allergy Medicine every time he visited the Imperial Palace traced back to this very matter.
Lillian now kept over thirty cats in her care.
After losing the child, when Lillian had refused all food and drink, a young kitten had appeared at her door—and that was how it had begun.
From that day forward, as she gradually regained some spark of life, everyone believed she had overcome her grief.
But the Lillian before him now told a different story entirely.
She remained trapped in that moment eight years ago, the moment she lost her child.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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