ONE NIGHT STAND WITH HOT DUKE-Chapter 143: It shouldn’t be Ivanka

The Marquess lifted his head. "Are you saying this is our fault?"

"I am saying," Sigrid replied without hesitation, "that a bond born of pressure only lasts as long as the stronger party chooses to hold it. And Demian Morvex... was never weak."

He rose and walked slowly toward the sealed window. "From the beginning, he never accepted Ivanka as his choice. Only as his obligation."

The Marquess clenched his fists. "But the bond is real. Morvex blood—"

"Has never been able to be forced into love," Sigrid cut in quietly. "And that was the greatest mistake of the elders long ago. Including myself."

The words silenced the Marquess. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Sigrid turned back toward him. "If you are asking whether there is a way to restrain him now," he continued, "my honest answer is this: any further attempt will only push him farther away."

"And Ivanka?" the Marquess asked softly. "What will become of her?"

Sigrid lowered his gaze to the floor for a moment. "She is standing at the most dangerous point," he said. "Not because the bond is weakening but because she is hoping for something that never truly existed."

The Marquess rubbed his face, his breathing heavy. "So all of this..."

"...is consequence," Sigrid finished. "Not a curse. Not fate. But old choices finally demanding their price."

Marquess Kosler fell silent.

Not an empty silence but a heavy one, as though all the air in the room pressed down on his chest at once. His fingers gripped the armrest of the chair, his face tightening as lines of age and regret collapsed into a single expression.

Sigrid did not press him. He knew that wounds this old only tore wider when rushed.

"You know as well," Sigrid said at last, his voice low and steady, "that from the beginning, Demian’s choice was never Ivanka. It was someone whose existence not everyone even knew about."

The Marquess slowly lifted his face. His gaze went blank for a moment before he exhaled deeply and closed his eyes.

And the memory came wild, sharp, and far too vivid.

Years ago.

The palace was still filled with hurried footsteps and the murmurs of nobles measuring one another’s power. Young Demian stood in the center of the training hall, his body slender, but his eyes far too sharp for a child.

"I don’t like her."

The words were spoken without hesitation.

Demian’s father stood rigid before him, his jaw tightening. Across the room, Marquess Kosler and several elders exchanged looks. Young Ivanka stood a few steps behind, her dress immaculate, her hair perfectly arranged trained from an early age for a role she might not yet have understood.

"This is not about liking or disliking," Demian’s father said coldly. "This is about responsibility."

Young Demian stared straight ahead."I already have one."

That single sentence froze the room.

"What do you mean?" one of the elders snapped.

But Demian did not answer. He only lowered his gaze slightly, as if hiding something or someone behind his silence.

From that day on, surveillance tightened.

Demian was no longer allowed to go anywhere alone. His movements were restricted, his time carefully managed. They called it protection. In truth, it was a prison wrapped in concern.

But the boy... was as slippery as a shadow.

One morning, he vanished.

No trail. No sign. The forest beyond the imperial lands became the only direction left.

Panic swept through the palace.

"He doesn’t yet know restraint," one elder shouted at the time."If the bond manifests without control—""If he chooses for himself—"

The sentences were never finished. Everyone knew what they feared.

Demian was found three days later.

At the edge of the forest, his clothes filthy, his arms and neck marked with scratches. But he was alive. More than that he was calm.

Too calm.

His eyes had changed.

The Marquess still remembered standing several steps behind Demian’s father when the boy lifted his face.

"I have already bound myself," Demian said quietly.

Not a confession.Not an apology.But a statement of fact.

The room filled with fear.

Because with that single sentence, every plan collapsed.

Ivanka who was meant to be his partner was rejected before any ritual could even be prepared. And worse still, the bond had already formed outside imperial control, without the elders’ consent, beyond every rule that had long maintained stability.

"This cannot be allowed," the Emperor said then, his voice echoing through the council chamber. "Such a bond must be annulled."

But a true bond cannot simply be torn away.

So they chose another path.

"That ritual..." the Marquess’s voice returned to the present, hoarse. "It should never have been performed."

Sigrid watched him without blinking.

"It was a ritual of coercion," the Marquess continued. "A ritual meant to suppress an existing bond. To force Demian’s body and blood to accept another partner."

Ivanka cried that night.

Not from pain but because she knew. She knew she had not been chosen. She had only been... placed.

Demian did not scream. He did not fight physically. He endured the ritual with an empty face, his teeth clenched, blood running from the corner of his lips.

But something inside him... died.

And something else... cracked.

"From that day on," the Marquess said softly, "their bond was never truly stable. Ivanka endured because of the ritual. Demian endured because of obligation."

Sigrid nodded slowly. "And now, as he tries to release that bond Ivanka’s body reacts."

"Because the bond was never natural," the Marquess replied bitterly. "It was forced for too long."

Silence fell once more.

The Marquess opened his eyes and stared emptily ahead. "Our greatest mistake," he said quietly, "was not allowing Demian to choose too early."

He gave a short, hollow laugh almost a sigh of despair.

"Our greatest mistake was believing that such a choice could be erased."

Outside the room, the night moved on slowly. And elsewhere, Demian walked ever farther from the past that sought to bind him again while the shadows of old decisions finally began to demand a price that could never be bargained away.

Marquess Kosler opened his eyes slowly.

The decision did not arrive as a new idea, but as something that had long been circling his mind waiting for the moment when there was no longer any room to pretend that everything could still be controlled.

"I must meet the Emperor,"