The Mind-Reading Mate: Why Is the Lycan King So Obsessed With Me?!-Chapter 441: The Duke’s One and Only Daughter

Hazelle froze at those words, her eyes widening slightly. She quickly shook her head and stepped back. "N-No, Your Majesty. Please, I still feel that I don’t deserve something like this."

[This is really too much,] Hazelle thought. [What kind of Duke would ever adopt someone who used to be a slave? Even a commoner wouldn’t want to do that.]

Meanwhile, Lazarus was lost in thought. [Why did Rosie suddenly want me to adopt a child? Does she want to abandon me entirely?! Did I fail as her father so badly that she doesn’t want to be my daughter anymore?!]

[Is this because I didn’t give her money anymore?!]

Primrose let out a soft sigh. She hadn’t even explained the real reason yet, but somehow her father had already jumped to the most dramatic conclusion possible.

And honestly, since when could a daughter throw away her own father and give him a new child as a replacement?

Where was the logic in that?!

Primrose finally spoke. "It’s alright, Hazelle." She lifted her head and looked gently at the girl. "Just sit down first."

Hazelle opened her mouth to refuse, but the look in Primrose’s eyes made her sit down before she even realized it.

"Father, I know this is a huge request... maybe even shameless, but..." Primrose looked straight into his eyes. "I’m asking this because I have an important reason."

Primrose then told Lazarus her reasoning about how she simply wanted to protect Hazelle from the cruel people who would continue to look down on her if they knew she was just a commoner or, worse, a former slave.

"Dr. Silas tried to poison me, and Hazelle was the one who helped me," Primrose said, exaggerating Hazelle’s part even though she didn’t actually do much. "After hearing that, don’t you think she deserves some kind of reward, Father? She saved your daughter."

Instead of focusing on Primrose’s question, Lazarus looked utterly shocked by the fact that his daughter had been poisoned. "You... you what?!"

He shot up from his chair so fast the table shook, knocking several glasses onto the floor.

"Rosie, why did you never tell me about this?!" He looked at Primrose with reddened eyes, not from anger, but from a deep, aching sadness. "We may live far apart, but you’re still my daughter! I deserve to know everything that happens to you, whether it’s good or bad!"

[Why is my daughter acting like this? No... this must be my fault. Back then, she probably hated me because I didn’t help her when the Emperor ordered her to go to the Beastland.]

Lazarus sounded utterly desperate in his heart, like a father who had nearly lost his child. [But still... what if I suddenly received news that my daughter had died? And I knew nothing about the reason behind it.]

"Primrose," he suddenly called her by her full name. "I know you hated me back then, or maybe you still do, but... don’t do this to me. If I had known you were about to die, maybe... maybe I would’ve ignored the Emperor’s decree telling me to stay away for a while, and I would’ve gone to see you in—"

"Father, no!" Primrose also stood up from her chair. She walked around the table until she stood directly in front of him. "I... I never hated you. I was angry at you, yes, but still... I didn’t hate you. How could I hate you?" She added softly, "But the reason I didn’t tell you wasn’t because of that!"

Primrose held her father’s hands tightly, her voice trembling a little as she continued, "I didn’t tell you because... I didn’t want you to worry. That’s all."

Lazarus blinked, stunned. "W-Worry? Rosie, you almost died!"

"I know!" Primrose raised her voice, her emotions spilling over. "But I also didn’t want you to risk your safety just to come to me! Even if I died in the Beastland, I didn’t want you to die as we—"

"Primrose, don’t say that!" Lazarus gripped her hands even tighter. For the first time in a very long while, he sounded truly angry, not the playful kind of scolding he normally used, but real anger born from fear and love.

"You can’t say things like that as if it doesn’t matter!" His voice shook. "Do you think your life means so little to me?! Do you think I’d just stay still while my daughter dies somewhere alone?!"

Primrose held her breath for a moment.

Lazarus’s eyes reddened again as he continued, "You are my daughter. I don’t care about orders. I don’t care about danger. If something happened to you... I would have gone to you. Even if it killed me."

Hazelle’s eyes softened as she watched from the side. She had never seen a noble... a Duke... look at someone with that much fear and love at the same time.

Primrose swallowed hard. "Father..."

She looked at him with an empty, distant gaze, and for the first time, she truly wondered what Lazarus had gone through back then, on the day he learned that his daughter had died.

Edmund had only known her for a few years, yet he had been completely shattered; lost, devastated, and broken beyond words.

But what about Lazarus?

He wasn’t just someone she met along the way.

He was her father.

The man who had watched her grow.

The man who carried her in his arms when she was small, who tied her hair when she cried, who scolded her clumsily whenever she scraped her knee, and who secretly slipped her pastries when the servants weren’t looking.

The man who loved her long before anyone else ever did.

Primrose could only stare at him now, unable to imagine the pain he must have felt. What had happened to him after losing her? What kind of father could survive hearing that his daughter—his only child—had died a cruel death in a foreign land, far from home?

How did Lazarus breathe through that grief? How did he wake up the next morning and keep living?

Did he cry alone in his room with all the curtains drawn? Did he break every fragile object in sight? Or did he simply sit in silence, unable to understand how the world could keep turning without his daughter in it?