Chapter 41: The Secret Comes Out

A month passed and Seraphine awoke at daybreak. Right beside her, sprawled across the silk sheets, lay Vivienne. Her silky, strawberry-blonde hair gleamed in the first rays of sunlight. The girl was sleeping soundly - for some time now she had regularly slept through mornings.

She was already in her second month of pregnancy, so Seraphine tenderly allowed her to rest. At this hour, no one in the castle was up yet.

The heir slipped from the bed and commenced her daily workout. Today was chest day, so she lay upon the bench and gripped the barbell. She was well aware that in this new, female futanari body she would not attain the sheer, raw mass of her past life as a soldier, but regular exertion allowed her to maintain incredible conditioning.

After half an hour of pressing iron, she quietly slipped out of the chamber for her morning run.

She ran nearly ten miles around the settlement and fields. In the crisp morning air, she passed the few laborers heading off to work.

Thanks to the introduction of standardized working hours, most of the women of Karsfeld were still resting in their warm beds. Seraphine waved to the peasant women she encountered, yet never broke her stride.

The only souls fully awake at this hour were the militiamen conducting their morning drill. As their commander jogged past, every one of them snapped to attention like bowstrings, rendering a textbook salute. The heir returned the gesture.

The sight of Seraphine sweating bullets at dawn raised her soldiers' morale tremendously.

Seraphine led by personal example. She never permitted herself more sleep than her people and rarely took a day off.

She directed the ironworks, the fields, and the military with such fierce determination that she worked harder than her own mother, Baroness Adelgarde.

Adelgarde had deliberately saddled her firstborn with an ever-heavier burden, quietly hoping the young futa would crack under the pressure. Yet Seraphine took everything in stride and exceeded every expectation - which was precisely why the Baroness had named her official regent without hesitation.

That tireless work ethic was a legacy of her former life, where as the daughter of immigrants she had been forced to toil bitterly for every crust of bread, and later at the military academy learned that idleness was a cardinal sin.

Following her ninety-minute run, she returned to the fortress and washed away the sweat in her private, steaming bathhouse.

Nearly three hours had elapsed since waking. Stepping into her bedchamber, she found Vivienne still deep in slumber.

The keep was already humming with life - servants bustled through the corridors, and the household was beginning its day. Lady von Drachenberg's continued presence in the elder sister's bed was becoming lethally perilous.

Seraphine smirked roguishly. Rather than rousing her with words, she slipped soundlessly beneath the quilt behind the girl's back.

She pressed her entire naked, heated frame against her spine. Her own firm, perky breasts pressed flush into the noblewoman's smooth shoulder blades, while the heir's hands traveled straight to Vivienne's lush, soft bust.

She cupped those massive, milky-white breasts, squeezing them possessively and rolling the hardened nipples between her fingertips.

Vivienne smiled in her sleep, purring in pleasure beneath the touch. She could feel the firm breasts of her beloved massaging her back, while the sensual pressure upon her own curves stirred waves of heat within her.

She adored the feminine softness of their bodies intertwined with Seraphine's strength. Stretching luxuriously, she arched her rounded hips straight against her mistress's hardening member, just as Seraphine leaned into her ear and whispered:

"It is past seven-thirty. If you don't get up this instant, my family will catch you in my bed..."

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Vivienne's eyes snapped open and she bolted to her feet, shaking the hands from her bosom:

"Seraphine! Why didn't you tell me what time it was sooner?!"

Seraphine let out a quiet chuckle, watching from the bed as the drowsy noblewoman hastily pulled on her nightgown:

"You need sleep for our little one, so I let you rest."

Vivienne fastened the silk, leaned over the bed, and captured Seraphine's lips in a brief, passionate kiss, before slipping from the chamber like a shadow, cautiously checking the empty corridor.

Had it not been for the heir's vigilance, a scandal would have inevitably erupted.

Once left alone, Seraphine reviewed the dispatches. Affairs were progressing splendidly, and the raising of the second artillery battery advanced at a dizzying pace.

The foundry was casting twelve-pounders faster than gunners could be trained. Thanks to the requisitioning of the late Ulrike's mines in Eisenwald, the second line of furnaces and converters had doubled steel production.

Surpluses were sold at handsome prices to allies cultivated during the betrothal gala. Meanwhile, the workshops had forged enough modern carbon-steel armor that one in four militia soldiers now donned a blackened half-harness paired with a burgonet helm.

Today was destined to bring the culmination of two grand schemes.

First, Adelgarde’s Marshal of the Host - the corrupt old knight loyal to Cordelia - was already on her deathbed after a month of systematic arsenic poisoning.

Today’s slightly larger dose, administered by a maidservant, was to finally dispatch the traitor into the next world under the guise of a sudden stomach ailment, arousing not the slightest suspicion from the physicians.

Second, Vivienne was to drop a bombshell upon the family at breakfast today and announce that she carried a child.

A veneer of idyllic calm hung over the morning table. Seraphine took her seat beside little Rosalie, while Cordelia sat opposite alongside her official betrothed.

As the meal drew to a close, Vivienne set down her spoon. A deep blush rushed to her face, her azure eyes burning with an unusual fire.

"I have an announcement to make..." she began in a trembling yet distinct voice.

Every eye turned toward her. Vivienne glanced first at Seraphine, then at Cordelia, and finally lowered her gaze to her empty plate. Then she forced the words out, deliberately omitting the crucial detail:

"I am pregnant..."

A dead, stunning silence blanketed the hall. Seraphine barely suppressed a smirk - the girl had deliberately refrained from naming Cordelia as the sire!

Yet save for one person, no one entertained any other possibility. Seraphine's mother, Isolde, instantly narrowed her sharp eyes, darting a suspicious glare from a pale Vivienne to her younger daughter.

Cordelia, meanwhile, froze with her mouth agape:

"You... are pregnant?!"

Vivienne nodded faintly.

Baroness Adelgarde slammed an open palm onto the table, furrowing her brow:

"With my daughter?!"

Vivienne feigned indignation, lifting her chin proudly:

"With whom else would I conceive this child, my lady?!"

In that split second, pure pride and euphoria bloomed across the faces of Cordelia and Adelgarde.

Cordelia felt her position had been rescued - since no one else had touched Vivienne and the girl carried her seed, it meant that in the eyes of the entire duchy, it was she who had claimed one of the most breathtaking maidens in Ardenia!

Adelgarde, for her part, rejoiced over her first grandchild, hoping to behold a scion of the house before the fires of war in Alaria summoned her to the battlefield. Neither of them grasped that when Vivienne spoke the words "with your daughter," she had meant Seraphine alone.

Cordelia surged from the bench, aiming to embrace her betrothed with a triumphant grin, but Vivienne cracked a stinging slap across her cheek in full view of the entire household:

"And who said I have forgiven you for that night?! Sit down!"

Struck across the face, the younger sister immediately cowered and slumped back onto her chair in a sulk. Beneath the table, Seraphine nearly choked with laughter.

Vivienne had played it masterfully - without outright confirming Cordelia's paternity, she had left the door open for Seraphine to legally acknowledge the child as her rightful blood in the future.

Little Rosalie, sitting nearby, grinned from ear to ear. The naive maiden assumed she had won the war for her betrothed's affections - in her eyes, Seraphine would never so much as look at a woman carrying her younger sister's bastard.

Conversation around the table swiftly shifted to expediting Cordelia and Vivienne's wedding.

The younger futa's sixteenth birthday fell in mere days, allowing for a lawful marriage and concealing from Countess Eleonora of Arnsbruck that conception had taken place before the ceremony.

Vivienne feigned meekness, though inwardly she prayed to Christa the Savior that Seraphine would sever her useless betrothed's head before the child entered the world.

The solitary soul boiling with fury was Isolde. She saw that their family had become entangled with a shameless vixen who was now bound to their house forever.