[Devoted, unhinged crown prince × clear-eyed, powerful stand-in]
[Two male leads | Stand-in romance | The crown prince pursues his wife to the crematorium | Identity reversal | Matched in strength]
The night I was presented to the crown prince, he gripped my chin and ordered, “Smile. My beloved's smile has dimples.”
So I became the stand-in he doted on most, and the cripple he despised most: a Di Kun with a faint pheromone scent and the lowest possible rating.
He didn't know my “inability” was an act.
I could mimic any scent in the world, including the deadly bamboo fragrance of his beloved.
He also didn't know that each time I mimicked a scent, I forgot a little more of myself.
Until the night of the fire, when I was gravely wounded saving him and, half-conscious, let my true cedarwood scent slip.
He held me and roared, while I used my last strength to clutch his lapel.
“Your Highness, don't be afraid...”
He jolted. Three years ago, his beloved had said the same words just before dying.
At last he grew suspicious. He began investigating my “late” cousin, as well as his own top-tier pheromone scent, which was on the verge of collapsing...
*
He tried to find redemption in a counterfeit, only to realize that the scent he craved had never been that of bamboo.
I approached him in the name of revenge, but beneath his obsessive protection, I glimpsed the soul that my cousin had given his life to save, still whole beneath that violent exterior.
