Chapter 20

“It’s impressive that you only realized that now.”

Genuinely impressed, Yuri moved past him and examined the house. The curtains were drawn, obscuring the interior, but Yuri saw no movement or shifting shadows. Even so, a visual inspection would not expose someone who knew how to hide. He began circling the property. Aside from their own, there were no fresh footprints, nor did he find flattened grass, broken branches, or any other immediate sign of intrusion.

“Who usually looks after this place?”

“No one. There’s probably a fair amount of dust inside.”

“If it’s been abandoned that long, thieves could have broken in.”

“There are security cameras, and the windows are locked.” Cherriot waited beside the door. “May I open it now?”

The question came easily, without irritation. Yuri nodded, though a sliver of unease remained. Cherriot drew a bundle of keys from his jacket and selected a rounded, reddish one. Like the old house itself, it resembled a prop from a period film. The lock clicked open, and the door creaked inward.

Dust trapped for months in the stagnant air swirled through the sunlight. Cherriot pushed through it, crossed the living room, and opened a broad window beside the adjoining kitchen. The lake appeared immediately beyond the glass. Yuri watched the glittering ripples for a moment before turning his attention to the structure of the house.

It was as simple as it had appeared from outside. The front door opened directly into the living room, with the kitchen attached on the left. Two doors stood on the right, one of which was almost certainly the bathroom.

Would he have to sleep on the floor?

Yuri surveyed the living room, estimating where he could lie down. The sofa positioned lengthwise before the two doors looked too short for a man of his size.

“Is there only one bedroom?”

“No. There’s another one around the kitchen. I’ll take that room.”

Cherriot sounded excited. Yuri left him to wander familiarly through the house, his expression brightened by recognition, and opened the first closed door. As expected, it was a bathroom. Warm turquoise tiles covered the floor, and the sink, shower stall, and toilet were clean beneath a faint coating of dust.

The sight sharpened Yuri’s desire to wash. He approached the shower and turned the faucet. The pipes groaned, the sound swelling through the walls until water finally burst from the showerhead. If both the plumbing and boiler still worked, someone must visit often enough to maintain them.

Did Cherriot’s family come here together?

Although Yuri’s father was still alive, family outings and shared holidays had long since become foreign concepts to him. He briefly chewed over the distant thought, then returned to the living room. Cherriot had apparently left the front door wide open before going outside.

Yuri would have to teach him some rudimentary sense of security.

After a moment’s consideration, Yuri decided to rinse himself off. Unlike Cherriot, he had brought nothing, so a proper shower was impossible. Still, the day had grown warm, and he wanted to wash away the grime and clear his head. He rarely sweated heavily and doubted he smelled, but more than a day had passed since he had washed properly.

Yuri removed his black coat, then pulled off the moderately thick cotton shirt beneath it and folded both neatly on the sofa. As he turned toward the bathroom, he hesitated. His knife rested in the coat pocket.

Should he carry it with him, or would constantly keeping the weapon within reach frighten Cherriot?

While Yuri considered the question, footsteps approached outside.

TAP, TAP.

The light sound reached the doorway. Yuri flinched and reached for his shirt. His torso bore enough scars to horrify most people. Someone like Cherriot would almost certainly recoil.

“Huh?”

Cherriot entered before Yuri could cover himself. He carried the heavy suitcase as though it were no more burdensome than a satchel, but the instant he saw Yuri’s bare, pale torso, he froze in the doorway.

Their eyes met.

Yuri watched Cherriot’s eyes widen in shock. Instinctively, he turned to conceal his back and the large flame-shaped scar that covered it. He opened his mouth, ready to apologize for revealing something so hideous.

“Ah, shit. I’m sorry.”

The suitcase hit the floor with a heavy thud.

“I didn’t mean to look. I wasn’t trying to…” Cherriot covered his face with one large hand and retreated, only to dart inside again and slam the front door shut. “No, wait. Who suddenly takes off his clothes in the middle of the living room without warning?” His voice rose, and even the backs of his hands had turned red.

“…What?”

Yuri stared at him, bewildered for an entirely different reason. His urgent need to conceal his ruined body vanished, leaving only confusion. He tried to understand Cherriot’s reaction, but nothing about it made sense. This was not revulsion. For some reason, Cherriot appeared embarrassed.

“If you’re going to undress, do it in a bedroom,” Cherriot said, keeping his palm firmly over his face. “Or at least warn me first.” He pressed his back flat against the door. “I’ll keep my eyes covered, so hurry into another room. And next time, tell me before you start changing.”

So this commotion truly was because he had seen Yuri without a shirt. Yuri found it both absurd and, unexpectedly, amusing. This was the same man who had displayed his own naked body without shame and joked about sex as casually as the weather, yet Yuri removed one shirt and Cherriot behaved like an inexperienced boy. One moment, he spoke and acted like someone thoroughly jaded and vulgar. The next, he reacted with startling innocence. The contradiction was strange. Most people Yuri had known possessed a certain consistency, which made their reactions predictable.

“Didn’t you change clothes in front of me perfectly well last night?”

Yuri had not meant to ask. He could have let the matter pass, but Cherriot’s exaggerated reaction was entertaining. Not unpleasantly so, either. It amused him in a way he found oddly gratifying.

“That was different from seeing someone else undressed.”

“It seems exactly the same to me.”

“My body is like a magnificent statue. Anyone who looks at it benefits.” Cherriot’s fingers parted slightly. “Someone else’s body is private.” Through the narrow gap, he stole a glance at Yuri’s chest, then immediately dropped his gaze. “I said hurry up and get dressed.”

“That may be difficult. Unlike you, I didn’t bring anything. I’ll have to buy some basic clothes when we go out.”

The thought of putting on the same shirt after wearing it all day was unpleasant, though when Yuri remembered the years when he had gone days without an opportunity to change, he wondered whether he had become spoiled. He mocked himself silently and lifted the shirt from the sofa.

“Then…” Cherriot peered through his fingers again. “Wear one of mine.”

Yuri stared at the pale green eye visible through the opening. Cherriot promptly squeezed his fingers shut. If he intended to keep peeking, he might as well look openly, but Yuri could not begin to understand the performance.

“We’re about the same size,” Cherriot continued. “It may be slightly loose on you, but I can lend you something.”

Yuri considered the offer.

Had the shirt belonged to T-Mac or Alexei, he would have accepted without hesitation. Borrowing clothes from someone like Cherriot, however, felt like crossing a boundary he could not define. Whatever Cherriot wore was undoubtedly expensive or made from fine fabric. Yuri wondered whether putting it on would somehow soil it.

When Yuri remained silent, Cherriot finally lowered his hand. He made a conscious effort not to look at Yuri’s bare torso and instead glanced around. To his surprise, he had left the suitcase outside. He hurriedly reopened the door and, instead of bringing the suitcase inside, he crouched in the doorway, opened it there, and rummaged through its contents. Yuri narrowed one eye and watched him. Cherriot had been opening doors carelessly since they arrived, and before the day ended, Yuri would have to teach him how to lock up properly.

“Here.”

Cherriot approached holding a white short-sleeved T-shirt. He used the garment like a screen between them, and the sight drew a hollow laugh from Yuri.

“It’s just the body of another Alpha. Stop making such a fuss. If looking at it doesn’t disgust you, I don’t care. ”

Yuri reached for the offered shirt. Refusing would only make the atmosphere more awkward. Besides, now that clean, freshly laundered clothes were directly before him, he wanted to wear them.

The realization unsettled him. Had he always been this greedy?

As Yuri caught the edge of the shirt, his eyes met Cherriot’s above the fabric. Those pale green eyes were fixed on him, as though they had never looked away. The dark pupils at their center seemed to search far beneath Yuri’s skin, and his hand tightened around the cotton.

There was desire in that gaze.

It resembled the instinctive hunger Alphas felt when looking at Omegas. Possessiveness sharpened it, the raw craving to seize someone and make him one’s own. Beneath that lay simpler lust, the animal urge to pounce.

For the first time, Yuri felt in his own skin that Cherriot regarded him as a sexual object. From the moment they met, Cherriot had called him handsome and beautiful, had said Yuri pleased him, had repeatedly insisted that Yuri was exactly his type. None of it had seemed real until now.

The air between them turned dense and clinging. Yuri jerked the shirt toward himself. Cherriot did not immediately release it.

For a fleeting moment, his grip tightened in response. As Yuri felt the resistance through the cotton, goosebumps erupted over his lower back, and a strange chill coursed up his spine. An Alpha bastard had dared to look at him that way. Revulsion should have been his first reaction. Instinct should have compelled him to reject him, perhaps even attack. Instead, an inexplicable tension gripped his body. Every nerve tightened, and Cherriot’s pheromones reached him with startling clarity. The instant Yuri became conscious of them, the sensation grew so alien that his fingers opened. Cherriot released the shirt at the same moment. It fell to the dusty floor with a soft whisper of cotton.

With the thin barrier gone, Yuri’s bare torso lay fully exposed to Cherriot’s gaze. Scars covered nearly every part of him, but those crossing his chest and abdomen stood out most clearly, pale against his already white skin. No generous observer could have called the accumulated damage pleasant.

In several places, late-forming flesh had filled old wounds with raised white tissue, as though shattered skin had been crudely stitched together. From a distance, his pallor might have concealed some of the marks. Up close, no one could fail to see them.

His life had been a succession of years forcibly sewn together and made to continue. As the evidence of a life he had never exposed to an ordinary person came fully into view, unbearable shame rose first. Yet beneath it, Yuri felt a faint and inexplicable release. Cherriot, at least vaguely, already knew what kind of man Yuri was. He couldn’t become newly disappointed. “…It fell on the floor,” Cherriot finally said. “I’ll get you another one.” His voice, usually a low baritone, had risen during his earlier embarrassment. Now, it had dropped again, settling into a deep, restrained register that mirrored the heavy gaze Yuri had felt moments before.

Yuri blinked.

“No. I’ll wear this one.”

“I’ll replace it.”

To stop the unnecessary fuss, Yuri bent to retrieve the shirt. As he straightened, he felt Cherriot’s gaze settle on his curved back. The mark there resembled an enormous burn because fire had, in fact, seared nearly half his back. A machete had carved other wounds across it in the shape of a cross. Igor and Ivan had created them personally, payment for the foolish beliefs Yuri’s parents had once held.

Yuri’s hands went cold. Even Alexei had probably never seen those scars. After his mother died and the wounds appeared, Yuri had never shown his bare back to anyone. Thousands of memories lay knotted inside those marks, catching in his throat like a wad of hair he could neither swallow nor spit out. He himself had not looked at them in years.

Yuri clenched his teeth. Blood roared into his head until pressure throbbed behind his eyes, but he was no longer young enough to let old memories shake him into revealing weakness before another person. The more one reacted, the more one confessed that the wound still mattered. Yuri pressed his lips together until his jaw ached, then slowly straightened. He expected to find Cherriot staring in horror.

“Then let’s go grocery shopping.”

Cherriot spoke at the exact moment Yuri corrected his posture. When Yuri turned, Cherriot wore an expression entirely different from the one he had expected. His eyes were troubled, as though he had witnessed something too private and terrible to acknowledge aloud. A gentle smile rested on his lips, carefully offered as something Yuri might steady himself against.

For several seconds, Yuri could not answer. Cherriot had regained his composure, but Yuri felt as though his own face might betray him. He closed his mouth and struggled to smooth away whatever expression had surfaced. The emotion in Cherriot’s eyes was neither pity nor contempt. It possessed a shape Yuri had never encountered.

“Right.”

“It’s already two in the afternoon,” Cherriot continued. “If we need clothes and groceries, we should leave soon. Places this small tend to close by four.”

“…Right.”

Cherriot did not retreat from the room or pretend the moment had never happened. He looked directly at Yuri and calmly listed what they needed to do. Yuri could offer nothing beyond quiet agreement. His throat felt dry and obstructed, probably because the house had been shut for so long.

“I’ll start the car and get everything ready,” Cherriot said. “Take your time changing.” He smiled softly and left Yuri alone.

Only after observing the man attempt to exude maturity, close the suitcase he had spread open outside, and slide it over the threshold did Yuri allow the stiffness to dissipate from his body. A shallow breath escaped him. He glanced down at Cherriot’s shirt in his hand, unable to organize his thoughts into any coherent order, and squeezed his eyes shut.

He had anticipated Cherriot to flee.

About a year had elapsed since the punishment wounds had healed. It was summer, and the temperature had soared beyond eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit, an unusually hot climate for Saratov. Yuri returned from work with his body and clothing drenched in blood. The inside of the car was so strongly scented with it that nausea twisted through him.

On his way back to Saratov, he pulled over beside a narrow river. Stripping off his bloodstained clothes, he rinsed them repeatedly in the current, watching as the red stains streamed away and drifted downstream. The stains on his clothes and skin gradually faded, then disappeared, but the smell of blood lingered at the back of Yuri’s nose, growing stronger with each passing moment.

Standing in the water, he felt a sense of urgency to return, but footsteps reached him from the bank. A group of young people from a nearby village had apparently come to swim. Turning, he saw several youthful faces watching him. Looking back now, he realized they must have been close to his own age. Yuri had only recently turned twenty. At the time, however, the strangers had seemed far younger. Perhaps it was because none of them appeared to carry a single worry. Not that anyone truly lived without burdens of their own.

When they first noticed Yuri, the young people hurried toward him with delighted expressions, thrilled to encounter someone their age. But then one of the girls stopped, her pleasure vanishing and replaced by pale terror. Fear spread quickly through the group, and everyone who had been about to approach halted where they stood, their eyes fixed on Yuri’s back.

Yuri said nothing.

After several moments, the young people turned away. Because of the heat, the boys had already removed their shirts. Unlike Yuri’s back, theirs were smooth and beautiful, untouched by a single scar. Sunlight gleamed over their wet skin like ripples traveling across water. Until they disappeared from view, Yuri stood in the river and stared at those unmarked backs. He remained there so long that the blazing sunlight began to make him dizzy. The smell of blood still clung to the air.

At last, Yuri walked back to the parked car and resumed driving toward the city where he belonged.

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