Chapter 9

Switching to the night bus and making his way home, Alex fought to contain the boiling fever threatening to drive him insane.

The streets lay deserted in the early hours of a weekday, yet the strange, wary glances from the occasional Alpha or Omega made it terrifyingly clear that his pheromones were spiraling out of control.

Hunching his shoulders like a fleeing criminal, Alex dragged himself back to the flat. His trembling hands fumbled with the lock, dropping the keys four agonizing times before he finally tumbled inside to find the house empty, his father likely passed out drunk in someone else’s home.

The rain had long since stopped, bringing the dreaded hour of football practice ever closer, but Alex locked his bedroom door and refused to leave his bed. The realization that he desperately needed to buy suppressants surfaced much later, yet the sheer terror of stepping outside reeking of such aggressive pheromones kept him paralyzed.

Petrified that Nathan might contact him, he powered off his phone and forced himself to endure the agony alone.

His first rut was a long, excruciating descent into hell. He drifted in and out of consciousness, passing out from sheer exhaustion only to jerk awake in a relentless cycle. Whenever the boiling, maddening lust threatened to shatter his mind and forced his trembling hand downward, Nathan’s dry, indifferent voice would echo in his ears, paralyzing him completely. It was a genuine miracle he survived the ordeal without touching himself again.

Having suppressed his instincts so brutally, his body writhed in genuine, debilitating pain by the time the rut finally began to subside. His consecutive absences from both school and training must have prompted a phone call to his father, because the man, who hadn’t been home in over two days, wrenched open the bedroom door and launched into a screaming tirade.

“Yeon Joo-hyuk!”

The harsh syllables of Korean, a language Alex only ever heard from his father, rang viciously through the room. The blanket shielding his pale, sickly complexion was ripped away. Forcing his trembling eyelids open, Alex was met with the dark, weathered face of the older man, complete with the pitch-black hair and sharp, piercing eyes that his mother had so deeply loathed.

Just as the man opened his mouth to hurl another barrage of insults, he froze, clearly catching the thick, oppressive stench of pheromones choking the room.

“Are you in rut?” his father demanded.

“Yes,” Alex rasped, his voice cracking pathetically. Extreme dizziness washed over him, accompanied by the grim realization that if this was what a rut felt like, he never wanted to experience one again.

“You pathetic retard,” his father spat. “What the hell have you been doing, not even managing to secure a single Omega for yourself? Didn’t I tell you to spend your ruts with a partner? Skipping practice like a total moron, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

An irritated huff mingled with a string of crude curses as the man stepped out of the room, followed by the chaotic sound of items being violently rummaged through. A few minutes later, heavy footsteps returned. Striding back inside, his father casually tossed something onto Alex’s chest. With a soft thwack, a blister pack of pills landed on the sheets.

“Get your ass back to practice starting tomorrow,” the older man ordered, his tone shifting unsettlingly. “Joo-hyuk, my son. Dad told you, didn’t I? You have to do well. If you want to see that crazy bitch regret her choices, you have to succeed.”

At the deeply uncomfortable slur aimed at his mother, Alex dropped his gaze to the blanket. He reached out, curling his fingers around the packaged pills.

To his father, his mother was now nothing short of a mortal enemy, the absolute worst kind of whore who had heartlessly abandoned both her husband and her son. Treating his mother like an adulterous slut simply because she had found someone new during their separation, the man had deliberately dragged out the divorce proceedings for years in a toxic, desperate bid to prevent the final split. Alex had been forced to listen to these relentless, brainwashing insults against his mother every single day.

“If you know how much your dad is suffering because of all that, then please, do this for me,” his father coaxed, his final words laced with a cloying sweetness. “You can do it, right?”

It had been a very long time since Alex had seen his father sober. The man was constantly drowning in anxiety, desperate to pivot his failing business in a new direction to avoid total ruin. There was a time in the distant past when he seemed to speak only in such gentle, loving tones, but now, only the hollow, empty shell of that affection remained.

Alex lifted his eyes, taking in the deep, bruised bags under his father’s eyes and the patchy, unkempt stubble dotting his cheeks. The profound exhaustion and suffocating depression etched into the man’s face pressed down on Alex’s own heart with an unbearable weight.

“Yes. I’m sorry,” Alex replied quietly.

“As long as you understand,” his father muttered.

A large hand reached out, ruffling Alex’s hair in a half-hearted gesture of praise before pulling away just as quickly. Watching the man turn and march out of the room under the guise of having work to do, Alex sluggishly peeled the foil back from the pills, the fleeting, artificial warmth that had rested on his head seeping away into the cold air.

Once the heavy thud of the front door closing echoed through the flat, Alex dragged himself down to the kitchen. The refrigerator was, as always, empty. Filling a glass with tap water, he swallowed the medication, having briefly checked the label to confirm they were indeed suppressants.

He decided that if his condition persisted into tomorrow, he would visit a GP before forcing himself to attend practice.

Even on weekends, countless kids in his age group voluntarily showed up to play matches, and when it came down to it, every single one of them was a direct competitor. In such a ruthless environment, taking even a day or two off to rest was an absolute luxury he simply could not afford.

The suppressants proved surprisingly effective. By the time evening rolled around, the sickening, maddening lust that had been tormenting him evaporated. Ruthlessly suppressing the desperate urge to check his phone, Alex forced himself to sit down in front of his laptop. He powered on the gray machine, its corner slightly chipped and battered. It had recently developed a nasty habit of throwing up the blue screen of death, making it painfully obvious that it was time for an upgrade, but he was stubbornly making do with it.

Unless a player possessed once-in-a-generation genius, pursuing football required an astronomical amount of money, and his father was already funneling every penny he earned into Alex’s tuition and private coaching. Asking for a brand-new laptop bordered on reckless extravagance. Beyond that, the battered machine carried a profound sentimental weight, as it was the very last birthday present his mother had ever given him.

Leaning back in his chair, he looped several match recordings, meticulously analyzing the plays of world-renowned midfielders before scrutinizing the footage of his own recent games in a desperate bid to concentrate on anything else. His forced focus, however, couldn’t even last two hours, and he slammed the laptop shut in defeat.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, Alex glared intently at the backpack holding his powered-off phone, the horrifying memory of the soiled clothes stuffed inside assaulting his mind. He released a long, shaky sigh and hauled himself up. Pinching the ruined garments between his thumb and forefinger as if handling toxic waste, he carried them into the laundry room. He shoved them into the drum alongside a pile of his father’s clothes and his own training gear, starting the wash cycle.

Crouching beside the violently rattling rectangular machine, he was finally forced to confront the colossal, terrifying issue he had been desperately trying to ignore.

What is going to happen with Nathan?

He had apologized, yes, but there was absolutely no way to know if Nathan had accepted it. Is he incredibly angry? No, he’s probably just utterly disgusted. The horrifying reality that his friend, a male Alpha no less, had been caught masturbating while screaming his name was a sickening violation. Given that Nathan was a Beta who exclusively dated girls, the entire situation was undoubtedly bound to feel skin-crawlingly uncomfortable for him, and Alex couldn’t even begin to fathom what dark, repulsive thoughts were running through the boy’s mind.

To make matters worse, Alex hadn’t dared to check his phone in over three days.

The prospect of receiving a message was terrifying, but the crushing possibility of total silence was infinitely worse, as it would mean their relationship was truly, irrevocably destroyed. Pulling his knees tightly to his chest, he buried his face in his arms, his eyelashes fluttering with sickening anxiety. He dug his fingertips into his own skin. Knowing Nathan’s deeply private nature, it was highly unlikely he would go around broadcasting the incident to the rest of the school. But if Nathan looked at him with pure contempt, if he coldly declared that they could never be friends again… 

What the hell do I do then?

He never should have been so greedy. Just as Nathan had casually pointed out, he never should have gone over to his house while feeling sick, and he certainly never should have allowed himself to harbor such selfish, unrequited feelings. If he hadn’t allowed himself to view Nathan in that romantic light, he wouldn’t have been plagued by those filthy fantasies, and he definitely wouldn’t have screamed his name.

He truly couldn’t do a single thing right.

It had always been this way, an endless string of failures tracing back to his childhood. He had never figured out how to be affectionate or endearing enough to earn his mother’s love, and he possessed zero talent for strategically showcasing his strengths to catch the coach’s eye. People were fundamentally difficult for him. Everyone seemed so vastly different, and the constantly shifting, invisible rules for keeping others from getting offended left him paralyzed and bewildered.

And now, he had profoundly disappointed Nathan, the one person who had graciously remained his friend without a single complaint, despite all of Alex’s glaring flaws. He was beyond pathetic. It wasn’t until the violently rattling washing machine finally ground to a halt that Alex forced himself to his feet.

Still, I have to do everything in my power to fix this. 

He would attend practice tomorrow, and if he felt even slightly more stable, he would seek Nathan out. 

If I beg for forgiveness and swear on my life that it will never, ever happen again, maybe he’ll accept my apology. 

Clinging desperately to that hollow, uncertain plan, Alex finally plugged his dead phone into the charger.

The heavy suppressants dragging his system down provided a merciful escape, pulling him into a deep, dreamless sleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

☂