Chapter 16

However, the quiet, domestic dinner Jaeha had envisioned was evidently not meant to happen.

…He’s late.

The digital clock on the wall had already passed 10:00 p.m. It was an awkward hour to keep calling the meal dinner, and it was rapidly drifting toward the territory of a midnight snack.

Jaeha stood alone in the vast kitchen, his gaze sweeping over the elaborate array of dishes arranged across the dining table. He had even fried the delicate wheat crepes for the gujeolpan himself, carefully assembling the traditional platter of nine delicacies by hand.

Myeongsun had offered to help before leaving, but Jaeha had insisted on handling everything personally. He had watched the enforcer finish shaping the fish dumplings for the beef stew before officially allowing him to clock out.

“Have a wonderful evening, Director.”

Since Jaeha had immediately corrected the phantom title of “sister-in-law,” Myeongsun’s parting words had not sounded quite as bizarre as they might have. The glaring problem was that three hours had already passed since the enforcer had left the estate.

“…”

Jaeha stared hard at the dark screen of his smartphone, sorely tempted to dial the eleven-digit number branded into his memory.

Unfortunately, technology had not yet advanced far enough to place a call through sheer force of will. His gaze remained fixed uselessly on the glass, and the matter ultimately came down to one humiliating truth.

He lacked the courage to call.

Deciding to grant the man exactly thirty more minutes, Jaeha turned away.

Clatter.

The front door rattled with sudden, jarring force.

Wondering what was happening, Jaeha cautiously made his way down the long hallway. He heard the unmistakable sound of hesitant fingers fumbling blindly over the electronic keypad before the heavy door finally swung open.

“…Director Jang?”

Jaeha stepped forward, eager to confirm that his husband had finally returned.

In the next instant, the sharp tang of sea salt flooded the entryway, violently mixed with the heavy metallic stench of iron. Before his mind could fully process the scent, a wave of primal revulsion crashed through him, drawing his brows into a tight furrow.

Fresh blood.

The cause of his shock revealed itself with brutal clarity.

Jang Taegeon’s crisp white dress shirt was drenched in crimson. His tie had vanished somewhere amid whatever violence had consumed the night, leaving only an unbuttoned suit jacket draped over the gruesome display. This was not the dull, rusted brown of an old injury. The blood was wet and viscerally fresh, the soaked fabric clinging to the sculpted ridges of his abdomen as more red slowly seeped outward.

All color drained from Jaeha’s face.

“What is this…?” he breathed, his voice shaking with horror.

“It’s not all mine.”

Taegeon answered with terrifying nonchalance as he stepped into the brightly lit foyer. He kicked off his ruined leather shoes, slipped into a pair of indoor slippers, and closed the distance between them while Jaeha remained rooted to the floor in a state of absolute paralysis.

“There’s blood.” Jaeha’s gaze locked onto the carnage. “Your blood…”

“I told you. Only this part is mine.”

Pinching the ruined hem of his shirt, Taegeon lifted the fabric and exposed the brutalized flesh beneath.

A savage, jagged laceration cut diagonally across the rigid planes of his abdomen. The wound gaped raw and open, easily stretching twelve centimeters across his muscles.

A sharp gasp tore from Jaeha’s throat.

Although the arterial bleeding appeared to have slowed for the moment, the sheer length of the gash clearly demanded immediate stitches. A horrifying image of the massive Alpha collapsing from hemorrhagic shock seized Jaeha’s mind and annihilated what remained of his reason.

“The hospital.” Jaeha spun around in blind panic. “We need to get you to the hospital.”

He rushed toward the mahogany console at the end of the hallway and snatched up a set of car keys. His hands shook so violently that he failed to notice he had grabbed the convertible’s fob rather than the keys to the heavier sedan.

He whirled back around, desperate to at least start the engine, but a bloodied, calloused hand clamped around his wrist like a steel vise and stopped him cold.

Jaeha snapped his head around, his chest heaving.

Taegeon stared down at him with open disbelief. “And where, exactly, do you think you’re going?”

“To the hospital!”

“Why? Are you sick?”

“Not me. Director Jang, you’re bleeding!”

“Forget it.” Taegeon released his wrist with an exhausted sigh. “Just come inside. I literally just finished working. Do you honestly expect me to drag myself back out?”

The sheer indifference in his tone struck Jaeha like a bucket of ice water and forcibly snapped him back to reality.

Is the cut only long, then? Is it not that deep?

Before his analytical mind could properly assess the medical severity, Taegeon had already brushed past him and strode deeper into the mansion.

With no other choice, Jaeha followed close behind, his heart hammering violently against his ribs. Taegeon’s stride remained perfectly steady and unhindered, but the hideous sight of blood soaking through the back of his shirt forced Jaeha to speak again.

“You absolutely need to disinfect that.”

“Sure.” Taegeon glanced over his shoulder. “You do it.”

The flippant challenge practically dared Jaeha to step forward and prove himself. Biting the inside of his lip, Jaeha frantically mapped the sprawling estate in his mind, struggling to recall the precise location of the medical supplies.

On Jaeha’s first day in Pyeongchang-dong, the hulking Myeongsun had explicitly shown him the primary first-aid cabinet. At the time, Jaeha had noticed that it contained trauma equipment far beyond the scope of ordinary household medicine, though he had not bothered to inspect the disturbing inventory more closely.

Only now did the chilling context fall into place.

The syndicate enforcer had anticipated this exact bloody scenario.

I’m completely losing my mind.

Jaeha pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

It was extraordinarily rare for him to fracture under pressure. During his tenure as a director of Yooshin Group, he had managed catastrophic overseas factory fires, navigated violent and volatile labor strikes, and successfully stabilized plummeting stock prices amid vicious corporate warfare. Through every multimillion-dollar crisis, Lee Jaeha had maintained a flawless, glacial calm, carrying out his duties with lethal, calculating efficiency.

Tonight marked the first time in his adult life that he had been driven so completely beside himself.

He curled his trembling fingers into rigid fists, terrified that if he relaxed for even a fraction of a second, his entire body would betray him in some unsightly, pathetic display of panic. He knew rationally that the laceration had probably avoided any major organs. He knew Taegeon was still capable of walking perfectly well.

The terror refused to loosen its grip.

After a frantic and agonizing minute spent pacing the corridor, his spatial memory finally returned.

Jaeha snatched the heavy trauma kit from its designated alcove and practically sprinted back to the living room, only to find the space completely empty.

A fresh trail of crimson droplets led toward the master wing.

Following the grim path, Jaeha approached the Alpha’s private quarters and came to an abrupt halt outside the heavy oak door. It stood slightly ajar, spilling a narrow strip of golden light into the darkened hallway.

A sudden realization seized him.

This was the first time he had ever approached his husband’s personal sanctuary since their wedding. Myeongsun had never offered him a tour of the second floor, and Jaeha had consciously, almost obsessively, kept his distance from this part of the estate. He had guarded that separation fiercely, even throughout the long month Taegeon had abandoned the house.

He had treated this entire wing as an absolute line of demarcation, a psychological boundary he had never dared to cross.

Now, standing only inches from the threshold, Jaeha’s hand hovered uncertainly over the heavy brass handle.

A terrifying premonition settled over him. The room felt as though it might contain all the dark, unraveling secrets of Taegeon’s violent underworld life, a world Jaeha had never been meant to see.

He hesitated for only a moment before stepping inside.

The immediate bleeding might have stopped, but leaving such a severe wound untreated was not an option.

Warm amber light, indirectly spilling from the edges of the ceiling, cast a deceptive coziness over the otherwise stark and desolate space. The room contained little more than a bed and a minimalist nightstand. Unlike Jaeha’s own quarters, which boasted expansive wardrobes, a television, and an imposing mahogany desk, this room lacked these features. Adjacent to the bed was a separate dressing room, while a long wooden cabinet rested against the far wall. Its contents remained hidden behind thick doors, leading Jaeha to assume it served as some kind of vault.

“Ah…”

Jaeha faltered mid-step and nearly tripped over a blood-soaked dress shirt and pair of trousers carelessly discarded across the hardwood floor. He methodically gathered the ruined clothes, then paused as the unmistakable rush of running water echoed from the adjoining bathroom.

Pure bewilderment struck him.

Is he seriously showering with an open wound? What if the injury gets infected?

Gnawing fiercely at his lower lip, Jaeha discarded the ruined clothes into a laundry hamper near the bathroom door. Carefully, he placed the heavy trauma kit on the mattress, which was his only option since there was no desk or table available. Despite the simplicity of the act, setting the medical box on those sheets sent a strange, unsettling flush through his veins. He felt almost as exposed as if he were lying naked in Jang Taegeon’s bed.

The intimacy of the gesture felt absurdly profound.

Having completed his delivery, Jaeha considered fleeing the room altogether.

Waiting alone inside his estranged husband’s private sanctuary felt dangerously intrusive, and he was half inclined to retreat to the relative safety of the living room.

“Have you ever actually sutured a wound before?”

Jaeha hadn’t even heard the bathroom door creak open. Suddenly, Taegeon leaned against the frame, rubbing a towel through his dripping hair. He wore nothing but loose lounge pants, leaving his massive, scarred torso completely bare. Jaeha stood transfixed. His gaze followed a single droplet of water as it slid down the sharp line of Taegeon’s jaw. If Taegeon hadn’t broken the silence with his dry, emotionless question, Jaeha might have remained there indefinitely, staring like a complete fool.

“You’re looking awfully hard.”

A wicked glint entered Taegeon’s dark eyes.

“And here I thought you weren’t the least bit interested in me.”

“I… I’m not.”

Jaeha scrambled violently to reassemble his composure. In his panicked haste to deny the accusation, he completely missed the heavier implication buried in his own reply.

Taegeon caught on immediately. His mouth curved slightly. “Not what? Not staring or not interested?”

“Ah, that’s not what I meant…”

“Keep sputtering like that and you’re going to start crying.” Taegeon scoffed and crooked a hand toward him. “Fine. I get the picture. Get over here.”

Crying?

Jaeha, who had never shed a genuine tear since childhood, allowed only one tear to fall at his biological mother’s funeral. However, standing frozen and indignantly defending his emotional resilience would have been absurd. He snapped his mouth shut and obediently crossed the room, stopping beside the mattress where Taegeon had seated himself.

Taegeon roughly rubbed the remaining moisture from his hair before carelessly tossing the damp towel onto the floor. “Do you even know the first step?”

Driven by an ingrained need for order, Jaeha immediately picked it up and threw it into the hamper.

Watching the immaculate corporate director perform the domestic chore, Taegeon leaned back and braced his weight on his palms.

Jaeha faltered. The clinical response he had been preparing died on his tongue.

An unbearably heavy, languid atmosphere radiated from Taegeon’s relaxed posture and low, rumbling voice. Although the Alpha was explicitly asking about first aid, the question twisted into something infinitely more carnal inside Jaeha’s fevered mind.

You absolute animal.

Jaeha harshly criticized himself.

Having such explicit and inappropriate fantasies about an injured, bleeding man was absurd. He had never encountered anyone who could awaken his dormant predatory instincts, let alone provoke such a desperate hunger to conquer and possess. Until now, Jaeha believed he was immune to desires of that nature. The horrifying truth was that he might actually be deeply and shamelessly depraved.

Yet, in the suffocating intimacy of midnight and the profound silence of the bedroom, ignoring the man before him was impossible.

The amber light highlighted the severe ridge of Taegeon’s nose, casting half of his rugged face into shadow. His heavy, unblinking gaze pierced through the gloom with the terrifying stillness of a Siberian tiger surveying its frozen territory.

Golden light slipped over the hard angles of his face and poured like liquid silk across his bare torso, accentuating every brutal line of his musculature. From the thick, ironlike span of his collarbones to the broad sweep of his shoulders and the meticulously carved planes of his chest, the sheer, imposing architecture of his body made Jaeha’s breath catch painfully in his throat.

Thanks to their superior biological hormones, developing an impressive physique came almost effortlessly to most Alphas. Jaeha himself possessed a disciplined, leanly muscled frame stripped of excess fat. But the enormous Alpha lounging before him had been forged from something else entirely, something far more dangerous. This was not a body sculpted by costly personal trainers and sterile gym memberships. It was a weapon honed through blood, mud, and survival.

Every part of Taegeon’s anatomy seemed designed for violence, built to tear through muscle, shatter bone, and seize whatever he desired. Although his skin bore few minor scrapes, several deep and catastrophic scars ravaged his torso. A dark, intrusive thought shot through Jaeha’s mind as he wondered what horrific fate had befallen the men who had managed to carve such lethal marks into Jang Taegeon.

Taegeon chuckled as he watched the immaculate director drift off into another daze. “You’re gonna start drooling. I told you to come here.”

“I absolutely was not drooling,” Jaeha shot back.

“Oh?” Taegeon arched one dark brow. “Did you spill something else, then?”

Jaeha followed the deliberate descent of the Alpha’s predatory gaze to the front of his tailored trousers. Pure, electrified shock ripped through him, and he jerked his hips away so violently that the intensity of his own reaction frightened him.

Taegeon took obvious delight in his fluster and broke into laughter. “Geez. It feels like I’m picking on a kid.”

“I am not a child.”

“Come to think of it, I’m technically the younger one here, aren’t I?” Taegeon cut in, tilting his head as a lethal, taunting smirk touched his lips. “Isn’t that right, Jaeha-hyung?”

A violent flush scorched across Jaeha’s face. The filthy implication packed into that single honorific short-circuited his thoughts completely. Desperate to gather the shredded remains of his composure, Jaeha tore his gaze away from the man’s smoldering eyes. He could not allow himself to be seduced by the thick, erotic atmosphere, especially when the heat of the shower had clearly dilated the vessels around Taegeon’s wound, causing fresh crimson to gather inside the ugly gash across his abdomen.

“I received basic trauma training during my military service,” Jaeha announced, his voice stiff and clinical.

“Fascinating,” Taegeon replied, his tone completely deadpan. “I was exempted.”

The dangerous amusement never left his mouth. Taegeon hooked one foot around the heavy medical kit and nudged it across the mattress toward Jaeha, silently challenging him to prove his supposed competence.

While Jaeha methodically unlatched the metal clasps, Taegeon pushed himself off the bed and sauntered toward the imposing mahogany cabinet. He pulled open its heavy doors, revealing a sophisticated, custom-built minibar.

A crystal decanter, still half-full of rich amber liquor, rested on a sliding shelf. Beneath it, a swinging compartment housed a temperature-controlled wine cellar and a folding side table. Taegeon poured himself a measure of liquor, then looked toward Jaeha and lifted the Baccarat glass in a subtle toast.

The invitation to join him was unmistakable.

Jaeha hesitated.

Caution warred with the memory of the last time they had shared a drink, the night before their wedding, which remained far too vivid for him to dismiss.

“I would advise you to avoid drinking as much as possible, Director Jang,” he murmured.

“I’m disinfecting,” Taegeon replied with careless dismissal. He emptied the glass in a single swallow, then set it down with the sharp clack of crystal against wood.

Jaeha watched him through pursed lips.

A low chuckle rolled from Taegeon’s throat. He collected the glass, sauntered back toward the bed, and perched on its edge. There was something strange about his laughter today, something dangerously wanton. Before their marriage, Jaeha had assumed Taegeon was a man almost entirely devoid of expression. Only now did he begin to understand that he himself had been the one paralyzed behind a stiff and unreadable mask. The realization unsettled him far more than it should have.

Taegeon appeared utterly indifferent to Jaeha’s internal spiral.

“I’m the only one undressed, and it’s making me a little self-conscious.” His voice slipped into a register that resisted easy interpretation. “So, are you actually going to get to work, or are you planning to strip down too?”

Startled, Jaeha looked up and caught a faint shimmer of amusement within those otherwise stoic eyes. He could not tell whether the remark was merely a crude joke or a literal demand.

Jaeha had spent his entire life being told that his expressions were impossible to read, but Jang Taegeon belonged to another species entirely. Jaeha burned to dissect whatever was moving behind those eyes, yet he did not dare ask.

Instead, he reached for the antiseptic and a stack of sterile cotton pads, determined not to let his agitation show, although he feared his face was already broadcasting every trace of panic. It was mortifying to become this jumpy, this pathologically sensitive, only when Taegeon was near. Jaeha had never learned how to conduct himself around someone who held his heart so completely captive.

Jaeha knew he was behaving unlike himself. He was flustered, chaotic, and utterly unprofessional, yet he could not make himself stop. Those who had once made the mistake of loving someone often found it dangerously easy to repeat it. Jaeha understood that perfectly, and still, he repeated the same mistake with every passing second.

Meanwhile, Taegeon tore open the packaging of a disposable syringe containing an unidentified ampule and injected it directly into his inner forearm with practiced, nonchalant precision.

Suspicion flashed through Jaeha’s mind. Was that some kind of drug?

As though he had sensed the doubt gathering in Jaeha’s eyes, Taegeon sighed. “It’s an antibiotic.”

“…Is that so?”

“Did you take me for some lowlife junkie?”

“No, that isn’t it…” Jaeha shook his head far too quickly. He could not bring himself to admit that the thought had, in fact, crossed his mind with remarkable clarity.

Taegeon’s expression remained an impenetrable void, making it impossible to distinguish biting sarcasm from literal truth. To keep his hands from fumbling, Jaeha exhaled slowly, soaked a fresh cotton pad with antiseptic, and stepped forward.

Because Taegeon remained seated on the edge of the bed with his glass in hand, Jaeha had to bend at the waist. The position made the wound impossible to inspect without confronting its agonizing intimacy.

At last, he lowered himself to his knees and brought his gaze level with the laceration. Almost immediately, he was struck by the suffocating certainty that Taegeon was watching him with predatory intensity.

What is happening?

Jaeha glanced up, only then realizing that he had placed himself directly between the man’s spread legs.

“Ah…”

“The view isn’t half bad,” Taegeon murmured. His gaze remained lowered, his long lashes casting dense shadows over his cheeks like a dark sunshade. Through that thick fringe, his black eyes appeared as deep as an abyss, with no visible distinction between iris and pupil.

The slight narrowing of those eyes told Jaeha that he was smiling. There was no obvious curve to his lips, yet the air around him radiated the unmistakable pressure of a grin.

Taegeon seemed to be savoring the sight of Lee Jaeha kneeling between his legs as though it were an appetizer, pairing the view with the amber liquor he tipped into his mouth through elegant, sharply defined lips.

Heat surged into Jaeha’s face until his skin burned crimson, but he forced himself to focus exclusively on the injury. The blood vessels around the wound had begun to dilate in the warm air, allowing fresh red beads to gather along the torn flesh.

Holding his breath, Jaeha carefully soaked the affected area with a cotton pad using tweezers. The contact must have been excruciatingly painful, yet Taegeon continued drinking, his gaze fixed intently on Jaeha’s face.

The intense stare became unbearable.

Perhaps sensing Jaeha’s distress, Taegeon extended the glass. “Just one sip won’t hurt.”

He’s using informal speech again.

Jaeha glanced from the offered drink to the man holding it, released a shaky breath, and accepted the glass with his free hand. He gulped down the contents in one go. The aroma of the drink revealed it as a high-end single malt distilled solely from barley. It was an exquisite spirit, but the scorching sensation it caused down his esophagus was the last thing he needed.

Surprisingly, the alcohol seemed to ease the knots in his fraying nerves. He could feel Taegeon’s gaze lingering over his flushed cheeks, but he refrained from confirming the suspicion. Instead, he focused his full attention on disinfecting the wound.

Fortunately, the cut was not as deep as he had feared. Relief washed over him in a quiet murmur.

“Thank goodness.”

“I told you, it only grazed me.” Taegeon’s voice carried lazy amusement. “You looked so eager to play doctor. Are you satisfied now?”

Jaeha briefly wondered whether the Alpha was treating him like a sulking child. Beneath those long lashes, Taegeon’s eyes were as black as the midnight sea, offering no hint of the tectonic forces shifting in the depths of his mind. He was exactly like that sea. He surrendered nothing of himself, leaving everyone else to drift, pitch, and heave in his wake.

Jaeha forced his attention back to the treatment.

He had briefly entertained the possibility that the wound might require stitches, but Taegeon had dismissed the idea outright. Had Jaeha not forced his way inside with the first-aid kit, the man might simply have poured whiskey over the open gash and considered the matter settled.

The thought horrified him enough to make his movements even more meticulous.

He wanted to tend properly to this beast of a man, who would otherwise lick his wounds in the dark and walk away as though pain meant nothing. Jaeha knew the impulse arose from his own selfish and desperate need to be useful to him, yet that knowledge only sharpened the urge.

Determined not to cause unnecessary pain, he became so absorbed in his work that he forgot how compromising his position had become. He pressed a fresh cotton pad soaked in styptic against the wound, then deftly wound the gauze around Taegeon’s waist.

As he prepared to tighten the knot, he abruptly realized that he was half-kneeling between Taegeon’s legs with both arms wrapped completely around the man’s bare torso.

“…Ah.”

The realization struck with enough force to wrench a foolish, panicked gasp from his mouth. The tips of his ears flared with heat, and his entire body ignited in a sudden, searing rush.

Even then, he could not stop bandaging him. If he released the gauze now, the protective pad would slide away from the wound. Lee Jaeha forced his trembling fingers into obedience and finished the knot.

Only inches from his ear, a faint, low chuckle resonated through Taegeon’s chest. “Just how long were you waiting?”

“What… what do you mean?”

“I asked you to have dinner with me, but I never showed up.” Taegeon’s voice softened, although the softness carried an edge. “You didn’t wait?”

No.

I waited.

I waited desperately.

I looked forward to it more than I had looked forward to anything in years.

Lee Jaeha completed the bandage without answering.

Once again, he could not bring himself to tell Director Jang that he had waited, that worry had eaten him alive, and that his heart had broken when Taegeon failed to appear. He had played the fool often enough for a single lifetime. Revealing those concealed and pathetic emotions felt physically impossible, but there was another fear beneath that one. Such naked sincerity might be nothing more than an irritating inconvenience to a man like Taegeon.

Jaeha had already lost ground since his meeting with Jang Changsik, and he genuinely wanted to preserve the peace between them. He did not yearn for affection. At least, that was what he told himself. He merely wanted to establish himself as a reliable, if distant, spouse. Given time, he had hoped their respective positions within the family hierarchy would settle into a stable and predictable rhythm.

Instead, Jaeha found himself navigating a map he had never been taught to read. He had received countless hours of elite social education, yet none of his tutors had explained how one ought to behave when one’s husband was a predatory Alpha steadily dismantling one’s sanity.

“I suppose you weren’t waiting for me.”

Jaeha went rigid, his silence absolute.

“I’m truly disappointed,” Taegeon continued, lowering his voice into a rough, gravelly register. “My stomach actually aches.”

“Does it… hurt?” Jaeha looked up in alarm.

Only then did he see the faint and inscrutable smile with which Taegeon was watching him.

The scent of rugosa roses and sea salt began to bloom in the narrow space between them, thickening until it became almost cloying. Jaeha did not realize he had gone still or that he was staring blankly while his thoughts slowly unraveled.

The pheromones intensified into a sweet floral assault, carrying the fragrance of a blossom that survived only upon barren coastal cliffs.

Jaeha struggled to anchor his muddled mind. He had barely managed to finish applying the bandage. His fingers felt clumsy as he broke their locked gazes and concentrated on fastening the final hook.

He tried to stand.

A violent wave of vertigo crashed through him and buckled his knees.

His body pitched forward as gravity betrayed him.

“Ah…”

“My, my.”

Taegeon’s exclamation was threaded with strange, mocking laughter. An arm snared Jaeha around the waist, solid and unyielding, coiling around him with predatory speed.

Oh… this is strange…

The room spun around Jaeha.

Was it the drink?

He had barely taken a sip. It should not have been enough to affect a man of his constitution. Something is profoundly wrong. He blinked through the haze, struggling to focus as phantom heat spread beneath his skin and blossomed across nerve endings his mind had not even known existed.

He was burning alive.

“Ash tree,” Taegeon whispered directly into his ear.

The inexplicable words sent a fresh chill coursing down Jaeha’s spine.

“No. Hmm.” Taegeon inhaled deeply against the curve of Jaeha’s neck. “Forsythia?”

Forsythia.

It was the distinct and subtle fragrance of Jaeha’s own pheromones. The air became completely saturated, heavy with violent sweetness and the scent of a flower that bloomed brilliantly in the most barren places.

Rugosa rose.

Jaeha could almost hear ocean waves crashing against the shore. It was a visceral auditory hallucination, conjured by the dense and suffocating scent of Taegeon’s sea salt.

Closing his dizzy eyes, Jaeha sagged helplessly against the Alpha’s chest. His biology was coming apart at the seams. He dimly wondered whether he had entered a sudden rut, yet he had never experienced heat this abnormal, simmering, and terrifying, not even at the height of his cycle.

Jaeha shook his head through the haze and tried desperately to straighten, but his limbs refused to obey. Unable to support his own weight, he clutched Taegeon’s broad shoulders to keep himself from collapsing completely against the man’s chest.

“Why do you keep leaning on me?” Taegeon whispered, deep satisfaction darkening his voice.

Jaeha wanted to deny it fiercely. He wanted to insist that he was merely dizzy, ask to rest in his own room, and tell Taegeon to summon a doctor if his condition worsened before fleeing the scene.

Instead, a warning siren shrieked inside his skull as a deluge of carnal heat flooded his body.

Why does everything feel like the tide?

Jang Taegeon’s pitch-black eyes were an unfathomable ocean. The room thickened with the sharp scent of sea salt and wild rugosa roses blooming across coastal cliffs, while heat surged through Jaeha like a towering wave.

Helpless against the undertow, he went limp and sank into that metaphorical sea until his cheek rested against the solid plane of Taegeon’s chest.

“You did this last time too,” Taegeon murmured. “Do you know that?”

The words seemed to carry the echo of a scandalous, unspoken rumor.

Executive Director Lee Jaeha excites Alphas.

Jaeha’s vision wavered violently. The oppressive heat corroded his ability to reason while a red warning light flashed uselessly through what remained of his rational mind.

“I… I just… have to go now,” he stammered, forcing out the declaration of retreat.

He struggled to pull away, but all strength had abandoned his waist, leaving him to flounder pathetically in Taegeon’s hold. As though rescuing a drowning man, Taegeon hooked one powerful arm around Jaeha’s waist and hauled him effortlessly onto his lap.

“Lee Jaeha.”

“…Yes.”

The obedient answer escaped before Jaeha even realized he had spoken.

He did not notice that he was instinctively rubbing his forehead against Taegeon’s collarbone. The heat inside him churned like molten lava, refusing to cool for even a heartbeat, while a heavy and maddening tickle gathered low in his abdomen.

A rut.

It has to be a rut.

“No, that isn’t it…” Jaeha mumbled like a feverish child, no longer able to distinguish dream from reality.

This was not a normal rut.

A standard cycle did not freeze a man’s blood and leave him utterly immobile. It was usually a suffocating mire of possessiveness, a primal compulsion to conquer paired with an insatiable and ravenous hunger. It had never included this particular nerve-wracking tickle, so foreign and humiliating that Jaeha wanted to crawl out of his own skin.

Taegeon tucked his massive arms securely beneath Jaeha’s knees and lifted him higher against his chest.

“Who told you to go into heat in my room?”

Each word carried a low vibration that resonated directly through Jaeha’s forehead. He wanted to protest and insist that Taegeon had misunderstood. Even between spouses, allowing pheromones to spill indiscriminately during a rut was considered a severe breach of etiquette.

Then the unmistakable scent of crisp ash trees flooded the room, his own innate pheromones bursting free.

Yet it was not only ash.

Woven through the explosion of woody fragrance was a cloying sweetness, the sharp tang of sea salt, and a faint, delicate trace of something else.

“No…” Jaeha breathed, his voice reduced to desperate denial.

Forsythia.

Its distinct fragrance was unmistakable.

He immediately remembered the flower’s meaning, a trivial fact he had memorized only because his former fiancé, Sumin, had loved flowers so dearly.

‘Sensual.’

“No?” Taegeon’s tone carried gentle, predatory amusement. “I suppose you don’t remember.”

Jaeha remained paralyzed, his mind spinning through chaotic circles.

“You start leaking and soaking everything the second I shove it inside you, but you still swear it isn’t you.”

Another meaning associated with the flower surfaced without warning.

‘You are mine.’

Jaeha did not understand why that possessive phrase seized his thoughts with such violence.

“If it wasn’t Lee Jaeha, then who was grinding against me hard enough to make my dick throb?”

“Jang… Director Jang…”

“Director?” Taegeon laughed, and something feral finally stirred beneath the darkness of his voice. “Fuck that, Jaeha. Why the hell would you call the man who’s about to fuck your ass ‘Director’?”

The beast lurking beneath the midnight sea finally bared its teeth.

Jaeha met eyes so utterly black that iris and pupil merged into one bottomless darkness. Intimidation struck him with such force that he reflexively looked away.

The bedroom was now oppressively saturated with the scent of forsythia.

‘You are mine.’

Although the floral pheromones were pouring from Jaeha’s own body, he did not feel like the one making that declaration.

Lee Jaeha could belong to Jang Taegeon.

But, Jang Taegeon could never belong to Lee Jaeha.

Then who was the flower’s message truly meant for?

***