Chapter 18

Lee Jaeha was struck by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.

He was quickly becoming accustomed to waking before dawn, utterly incapable of processing the sheer extent of what his body had endured during the night. Yet despite opening his eyes before the sun had even breached the horizon, his mind felt surprisingly lucid. His limbs were light and refreshed, almost as though someone had carefully bathed him and tended to his body while he slept.

As he watched the steady rain drum against the windowpanes through the dim blue light of early morning, he felt strangely weightless and clean.

Did the news say the rainy season had begun…?

The thought drifted through his mind before he dismissed it. It did not matter. Only one fact carried any weight now.

He was lying in Jang Taegeon’s bed.

“Hah…”

Jaeha was terrified to look over his shoulder. The steady rhythm of deep breathing brushed warmly against the nape of his neck like a ghost.

This was the second time he had slept with Jang Taegeon.

It sounded like a pathetic excuse, but his memories of their first encounter consisted of little more than scattered, fragmented flashes. He clearly remembered being with Taegeon, but the hazy question of who had lunged at whom, who had first entertained the absurd possibility of such an act, and who had ultimately surrendered remained maddeningly unclear.

Granted, that night was the sole reason he had managed to secure a marriage to Taegeon in the first place. Even so, he could hardly excuse himself for losing every trace of rational judgment a second time.

Lee Jaeha was not a man inclined toward self-love. Having been given so little in life that was genuinely worth cherishing, he had never developed much desire to cherish himself. What he did possess, however, was formidable self-assurance, an objective and ironclad confidence in his own abilities.

He had always believed his greatest strength was his cold rationality and absolute refusal to make impulsive decisions driven by emotion. If he had now failed so spectacularly in that regard twice, perhaps it was time to permanently retract that assessment of himself.

Gathering what remained of his fractured courage, Jaeha slowly turned his head against the pillow.

Taegeon lay fast asleep beside him. It was only natural, considering this was the man’s master bedroom. Yet the moment Jaeha’s gaze settled on his relaxed profile, the memories of the previous night struck with the force of a physical blow. He felt as though Taegeon’s hands had spent hours methodically destroying his body, only to piece it together again and begin anew.

“Hnngh, stop!”

“Are you finished just because you came, Executive Director? Your manners are fucking atrocious. Is this how you treated the Omegas you fucked?”

Jaeha had been utterly incapable of forming a coherent defense. He could hardly admit that sexual encounters were a rarity in his life, nor could he explain that he usually failed to reach completion because he was, for all practical purposes, clinically frigid.

Words had abandoned him completely as Taegeon’s thick, impossibly rough member scraped mercilessly along his inner walls. The length would slide out, only to grind back against the sensitive, aching ridges buried deep inside him with relentless precision. Every time Jaeha parted his lips to argue, nothing emerged but broken, humiliating moans.

For a man with virtually no memories of passionate relationships, the intensity of his own physical reactions had dealt him a profound psychological shock. He had never imagined that such filthy, desperate sounds could come from his throat. Any logical explanation he might have assembled was instantly obliterated by the overwhelming rush of pleasure, dissolving completely in the fever consuming his mind.

Taegeon had not appeared to want a verbal response. Had he truly desired one, he would not have been so meticulous about ensuring that every time Jaeha opened his mouth, he was robbed of the ability to speak.

Jaeha buried his burning face in his palms, dizziness washing over him as the vivid recollection surged back.

Why, of all possible times, did the rut have to strike then?

If Taegeon’s rut had been triggered naturally, suppressants would not have been an option. They were strictly contraindicated with the powerful antibiotics he was taking for his injury. Had the stubborn Alpha attempted to swallow the pills regardless, Jaeha would have physically stopped him.

During a spouse’s rut, it was his biological and legal responsibility to satisfy those needs, precisely as he had done the day before.

But why had his own body responded that way?

Perhaps he had simply been influenced by his proximity to Taegeon’s cycle.

It was not necessarily a case of an Omega’s biology being triggered by an Alpha’s pheromones. There was a documented phenomenon in which another Alpha, confined within the same territory, could have his hormonal system provoked by raw competitive instinct, triggering a sympathetic secondary rut.

Yet the change in Jaeha’s pheromone scent remained completely inexplicable.

Instead of the clean, crisp scent of ash wood that was innately his, his body had flooded the room with the thick, cloying fragrance of forsythia.

The floral aroma had deepened as though saturated by a torrential downpour, gathering heavily around the bedside and mingling seamlessly with Taegeon’s dominant pheromones. Completely enveloped in that intoxicating blend, Jaeha had climaxed and accepted him fully.

An Alpha, of all things.

Jaeha suppressed a short, trembling sigh. His core still felt unbearably raw, while the dull muscular ache left by holding his legs spread wide enough to accommodate Taegeon’s size remained severe. Strangely, however, it did not hurt with the same tearing agony he had experienced after their first encounter.

Why?

An Omega’s anatomy was biologically designed to accommodate such acts. An Alpha’s most certainly was not. Yet despite his body resisting its own design, the desperate greed with which he had swallowed the other man remained painfully vivid, even in hindsight.

Contrary to the taunts Taegeon had thrown at him in the heat of passion, children could not be conceived between two Alphas. It remained biologically impossible for an Alpha’s body to carry another Alpha’s seed.

Last night, however, had felt entirely different.

Something had shifted. Some fundamental and terrifying alteration had taken place, defying every known law of their biology.

Jaeha cut the thought off with ruthless force as a dull pulse of warning began to throb behind his eyes.

He had barely begun shifting his weight, attempting to slip silently from the bed, when a low, sandpaper-rough voice stopped him cold.

“Why? Planning to fuck me and run away again, just like last time?”

“Hah…”

Jaeha’s breath caught in his throat, and his shoulders locked rigidly. He had not realized Taegeon was awake.

Speaking with a veneer of dark, languid indifference, the Alpha wound a heavy arm around Jaeha’s waist and pulled him backward with effortless strength. Before Jaeha could brace himself, the dull ache in his lower back flared, and what little strength he had gathered collapsed.

He fell against the larger man, his cheek pressed firmly to the warmth of Taegeon’s broad chest. The position was so thoroughly mortifying that Jaeha squeezed his eyes shut for a heartbeat and muttered a silent, desperate curse before forcing them open again.

“Director… I am returning to my room.”

“Be my guest. Who’s stopping you?”

Despite the casual dismissal, Taegeon did not loosen his hold by so much as a fraction. The arm locked around Jaeha’s waist felt like unyielding iron. By refusing to release him, the man who had just granted him permission to leave had effectively transformed Jaeha into a captive forced to cling to him against his will.

“If you’re telling me to leave, then why are you doing this? You’re clinging to me like a damn leech.”

Taegeon responded with nothing more than a noncommittal huff.

Groaning in frustration, Jaeha tried to push himself upright, but the effort proved useless. There was nowhere to plant his hands for leverage, and Taegeon’s arm, coiled around his waist like the constricting body of an enormous serpent, only tightened around him.

“If you would just move your arm…”

“What arm?”

Taegeon looked down at him with an expression of pure, unadulterated gall, then allowed his eyelids to drift shut again as though he fully intended to return to sleep.

Jaeha used every ounce of strength he possessed to wriggle free without aggravating the wound still healing across Taegeon’s abdomen, but the effort was futile. After several more pointless attempts, he finally went limp in defeat. His only remaining option was to lie perfectly still and avoid placing any pressure on the injury.

Even so, indignation flared hotly in his chest.

“…Why do you keep speaking to me so casually?” Jaeha asked, his voice rough and thick with sleep.

“I heard the younger partner has to be a little cheeky if he wants to be properly loved.”

What in the world was he talking about?

Jaeha had no idea where the Alpha had scavenged such complete nonsense, and Taegeon’s lazy, disinterested cadence made it impossible to determine whether he was being sincere. Jaeha chose to interpret the remark as nothing more than Taegeon discovering a new and creative method of tormenting him.

Unless something far worse had happened.

Perhaps the pathetic desire Jaeha had buried so deeply within himself had been exposed in its entirety.

Vertigo swept through his mind, leaving him reeling. He did not even know how Jang Taegeon preferred his morning coffee, yet they had already been intimate twice, and their names were now legally bound together in a marriage registry.

He genuinely wondered whether any of this was normal.

Was this what an ordinary, functioning marriage looked like behind closed doors?

Jaeha had no healthy example to consult. His mother had entered her marriage solely as an instrument of corporate strategy, consistently and coldly rejecting his father’s desperate attempts to claw affection from her. In response, his father had arranged his own pitiful revenge through a volatile mixture of inadequacy and resentment, establishing a second household with his mistress.

Had they been mature and functioning adults, they would not have spent their lives systematically destroying one another. Unfortunately, Jaeha’s parents had been fundamentally broken people.

With the closest and most intimate example of marriage in his life having ended in total ruin, he found it impossible to understand how ordinary people navigated a shared existence.

And yet, even so…

“If you’re not getting up, then go back to sleep.”

Taegeon’s broad palm settled against Jaeha’s back. His strokes were clumsy and unrefined, a stark contrast to the predatory grace he usually displayed.

Surprisingly, the weight of that hand anchored him.

Before Jaeha could process the absurdity of the situation, his heavy eyelids began to close, surrendering him to the darkness.

This does not seem entirely terrible…

The thought was treacherous, slipping into his mind as smoothly as oil. Without realizing it, Jaeha began viewing their impossible arrangement with a strange, hazy optimism.

It’s all right.

It might actually be fine.

Jaeha had never attempted to soothe his own anxiety with such uncertain, slippery reasoning, and the unfamiliar impulse made him feel like a stranger within his own mind. He should have been fighting, pushing Taegeon away, or preparing himself for the inevitable fallout.

Instead, his willpower had simply evaporated.

Two sets of rhythmic breathing blended in the quiet bedroom, forming a fragile harmony in the last dark hours before dawn. Morning was still some time away, and the room remained swallowed in shadow, save for a thin ribbon of cold blue light slipping through the narrow gap between the blackout curtains.

Submerged in a liquid sense of safety, Jaeha drifted toward the edge of consciousness.

Will something be different when I wake tomorrow? Or will we continue stumbling through this wreckage, adjusting to one another one breath at a time?

Neither possibility felt catastrophic.

With his mind finally at ease, Jaeha abandoned the last trace of his resolve and stopped resisting the pull of sleep, allowing his eyes to close completely.

***