Even by his own assessment, Jinwoo had grown up thoroughly loved. Above him were an older brother and sister with a significant age gap, and below him, there was no younger sibling to steal that love away. Not an only child, yet raised like one.
Growing up that way hadn’t made him see the world through rose-tinted glasses, though. Not everyone was obligated to love him, and every person had their own way of showing it. But Yuhan’s way was too rigid, too cold. As though he made no effort at all to place any warmth in the people around him.
“Sweet dreams.”
“…You too, Yuhan.”
That pleasant, low-toned voice of his was nothing more than a means to Yuhan’s business success. Checking in on meals, asking if there was anything inconvenient about living in this house — gestures like that weren’t difficult things to do. And yet the reason Jinwoo found himself on edge like this was—
“If there’s anything you want to eat before your cycle, tell me. I’ll get it for you.”
There was too much unnecessary consideration. It was like a sweet poison — perfectly designed to lure people in.
The will to respond drained out of him, and he gave only a nod. Whether Yuhan noticed or not, he didn’t care to think about it. For some reason, it irritated him.
* * *
He caught the faint sounds of Yuhan leaving for work. His body had felt like lead since the early hours of the morning, so he barely cracked his eyes open before closing them again. Too hot with the blanket on, too cold with it off — he had tossed and turned more times than he could count. He had fallen asleep, yet it felt like he was awake at the same time.
“Ah….”
He knew instinctively. This is the heat cycle.
The expected date had been the day after tomorrow, so it had come two days early. Normally, he’d take medication the moment it seemed like it was starting, which meant he’d almost never felt this uncomfortable, feverish warmth before. Trying to endure it with a clear head was not something a person should have to do.
He bit his lip, clawed at the blanket, and crossed his legs. It felt as though all the heat blazing through his body was pooling in his lower half.
“Hnh… hh….”
He’d parted his lips to breathe, but what came out was a moan. It was his own voice, yet it felt utterly foreign.
“Ahk…. Yuhan….”
Calling the name of the closest alpha he’d been living with was beyond his control. It was the natural flow of thought for an omega in heat. But Jinwoo didn’t even register whose name he’d just called.
His lower half was damp. Whether it was sweat, or something else entirely.
No matter how hard he tried to think of a way to relieve this unbearable need, no answer came. He rubbed his thighs together, grinding against his swollen, aching length, but it only made the sounds wrenching out of him grow louder — it solved nothing. He knew well enough that just touching himself with his hand wouldn’t be enough.
Not only did he rarely indulge in self-pleasure, but he also knew instinctively that this wasn’t something that could be resolved by tending to only the front. Touching himself there already felt unfamiliar — the idea of reaching around to handle the back himself was simply out of the question.
“Hngh….”
‘At least take one of the milder pills.’
Yuhan’s voice echoed in his mind. Finding the medication and swallowing it in this state was next to impossible. If Yuhan had said that knowing as much, then he really was a cold, awful person.
“So… annoying….”
Tears spilled over all at once. The truth was, if Yuhan had been here, this would have been resolved quickly. An alpha’s pheromones were the most effective way to soothe an omega’s heat cycle, and an alpha’s bodily fluids came second.
The thought that, at this point, he’d rather just be held by Yuhan immediately — that thought paralyzed his mind. His body, which had never taken an alpha before, trembled and ached for him.
And then, in the very next moment, the alpha pheromones he had been so desperately craving flooded the entire room.
* * *
By the layout of the house, Yuhan and Jinwoo’s rooms faced each other directly. Leaving for work always meant walking past Jinwoo’s firmly shut door — and lately, with the heat cycle drawing near, Yuhan had been able to feel the traces of his pheromones even through that closed door. The scent was so unbearably sweet. That was part of the reason he had told Jinwoo to take the gentler medication.
This morning had been no different. Jinwoo’s pheromones had still been there, and the room that kept him sealed inside had held firm.
But now, returning home earlier than usual, what brushed against Yuhan’s nose as he stepped inside was not the faint trace of pheromones he’d grown accustomed to.
“……?”
The pheromones saturating every corner of the house were thick and potent, as though someone had deliberately released a concentrated scent. It was enough to make him instinctively furrow his brow.
As if drawn by something, Yuhan’s feet carried him toward Jinwoo’s room. This was the source. He knew that if he opened the door, Jinwoo — his heat having arrived early — would be writhing and reaching for an alpha. And yet his hand wouldn’t move the way he willed it.
An omega eight years his junior. Someone whose smile, when it appeared, was beautiful. He’d wondered sometimes if this was what it would feel like to have a much younger sibling. The two months or so spent living with him had not been unpleasant. Which was exactly why he’d invented the forced excuse of an “evening tea time” — though he wondered if Jinwoo had ever noticed.
“Ha….”
Sighing changed nothing. Yuhan could not afford to let this moment pass without result, and Jinwoo, if he missed it now, would go through the same agony all over again. In the end it was an act driven by his own interests, but he dressed it in the wrapping of doing it for Jinwoo’s sake — a convenient hypocrisy.
It was a door he had never opened with his own hand before. It was the same material, the same weight as his own — yet it felt heavier.
“Hngh…. Yuhan….”
The pheromones of an omega in heat wrapped around Yuhan. Aggressive yet deeply intoxicating, the pheromones were more powerful than anything he had ever encountered before.
“Jinwoo. Are you alright?”
At the same time, he asked himself the same thing.
Are you really alright?
It was Yuhan who stood to benefit from this marriage. For Jinwoo, it was a contract filled with nothing but loss. Why was he only thinking of that now?
“Please…. Yuhan, I….”
However many hours he’d endured alone, his restless body glistened with cold sweat, and his face had gone so slack it was impossible to tell whether he was grimacing or smiling. And beneath the pheromones came the thick scent of night-blooming flowers.
It was Jinwoo who first noticed the alpha pheromones Yuhan had unknowingly released.
“Hah—!”
Watching Jinwoo hunch his shoulders and squeeze his thighs together, Yuhan swallowed without meaning to.
Setting aside biology, he had shared a bed with a great many people. Sometimes it had been nothing more than fleeting pleasure, and sometimes it had been a calculated move for business. But Yuhan had never once experienced the sensation of being genuinely aroused. Not despite all those encounters, but throughout all of them.
So right now, for the first time in his life, he was aroused.
“Did you… not take the medication?”
“I didn’t, I didn’t take it…. Hngh….”
Jinwoo still had enough presence of mind to understand the question — he shook his head side to side. Yuhan moved carefully closer and wiped the remaining tears from his face.
“Good.”
His own voice had dropped lower than usual. And alongside that, he felt something like elation — the thrill of knowing that his omega, bound to him by law, had put up no barrier against conceiving his child. The instinct buried deep beneath the socialized exterior of a civilized alpha had surfaced.
He shrugged off the cumbersome jacket and loosened his tie. The thought of showering, or of reaching for a condom, didn’t cross his mind at all.
“I— hng—! Hah….”
“Don’t think about anything. I’ll take care of everything.”
“Hngh…. It feels, strange. When you touch me….”
The anticipation of an omega’s body welcoming an alpha, tangled together with the fear of something he had never done before — Jinwoo’s mind was in complete disarray.
I need to tell him. That it’s my first time.
But everywhere Yuhan’s hands touched him, moans that didn’t sound like his own tore from his lips, and he couldn’t get a single coherent word out.
“Ht—! Hng, ahh—!”
“Does it feel good here?”
Accompanying a dominant omega through a heat cycle was new for Yuhan too. If he himself had not been dominant, he would have already been consumed by Jinwoo’s pheromones, acting no differently from an animal — a coupling in the truest, most primal sense, with reason entirely gone.
He undid the stifling buttons of his shirt and buried his nose against Jinwoo’s neck. The pheromones were thickest here — thick enough to make his head spin. Before he even realized it, he had dragged his mouth slowly along the nape of Jinwoo’s neck and sunk his teeth in.
