Part 2.
As Seohan left Cesare’s building, he clutched the contract tight against his chest. Even after climbing into the hover car Cesare had prepared for him, he refused to let the contract go. He was half-convinced that if he let his guard down for even a moment, Cesare would materialize like some demon and snatch it away. He’d been craning his neck and scanning his surroundings right up until the moment he boarded, shoulders tense with wariness.
Ensha, chin propped on her hand at the desk, watched Seohan’s skittish glancing around with an amused eye — like a cat with its fur on end. Only after the sleek hover car disappeared from view did she laugh out loud.
“Ahaha, oh my, what are we going to do with him?”
“Having fun?”
Colin, who had come to stand beside her after seeing Seohan off, grumbled. From the moment he’d gone to hand Yi Seohan over to the driver, Ensha had been shooting him sidelong looks like she was dying of amusement.
“I won, so of course I’m having fun.”
“Ha.”
The more her laughter rang out, the lower Colin’s spirits sank. He had the distinct and horrible sensation that the wallet carefully tucked inside his inner pocket was thinning all on its own.
“That kid just came out of the boss’s place, right? Not some hotel he took him to.”
Floors ten and eleven of the Herald Financial building were Cesare’s private quarters. Ensha had already confirmed which floor Yi Seohan had come down from — and with that, she was certain the win was hers.
“……”
“Right? Well?”
Ensha poked Colin in the side as she asked.
Colin, who understood the full implication behind her question better than anyone, said nothing. He simply didn’t want to admit that he had become the complete and utter loser of this bet.
Cesare Herald’s standards for selecting an omega were exacting — but so was every step that followed. The venue where he spent the night to verify pheromone compatibility had to be a hotel room that had been perfectly sanitized, disinfection included.
There was no way someone who despised omega pheromones as intensely as he did would spend time with an omega inside his own home.
It was Cesare Herald’s firm belief that omega pheromones were clinging and tenacious as leeches — impossible to shake off no matter what you did. Because of that, he would order a fresh pair of gloves to be prepared every time he met an omega, and would even have every article of clothing he’d worn incinerated afterward.
And yet — omega Yi Seohan had entered Cesare’s private quarters and hadn’t emerged until nightfall. What that meant went without saying.
“You’re ignoring me? I said, right?”
“You already saw it. Why ask?”
Should’ve left my wallet at home.
Too late for regret now. Colin extended his deepest condolences to his wallet, which was about to be thoroughly cleaned out.
“Ensha.”
“Yes, yes, go on. Say it.”
Ensha answered him as if she already knew exactly what he was going to say, humming cheerfully to herself. Colin put on the most natural, pleasant expression he could manage and tried to talk her around.
“What do you say we change the terms of the bet? Dinner feels a little — I don’t know, dull? Childish, even.”
“Oh, I already made a reservation at Stiria Restaurant.”
Naturally, Ensha wasn’t having any of it. Stiria Restaurant was the most expensive establishment in the entire area. The smile Colin had worked so hard to put together shattered at her bombshell announcement.
“Stiria——?! Are you serious? Have you no conscience?”
“Oh? Which one of us here has a conscience?”
Ensha answered with shameless ease and laughed. She wasn’t wrong. It was a bit rich to talk about conscience when you were a member of a financial company built on dirty money — and more than that, one of the Executive Director’s closest aides, the very core of it all.
“You’ve already lost the bet anyway — stop holding back and talk. Did they sign a contract? That thing he was carrying earlier was a contract, right?”
“It was. Three months.”
“Wow. Three whole months?”
Ensha had suspected the boss might end up signing something with Yi Seohan — but even she was surprised by three months. She’d figured it would be two or three more meetings at most.
“To think a contract would actually be signed.”
Colin muttered to himself, rifling through his wallet. He wasn’t emotionally ready to accept this harsh reality.
“Look on the bright side. You lost dinner money, but your workload just got lighter. That’s a gain for you.”
Ensha patted Colin’s shoulder in what was comfort only in the loosest sense. She wasn’t the one losing money, so sympathy came easily.
But Ensha’s consolation seemed to act as a trigger — Colin let out a sigh as if the world were ending.
“This makes absolutely no sense.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“Doesn’t it seem strange to you? He’s from District 4, a recessive omega. And incredibly green on top of it.”
It wasn’t that he had a low opinion of Yi Seohan as a person. If anything, Colin was worried — Seohan seemed far too naive and inexperienced in every regard for his age.
Recessive omegas had the advantage of weaker pheromones, but the critical downside was that their heats and pheromone output were irregular and unpredictable. Which meant there could be times when he simply couldn’t be of use when needed.
The Executive Director as Colin knew him was not someone who would sign a contract while fully accepting that kind of handicap. Wasn’t Cesare Herald, above all else, thoroughly pragmatic and calculating?
And if there was a type of person that Cesare Herald hated most, it was exactly Seohan’s sort — sluggish and clumsy.
“Isn’t that just how compatibility works? Pheromone compatibility is the most important thing, isn’t it.”
“You think it already went that far?”
“Would he have signed a contract otherwise?”
“I suppose not……”
“Don’t be too down about it. As a special concession, I’ll only eat two servings per course.”
It was foreseeable from the moment he’d called to see the recessive omega from District 4 himself, Ensha said, patting Colin’s back in what was more teasing than comfort.
“And this is just my take — we need to hold onto Seohan properly. An omega who’s compatible with the boss? You’re not going to find one like that twice.”
“Who doesn’t know that? That’s the thing — why did the resume you happened to push forward have to belong to someone with such good compatibility with the Executive Director? This is a conspiracy.”
“Conspiracy my foot. I told you. He was the boss’s type.”
“That’s the part that makes the least sense. He’s never even been in a relationship — what type? I’ve never once seen him with anyone.”
Even now, with the bet settled, Colin couldn’t bring himself to accept what Ensha had said. Type. What type was she even talking about? Not once in all the years they’d been together since the orphanage had he ever seen anything like it.
But he couldn’t keep denying it forever. If Yi Seohan wasn’t the Executive Director’s type, as Ensha claimed, then nothing about the current situation could be explained.
Colin thought back to Cesare’s face — the last he’d seen of it before leaving. The emotion that had sat plainly in those deep olive-colored eyes had unmistakably been enjoyment. And interest.
“……Ahem. Is there a reason you thought Yi Seohan was the Executive Director’s type?”
Colin lowered his voice and asked carefully. Come to think of it, Ensha had always had sharp instincts to match her quick hands. She was the one who read the Executive Director’s mood more accurately than even Colin could.
“Do you remember? That time the boss was kidnapped, years ago.”
“I remember.”
Colin answered plainly.
In the Graven Federation, where everything had a price, the most valuable commodity was those with secondary genders. A dominant alpha with no parents, scraping through back alleys — that was exactly the kind of prize trafficking operations craved most.
The first person to recognize that prize was Viktor — current chairman of Herald Financial, and Cesare’s adoptive father.
At the time, the Herald family had hit a wall. They needed to expand their business territory against limited resources, and to do so, they required someone who could handle dirty money.
Viktor had a biological son — Rain Herald — but Rain’s calm, introverted nature meant he lacked the disposition for work that involved violence.
And above all, blood runs thicker than water. He didn’t want to put his own child at the forefront of something dangerous.
What he needed was a dominant alpha — one of what was being called the new humanity. Someone who could offset the sense of inferiority that Viktor and Rain, both recessive alphas, carried — and who, raised correctly, could become a symbol of power.
And Cesare met every single condition Viktor required. More than met them — he exceeded them. He was an ultra-dominant alpha, rarer even than a dominant alpha.
Superior physique, an aggressive nature, an unyielding ruthlessness, and an innate arrogance. There was no reason not to choose Cesare.
And so, as word quietly spread that Cesare would be adopted into the Herald family, trafficking operations began to grow bold.
The abduction attempts totaled three. Dominant alphas already fetched a high price on their own — and someone the Herald family had set their eyes on was worth whatever you dared to ask. Even with the enormous risk, it was enough to make operators’ eyes go wide with greed.
The groups who attempted the abductions were each different. They were professional operators who would stop at nothing, and the traps they laid were formidable — far more than a boy barely into his teens should have been able to detect and escape.
What the operators had failed to account for was that Cesare was the most tenacious of the tenacious — and that his physical abilities were exceptional.
The first two attempts ended so quickly they could barely be called attempts at all. The process hadn’t been entirely smooth, of course — but what mattered was that he’d come through unharmed.
But just once — the last time was different.
