Dojin’s footsteps were heavy as he headed toward the café Lee Minjae had mentioned, but he felt he had to go.
The warning that someone was targeting Yoonwoo—whether it was true or not, he couldn’t just ignore it.
The narrow alleyway, shrouded in deep darkness, was exceptionally eerie.
His shadow stretched long under the streetlights.
It was as he was passing the corner of the alley, lined with dilapidated villas, that it happened.
“Ugh!”
Suddenly, he felt a sharp prick at the back of his neck, and his vision blurred as his consciousness rapidly faded.
‘What is this…?’
With that final passing thought, Dojin collapsed helplessly and lost consciousness.
How much time had passed?
Dojin slowly opened his eyes to a splitting headache, a faint stench, and the creaking sound of an unfamiliar bed.
His mind was foggy, and his vision was blurry and unfocused.
He blinked repeatedly, trying to survey his surroundings.
The windowless room was lit only by the dim, gloomy light of a worn-out incandescent bulb hanging from the ceiling, and the air was thick with the smell of mold and dust that stung his nose.
When his vision finally cleared, he realized he was lying on a bed in a shabby, rundown motel room.
And… that his hands and feet were tied tightly with thick, cold metal chains, leaving him unable to move an inch.
The chains dug into his skin, sending a freezing chill through him.
“……!”
He tried to push himself up in panic, but the chains didn’t budge.
Every movement only produced a loud, jarring clatter of metal.
There were two other men in the room.
One was Lee Minjae, lying on the adjacent bed, clothesless and limp as if passed out like a discarded doll.
The other was… Han Jiwon, sitting on a rickety chair across from the bed, staring into space and biting his nails.
The neat, confident appearance he had seen in the conference room was nowhere to be found.
His hair was greasy and disheveled, his face was deathly pale, and his eyes were sunken with dark circles.
Above all, his eyes were filled with a bone-chilling, irrational madness.
He was rocking his body anxiously, muttering words that couldn’t be understood.
Then, discovering that Dojin had woken up, Jiwon suddenly smiled brightly, as if nothing were wrong, and greeted him.
The scene was so unnatural that it made Dojin’s skin crawl.
“Oh my, Dojin. You’re finally awake? I’m sorry for bringing you here so roughly. But what else could I do? To bring a Dominant Alpha like you here quietly, this was the only way.”
His voice was light and cheerful, as if a child were playing a prank, but his eyes still glinted with madness.
“What is the meaning of this!”
Dojin growled, low with rage.
He pulled at the chains with all his might.
But the securely fixed chains didn’t even twitch despite his strength.
“Don’t you know kidnapping is a crime? Untie me right now!”
But Jiwon, as if he couldn’t hear Dojin’s words, or perhaps choosing to ignore them, began to ramble to himself.
His voice trembled, high and unstable, like someone consumed by insanity.
“Why… why doesn’t Joowon-hyung love me? What is so great about that Seo Yoonwoo anyway! He’s just a Beta without even a single pheromone! You’re the same. A well-bred, cool Dominant Alpha like you—why are you clinging to someone like Seo Yoonwoo? There are pretty, capable Omegas everywhere in the world! So why! Why on earth is it that idiot Beta bastard who can’t even produce proper pheromones!”
His near-screaming outcry was filled with venomous jealousy and hatred toward Seo Yoonwoo.
His distorted expression was repulsive.
Dojin remained silent for a moment.
Facing those mad eyes made his blood run cold.
But he told himself he couldn’t collapse here—that he had to stay sane, if only for Yoonwoo’s sake.
He then spoke in a calm but firm voice.
“You will never know in your entire life. The emotion of love isn’t decided by things like pheromones. Someone like you, who grades people based on pheromones and only looks at conditions… will never understand the true meaning of love.”
He paused to catch his breath, then continued, thinking of Yoonwoo.
His voice was filled with deep affection and certainty.
“The reason I love Seo Yoonwoo isn’t because of his caste or his looks. I love his talent, his passion, his warm heart that considers others even when he’s been hurt, and… his resilience in standing back up after overcoming all that pain. I love everything about him. To me, he is not just some person classified as a Beta.”
“Ha…!”
Jiwon scoffed, as if Dojin’s words were absurd.
“Love? Don’t make me laugh. In the end, it’s all instinct! That kind of emotional play-acting, it’s over with one dose of pheromones!”
He snorted in frustration.
“I’ll show you clearly, from now on, how insignificant and pathetic your so-called ‘noble’ love is in the face of pheromones.”
With a creepy smile, he suddenly clapped his hands.
The door opened, and two sturdy Alpha men walked in.
They approached Dojin with emotionless faces and, ignoring his struggles, tried to force his mouth open.
Dojin resisted desperately, but chained as he was, he was no match for two burly Alphas.
Jiwon approached with a terrifying laugh and shoved a small white pill into Dojin’s mouth.
“Let’s see if you can keep that high-and-mighty love of yours until the end.”
He clamped his hand over Dojin’s mouth and nose, tilting his chin up to force him to swallow.
“Gack…! Ugh…!”
Dojin struggled, but ultimately, he swallowed the unknown drug. Jiwon giggled, then took out a syringe and roughly stabbed it into the arm of Minjae, who was sprawled on the next bed.
Minjae’s body twitched as if in a seizure.
“Then, you two, have a lovely time.”
Jiwon smiled satisfactorily, unlocked the chains binding Dojin’s wrists and ankles, and walked out of the room with a cold laugh.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Dojin felt his mind becoming increasingly hazy.
‘What is this…?’
Perhaps due to the drug, his senses dulled and his mind felt like it was turning blank.
His breathing grew shallow, his vision blurred, and he felt as if he were losing control over his own body.
Just then, an incredibly sweet and dense scent of Omega pheromones rushed into his nose like a storm from beside him.
“Ugh…!”
Dojin reflexively turned his head toward the source of the pheromone scent.
A massive amount of pheromones were erupting from Minjae’s body.
It wasn’t just a scent.
It was an irresistible feast of temptation that seemed to paralyze Dojin’s entire body.
A sweet, fatal temptation, like a perfectly ripe peach, that made his head spin.
Dojin’s Alpha instinct began to react violently to the scent.
Every cell in his body seemed to crave the Omega beside him.
‘This is…! A heat cycle…!’
Jiwon had injected Minjae with a heat-cycle inducer.
And the moment he realized it, an unbearable, searing heat surged from Dojin’s own body.
It was a horrific sensation, his reason paralyzed and his body governed by instinct.
[Ejaculate inside that Omega. Knot. Impregnate him. Pour your seed into him.]
A voice stimulating the most primal Alpha instincts echoed endlessly in his head.
The voice was so powerful that it made it impossible to think of anything else.
A fierce desire to bury his nose into that sweet-smelling neck, to bite into his tender skin with his teeth, and to lick every inch of his body consumed him.
Dojin approached Minjae step by step, as if possessed.
His eyes were already red with instinctual desire, stripped of reason.
The pheromones, intensifying with Minjae’s ragged breathing, threatened to snap the last string of Dojin’s reason.
His body was moving toward Minjae, independent of his will.
His hand slowly, so very slowly, reached out toward Minjae.
It was then.
He didn’t know how it ended up there, but he saw a Golden Retriever key ring lying in a corner beyond the bed where Minjae lay.
In that instant, Yoonwoo’s face flashed through his mind. His clear eyes, his soft smile, and the warm trust he had shown him.
The memory of laughing together at the amusement park, the sight of him eating the lunch he had prepared, and… finally, the trembling voice of him saying, “Please wait for me.”
‘No…! Stop…!’
With the last of his reason, Dojin bit down hard on his tongue.
The sharp pain, accompanied by the metallic taste of blood, jolted him awake.
Without hesitation, he scrambled, grabbed the key ring, and backed away into the farthest corner of the room, away from Minjae.
He curled up, leaning his back against the wall, burying his nose into the key ring Yoonwoo had given him, and desperately repeated his name.
“Chief… Chief… Yoonwoo… Seo Yoonwoo.”
Hot breaths tore through his throat.
A violent agitation, as if his blood were flowing backward, clashed with the desperate need not to betray Yoonwoo, keeping his sanity tethered.
“Gack….”
He began to self-harm to suppress his instinct, which kept wanting to reach for Minjae.
He scratched his own arms with his nails and pinched his body.
But the surging desire wouldn’t easily subside. He began to slap his own cheeks like a madman.
SLAP! SLAP!
A dull thud was followed by the metallic taste of blood in his mouth.
Soon his cheeks were swollen and red, but his body still twitched, trying to move toward Minjae.
Thinking he might as well lose consciousness, he slammed his head against the cold cement wall in front of him.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Red blood flowed from his head, down his forehead, across his cheek, and down to the floor.
But he didn’t stop.
He felt that if he stopped for even a second, his reason would be completely devoured by the vicious instinct.
His head was spinning, and his body was burning as if on fire, but he struggled desperately to picture Yoonwoo’s face, his tender smile, and their precious promise.
‘…Please… faint… just faint! Ugh… Yoonwoo… Seo Yoonwoo.’
Even as his consciousness faded, his voice calling Yoonwoo’s name continued, desperate and unwavering.
