First, a strange scent pierced my nose. It was different from the smell I usually got in this house. Something faintly... unusual.

I was a beta, so I should not have been able to smell pheromones, and yet instinctively I thought that if I were ever to feel one, this must be what it was.

The moment I slowly lifted my head, time seemed to drag unbearably slowly. What appeared first were long legs. Then, as my gaze traveled upward, I nearly lost control the instant I saw the other person’s face.

It was Cha Seonwoo.

The face of the man who had pushed all of his black hair back to expose his forehead did not feel real. His skin was pale and flawless, and his sharp eyes, lifted slightly at the ends, gave off a decadent air.

He was different from the photo that had hovered somewhere between adult and teenager. A fully grown man stood before my eyes, much more mature now, with the unmistakable appearance of an adult.

He was raw through and through. His face, looking down at me without even blinking, was calm, and I felt as though I would be overwhelmed by the atmosphere he exuded.

On top of that, he was at least a head taller than me, and even through his coat, I could sense a solid build. He was threatening just to look at. It was not simply because I was in a position where I had to look up at him. He was displaying with his entire body that he was an alpha.

It was hard to believe he was younger than me. That he had just turned twenty.

I think I understood why Cha Taewoo had tried so hard to put his brother down. Even I felt a primal rejection. It was fear born simply from being overwhelmed by his gaze alone.

While I stared at Cha Seonwoo in a daze, Cha Seonwoo was also staring straight at me with goosebump-inducing intensity, and then, the moment he blinked slowly, I came back to my senses.

"...I’m sorry. I’ll go back to my room right away."

It felt as if I had been briefly bewitched by something. Only then did I hurriedly stand with my brother held tightly in my arms.

Cha Seonwoo also slowly straightened up. Even though I was facing him now, he still felt, if anything, even more oppressive. Also, maybe it was just my imagination, but his gaze somehow had a sticky, murky side that resembled this mansion. I thought I should leave this place quickly.

Ignoring the man who was staring at me, I lowered my head and gave a quick bow. With him still saying nothing, I instinctively backed away, and only then did the silence break as Cha Seonwoo lazily opened his mouth.

"Come here."

When his deep voice, so fitting for his face, reverberated in my ear, a cold shiver ran down my spine.

At the same time, the strong smell of perfume, along with the scent of cigarettes and alcohol, filled my lungs.

"I’ve never seen your face before."

Trying not to show that I was tense, I slowly lowered and raised my gaze. All the while, Cha Seonwoo kept staring at me without blinking.

"Do you work here?"

Unlike before, now that I was aware of that gaze, I could hardly breathe. He was showing with his whole body that he was an alpha and the master of this mansion. At the same time, he was making me acutely aware that I was nothing but an unwelcome guest in this house. The thought that I wanted to run away right this second returned, as if I had never been curious about Cha Seonwoo in the first place.

I opened and closed my lips several times, and just as Cha Seonwoo tilted his eyes in annoyance from waiting, I finally found my voice.

"The chairman... um..."

But the words would not come out. It was unlike me, but I could not help it.

Still, perhaps thinking something of my flustered silence, Cha Seonwoo tilted his head with a crooked look.

"So, after all that, he’s bringing in a younger man than his own son to keep as a mistress?"

My eyes immediately crumpled. I realized he had misunderstood something.

"It’s not like that."

But before I could explain any further, I hesitated.

"Oh my! Young Master!"

A servant approached from behind me.

"When did you arrive? If you had let us know in advance, we would have been waiting for you..."

But Cha Seonwoo did not answer. He just kept staring at me.

Seeing that, the servant seemed to realize the situation and gave an awkward laugh.

"Ah..."

Only then did the servant glance at me, then hurriedly move toward Cha Seonwoo. She whispered something too softly for me to hear, and after hearing it, Cha Seonwoo raised his eyes and looked directly at me. I had no choice but to lower my gaze. My cheeks burned hot.

A moment later, Cha Seonwoo let out a short laugh, as if he understood.

"I wondered. I thought Father had finally started taking interest in men too."

But that strange gaze still did not leave me. At his laugh, I had to suck in another sharp breath. It felt like he had seen through a shameful secret I wanted to keep hidden.

"Go on inside."

I lowered my head and turned away. Even as I crossed the hallway in long strides, I could still feel that piercing gaze on the back of my head.

"But you, you should be careful."

At the sudden words, I stopped for a moment, but without answering, I kept walking. I could not understand what he meant, and I could not ask. I was afraid of what he might say.

I returned to my room as if I were being chased by someone, and only then did the strength leave my legs when I shut the door. My expression, reflected in the mirror across from me, was twisted in utter disarray.

My heart pounded madly. It was not only because of disgust and shame.

* * *

Like butterflies gathering around flowers, my mother had been surrounded by alphas for as long as I could remember. The alphas kept changing, their ages and jobs all different.

They acted as if they were going to shower my omega mother with everything they had. But like alphas always did, after a short time, sometimes months, at most a few years, they would grow bored and leave.

When an alpha grew tired of my mother and took back everything he had given and provided, there was nothing left to do.

And yet my mother could not escape alphas. It must have been learned helplessness.

Born into a family so poor it seemed torn apart by hunger, my mother was the only hope her family had. She had been born as a dominant omega, a miracle among recessives. Raised only to be sold, my mother was eventually led away by her parents and sold to a recessive alpha when she came of age. A few years later, I was born.

But contrary to their expectations, I had not manifested until I was seven.

"How much did we pay for you? And you couldn’t even give us a proper dominant alpha?"

My father, grandmother, and grandfather treated my mother and me colder and colder, and they often raised their hands with abuse and curses about how we were useless things. And I, without understanding why, had to take some kind of unknown injection several times a week. Every time I got the shot, I would develop a fever and have trouble breathing.

In the end, unable to endure it, I fainted. When I finally opened my eyes again, my mother was holding me and crying so hard she seemed to tear herself apart. Even as a young child who understood nothing, I felt as if everything was my fault.

Thinking about it now, it must have been pheromone injections meant to induce manifestation. Those injections, secretly traded because of the side effects that could, in the worst case, cost a person their life, were supposedly hard enough for even adults to endure, and I had been getting them several times a week at such a young age... Thinking about it now, it was a miracle I had not died.

But to my father and his family, it would not have mattered at all if I died, so long as I failed to become an alpha.

"You’re already eight years old, so it’s too late for him to manifest as an alpha now. Even an omega would have been fine, as long as he manifested. At least then we could have sold him off. Parasites. He looks exactly like an omega anyway, so we thought we might as well wait a little longer, and in the end we got nothing back..."

The people who had bought my mother, expecting only an alpha, a dominant alpha at that, threw my mother and me out without mercy.

My mother’s family had long since abandoned her, and now she and I, discarded by her husband without having received a single thing, had nowhere to go. All my mother could do was the same mistress work she had seen and heard about all her life.

After that, the fragments of my childhood I remembered were of living with my mother in a damp, unpleasant-smelling semi-basement, and, whenever an alpha came toward my mother, I would briefly escape from there.

Fortunately or not, there were plenty of alphas willing to have my dominant omega mother, even with a child attached.

I always had to live hidden away, unable to make a sound, in the house provided by my mother’s alpha. For alphas, a child who was attached to their omega and did not share their blood was nothing but an eyesore.

Sometimes the alphas who had been looking at my mother would turn their gaze to me. The alphas I had seen so many times left only an instinctive disgust in me.

And that disgust eventually turned back toward myself. It felt as if all my misfortune had begun because I had failed to manifest.