The most pitiful person here was clearly Chaegong himself, but not realizing that, he went and took pity on others above his station. That was why, that afternoon, he ended up giving Hyeonjo advice he had no business giving when he came home.

After finishing dinner and the dishes, Chaegong carefully sat down beside Hyeonjo, who was on the sofa. Hyeonjo seemed absorbed in his phone.

“Hey.”

“Hm? What is it?”

“What are your family members like?”

He swallowed reflexively. At the abrupt question, Hyeonjo lifted his head, brows twitching. After studying Chaegong with narrowed eyes, Hyeonjo apparently thought it was nothing important and looked back down at the screen.

“They’re obnoxious and irritating. Why are you suddenly curious about that?”

“No, just. I’ve never seen them before.”

“They’re people you don’t need to know about.”

At the firm answer, Chaegong snuck a glance at him. If he said more, would Hyeonjo get angry? But thinking of the family who supposedly cried because they couldn’t see their son, and Hyeonjo, who harbored such a huge misunderstanding about them, made him feel too sorry for them.

“Don’t you need to go see your family?”

Hyeonjo’s fingers froze. Slowly turning his head, his face was utterly cold. Chaegong, clutching his trembling hands into fists, blurted it out.

“You don’t go back to the main house that often, right? Even so, they’re still your family, so I thought maybe you’d be lonely…”

Hyeonjo said nothing. He only stared at Chaegong. Even breathing under that gaze felt difficult. The excessive tension stiffened his head.

“S-so, your mother’s birthday is coming up soon, right? So I was thinking, maybe this time…”

“How do you know that?”

“Huh?”

“How do you know that?”

His low voice was packed with icicles. They instantly froze Chaegong from head to toe. I spent so much time with you. I heard it while passing by. He should have said that.

Bang, Chaegong’s body went rigid. Hyeonjo, without the slightest hesitation, hurled the phone in his hand against the wall and met Chaegong’s eyes without even blinking.

“Who told you? Who called you?”

“It’s not like that,”

“Who knows your number? You didn’t tell it to anyone.”

“…….”

“……Kwon Hakjo came and went, huh?”

Chaegong stayed silent, and that silence was answer enough. Hyeonjo gave a small snort of laughter. It was not his usual gentle smile. The alpha pheromones settled heavily in the air, and the pitiful omega could not even breathe. At last, Hyeonjo seized Chaegong by the hair. The sharp yank sent pain through his scalp. Looking down at the face twisted with fear, Hyeonjo’s eyes swayed with an unreadable emotion.

“What did that guy come here and say?”

“Ah, it hurts…“

“Did you ask him to put in a good word for you because of this mess?”

“Hyeonjo, no, no, that’s not it.”

“What do you mean, not it?”

The hand that cracked across his cheek was merciless. Chaegong had thought his body was fairly tough, but that one slap split his lip open. He must have bitten his cheek too, because the inside of his mouth filled with a bloody taste. Hyeonjo pulled his head back to where it had been by yanking his hair, and his voice came out icy.

“I told you not to let him in, but you brought him into the house and told him things like that? Did you really think what I said was a joke?”

Chaegong could not answer as he swallowed the blood in his throat. Tears were already spilling down his face.

“Did you like it, chatting and laughing with that bastard about me? Say it. Did you like it?”

Chaegong shook his head with effort. His hair, his cheek, they all hurt, but Hyeonjo’s cold gaze hurt most of all.

“…I thought you only liked alphas, but I didn’t know you got turned on by betas too.”

His tear-filled eyes trembled in confusion. A single drop slid down his pale cheek. For some reason, that made him angry. The way Chaegong was frozen stiff, offering no excuse and wearing a face full of fear, rubbed him the wrong way.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Did you bring him in because you wanted to seduce him once?”

“No, no. Hyeonjo, really, no.”

“Then I was just a joke to you. You thought I was so pathetic you could ignore me for no reason?”

Chaegong panted and cried. He clamped his mouth shut, knowing that if he made a sound he would be hit even harder, but he could not stop his body from trembling violently. Hyeonjo looked on with cold eyes, then raised his hand again.

“Did I get too soft on you, you freeloader omega bastard, enough for you to look down on me like this?”

Each time he paused to speak, the hand that came down was terrifying. Violence had run through Chaegong’s whole life, but no matter how many times it happened, he could never get used to how frightening Hyeonjo was when he hit him like this.

Perhaps it was because Hyeonjo had been the one to teach him feelings like warmth, sweetness, and comfort. Hyeonjo watched Chaegong, blood dripping from his nose, without even closing his eyes. He did not like the tearful face trembling in fear. The face that must have been bright and smiling while he was joking with Kwon Hakjo was now drowned in terror and a mess of tears.

My omega. My omega, the one I saved, fed, and clothed. He did not like the sight of him wagging his tail so sweetly at another man.

Hyeonjo dimly understood what this feeling filling him was. It was betrayal. Laughably enough, Kwon Hyeonjo was feeling betrayed by Lee Chaegong. It was like the time long ago when a hand he had believed would be given only to him had instead stroked someone else’s forehead.

Hyeonjo lifted his hand again, and Chaegong instinctively shut his eyes. That only made him more annoyed. If Chaegong fluttered his lashes and smiled brightly, maybe his mood would improve a little, but this stupid omega did not even know how to act cute toward an alpha. Hyeonjo let go of the hair he had been gripping.

“I don’t need an omega who won’t listen. If you’re going to keep acting like that, get out.”

Chaegong’s heart dropped. Swallowing blood-tainted spit, he sat on the floor and looked up. Hyeonjo knew. Chaegong had nowhere to go anyway. Knowing that, he said it. He wanted to make Chaegong think that someone like him could be discarded at any time. Then maybe he would do something cute to earn Hyeonjo’s favor. As expected, Chaegong was flustered and could only let tears fall, drop by drop.

“I, I was wrong. I’m sorry. So please don’t say that…”

“What did you do wrong?”

Perhaps his tone softened a little because Chaegong had been earnestly rubbing his hands together and begging him. Chaegong, clutching his trembling hands, opened his quivering lips.

“F, for opening the door, and then…“

What else was there? Chaegong desperately racked his brain. It was obvious. Seeing how hard he was trying in his own way was not unpleasant, so Hyeonjo decided to be merciful.

“For getting worked up and trying to seduce a beta.”

That was not exactly it, but if he denied it, it would be as good as deliberately ignoring Hyeonjo. Chaegong bit down on his split lip.

“…Getting worked up and trying to seduce a beta.”

“And what else?”

Chaegong sniffled as his whole body shook, blinking rapidly. A smile tugged at Hyeonjo’s lips at the troubled face. He was probably thinking about what happened with Kwon Hakjo. That only made his mood sour again.

“Fucking with my business when you had no right to.”

At the low whisper, Chaegong’s face crumpled again. Sniffling would not stop the nosebleed, and the red blood kept running down. With his left hand Hyeonjo seized the hair again, and with his right he reached out. Chaegong shut his eyes tightly at the large palm coming toward his face, but the pain he expected never came. Hyeonjo rubbed the area beneath Chaegong’s nose with his thumb, leaving a red streak along his finger.

“Say it again. What exactly did you do wrong?”

“…For opening the door, and f, for getting worked up and trying to seduce a beta, and then… for sticking my nose into Hyeonjo’s business when it was none of my business…”

Even as he said it himself, it felt miserable. More than his bleeding face, his chest hurt from a blow he had not even been struck with. Tears ran down his cheeks and soon mixed with the wound on his lip, turning into blood as they fell. Kwon Hakjo had probably never seen this. Hyeonjo stood up with an expression that seemed to be smiling and yet not smiling.

“If you did something wrong, you need to be punished.”

But the violence did not come down at once. After a moment of thought, Hyeonjo opened his mouth.

“I’m not forgiving you today. If you’re going to run, then go now. After that, I won’t go easy on you.”

Chaegong lifted his head blankly. He had two choices. Run away from him through the front door right this second, or stay here and be punished. Chaegong could not run. If he left, he would never see Hyeonjo again.

If he left the house, he would not be beaten, but at the same time he would get none of his smile, none of his warm hands. Nothing at all. He did not want that.

Chaegong, still on his knees, shrank in on himself but did not flee. Hyeonjo smiled, satisfied by that. In truth, he did not smile. He frowned.

“You made your choice.”

Now there was truly nowhere left to run. Chaegong was terrified of the alpha standing before him. The man he loved no longer seemed pitiful. The only pitiful, wretched one here was Lee Chaegong.

“My omega, that bastard, is fucking cheating on me? Fucking hell.”

Hyeonjo stopped in front of the sofa, dragging Chaegong by the forearm. Trembling so hard he could not even cry out, Chaegong forced himself to kneel.

“Where was Kwon Hakjo sitting?”

Chaegong wiped the nosebleed with the back of his hand and pointed to the three-seater sofa on the left. Hyeonjo stared at it for a while, then yanked Chaegong’s forearm again. Chaegong was made to lie down on the sofa and looked up at Hyeonjo with trembling eyes. Without a word, Hyeonjo stripped off his clothes, and then.

“A-ah!”

He thrust in his sex without any foreplay, without so much as a touch. Even for an omega, it was hard to force a large sex into a hole that had not even started producing slick. Worse still, because Chaegong was a recessive, his hole felt as though it had been torn, burning fiercely.

Even though it was Hyeonjo doing it, even though the other person was the Hyeonjo he loved, Chaegong kept remembering his first time for some reason. The pain, the fear, the disgust, the self-loathing, the hours when he had wanted nothing more than to die. Those memories came flooding back. That was what scared him. So Chaegong reached out and wrapped his arms around Hyeonjo’s neck.

“You still get aroused in a situation like this? Dirty little slut.”

Despite the rough words, his voice was quite gentle. The pheromones that leaked from him seemed as if they made his words true. Chaegong did not answer. He only let out a groan that could not be told apart from pain or pleasure.

When the sex was over, Hyeonjo ordered Chaegong to take out every piece of clothing he owned.

“I’m afraid you’ll go wandering around in heat and smear my face in the mud.”