Hyeonjo tossed a large pair of scissors in front of Chaegong.

“Cut them all yourself. What are you waiting for? You said you’d stay here, didn’t you? Or what, were you planning to seduce Kwon Hakjo into fucking you?”

Chaegong shook his head in a panic. Then, with trembling hands, he picked up the scissors. Hyeonjo, seated in the chair, looked as if he would not stand until Chaegong had cut up every single garment.

Chaegong parted lips crusted with blood and then lifted his clothes. Hyeonjo even made him cut his underwear. Chaegong seemed about to protest, but one whiff of Hyeonjo’s rough pheromones scared him so badly that in the end he turned every last thing he owned into scraps of cloth. Only after he had cut apart even the underwear he was wearing did Hyeonjo smile in satisfaction.

“You should have listened better. Then you would have been spoiled and nothing else. What happened to your face?”

His cheeks were badly swollen, his lips were torn to shreds, and even the philtrum beneath his nose was crusted with blood. His eyes, puffed up from tears, rolled awkwardly in their sockets. Being naked was humiliating. It was miserable to sit there with a body covered in bruises and blood, with nothing to hide it.

Hyeonjo, gazing at that pitiful body, looked oddly satisfied. Or perhaps not. His lips were curved, but his eyes were furrowed.

Still, whether his anger had cooled or not, a warm hand stroked Chaegong’s hair. Chaegong instinctively shrank from the touch and could not even lift his head.

“Go wash up and sleep.”

The moment warm water touched his skin, it stung terribly. His face in the mirror was so pale it looked almost colorless. His cheeks were badly swollen, and so were the eyelids that had shed tears without cease. In truth, it was a face he knew quite well. That face had accompanied Chaegong’s life from beginning to end.

“…Why do you live like that?”

The swollen face in the mirror asked.

“Why do you live like that?”

A voice full of trembling echoed through the bathroom. As time passed, steam fogged the mirror, and soon the pitiful omega’s reflection vanished.

“…You should’ve just died. You should’ve died back then. You should’ve just died that day.”

That day, when his suppressant had been taken away and his heat had hit, and he had been caught in an alley by an alpha he had never seen before. He should have died then. He should not have only said he wanted to die. He should have simply died. Then he would not have suffered any longer.

It was too late now. Chaegong had already learned the warmth and kindness of human hands, and he could no longer die so easily. If he endured this pain, maybe he would be stroked again.

Hope, more frightening than despair, swallowed Chaegong whole. Lying naked on the bed, Chaegong pulled the blanket up to the top of his head, then soon lowered it back to his shoulders. He had been hurt badly today, so maybe Hyeonjo would come with a first-aid kit. He might come into the room and then leave again when he saw Chaegong buried beneath the blanket. Afraid of that, Chaegong pushed the blanket away and forgot the cold.

But from the moon’s setting until the sun rose, Hyeonjo never once came to Chaegong’s room. Chaegong, still bruised, sat up, and the loneliness of it made him cry.

Hyeonjo walked down the hallway, savoring the looks aimed his way. He was the heir to this company, and there was no one who did not know his face. So naturally, no one would dare complain to him over something personal. Even if he was drenched head to toe in an omega’s pheromones.

It was the kind of pheromones that seemed to announce, I fucked an omega yesterday. For the first time in a while, Hyeonjo had come to the company on his own and attended a meeting, and the executives’ meeting, mostly alphas, proceeded awkwardly. The middle-aged executives coughed into their fists and looked away from Hyeonjo. There was someone who keenly noticed the atmosphere in the meeting room.

“Kwon Hyeonjo. Wait a second.”

“Well, if it isn’t the beta bastard who tried to lay hands on someone else’s omega?”

With a deliberately exaggerated voice, as if he had no idea, Hyeonjo watched Hakjo’s gaze grow cold. The pheromones of Hyeonjo and Chaegong had filled the meeting room, now empty except for the two of them, but the beta in front of him would not know that. Hyeonjo, somehow feeling amused, unhurriedly began undoing the buttons of his stuffy suit.

“You… What did you do to Chaegong ssi?”

Chaegong ssi? A derisive laugh slipped from Hyeonjo’s mouth. It was the first time the man, who had never cared about omegas, alphas, or betas, had ever spoken to him first over something like this. Did he have feelings for Lee Chaegong? At the thought of the conclusion he himself had reached, Hyeonjo wanted to laugh bitterly.

He was the former heir, and yet still someone others admired. Surely he couldn’t possibly be fond of such a worthless omega. He wanted to use that fact to hurt Hakjo as much as possible. But at the same time, he did not want to do that.

If he was going to reveal that the one Hakjo liked was so shabby and unremarkable, he would have to expose Lee Chaegong, and for some reason he hated that. Perhaps it was because Chaegong was still an omega that belonged to Hyeonjo. If he made him the object of ridicule too, then Hyeonjo, who kept him tucked safely away at home as if cherishing him, would be laughed at as well.

His face hardening, Hyeonjo looked at Hakjo standing before him and deliberately lifted the corners of his mouth.

“What do you think I did? What else would an alpha and an omega do? It stinks. Ah, right. You’re a beta, so you wouldn’t know that, would you?”

Hakjo gritted his teeth at the obvious attempt to provoke him. That man always had such a composed face, quietly doing his work without complaint, and now he was showing a face so furious. It was almost funny enough to kill him.

Hyeonjo was curious what on earth he had done to have Kwon Hakjo so completely bewitched. Thinking of that brought to mind how light his omega’s ass was. The alpha pheromones grew heavier at the faint rise of anger, but Hakjo did not seem to notice at all. At last, Hyeonjo completely undid the buttons of his jacket.

“You, that…”

At the vivid bloodstains visible beneath, Hakjo’s face stiffened. The torn lips with blood dripping from them, and the nosebleed that had run down from beneath his nose, had remained on Hyeonjo’s shirt. The damp floral scent of an omega also lingered thickly there.

“Of course that wasn’t all I did. I also gave the heat-struck omega a little punishment. Well, who would say anything if I manage my own omega?”

Hyeonjo thought of Chaegong, who was probably at home right now, naked and wiping away the bloodstains he had left behind. Then he remembered the blood that had run down his own cheek as well. For some reason, his stomach churned, and he could feel his mood sinking a little more. Just as he failed to notice what he himself was thinking, Hakjo grabbed Hyeonjo by the collar.

“If you’re going to treat him like that, just let him go. You son of a bitch.”

Hyeonjo looked at Hakjo with an empty, emotionless face. It was the opposite of usual. Normally it was Hyeonjo who burned with emotion and glared, while Hakjo only blinked calmly. This was the reversed situation he had long wanted, but strangely enough it was not enjoyable. All he could see was the face of Chaegong, swollen and crying.

What was so good about that scrawny bastard who only ever looked around timidly? A faint, derisive smile appeared on Kwon Hakjo’s face, the man who had taken Lee Chaegong into his home.

“Why? If I throw him away, are you going to pick him up and use him?”

Hakjo kept his mouth shut. To be honest, he did not love Chaegong. He simply found himself thinking of those gentle eyes from time to time. When he thought of those pupils, which resembled the puppy he had raised as a child, he felt sorry for Chaegong, slowly wasting away in Hyeonjo’s grasp.

The two eerily similar faces glared at each other. Hyeonjo was angry that Kwon Hakjo spoke as if Chaegong were nothing more than an object, and irritation rose at Kwon Hakjo for not denying it.

Lee Chaegong was the first thing Kwon Hyeonjo had ever possessed in full. Not only had his parents’ affection and attention belonged to someone else, even the seat of heir had originally been Kwon Hakjo’s. Things bought with his parents’ money, the position stolen from Kwon Hakjo. Lee Chaegong was none of those things.

He had been picked up by Hyeonjo’s own hands and kept alive until now. Even if he were to be cast aside someday, it had to be by Hyeonjo’s hands, by Hyeonjo’s will. Kwon Hyeonjo no longer wanted to let Kwon Hakjo take anything else from him.

After staring at his brother with a cold expression for a long while, Hyeonjo slowly spoke.

“You don’t know what kind of scent Lee Chaegong has, do you?”

Pheromones belonged only to alphas and omegas. It was their world. The difference between them and betas was something that could never be bridged, no matter how long a beta lived or how hard they tried. Hakjo glared coldly at his younger brother.

“Do you know what scent he gives off when he’s asleep, or where to press to make it stronger? Can you even tell?”

“…”

Hakjo could not say a word, and only then did Hyeonjo manage a crooked smile.

“That’s why you can’t. He’s an omega, and I’m an alpha. A beta like you can stay out of it.”

His voice sounded like a huge hunting dog growling. Hakjo was certainly a beta, and so he didn’t even know what pheromones felt like. But at this moment, for some reason, he felt as if he understood even a sliver of it.

And for the first time in his life, he found the fact that he was a beta unbearable.

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