I pulled the blanket over myself and moved my body around to check how I felt. There was a heavy, dull pain in my lower back, inner thighs, and between my ass cheeks that I couldn’t even put into words.

And my wrists, abused from being dragged around by his hands, were swollen too. As I wondered if I should go get a massage, my phone rang. At the sound, Today shot upright and barked fiercely.

I stroked Today, who was on high alert, and reached out to pick up the phone. When I checked the name on the screen, I let out a small sigh. Coughing once, I cleared my throat and answered. My gaze naturally drifted to the camera blinking red.

“H-hello.”

[Wake up and either get a massage or go to the hospital.]

“Ugh, I’m not in condition to move right now.”

[Stop talking and put some clothes on. I’ll have Assistant Manager Park let himself in.]

I glared at the phone after that one-sided order and then pulled the blanket over my head in protest. He wasn’t the kind of person who would show me to Park Suwon while I was lying on the bed without a stitch of clothes on. But my protest didn’t last long, because I got the feeling it wouldn’t be Park Suwon but Jung Inhyuk himself who would unlock the door and show up.

The moment I sat up, a groan escaped me.

I pushed the blanket aside and spread my legs, and I could see bruises on my inner thighs in a shape similar to his hand. The one who had shaken me to this point and the one who’d been shaken without even realizing it were both the same, I guess. I clicked my tongue and barely managed to sit up.

My body was fully exposed, with not a thread on it. Thinking of Jung Inhyuk, who was probably watching this through the monitor too, made irritation flare up.

You voyeuristic pervert.

I rained curses on him in my head while scanning the cameras installed with no blind spots.

The hallway wall leading to the bathroom had black scorch marks. It was from when Jung Inhyuk had left after sex and rubbed out his cigarette against the wall. I thought, What are you doing, messing up someone else’s house like this, but then I changed my mind. This house was effectively Jung Inhyuk’s anyway. What did it matter if he stubbed out his cigarette on his own house or smeared shit on it.

By chance I looked up and checked my reflection in the bathroom mirror, then clapped both hands over my mouth. What the hell was this. From my neck to my toes, I was covered in raw red bruising like someone with a contagious disease. There were even bite-like wounds on my shoulders and chest. I held my throbbing head and let out a deep sigh.

After showering, I came out and dressed. I didn’t forget to mutter under my breath while I got dressed. At least after washing up, I felt much lighter. But separate from feeling lighter, the room still held the stench left behind by our filthy sex. Feeling like I might gag, I covered my mouth and flung the window wide open.

The moment I finished dressing and stepped outside, the doorbell rang as if on cue. Moving slowly, I approached the front door. Faint voices drifted in from outside. I unlocked it and opened the door. Park Suwon, dressed crisply in a suit, frowned the moment he saw my face. With his phone pressed to his ear, he strode inside.

“I’m inside now. Yes, I’ll contact you when I arrive.”

He tucked the phone into his inner jacket pocket and looked me up and down. Then he gave a short laugh, as if he couldn’t believe it. I grimaced and straightened the sneakers scattered messily on the floor. Uh… but the shoelaces and the inside had some unknown yellowish stains dried into them. And I quickly realized what the stain was. A small curse slipped out.

When I was little, even if my mother handed down clothes or hats from other people, she always bought me brand-new shoes. She believed in the saying that good shoes carried their owner to good places.

Of course, Jung Inhyuk knew that too. He knew how much I treasured my shoes… I stared blankly at them for a long time.

“My God, look at your neck.”

Park Suwon shook his head and clicked his tongue. I awkwardly cleared my throat and stood up. I even pulled my T-shirt up high to cover my neck, but of course that wouldn’t hide the marks.

“You’re going to the hospital, right?”

“Spa.”

“No. The executive director allowed either the hospital or a massage shop, one of the two.”

I was irritated for a moment, but didn’t want to argue with him, so I said I’d go to the hospital. I left Park Suwon at the front door and went inside to get Today’s food and water ready. After setting the bowl with the proper amount of kibble and the water bowl on the floor, Today started gobbling the food down in a hurry.

Using the sound of kibble crunching as background noise, I sprawled on the floor. The hard floor hit my back and I grimaced hard. Then Today stopped eating and came over to lick my face.

I lay there until Today finished his food, and then suddenly remembered Park Suwon waiting at the front door. I quickly cleaned up the bowls and headed to the dressing room. I absentmindedly put on a shirt, took it back off, and pulled a turtleneck from the drawer. What a damn hassle this was.

After grabbing a hat and outerwear too, I went back to the entrance. Park Suwon was staring at me with a dissatisfied face.

“You messing with me?”

“What? I fed Today. Even beasts have to eat.”

“What nonsense. Worry about your own damn self, punk.”

I shoved my feet into my shoes with a sour expression, and Park Suwon opened the front door and stepped aside. It had been almost four days since I’d been outside. Was this how it felt when you got out of prison? Looking up at the clear sky, I stretched. Park Suwon snatched the hat from my hand and shoved it down over my head.

I narrowed my eyes and glared at him.

“You don’t even know what you look like, and I’m not even going to start.”

“…Is it that bad?”

Embarrassed, I covered my jaw with my palm and rubbed it. I supposed my appearance really would be a mess, since I’d been rolling around with Jung Inhyuk for three days and nights. Still, wondering if it was really that bad, I made a sulky face.

“A textbook omega who got drained dry by an alpha.”

“Hey!”

“Jung Inhyuk looked perfectly polished and shiny. Unlike someone else.”

I frowned and let out a huff of air. I almost snapped back, asking what he knew, but I closed my mouth tightly and trudged toward the gate. The moment I reached to open it, Park Suwon caught my arm and turned me around.

Then he took a small spray bottle from his pocket and sprayed me all over with it. I brushed at my skin because I didn’t like the liquid touching it, but he didn’t care and kept spraying me here and there.

“Aren’t you going to tell people your secondary sex changed?”

“……”

“Word about military service is going to start spreading soon. Think carefully.”

The unexpected comment made my head ring. Military service, my only escape route, had vanished like foam the moment I mutated into an omega. I tapped my foot on the floor as I thought hard.

Park Suwon had a point. But I didn’t want to announce with my own mouth that I had become an omega. Especially since it was a mutation rather than an awakening, that made it even more unpleasant.

The truth was, surviving in the entertainment industry as an omega was hard. In a place swarming with such garbage people, omegas only became targets. They’d deliberately leak pheromones to provoke you or demand sexual favors all the time. Even if the social perception of omegas had improved, this place was still behind. For now, I wanted to put it off a little longer.

“Get in for now.”

Park Suwon opened the back door for me. I glanced at him once and got into the car. He shut the door for me, walked around the hood, and got into the driver’s seat. The seatbelt clicked into place, and the car began moving slowly. Leaning back comfortably, I thought over the past three days.

Jung Inhyuk and I had spent rut and heat in one bed, not as alpha and beta, but as alpha and omega. I had learned something I never knew when I was a beta.

He was a very healthy, ideal alpha. Just the number of knots I remembered from those three days was seven. The duration ranged from twenty minutes at the shortest to about an hour at the longest. That meant Jung Inhyuk’s breeding ability was exceptional. Just thinking about it still left me uncomfortable below.

Because I was a low-quality omega, Jung Inhyuk had said the chance of pregnancy was extremely low and there probably wouldn’t be one, but I didn’t think so.

The amount of sperm alphas released during rut was two to three times greater than usual. And as far as I knew, Jung Inhyuk had awakened as an alpha at a very young age, unlike others. I had heard that the earlier the awakening, the higher the grade of the alpha. That meant Jung Inhyuk was among the elite even within the dominant class.

Maybe I could give birth sooner than I expected and escape from Jung Inhyuk’s shadow.

This wasn’t an uncertain future. It was a certain future.

Once my thoughts reached that point, my heart suddenly started pounding so hard it hurt. Just dreaming of a free life no one controlled made a smile appear on my lips.

Lost in my own thoughts for a long time, the car eventually entered the hospital entrance. Park Suwon pulled over and tried to stop me from getting out, but I opened the car door myself and stepped outside. The weather was much nicer than before.

“I’ll wait in the underground parking lot, so take care of your business and come out comfortably.”

Park Suwon said this with his head tilted slightly, one hand on the passenger seat headrest. I shook my head a little.

“No, I’ll take a taxi back in, so go ahead.”

“Manager Jung—”

“I’ll call him and tell him. That’s enough, right?”

Park Suwon stared at me for a while, clearly unconvinced, before finally moving the car only after hearing the car behind us blare its horn irritably. I followed the receding rear end with my eyes, then turned back. Every step made my lower abdomen ache with dull little stabs. I rubbed my stomach through my clothes and rode the escalator up. It was crowded with patients and guardians, both going up and down.

For some reason, the area in front of Kang Jigyu’s office was quiet. As I got closer, I could clearly see the sign saying the clinic was closed. Scratching my head in disappointment, I took my phone out of my pocket.

When Jung Inhyuk had designated only the hospital and massage shop as options, I had naturally thought he’d checked whether Kang Jigyu was available for appointments. I brought up Kang Jigyu’s number and hit call. The ringing went on for a long time before Kang Jigyu’s voice finally came through.

[You here?]

“Huh? Oh.”

I answered blankly. Then the tightly closed office door opened and Kang Jigyu, wearing a doctor’s coat, waved his phone at me.