Chapter 10

Once his composure fractured, the tears would not stop. Unfolding the sleeves of his oversized pajama shirt, he scrubbed violently at his cheeks, soaking the cotton fabric instantly. Snot ran down his upper lip, hot against his skin. Careless of the mess, Jinseong grabbed his hem and pinched his nose, wiping it clean.

The car navigated through the city for nearly an hour before pulling up outside a sleek six-story commercial building. Though regular clinic hours had long passed, an illuminated sign reading Internal Medicine & Orthopedic Specialist glowed softly above the glass entrance.

Stepping out first, Jeongwoo held the rear door open.

As Yi-jae climbed out, he turned back to his men. “Tell the others to wait downstairs. You two go get some sleep.”

Bracing one hand against the doorframe, Yi-jae bent at the waist, peering into the dark cabin as if examining a cornered animal. “Come on out.”

The man who had gouged his wound now spoke in a gentle, soothing tone. Jinseong dragged a damp sleeve across his wet face. His sobs had quieted, but his cheeks burned with feverish heat. When he tried to swallow, his throat clicked dryly. Refusing to ask for help, Jinseong reached for the opposite door handle, then hesitated. His tear-glossed eyes slid furtively toward Yi-jae. “My foot… hurts too much. I can’t walk.”

He had no choice. If stoicism had enraged the man earlier, he had to play the helpless victim now. Having choked out the confession, Jinseong ducked his chin.

“Come here.”

Sniffling, Jinseong crawled across the leather seat. Yi-jae hooked an arm beneath Jinseong’s knees and another behind his back, lifting him effortlessly. Thick, iron-hard arms locked around him. Terrified of falling, Jinseong wrapped both arms around Yi-jae’s neck on instinct. A faint, intoxicating Alpha scent brushed his senses, but he forced himself to ignore it.

An electronic chime echoed, and the glass entrance doors unlocked from within. Jeongwoo pulled the door wide, bowing with crisp deference as Yi-jae carried his burden inside, letting the glass slide shut behind them.

Yi-jae’s low voice drifted into Jinseong’s ear. “Let’s not tell lies from now on.”

“…”

“You’ve told plenty enough as it is.” Carrying Jinseong as though he weighed nothing, Yi-jae strode into the private lobby and stopped before the elevator.

“Master.”

Yi-jae looked down at him.

“We can’t go to a hospital. I don’t have an ID. If something goes wrong, the police will come.” The words scraped out through a raw, swollen throat.

“That so?” Yi-jae brushed off the warning as if it were trivial. Shifting his grip, he pulled Jinseong flush against his chest. “Say ‘Master’ one more time. That got me hard just now.” With that, he pressed his lips against the sensitive curve of Jinseong’s ear. When Jinseong flinched and curled inward, Yi-jae’s mouth curved into a teasing smile. “Hurry up, won’t you?”

Yi-jae’s lips were damp from his tongue, hot and soft against Jinseong’s ear. Jinseong’s shoulders hunched defensively. Yi-jae’s breath warmed his ear, sending goosebumps down his neck. Unable to bear it, Jinseong lifted a hand to cover his ear, only for Yi-jae’s lips to brush the back of his knuckles. Jinseong’s eyes widened. A heavy, simmering heat bloomed between them, and the harder he tried to shrink away, the hotter it flared. None of these sensations were familiar. Panicking, Jinseong’s hand slipped and clapped directly over Yi-jae’s mouth.

At that, Yi-jae deliberately dragged his tongue right up the center of Jinseong’s palm in a slow, wet stroke. Even though the contact was only on his skin, a violent shiver ran straight down Jinseong’s spine. He pulled his hand back, his brow furrowing in disgust.

“…I thought you said Betas weren’t your type.”

“Yeah.” Despite the blatant contradiction, Yi-jae showed no embarrassment.

Jinseong stared at his cheek in bewildered silence. Sensing the gaze, Yi-jae looked down at him without a word.

“…”

[Sixth floor.]

The elevator’s automated chime shattered the standoff. As the doors slid open, Yi-jae adjusted his grip and stepped out into a sleek, open penthouse clinic. Jinseong, trying to look indifferent, tightened his arms around the Alpha’s neck.

“This isn’t a veterinary clinic, in case you didn’t know.” The dry voice came from a woman emerging from the inner hallway. Still groggy from sleep, she stretched her arms, yawned, blinked her eyes open, and froze. “It’s a human.”

She wore a low-cut ribbed tank top and loose sweatpants. Across her right forearm ran a serpentine tattoo identical in design to the one on Yi-jae’s chest, though smaller in scale. The woman cast Yi-jae a sharp, venomous glare. “Didn’t you know there’s an overtime surcharge when you drag your ass in at this hour, dear customer?”

“Just wanted to see your face.” When Yi-jae flashed his charming smile, the woman’s brow twitched for a split second before she mirrored the grin. Even bare-faced, her beauty was striking, her eyes crinkling warmly.

Which was why Jinseong didn’t see it coming—her middle finger snapping upright an inch from Yi-jae’s nose. “Shut the fuck up, you crazy bastard.”

Such foul profanity bursting from such a refined face felt completely surreal. When Jinseong’s eyes went wide like a startled rabbit’s, the woman instantly melted into a sweet, disarming smile directed straight at him. “Hello there. He texted that he picked something up off the street, so I assumed it had four legs.”

The exterior of the building was unmistakably a private clinic, but the top floor clearly served as her personal residence. Yi-jae treated the space with the same casual intimacy he showed her cursing. Striding over to an examination sofa, he set Jinseong down.

“Where does it hurt?” She treated Jinseong like a child, though he couldn’t begin to guess her age. Her voice carried a seasoned authority that disarmed him, and he hesitantly lifted his leg.

Cradling Jinseong’s foot in her palm, the woman leaned in to examine the torn sole. Words flickered into view beside her temple—the same pale hue as Yi-jae’s, though written in a rounder, softer hand:

[Doctor.]

Then, another word surfaced directly below it:

[Helper.]

A supporter? Jinseong’s eyelids fluttered. Half good news, half trouble. Without knowing which faction she supported, he couldn’t tell whether the word promised help or danger. He had survived by making use of such double-edged insights before, and his mind raced through the possibilities. Judging by her script and her gentle demeanor, she didn’t appear hostile—much like Grandpa Ho. But jumping to conclusions in a syndicate den was suicide.

“I stepped on broken glass or something,” Jinseong murmured.

“Didn’t it hurt?”

At her question, Jinseong’s eyes flicked nervously toward Yi-jae. The Alpha was calmly tipping back a bottle of mineral water, swallowing in slow gulps. “If you ask him like that, he’ll just swear it doesn’t hurt,” Yi-jae said, wiping his mouth. “Press on it and see.”

The woman nodded in understanding, prompting Jinseong to yank his knees back in sheer panic. “I-it hurts!”

Yi-jae’s deep laughter rang through the room. As Jinseong bit his lower lip hard and cast his eyes down, the doctor gently took hold of his ankle, drawing the foot back onto her lap. “Of course it does. A laceration this deep, you’d have to be a corpse not to feel it.”

“…”

“This needs stitches.” She stood up and walked toward the metal instrument trays.

Tracking her movements, Jinseong rubbed his dry face with both hands, his palms sweating. He squeezed his knees, wringing his fingers together in tight knots as panic coiled in his gut. “Can’t you… just leave it alone?”

Gathering suture packs and curved needles, the woman paused, looking over her shoulder. “Stitches will help it heal five times faster. Why? You want me to just bandage it?”

“Yes. Could you please do that?”

“It’ll heal much slower, and it’s going to ache every time you step on it. You said it hurt.”

“I don’t mind the pain.”

A sharp swat clipped the back of Jinseong’s head. Jinseong turned around, his eyes locking with Yi-jae’s. The woman might let it slide, but Yi-jae was a different animal entirely. His gaze was fierce with annoyance, practically daring Jinseong to test his patience again. If he offered another weak excuse, the man would pin him down and let her carve into him.

“I hate needles,” Jinseong blurted out, admitting the truth before he could be cornered.

“What?” At the sudden confession, Yi-jae cocked a single brow, his displeased expression unnecessarily handsome.

“I’m scared of them.”

* * *

The words had first appeared after Jinseong was forcibly drugged—the first and last time he had ever taken narcotics. Cheol-joon’s men had done it. Jinseong had been nineteen then.

They hated him, and any excuse would do. He acted superior. He worked less. He enjoyed Cheol-joon’s favoritism. Anything was easier to swallow than the bitter reality that Jinseong was simply more gifted than they were. Some assumed addiction would make him pliable; others wanted him unconscious for uglier, more sordid reasons.

They were crude street thugs, not technicians. When Jinseong fought back harder than anticipated, panic degraded their plan into reckless stupidity: they injected far too much of a contaminated synthetic compound of indeterminate origin. His heart stopped almost immediately. Even after emergency detoxification, he hovered at death’s threshold for days while a savage fever ravaged his body.

The crude concoction was riddled with chemical impurities, and his flesh paid for every one of them. No physician could ever determine whether the Omega traits had lain dormant all along or whether the profound chemical trauma had forcibly unlocked them. Either way, Jinseong entered that room a Beta and emerged from the brink of death an Omega.

“How did something as precious as you ever end up in my hands?” The moment Cheol-joon realized what Jinseong had become, he grinned as though he had struck an inexhaustible vein of gold. His brief disappointment over the boy’s recessive status evaporated beneath naked greed. “Only Omegas can birth true Alphas, ain’t that right?”

After four days and nights lost to delirium, Jinseong drifted awake to the rough scrape of Cheol-joon’s voice on the telephone.

“How much are they paying for a breeder these days? Nah, I can’t sell him off outright. You know how sharp the boy’s mind is.”

Jinseong turned his heavy head toward the sound. Beside Cheol-joon’s temple, something flickered. What is that? The distortion deepened into jagged text. Characters shivered and rotated, their edges wavering in his blurred vision. Yet even through the fever, the glyphs were too structured to dismiss as a hallucination. Crimson and black, twisted and barbed, the lettering belonged in a horror film—and suited Cheol-joon perfectly. Terror shot through Jinseong’s veins, though his paralyzed limbs could do nothing with it. Even drawing breath through the plastic oxygen mask was an agonizing struggle.

[Merchant]

Moments later, a secondary cascade unfurled beneath the title:

[Organ Trafficking, Prostitution, Sexual Violence, Assault, Extortion, Gambling, Narcotics, Contract Murder]

Jinseong understood almost instantly. These were not arbitrary labels; they were Cheol-joon’s deeds, a ledger of atrocities—not merely the predatory, narcotics-backed loan sharking Jinseong had witnessed, but the syndicate’s other hidden cruelties. He isn’t human. He’s a monster. Tears welled at the corners of Jinseong’s eyes.

The villagers had entrusted that monster with everything: their deeds, their land, their livelihoods, and ultimately their families. Children inherited crushing debts as though guilt itself were carried through bloodlines, and Jinseong was no exception. Now, a heavier shackle snapped shut around his throat—the grotesque commercial value the underworld assigned to an Omega body.

“A genuine treasure, that’s what our Jinseong is. A walking goldmine.” Cheol-joon reached down, stroking Jinseong’s sweat-dampened hair as though nothing had changed. The dry touch skittered over his scalp like centipede legs.

Jinseong squeezed his eyes shut, desperately wanting to recoil, to strike the hand away, to do anything at all. He could not twitch a single finger. He prayed that when he opened his eyes again, the words would have dissolved. If nothing else, he wanted to be spared the sight of them.