Chapter 11

The woman tapped the clear barrel of the syringe with a long, black-lacquered fingernail, flicking a stray droplet of liquid from the needle tip before snapping her chewing gum with a sharp pop. A silver barbell flashed against her tongue as she chewed. When she glanced down at the deathly pale youth seated before her, her painted smile was purely transactional; beneath her heavy false lashes, her eyes were flat and cold.

Her dark-tipped fingers reached for his bare forearm. Jinseong had no idea what chemical compound filled the glass chamber, but its intended destination was unmistakable. The second her acrylic nail scraped his skin, he jerked violently away.

She popped her gum twice, irritation sharpening the lines of her jaw. “Don’t make this difficult. If the needle slips, you’re the one who suffers.” Once more, her ringed hand clamped down around his wrist.

“No.” He knew resistance was completely futile in this windowless basement, yet he fought anyway. As she reached for the rubber tourniquet with her free hand, Jinseong seized her wrist with all the strength left in his fingers.

“Haa.” The woman sighed through her nose, hooked the wad of gum from her mouth with two fingers, and ground it flat against the laminate tabletop. Wrenching her arm free with an annoyed twist, she dropped the syringe beside it with a sharp metallic clatter. “Look, sweetheart. Take the shot and stay put till the Boss says otherwise. Jerk yourself raw, stick something up your ass—I don’t give a shit how you get through it.”

“…The clinic already said I’m an Omega,” Jinseong forced out through clenched teeth. He was sick to death of needles—sick of their sterile silver gleam, sick of the cold bite against his flesh, and sick of the suffocating nightmares that invariably followed every puncture.

“Yeees. But you’ve never gone into heat! You’re over twenty. What’s the holdup?” She planted both hands on her hips, watching him with tired, theatrical exasperation. “Some Omegas hardly ever go into heat, so how’s anyone supposed to know when you’re fertile? The Boss has waited long enough. This shot’ll bring it on. Got it? Fight me again and see what happens.”

She lunged for him just as the heavy iron door swung open behind Jinseong. Catching sight of the immense silhouette on the threshold, the woman hastily snatched up the syringe, instantly pasting on an obedient, deferential smile. She caught Jinseong’s forearm; this time, when he recoiled, she dug her sharp nails deep into his flesh.

“Forget it. Pin him down for me,” she barked toward the doorway.

The towering subordinate moved without hesitation. One broad, calloused hand clamped over the nape of Jinseong’s neck while the other locked his shoulder to the metal chair, subduing him with effortless brutality. Jinseong stared wide-eyed at the advancing steel needle. He had sworn to himself that he would never be drugged against his will again. Blind terror shattered his fragile composure, reducing his protests to ragged, desperate gasps.

“N-no! Stop!” he cried out.

“Hold still unless you want to die,” the woman hissed, the slight tremor in her voice born of terror for herself, not him. If the boy kept struggling, she would answer to the monster looming in the doorway. She jammed the needle into his pinned arm and drove the plunger home.

Agony pinched Jinseong’s brow. His teeth sank into his lower lip until he tasted copper. He wanted to confess that he was terrified—wanted, absurdly, for that terror to matter to someone in this godforsaken room—but there was no mercy to be found here. His vision blurred as hot tears gathered against his lashes. The instant the fluid emptied into his vein, the restraining hands vanished. Jinseong scrubbed violently at his eyes, furious at his own weeping more than at anyone in the room.

“Straight into a vein? It’ll hit fast. An hour at most,” the woman reported, glancing over her shoulder toward the threshold. “Either someone takes him or you give him a heavy dose of suppressants. Leave him like this and he’ll lose his mind. You know how induced heats work, Boss.” She tapped her temple, twirling her forefinger in a small circle.

Jinseong felt the chemical shift before she even finished speaking. His eyelids fluttered. A feverish, suffocating fog rolled through his consciousness, followed immediately by a molten heat coiling deep in his lower abdomen. The first time he had been poisoned, his mind had seemed to shoot into the stratosphere before blacking out entirely. This was different. Every hair on his body rose. Every nerve ending in his skin flared until even the scrape of his shirt became unbearable.

“Watch the time,” the woman cautioned.

“An hour’s plenty. Just need a few good minutes on camera,” Cheol-joon replied.

Jinseong’s stomach turned at the raspy voice before he even looked up. His head fell back against the metal headrest. Through the haze, Cheol-joon loomed over him with a lit cigarette clenched between yellowed teeth, his immense frame casting a shadow that swallowed both Jinseong and the guard.

Cheol-joon studied the youth’s sluggish, fever-bright eyes with cold, clinical appraisal, a leering grin spreading across his leathery face. “Damn fast. I like it.”

You bastard… You goddamn son of a bitch… You fucking piece of shit… Rot in hell… You deserve to be butchered in the street… Inside his head, Jinseong hurled every curse he had ever learned. None crossed his lips. Cheol-joon had beaten the consequences of defiance into him too thoroughly; careless insolence would only rebound on his mother in the north. Since this syndicate entered his life, even righteous anger had become something he was forced to bury beneath iron silence.

A wet whimper caught in his throat. “Haa…”

Strength drained from his limbs like water through dry sand. He commanded his eyes to focus, but his vision smeared into sickening double images. Cheol-joon had once forced the entire workforce to watch captives dosed with industrial aphrodisiacs tear at one another in a frenzy—carnal desperation stripped of all dignity and weaponized as a public execution. It had been an explicit demonstration of what awaited anyone who failed him. Some women had fainted; grown men had soiled themselves on the concrete floor.

Natural Omegas weathered biological cycles regularly. But since his late manifestation, Jinseong had never experienced a true heat. As a recessive with undetectable pheromones living among Betas, he had survived like an ordinary human. “Omega” had been a diagnosis printed on clandestine lab work, not a living reality. He had never imagined someone would violently force that nature to the surface with a syringe. Everything Cheol-joon touched was converted into currency: pregnancy, surrogacy, forced cycles, sexual bribery. Jinseong’s body was simply another row on the ledger.

Jinseong flinched violently. Cheol-joon had dropped into a low crouch directly in front of him—the man whose voice he loathed, whose visage repulsed him, with whom he refused to share the same air. No. No. Please, no. Nausea was simpler than terror. Jinseong wedged himself hard against the backrest, but Cheol-joon leaned in close, burying his rough jaw into the curve of the boy’s neck and inhaling deeply. Jinseong yearned to shove the monster back, but he dared not move; Cheol-joon converted the slightest resistance into agony for someone else. Jinseong held his breath until his lower lip shook uncontrollably.

Cheol-joon drew another deep breath, hunting for scent against the nape of his neck. Jinseong jerked his chin toward his shoulder, fighting the contact, until the kingpin pulled back with an annoyed scowl. Glancing over his shoulder at the woman, Cheol-joon asked, “I don’t smell a damn thing. Did that shot even work?”

“You wouldn’t, Boss. You’re a Beta,” the woman answered indifferently, snapping her gum.

“Fucking strange creatures,” Cheol-joon muttered. His calloused fingers wound into Jinseong’s dark hair, wrenching his head backward.

The breath Jinseong had been holding escaped in a sharp, helpless gasp. He fought to clamp his teeth together, but the surging heat overwhelmed his self-control. His breathing fractured into ragged sobs. “Ugh, haa…”

The sounds escaping him were utterly foreign—halfway between physical pain and an involuntary moan. When Jinseong attempted to drop his gaze, Cheol-joon yanked harder on his hair, punishing him for looking away. Flush crept across Jinseong’s pale skin, staining his cheeks crimson. Tears spilled freely down his face, and saliva pooled at the corners of his lips with every broken exhalation. Even Cheol-joon, who had treated him solely as an intellectual asset, lingered on the sight.

“Haa… the suppressants. Please… Ugh—ngh… You’ve seen enough, haven’t you?” Jinseong pleaded, each breath scalding his lips.

“Seen enough?” Cheol-joon scoffed. “I’m only getting started.”

At Cheol-joon’s curt nod, the woman packed her equipment into a metal case. The final item she placed on the table was a handheld camcorder. “I’ll wait outside,” she said, stepping toward the corridor.

Driven by blind panic, Jinseong lunged upward after her, driven by one certainty: he could not be left alone in this room with Cheol-joon. The sight of the camera made that conviction absolute. He took one stumbling step before Cheol-joon caught him by the hair and hauled him backward. As he was dragged toward the bed, Jinseong’s blurring vision registered the surroundings: a sleazy hourly motel, stained wallpaper, a sagging mattress. He clawed weakly at Cheol-joon’s iron grip, but his fingers had no purchase. The door clicked shut behind the woman.

“Jinseong.”

“…Ngh, let… let go of me.”

“A buyer checks the goods before he pays,” Cheol-joon said smoothly. “That’s business. Gotta make sure everything works. That your body responds like it’s supposed to. That it can take what the buyer wants. If you were paying that kind of money, you’d want proof too.” Cheol-joon threw him face-first onto the mattress.

Jinseong attempted to push up onto his elbows, only to discover his limbs no longer obeyed his mind. His chest spasmed. Saliva dribbled from his lips before he could catch it. “Haa. Haa…”

Molten heat climbed through his throat, forcing his mouth open. An unnatural, suffocating thirst seized him. This isn’t me. It can’t be. Yet his traitorous body answered regardless, pathetic whimpers slipping past his teeth as humiliation wrung fresh tears from his eyes.

“Give me the suppressants… please… hurry… ah—”

His hips twitched uncontrollably. Friction against the coarse sheets only sharpened the thrumming ache between his thighs. The heat scorched through his abdomen and settled into his groin until blind biological panic overrode the last shred of shame. He reached downward, fumbling desperately with his belt buckle, driven by an animal certainty that he would rupture from the inside out if he didn’t find release. Cheol-joon recorded every second, the camcorder’s red tally light pulsing in the dim room.

“That old bastard’s going to grin ear to ear when he sees this,” Cheol-joon drawled.

Jinseong barely registered the words. Shoving his trembling hand beneath the waistband of his briefs without even working his trousers down, his clumsy fingers wrapped around his own erection. The touch was tentative, yet his chemically primed flesh reacted violently to the slightest friction. Heat scalded his temples. His spine snapped taut.

“Haa!” The climax tore through him with punishing intensity, yet it resolved nothing.