Chapter 12

Jinseong collapsed onto his knees, one palm flat on the mattress while his other hand remained trapped between his thighs. The posture was degrading; the gnawing emptiness was infinitely worse. He stroked himself again with desperate, graceless speed until his body seized in another convulsion, a sound closer to a wounded sob than pleasure ripping from his lungs. “Ugh, ngh…”

The fleeting relief evaporated instantly. An induced heat could never be satisfied by manual release. Clenching the stained bedsheets in both fists, his face slick with tears and sweat, Jinseong trembled as his body demanded something he had no knowledge of giving it. Even after two orgasms, the furnace in his belly raged untamed. His hand drifted toward his backside, hesitated in horror, and snatched the sheets again. He bit his lip until blood welled over his chin.

Cheol-joon stepped closer, catching the hesitation. “No, no. That’s not going to cut it.” He pressed Jinseong’s shoulders down, shoving his hips upward and stripping the trousers down his thighs. Bringing the lens flush against the boy’s skin to document the glistening lubrication, Cheol-joon pressed a heavy thumb against the slick entrance.

“Ahhn!”

This isn’t me. Jinseong repeated the mantra until the words lost all coherence, his face mashed into the mattress while his body yielded to a desecration his mind rejected. Cheol-joon kept the camera rolling. It burns. God, it burns so much I’m going to die.

Groping blindly, Jinseong’s hand caught the cuff of Cheol-joon’s trouser leg, clinging to it like a drowning man grasping a fraying rope. In the warped logic of the chemical haze, even his tormentor’s warmth was an anchor. Nothing he did to himself quelled the ache; the hollow hunger sat far deeper, beyond his innocence to navigate. Looking up at the man he despised above all others, Jinseong broke completely, begging for relief. “Please… do something. Ah, ugh…”

“…”

A shred of clarity cut through the fog, rendering the plea horrifying. Jinseong dissolved into open, wretched weeping, nauseated by the fact that the drug had driven him to beg this monster for touch. “Hnnngh…”

Cheol-joon tossed the camcorder aside and crowded onto the mattress behind him, his thick hands clamping around Jinseong’s hips. For a second, the kingpin’s own control slipped; his hand went to his belt buckle, paused, and then he swore viciously, shoving himself away from the bed with violent haste.

Cheol-joon knew his appetites well enough to fear giving in even once. If Jinseong hadn’t already been promised to an elite patron, he would have broken the boy the day he manifested. There were hundreds of bodies available for his pleasure, but only one buyer offering this fortune. A momentary impulse wasn’t worth throwing away billions of won. Even without detectable pheromones, the visual spectacle of an Omega in induced heat had crawled under his skin. Cheol-joon sucked in ragged breaths, pacing the small room like a caged animal. Beta or not, proximity to that raw biological furnace was fraying his nerves. “Can’t even fuck him. Fuck!”

While Cheol-joon wrestled with his greed, Jinseong remained trapped in the nightmare. He reached between his thighs, recoiled in disgust from his own wetness, and rolled onto his side, curling into a tight ball. Nothing helped. The artificial heat was terrifyingly lonely—a cavernous, hollow ache that frightened him far more than physical pain. He curled around his knees, weeping until he could barely draw air. “Ugh… sob… ahhng…”

The broken sobs finally drove Cheol-joon past his limit. He turned his back to the bed, refusing to look. “Hey! You out there! Get the fucking suppressants in here! Now!”

The injections eventually extinguished the fire, but they could not spare him the physical toll. Jinseong spent the following week shivering through a life-threatening fever.

* * *

“Finish all the antibiotics. Come back in five days so I can check the wound.”

Jinseong accepted the paper pharmacy bag with both hands, bowing respectfully. Yi-soo’s eyes softened with quiet, professional warmth.

Turning her attention to Yi-jae, her expression instantly iced over. “And as for you, get the hell out of my clinic.”

Even in parting, Yi-soo treated the Nyx executive with venomous familiarity.

Yi-jae merely offered a bright, unbothered grin. “Sleep well, Doctor.”

Jinseong wondered what history permitted someone to speak to an underworld commander like that, but sheer physical exhaustion silenced his curiosity.

Once they settled into the back of the sedan, Yi-jae lifted the black hood from the seat, considered it for a moment, and tossed it aside onto the floorboards. Reaching over, he pinched Jinseong’s reddened nose between his fingers before releasing him. “Guess we’ll have to shop for your underwear tomorrow.”

The lazy drawl lent the comment a suggestiveness that made Jinseong look away. For once, he would have preferred the blindfold; instead, Yi-jae abandoned the idea and tapped away at his tablet.

Yi-jae’s heavy scent of cedar and ozone clung to Jinseong throughout the drive. If the morning suppressant was already losing its efficacy, he needed another tablet the moment they crossed the threshold of the penthouse. I’m letting you live because you aren’t an Omega.

Yi-jae had spared his life on the conviction that he was a Beta, extending his lease on life on the condition that he synthesize narcotics powerful enough to dominate the market. The transaction was ruthless, but logically sound. Yi-jae’s personal conduct outside that arrangement, however, defied all comprehension.

Jinseong harbored a visceral dread of needles bordering on panic. Even that morning, looking at the ragged tear in his heel, part of him had been perversely relieved by the absence of surgical instruments. Yi-jae had crushed his wounded foot for telling a lie, yet when Jinseong panicked over receiving sutures, the man had actually indulged him, instructing the doctor to use medical adhesive and pressure dressings instead. The longer they remained in each other’s orbit, the more Jinseong found him impossible to decipher. Either the man was playing an elaborate psychological game, or he was stark raving mad.

Dressed in a bespoke three-piece suit, legs crossed as his long fingers flicked across the glowing screen, Yi-jae looked indistinguishable from a legitimate corporate heir. His lips curved in an abrupt, private amusement. “What are you staring at?”

Caught red-handed, Jinseong snapped his gaze toward the dark glass. He had assumed Yi-jae was absorbed in business, but the Alpha had tracked him the entire time. Flustered, Jinseong blurted out the first excuse that crossed his mind. “Maybe I really am memorizing the route.” It was a painfully transparent deflection.

Yi-jae’s low chuckle rippled through the quiet cabin. “Good. Memorize every turn. That way, even if you run off and get lost, you’ll know how to crawl back to me.”

I won’t get lost. And I’d die before crawling back to you. Stealing another glance at the man’s sharp profile, Jinseong watched the neon streaks of the city dissolve into the black night.

Yi-jae’s home was no ordinary apartment, but a private penthouse atop an elite high-rise hotel. Before they entered the subterranean garage, Jinseong craned his neck, taking in the tower’s summit where the name ZEYA burned in immaculate white neon.

Yi-jae bypassed the public elevators entirely. Carrying Jinseong in his arms, he acknowledged the crisp bows of stationed guards before stepping into a secure, keycard-access lift.

The moment the suite doors sealed behind them, Yi-jae set Jinseong down outside the master bath. Assuming it was an order to wash up, Jinseong turned toward the door, but a heavy arm barred his path.

“Not yet.”

“…?”

“Arms up.”

Jinseong blinked, baffled. Yi-jae prompted him with a slight tilt of his chin. Sullenly, Jinseong raised his hands, and Yi-jae caught the hem of the oversized pajama top, peeling it over his head in one fluid motion. Static electricity sent Jinseong’s dark hair standing in messy tufts.

“Think you can bathe yourself with that foot?”

“Yes.”

“Cold as ice,” Yi-jae drawled, tilting his head with mock offense.

Jinseong met his gaze, bewildered by the charge. What was so cold about wanting to wash in peace without an audience?

“Think about it,” Yi-jae counted off smoothly. “I give you clothes. I feed you. I give you a nice bed, a top-of-the-line lab, and my own doctor to patch up your foot.”

“You’d be doing the work,” Jinseong countered, clutching the hem of his shirt. “How is that a reward for me?”

“And me touching you?”

“…”

Jinseong’s brow furrowed in sheer discomfort. Given that Yi-jae was his captor, the way he framed the intimacy as though Jinseong had a choice felt bizarre. Yi-jae’s hand drifted downward. Hooking a long finger into the elastic waistband of the pajama bottoms, he gave a firm tug, drawing Jinseong forward until the boy’s lower back arched against him. Yi-jae cast an idle glance downward. Beneath that cotton fabric, the only thing that could possibly command his attention was Jinseong’s groin. “I need to inspect this properly too, don’t I?”

“You could have anyone you wanted…” Jinseong trailed off, unable to voice the crass reality, and buried his face in his forearms. Fierce heat scorched from the nape of his neck to his ears. He understood what Yi-jae wanted; he simply hadn’t expected Yi-jae to choose him.

Yi-jae gently pulled Jinseong’s wrists away from his face. The effortless smile playing over his features was strikingly handsome. “I thought you were the innocent, bookish type. Turns out you know plenty.”

“…”

Jinseong dropped his chin, his cheeks burning crimson. Yi-jae leaned down, murmuring his name in a low, teasing cadence. “Lee Jinseong.” When no answer came, he tilted his head, forcing their eyes to meet. “Did someone tell you I eat people alive?”

“…”

“It’s just that… this is the first time a man’s cock ever looked pretty to me.”

Jinseong repeated the rationalization like a shield in his mind: It’s only because he’s a dominant Alpha. It’s because his latent pheromones are overwhelming. That had to be why this overt proposition, something he had always found repulsive, exerted such a suffocating gravity. He had never been confined with an Alpha before. That was why this dangerous man appeared dazzling.

“I… I wouldn’t be any good at that,” Jinseong mumbled.

The corners of Yi-jae’s eyes crinkled. “You wouldn’t enjoy it.” Remembering Yi-jae’s threat that he’d mutilate anyone bad in bed, Jinseong spoke with grave earnestness, but the Alpha casually brushed the warning aside.

Tugging the pajama bottoms down, Yi-jae said, “Care to lift your feet?”

It was anatomically unremarkable—the genitals of an ordinary young man, framed by legs only slightly leaner than an athlete’s. Compared to the voluptuous woman from the night before, it was a body devoid of glamour, yet the man gazing down at his groin appeared genuinely fascinated.

Refusal had never been an option. Yi-jae held his life as collateral, and Jinseong had learned early that survival required yielding before violence became necessary. At Gold Class, only Cheol-joon’s possessive greed had kept the other men from brutalizing him the way they did the factory laborers. Cheol-joon preserved assets only until the auction price peaked; an untouched virgin was a prerequisite for high-tier patrons. Yet Cheol-joon held no dominion here. That realization gave Jinseong a dark, spiteful satisfaction.