Chapter 49

“Ah… why did I do that?”

Dante had been asking himself the same question for the past twenty minutes. As the shower cascaded over him, he replayed the scene carefully. Yet, no matter how long he rationalized it, his actions earlier were completely uncharacteristic. For the first time in a while, the tense atmosphere between them had softened, offering a rare window to finally talk things through. He should have seized it.

But the moment Rhys dismissed it all as a mistake, Dante felt a fuse snap in his mind. Rhys had been cold all along, but in that exact second, the rejection stung so acutely it felt as if his very existence was being denied.

Besides, when he had woken up that morning, he felt lighter—as if four years of pent-up frustration had finally evaporated. He hadn’t even harbored the slightest desire for more sex. Having gone more than twenty-four hours without a meal, food was his most urgent priority; after being worked so relentlessly on an empty stomach, his stamina was entirely depleted.

Yet the instant he saw Rhys—whom he had touched out of sheer anger—become aroused by his hands, all reason evaporated. Only raw instinct remained. Put that way, it didn’t sound much different from his usual self, but the quality of it was distinctly altered. Earlier, an overwhelming urgency had consumed him: he needed to bind his body to Rhys immediately, to force Rhys to truly look at him. He wanted desperately to fracture that dry voice and shatter that freezing gaze.

And he had. Contrary to his expectations, the encounter had stretched on for hours—and he hadn’t hated a single second of it.

In any case, he had achieved his goal.

Rhys, who had driven him with an intensity that bordered on terrifying, had finally released him after hours of torment. Once the fever broke, Rhys seemed to return to his senses. Crucially, he hadn’t violently shoved Dante away the way he had upon first waking. For Dante, that small concession was enough.

The real enigma was why Rhys was acting this way.

Judging by how instantly his body reacted the moment Dante initiated contact, he absolutely did not hate him. No matter how much men could be reduced to creatures of base instinct, no one engaged in sex that prolonged, nor continued to touch someone so intimately, if they truly loathed them. There were depraved bastards capable of it, sure, but Rhys was nothing like them. Moreover, Dante had been the one to force the issue, initiating something Rhys had explicitly resisted.

So that means he doesn’t hate me, Dante reasoned, staring through the steam. No… after what he just did, he definitely still cares for me, doesn’t he?

Sighing heavily, Dante gave up on the mental loop. No answers would materialize by agonizing over it alone in the dark. The only logical step was to clean up, go out there, and confront him. The strongest cards in Dante’s hand were the shared intimacy of the past two days, capped by the explosive encounter they had just survived.

Though bruised by Rhys’s constant attempts to push him away, Dante felt his mood lift as he reviewed the timeline. Just the memory of Rhys pouncing on him, eyes brimming with tears, sent a wave of profound tenderness swelling in his chest. The sex that followed had been nothing short of ecstatic—eventually crossing the threshold from electrifying to downright addictive. Dante pridefully considered himself a man of excellent stamina, but he was no match for Rhys.

Among Betas, a feat like that was practically impossible. It was a capability uniquely reserved for Alphas. Physical endurance aside, if an ordinary man came repeatedly over the span of a day, his body would run dry. Yet Rhys had spent two full days producing an unwavering, considerable amount.

Who knew Alphas were truly this biologically distinct from Betas? How had Rhys managed to conceal that raw strength and stamina all this time? Unlike Dante’s own length, which at a certain point could only manage a half-erection and leaked clear fluid, Rhys had consistently filled him to the brim with semen. Their anatomical frameworks were fundamentally different. Especially the way Rhys’s shaft would swell, locking himself inside Dante’s heat from time to time…

Was that knotting? Dante wondered. It must have been.

He had never dreamed he would firsthand experience a phenomenon he had only ever heard of in whispers. Ironically, knotting was one of the primary reasons Dante had always avoided Alphas—a list of grievances Rhys himself had once recited back to him word for word.

To Dante, knotting was the ultimate reminder of how alien people with secondary designations were compared to him. As a Beta, the concept of a body part physically transforming during intercourse felt profoundly unsettling, and he had never been confident he could accept it.

His aversion to Omegas was slightly tamer, but the unpredictability of a heat cycle occurring at fixed intervals still bothered him. Above all, he dreaded the idea of carelessly hurting someone he loved. Consequently, Dante had resolved early on to strictly date fellow Betas. It was a protective boundary forged in childhood, having learned firsthand how deeply a wound inflicted by a loved one could cut.

His specific resistance to Alphas, however, had been solidified during his stint as an EMT.

He vividly recalled a dispatch call involving a catastrophic complication from knotting. An Alpha and a male Beta had engaged in intercourse. Fortunately, there was no severe trauma like an intestinal rupture, but the couple had panicked and dialed 911 when the knotted anatomy refused to release.

Dante and his partner had been forced to transport the pair to the emergency room while they were still physically conjoined. Though the hospital staff successfully separated them, the incident left a bad taste in Dante’s mouth. The desperate, quiet dialogue the couple shared in the back of the ambulance had haunted him for days.

“I’m so sorry,” the Beta had wept. “I think this happened because I’m not an Omega…”

“It’s not your fault,” the Alpha had replied, voice thick with guilt. “This happened because I couldn’t control myself. If I weren’t an Alpha, you wouldn’t be in pain right now.”

It had filled Dante with a profound, lingering sadness that an act of love between two people could result in such clinical violation, keeping him awake that entire night. While physical intimacy wasn’t the sole metric of love, the idea that two people could be barred from expressing their desire safely simply due to their designations seemed tragic.

That was the foundation of his dislike for Alphas.

Yet, the man who turned out to be an Alpha was none other than Rhys Elliott—the lover so flawless Dante had spent years terrified of losing him. Dante had happily spent four years with the exact designation he assumed he could never genuinely connect with. Furthermore, over the last forty-eight hours, he had repeatedly endured the very act of knotting that had once repulsed him.

Astonishingly, his body had held up. Aside from being incredibly sore and stinging from the relentless friction, there were no alarming symptoms. He had always heard that without an Omega’s natural lubrication and elasticity, the experience was agonizing, but apparently, his own anatomy was durable enough to adapt.

…Wait. This isn’t something I should just gloss over.

When Rhys had actually knotted him in the heat of the moment, Dante had been too overwhelmed to parse the significance. But in the quiet clarity of the shower, the weight of it hit him. This was irrefutable proof of Rhys’s underlying feelings.

According to everything he knew, knotting was an involuntary biological response Alphas only experienced with partners they genuinely desired.

That meant Rhys still harbored enough latent affection to bind them together. While it was true that Alphas occasionally knotted purely from overstimulation regardless of emotion, Rhys was far too disciplined to suffer such a loss of control with someone he felt nothing for.

Moreover, it hadn’t happened just once; it had occurred multiple times. It was impossible to misinterpret.

Rhys had even confessed as much during their feverish hours: “What man in the world would hate hearing the sounds my own makes?”

Unable to contain his urgency a second longer, Dante wrenched the bathroom door open and stepped out. Rhys, who had bathed earlier, was seated on the living-room sofa. At the sound of the door, his eyes drifted toward the bedroom threshold. When he caught sight of Dante emerging completely naked, skin glistening with un-dried droplets of water, his eyes widened in sharp disbelief.

“…What exactly do you think you’re doing right now?” Rhys demanded, his tone laced with bewilderment.

Dante marched directly toward the sound of that cold, beautiful voice. His mind was entirely fixated on the evidence he had compiled—the concrete answers to the puzzle that had been torturing him. They needed to hash this out immediately. The way Rhys had flown into a feral rage over some pathetic bastard’s pheromones; the relentless, day-long sex where Rhys refused to let him go; and finally, the knotting.

Rhys stared at Dante, who stood dripping wet in the center of the living room, before tightly squeezing his eyes shut. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he muttered under his breath, “Put some clothes on first. At least throw on a robe.”

“Look at me, pretty boy,” Dante urged, running a hand through his damp hair, which slicked back dark against his scalp. “You still love me, don’t you? Let’s stop lying to each other. Why do you keep pushing me away when your body is telling me a completely different story?”

Rhys’s long, elegant fingers remained pressed against his brow. After a heavy silence, he finally spoke. “…I thought a genuine emergency had occurred. You caused a scene just to ask something so ridiculous?”

“A scene?” Dante repeated, staring down at him in sheer disbelief.

As if sensing the heat in Dante’s gaze, Rhys slowly lowered his hand to face him. His eyes flicked to Dante’s neck first, tracking down the damp slope of his collarbones before skimming across his chest. Eventually, Rhys’s gaze anchored on Dante’s thighs, which were still vividly decorated with bruised handprints and bite marks. Under such an unblinking, predatory evaluation of his intimate areas, a sudden wave of late-blooming embarrassment finally crashed over Dante.

Clearing his throat awkwardly, Dante pivoted and retreated to the bedroom. Finding a lone remaining towel, he wrapped it hastily around his waist before marching back out.

“How is this not serious?” Dante demanded, re-entering the living room.

Wasn’t it standard procedure to discuss the status of a relationship after a night of world-shattering intimacy? Ordinarily, a romantic brunch would be next on the agenda, but given their fraught circumstances, untangling this emotional knot took precedence. Dante stepped proudly into the room, fully expecting to extract a definitive confession, only to freeze. Rhys had risen from the sofa and was actively preparing to leave. Dante stared, utterly thrown, as Rhys slipped into a pair of ankle-baring, brown Oxford shoes.

“What are you doing? Are you going out?” Dante asked, gesturing to his own damp state. “I literally just got out of the shower.”

“Yes,” Rhys replied curtly.

“You’re leaving without me?”

Rhys straightened up gracefully, turning an indifferent expression toward Dante. His voice carried the casual dismissiveness of someone stating the obvious. “Is there any particular reason we should be traveling together?”

Transitioning from confusion to unadulterated shock, Dante arched a dark eyebrow. unbelievable. This was the exact same man who had pinned him down and fucked him mercilessly hours ago, completely ignoring Dante’s desperate pleas to stop so he could eat. Now, he was acting pristine, chilly, and utterly untouched—as if the entire weekend had been a hallucination.

“Pretty boy, did you suffer amnesia regarding what we were doing a few hours ago?”

The ex-lover whom Dante believed was on the precipice of becoming his current lover merely offered a detached shrug. Not long ago, Rhys had worn an expression of pure, unadulterated ecstasy at the mere touch of Dante’s hand, tackling him to the mattress. Now, he carried himself with the lofty, abstinent air of a priest. The whiplash was so severe it felt as though he were dealing with a stranger.

A stranger.

Unlike the beast that had driven him to the brink until dawn, this Rhys was quiet. He had reverted entirely to the defensive version of himself—the version that hid behind walls and pushed Dante away.

In truth, Dante realized he didn’t know the first thing about Rhys anymore. He had arrogantly assumed that four years of domestic bliss meant he understood Rhys better than anyone alive. But the man he had reunited with after a two-month separation was entirely unpredictable, leaving Dante feeling incredibly foolish. Not once had Rhys reacted the way he anticipated. The sex had defied his expectations, and now, the aftermath of an encounter that felt closer to an Alpha’s primal mating ritual was met with cold distance.

After sex that unhinged!

By some stroke of luck, Dante had successfully used his body to break through Rhys’s defenses, just as Lazzaro had advised, but the victory was hollow. Even now, Rhys was behaving like an unyielding wall. He had broadcasted his desire with every fiber of his being, yet he still insisted on playing the part of an indifferent ghost. It was maddening. Rhys Elliott was a walking contradiction.

“Are you seriously going to pretend you didn’t hear the conversation our bodies had all night?” Dante protested, his voice adopting the wronged, indignant tone of a virgin whose virtue had been stolen.

Rhys’s mouth twisted into a cold, mocking slant. “Assigning grand emotional weight to a basic release of physical tension? How pathetic. Don’t tell me this was somehow a novel experience for you.”

Frowning at the sharp, accusatory bite in Rhys’s tone, Dante shot back, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve undoubtedly had plenty of encounters exactly like this throughout your life,” Rhys said, turning his head away. “Save the act about this time being unique.”

What kind of distorted caricature of him lived inside Rhys’s head? Hearing him speak, one would think Dante was some hypersexual playboy who bedded anyone with a pretty face. While his past might have had minor overlaps with that stereotype, Dante felt entirely vindicated in his outrage. He was a thoroughly conventional guy who didn’t participate in one-night stands; he only slept with people he was actively dating.

“What kind of person do you think I am? I’ve only ever slept with my partners!”

“The moment that number climbs past one or two, the meaning is entirely lost anyway.”

As if deeming the conversation a waste of breath, Rhys turned his back completely. Seeing him on the verge of walking out the door, Dante ran a frustrated hand through his hair. The lingering ache in his lower half and the heavy sensation of Rhys’s fluid still pooled deep inside him were entirely unaligned with any standard sexual encounter from his past. It had been an entirely different dimension of intimacy, and he refused to let Rhys rewrite it as meaningless background noise.

“Don’t walk away from me. You can’t,” Dante commanded, stepping forward. “We are talking right now. Rhys, every single issue we’ve ever had boiled down to a lack of communication. If we’re going to fix us, we have to talk about what comes next!”

By now, Rhys was already navigating the short corridor toward the suite’s exit. Terrified that a single step would sever their connection forever, Dante pursued him, his voice echoing off the walls. At the wet slap of Dante’s bare feet against the floor, Rhys paused, his gaze narrowing dangerously as he turned. Dante stood before him, clad in nothing but a loosely tied towel.

“It wasn’t a lack of communication,” Rhys said, his hand gripping the doorknob. “I simply chose not to tell you. Furthermore, there is no ‘us’ to fix. We broke up, and this is the absolute last time I intend to repeat myself.”

With that final, freezing declaration, Rhys opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, leaving no room for a rebuttal. The heavy door clicked shut with a definitive thud. Dante stood frozen, a volatile mix of panic and profound loss churning in his gut. It was the exact, sickening feeling of watching something you thought you had finally retrieved slip through your fingers into an abyss. Realizing that if he let Rhys walk down that hallway alone, it would truly be the end, Dante threw the door open and bolted out.

“Rhys Elliott!”

Dante’s shout shattered the quiet of the hotel corridor. He stood there, completely exposed save for a towel, glaring at Rhys’s retreating back as he neared the elevators. At the sound of his name, Rhys spun around, freezing instantly at the sight of Dante standing half-naked in a public hallway. Watching the pale skin of Rhys’s forehead tighten in sheer mortification, Dante felt a surge of certainty. Rhys couldn’t ignore him. Not yet.

“Have you completely lost your mind?” Rhys hissed, his voice a lethal whisper. “Get back inside. Right now.”

Look at that, Dante thought. If we’re truly over and you don’t care, there’s no reason for you to panic if I get arrested for public indecency.

Instead of retreating, Dante dug his heels in, refusing to budge. He had accidentally left his key card inside anyway, so returning wasn’t an option even if he wanted to. Besides, he possessed a flawless physique and didn’t particularly care who saw it; the only time he ever felt truly self-conscious was when he was tangled in a sheet with Rhys.

“If you’re going to take advantage of me when I was actively trying to sort out my feelings, then you need to take some goddamn responsibility!” Dante yelled.

Whether the drama unfolding in the hallway was too enticing to ignore or simply loud enough to cause a disturbance, the distinct click of a nearby guest-room door signaled an audience. The moment Rhys caught the sound, his composure shattered. He strode back toward Dante with furious steps, using his tall frame to shield him from view. Snatching Dante by the upper arm, his blue eyes flared with a sharp, dazzling intensity.

“I ordered you to go inside,” Rhys ground out through clenched teeth.

Dante met that fierce gaze squarely, refusing to flinch. “Two days ago, after everything you said, I was genuinely prepared to walk away and bury my feelings. You were the one who ambushed me after that. Take responsibility for what you started. I’m not asking for the world, Rhys. Just give me one chance.”

Past Rhys’s shoulder, Dante caught the curious stare of a hotel guest lurking nearby. Simultaneously, the heavy door to the emergency stairwell creaked open, revealing a member of the housekeeping staff. Finding himself surrounded by spectators, Rhys slammed his key card against the electronic lock, threw the door open, and roughly shoved Dante back into the safety of the suite.

The heavy thud of the door sealing shut echoed through the sudden silence of the room. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Rhys simply glared at him, his brilliant blue eyes burning with an intensity that practically stung. Finally, he broke the silence.

“Childish antics like this aren’t going to alter reality, Dante.”

“Let’s go on a date.”

To win a beautiful person, a man must be willing to gamble everything.

Dante’s father had always included that specific line whenever he recounted the story of how he had courted Dante’s mother. Dante didn’t possess a wealth of memories regarding his father, but on the rare occasions he begged for a story, the older man would sit him down and grant him a sliver of his time. He was a man who had never managed to give Dante the specific affection he craved, but Dante still respected him as a man. Ultimately, his father had always known exactly how to bring a smile to the face of the person he loved.

Dante resolved to follow that ancestral wisdom, determined to exhaust every single card in his hand.

“Go out with me,” Dante pleaded, his voice dropping to a softer, urgent register. “Today is our final day in Rome. Even if it’s only for half a day, go on a date with me and check your pulse. Look at how you truly feel. If your mind doesn’t change after that…”

He hesitated, preparing to play his absolute last card. If securing an equal opportunity required putting his most precious possession on the line, so be it. Since Rhys was so desperate to build a wall between them, Dante would offer him the exact tool to build it permanently.

“…then I’ll surrender. I won’t chase you anymore.”

The words cost him dearly; just uttering them sent a violent spasm through his stomach. A dull ache bloomed behind his temples, identical to the headache that had crippled him the first time Rhys announced their split.

But if he let his desperation show, Rhys would instantly reject the terms. Forcing his muscles to cooperate, Dante pulled his features into a wide, easy smile—the picture of effortless confidence. Rhys’s piercing, quartz-blue gaze locked onto the expression, searching for cracks. Sensing the scrutiny, Dante added one final, daring provocation.

“If you’re that eager to rid yourself of me, accept the wager.”

A suffocating silence filled the room. While he waited for a verdict, Dante maintained the smile, using it as a shield to mask the agonizing anxiety rattling his ribs. It was a desperate gamble born of sheer necessity, though a part of him secretly prayed Rhys would reject the terms out of hand. It was a selfish wish—the desire to avoid formatting their definitive end into words.

But time refused to stand still merely because he wished it so. Eventually, every path required a step forward.

“…Four hours,” Rhys said, checking the face of his wristwatch.

In that exact instant, the frozen clock of the last two months violently snapped back to life.

“I will grant you exactly four hours.”

It was a horribly ambiguous window. It couldn’t be quantified as a proper half-day, yet it was just long enough to make complaining about its brevity feel petty. It was a block of time that perfectly mirrored their current, fractured state. Dante opened his mouth to argue that prep time shouldn’t count against his clock, but changed his mind, opting to deepen his smile instead. There was a far more critical term to establish.

“…Fine,” Dante agreed, wetting his dry lips before deliberately softening his tone. The emotions tearing through him were heavy enough to crush them both, and he didn’t want Rhys retreating under the weight of his desperation. “But since this is an official date, I don’t want this version of you.”

“Let’s play by the old rules. Let’s act like we used to—back when we loved each other.”

Rhys lowered his long lashes, studying Dante in absolute silence. For a fleeting second, the expressionless, porcelain mask that had been nothing but frigid appeared to crack, revealing a flash of profound grief. Dante couldn’t fathom the source of it; it was simply a raw impression. Stirred by an inexplicable urge, he reached out to ask if Rhys was alright, but Rhys preempted him by sharply tapping the glass of his watch.

The second hand was already ticking.

Realizing the countdown had officially begun, a spike of urgency hit Dante. He spun on his heel to sprint into the bedroom and get dressed, but stopped at the threshold to cast one final glance back. The strangely sorrowful shadow that had crossed Rhys’s face lingered uncomfortably in his mind.

But when Dante looked again, the beautiful face was entirely devoid of emotion. As if the grief had been nothing more than a trick of Dante’s own desperate imagination, Rhys stood perfectly still, an impenetrable fortress once more.

***