Chapter 61

…Perhaps it was because he hadn’t said something like that in so long, but his voice came out incredibly hoarse. Or perhaps it was simply the lingering aftermath of the strange heat that had claimed him earlier.

Rhys remained entirely frozen where he stood, his body still turned toward Dante. From across the room, Dante could see Blake subtly twisting his neck away from the fist still suspended in the air. The gaze fixed on Dante was far more animal than human, and Dante couldn’t tell if Rhys had even processed the words. Dante’s lips parted, and once more—low, soft, and falling back into the deep habit he had used before they broke up—he called out.

“I’ll hold you, so hurry. Okay? Come here, beautiful.”

In that exact instant, Blake was abruptly released. Rhys lowered his clenched fist, let go of Blake’s collar, and immediately strode toward Dante. As Rhys closed the distance, the fragrant flower scent thickened exponentially, and Dante’s heart began pounding like mad. The things he had once simply assumed were an expensive perfume now reached his senses entirely differently.

Rhys’s scent wound all around his bare skin. That invisible barrier surged toward him like a localized gale and completely surrounded Dante, as if physically blocking any trace of Blake’s scent from clinging to him, while simultaneously keeping Dante from smelling anything else in the room. At the same time, as if soothing Dante’s profound shock, he felt a strange, unseen force brush and caress him with desperate tenderness. The pure emotion seemed to reach him directly through his heart rather than his mind, and it was so intense that he could barely breathe.

A sensation like this actually existed.

Dante, who had been born entirely human but lived his life as a standard Beta, was utterly overwhelmed by this new realm of perception—one he had never been biologically equipped to sense before. He could see nothing physical, but that invisible presence touched a deep, hidden place settled inside his chest.

When Dante felt the true weight of Rhys’s scent, he understood with absolute clarity that Rhys wanted him so very….

So truly, blindly much.

It was a terrifyingly deep emotion Dante never could have guessed from Rhys’s usually calm, expressionless face. In the first place, he wondered whether an intensity that resonated this deeply could ever truly be inferred from mere words or facial expressions.

How could a single person carry an emotion of this magnitude?

Rhys came to a halt right before Dante, who sat frozen on the floor with his arms still open. Through the disheveled blond hair, those blue-gray eyes looked down at him. Only after sweeping Dante thoroughly from head to toe, as if physically confirming he was unharmed, did Rhys slowly sink to his knees. Then, he fiercely pulled Dante’s waist into his arms, burying his face against his chest. He tucked himself in and drew Dante close, holding him as tightly against his body as humanly possible.

“Tay…. Tay, where were you?” Rhys murmured, his words broken and hard to understand. “I missed you so much. I kept calling Dante, so why… why do you keep leaving…?”

As Rhys held him, a violent shudder ran through Dante’s entire body, fine enough to make him visibly tremble. He had hugged Rhys too many times to count over four years, and yet, as if this were the absolute first time, a frantic fullness and a dense, heavy arousal surged through his veins. The heat that had briefly faltered began boiling wildly all over again.

Without meaning to, Dante’s hands tightened around Rhys’s back, and an excited, fractured breath slipped from his lips. Perhaps Rhys felt the sudden spike in temperature, because the hardness between them swelled stiffly below. The insane, intrusive thought of wanting Rhys inside him right this second made Dante’s body arch off the floor.

Then, out of nowhere, Blake approached from behind and drove a heavy syringe directly into Rhys’s neck.

“…!”

Rhys’s eyes flew wide in shock. He stiffened instantly, clutching at his neck, before his long eyelashes trembled violently and he slowly collapsed forward into Dante’s arms. Dante caught his limp weight reflexively, glared up at Blake, and snapped sharply.

“What the hell did you just do?”

He nearly sprang to his feet, terrified that Blake might be attempting to harm Rhys, but he couldn’t bring himself to let Rhys go, so he remained kneeling on the cold floor. As Dante glowered at him, breathing heavily, Blake offered him a slightly betrayed, exhausted look.

“Haah… You said your legs wouldn’t work, but you got up just fine to catch him,” Blake muttered.

“I asked what the hell you did,” Dante repeated, his voice dropping an octave. “What did you inject into Rhys?”

Blake, who had been wearing that smug, smirking expression when Dante first arrived, now looked utterly spent. Dante watched him carefully, prepared to knock him down if necessary, but his aggression faltered slightly when he truly took in Blake’s bloodied state from Rhys’s beating. Blake’s pretty face was an absolute disaster—red, swelling, and dark bruises were already rising rapidly along his jawline. Dante wondered if there was even an uninjured spot left to hit, and whether Rhys might have taken the beating a little too far. The sudden thought crossed his mind that the actual victim in this room might be Blake.

“It’s a stabilizer for Alphas,” Blake explained, roughly wiping his nose. “That one has been having episodes like this for months, and he only calms down after we inject him with it. Haah… I definitely gave him a incredibly strong dose just a few hours ago, but he must have forced himself back to consciousness already. Seeing as he made it all the way here. No, how did he even know his ex-boyfriend had arrived?”

Blake roughly wiped his bloodied face several times with the back of his hand, muttering low curses as he let out a weary, rattling sigh.

For a moment, a heavy silence settled over the wide exhibition hall that had just been torn apart by chaos. Dante adjusted Rhys’s limp body securely in his arms, trying desperately to piece the puzzle together.

Blake had just dumped far too much information on him at once. Dante still didn’t understand the bizarre phrases Blake had shouted earlier while trying to stop Rhys from killing him, but right now, the word making his chest tighten with anxiety was episodes. Rhys needed an Alpha stabilizer just to calm down? What on earth had happened to his little flower?

Dante’s face hardened into a grim line. The first realistic thought that came to his rescue-trained mind was that Rhys needed to be moved to a hospital immediately. As if he had easily read that thought on his face, Blake, who had been sighing repeatedly, spoke up.

“I’m doing exactly what his regular hospital prescribed, so don’t start thinking weird things.”

“…Does Rhys have some serious illness?” Dante asked, his voice now stiff with genuine worry rather than aggression.

At the question, Blake closed his mouth. He wrapped the empty syringe he had been holding in a clean handkerchief, tucked it securely into his trousers pocket, and after several long minutes of heavy thought, finally broached the subject.

“First, I called you here today literally because of the guinea pig—Lily, or whatever it is—that belongs to the two of you. I ended up taking care of him because of that one’s condition, but once both his owners disappeared, the little guy became terribly shy.”

At the explicit mention of Lily—the entire reason Dante had come here in the first place—a sudden sense of reality returned. Right. He had decided to bring Lily back, gone shopping to prepare his apartment for the pet while waiting for Blake to contact him, and then entirely changed course. Then he had entered this building, encountered Blake, and… something inexplicable had happened to his body. Something he didn’t want to remember, and something that, in one way or another, was still actively ongoing.

“Lily is… ha, right. Is he okay?” Dante asked, rubbing his temple. “You wrote all that terrifying stuff about Lily’s well-being, so I thought something awful had happened to him.”

As Blake listened, the tension in his expression eased slightly. “You really are incredibly fun to tease. You react instantly.”

Dante raised his thick brows and stared at him coldly to make his deep displeasure clear. Blake blinked back at him as if he were the one being wronged. Under normal circumstances, with that handsome face, it might have been somewhat effective. Right now, covered in blood, it wasn’t.

“My God. I’m not some mad scientist,” Blake sighed, rolling his eyes. “You didn’t actually believe I would torture a rat, did you? Your Lily is perfectly fine. He’d been sleeping far too much lately, so I took him to a vet, and they said it was simply because he was lonely. So I got him another guinea pig friend. He’s been playing perfectly well since then. The other one’s name is….”

Before revealing the name of Lily’s new companion, Blake looked down at the unconscious Rhys resting in Dante’s lap and let out a hollow, dry laugh.

“Beatrice.”

It was a pretty name, certainly, but as luck would have it, Dante knew someone with that exact name. Dante flinched into a stunned silence because the name was identical to his youngest sister’s, and Blake nodded as if he perfectly understood the reaction.

“It’s truly godawful, right? For reference, I’m not talking about myself. I’m talking about the idiot in your arms. He named her. Giving the name of Beatrice from The Divine Comedy to a damn rat… well, anyway, to a rodent. Her nickname is Beabee.”

Dante didn’t know what possible reaction would suit this entirely chaotic situation, so after serious thought, he opened his mouth. “…Is she female?”

He was about to say that if so, they absolutely needed to get her spayed immediately to avoid the endless breeding situation Kirk had faced, but he belatedly realized that a guinea pig’s reproductive health was the least of his concerns. For now, knowing Lily was safe was enough. The real, pressing problems were Blake’s battered face, the unconscious Rhys sleeping in his lap, and, of course, Dante’s own highly alarming physical condition.

“Anyway, I’m glad Lily is doing well. Thank you for taking care of him.”

Now that he looked closer, Blake might not be an entirely terrible person. Judging by his harsh use of the word rat, he clearly wasn’t a passionate fan of guinea pigs, but he had still stepped up to take care of Lily in Rhys’s place. He had even gone out of his way to buy Lily a companion. Lucy had always insisted that guinea pigs were social creatures that should be kept in pairs, and her wish had finally come true through a stranger. Dante thanked Blake with several layers of genuine sincerity. He was glad to know, even now, that Rhys had a friend this fiercely loyal.

“Yes, well… he’s my cousin, so I have to help,” Blake muttered.

A good friend. Wait. Cousin?

“What?” Dante blurted out, his voice cracking. “Cousin?”