Chapter 74

When was the last time he had come to Rhys’s place?

Two distinct dates surfaced in his mind. One was early January, the other early February. Of the two, the former marked the date he had officially succeeded in entering the apartment, while the latter was the glorious day he had been formally added to the building’s no-entry list.

Even now, looking back on it made his heart sting. He couldn’t forget Rhys’s voice, cold as frost, instructing the concierge that they had broken up, that Dante was no longer permitted inside, and that the police should be called if necessary. Rhys hadn’t even shown his face; he had merely conveyed his wishes over the phone. At the time, Dante’s only thought had been, He must be really angry. He had truly believed they were just in the middle of a bitter cold war.

But after their final break-up in Rome, Dante realized Rhys had grown completely sick and tired of him. The last conversation they shared echoed in his mind: Rhys claiming he had only slept with Dante because he was an Alpha driven by basic instinct, and that the identity of his partner hadn’t mattered at all.

Even then, Dante hadn’t believed the words. No matter how little he truly understood the man, he knew Rhys wasn’t the type to callously insult an ex-partner. Yet, it had made him terribly sad to realize he had driven Rhys so far past his limit that such cruel words had felt necessary.

In the end, it had been true, too.

Lost in a state of mind so convoluted he couldn’t decipher his own emotions, Dante stared down at Rhys, who lay fast asleep on the bed.

Currently, with Blake’s assistance, he had managed to slip past the watchful eyes of the doorman and the concierge to enter the apartment. As luck would have it, the two staff members who remembered Dante’s ban were still on duty, forcing Dante to hurriedly explain his predicament to Blake downstairs. Upon hearing the tragic comedy of Dante’s banishment, Blake had laughed out loud.

Rhys’s home, which Dante hadn’t stepped foot in for half a year, hadn’t changed much. In truth, nothing had changed at all. Rhys had left the room he had once cleared out for Dante exactly as it was. Even the furniture arrangement—altered back then so they could bring in pieces meant for the two of them—remained untouched. Looking at the space in isolation, it felt as if no time had passed.

But in the last six months, their relationship had entirely fractured. Whether their core feelings had shifted, Dante couldn’t say. At the very least, Rhys’s hadn’t. The man had merely been desperately pushing Dante away to make it appear that way.

“Haah…”

A heavy sigh escaped him before he could stop it. From the kitchen, where he was brewing tea, Blake called out to him.

“Come have some tea. You must have been startled, so it’ll help you calm down.”

After learning things he had never known back at Blake’s gallery—or whatever that place was—the two of them had agreed to relocate for the time being. For the sake of Rhys’s emotional stability, returning him to his own home seemed best, so they had headed to his apartment a few blocks away.

Rhys had been carried in on the back of a man who looked like a bodyguard. Dante had wanted to carry him himself, but following the unforeseen incident earlier, strength had yet to return to his limbs. The mere sight of someone else touching Rhys made him so intensely uncomfortable that he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off the bodyguard the entire way. It was ridiculous to care so much when they were broken up, but ever since Dante had perceived Rhys’s pheromones for the first time, a powerful instinct told him they were irrevocably tied together.

Pheromones, honestly, he thought bitterly. Who would have believed I’d ever be thinking about something like that?

He didn’t even know when the transition had begun, and he still couldn’t fully grasp that he was becoming an Omega—that such a massive physiological shift could happen so abruptly overnight. Yet, the embarrassing episode from earlier, combined with the strange, crushing pressure he had felt radiating from Blake and Rhys, were no illusions. He didn’t want to believe it, but reality left him no choice.

Forcing his eyes away from the bed, Dante moved to close the bedroom door so Rhys could rest in peace. However, loath to be completely cut off from him, he left it slightly ajar.

He walked into the kitchen, where Blake had set out two cups. Tea… It was such an old-fashioned choice of beverage that it felt awkward. He had thought the same whenever he watched Rhys drink it, but with a cup placed directly in front of him, the habit felt entirely foreign.

Dante had no desire to swallow something as tasteless as herbal tea, but catching a glimpse of Blake’s face—bruised and ruined by Rhys’s outburst—he felt a sudden obligation to comply. A heavy sense of responsibility weighed on his chest. Even if Dante’s will hadn’t been involved, Blake had still been beaten by his own cousin because of Dante’s sudden, chaotic pheromone spike. Ultimately, it was his fault.

“Thank you,” Dante murmured.

“It’s chamomile,” Blake replied, pulling a chair out. “It has a calming effect, so it should help settle the shock a little.”

Ah, of all things, a truly awful tea… It was a blend Dante had tried exactly once in his life, vowing never to let it touch his lips again.

Ignoring his own advice, Blake opened a kitchen cabinet with practiced ease and retrieved an expensive-looking bottle of whiskey. He unceremoniously splashed a heavy pour into his own cup, which appeared to be black tea.

Seeing this, Dante eyed the bottle. “How about making mine like that, too?”

Blake arched a sharp eyebrow. “My cousin hates it when Mr. Devil Hunter drinks. He told me you already have zero sense of caution, but that it gets even worse when you’re drunk because you smile prettily at anyone. He was terribly upset about it.”

Hearing another man call him pretty—especially a man with whom an entirely different, bizarre tension had almost sparked earlier—made Dante deeply uncomfortable. To mask his unease, he forced himself to take a sip of the chamomile. He couldn’t speak to its calming properties, but the taste was so universally terrible that it successfully cleared his thoughts for a split second.

Blake brought his whiskey-laced tea to the table and sat across from him. Weariness etched deep lines into his face as he took a slow sip. Dante silently pretended to drink his own, letting a quiet stillness settle over the room as he observed the man opposite him.

Before today, Blake had seemed like nothing more than a slick, untrustworthy bastard. But now, looking at the blond hair that so closely mirrored Rhys’s, a strange familiarity softened his view. Dante didn’t know the full scope of the situation, but considering Blake understood Rhys’s condition and was actively caring for Lily, he had to be decent at heart. Whatever his flaws, if he was good to Rhys, he was good to Dante.

“So…” Blake broke the silence, his eyes boring into Dante’s. “Do you remember what happened six years ago?”

Deciding he had feigned drinking the awful tea long enough, Dante set the cup down and gave a firm nod.

“I remembered the incident itself. Jumping into a stormy sea bare-bodied without proper rescue equipment is dangerous even for people like us. Of course I remember saving someone from that.”

“Did nothing come back to you when you saw Rhys?”

“I remembered saving three people,” Dante admitted, his brow furrowing. “And I remembered that one of them—probably Rhys—said he would repay me if I ever came to New York…”

It was simply the face that had been hazy in his recollection. A countenance as striking as Rhys’s shouldn’t have been easy to forget, but in Dante’s memory, the teenager had been completely overshadowed by a profound impression of overwhelming shyness. Still, now that the narrative was being pieced together, the scattered fragments of the past were slowly shifting into place.

“Well, you don’t have an obligation to remember,” Blake said softly, his expression turning complicated. “Help tends to leave a much deeper impression on the person who receives it than on the one who gives it. I simply wanted you to know that he liked you from that moment on. Much more—far more than you think.”

Knowing the rough explanation of a one-sided imprint, Dante felt his chest tighten. It was true that he’d had no way of knowing Rhys was an Alpha, let alone that the man had imprinted on him all those years ago. Yet, the stark realization that his own idiotic, repetitive habit of threatening break-ups had driven Rhys into this psychological corner made the guilt he carried nearly unbearable.

“Rhys’s mother… and you too, Blake,” Dante said quietly, looking down. “You must have absolutely hated that Rhys was dating me.”

Dante thought of Rhys’s mother, whom he had encountered several times over the last four years. Now that he had the context, he realized he had actually met her once in the distant past as well, though he truly hadn’t remembered her. He disliked complications, and when he was working, he strictly avoided any thoughts unrelated to the mission. If you overthink things, you don’t jump out of a helicopter into a raging sea. Some actions simply required execution. That was why long-trained experience mattered.

If he had remembered Rhys sooner, would things have turned out differently? Would Rhys have approached him openly, without feeling forced to lie about his presentation? If so, Rhys might have confessed to the imprint. Dante would have learned about the oppressive environment his partner was hiding alongside his trait, and perhaps there would have been no reason for either of them to feel so perpetually anxious.

Dante despised regretting a past he couldn’t alter, but ever since he had watched Blake inject Rhys with a stabilizer, his mind had been trapped in a vicious loop. He regretted everything. It felt as though Rhys had only found unhappiness because their paths had crossed.

“Well, the imprinting was Rhys’s own heart at work,” Blake countered smoothly. “You did nothing to force that process. If anything, you saved his life. He brightened up a great deal after that.”

“Looking at the state he’s in now, I find that hard to believe.”

“Even so, now is still better.”

Dante looked up, unable to comprehend the logic. Rather than offering a clinical breakdown, Blake simply offered his observation.

“In any case, he always smiled when he was beside you.”

At those words, Dante’s lips pressed into a tight line. His eyes stung with a sudden heat, and he clamped his jaw shut to steady himself. He couldn’t stop the sudden flood of memories—those beautiful eyes curving with genuine happiness whenever they walked side by side. That smiling version of Rhys was one of the few sights Dante had truly, unconditionally loved.

“For several years before he met you, he hardly smiled at all,” Blake added, taking a sip. “But that is Rhys’s personal story. You should ask him about it yourself later.”

Because his throat had completely constricted, Dante took another superficial sip of tea. He wanted nothing more than to do exactly that, but the stark reality remained: he and Rhys were no longer together. They had broken up, and a definitive line had been drawn. Aside from the biological compulsion of the imprint, Rhys had explicitly chosen this separation, and Dante wanted to respect his autonomy. He feigned a lack of lingering attachment, but the truth was absolute—he still loved him.

Furthermore, Dante had just resolved to leave New York entirely. Rather than forcing himself to brutally suppress his feelings, he had intended to let distance erode them naturally. The chaos of the city had thoroughly exhausted him. That was why he had firmly resolved to take Lily and start over in a completely different city.

“I don’t know,” Dante muttered, running a hand through his hair as he stared intently into his teacup. He could feel Blake’s evaluating gaze fixed on him.

“Rhys said we had broken up too many times, and that a relationship shaken that badly was impossible to restore. I understand now that he was trying to push me away because the imprint was tearing him apart, but I think his words were sincere to some degree. Back then, I foolishly believed everything would be fine as long as I just tried harder. But now that time has passed, I think I finally understand his perspective.”

“If you had remained a Beta, I wouldn’t be saying any of this,” Blake pointed out flatly. “I wouldn’t have brought you all the way back to Rhys’s apartment in the first place.”

This was the core friction Dante still couldn’t reconcile.

“Let’s say I really did present as an Omega,” Dante conceded, though it still felt surreal. “But Rhys was suffering because of the thoughtless things I said to him, not just because of some biological side effects from pheromones. That emotional damage has nothing to do with my presentation.”

Staring at his own warped reflection in the transparent, amber liquid of the tea, Dante wanted nothing more than to punch himself.

“Are you trying to say you don’t want to be with him again?” Blake asked.

It would be more accurate to say I don’t have the right.

In a low voice thick with a mixture of guilt and intense self-loathing, Dante whispered, “It’s not that. It’s just… I don’t understand what suddenly changes just because my secondary gender changed, especially when his condition only worsened because of my actions.”

“A lot changes.”

Because he possessed absolutely no framework for what it meant to exist as an Alpha or an Omega, Dante stared back at Blake, silently demanding an explanation.

Blake let out a dry chuckle, the corner of his mouth twisting. “You felt it earlier, didn’t you? When Rhys completely wrapped you in his pheromones. How did it feel?”

“…It felt grounding,” Dante admitted softly after a pause. “I could feel exactly how much Rhys cared for me.”

And along with it, a profound, ambiguous desire he couldn’t quite put into words had surged through his veins.

Blake nodded, as if his point had proven itself. “Alphas and Omegas communicate through an entirely different sensory plane using pheromones. Emotions are conveyed much more intuitively and instinctively than they ever could be for Betas. Rhys was perpetually anxious because his biology told him you could vanish at any moment, and you…” Blake paused, a sudden thought striking him. “Why were you so anxious?”

Dante still lacked the confidence to bare his deepest insecurities to an outsider like Blake, but the fundamental anxiety he had carried wasn’t so different from Rhys’s.

“I thought the reason Rhys hid so much of his life from me was because he didn’t want a deep, serious commitment,” Dante confessed, his voice dropping. “When he asked me to move in, I thought things would finally progress. But when I saw his guarded attitude and realized nothing was actually changing, I got scared.”

Hearing it aloud, the sheer tragedy of their miscommunication settled over him. They had taken such an agonizingly tortuous path just to end up back here. They had been identical in their desperation not to lose one another, yet their methods of expression had been entirely incompatible. There were deep-seated reasons for that incompatibility, but if they had only known the true depth of each other’s desires, perhaps they would never have fractured this completely.

“Do you still believe that’s the case?” Blake asked.