Keep your mouth shut

Ji Chi was like a vicious lion driven mad by hunger, placing himself firmly on top, determined to control everything. The surrounding darkness laid bare every ugly aspect of the Alpha. He bit and sucked as though searching for water, without savoring a thing, let alone showing tenderness. Even his kisses were arrogant.

Not enough.

Still not enough.

He had to get #inside.

There was something wrong with this Omega. Only by kissing him could Ji Chi taste those scarce traces of pheromones.

Ji Chi bit through the other man's lip.

Blood carried its owner's pheromones, too.

Ji Chi kissed the man before him with the bearing of someone in command.

Demanding, probing.

Yet clumsy all the same.

Warm breaths mingled with a violently pounding heartbeat.

Getting close to him meant saving himself.

Sex was not something one person could make happen alone; even the driest wood would not catch fire that way. Ji Chi grew increasingly irritated. He was getting no response whatsoever.

He wanted this man to respond to him.

What the hell did he mean? He had the nerve to set a trap, and now that he had gotten what he wanted, he was playing hard to get?

Ji Chi simply could not reconcile the man before him with the word Omega.

"You fucking provoked me because you wanted to sleep with me, didn't you? Why the act?"

Suddenly, Ji Chi felt the other man's hand settle on his waist.

The grip was so strong he could not break free. The man bent slightly, looking down at Ji Chi beneath lowered eyes. The look jolted him, a tingling numbness spreading around his ears as that deep voice caught him by the throat. "Will you regret this?"

Ji Chi answered immediately. "No."

The next second, Ji Chi felt the man draw a little closer.

Something was being released, violence and gentleness interweaving.

Then the world spun, and the man before him pinned him hard into the corner beside the narrow doorway of the shared apartment.

"Mm..."

The battered iron door shut, extinguishing the last sliver of soft light.

Looking into the man's eyes, Ji Chi felt a sudden bewilderment.

It seemed he was the prey.

"If you won't regret it, I'll give you my pheromones." The man's voice was hoarse, its faint weariness inexplicably sexy.

When the man seized Ji Chi's wrist, his palm moving down and back, Ji Chi felt as though he were facing a mortal enemy. A roar exploded inside his head, and his eyes flew wide.

"Fuck you!"

"I'm an Alpha!"

The man held Ji Chi firmly by the shoulders and surveyed the clothes clinging to his body. He looked obscenely enticing. "Of course I know."

"But you don't have a choice anymore."

The night grew darker. The incandescent bulb's filament buzzed, threatening to light before dying again.

Their breaths merged, then scattered apart.

"I asked what you wanted."

In the pitch-black room, the man's eyes were frighteningly bright, like a sharp blade that carved through every inch of Ji Chi until nothing remained.

"Now you can't escape."

The final words lingered, echoing through the cramped room and circling endlessly in Ji Chi's ears.

The next instant, a sharp pain struck Ji Chi's lips.

"Mmph...!"

Compared with Ji Chi's tentative kisses earlier, this kiss was worlds apart.

It plunged into desire, tore open the tension, and struck straight at their tangled pheromones. The baser instincts suppressed deep inside were unleashed completely. Heaven and earth spun as they exchanged the vibrations in their chests. One was being driven onward, one had his gland held in check. Who wanted whom, who was the Omega-Ji Chi could no longer tell.

Ji Chi's numb tongue tried to evade him, but it posed no threat at all, yielding limply to his control. The man pinned him down so tightly he could not move. "Fuck... let me go!"

"Be good."

"Be good and I'll #you," Huo Jin said.

Three days later, Ji Chi still woke in that same shared apartment.

The images in his mind came hard and fierce.

Everything base, shameless, and filthy crashed down like an avalanche, driving him to the brink of madness.

Fuck!

Ji Chi slowly sat up. The man was nowhere to be found. He glanced at the clothes beside the bed.

Brand-new.

But cheap.

Ji Chi, who wore nothing but luxury brands, disliked them, but his original clothes were already filthy.

After putting them on, he sat on the edge of the bed in a daze for half an hour. Every time he remembered, he wanted to kill someone.

An Alpha followed his true instincts more closely during his rut.

Now Ji Chi felt an inexplicable urge to strangle himself.

He should never have come here!

Ji Chi slowly got up. As he approached the table, he saw a glass of water sitting on it.

A note lay beneath it.

[Let me know when you leave.]

Looking at the handwriting, he could almost hear the man's soft, warm voice, unhurried, mature, and gentle. He even coaxed him in bed. Those eyes were the most deceptive of all.

"I'm going to chop off your *!"

Ji Chi clenched the note, his knuckles cracking.

But he did drink that glass of warm water, because he was thirsty and his throat hurt. Young Master Ji had never made life difficult for himself, even as a child. He only did what made him comfortable.

After drinking the water, Ji Chi stormed out, burning with anger. When he returned, he had a blacksmith's hammer in his hand.

He smashed the man's bed to pieces!

There had not been much in the room to begin with, and within minutes, not a single thing remained intact. The desk, stool, bed frame, door, even some seemingly unused household items, the glass he had just drunk from, and the washbasin-all of them suffered.

After smashing the bed, Ji Chi looked at the wreckage strewn across the floor and still felt no relief.

His ass hurt.

The anger lodged in his chest would not come out.

He was used to being above everyone else. From childhood, he had been taught that Alphas stood above Omegas.

It made what had happened to him impossible to accept.

He wanted to kill that man, make him vanish from the world forever. He wanted to erase what had happened.

Ji Chi collapsed helplessly onto the floor.

He wrapped both arms around his bent knees.

He was the one who had begged the man for pheromones.

Why hadn't he left when the man said no?

With the door locked, Ji Chi hugged his knees and cried in humiliation, unwilling and afraid to remember.

After a long time, Ji Chi comforted himself and pulled himself together. He made a phone call.

An hour later, his driver arrived with a stack of documents.

Ji Chi washed up and looked in the mirror. Apart from his slightly reddened eyes, he was still that same privileged, defiant Alpha.

Still the Alpha who could frighten an Omega until his legs went weak.

He would never acknowledge what had happened in this rented room. He had been born into glittering nightlife and extravagant luxury, never once setting foot in the mud. This was only a dream.

Once he left, the dream would end.

Ji Chi waited in the room all afternoon.

The man returned toward evening, a dusting of gray on his body that stood out sharply against his black clothes. It looked as though he had gone out to work.

There was a construction site nearby.

Ji Chi guessed he worked there.

This was the first time Ji Chi had looked at him in a normal, clearheaded state.

Some people possessed a deep gravity without a trace of youthful innocence, worldly and sophisticated, regarding everything with indifference. It had nothing to do with age; most of it came from years of misfortune. This man embodied that air perfectly. His features were sharp, as though he never smiled. His indifferent eyes could sometimes seem cold enough to freeze a fish to death, yet gazing deeper into them, they were gentler than warm water. His nose was high and straight, his lips beautifully shaped. Every one of his features could have served as a model for cosmetic surgery.

The man had an air of nobility that seemed to emanate from his very bones.

Yet his expression was so bland that he seemed utterly unaware of how good-looking he was.

If he had not been living in this rented room,

Ji Chi would definitely have suspected he had work done.

He was a type Ji Chi would never have liked.

This defective Omega was not suppressed by an Alpha's pheromones.

So he was not afraid of Ji Chi at all.

On the contrary... every moment Ji Chi recalled of the man over the past few days left him shaken.

He couldn't show weakness.

When Huo Jin pushed open the door, he saw the young man sitting arrogantly at the desk, along with everything that had been smashed to pieces.

He did not reproach him. He was even calm.

As though he had expected exactly this.

Ji Chi raised a hand and pointed at the documents on the desk, his expression haughty as he got straight to the point.

"Read the agreement. Once you've confirmed the contents, give your ID to my driver. An identical copy will be drawn up and brought over for you to sign."

"From now on, there can be no connection between us."

"You must keep your mouth shut about everything."

"You'd better forget it all yourself, too!"

"You can't breathe a word of it to anyone!"

Huo Jin glanced at the agreement on the desk. His gaze dimmed for a moment, and he took a composed step forward.

As he raised his eyes, he took another step.

Ji Chi straightened. He hated being challenged.

When Huo Jin advanced again, Ji Chi's feet instinctively shifted backward a fraction. His lower back hit the damaged edge of the desk, his chest heaving. The urge to run was almost reflexive, and in the brightly lit room, his panic had nowhere to hide.

"Stay the fuck away from me."

Their gazes met, scorching Ji Chi until he felt he would melt. Huo Jin surveyed him casually. "Does it hurt?"

"Fuck your pain!"

Ji Chi wanted to tear his mouth apart. "Fuck you!"

As though he had not heard the curses, Huo Jin pointed out the problem instead. "There are still traces of my pheromones on your gland."

"The next time you go into heat, you'll still come looking for me, unable to control yourself."

Ji Chi's chest heaved as he slammed a palm onto the desk.

His vicious voice exploded along with the bang of his hand striking the wood. "Then you have to move out of here!"