Chapter Two #3
I check my phone at the first red light, pulling up Jinkyung’s text.
The address is a hotel in Gangnam, one of the ones tucked behind the main boulevard where the buildings get taller and the signage gets more discreet.
Room 2714. There’s a note underneath that says the front desk has been informed and will direct me to the private elevator bank on the east side of the lobby, and that I should use the client’s reservation name, which is listed simply as “Mr. Lee.”
The drive takes forty minutes with traffic, and I spend most of it not thinking.
I’m good at not thinking when I need to be.
I turn the radio to a station playing older ballads and let the music fill the car while I watch the city slide past my windows, the neon signs and late-night food stalls giving way to wider streets and cleaner sidewalks as I cross into Gangnam.
The buildings here are all glass and steel, architecture that looks like it was designed to make you feel small on purpose, and the cars parked along the curbs cost more than my apartment.
The hotel, when I find it, is exactly what I expected.
A tall narrow building with a facade of dark stone and minimal signage, the type that doesn’t need to advertise because the people who stay here already know where it is.
I pull into the underground parking structure and find a spot between a black Mercedes and a white Porsche, and my Daewoo looks so out of place that I almost laugh.
I kill the engine and sit for a moment with my hands on the steering wheel. My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and glance at the screen. It’s a text from Sungyoon, just two words: be safe.
I stare at those two words for a long time. Then I type back always am, pocket the phone, and get out of the car.
The lobby is cool and quiet, all muted lighting and dark wood, with a single receptionist behind a long marble counter who looks up as I approach.
I tell her I’m here for Mr. Lee in room 2714, and she nods without a flicker of judgment or curiosity, tapping something into her screen before directing me to the elevator bank on the east side with a polite gesture.
The elevator requires a keycard, which she provides, sliding it across the counter to me with a small professional smile.
I thank her and cross the lobby, I’m aware of how I must look in this place, neat enough but not expensive enough, my button-down pressed but not designer, my shoes clean but worn at the heels.
I fit the part of what I am. A hired omega walking through a rich alpha’s playground.
The elevator is silent on the ride up. I watch the floor numbers climb on the digital display and use the time to settle myself, rolling my shoulders back, loosening my jaw, breathing evenly through my nose.
By the time the doors open on the twenty-seventh floor, I’ve tucked everything personal behind the wall I’ve built for this, the one that lets me walk into a stranger’s hotel room and do what needs to be done without bringing the rest of my life in with me.
I follow the numbers until I reach 2714 and press the doorbell, hearing a soft chime from inside.
A few seconds pass. Then a voice comes through the intercom panel beside the door, male, deep, slightly muffled by the speaker. “Who is it?”
“Good evening,” I say, keeping my voice level and neutral, the same tone I use for every first meeting. “I’m the omega from the agency.”
There’s a pause, brief enough that it might just be the delay of the intercom system, and then the door clicks. The lock disengages with a soft electronic hum, and I push the handle down and step inside.
The entryway is a short corridor of dark tile. I toe off my shoes and line them up against the wall the same way I do at home, and step onto the hardwood floor of the main sitting area in my socks.
The scent reaches me before I’ve taken two steps.
Alpha pheromones, thick and saturating, filling the entire suite like they’ve been soaking into the walls for hours.
It’s not a rut scent, there’s none of that feverish sharpness to it, but it’s strong enough to tell me this particular alpha’s pheromones run hotter than normal, the kind that most alphas only produce when they’re agitated or aroused, except this feels like it’s just his baseline.
My body responds automatically. My skin prickles, warmth pooling low in my belly, and I can feel my own scent glands activating, releasing a thread of omega pheromones into the air in automatic answer.
I clench my jaw and breathe through it, I’ve been doing this long enough to know how to keep my body’s reactions from running the show.
But there’s something else underneath the initial wave that snags in my chest as I inhale deeper. An odd familiarity. I frown slightly and push the feeling aside, because I don’t have time to chase down half-formed scent memories when I’m about to meet a client.
I round the corner into the suite’s main room, and the space opens up into something that looks more like a luxury apartment than a hotel.
Floor-to-ceiling windows line the far wall, the city glittering beyond them in streaks of white and gold, and the furniture is all dark leather and polished wood, arranged in a deliberately casual sprawl only expensive interior designers can pull off.
The alpha is seated in an armchair in the far corner beside a low side table, a glass of something amber in his hand. He stands as I come in, setting the drink down on the table with a soft clink, and I bow automatically, dipping my head as I start my introduction.
“Good evening, I’m Jung Yoon—”
My name dies halfway out of my mouth.
I’ve looked up, and the face in front of me stops every functioning thought in my head.
It’s older now. The round softness of youth has been stripped clean away, replaced with sharp angles and clean lines that sit differently on a grown man than they did on the boy I knew.
Cat-like features, narrow and intent, with sharp brown eyes that haven’t lost a single degree of their intensity.
His hair is dyed blonde, styled back with a dark undercut that shows off the shape of his skull, and there are silver rings in both ears, two per side, glinting in the low light of the suite.
Small lines fan from the corners of his eyes that weren’t there fifteen years ago, and his jaw is harder, his neck thicker, his shoulders broader under what looks like a very expensive black shirt with the top two buttons undone.
But it’s the same face. Unmistakably, impossibly the same.
His gaze lands on me and I watch recognition flicker across his features in real time, his brows drawing together for half a second before his mouth curves into a wide grin and the dimple appears. Left cheek. Exactly where I’ve seen it every single day for fifteen years on my son’s face.
It’s Hongjoong.
I can’t move. My brain is caught somewhere between panic and incomprehension, cycling uselessly through the facts as if repeating them will make them make sense.
Hongjoong is here. Hongjoong is the client.
Hongjoong is the alpha who’s been burning through omega after omega and rejecting every single one, and I’m standing in his hotel suite to audition for the role of his rut companion.
“Jung Yoonjae,” Hongjoong says, his voice is deeper than I remember but the cadence is exactly the same, that bright incredulous bark of a laugh coming out of him as he crosses the space between us in three long strides and claps a hand on my shoulder hard enough to rock me forward.
“You slippery bastard! How fucking long has it been?”
I blink. My mouth opens. Nothing comes out for a second, and then I manage to clear my throat and find my voice somewhere at the bottom of it.
“Hongjoong,” I say, and I mean for it to sound surprised, maybe even pleased, but it comes out flat and strange, like I’m reading the name off a card. “What a surprise.”
Hongjoong takes a step back, his hand sliding off my shoulder, and looks me over from head to toe with an open, unself-conscious appraisal that makes my skin prickle.
His eyes move across my face, down my chest, over my arms, and back up again.
Then his grin falters into a more bewildered curve, his brows lifting.
“Wait,” he says. “You’re the omega? The rut companion?”
I lean back slightly and rub the back of my neck. “I’m guessing you really didn’t look at the profiles the agency sent.”
Hongjoong laughs, loud and sharply. “No, I didn’t.
I’ve been through so many omegas lately I got bored of the whole process and stopped reading the files entirely.
” He shakes his head, still grinning, and jabs a finger in my direction.
“But now I’m thinking maybe I should have, because I would’ve called you right away if I’d seen your name. ”
I stare at him. “You would’ve?”
“Hell yeah,” he says, like it’s obvious. “Out of sheer curiosity at least.”
He takes another long look at me then, and his expression shifts, the grin fading into a more serious, more searching look. His eyes linger on my face with a focus that makes me want to look away.
“I never would’ve expected this,” he says quietly. “I never dreamed you of all people would end up doing this kind of work, Yoonjae.”
I do look away then, turning my gaze toward the windows and the city lights beyond them, because I can’t hold his eyes while he says that.
Not with that tone. Not with that look on his face, like he’s trying to reconcile the version of me he knew at eighteen with the version standing in front of him now.
“Well there aren’t that many career options for unclaimed omegas, are there?” I reply shortly.
Hongjoong’s expression flickers. I see it in my peripheral vision, a brief crack in his composure. But he recovers quickly, rolling his shoulders back and gesturing toward the minibar against the wall.