Chapter Twelve
I’m dragged out of a heavy, dreamless sleep by the sound of one of the dogs barking somewhere in the apartment. Sharp, insistent barks that pierce through the layers of unconsciousness and force me back to an awareness I immediately wish I didn’t have.
Bright light is pouring in through the bedroom windows, late afternoon light from the warm golden angle of it.
I’m bone tired, so groggy and faded it feels like I’ve been awake for days straight.
My limbs are heavy and drained, my skin sticky and tight where dried sweat and other fluids have crusted on me in patches.
My stomach grumbles with a furious, gnawing hunger that feels like it’s been building for hours, maybe longer.
I’m face down in the bed, the covers thrown haphazardly over my lower half with my ass exposed to the air, and the sheets beneath me are a disaster of stains.
The bedroom smells like a brothel. Residual pheromones coat every surface, alpha and omega scent so thickly intertwined it’s like breathing through perfumed smoke.
My cock is sore. My ass is sore and tender in a way that tells me I was used thoroughly and repeatedly, my rim puffy and aching even without moving, a deep throb.
My nipples sting against the sheets where they press, the swollen tissue oversensitive from what I can only assume was hours of Hyunwoo’s mouth on them.
Something twinges sharply in my shoulder when I shift, a localized pain I can’t immediately identify.
I groan deeply as I pick my head up, blinking against the light, my hand reaching out to fumble for my phone on the nightstand. I peer one-eyed at the clock through crusted lashes, squinting until the numbers resolve themselves into something legible.
Two PM.
I huff and drop my head back onto the pillow with a defeated thud.
I feel a weight draped across my lower back, a leg that’s not mine, heavy and warm and covered in a fine layer of hair that scratches against my skin.
I turn my head on the pillow and find Hyunwoo sprawled on his back beside me, his black hair a wild mess fanned across his pillow, dead to the world.
His bare chest rises and falls in the steady rhythm of deep sleep, his lips slightly parted, one arm flung over his head and the other resting across my back possessively even in unconsciousness.
There are red scratches down his chest and across his shoulders that I’m fairly certain I put there, though I don’t remember doing it.
I stare at him for a long moment, half glaring, half bemused.
Fuck, that guy is terrifying when he’s in rut.
I don’t even remember when we stopped, when Hyunwoo’s rut finally burnt out and the desperate, insatiable energy finally left his body.
I’m not completely sure I was even conscious for the end of it.
The last thing I can recall with any clarity is being on my side with my leg hooked over Hyunwoo’s hip, his cock buried inside me and his face pressed into my neck, and then nothing.
Just a blank stretch of black where my memory should be.
My stomach cramps painfully with hunger and I hear another bark, Machete’s sharp voice carrying through the apartment from what sounds like the living room. She’s probably needing to be let outside and fed, having been neglected during our marathon, and the guilt of that cuts through my grogginess.
I push at Hyunwoo’s shoulder with my palm, shoving at the solid mass of him. The man barely moves, heavy and immovable in sleep like a boulder sunk into the mattress. Annoyed, I slap at his bare chest with the flat of my hand.
“Hey. Wake up, jackass.”
Hyunwoo stirs slowly, shifting on the pillow, turning his head toward me and blinking with sluggish confusion, surfacing from very deep sleep.
His eyes are puffy and unfocused, his face still carrying the remnants of that rut-flush across his cheekbones, his voice is hoarse when he manages a single syllable.
“What?”
I gesture toward the door, at the barking audible beyond it, Machete’s voice joined now by a lower, more urgent whine that’s probably Kal.
“The dogs.”
Hyunwoo groans and runs a hand over his face, rubbing at his eyes with his knuckles before dragging his palm down over his jaw.
He rolls onto his side with visible effort, reaching for his phone on the nightstand, and says, “Hold on, let me message the housekeeper to come let them out and feed them. I don’t think I can physically get up without passing out. ”
I settle back into the pillow while he types, my cheek pressed against the cotton, silently taking stock of the number of aches in my body.
My ass throbs dully. My inner thighs are sticky with dried slick that’s gone tacky and uncomfortable against my skin.
My hips feel bruised where Hyunwoo gripped them, and when I shift my weight even slightly my lower back protests with a sharp twinge that makes me wince. My jaw aches too.
Hyunwoo goes still after sending the message, his phone dropping onto the mattress beside him, and I say sleepily into the pillow, “Maybe you should order us some breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. Whatever meal it is for this time of day, because I’m absolutely starving.”
Hyunwoo, clearly not having gone back to sleep despite looking like he desperately wants to, snorts and says, “As you wish, your highness.”
Despite the sarcasm he pulls his phone back out and starts scrolling through delivery apps, his thumb moving sluggishly across the screen.
I try to make myself get up, planting my palms against the mattress and pushing, but my limbs are slow to respond and a muscle in my lower back seizes the moment I shift my weight, a sharp spasm that locks up the entire left side of my lumbar region and makes me groan through my teeth, one hand shooting back to rub at the spot.
“Damn,” I mutter, kneading at the seized muscle with my knuckles. “And you used to ride out these ruts with women? Are they okay? Did any of them survive?”
Hyunwoo laughs, a rough, scratchy sound that tells me his throat is as fucked as mine, and sets his phone down on his chest. He rolls onto his back and throws an arm over his eyes to block the light streaming in through the curtains.
“It isn’t normally that bad,” he says from beneath his forearm. “Your pregnancy scent made it significantly more intense than usual.”
He removes his arm and glances at me sideways, his expression softening slightly from exhausted flatness to genuine concern. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll let you know once I get to a mirror and can fully assess the damage,” I say, still rubbing at my back. “But I don’t feel like I’m going to come apart, no. Everything seems to still be attached and functional, if sore.”
I push up onto my palms, sitting upright with a grunt of effort, and immediately cringe as a literal flood of cum gushes from my hole.
Released by gravity now that I’m no longer lying flat, it pours out of me in a warm, thick rush that I can feel sliding down my taint and pooling beneath me.
I look down, watching it spread on the already-ruined sheets between my thighs, a startling amount of thick white fluid joining the mess that was already there, and my face twists.
“Jesus fuck,” I say, staring at the growing puddle. “How the hell are you not dead of dehydration after expelling that much? That’s not a human amount of fluid.”
Hyunwoo snorts from behind me, not lifting his head from the pillow. “I feel about as dry as the Gobi Desert right now, so that tracks.”
I sit up the rest of the way, ignoring the mess as best I can, and stretch.
I raise my arms over my head, lacing my fingers together and pushing upward until my back pops in several places, each crack sending a small wave of relief through my stiff muscles.
The movement feels good, loosening some of the tightness that’s settled into my shoulders and spine from however many hours I spent in various undignified positions.
Hyunwoo makes a sound I’ve never heard from him before.
A sharp intake of breath. Shock, distress, alarm, all compressed into a single strangled syllable that cuts through the lazy, post-rut atmosphere of the room.
I look down at him, my arms still raised, and see the wide-eyed, stricken expression on his face.
His gaze is locked on a point on my body just above my collarbone, his pupils contracted to pinpoints despite the bright room, the color draining from his face so fast it’s like watching someone pull a plug.
I hear him whisper, barely audible, “Oh, fuck.”
“What?” I drop my arms, alarmed now too, a spike of adrenaline cutting through my grogginess.
I look down, following the line of his gaze to the left side of my neck, just above my collarbone at the junction where my neck meets my shoulder.
I can’t see it clearly from this angle, but I can see enough.
The edge of something red and angry peeking above my collarbone, the skin around it inflamed and tender in a way I can suddenly feel now that my attention has been drawn to it.
That’s the twinge I felt earlier, the localized pain in my shoulder I couldn’t identify.
My blood goes cold.
I throw back the covers and stumble out of bed, crossing the room to the full-length mirror on unsteady legs, cum still trickling down my thighs in warm rivulets that I don’t spare a single thought for.
I bend close to the glass, tilting my chin up and turning my head to expose the left side of my neck, and the reflection confirms what I already know with a certainty that makes my stomach drop through the floor.