Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
KEIRA
I found him in his office.
It was late — well past midnight — but light still spilled from under his door, the only sign of life in the otherwise quiet dorm. The others were asleep in the nest, their breathing soft and even when I'd slipped out, careful not to wake them.
I needed to talk to him. Alone.
My hand hesitated on the door before I knocked, soft enough that he could ignore it if he wanted to.
"Come in." Jae-won's voice came through the wood, low and tired but not unwelcoming.
I pushed the door open and found him at his desk, laptop open, papers scattered around him.
He looked exhausted — his jet black hair slightly disheveled from running his hands through it, the top buttons of his shirt undone, his usually perfect posture slumped with fatigue.
Dark circles shadowed his nearly-black eyes.
He looked up when I entered, surprise flickering across his strong features before being replaced by concern. He straightened immediately, that commanding presence reasserting itself even in his obvious exhaustion.
"Keira. What's wrong? Are you okay?" Jae-won said, already rising from his chair, his dark eyes scanning me for signs of distress, his broad shoulders squaring with attention.
"I'm fine." I said quickly, holding up a hand to stop him, my voice soft in the quiet room. "I just... I need to talk to you. Privately."
"Of course." Jae-won closed his laptop, abandoning whatever work had kept him up this late, his movements careful and deliberate. "Here? Or..."
"Somewhere more comfortable?" I suggested, my voice smaller than I intended, vulnerability coating every syllable. "Your room, maybe? I don't want to wake the others."
Something shifted in his expression — surprise, then understanding, then something deeper that I couldn't quite name. Asking to go to his room, just the two of us... it was significant.
Let him in, my omega urged. Show him we trust him.
"This way." Jae-won said, his voice low, gesturing toward the door that connected his office to his bedroom.
I'd never been in his room before. It was exactly what I would have expected — clean, minimal, organized.
A large bed with dark grey sheets, a bookshelf lined with management books and poetry collections, a single framed photo of the pack on his nightstand.
"Sit. Please." Jae-won gestured toward the bed, then seemed to second-guess himself, running a hand through his already disheveled hair. "Or the chair, if you'd prefer—"
"The bed is fine." I settled onto the edge of the mattress, pulling my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.
His scent surrounded me, warm and grounding.
He moved carefully, settling beside me but leaving space between us, his tall frame tense with uncertainty.
Even here, in his own space, he was giving me room. Giving me choices.
"What did you want to talk about?" Jae-won asked, his voice low and careful, his dark eyes patient on my face, his hands resting on his knees. I took a breath, trying to organize the thoughts that had been spinning through my head all night.
"You always ask what I want." I said finally, meeting his gaze directly, my grey eyes holding his nearly-black ones. "In every conversation, every discussion. You ask what I need, what I'm comfortable with, what I'm ready for."
"Of course. This is your choice. Your life. Your—" Jae-won nodded slowly, a slight furrow appearing between his brows, confusion flickering in his expression.
"You never say what you want." I cut in gently, watching something flicker in his dark eyes, something quickly suppressed. "Not once. Not really. You speak for the pack, you explain the options, you make sure I understand everything. But Jae-won... what do you want?"
The question hung between us, heavy with meaning. I watched him struggle with it — watched the pack alpha instincts war with something more personal, something he kept carefully locked away.
"My wants aren't—" Jae-won started, his voice rough, his jaw tightening.
"Important?" I finished when he trailed off, my voice soft but insistent.
"Relevant? That's not true. You're not just the pack alpha.
You're one of my alphas. One of five. And I need to know what you want.
Not what's best for the pack. Not what's strategically sound. What you, Jae-won Choi, actually want."
The silence stretched, thick and charged. I could see him fighting with himself — the careful control he always maintained cracking at the edges.
"I want..." Jae-won's voice came out rough, his dark eyes dropping to his hands, his fingers curling into fists on his knees. "I want things I have no right to want. Things I've spent my whole life being told alphas shouldn't demand."
"Tell me anyway. Please." I leaned forward slightly, my heart pounding, my grey eyes searching his face. When he looked up, his eyes had shifted — the near-black deepening, flashing with alpha-gold around the edges. Raw. Unguarded. It should have been terrifying.
It wasn't.
"I want Option B." Jae-won said, the words coming out like they were being pulled from somewhere deep, his voice low and intense, his whole body tense with the effort of confession. "I want the bonds to complete. I want to spend your heat with you, inside you, claiming you in every way possible."
My breath caught, heat flooding through me at the rawness in his voice.
"I want to mark you." Jae-won continued, his voice dropping lower, his eyes never leaving mine, his cedar scent sharpening with emotion.
"I want to sink my teeth into your bonding gland and leave a scar that tells everyone who sees it that you're ours.
Mine. I want every alpha who ever looks at you to know they can't have you.
I want every omega who ever sees you to know you're claimed. Completely. Permanently."
The possessiveness in his voice should have terrified me. Should have sent me running, reminded me of every warning my mother ever gave about bonds — how powerful they were, how permanent, how breaking one could destroy you.
It didn't.
Yes, my omega purred, something primal stirring in my chest. His. Theirs. Ours.
"I want you in our nest every night." Jae-won was still talking, the dam broken now, words pouring out, his hands unclenching to reach toward me before he stopped himself, his jaw tight with restraint.
"I want to wake up surrounded by your scent.
I want to watch you write songs and know that some of them are about us.
I want to protect you from everyone who ever hurt you and everyone who ever might. "
He took a shuddering breath, his eyes closing for a moment before opening again, the alpha-gold fading back to near-black.
"I want everything." Jae-won said quietly, his voice rough with emotion, his expression vulnerable in a way I'd never seen from him before. "And I've spent the last week terrified of wanting it too much. Of scaring you away. Of asking you to risk something that destroyed your mother."
The mention of my mother hit something in my chest. The fear I'd been carrying, the warnings echoing in my head — he knew. He'd been carrying it too.
"She told me bonds were dangerous." I said, my voice barely above a whisper, my eyes fixed on his face. "Not because the alphas were bad. Because the bonds themselves were too powerful. Too permanent."
Jae-won was quiet, letting me continue.
"She loved the alpha fate chose for her." I said, the old story heavy on my tongue. "But she loved my father more. So she broke the bond. Severed it to choose him instead." I swallowed hard, tears pricking at my eyes. "And it killed her. Slowly. Over twelve years."
"I know." Jae-won said softly, his hand finally crossing the space between us to rest on my knee, warm through the fabric, his touch gentle despite the strength in his fingers. "That's why I've been so careful. Why we've all been so careful. We know what you're risking by choosing us."
"But this is different." I said, testing the words, needing to hear them out loud. "Isn't it? She broke her bond. I would be... completing mine."
"Yes." Jae-won's thumb traced gentle patterns on my leg, his voice soft but certain. "A completed bond isn't a broken one. It's not something that will slowly tear you apart. It's something that makes you stronger. More whole."
"And if I ever wanted to leave?" The question came out small, the deepest fear I hadn't been able to voice until now.
"Then we would let you go." Jae-won's voice was rough with pain at even the thought, but steady with conviction. "It would hurt. It would hurt more than anything. But we would never trap you, Keira. We would never make you choose between staying and dying."
"You'd just... let me leave?" I asked, searching his face for any sign of deception.
"We'd beg you to stay." Jae-won admitted, a sad smile tugging at his lips, his dark eyes soft with honesty.
"We'd fight for you. We'd do everything in our power to make you happy enough that you'd never want to go.
But if you truly wanted to leave? Yes. We'd let you.
A completed bond doesn't have to be broken to be.
.. set aside. It's not the same as what your mother went through.
It would hurt, but it wouldn't kill you. "
I stared at him — this alpha who commanded rooms just by entering them, who carried the weight of a pack on his broad shoulders, who had spent an entire week putting my needs above his own wants. Who was looking at me now like I held his entire future in my hands.
Because I did. I held all of theirs.
"I'm scared." I admitted, the confession feeling different now than it had all the other times I'd said it, more settled somehow.
"I know. I'm scared too." Jae-won squeezed my hand, his grip firm but gentle, his expression softening.
"You? The pack alpha? Scared?" The surprise in my voice was genuine, my eyes widening.
"Terrified." Jae-won admitted, something vulnerable flickering in his dark eyes, a self-deprecating smile tugging at his lips.
"Of hurting you. Of not being enough. Of failing you or the pack.
Of wanting too much and pushing you away.
The alpha instincts don't come with an instruction manual, Keira.
They just come with a lot of pressure to get everything right. "
The honesty in his voice cracked something open in my chest. I'd been so focused on my own fears that I hadn't considered his. Hadn't thought about what it must be like to be the one everyone looked to for guidance, for decisions, for strength.
"Can you hold me?" The request slipped out before I could overthink it, soft and small in the quiet room.
Jae-won didn't hesitate. He shifted, opening his arms, and I crawled into them like I belonged there.
His chest was warm against my cheek, his heart beating steady under my ear, his cedar-and-thunder scent surrounding me completely.
"I think I want Option B too. The marks. All of it." I said into his chest, the words muffled by his shirt, my fingers curling into the fabric.
"You don't have to decide yet." Jae-won said, his arms tightening around me, a shudder running through his frame, his breath catching audibly.
"I know." I tilted my head up to look at him, finding his dark eyes already on me, soft with something that looked like hope and fear tangled together. "But I think I have. I just... I wanted you to know. That I'm choosing this. Choosing you. All of you."
"Keira..." My name came out rough, reverent, his hand coming up to cup my face, his thumb brushing along my cheekbone with trembling gentleness.
"Don't say anything yet." I pressed my face back into his chest, suddenly overwhelmed, my heart racing. "Just... just hold me. For tonight. We can figure out the rest tomorrow."
"Okay. Whatever you need." Jae-won's voice was thick with emotion, his arms wrapping more securely around me, his chin coming to rest on top of my head.
We lay back on his bed together, my head on his chest, his arms around me.
His room wasn't the nest — didn't have the layered scents of all five alphas woven together — but it had him.
His scent, his warmth, his steady heartbeat. And right now, that was enough.
The bond pulsed between us, warm and steady, finally settling into something that felt like certainty.
"Thank you. For telling me what you want. For being honest." I murmured against his chest, my eyes growing heavy despite everything, exhaustion finally catching up with me.
"Thank you for asking. For trusting me enough to ask." Jae-won pressed a kiss to the top of my head, his lips warm against my hair, his voice soft in the darkness.
My omega purred quietly in my chest, content in a way that felt new and familiar all at once.
Choosing, my omega whispered as sleep pulled me under. Finally choosing. Ours.
I fell asleep in Jae-won's arms, my decision final as I let myself finally believe it was going to be okay.