Chapter Twelve #2
There, right over my bond gland, the exact spot every omega knows from the time they learn about their biology, is an angry red wound.
Open, raw, unmistakable in its shape. The impression of teeth, upper and lower jaw, the puncture marks deep enough that dried blood has crusted in dark lines down toward my collarbone.
The edges of the wound are still red and irritated where teeth broke through skin and reached the gland beneath, the tissue around it swollen and hot to the touch when I press my fingers against it and immediately hiss at the sting.
A bite mark. The meaning is undeniable.
Sometime last night, when I was too drunk on pheromones to notice or resist, Hyunwoo bit me. Hyunwoo bonded me.
I let out a loud, vicious stream of curses that would make a sailor wince and spin from the mirror, my chest heaving, my hands balled into fists at my sides.
Hyunwoo is sitting up in bed now, the sheets pooled around his waist, his hands raised in front of him in a placating gesture, his mouth already open and forming words I can’t hear over the roaring in my ears.
“Calm down—” is what I catch.
“Calm down?” I snarl, my voice cracking. “How the fuck am I supposed to calm down? You bit me! We’re bonded now, permanently, you fucking maniac!”
Hyunwoo winces visibly, his shoulders drawing up, and says, “It’s not like I did it on purpose. Honestly, I don’t even remember doing it. The rut took over completely, I lost hours in there.”
“Is that supposed to make it better?” I yell, I can hear the edge of hysteria creeping into my voice but I can’t stop it. “That you were so out of control you claimed someone without even being conscious of it?”
Hyunwoo looks down at the sheets, his jaw working, his hands dropping to his lap. For perhaps the first time in our entire friendship, he looks genuinely cowed. The smugness is gone, the easy confidence gone, what’s left is a man who knows he fucked up and doesn’t have a quip ready to deflect with.
“No,” he says quietly.
I groan and drag both hands through my tangled, matted hair, pacing the bedroom naked, cum drying on my thighs, my pregnant belly leading the way as I stalk back and forth across the hardwood floor.
My reflection catches in the mirror each time I pass it, the bite mark glaring at me from my neck like a brand.
“Fuck,” I say, more to myself than to him. “What the hell. This changes everything.”
“It was an accident,” Hyunwoo says again. I can hear him trying to keep his voice level, trying to sound reasonable, but there’s a tightness underneath it that tells me he’s rattled too. “I couldn’t help it when I’m in rut like that. My instincts overrode everything.”
I stop pacing and point a finger at him, my hand shaking with anger. “You’re dead. Truly, genuinely dead. I’m going to castrate you with my bare hands. Who the hell do you think you are, putting some kind of crazy alpha brand of ownership on me without my permission?”
Hyunwoo frowns, and I watch his mood shift in real time. The guilt in his expression doesn’t disappear, but defensiveness slides in alongside it, his chin lifting a fraction. “Is it really such a big deal?”
I gape at him. My mouth actually falls open and I stand there, naked and furious and dripping, staring at him like he’s grown a second head.
“You cannot be serious,” I say, my voice dropping low and dangerous. “You know what a bond means. It’s for life. Permanent. Irreversible. It means we’re tied to each other sexually and biologically until one of us dies.”
Hyunwoo shrugs, his bare shoulders rising and falling like I’ve just told him it might rain later.
“So what? We’re already having sex regularly, and have been for months.
So now the bond means we need it more intensely.
” He tilts his head, those sharp brown eyes finding mine with an infuriating steadiness.
“What’s the difference? Besides, it doesn’t seem like you mind the sex much anymore. It even seems like you enjoy it.”
I stare at him. I sputter, heat flooding my face and neck and chest until I’m burning from my hairline to my navel.
“I do not—do you need reminding that I like women?” The words come out strangled, too loud for the quiet room. “How the hell am I supposed to manage that now, bonded to a man?”
Hyunwoo rolls his eyes. Like actually rolls his eyes at me, leaning back against the headboard with his arms folded across his scratched-up chest, and says with the casual cruelty of someone who knows exactly where to aim, “Oh come on, Yuggie. You’re full of it.
You can’t even come from the front anymore, can you? ”
I flinch. The words stick me like an arrow to the back, sharp and hot, because he’s right and we both know it and he’s an absolute tool for saying it out loud.
My cock hasn’t been the main event in months.
Every orgasm I’ve had since my heat has come from my ass, from my womb, from Hyunwoo’s cock or his fingers or his knot pressing against places inside me that didn’t exist in my consciousness before he put them there.
I sputter, going crimson from my chest to my hairline, the flush so intense I can feel the heat radiating off my own skin.
“I can too,” I say, and even I can hear how weak it sounds, how hollow. “And fuck you for saying that.”
I turn on my heel, stomping toward the bathroom with as much dignity as a naked, cum-leaking, visibly pregnant man can muster, and snarl over my shoulder without looking back, “Don’t fucking come near me.”
I slam the door so hard the frame rattles and something falls off the shelf on the other side of the wall with a distant crash.
I stew for the rest of the day.
The shower runs so hot the mirror fogs over completely and the bathroom fills with thick steam that makes it hard to breathe, and I stand under the spray for what has to be forty minutes, scrubbing at my skin until I’m pink and raw.
I work the lather into every inch of myself, digging my nails into the places where I can still feel the ghost of Hyunwoo’s hands, his mouth, his teeth.
I scrub my neck, my chest, between my thighs, behind my ears where his scent has soaked into my skin so deeply it feels like it’s become part of me.
The water runs soapy and then clear and I keep scrubbing anyway, like I can wash away the last twelve hours if I just try hard enough.
I can’t, obviously. The bite is still there when I step out and wipe the condensation from the mirror with my forearm.
Angry and red and undeniable, sitting right over my bond gland like a flag planted in conquered territory.
I dig through the cabinet under the sink until I find the first aid kit Hyunwoo keeps stocked, pulling out antiseptic spray and a packet of sterile gauze pads.
The disinfectant stings like hell when I spray it directly onto the wound, a sharp chemical burn that makes me hiss through my teeth and grip the edge of the counter, my knuckles going white.
I press a gauze pad over it and tape it down with medical tape, smoothing the edges flat against my skin.
It doesn’t help. I can still feel the bite beneath the bandage, pulsing with a low, insistent warmth.
It spreads outward from the wound site through my shoulder, down my arm, across my chest, settling into a hum that sits just below the threshold of conscious thought but never quite disappears. Like a second heartbeat.
I pull on clean clothes, soft shorts and an oversized t-shirt that hangs loose over my belly, and pad out of the bathroom with my jaw set and my eyes still burning.
What I’m not prepared for is what happens when I step into the hallway and Hyunwoo is standing at the other end of it, coming out of the kitchen with two glasses of water in his hands.
Our eyes meet across the length of the hall and my body lights up.
Heat floods my face and neck and chest, arousal slamming into me so fast and so hard that I stumble, catching myself against the wall with one hand.
My hole clenches and a rush of slick soaks through my fresh underwear in an instant, warm and copious, and my cock stiffens against my thigh despite being sore.
My pulse hammers in my throat, in my wrists, between my legs, and the bite on my neck throbs with it, a deep answering pulse that sends sparks cascading down my spine.
Hyunwoo’s nostrils flare. I watch his pupils dilate from across the hallway, his grip tightening on the glasses, and I know he can smell it. He can smell me reacting to him, all of it broadcasting through my pheromones like a neon sign.
I tear my gaze away and force myself to walk past him toward the kitchen, keeping my eyes fixed on the floor, my teeth clenched so hard my jaw aches.
Every step that takes me further from him makes my chest tighten, a pulling sensation behind my ribs like a rubber band being stretched to its limit.
The bond screaming at me to go back, to close the distance, to press myself against him and breathe him in.
I ignore it. I sit down at the kitchen table where the delivery food Hyunwoo ordered has been laid out in containers, and I start eating.
Hyunwoo joins me a minute later, setting one of the glasses of water in front of me before taking the seat across the table.
The silence between us is thick and charged, neither of us speaking, the only sounds the clink of chopsticks against containers and the soft panting of the dogs lying at my feet.
Kal has his chin resting on my bare foot, his ears flat against his skull, and Machete is pressed against my calf with her body tense, both of them radiating anxious energy.
Dogs always know. They’ve been unsettled since the rut started and the tension in the apartment hasn’t done anything to calm them down.