Chapter Fifteen #3
The rest of the visit passes in a warm blur that loosens something wound tight inside me.
Hyunwoo’s grandmother insists on feeding me personally, waving off the servants and ladling a second helping of samgyetang into my bowl with her own hands while lecturing Hyunwoo about the importance of ginseng root for fetal brain development.
His mother sits beside me on the sofa and asks detailed questions about my sleep patterns, my cravings, whether the baby’s movements have been consistent, and when I mention offhandedly that my lower back has been killing me she immediately dispatches a servant to fetch a specific herbal heating pad from the family’s private supply that she swears saved her sanity during her own pregnancy.
By the time we’re preparing to leave, Hyunwoo’s arms are piled so high with boxes and bags that I can barely see his face over the top of them.
His grandmother personally supervised the assembly of what can only be described as a prenatal care package of staggering proportions: bottles of high-grade prenatal supplements with labels in both Korean and Chinese, glass jars of dark herbal tonics that smell like the earth after rain, traditional ssanghwa-tang packets tied with ribbon, tubs of premium belly butter imported from somewhere in Europe, organic raspberry leaf tea that his mother insists will make labor easier, and an entire case of high-end colostrum supplements that his grandmother apparently had shipped from New Zealand specifically for this occasion.
“You will make sure he takes the tonics twice a day, morning and evening, on a full stomach,” his grandmother instructs Hyunwoo, jabbing her cane toward the relevant box in his arms. “And the raspberry leaf tea starting at thirty-six weeks, not before. And the belly butter every night after bathing. Are you writing this down?”
“My hands are a little full, Grandmother,” Hyunwoo says from behind the tower of supplies.
She narrows her eyes at him. “Then remember it. If I find out you’ve let any of this go to waste I will come to that apartment myself and administer it personally, and you will not enjoy the experience.”
His mother grips both of my hands at the door and makes me promise, her eyes fierce with maternal intensity, that I will call the family the moment I feel the first contraction.
Not after I get to the hospital, not after I’ve been admitted, the moment it starts.
She wants to be there. His father claps me on the shoulder and tells me I’m doing well, that I look strong and healthy, and that anything I need, anything at all, I should consider the full resources of the Seo family at my disposal.
The sincerity of it makes my eyes sting.
Hyunwoo hands the armload of supplies off to one of the household servants with instructions to carry everything ahead to the car, and then falls into step beside me as I waddle through the familiar halls toward the front entrance.
My pace is slow these days, my gait wide and rolling, my hand braced against the small of my back where the ache never fully lets up, but Hyunwoo matches it without comment, shortening his long stride to stay at my side.
He glances over at me and I realize I’m smiling.
A slightly goofy grin that I can feel stretching my cheeks.
The knot that’s been sitting in my stomach for days, the tension from our fight and the dread of this visit, has dissolved almost entirely, replaced by a warmth that spreads through my chest.
“Feel better?” Hyunwoo asks, his tone careful but curious, testing the waters between us.
“Yeah,” I say, and I mean it. “I like your grandmother.”
Hyunwoo snorts, loud and incredulous. “Of course you do. She’s obsessed with alphas properly spoiling their omegas. You two are a natural match.”
“She’s right, though,” I say, grinning sideways at him. “You should spoil me more.”
“I literally furnished an entire bedroom for you, hired you a personal chef, and have been hand-feeding you prenatal vitamins every morning for seven months.”
“More,” I say, and Hyunwoo shakes his head but the corner of his mouth is twitching.
I’m still laughing about the way his grandmother seized his ear, the way Hyunwoo’s entire body had folded sideways like a collapsing lawn chair, his face scrunched in genuine pain while this tiny eighty-year-old woman twisted with the grip strength of someone half her age.
“She really got you,” I say, snickering.
“I thought she was going to rip it clean off.”
“She’s deceptively strong,” Hyunwoo mutters, rubbing his ear, which is still faintly pink. “I’m convinced she does hand exercises specifically to maintain her ear-grabbing capability. It’s a targeted skill she’s—”
We come around the corner into the east corridor and every word dies in my throat.
My mother stands fifteen feet away in the hallway.
She’s wearing the same navy household uniform she’s worn for as long as I can remember, the fabric neat and pressed, her hair pulled back in the same low bun she’s always kept it in for work.
There’s a stack of folded white linens in her arms, freshly laundered, and she’s clearly in the middle of her rounds because she’s walking with a brisk, purposeful stride.
She stops dead when she sees us.
Her eyes find my face first, and I watch recognition register, the brief flash of surprise and pleasure that always crosses her features when she sees me unexpectedly. Then her gaze moves to Hyunwoo beside me. Then, with the horrible inevitability of gravity, it drops to my belly.
The stack of linens slides from her arms and hits the hardwood floor with a soft, muffled thump, white fabric fanning out across the polished wood.
“Yugyeom?” Her voice is high and thin, cracking on the second syllable. “What—”
My throat closes completely. I can’t speak, can’t swallow, can’t do anything but stand there with my hands frozen at my sides and my heart slamming against my ribs while my mother stares at the unmistakable evidence of my pregnancy with an expression that cycles through confusion, disbelief, and then a dawning horror that makes my stomach drop through the floor.
Hyunwoo steps slightly in front of me, not blocking me from view but positioning himself between us instinctively, protective.
He clears his throat and says with a composure that sounds almost rehearsed, “Mrs. Sung, I think we should step into a private room. There’s obviously no avoiding this conversation anymore. ”
The next few minutes are a blur of movement and muffled voices.
Hyunwoo guides us into a smaller sitting room off the east corridor, a room I remember from childhood as the one where the family took their morning tea, intimate and quiet with upholstered chairs and a low table.
Someone finds my father, who appears in the doorway moments later still wearing his work vest, his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead, his face already tight with concern because he can read the atmosphere before anyone says a word.
I sit on the sofa with my hands trembling in my lap, my fingers laced over my belly, unable to look up.
My parents sit across from us, my mother perched on the very edge of her chair like she might bolt at any moment, her face pale, her eyes red-rimmed and glassy.
My father sits beside her with his hand on her knee, his expression carefully neutral the way that betas learn to maintain when emotions run high around them, but I can see the tension in his jaw and the way his thumb presses hard into my mother’s kneecap.
“How did this happen?” my mother asks, her voice pitched high and unsteady, wavering on every word. “Why weren’t we told?”
I stare at my own hands and mumble, “You weren’t supposed to find out. Not like this. Not yet.”
She does not take this well. My mother makes a sound like she’s been struck and says, her voice cracking wide open, “Why should we not know that our only son is pregnant? How could you keep something like this from us, Yugyeom?”
I try to explain. I stumble through it, halting and disjointed, the words coming out in the wrong order.
The agreement between me and Hyunwoo. The inheritance, the money, the practical reasons that made it seem like a reasonable thing to do at the time.
The explanation sounds worse out loud than it ever did in my head, each detail landing on my parents’ faces like a slap, and by the time I trail off into silence my mother’s hands are pressed flat over her mouth and my father’s neutral expression has turned stricken.
My mother’s eyes dart to Hyunwoo, sitting beside me with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped, and she puts her face in both hands.
“And with the young master,” she says, her voice muffled and anguished behind her palms. “Oh, Yugyeom. How are we supposed to show our faces to the Seo family after this?”
“The Seos have known for months,” I say quietly. “They’re supportive. They want this.”
My mother makes a wounded, keening sound that makes me flinch.
She lifts her head and stares at me with wet, devastated eyes.
“What were you thinking? Did you consider for one second how this reflects on you? On us? After everything your father and I did to raise you properly, to give you a chance at a respectable life?” Her voice climbs higher, thinner.
“An unclaimed omega, pregnant by the son of the family we serve. You’ve damaged your prospects forever, Yugyeom.
You’ve tied yourself to an alpha with no official recognition, no formal bond, no legal standing.
Who is going to take responsibility for you? Who is going to—”
“I have claimed Yugyeom.”
Hyunwoo’s voice cuts through my mother’s spiraling instantly. Calm, steady, certain, with no hesitation and no room for doubt.
I whip around to stare at him. Both my parents do the same, all three of us equally stunned, the room going silent so fast I can hear the ticking of the clock on the mantle.