Chapter Seventeen #2
I wince, pressing a hand to my other breast where it’s full and aching, the pressure uncomfortable. “I should pump first so the night nurse has enough to feed her through the night. If we’re going to be—occupied.”
Hyunwoo nods, already standing carefully with Wonyoung drowsing against his shoulder.
He rubs his nose against hers, making her scrunch her tiny features, and murmurs something soft and ridiculous to her that I pretend doesn’t make my stomach flip.
Then he heads for the nursery. Machete and Kal are on their feet instantly, falling into step on either side of him like a military escort, their tails swishing low, their eyes fixed on the bundle against his chest.
Those two are the reason we don’t worry much about leaving Wonyoung alone in her crib during the night.
Both dogs sleep on the floor directly beneath it, stationed like sentinels from the moment she’s laid down until the moment she’s picked up.
Their keen eyes track her breathing, their ears swivel at every tiny sound she makes, and if even the slightest thing seems off—a cough, a whimper, a shift in her breathing pattern—one or both of them will be at our bedroom door within seconds, barking and scratching until we’re up.
It was Machete who alerted us I was in labor in the first place.
She started scratching at the bedroom door and whining in the middle of the night, pacing back and forth in the hallway with increasing urgency, barking in sharp bursts that dragged both of us out of sleep a full twenty minutes before the first contraction hit.
She sensed it coming before my own body gave me any warning, and because of her we had time to call the doctor, grab the hospital bag Hyunwoo had packed three weeks in advance, and get to the hospital without panic.
Hyunwoo bought her a premium cut of steak the next day as a thank-you. She earned every bite.
I smile to myself in the quiet bedroom and reach for the breast pump on the nightstand.
While I set it up, I rest my free hand on my belly.
It’s flatter now, though not as flat as it was before, a softness remaining where taut muscle used to be, the stretch marks fading from angry purple to silvery pink lines that branch across my lower abdomen.
I think about another baby growing in there.
Another pregnancy, another round of morning sickness and swollen breasts and Hyunwoo’s obsessive temperature checks and his creative excuses for knotting me at all hours.
Maybe it’s the omega instincts talking, the ones that are fully expressed now and humming with a contentment they never had before Hyunwoo woke them up.
But it really did seem to suit me. All of it.
The pregnancy, the domesticity, the partnership.
Being Hyunwoo’s omega. Being Wonyoung’s father.
Having a home and a family and a place where I belong, instead of a leaky studio apartment and a negative bank balance and a life that felt like it was always one bad decision away from falling apart.
I finish pumping, label the bottles for the night nurse, store them in the mini fridge Hyunwoo installed in our bedroom specifically for this purpose and clean up.
When Hyunwoo comes back maybe thirty minutes later—Wonyoung successfully down, the dogs stationed at their posts, the night nurse briefed and settled in the nursery’s adjacent room—I’m already stepping out of my sweatpants, pushing them down my hips and kicking them off my ankles.
He stops in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed over his bare chest, and watches me.
That look on his face. The heavy-lidded one with the sharp gleam underneath, the one I used to dread back when this all started and now makes my pulse kick up and my hole clench with anticipation.
I pause in just my boxers and raise an eyebrow at him. “What? What’s that look?”
He shakes his head slowly. His eyes are soft behind his glasses, his mouth curved in a smile that isn’t a smirk for once, and his voice is quiet when he says, “Nothing, just. I love you, you know?”
I stop. Blink. Feel the flush climb from my chest all the way to my hairline, hot and fast. “Shut up. You’re just trying to make me soft so it’s easier to knot me.”
He laughs and pushes off the doorframe. “Well, that too.” He crosses the space between us and leans forward, his hands bracing on the mattress on either side of my hips, his face close enough that I can see the darker swirls in his brown eyes and the faint scar on his jaw from where he wiped out on his bike when we were twelve and I had to half-carry him home. His voice drops. “But I mean it.”
I look up at him. At this man who has been my whole world since before I could form memories, who drove me absolutely insane and dragged me into the most absurd situation of my entire life and changed everything about who I thought I was and gave me a daughter and a home and a bond.
I feel it swell behind my ribs, too big for my chest, too much for any words I know how to say.
So I just say, “You too.”
His smile goes soft for exactly one more second.
Then the gleam comes back and he winks. “Good. Now let’s stop being wholesome, because it’s been six weeks since I’ve been inside you and I’m going to literally explode if I have to wait a single second longer.
I’ve been patient, Yuggie. I’ve been so goddamn patient.
But my patience has a limit and we reached it approximately four weeks ago. ”
I roll my eyes. There he is. There’s the Hyunwoo I know. But I’m smiling as I lie back on the bed, and I don’t resist when he hooks his fingers into the waistband of my boxers and pulls them down and off.
He kneels between my legs, running his hands up my thighs.
His touch is different than I expect. Slower.
His palms smooth over my skin like he’s relearning the shape of me, taking in the body that’s changed and softened and carried our child.
His thumbs trace the silvery stretch marks on my hips, lingering there, and then his hands slide up over the gentle curve of my belly to my breasts, his fingers brushing carefully over the sensitive nipples that are still damp from nursing.
I shiver at the contact, my body responding the way it always does now.
Slick building between my cheeks, my hole warming and loosening, the bond humming with a want that resonates through both of us.
His fingers find their way between my thighs, slipping through the slick that’s already gathered there, circling my hole before pressing inside.
Two fingers first, then a third, stretching me slowly.
My body is a little tighter than it was before the birth, the muscles having healed and contracted, but it opens up for him willingly, muscle memory and physiology working together to welcome him in the way they’ve been trained to over the past year.
I breathe through it. The stretch, the fullness, the sparking pleasure as his fingers crook against my prostate.
And I think that this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Not the broke, struggling omega drowning in student debt and pretending he didn’t need anyone.
Not the stubborn idiot who thought he could rent out his womb to his best friend and walk away unchanged, like bodies and hearts don’t get tangled up when you let someone that close.
But here. In this bed, in this home, with this man’s mark on my neck and our daughter sleeping down the hall guarded by two personal guard dogs who love her almost as much as we do.
Hyunwoo lines up and presses in, and I gasp.
Six weeks of abstinence makes the stretch feel brand new, my healed body gripping his cock like it’s the first time all over again, that familiar fullness spreading through me as he sinks deeper.
He groans, his forehead dropping to my shoulder, his breath hot against my skin. “Fuck. I missed this. Missed you.”
I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him deeper, and it feels like everything clicking into place. Like the last piece of something that’s been assembling itself for twenty years finally slotting home.
Maybe that’s how it was always going to end up. The meathead alpha and his stubborn omega, a lifetime of friendship and one ridiculous arrangement later, finally figuring out what everyone else apparently saw from the beginning.
I tip my head back as Hyunwoo starts to move, slow and deep, his mouth finding my bond mark and pressing there, and I think—yeah. This is it.
This is home.