Archive of Our Own ^omega

Here I've been living unloosened from sin

Upward and Outward

"Begin, begin."

The Lighthouse
Interpol

“You and I are not finished this evening, Minho.”

His mother’s voice is tinny and thin, like a knife drawn from its sheath. Minho rolls his eyes at his listless reflection in the tall mirror before him. His attendants are fluttering around, preparing to remove the excessively layered hanbok he’s eager to shed, but there’s no hope of evading this scolding. He’d been toying with his mother’s nerves the whole week of Prince Sujin’s visit, it was inevitable she’d reach her breaking point eventually.

Releasing a prolonged sigh, he turns to find her arms crossed tightly over layers of elegant silk, a bulging vein weaving across her temple and underlining her fury.

“Haven’t we a long journey tomorrow?” Minho asks dully.

Chambermaids bustle about with evening preparations, stoking the fire and readying the room for bed while Minho’s two attendants work in sync. The smaller steps behind him, luminous blond hair slipping behind his shoulders as nimble fingers lift the pendant from Minho’s neck, while the other moves to his side, his steady grip loosening the ties at Minho’s waist.

A lock of raven hair falls into the man’s eyes, and Minho’s gaze lingers for a heartbeat longer than it should before shifting back to his mother.

“What more can there be to say?” Minho adds, a touch of distraction in his voice. “I had intended to do some light reading before bed.”

“You’re quite lucky this journey hasn’t been called off after your persistently petulant and disagreeable behavior; any other host would have rescinded our invitation.”

The attendants unfasten and remove Minho’s blue overcoat, and he slips away to take a seat, grabbing a tattered brown book before propping his feet upon his elaborately carved desk.

“Personally, I’m not convinced the crown prince even possesses the necessary faculties to comprehend my displeasure; you fret over nothing,” he counters, waving a hand at her and opening the book, tiring of this conversation already.

“You must take this matter seriously,” she snaps, plucking the book from Minho’s hands. “An alliance with the Seok family would afford our pack far greater protection than we could ever ensure on our own. Prince Sujin was perfectly amiable, and as I have told you time and again, we are not in a position to insist upon a love match.”

After so many years of failed courtships with highborn alphas from every neighboring pack, the king and queen had lost their patience. With escalating tension in the region, Minho’s match with Prince Sujin was no longer a suggestion but a certainty—one which he had no say in.

“I fail to see why I must bear that burden,” Minho says, head falling dramatically over the backrest of his chair. “I am not the one who began this ridiculous dispute with the Eastern packs, yet my entire future has become nothing more than a token for barter.” He throws his hands up into the now-quiet air, the rustling and shuffling having ceased as the household staff attempt to make themselves invisible against the walls. “I have agreed to it, have I not?” he challenges. “I have submitted to this abhorrent arrangement with an imbecile to whom I can never hope to endear myself. So what more can there be to discuss? You cannot possibly expect me to accept such a fate with a smile.”

“If not with a smile,” she thrusts the book roughly against his chest, “then with lips firmly sealed.”

Minho bites the tip of his tongue, staring up with resentment into her unwavering gaze.

“We leave tomorrow for the north,” she continues, “and it will not be merely the prince and his handlers with their eyes upon you. His family—the members of their royal court—will observe and influence whether they ought to proceed with the betrothal. You must dispense with these antics and conduct yourself with proper decorum. If not for the love of your kingdom or your family, then perhaps for the love of your undeserved luxury.” She gestures with condescension at the lavish room, the meek staff with eyes lowered to the stone floor. “You’ll have no such comforts should our lands fall to the Eastern packs.”

“Such comforts,” Minho snorts, rising to face her. “Such comforts I am not even permitted on this journey. My own attendants are to be left behind. How, then, can you expect to dangle them in front of me like carrots, as though I am some cart horse ushering forward your schemes?”

“You’ll have the comfort of the prince’s staff. It is only sensible that you familiarize yourself with them. It shall be no different than what you have here. In fact, if I understand their position properly, it is likely better. I have no need for dangling carrots, Minho. I do not seek to motivate you; I seek to impress upon you the dire truth of our situation. You shall not remain a prince if you do not proceed with caution.”

“A dream come true for you, I should think.”

A sharp slap cracks through the air as his mother’s hand strikes his cheek, staining it a violent crimson. She recoils as hastily as she’d advanced, her cheeks burning with a fury Minho has seen many times before.

His expression, however, remains blank as he traces his fingertips over the warmth blossoming on his skin.

“That is enough,” she breathes, collecting herself, massaging her raw palm with a thumb. “You will fill your role, and you will do so properly. Or I shall ensure you find yourself in a new role, one befitting your unworthy behavior.”

With that, she turns, silks billowing in her wake, leaving Minho clutching his sore cheek in the center of his room.

The staff begins to shuffle once more, exchanging nervous glances as Minho closes his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose. “Out. Now,” he says with forced calm. “Please.”

They file out quietly, eyes cast downward, but Minho’s eyes spring open, searching their retreating backs. “I will need assistance readying for bed, though,” he calls, and his attendants halt in the entryway.

The lighter-haired one, his fair skin dappled with freckles, looks up at the other: taller, broad-shouldered, with a honeyed complexion framing eyes that do not meet his. Instead, they’re fixed on Minho.

“I assume you mean…” the freckled attendant begins.

“Yes, Felix, you may go,” Minho answers, turning to examine the red splotch coloring his cheek in the mirror.

Felix grins up at the other man as he leaves, eyebrows lifting before shutting the doors behind him.

“You’d think she might be more careful with the merchandise,” Minho huffs as the attendant arrives at his side, skillful fingers working to undo his vest. “We should leave this place.”

The attendant's hands freeze for just a moment, but he presses on, helping Minho from his vest. “You mustn’t say such things, Your Highness,” he cautions, voice low and scolding.

“I could live a normal life, Chan. I would be happy to.”

“I would not permit it,” Chan replies simply, though he sighs with the weariness of a man playing out a conversation he’s had countless times before. He loosens the ties of Minho’s jeogori, the final layered jacket, then eases it from Minho’s shoulders.

Minho’s eyes narrow as he watches Chan in the mirror. “You will not permit it? And what right have you to permit or deny a prince anything, might I ask?”

Chan circles to face Minho, pinning him with a resolute stare as he deftly untangles the knotted sash holding up his trousers. “Falling back on nobility so quickly, are we, Your Highness?” he asks, pulling the sash free with a swift tug that brings Minho rocking toward him. Chan secures his hip, steadying him, and Minho’s breath catches in his throat.

With a barely concealed smirk, Chan drops gracefully to his knees, sliding the loose silk of Minho’s pants down from his waist.

“You think me spoiled,” Minho frowns, eyes fixed on Chan’s gentle fingers lifting his feet one by one to slip off his trousers until he stands only in long white undergarments.

“I think you deserving of spoils,” Chan answers, looking up at Minho with modest admiration. He leans forward then, sliding calloused hands beneath Minho’s undershirt to grasp the bare skin of his hips. Circling his thumbs to soothe the rising goosebumps, he kisses over the thin cotton separating his lips from Minho’s stomach. “I always have.”

When first they’d met, Chan had just begun working at the palace as a stablehand. Minho had snuck off from his studies to visit the horses, only to be discovered by the unfamiliar boy in muddy clothes and worn-down boots two sizes too large.

Arriving shovel in hand, Chan jolted back just as suddenly as Minho upon finding the young prince hand-feeding an apple to an easygoing mare. Still, he appeared a few years Minho’s senior, and so—despite Chan’s puzzled expression—Minho’s first instinct was to regard him as a threat.

“You mustn’t tell the Queen,” Minho had pleaded, eyes wide and fearful. He was just shy of thirteen, and nearly past the age when such theatrics could curry favor.

“You mean your mother?” Chan asked, balancing an elbow on the end of his shovel and watching Minho with a look of curiosity.

“That’s Her Majesty to you,” Minho said, eyes sharpening. “And if you tell on me, I shall tell on you for failing to refer to her as such.”

Chan’s laugh had come from deep within his belly. Minho could feel it in his knees.

Shaking his head, Chan took hold of his shovel again. “A knack for politics already, I see,” he chuckled, returning to his work. “I’ve no interest in offending a future king, do as you wish.”

“I may not be a king,” Minho said, digging his thumbnail into the apple he was still holding as his expression turned hesitant. “The Queen says she prayed that I should be a queen, as she is. An omega, to spite The King for his wickedness.”

Minho held the apple back up to the horse, sticky juice dripping down his thumb as he ran his fingers nervously through its mane. He shot a sidelong glance at Chan, looking at last like the child he was.

“There’s nothing wrong with being an Omega,” Chan said, slowing again as he eyed Minho.

“The King says—”

“I care not what the King says,” Chan interrupted, examining Minho’s shocked expression more closely, uncovering the fear hiding behind his dark eyes—the innocence and the loneliness. “Alphas and Omegas depend on each other equally, and as such, are equals. However you may present, you shall make a fine king or queen, so long as you abandon any absurd notions to the contrary.”

Minho dug the toe of his boot into the dirt, uncertain. “You’re not trying to trick me, are you? To make me look foolish?”

Chan paused, weighing his words before answering. “Perhaps I am the fool, to believe the world could be so just,” he mused, a wistful smile drifting across his face. “And as such, reciting my words may indeed paint you foolish in turn. It is not trickery, however. I stand by what I have said—I would never lie to you.”

The Queen never learned of Minho’s trip to the stable; Chan had kept his word. Nor did she ever discover that, for several years after, Minho continued to visit the stables as often as he could. Coincidentally, though, his interest in horses waned when Chan received a promotion.

At nineteen, with no presentation, Chan was determined to be a beta, making him well suited to take on servant duties within the home.

Minho was sixteen then. Freshly presented.

From that point on, the term prince would be but a formality—a remnant title determined by a child’s primary gender. Once Minho presented as an omega, his fate was sealed. He would be no king.

The vision of himself as a future queen looms over Minho’s thoughts. He purses his lips, carding his fingers through the waves of Chan’s hair at his waist, smoothing a tangle. “I cannot leave you behind,” he insists. “I will go mad—I am certain of it. I need you by my side.”

Chan’s slow exhale is warm against Minho’s stomach. “This is not our first separation, nor our longest, Your Highness” he says, rising from his feet and taking Minho’s cheek in his palm. “You will be back in two weeks time, and I shall be here waiting.”

“And what then?” Minho asks, batting Chan’s hand away from his face. “Two, maybe three months until I am to be shipped off for good? I cannot marry Prince Sujin.”

Chan nestles his head into the crook of Minho’s neck, gathering the prince into his strong arms. “Please,” he whispers. “Let us not waste the time given. We could circle this matter forever only to arrive at the very same conclusion we have each time.”

“You have. Not we—you.”

“Your Highness—”

“Stop that,” Minho says, hurt bleeding through his scowling lips as he tugs on the front of Chan’s jacket. “Do not call me that.”

Chan lifts his eyes to Minho’s, wetting his lips with his tongue. “Minho,” he says, solemn as a prayer, bringing both palms up to cradle Minho’s face. “My love for you is too great. I will not have you lowered to such a station on my account; I could not bear it.”

The lines of Minho’s brow wrinkle with dissatisfaction, but Chan leans in, silencing his objections before they can form. The delicate brush of his lips never fails to obscure Minho’s worry. It might infuriate him were it not so captivating, coating him like amber—preserving his momentary pleasure and rendering it into something eternal. Something that makes the idea of dwelling in reality, amid the tragedy of circumstance, seem trivial.

Instead, Chan’s kiss anchors him, warm and enveloping like sand filling an hourglass—a comforting pressure. A consoling weight that gradually builds as Chan’s curious tongue explores his depths. And always, before he knows it, he’s trapped beneath the surface.

Chan’s lips wander along Minho’s jaw, trailing kisses downward. He melds his body to Minho’s, pressing him against the wall and burying his nose into the curve of his neck. He inhales deeply, searching. “I hate when I cannot smell you,” he growls, rubbing his face where he knows Minho’s scent should be.

“I’ve been doubling up on my scent blockers,” Minho admits, now that Chan’s allowed him to come up for air. “I did not want to be too…”

“Alluring to the prince?” Chan finishes before dragging his tongue across the skin, lapping at the flesh in hopes of removing the layer of oil separating him from the sweetly spiced fragrance of ginger and cinnamon apple he knows should be there.

“It cannot be removed so easily, you should know that,” Minho laughs, prying Chan from his neck. “Now you know how it feels to be me. To never be able to catch even a whiff of one’s lover.”

With such a heavy layering of blockers needed to keep Chan’s secret hidden, Minho could only cling to the memory of Chan’s scent, long faded after so many years.

Minho had been infatuated with Chan from the moment they met, though he hadn’t recognized it as love until taking him as an attendant.

After Minho had presented, Felix was assigned as his sole attendant. A random, albeit fortunate, placement—Felix, with his wealth of palace gossip, had been loyal and warm-hearted, well-suited to guide Minho through the last of his adolescent years. But turning eighteen granted Minho the privilege of selecting a second attendant, one he could hand-pick himself.

He’d always known it would be Chan. Secretly, Minho had been pulling strings, ensuring Chan gained experience in every household position that would qualify him when the time came.

Until then, he’d convinced himself it was simply fascination. But once he had Chan so close, Minho began to accept that just as the scruffy stable boy had grown into a man of silent strength and poised presence, so too had his feelings transformed into something far more complex than mere admiration.

Still, he kept his errant feelings to himself. He could not take a servant as a mate, and certainly not a beta, so there was no use burdening Chan with the knowledge of his obsession. He wanted pups, he told himself—something only an alpha could give him.

It was the thin fiber that kept him in check. The strand of reason that would keep him plodding towards his inevitable fate, until Felix turned up at his bedside in the dead of night.

“Your Highness,” Felix shook his shoulders, and Minho had been ready to curse at him until the orange glow of the chamber fire illuminated the lines of panic around his eyes.

“You must come. I know the protocol—what should be done,” Felix faltered, eyes darting over Minho’s face. “But I do not think you would forgive me.”

Down the narrow, shadowed passageways reserved for the palace staff, Felix led Minho to the corridor that housed the servants’ quarters. They tiptoed past rows of closed wooden doors, Minho ducking into stony alcoves now and again, while Felix ensured the coast was clear. Finally, they reached the small, unassuming room that Felix and Chan shared.

A wall of smoke and pine washed over them as they entered, the scent so strong that Minho had been momentarily distracted by the thought of a nearby forest fire. There was an undercurrent to it, however—burnt sugar, or molasses perhaps. Minho placed a palm on Chan’s forehead, soaked with sweat and moonlight, and frowned.

“He’s so feverish—why have you not called for a doctor?” Minho asked, tucking wet tangles of black hair away from Chan’s dazed and lolling eyes.

“Do you—do you not see what is happening?” Felix replied, his face alight with fear despite the cloying darkness. “Your Highness, he is presenting.”

Minho’s eyes snapped back to Chan’s straining face. “But he is three-and-twenty years now; it is far too late for that,” Minho said flatly, his gaze drifting further down the bed to where Chan’s hips rolled desperately upward into empty air.

With Felix’s help, they managed to get Chan to Minho’s bedchamber. More than once, Minho had to cover Chan’s moaning lips with his palm to keep him quiet as they dragged him along, an arm slung around each of their necks.

With the encouragement of a plump sack of gold fished from beneath Minho’s floorboards, the palace doctor declared that Minho and his attendants had contracted an illness requiring quarantine for everyone’s safety. While all indications were that they would pull through, only the doctor—equipped in proper plague gear—could enter Minho’s room to deliver care and supplies.

Once the prying nobles could be trusted to keep their distance, the doctor returned with supplies: food, water, wood for the fire, and a case of sinister tools meant to “help” their situation. The sight of it all made Minho sick.

He wasn’t sure which was worse—the cage-like muzzle tied around Chan’s skull with crude leather straps, or the rusty manacles affixed to chains that the doctor secured to Minho’s bed. They were just long enough to allow for some freedom of movement, yet short enough to keep Chan from getting farther than the foot of the bed.

Minho had never witnessed an alpha in rut before, and he was not convinced any of this was necessary, but Felix refused to take the risk. There was every chance that Chan’s willpower would be strong enough to maintain control in such a state, but there was also every chance it would not be.

The final item the doctor left with them was a long, pliant tube of questionable material. It was flexible and soft, wider at one end, so as to accommodate a knot. It was intended to help Chan bring himself some small amount of relief.

It provided no such comfort.

At first, Minho tried waiting it out in the bathing chamber to give Chan privacy, but he seemed to suffer all the more with Minho out of sight. By mid-afternoon, Felix suggested offering himself to Chan—to do what he could to soothe him, even if he couldn’t take Chan’s knot—but Minho refused. Chan couldn’t fully consent, and Felix could be injured. Besides, Chan barely seemed to notice that Felix was in the room most of the time anyway; he had eyes only for Minho.

For two more nights and three days, Minho endured Chan’s pleas for him. His fevered admissions of longing, of having coveted Minho for years as his attendant. Confessions of forbidden love and unbridled lust, escalating into vivid descriptions of the pleasure he would bring Minho if only he’d come just a little bit closer.

And Minho wanted to—oh, how he wanted to.

But Chan had no relief that rut. Enamored as he was, Minho could not bring himself to alleviate Chan’s pain without proper consent—something impossible to obtain in Chan’s current state.

It was the right thing to do, the honorable thing—or so he told himself.

Never mind his own selfish desire to share a real first time with Chan—in private, with both of them in their right minds. He wanted assurance that Chan’s devotion was sincere. Only then could he be knotted without the fear that Chan’s words were merely fabrications, a ruse concocted by his rut-addled brain to sate his urges.

It would be Minho’s first time, not just with Chan, but with anyone. He wanted it to be right.

“Please, I cannot remain at your side after—after what I’ve said. After what I’ve done,” Chan insisted, his tone thick with revulsion and regret as he came back to his senses. His hands trembled, clutching the blanket over his nakedness as he shook his head. “It would not be right.”

“That is for me to determine,” Minho snapped, crossing his arms at the foot of the bed. “I’ve no use for this penance—what I seek is the truth.”

“Your Highness,” Felix interjected, loosening the fastenings on Chan’s muzzle. “It is not his fault. The desperation of a rut—it clouds one’s judgment.”

“Oh, does it now?” Minho replied sharply. “Tell me plainly, was all you said during your rut a lie?” His gaze fixed intently on Chan. “Falsehoods meant to tempt me, with no truth behind them?”

“It is not so simple as that,” Chan murmured, the chains at his wrists jingling as he shifted on the bed. His eyes were round and fearful, though of what, Minho could not discern. 

“It is indeed that simple. A yes or no, in fact. Did you lie? If so, I shall dismiss you at once. I will not keep a liar by my side. But after all I’ve done to shield you, to keep you safe…” Minho hesitated, swallowing heavily, afraid his voice might crack. “It must be clear to you where I stand—where my heart lies.”

“Y–Your Highness…” Chan stammered, confusion muddling his thoughts. “You cannot honestly—why would you—”

“Did you lie?” Minho asked again, his tone now edged with anguish. “I—I command that you tell me at once.”

The tension in Chan’s eyes softened, his grip on the blanket loosening. With a gentle, resolute gaze, he gave his answer:

“I would never lie to you.”

Gold continued to flow to the doctor in exchange for the scent blockers and suppressants Chan would have to use religiously to avoid detection.

Now and then, Minho worried the doctor might use this information against him, perhaps to blackmail him. But the elderly man had lived in the palace for many decades, and affairs of this nature were not uncommon.

Had he any inkling that love was involved, he might have conducted himself differently. But he assumed it was a harmless fling, like those had by many before Minho. If anything, what would ultimately amount to a slap on the wrist for both of them at present could mean the end of everything for the doctor once Minho was in a position of power.

And Chan, after agreeing to stay by Minho’s side, was not able to deny the prince what they both yearned for very long.

“I do not like this, Minho,” Chan says, his agitation evident as he paws at Minho’s collar. “You must allow me to remove it.”

“I’ve had an idea, actually. I will remove my blockers only if you agree to do the same,” Minho answers, smug as he nips at Chan’s supple lips.

“We cannot risk such a thing,” Chan says, nipping Minho’s mischievous smirk right back. “Besides, if you insist on toying with me then I shall find your scent in other ways,” he smiles, cupping the warmth between Minho’s thighs. He slides his palm further, digging his fingertips in to feel the wetness that’s begun to leak through the fabric.

“Just once,” Minho pouts, wriggling away from Chan’s probing fingers. “I’ve so much extra, we can reapply as soon as you must leave. No one would know.”

“And how then would you explain my scent lingering over every bit of your room?” Chan asks, skirting his soft lips along the devilish cliff of Minho’s jaw. “Every bit of you?”

“The same as I did after your first rut,” Minho answers, grinning as Chan falters, his cheeks warming, ears flushing red.

They’d burned the very same shade of scarlet then too. Back when Chan had stood against the bedroom wall beside Felix, silent as Minho ‘admitted’ to the queen the supposed source of their illness—that Minho had smuggled in a commoner for an evening of fun, who must have brought the sickness with him.

Minho had almost feared Chan would give them away, trembling as he was, eyes fixed on his feet, fingers tensing as he tried not to pick at his clothes. He had never seen Chan so nervous, and he never did again.

“Nobody would recognize the scent,” Minho insists. “They may think what they like about me; I’ll be gone for good soon enough. And mind you, it will be a much easier sell this time. Assuming you do not make such a mess of my linens again.”

Chan’s first rut had been the only time Minho had smelled the full potency of Chan’s pheromones in the entire four years since he presented. He’d badgered Chan many times before about removing his blockers, about having the chance to be truly scented, and Chan had always refused.

But today is different, and they both know it. Once wedding planning commences, the palace will be crowded, the evenings long. They may not have another full night together again.

“Must you always be so…” Chan grumbles, grinding his hips peevishly forward and ducking below Minho’s jaw to graze his teeth over his infuriatingly bland scent gland.

“I will not speak of running away with you for the rest of the evening.”

Chan raises his head, cocking an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“Quite.”

Chan squints, suspicious. “Not just the evening—through ‘til morning as well.”

“Yes, of course. That is what I meant.”

Chan slips the ledge of his forefinger under Minho’s chin, sweeping his thumb across plush lips faintly stained from the wine at dinner, then dipping down to the hollow beneath them. “And this is not another one of your tricks?”

“I would not dream of such a thing.”

Chan’s reflexive scoff puts a crack in Minho’s sober expression, and Minho bites back a grin, causing Chan’s eyes to narrow further as he firms his grip on Minho’s chin.

“Sincerely,” Minho says, but he cannot keep from smiling. “My expression is simply fondness, but my words are true. I will not bring it up again. Through ‘til morning, you have my word.”

Chan tucks his tongue into his cheek, tilting Minho’s face from side to side. He grumbles again, but this time it’s a long, drawn-out sound—resonating from deep in his chest with skepticism.

But Minho watches Chan’s expression with rivaling intensity, and within it, he spots a flash of something—something he suspects Chan is not fully aware of himself. Heat and energy, sparking like flint against steel. Tinder catching flame.

“All right,” Chan says. “It’s a deal.”

It takes a hefty amount of scrubbing to get the job done. Minho needs only to remove his top for Chan to reach the glands in his chest and neck, and he makes quick work of it. Chan, on the other hand, must undress entirely—only slowing the process further as Minho’s gaze continuously drifts, spellbound, over Chan’s perfectly sculpted figure.

Unlike Minho, Chan has to coat the glands in his thighs and groin daily. He must be meticulous about protecting his secret, Minho knows this—but it’s the first time he truly appreciates what a constant chore it must be.

They rub each other nearly raw before they’re satisfied. Minho’s head is foggy before they even emerge from the bathing chamber, the both of them achingly hard, stumbling over their feet as they try to navigate to the bed amid frantic scenting. Chan’s aroma is dense, as though it were actual smoke, and the more it builds, the more lost Minho feels in a sumptuous and simmering forest. Their knees knock against the wooden bedframe, and Minho realizes that slick has turned his sleep pants into a sopping mess.

“You like it, then?” Chan asks, laying Minho atop the sleek red bedspread and peeling off the soaking garment. “It certainly seems as so,” he grins.

Minho blinks sightlessly as his pants are discarded. He feels the weight of Chan crawling over him, the bed dipping on either side of his thighs where Chan’s knees sink into the mattress. The exquisite torment of Chan’s tongue laving over his throat, measured and methodical.

“Had I known I could quiet you so easily, I’d have done this much sooner,” Chan says, planting an elbow beside Minho’s head to lean over him. He rubs his other wrist over Minho’s chest, his neck, marking him further and watching ravenously as the black wells of Minho’s pupils spread wider and wider.

Minho parts his lips to speak. Closes them. He opens them to try again but manages only a rasping whine, teeming with need.

Chan’s grin widens. He slides his wrist up Minho’s throat, across his cheek, and pine smoke floods Minho’s mouth, molasses coating his tongue. It’s as though he’s breathing Chan directly into his lungs—thick and suffocating, burrowing into his chest—and yet he cannot get enough. He gasps for more, each breath shuddering and overwrought.

“Minho—” Chan pulls his wrist away, lowering his face to Minho’s ear and nuzzling. “Minho, you’re alright,” he whispers, relaxing his body atop Minho’s like a leaden weight, grounding him. 

Minho squeezes his eyes shut, regaining some awareness under Chan’s guidance. He concentrates his senses on the warmth of Chan; the solid, stable weight of him. He feels Chan’s calloused fingers combing through the hair at his temple, and the initial intoxication begins to level. When he opens his eyes he finds Chan watching him: attentive, adoring—tongue darting out to wet his lips, as though he’s waiting patiently to devour Minho.

Minho wraps his arms around Chan, his legs, tight and urgent. He strains upward, capturing Chan’s mouth so swiftly that he moans in surprise. Their tongues swirl and dive, Minho running his along Chan’s sharp canines, feeling how they’ve begun to elongate as his desire grows. He squirms, bucking his hips to find friction. 

Using one strong hand, Chan grabs Minho’s hip and pushes down, forcing his ankles to unlock and his bottom back onto the bed. With the firelight dwindling, resplendent moonlight streams through the window, overtaking the warm orange glow of Chan’s silhouette and cooling it to blue as he reaches between Minho’s thighs

Minho feels the slight brush of Chan’s fingertip over his rim, and he keens, powerless to suppress the rush of slick it produces. Spiced apple blooms in the air, mingling sweetly with crisp pine, and Chan hums with amusement.

“So wet for me already,” he smiles, leaning to lick into Minho’s mouth as he rubs his finger in a teasing circle.

“You smell—” Minho falters, overwhelmed by even the slightest stimulation. “You smell unbelievable.”

“Do I?” Chan asks, fitting two fingers into Minho easily, then quieting his reckless moan with a kiss.

Minho arches, rocking his body on Chan’s fingers, but it isn’t nearly enough. He finds himself buzzing with impatience, hungering to experience for the first time the virile combination of Chan’s scent and his knot. Now that he’s been pulled so deep, completely saturated, he can hardly believe he’s waited this long.

“I need you, Chan,” he pleads, breathless as Chan’s fingers scissor within him. “I need you inside me, your knot—I cannot wait.”

Wickedness curls at the ends of Chan’s lips, revealing he has half a mind to refuse—to drag things out until Minho is a soaked and blubbering mess, promising anything just to feel Chan’s knot swelling inside him. But there is something mesmerizing and instinctive about the full potency of Chan’s scent—the ability to properly mark Minho as his own. It’s affecting Chan almost as much as Minho, making him equally anxious for relief, and he tries to conceal his fervor.

“And yet you call me by my name,” Chan tsks, rising to his knees and withdrawing his fingers from Minho, leaving him whimpering. “Is that an order then, Your Highness?” he asks, wrapping his slick-coated fist around his cock and pumping slowly as he peers down at Minho.

“No, I’m sorry,” Minho whines, reaching to stuff his meager fingers into his hole, to quell the terrible empty feeling. Chan snatches his wrists away, securing them easily in a single hand despite all Minho’s twisting and tugging to free himself.

“Then ask properly,” Chan compels, voice dark as a shade pulled over Minho’s senses.

Chan’s face is carved in stark relief under the gleaming moonlight, and Minho shivers as he stills beneath his looming shadow. “Please Alpha,” he calls, then lets his knees fall to the sides, spreading himself as wide as he can.

Chan shudders as the words wash over him, transfixed by Minho unfurled obscenely before him like a flower freshly bloomed. Chan grips the base of his cock, falling over Minho whose hips rise to meet him. “That’s it,” he rasps, rutting crudely against Minho’s slippery flesh in search of his entrance. “Much better. Now—show me how well you can behave,” he challenges just as he finds his target, slamming forward and bottoming out in one powerful thrust that drives Minho up the bed.

A bolt of ecstasy courses through Minho like some divine force of nature—immense and undeniable. He moans, raw and guttural, rivaling the volume of the headboard thumping against the stone wall as he cums without warning, white ribbons coating Chan’s stomach and dripping thick, warm droplets back onto his own.

Chan’s eyes widen with astonishment, his mouth falling open for scarcely a second before he recovers.

“Already?” he asks, pleased. He swoops to kiss Minho, sucking his tongue into his mouth and grinding his hips lazily. “So good for me,” he says, and Minho preens as tremors of aftershock quake through him. “But,” Chan continues, a sly curve to his lips. “I’ll need another if you want my knot.”

Chan pulls out a little to push slowly back in, circling until Minho’s breath hitches and he knows he’s found the right spot.

“There,” Minho pleads. “Please, there—”

“You think I cannot tell?” Chan asks, sardonic as he rolls his hips with deliberately restrained pressure, prodding at Minho’s prostate.

Minho groans, his cock already hardening again, twitching in the puddle of his own cum. He loops his arms around Chan’s neck, weaving his legs around his waist and squeezing in hope of pulling him deeper.

“You do not understand,” Minho says, shoving his face into Chan’s neck, lapping as though starved for the sweetly charred aroma emanating freely from his scent glands. “Please I have never—I cannot, it is too much, you must—”

“I must?” Chan asks, snapping his hips forward and sending Minho’s eyes rolling back, arms and legs going boneless.

“Channie—” Minho answers, losing hold of Chan and falling back onto the bed.

“Close,” Chan smiles, straightening onto his knees again and pulling Minho’s rubbery legs with him, throwing them over his shoulders. He rests his head against one of Minho’s calves, pondering for a moment—idly running his fingers through the cum spattering Minho’s warm belly. “You may have another try,” he decides, curling his body forward, allowing gravity to aid in folding Minho beneath him. “Who is it you cry out for?” he asks.

“Alpha—my alpha ,” Minho murmurs, and the instant the words fall from his quivering lips, Chan’s hips begin to piston, plunging his cock ruthlessly into Minho's soaked and fluttering hole.

“That’s right,” Chan grits without slowing his tempo, the vulgar sound of their skin slapping together echoing off stone. “Your alpha, no matter where you go.” He presses closer, pinning Minho’s knees against his shoulders. “I care not who you marry,” he pants, sweat trailing from his brow down the length of his nose, a single bead falling like a teardrop onto Minho’s ruddy cheek. “You will always be mine—my omega.”

Minho’s vision swims, caged between Chan’s arms, his pleasure compounding beyond reason. Each thrust drives logic further from his mind, reducing him to something primitive—something wild. The nearer he gets to his peak, the more the boundary between them blurs; the line distinguishing what should be and what must, dissolving like sugar brought to a boil.

“Always—?” Minho tries to say, but it rings with an edge of anxiety—of question.

Chan stops, still bent as he slips Minho’s thighs from his shoulders, letting them fall away. He catches Minho’s waist, hooking one arm below him to keep his hips suspended where they connect, while his other slides up Minho's spine until his fingers tangle into moist black tendrils. He lifts Minho’s head to his chest, cradling him tight as though at any moment he might slip through Chan’s fingers like sand from an hourglass.

“I swear it,” Chan whispers, hot breath stoking the fire of Minho’s desire. “I would never lie to you,” he affirms, thrusting up into Minho, his knot beginning to swell.

He lays Minho on the mattress again, cool and damp with slick, his forearm settling into the buttery bedcover above Minho’s shoulder to keep his body from sliding away as his tempo increases. Chan’s other hand glides across Minho’s stomach, cum and sweat mingling so thoroughly beneath his fingertips that he cannot distinguish between the two.

Seizing Minho’s cock, tender and painfully hard again, Chan mouths at his jaw, following its sharp line up to Minho’s ear as he pumps in time with his thrusts. “It’s time,” he says between teasing flicks of his tongue to Minho’s earlobe. “I need you to cum for me again. I need to feel you.”

Their heads knock together as Minho turns clumsily to seek Chan’s mouth, nodding emphatically until he’s able to lock their lips together. His heart races, the feel of Chan’s knot bumping against him pushing him deeper into a spiraling haze of lust. He wraps a hand over Chan’s, guiding his strokes, allowing Chan to focus his energy on forcing his knot to catch.

“Close,” Chan breathes, separating from their kiss with a wet smack. Minho dips his head to latch his lips around Chan’s scent gland, licking and sucking until Chan is groaning, losing his rhythm with the surge of pleasure, but pounding more forcefully than ever.

And then, with a low growl through clenched teeth, Chan’s knot breaches Minho’s slick-coated rim. Minho’s body clamps down instinctively, locking them together—spasming and milking Chan’s knot, filling up with heat until he’s fit to burst, and everything goes white.

Minho is hardly Minho at all as Chan spasms and writhes, cursing and pumping him full. Not a prince, or even a person as adrenaline and euphoria flood his veins, blinding and electrifying. No, when he cums, his hole squeezing tight around Chan’s perfectly seated knot, he is only an omega—Chan’s omega. And Chan is his alpha.

His alpha.

There’s a hiss of pain, a stuttering, agonized inhale—Chan is saying something, tone frantic, but Minho’s senses haven’t fully returned. He can’t see, can’t quite hear either, but he can smell. Pine smoke and molasses, spiking even stronger somehow. He can taste it too, rich and warm, almost metallic. Minho feels his brow furrowing, tries to frown, but his mouth is too wide. In fact, his lips are stretched in a circle around Chan’s scent gland, and his teeth—his teeth are plunged deep into the meat of Chan’s shoulder.

He reels back in horror, and Chan gasps as the loss of pressure causes blood to gush freely from his neck. Minho scrabbles for a pillow, a sheet, anything that can cover and stem the flow.

“What have I done?” he asks, but he knows. He knows.

And Chan does not answer either, he couldn’t if he wanted to—too overwhelmed by the change taking place in his body. His lashes flutter, blinking rapidly despite eyes that stare sightlessly past Minho. His mouth hangs open, chest heaving as he gulps down air.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” Minho intones over and over as he rolls them on their sides to reach for a pillow, still locked together by Chan’s knot. “Channie, please—come back to me. Please, Alpha—you have to come back.”

But Chan doesn’t seem to hear him, and Minho is too terrified to think straight. He cannot remember his lessons. He isn’t sure how long it will take Chan to come back down.

With trembling fingers, he hastily pulls a pillow from its case, discarding it and bunching the pillowcase in his hands. He takes a deep breath, trying to steady himself, but his heart refuses to slow its furious pounding.

“Please, Channie. Please—I’m so sorry,” Minho whispers as he presses the fabric firmly against the fresh mating bite.

The first thing Chan feels when his senses start to return is fear. His bones ache with it, heart palpitating with a terrible, churning dread.

Some of it, he can tell, is his own—it feels as it always has. The same as it did when his mother died slowly, over weeks, withering to nothing in her bed. Each sunset, each slowed breath, counting down to that inescapable moment when the only other heart that beat for him would be forever silenced.

Or when his father stumbled home from cards one afternoon, yellow smile stretched wide and ghoulish over his sallow face. Slurring as he announced that Chan would finally be of use to him—that he’d won him a position at the palace. He tucked Chan into a stranger's wagon that very same night.

Chan can recognize what of his current terror belongs to him by the sting of it. The hollow uncertainty, filling his gut just as it did when his father wedged a poorly packed sack of rations beside him in the cart. He’d explained that Chan’s earnings would be sent directly to him. It was only fair, after all. Chan owed him. 

Yes, the sting is the same, piercing—just like his father’s bloodshot eyes that seemed to glow red in his memories.

It had been a long journey, separating Chan from the only life he’d known for good. His heart kept pace with the horses that evening, and his entire body prickled and shook relentlessly the whole ride—just as it does now.

Shoving aside those bitter memories, Chan directs his focus to the rest of the fear coiling in his belly. There’s more to the feeling—something foreign. The remainder of it—the majority, even—belongs to someone else.

If he likened it to his own, he might describe it as lingering hands on Minho’s waist under watchful eyes, or the tunnel to the prince’s chambers echoing with the voice of a guard—but sharper. Like a knife pressed to his throat, or a guillotine flashing menacingly overhead.

His eyes are wide and stinging, but only now does he see. He’s on his side, floating in a scarlet sea across from Minho, whose hands are cupped around his cheeks. Minho’s brilliantly red lips wrench and pull in a pattern, repeating something, and Chan screws his eyes shut, struggling to remember.

And then the pain comes—a piercing throb setting in at the base of his neck. His eyes shoot open again, saliva, cool and slick, pooling in his mouth as his nausea wells. He tries to reach for the wound, and a flurry of panic clouds his mind. Minho’s hands rush to stop him, and in that moment, he knows.

The fear in his chest, the surge of panic—it’s Minho’s, pulsing through the bond he feels now, as sharp as the bite still throbbing on the slope of his neck.

Chan’s immediate instinct is to soothe. To gather his own calm and deliver it to Minho; but there’s a wall, solid and uncompromising—keeping him from Minho no matter how hard he pushes against it.

He tenses, clutching at Minho’s wrists, and his own growl of frustration is the sound that ushers in the noise around him. Wind whistling through the loose seal of the window, the creaking of its frame, the last embers crackling into oblivion within the fireplace, and Minho’s harrowed incantation.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so—”

“Stop,” Chan cuts in, sounding more coarse than he intends, and again he can feel it. Another snap of fear—Minho’s fear—and his stomach drops. “It’s alright, shhh, it’s alright,” he whispers, releasing Minho’s wrists and reaching out to pull him close, to cocoon him and dampen his suffering.

Only then does he notice that they’re still connected physically, his knot seated firmly within Minho, just beginning to subside. He can’t have been out of it for more than ten minutes at most, which doesn’t sound so bad until he imagines how long it must have felt to Minho, waiting in grim silence.

“I don’t know why I did it, I don’t know what came over me,” Minho says, hiding his face in Chan’s chest. “I did not know what I’d done until it was too late.”

Chan brings a hand to his neck, feeling the satin fabric over the bite. A swirl of his own emotions threatens to overtake Minho’s in his chest, but he tamps them down, shuts them away—just like always. Really, this is no different from every other pivotal moment in his life—completely out of his hands. He knows by now not to waste time on worry, on wondering what he could have done differently.

“What’s done is done,” Chan sighs.

Minho peeks up at him, searching his face, and Chan tries to decode the sensations trickling through the bond. It will be a while before he has a handle on these less urgent emotions, but from the lines of curiosity in Minho’s brow, the furtive purse of his lips, Chan has a good idea of where his mind is dwelling.

“I know what you are thinking, and I will not.”

Despite the depth of Minho’s distress, he flashes hot, face pinching with annoyance and masking his disappointment. 

“How can you expect me to let you live like this? What other choice do we have but to complete the bond, come what may?”

“You promised,” Chan reminds him. “Through ‘til morning—you promised me.”

“I have cursed you, then,” Minho glares, and though Chan has always known these expressions to be a veil, now he can truly feel the anguish hiding underneath. “You will be bound to me, trapped feeling my every wayward emotion. Physically sick should I remain far from you too long. Shackled to me in misery until you find someone willing and able to mate you again, and we both know that is no easy feat.”

“I will manage.”

“You will manage?” Minho parrots with incredulity. “Is that so?”

“It is.”

Minho’s gaze hardens. “I will find you another then,” he decides, nodding to himself as previously unknowable wheels turn behind his eyes. “We will fix this, I will make sure of it.”

“I do not want another, Minho, I said that I shall manage,” Chan grumbles, growing irritated. His knot has dwindled and he makes to withdraw his softening erection, but Minho hooks a leg over him, keeping him in place.

“I’m sorry, please—I will not badger you about it,” Minho says, fingers splayed on Chan’s chest, the resigned droop of his brows assuring Chan of his sincerity. “But I do not know that I can forgive myself for this.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” Chan says. He tilts his head, brushes his nose against Minho’s. “I was already bound to you—doomed long before I had the mark to prove it,” he chuckles, but it’s cut short by guilt that does not belong to him.

“I have doomed you, haven’t I?”

Chan kisses away the quiver of Minho’s lips with slow, elongated movements—stretching the moment out like the molasses of his scent. Reflexively, he tries to push calm through the bond again, and this time it is his own pain he feels when he meets the wall once more.

“No, my love,” he whispers against Minho’s doubt. “Were I to go back somehow, to have a do over—I would do things just the same. But please, let us not spend the night dwelling.”

Minho’s eyes dart over Chan’s face, mulling over the request until, with obvious reluctance, he nods.

Chan brings Minho’s palms to his lips, humble and earnest. Kissing them in the hope of displaying the adoration he cannot deliver through their one-way bond. But it feels… weak. Inadequate. Almost embarrassing for some reason, and Chan attempts to pull out again in retreat, but Minho squeezes his leg to prevent it.

“Can we stay like this?” Minho asks. “I–I want to keep you close… while I still can.”

It cuts right into his chest, neatly carving the outline of his heart. He pulls Minho’s arms around him, hugging tight. Kisses his temple and hides his wavering expression in the soft tousles of Minho’s hair. “Of course,” he murmurs.

It was early on when Chan made up his mind—their love freshly bloomed like jasmine, with tendrils only just beginning to climb, entwining their lives together. He knew he could not entertain thoughts of the future; he had to draw a distinct line in the sand. He would not run away with Minho. He could not.

Life outside the palace was difficult. It was dirty and arduous—it was work. But that hadn’t been the trouble. Minho had never been a fool; he was always aware of such facts. And it wasn’t as though Chan believed him incapable of labor, or even unwilling.

In truth, Chan was haunted by the sickly green pleasure he felt when envisioning a life for them together—the consuming, greedy hunger that filled him at the thought of having Minho all to himself. It was too tempting, too enticing, and he needed to draw that line more for himself than for Minho. He could not, in good conscience, steal Minho away from the comforts of royalty to imprison him in a meager cottage, running a household when he deserved to be running a kingdom.

So, he had decided he would not. It had been that simple. They bickered about it often, but Chan had always been firm.

But now, as he feels Minho’s discontent seeping into him, his mind flounders.

Minho shifts in his arms, goosebumps rising from the cold. Chan reaches across him, pulling the blanket snug around Minho before stretching to wrap it over both of them completely. He rests his lips upon Minho’s furrowed brow, nosing into his hair to calm himself with a deep inhale of his rich scent.

“I’m sorry,” Minho whispers again.

Chan shushes him lightly. Kisses his forehead until the creases smooth. “Rest, now.”

It’s not until Minho’s breathing slows, easing into the steady rhythm of sleep, that Chan finally allows himself to feel the weight of what’s happened—some of it, at least. Minho’s emotions have softened, his peaks and chasms settling into a manageable plateau. Maybe now, Chan can begin to chart his own.

Of the many messes he has on his hands, however, he knows the first he must tend to is his fresh wound.

He withdraws from Minho slowly, careful not to wake him. It’s a struggle to ignore the friction dragging his mind back toward his baser urges, but he slips free. He props a pillow in his place, wrapping Minho back up in the blanket before tiptoeing to the bathing chamber.

Chan sucks in a sharp breath as he peels off the satin pillowcase sticking to the raw skin at the crook of his neck. Tossing it aside, he rummages through the polished wooden drawers of Minho’s vanity until he finds a bronze mirror, its edges shining under dim moonlight.

After lighting a candle, he raises the mirror to examine the series of gashes ringing his scent gland. His stomach flutters, and he chews his lip. Something like pride wells in his chest, laced with melancholy. The scar will be low enough to hide under his Hanbok, he thinks, and his heart thuds painfully.

With a finger, he traces Minho’s claim and winces. The bleeding has ceased, but each tooth mark is tender and inflamed. He sets the mirror aside, moving to the washbasin to clean and disinfect the bite.

“We could leave here, you know. I have enough gold hidden, we could have a real shot.”

Minho had said it without any hesitation, right after Chan knotted him for the very first time. Locked together, so he couldn’t escape the conversation. Minho already knew him so intimately by then.

“Your Highness—”

“Channie, please. Don’t call me that anymore, and now of all times.”

“You want me dead, is that it?”

“Were I to run off with a commoner they’d simply disown me, why waste the energy killing anyone? They hate me anyway—‘disloyal,’ ‘disobedient’—and besides, my brother could be king. They’d have a higher standing. I think they’d be quite glad to be rid of me.”

“You’d give up all this?” Chan shook his head. Where could they go? he thought. He couldn’t even offer Minho a roof over their heads, let alone the kind of life he deserved.

“I do not need any of this, I need only you.” Minho answered, unwavering and obstinate. “Will you not at least consider it?”

Chan lowered his eyes, swallowing the lump in his throat. How many times had he dreamed of hearing those words? And yet now they seemed to puncture him, each syllable a thorn on a vine winding tight around his heart. Will you not at least consider…

He had considered it—an excruciating number of times by then.

He considers it now too, though it’s the first time in ages. He’d kept it at arm’s length for so long, training himself to stay present, to avoid getting lost in such daydreams. But he can’t resist now. Not when he feels Minho’s desperation leaking out even in his sleep—like a pinhole in a dam, patched but ready to burst.

He couldn’t bring Minho to his own home. His father depends on the money he sends each month, and the loss of such funds would hardly make him eager to harbor a fugitive—much less a runaway prince.

They’d have to go east. Somewhere they wouldn’t be recognized, somewhere it wouldn’t be worth tracking them. Minho may think himself unworthy of such pursuit, but Chan knows better—that kings and queens tend to look poorly upon the theft of what they’ve decided belongs to them.

But then—if they could get out, if they could make it past the borders of the Western alliance, find somewhere to settle… What might it look like?

Whenever he imagines it, their life is invariably cast in shades of summer—golden light highlighting a small cabin on the outskirts of a town. Close enough for trade, but far enough for privacy. Something modest, but with land. Lots of it, bordering a lush forest, perhaps. Enough space for a garden, maybe even some horses. Humble but charming—with plenty of room to raise their pups.

Chan’s eyes sting as he dabs a wet cloth on his neck, rinsing it after each wipe and trying not to imagine Minho round and smiling, their love growing inside him. Minho, with their baby on his hip, welcoming Chan home. Minho, asleep in his arms, their children snuggled around them. He wipes and rinses, again and again, until the rag comes back clean.

Sifting through the drawers, Chan finds a healing balm. He picks up the mirror again to apply it, forcing away the vision of that life—of what cannot be.

Once he’s clean and bandaged, he sneaks back into the bed chamber. He pulls back the covers and slips into his spot, finding that Minho has rolled away. Scooting closer, he spoons Minho’s back, warming his cold nose against Minho’s slender neck. Minho shivers, writhing lightly, and this time, Chan can’t ignore the heat building in him again.

He wiggles his hips tentatively, digging into the slope of Minho’s neck to inhale his sweet scent, and his cock twitches. Minho doesn’t stir, slumbering peacefully as Chan trails his fingers along Minho’s Jaw, down his torso. He plucks the soft bud of his nipple and Minho makes a small noise of pleasure that ripples lightly through the bond.

He travels further, groping the muscles of Minho’s abdomen, then down to dig his fingers into the meat of his hindquarters. Chan groans, low and gravelly, grinding to push his stiffening cock between Minho’s thighs and finding the glide easy with slick seeping from Minho even in his sleep.

He nestles into Minho’s nape, inhaling his scent again—tart but sweet—and remembers the day they met, when he’d caught a snot-nosed little prince offering a glossy red apple to one of the horses.

Smiling against Minho’s skin, he rolls his hips forward, savoring the snug pressure of his supple thighs. The little prince had been just an annoyance then, and when he kept turning up, a liability. Always with a million questions about life outside the palace, about the world kept hidden from him. It wasn’t until Minho chose Chan as his attendant that the light seemed to fall on his sharp cheekbones in a peculiar new way.

Chan can still recall the first time Minho jabbed a finger against his chest, ordering him to kiss him or shut up. He pushes down on Minho’s thigh, stifling a moan as he grinds. He’d kissed Minho, of course; he’d been dying to for years by then.

Minho exhales a faint whine, a small gush of slick trickling from his hole, and something unfamiliar trickling in through the bond. Chan rests a cheek upon his back, closing his eyes to focus on the emotion. He pulls his hips back, ruts forward, and it flares again—stronger this time.

Emptiness. Minho feels empty. He’d fallen asleep with Chan inside him, and now as he drifts in the fog between consciousness and dreaming, that lack is the first thing he notices. 

Chan looks down at the pale curve of Minho’s backside, past it. Pulls at Minho’s cheeks to see the obscene sight of his cock sliding along Minho’s entrance. Pink and wet and waiting. He nudges it with his tip. The feeling of emptiness strengthens again, but now it mingles with want. With longing.

Pressing his thumb down to guide the head, Chan pushes his cock slowly into Minho, who gasps softly at the intrusion, rocking his hips back to meet Chan, and Chan… Well, Chan tries to maintain his composure.

A tingling thrill spreads from his groin to his chest, constricting his lungs until his breath rattles. While Chan is quite familiar with the pleasure of filling his omega, of carving out a space within him, he’s quickly learning that it is something else entirely to amplify that sensation with the addition of Minho’s own pleasure echoing through him. To experience Minho’s rapture, his yearning for Chan, layered over his own like molten honey.

He inches forward, cautious not to overstimulate himself, until he’s fully seated within Minho. The empty feeling dissipates, replaced by a tranquil tide of satisfaction, and Chan kisses along Minho’s shoulder blades.

It is agonizing to remain motionless, but Chan isn’t sure he’s prepared for the intensity that moving would bring. Instead, he inhales Minho again. Swipes his wrists over Minho’s chest to scent him, placating his desire.

Again, he catches himself wondering what horse they could take, which road they could travel. What names they would assume, and what pasts they’d invent. He buries his face in Minho’s hair, shaking the nagging fantasy from his mind.

“I will manage,” Chan whispers to himself. “I must manage.”

Minho lets out a long yawn, beginning his question at its end. “What was that?”

Chan nips at the back of his ear. “Nothing, my love. Go back to sleep.”

Minho yawns again, stretching his arms up and arching his body, and Chan’s cock twitches inside him.

“It does not feel as though you want me to sleep,” Minho teases, circling his hips.

Breath hitching, Chan’s hands shoot down to Minho’s waist. “S–stop,” he sputters, holding him in place. “I’m not ready.”

Chan senses Minho’s curiosity, the devious impulse sparking just seconds before Minho starts wiggling in his grip. Shuddering, Chan wraps his arms around Minho’s waist and chest, one hand clutching the top of his shoulder to lock him in place.

“It’s different,” he croaks, working to restrain Minho’s squirming. “It’s stronger now.”

Minho stills, humming thoughtfully. “I’ve always heard that, but I wasn’t sure how true it was,” he muses. “I thought maybe it was just one of those things they say to convince the freshly presented of the virtue of settling down and mating properly. Keep them from wanting to mount everything that moves.”

With a faint chuckle, Minho swirls his hips again, and Chan chokes out a ragged exhale.

“Stop moving,” Chan growls, and Minho goes instantly rigid in his arms—paralyzed, like a rabbit caught under the shadow of a wolf.

It takes Minho’s annoyance scorching through the bond for Chan to realize that Minho is only frozen because he has to be. That Chan had accidentally issued an alpha command.

“I’m sorry, I just need time to adjust,” Chan murmurs, loosening his hold.

Minho, still immobilized, huffs a breath through his nose. “Well, I suppose I believe you, considering I can’t recall ever hearing such an effective command from you.”

Body relaxing, Chan caresses Minho’s temple, planting apologetic kisses along his neck.

Once able, Minho leans into the velvet tenderness of Chan’s lips, careful to keep his hips still. “How long will you need?” he asks.

“I just need to steady myself, then ease into it. I want to be sure I have my wits about me.” It’s the wrong thing to say—Chan knows immediately from the spark of Minho’s interest perking up, like a cat’s ears at the jingle of food being poured into its bowl.

“Your wits?” Minho asks mildly, as though inquiring about the weather.

“You do understand how a bond works, yes?” Chan replies, reaching up Minho’s chest to grip the base of his jaw, gentle but firm. “That I can feel your intentions? I will always have the upper hand now. You can’t even begin to know how to guard your mind without feeling a bond yourself. You cannot conceal your scheming from me like this.”

Minho grumbles, swatting Chan’s hand away from his face. “I shall find out soon enough, I am told. Should everything go as planned, I’ll be mated to Prince Sujin by winter.”

Chan’s heart skitters like a stone across water, then plummets into unfathomable depths. He’d allowed himself to envision a life with Minho and had strength enough to banish the thought. He’d indulged in fantasy, then ripped it away. But never had he considered what it might be like to be mated by someone who was mated to another.

Something at his core ignites. He’s never been quick to anger, but all at once it blisters from within him, scornful and garish, desperate to make itself known.

He doesn’t want to see it, doesn’t want to imagine, but the image is treacherous, glittering in his mind like shards of broken glass, and he can’t look away. Can’t ignore the vision of someone else wearing Minho’s bite, an unknown twin to his own, and Minho—marked by another.

Snatching up Minho’s hips, Chan pulls his own back and slams abruptly forward, rough and unrestrained. He can barely breathe as a wave of doubled pleasure crashes over him, drowning out all reason as Minho yelps in confusion before pressing back in excitement.

Nevertheless, his wayward thoughts gain momentum, speeding out of control. He had already half-decided to find a way to the northern packs. Even if he had to start from the bottom, he’d be near to Minho somehow. He could handle not seeing him, not being truly close—no intimacy, no affection. As he said, he’d manage. But now, the disturbing image of Minho claimed by another begins to root in his mind, and his stomach churns.

Minho, on the arm of that royal idiot who’d been waltzing around the grounds all week like he owned the place—Chan slams his hips forward again—Minho spending every night falling asleep beside someone so undeserving.

Minho—Chan grinds, his hips falter—his omega, whimpering and writhing on Prince Sujin’s cock.

His thrusts turn wild and Minho yelps as he’s rolled unceremoniously onto his stomach so Chan can gain better leverage, mumbling mindlessly, “Can’t, I can’t— ”

“Can’t what?” Minho gasps between punched-out moans. He tries to push up onto his forearms amid the tumult, but Chan wraps an arm beneath him, scooping Minho up until his back is plastered against Chan’s chest.

He smears his face over Minho’s scent gland, bathing in the delicious aroma. He’s losing a battle with himself; he can feel it, but he can’t slow his hips, his rabid inhales of Minho’s essence, nor the recurring flashes of his omega mating, being bred by, and growing old with another.

“Channie, look at me—let me see you,” Minho pleads, twisting feebly within Chan’s clutches.

Minho’s voice, its undercurrent of worry, penetrates Chan’s trance. He loosens his hold, and Minho breaks away, rolling onto his back, skin flushed pink and eyes searching. The brisk air rushing over his cock almost throws Chan off again, but Minho reaches up, two-handed, cushioning Chan’s face in his palms.

“What is it? What’s gotten into you?” Minho asks, brows knit with concern.

“I think… I think it is the bite. I think I may have underestimated its effects,” Chan trails, gaze roving from Minho’s eyes to his swollen lips—further still to his stiff and sensitive nipples. He twists one, unthinkingly, and Minho’s eyelids flutter as together they shudder. Chan’s cock throbs with neglect and he nudges it at Minho’s entrance, then remembers he was supposed to be answering a question.

“I have always felt… passionately about you,” he starts again, struggling to focus with the temptation of Minho below him. He shuts his eyes, continuing, “And to feel your emotions within me—it is indescribable. But it is not only that. My thoughts about you—they’re different. I do not simply want you more—I need you. Every second I do not have you, and I mean, have you, mate you, make you well and truly mine—it hurts. And to think about you with another…”

Chan grimaces in the darkness behind his eyelids, images of Minho with the prince bombarding him again. He dives sightlessly back to Minho’s throat, burying his face in the scent.

“It is as you said,” Minho says, stroking soothing fingers down Chan’s back. “I am your omega, no matter what. No matter who I should marry. You swore it.”

He tries to agree, to say he believes it, but the image won’t go away. Minho, a queen dripping in jewels and finery, seated on a golden throne, with a scar at his throat that is not Chan’s.

His control slips again, and Chan bucks, cock sliding over Minho’s. “My omega,” Chan says, and sits back on his heels. He spreads Minho’s thighs wide, groping and pawing, dragging them up over his own. Lining up his cock, he pushes in without warning. “But not your alpha,” he scowls as Minho’s gasp catches in his throat. Cupping and fondling Minho’s balls, Chan lifts them to watch as his cock disappears into Minho over and over, eyes glazing.

“It’s not true,” Minho insists through labored breaths.

Chan doesn’t hear him. He grips Minho’s thighs, anchoring him in place as he slams his hips harder, as if it takes no effort at all. He watches Minho with dazed hunger, every immaculate inch of him glistening and perfect—every inch that should belong to Chan. Should be right beside him, always. Or beneath him, as he is now: cock bouncing and leaking onto the taut muscles of his stomach while the bulge of Chan’s own slides below. Chan ghosts his hand over the flesh of Minho’s belly, fingers tracing the outline of his desire until he’s bowled over by another sickly vision.

Minho, radiant and round with pups. Someone else’s pups.

Whatever shreds of discipline Chan has left disintegrate as his heart aches and blazes. Gritting his teeth, he pushes down on the bulge, sending Minho keening and shaking, slick gushing out around Chan’s burgeoning knot. The sensation reverberates through Chan, and he nearly collapses from the vivid intensity, but he persists, overtaken by animalistic urgency.

“My omega,” Chan growls, hunching over Minho, until he feels something troublingly similar to fear bubble up through the bond. “No,” he implores, sweeping wisps of hair from Minho’s uneasy eyes. “Do not worry,” he says, despite the relentless pace of his pounding. “Your alpha. Do you understand? I will be. I will—” His voice breaks, irritation flashing again as he tries and fails for the third time to force calm through a bond that does not exist.

“You are,” Minho calls through the fog, his nails digging into the tops of Chan’s hands. “Channie—Alpha, you have me. It’s alright, you have me, and I you.”

“No,” Chan says, drenched in sweat that scatters in shimmering droplets at the disgruntled shake of his head. “But you will. You’ll have me, you’ll have my pups,” Chan explains, tempering his speed to bend closer to Minho.

There’s something urgent bleeding through the bond again. Something conflicted and hopeful. Anxious but eager. Chan bristles at the complexity, in no state to interpret.

“Do not fret,” Chan says, a look of frenzy in his eyes as he presses his forehead hard against Minho’s and grinds deep. “I’m going to fill you with my love, with my pups.” He smiles, kissing Minho with surprising gentleness. “You’ll be so beautiful, so perfect,” he whispers between his tremulous lips.

It’s an absurd thing to say, and they both know it. A pregnancy won’t take outside of a heat, but Chan can feel Minho’s unambiguous exhilaration at the thought. It’s simple, overflowing and indisputable, and it winds him up—spurring him on with renewed vigor.

“I want them,” Minho goads, breathless—eyes watering. “Please, Channie, deeper—” his fingers dig into Chan’s biceps, bruising, and he pushes his hips into Chan’s stroke.

Chan groans, intoxicated and overwhelmed, his knot swelling. “Then beg,” he commands, sitting up on his heels again and tugging Minho’s erection. “Be a good omega—my good omega, and beg for it.”

Minho shivers, tears spilling unbidden, on the verge of collapse. “I need you, Alpha—I need your cum.”

“Is that all?” Chan demands, greed igniting at the sight of Minho’s tears beading in his lashes, streaking his cheeks. He pulls his hand and his hips away until Minho’s rim clings only to the head of his cock. 

Whimpering under Chan’s cruel stillness, Minho gazes up, glassy-eyed and dewy, to find him licking his lips, waiting for an answer.

Minho’s hole flexes expectantly around Chan’s cockhead, the thrill of anticipation shooting through them, but Chan musters every scrap of restraint left at his disposal and waits. Waits until Minho’s lips part again. Waits until his chest rattles and he moans out his plea.

“Need you to breed me.”

Smiling fiendishly, Chan blankets his sweat-slick body over Minho’s. Drags his tongue over Minho’s salty tears. “That’s right,” he croons, pouring over Minho like hot wax, melting them into one. He drives his cock deeper, mind cloudy with dueling pleasure.“I can feel your body—your very soul calling for it. Screaming for me to fill you up—to fuck you full of my pups.”

The vulgarity jolts Minho, shocking his senses. He fumbles for Chan’s face, yanking him into a famished kiss. Sloppy, wet sucking, and they lose track of one another amidst the fervor of Chan’s thrusting. Chan bites Minho’s lip and feels the pain of it, the arousal, throb in his neck, his mating mark burning.

Minho reaches down to stroke himself, and Chan’s knot is nearly full. His climax is nearing, and he can feel Minho’s building as well—heady and sparkling, glowing in his veins. 

When finally his knot catches, Chan is woefully unprepared for the carnal pleasure of Minho’s orgasm syncing with his own. It’s a feedback loop of endless gratification, and it turns him delirious, overriding his convictions. He feels simultaneously larger than life and yet, crumbled into dust. 

Minho had said he didn’t know what he’d done until after the fact, but for Chan, it’s different. It’s as though he’s watching himself from the outside, except every minute sensation is magnified to such a surreal degree that it borders on unbearable.

He sees his mouth tear away from Minho’s, and he feels the aching itch of his canines extending to their fullest length—something they’d never done before. He sees his hips grind so roughly that Minho’s body curves beneath him, fucking his cum as deep as he can into his omega, and feels Minho clenching around his cock as he paints their stomachs white again with his own release.

And then it happens, beastly and dazzling, and if Chan could reach out and stop himself, he wouldn’t. He watches as his teeth sink into the trembling slope of Minho’s neck, feels the warmth of skin, the rush of blood, and he tastes copper—ginger—cinnamon—apples.

A surge of endorphins, a cry of pain and ecstasy, and he’s back in his body again, with Minho spasming and gaping wordlessly beneath him.

He can’t have—he knows better—except—

Except there it is: a fresh mating bite on Minho’s throat, searing as a halo of sunlight during a solar eclipse. And it feels like that too—like some cosmic event Chan should have foreseen, should have calculated beforehand and predicted. Obvious yet awe-inspiring, its magnitude impossible to fully comprehend until here and now, in the moment it becomes real.

Despite the avalanche of reality crashing down upon him, Chan steels himself over Minho. Gathers his wilting limbs into his arms like precious petals and, at last, delivers a torrent of tranquility, of affection through their shared bond.

A fleeting eternity passes while Chan waits for Minho to recover. He spends the entirety of it rooted deeply inside Minho, locked in place. He peppers anxious kisses over Minho’s helpless face—vivid red stains atop stark white—and presses a fresh pillowcase firmly against the claim he’s left upon him.

Chan’s own lightheadedness fails to subside, but somehow he manages not to panic. Likely because it feels like his duty, an obligation he understands innately without ever being told. Any stress he feels will flow directly into Minho, which, in turn, will make it all the harder for Minho to break through the fugue that’s currently paralyzing him.

So he concentrates on comforting, on stabilizing—on the assurance that he is here, solid and unmoving, a pillar for Minho to lean against for as long as he needs, until finally, Minho gasps back to consciousness.

At first, Minho struggles to orient himself in Chan’s sheltering embrace, so Chan pulls him closer. He rocks back to lean against the bed frame, sitting upright with Minho panting in his lap. Chan winces as the maneuver tugs at his knot, but the feeling seems to steady Minho. Give him something tangible to focus on, and remind him where he is. His breathing slows, heart rate settling, and gradually his pupils begin to shrink back to their usual size.

“Chan?” Minho asks, voice hoarse.

“Yes, my love. You’re alright. Can you hear me? I’ve got you—you’re alright,” Chan whispers, massaging Minho’s temples with his thumbs.

“Did we—Did you—”

“I did,” Chan sighs heavily. “You can feel it now, can’t you?”

Minho closes his eyes, face scrunching a bit and tilting, like he’s searching within himself. Untangling strands. “You’re worried,” he frowns.

“No, no, I am not worried, it’s just—”

Minho presses a still-trembling finger to Chan’s lips, silencing him. He reaches up to cover Chan’s eyes. “You’re scattered,” he whispers, bringing their foreheads together. “Stop thinking.”

A pleasant warmth blooms in Chan’s chest, lush and heavy, cascading gently into his belly and spreading through his limbs, then somehow further. Somewhere deeper than flesh, past blood or marrow. Somewhere infinite.

“Alright,” Chan exhales, “I suppose I was a little worried.”

Minho uncovers his eyes, his cool fingers damp as they glide over Chan’s warm cheeks. “Well given the circumstances, I think that is perhaps the rational reaction.” Minho attempts a grin, but his expression is pained.

Chan gazes up at him, chews at his lip. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Minho blinks.

“I fear I’ve made a mess of things.” 

“Well personally, I fear I must still be addled from the claiming, as you cannot possibly be serious. You do recall that I bit you first, do you not?”

“Yes, but as I’ve already said, that would have been manageable. It would have been fine if I’d just been able to control myself. I could have kept my mark hidden, but yours…” Chan trails, his nerves rallying once again.

“We’ll manage it together, then.”

Chan shakes his head. “It cannot be managed—there will be no hiding this. If they found out… We can’t stay here,” he says, eyes darting side to side as he deliberates.

“Are you suggesting that we… run away?”

“It was not what I had hoped for, nor what I wanted for you. Certainly not what should have been.” Chan huffs. “But I can see no other option.”

Minho sniffs, resting his head against Chan’s shoulder. “I do hope you have a plan, then,” he yawns. “I’m not allowed to discuss this, after all, so I shall rest until you’ve determined a course of action.”

“Excuse me?” Chan sputters, grabbing Minho’s shoulders to look him in the eye. “I will need your help, your input—I cannot sort this all out on my own.”

“I really am quite sorry,” Minho sighs, draping the back of his hand to his forehead to heighten the drama. “It’s just that—I can’t rightly speak on it.” He glances toward the window, squinting at the dark blue night speckled with stars. “Surely, it’s not yet past two o’clock, and I did promise someone rather dear that I’d refrain. ‘Through till morning,’ if I recall,” he explains, biting back a grin.

Chan’s lids flatten. “I see you’ve recovered your wits rather quickly, Your Highness,” he mutters before nipping Minho’s jaw and tackling him onto the bed.

“W–wait!” Minho chokes as Chan swivels his hips. Though he’d softened, his knot having subsided, Chan begins to stiffen again as he pushes deeper into Minho.

“Overwhelming, is it not?” he snickers, dusting kisses all over Minho’s face, smoke and spice thickening in the air.

“It’s not funny, this is—” Minho shivers, his legs beginning to quake of their own accord with all of Chan’s grinding. “This is serious, we must determine a plan.”

Chan barks a laugh, nuzzling against Minho’s ear. “I’m quite glad you agree, Your Highness,” He says, rising just enough to see Minho’s expression, to cup his cheek in a palm.

Minho’s mouth is pinched, brow furrowed, but Chan can’t sense any true irritation. Mostly what he feels is amusement—luminous and beaming with adoration—and he decides to bask in it. He plunges downward, swallowing Minho up in a kiss, and setting aside, for just a few moments more, the approach of inexorable dawn.

Minho’s arms thread around him, clutching tightly as his tongue gives chase, and love floods Chan’s chest such that his lungs can hardly find the space to breathe.

“You should have three days, at least. I’ll try for a week, but I can’t guarantee it.”

The forest trail Felix leads them down is familiar to Chan, but Minho had lost track after only a handful of turns. Now, after a solid hour’s walk, the brush has grown so dense that he can’t even determine if they’re on a path at all. 

“Three days should do, but I worry for you once the truth is discovered,” Chan says, dappled in afternoon sunlight as he pushes back a thorny branch to allow Felix and Minho to pass.

“There is no need,” Felix assures, stepping carefully over gnarled roots. “The doctor believes your medication was poorly prepared, that you’re enduring a rut. He’ll be keeping his distance as well. Once he discovers you both missing, he’ll have no choice but to feign ignorance of the whole ordeal. Revealing my hand would mean revealing his own.”

“I suppose,” Chan reluctantly agrees.

When they arrive at the edge of a clearing, sprawling green with patches of wildflowers, there’s a familiar brown mare tied to a nearby tree. Felix had brought her down just before dawn, while Chan and Minho gathered their supplies.

“Long time no see,” Minho says, scratching the horse’s neck with a rueful smile.

“Feels right that it would be her, does it not?” Chan asks, and Minho can feel his trepidation creeping through their bond. He worries Minho will regret this. That he already does.

Minho forces back a current of annoyance.

“You know,” Chan starts, eyes narrowing as he works to untie the horse’s lead rope, “some people might consider providing reassurance through their bond. Perhaps even a calming sensation.”

“Would they, now?” Minho replies, eyes widening with exaggerated surprise. “You know, I believe some might also consider taking their beloved at their word. Though I must confess, I cannot for the life of me imagine what that might be like.”

Felix giggles at the exchange, and they turn in unison to find his eyes watering, his nose gone red.

“You’ll join us when you’re ready, won’t you?” Minho asks as Chan places a foot in the stirrup and swings himself up into the saddle.

Felix smiles, swiping the back of his hand across his cheeks. “If I can convince him.”

“Changbin would pluck the moon from the sky at your request,” Chan says, extending a hand to help Minho up into the saddle in front of him.

“Indeed,” Felix agrees, scratching the horse's chest as Chan wraps an arm around Minho’s waist and gathers the reins. “But I cannot rob the night sky of its light. He is not like us; his family is here.”

“Well then,” Minho says, leaning back into Chan’s chest. “Thank him from us for the rations. We’ll send word when it’s safe, and if the time should come…”

“If the time should,” Felix agrees.

A gentle breeze accompanies them as they set out, carrying the mingled scents of the glade—earthy and sweet. Wild herbs and pine sap drift in the air, blending with the dust kicked up by their horse, and beneath it all, the faint perfume of wildflowers bowing listlessly under the sun’s warm dominion.

They follow the forest's perimeter, riding toward an uncertain destination and a vast unknowable future. Minho shifts between Chan’s arms, his fingers fidgeting restlessly over the pommel.

“What is it?” Chan asks over the sound of steady galloping.

Minho hesitates, his gaze flitting to a hint of movement in his periphery, but it is only a doe—her head raised, watching them pass.

“I can feel your agitation, Minho, what is it that disturbs you?”

“You’re quite positive this is what you want?” Minho asks quietly. “Even though it makes you a fugitive? Even though, should we be discovered, it is you who will surely bear the brunt of punishment?”

“Seeking some reassurance, are we?” Chan teases, a soft chuckle escaping his lips.

“Yes,” Minho admits, his shoulders stiffening, “I suppose I am.”

Chan tightens his hold on Minho’s waist. “This is what I want,” he offers simply. “Everything I could ever want.”

“You’re certain?”

Chan hooks his Chin over Minho’s shoulder, breathing warmly into the shell of his ear, and whispers,

“I would never lie to you.”