Sunlight. That’s the first thing I register. A sharp, unforgiving blade of it slicing across an unfamiliar ceiling. My head is full of cotton and broken glass. I’m half on, half off a bed, one leg dangling in space, my cheek pressed into a pillow that smells wrong. It’s not the usual sweetness of whatever omega I usually end up with. It’s clean, cold. Like winter air and ink.
Fuck.
I try to push myself up, and a chorus of agony answers. My shoulder screams, a sharp, stinging protest. My back feels like I went ten rounds with a cement mixer. And when I try to shift myhips, to sit up properly, a deep, throbbing ache blooms low in my spine, radiating directly to my asshole.
The air is thick and suffocating. Something primal and heavy. Pheromones. Mine, the aggressive spice of rum and musk, are clinging to the sheets, smelling sharp and desperate. But they’re tangled up with another scent, that infuriatingly clean, cold smell of winter. The two are woven together, a cloying miasma of alpha-on-alpha. The room stinks of sex.
My stomach lurches.
There’s a weight in the bed beside me. A solid wall of heat pressed against my back. A slow, even rhythm of breathing that isn’t mine. My own breath catches in my throat, a ragged, panicked thing.
Don’t turn. Don’t look. If I don’t look, it’s not real.
But I have to. I force my head to turn, my neck protesting with a stiff crack. My eyes, gritty and sore, struggle to focus on the figure beside me.
And then I see the unmistakable form of Kang Donghwa.
He’s sprawled on his stomach, face turned toward me, mouth slightly parted in sleep. His black hair is a disaster on the pillow. One long, leanly muscled arm is thrown over my waist, holding me in place like I’m some kind of fucking teddy bear. He’s naked. Covers tossed half over his back, but I see the line of one lean thigh and a sharp hipbone.
Horror, cold and absolute, floods my system.
It all comes crashing back. Not in a gentle wave, but like a fucking pallet of bricks. The party. Heesung draped all over him. The red haze of my anger. Dragging him into the empty room.
“I could even have you.”
The memory of my own stupid, arrogant words makes me want to vomit.
I kissed him first. The initial surge of my own dominance, trying to force him into submission, and then the shocking,instantaneous flip. Donghwa’s tongue, not resisting, but invading, taking control. The clash of teeth. The dizzying, head-spinning scent of two alphas locked in a dominance war.
The wrestling. The crash of a lamp. Being flattened face-first onto the mattress, the inescapable weight of him settling over my thighs.
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
The glint in his eyes as he wet his fingers in his own mouth. The humiliating, unwanted pleasure as he prepped me. The agonizing burn of him pushing inside, stretching me, filling me until my vision went spotty.
And then the knot.
My own voice screaming, begging him to pull out. The feeling of being split open, the terror mixing with a sick, traitorous pleasure. The sharp, searing pain in my shoulder as his teeth sank in.
I look at him, this bastard sleeping peacefully beside me, and I see it all. I see myself, Oh Sihwan, the king of this campus, pinned and taken by a freshman. By another Alpha. I was knotted. Bitten.
The thought is so vile, so fundamentally wrong, it feels like acid crawling up my throat. A silent scream builds inside my chest, a pressure cooker of shame and rage. I have to get out of here. Now.
I hold my breath, my lungs burning with the effort, and carefully lift Donghwa’s arm off my waist. It’s heavy, dense with that lean muscle that I hate so much, and warm. Disgustingly warm. I pinch his wrist between my thumb and forefinger, treating it like a dead rat, and inch away until I can roll off the mattress.
My feet hit the floor, and I immediately regret being born.
A sharp, tearing pain shoots up my backside, so intense I have to grab the edge of the nightstand to keep from crumbling. Myknees buckle.Motherfucker.It feels like I’ve been impaled on a fence post. I grit my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut until stars explode behind my eyelids.
I’m an Alpha. I’m Oh Sihwan. I bench press twice my body weight. I do not get taken apart like a cheap folding chair.
But the evidence is everywhere. My boxers are under the desk. My jeans are in a heap near the door. My shirt—God, my favorite limited edition release—is draped over the lampshade of the lamp we knocked over.
I move like a geriatric man, shuffling across the carpet. Every step sends a fresh wave of misery through my hips. I snatch up my boxers, my face burning as I see the dried, crusty evidence of last night staining the fabric. I can’t put those on. I’d rather go commando than slide into that humiliation. I kick them under the bed. Let Donghwa find them and choke on them.
I wrestle into my jeans, a process that requires a level of gymnastics my battered body isn't ready for. Zipping them up puts pressure on my stomach that makes me nauseous. I grab my shirt, sniffing it. It smells like him. Like cold air and ginseng and that infuriatingly smug alpha pheromone. I gag, but I pull it on anyway. It’s better than being naked in the enemy’s camp.
I risk one last look at the bed. Donghwa hasn't moved. He’s sleeping the sleep of the satisfied, face buried in the pillow, back rising and falling in a slow, mocking rhythm under the covers.
