"Keira. What's wrong? Are you okay?" Jae-won said, already rising from his chair, his dark eyes scanning me for signs of distress, his broad shoulders squaring with attention.
"I'm fine." I said quickly, holding up a hand to stop him, my voice soft in the quiet room. "I just... I need to talk to you. Privately."
"Of course." Jae-won closed his laptop, abandoning whatever work had kept him up this late, his movements careful and deliberate. "Here? Or..."
"Somewhere more comfortable?" I suggested, my voice smaller than I intended, vulnerability coating every syllable. "Your room, maybe? I don't want to wake the others."
Something shifted in his expression — surprise, then understanding, then something deeper that I couldn't quite name. Asking to go to his room, just the two of us... it was significant.
Let him in,my omega urged.Show him we trust him.
"This way." Jae-won said, his voice low, gesturing toward the door that connected his office to his bedroom. I'd never been in his room before. It was exactly what I would have expected — clean, minimal, organized. A large bed with dark grey sheets, a bookshelf lined with management books and poetry collections, a single framed photo of the pack on his nightstand.
"Sit. Please." Jae-won gestured toward the bed, then seemed to second-guess himself, running a hand through his already disheveled hair. "Or the chair, if you'd prefer?—"
"The bed is fine." I settled onto the edge of the mattress, pulling my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. His scent surrounded me, warm and grounding. He moved carefully, settling beside me but leaving space betweenus, his tall frame tense with uncertainty. Even here, in his own space, he was giving me room. Giving me choices.
"What did you want to talk about?" Jae-won asked, his voice low and careful, his dark eyes patient on my face, his hands resting on his knees. I took a breath, trying to organize the thoughts that had been spinning through my head all night.
"You always ask what I want." I said finally, meeting his gaze directly, my grey eyes holding his nearly-black ones. "In every conversation, every discussion. You ask what I need, what I'm comfortable with, what I'm ready for."
"Of course. This is your choice. Your life. Your—" Jae-won nodded slowly, a slight furrow appearing between his brows, confusion flickering in his expression.
"You never say what you want." I cut in gently, watching something flicker in his dark eyes, something quickly suppressed. "Not once. Not really. You speak for the pack, you explain the options, you make sure I understand everything. But Jae-won... what do you want?"
The question hung between us, heavy with meaning. I watched him struggle with it — watched the pack alpha instincts war with something more personal, something he kept carefully locked away.
"My wants aren't—" Jae-won started, his voice rough, his jaw tightening.
"Important?" I finished when he trailed off, my voice soft but insistent. "Relevant? That's not true. You're not just the pack alpha. You're one of my alphas. One of five. And I need to know what you want. Not what's best for the pack. Not what's strategically sound. What you, Jae-won Choi, actually want."
The silence stretched, thick and charged. I could see him fighting with himself — the careful control he always maintained cracking at the edges.
"I want..." Jae-won's voice came out rough, his dark eyes dropping to his hands, his fingers curling into fists on his knees. "I want things I have no right to want. Things I've spent my whole life being told alphas shouldn't demand."
"Tell me anyway. Please." I leaned forward slightly, my heart pounding, my grey eyes searching his face. When he looked up, his eyes had shifted — the near-black deepening, flashing with alpha-gold around the edges. Raw. Unguarded. It should have been terrifying.
It wasn't.
"I want Option B." Jae-won said, the words coming out like they were being pulled from somewhere deep, his voice low and intense, his whole body tense with the effort of confession. "I want the bonds to complete. I want to spend your heat with you, inside you, claiming you in every way possible."
My breath caught, heat flooding through me at the rawness in his voice.
"I want to mark you." Jae-won continued, his voice dropping lower, his eyes never leaving mine, his cedar scent sharpening with emotion. "I want to sink my teeth into your bonding gland and leave a scar that tells everyone who sees it that you're ours.Mine.I want every alpha who ever looks at you to know they can't have you. I want every omega who ever sees you to know you're claimed. Completely. Permanently."
The possessiveness in his voice should have terrified me. Should have sent me running, reminded me of every warning my mother ever gave about bonds — how powerful they were, how permanent, how breaking one could destroy you.
It didn't.
Yes,my omega purred, something primal stirring in my chest.His. Theirs. Ours.
"I want you in our nest every night." Jae-won was still talking, the dam broken now, words pouring out, his handsunclenching to reach toward me before he stopped himself, his jaw tight with restraint. "I want to wake up surrounded by your scent. I want to watch you write songs and know that some of them are about us. I want to protect you from everyone who ever hurt you and everyone who ever might."
He took a shuddering breath, his eyes closing for a moment before opening again, the alpha-gold fading back to near-black.
"I want everything." Jae-won said quietly, his voice rough with emotion, his expression vulnerable in a way I'd never seen from him before. "And I've spent the last week terrified of wanting it too much. Of scaring you away. Of asking you to risk something that destroyed your mother."
The mention of my mother hit something in my chest. The fear I'd been carrying, the warnings echoing in my head — he knew. He'd been carrying it too.
