Chapter 17
Chapter 17
“…Hngh…”
Tae-geon’s heart ached at the sight of Hyeon-woo clutching his lower abdomen in pain.
He needed to completely revise his plan.
He couldn’t keep tormenting Hyeon-woo with this ineffective method indefinitely.
It was a matter of compatibility. His pheromones weren’t compatible with Hyeon-woo. Tae-geon couldn’t understand the situation otherwise.
Not wanting to admit it, he blamed his own inexperience in pheromone control, but normally, a proper omega would become deliriously euphoric as an alpha’s pheromones intensified, not writhe in abdominal pain like this.
Was it because he was an incomplete omega? He couldn’t even properly receive what was being spoon-fed to him.
It was like pouring water into a bottomless jar. At this rate, it was clear that no matter how high-quality pheromones he poured out, he wouldn’t be able to end Hyeon-woo’s heat.
Tae-geon glanced at the window where dawn was breaking, then looked back at Hyeon-woo. He instinctively reached out to Hyeon-woo’s pale face, drenched in cold sweat, and was startled. His forehead was burning hot.
The heat, which should have ended around midnight, had been continuing for over eight hours. If this went on any longer, it could become truly dangerous. The craving must be severe, with the hole that needed to be filled left empty while being steeped in pheromones.
Moreover, this must be Hyeon-woo’s first heat cycle without sex with an alpha, so it must be hellish for him, having no immunity to this.
This night was equally torturous for Tae-geon. He hadn’t imagined that resisting an omega desperate to be taken would drain his mental strength this much.
Tae-geon moved his fingers from Hyeon-woo’s forehead to the black cloth covering his eyes. It was damp with Hyeon-woo’s tears.
How much has he cried?
Tae-geon furrowed his brow, looking troubled.
He wasn’t unaware of why Hyeon-woo had been spending his heats with alphas without using suppressants. He must have been using alpha pheromones to hide the fact that he had manifested as an omega.
While the thought of Hyeon-woo rolling around with other alphas made him furious, he also felt relieved that Hyeon-woo hadn’t taken suppressants.
Suppressants were drugs that suppressed heat by disrupting an omega’s autonomic nervous system. Not a few omegas died from shock or mysterious causes in their later years, and Tae-geon thought the cause might lie with suppressants.
Just counting the life sciences-related affiliates that the Taeryeong Group had recently spun off, there were too many to count on one hand. Moreover, after acquiring a university foundation several years ago and establishing a university hospital, the Taeryeong Group had grown to a level where discussing life sciences in Korea without mentioning them was impossible.
Having observed from the sidelines since childhood a company that had rapidly monopolized an industry with its abnormal structure, Tae-geon understood the workings of that world without anyone having to tell him.
Perhaps an ideal new drug with minimized side effects had already been developed. He could easily imagine their plan: hiding this fact, revealing the side effects of marketed suppressants through timely exposé media plays, and repeatedly releasing improved suppressants at higher prices, driving up the value of the new drug over several years.
Suppressants were directly related to omega rights and should have been classified as basic necessities managed by the government. The government should have directly managed quality and distribution, and supervised market prices based on cost verification, but due to inadequate social awareness, suppressants were still treated little differently from luxury goods.
It was none other than the state that had created this trend. Countless vested interests, including government departments and media outlets, were closely intertwined through various lobbying and kickbacks.
On the unofficial shareholder meeting attendance list of the group companies, Tae-geon had seen the names of leaders from various sectors who wielded state power. The situation abroad was no different. The entire world had formed a massive cartel centered around suppressants.
Until now, he had dismissed it as irrelevant to himself, but that was no longer the case. After Hyeon-woo manifested as an omega, Tae-geon felt as if the world around him had turned upside down. He couldn’t let Hyeon-woo become a sacrificial lamb to such a cartel. He would never feed suppressants to Hyeon-woo with his own hands.
If he couldn’t end Hyeon-woo’s heat cycle with pheromones or suppressants…
What Hyeon-woo needed most right now.
The veins bulging on the back of Tae-geon’s clenched fist looked savage.
Muttering a curse under his breath, Tae-geon irritably picked up the mobile phone he had placed on the bedside table.
“Find out if there are any dominant alphas. A dominant alpha with a functioning dick who can rush over here right now.”
*
The omega who gave birth to Tae-geon was raped by an alpha as soon as she manifested. Her assailant was the master of the mansion where she had been working as a maid. When it was discovered that she was pregnant, the omega was thrown out in the dead of winter without a penny to her name.
The omega had no family or friends to rely on. Without money for an abortion, she climbed up to a shantytown in the biting cold wind, heading for the makeshift houses.
In winter, elderly people living alone in tiny rooms would often freeze to death, unable to withstand the cold. Such places, known as “death houses,” were left unattended for long periods as no one wanted to rent them. The omega spent the winter moving between these empty houses.
She tried to earn money through honest labor, but at that time, omegas outside the social safety net were nothing more than prey for alphas, and she was pregnant on top of that. Far from finding work, she was often branded as a vulgar omega who couldn’t even take care of herself. For an omega with no education or possessions, there was only one option left to make ends meet.
The omega voluntarily sought out the back alleys where those who sold their bodies gathered. However, as her belly began to swell, even that became difficult. She would punch her growing belly day after day, cursing it to fall out. Her abdomen, bruised blue, was never without injury.
Please die.
Please die, darling.
The more the omega cursed the child to die, the more tenaciously it clung to life. The midwife who delivered the baby shook her head, saying it was born clutching the umbilical cord with both hands as if determined not to let go.
Despite being born burdened with karma like a curse, its lifeline was incredibly tough. To the omega who glared at her own child with murderous intent, the midwife advised that since the child was a dominant alpha, if she kept it, she might be able to make a fortune in the future. And so, the child survived.
Tae-geon’s earliest memory was of crouching on the ground, begging for money from passersby. The omegas in the back alleys relieved their stress from alphas by tormenting young Tae-geon. Being beaten became so routine that no amount of physical abuse fazed him anymore, but there was one thing even Tae-geon couldn’t bear.
As the sun set and twilight colored the sky, young Tae-geon would fervently pray every day, “Please don’t let the full moon rise tonight.”
The omega didn’t initially involve Tae-geon in her heat cycles.
It started as an accident.
On a full moon night, as Tae-geon wiped the cold sweat from the omega’s forehead with his tiny hands as she lay sweating from the onset of her heat cycle, it just so happened that she had run out of the suppressants she usually kept on hand.
From that day on, Tae-geon never saw suppressants in the house again. After that, the omega would call for Tae-geon during every heat cycle. Even Tae-geon, who had remained stoic in the face of various abuses, would cry all night when the full moon rose. The more Tae-geon screamed and suffered, the more ecstasy the omega felt.
You’re suffering like me. You understand my pain. You’re just like me.
The omega would cover Tae-geon’s mouth as he struggled to escape, curling her lips into a smile and shouting horrifically.
Ah! My baby. My beloved baby! My alpha!
The omega’s revolting pheromones that choked him and her red eyes that shone ominously as she looked at him.
The omega’s eyes spoke to Tae-geon.
Do you find omegas horrible? I find alphas horrible too.
Curse omegas as much as I curse alphas. Be as unhappy as I was unhappy.
One summer in August.
The omega hanged herself from a crossbeam.
In the sweltering heat. A black silhouette hanging against the sunlight pouring into the room filled with the stench of decay. That was the last image Tae-geon had of the omega who gave birth to him.
He wasn’t sad. No tears fell. He just came to find omegas terribly horrific.
Just as the omega had wished.
Tae-geon gave a bitter smile at the memory that suddenly surfaced.
The omega had been exactly Hyeon-woo’s current age when she took her last breath.
Tae-geon gently brushed Hyeon-woo’s hair with careful hands.
Whenever lustful gazes fell upon him, he would imagine gouging out their eyeballs. He wanted to mercilessly twist the necks of those who emitted that terrible pheromone, to stomp on their filthy lower bodies until they were unrecognizable. A destructive desire towards omegas boiled within him incessantly.
There was only one reason he had been able to resist such impulses.
Han Hyeon-woo.
Because he didn’t want to lose Hyeon-woo, because he wanted to share a future with Hyeon-woo, he had been able to resist the instincts that were eating away at his self until now.
Tae-geon was afraid, terrified that these dangerous and cruel impulses of his towards omegas might one day be directed at Hyeon-woo.
He felt a fear beyond fear that he might one day feel the same hatred, the same nauseating disgust towards Hyeon-woo as he did towards them, that his destructive urges might end up breaking Hyeon-woo, that the world he had built through Hyeon-woo might be utterly shattered by Hyeon-woo. He hated and abhorred the omega that made him feel such fear about his precious Hyeon-woo.
Tae-geon’s eyes trembled erratically as he looked down at Hyeon-woo.
Hyeon-woo.
You know what?
Tae-geon withdrew his hand from caressing Hyeon-woo’s hair and clenched his fist tightly.
“I find omegas absolutely horrific.”