“At the time, my goal was to calm him and put him to sleep, so I didn’t insert myself, but after that… his pheromones grew stronger. The second time we slept together… you may not believe this, but from partway through, I couldn’t control my pheromones at all.”
By the time he was heading to Hong Kong, his interest and fascination with him had already taken on a complexity that could no longer be explained by pheromones alone, but there was no need to confess the tangled skein of his ambiguous feelings to the person on the other end. The goal was to find out anything he could about his identity in relation to his pheromones.
To lure the man, who seemed so cautious about sex he would likely hesitate even in a sufficiently large house just knowing someone else was inside, into his bed, he had insidiously moved his lodgings to a hotel, unlike his usual business trips, and had been anticipating and planning their second night together in advance. This, too, was a fact he had no need to be honest about.
“Oral, the nape of his neck, his groin, armpits, genitals, anus….”
The man, who had been listing these off in a dispassionate voice, trailed off, suddenly realizing he was disclosing his private life to the person on the other end. Although it was merely a conveyance of information, like reporting symptoms to a doctor for a diagnosis, he felt it would be unpleasant for the other person to learn the details of a stranger’s private life.
“I’m sorry, for making you listen to this….”
Perhaps receiving an assurance that it was fine, the man cleared his throat and continued.
“The fact that they were detected more strongly in places with developed sweat glands or strong body odor, in the soft membranous linings, and bodily fluids, was also consistent with the characteristics of pheromones. He also reacted more sensitively to my pheromones than before, becoming honest about his sexual desires to a degree unimaginable given his usual personality. When I inserted myself… we were both already completely dominated by our pheromones and not in our right minds, and by the time I came to my senses… I had already attempted knotting and even changing. I couldn’t… control or defend against anything….”
The man’s voice lost its strength toward the end, becoming dazed. With eyes more hollow than mere self-reproach could account for, like someone who had been stripped of even the final human right to control oneself as one wished, he cast a meaningless gaze at nothing in particular.
As if tracing the contents of a hazy, half-remembered dream, the man narrowed his eyes and slowly shook his head.
“I thought it was a mistake that could happen. I tried to stay calm, telling myself that. Why wouldn’t I? But, if he’s an Omega, the chance of pregnancy is over 90%, and if he’s a Beta, it means I attempted to change him… How… could I possibly be in my right mind.”
The man drained the glass, which now held only a sip or two of liquor, in one go. Wiping his lips roughly with the back of a hand where bluish veins ran down to his fingers, the man bent over and ruffled his hair.
“I know. A change doesn’t happen easily with just one or two attempts at changing. But… a defense that had never once been breached before was broken through so easily. And it was brought down by the most fragile enemy I could have ever imagined. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
The man’s bare shoulders and chest swelled, growing harder with his emotional agitation.
“What’s more surprising is that his insides were fine even after experiencing my ejaculation while knotted.”
He reached for his glass, but the liquor was already gone.
“Didn’t I tell you it was impossible? A Beta withstanding my knot? Twice? It’s impossible. You know that. A regular Omega’s inner walls would rupture, and even a Golden Omega would struggle. But he….”
Perhaps the person on the other end had cut in, as the man stopped, his words cut short, and hesitated like a scolded child.
A Beta withstanding my knot? Twice?
It seemed a reprimand had followed, questioning why he had created a situation for a second insertion where knotting could occur, despite the first mistake. The man dropped his gaze and bit his lip.
He had used the excuse of the pheromonal pull, which had grown stronger after the first insertion, but while he could deceive the person on the phone about not having actively tried to avoid such a situation, he could not deceive himself.
What if he hadn’t come up to his bedroom? Would he have gone to bed quietly?
What he could be sure of was that from the moment he saw him trembling in front of his house, drenched in rain, an intense rage—a desire to destroy whatever had done that to him—had flared up, and along with it, a sexual desire for him that burned as hot as that rage.
The man knew, through his education, what kind of instinct this terrifyingly strong rage and lust that seemed to envelop his being and lift it into the air was.
The protective instinct an Alpha develops for his Omega when he has maintained a steady relationship with only one Omega for a long time. It was, at the very least, the sensation most similar to that.
He also knew about the Alpha trait where an Alpha who remained faithful to one Omega would not hesitate to lay down his life for his Omega, though this had become rare in modern times as the physical circumstances for it had disappeared.
The biology teacher’s business-like explanation at the time—that it was because the safety of the Omega, who could become pregnant, was prioritized due to the biological characteristics of Alphas and Omegas, which put reproduction and procreation first… had displeased the man, as it seemed to define him as a being solely for breeding.
But if the rage and lust that had enveloped him at the front gate were an instinct close to an Alpha’s protective will for an Omega, the feeling itself was not as unpleasant as his theoretical aversion to it.
On the contrary, in that moment, there was no being in his eyes more pitiful and lovely, and it felt as if he could throw away everything he had if it meant he could protect him from danger and make him smile in peace… He had felt all his energy focus on the being before him with astonishing simplicity.
Such an unbecoming spirit of sacrifice did not make him feel displeased, but it was just as incomprehensible.
First of all, he was not his Omega, with whom he had a long-standing relationship. No, regardless of whether he was his Omega or not, he wasn’t even an Omega. How could his Alpha instincts be stimulated by him, whose very existence was uncertain?
“The second time, I was completely dominated by his pheromones, dragged along into knotting and then, changing. Because of the first mistake, I consciously struggled to not lose my own pace, but… it was useless. His pheromones were such that they seemed to intend and compel me to knot and change him. It’s no longer a matter of my pheromones stimulating and drawing out his….”
The man’s lips parted. Then, as if letting out a sigh, as if pushing out the cold wind pooled inside him, he spoke.
“What… is he?”
It seemed he had spun this long tale just to ask that one question.
“No. No, that’s not it.”
The man’s reaction to the answer from the other end of the phone was firm. He shook his head, denying it several times.
“The pheromones of an unstable and immature Omega? Is it possible for a Golden Alpha of my caliber… to be stimulated by the unstable pheromones of an immature Omega, not even a Golden Omega, and lose all control?”
In a steep surge of agitation, the man clutched his head as if in pain.
“If that’s the case… then what am I? Am I really a Golden Alpha? Am I a Ghost?”
His shoulders, hunched as he held his head, swelled and sank repeatedly in the darkness.
“I tried to calm down and be rational. Many times.”
His voice was pierced with the sharp desperation unique to a human trapped in deep regret, self-reproach, and the vagueness of an unknowable future.
“But lately, when I face him, I feel myself being helplessly drawn in. The most I can do is suppress my pheromones so I don’t release them at any given moment. And even that… the moment the place and conditions are right for us to be physical, I immediately enter a state where I want him so badly I could go insane. If he sends his pheromones to me first, I can’t resist at all. That the will to resist doesn’t even exist in my body, that I myself am utterly powerless before his pheromones….”
With his elbows on his thighs, the man lifted his head. He then opened his large palm and rubbed his lower face, as if to crush it.
“This… being occupied by something like pheromones, completely losing self-control and going into heat… was this pathetic thing what a Golden Alpha is, and did I train myself so hard just to become this kind of beast in the end.”
Now the man’s voice was instead subdued, empty. As was the gaze he fixed on the empty space before him.
At the words of comfort from the other end of the phone, the man let out a snort, as if he had heard a flat joke.
“I’m not afraid. I’m confused.”
In the end, he did not get a satisfying answer. But he hadn’t expected to get an immediate answer to such a complicated situation in the first place. It was a case that even he, who was quite well-versed in the knowledge of Alphas and Omegas, had never heard of, not even in rumors, and the person on the other end had also seemed considerably flustered.
He wanted to think that just confessing to a trustworthy person had unburdened him to some extent… but that wasn’t it. The problem was still right in front of him, and he had to face it with only his own strength.
“I’m going to Chicago in September for an exhibition. I’ll see you in person then. If you know or find out anything before then… Yes, then.”
Even after ending the call, the man remained frozen, his torso bent forward. Only after a long while did he straighten his back and press his eyelids, muttering a low curse.
As he stood up to have another glass of whiskey and walked toward the wet bar, his foot caught on the cord of a floor lamp stretching across the carpet. He reached out to grab the lamp as it started to fall forward, but the long, thin metal rod slipped past his hand by a hair’s breadth.
He managed to prevent the lampshade and bulb from shattering by catching it with his thigh and knee, but at a mistake that would have been unthinkable for him normally, the man spat out a stronger curse this time.
Forgetting he had been going to get a drink, he laid the lamp down on the carpet and sank to the floor. He blinked several times, squeezing his eyelids shut and opening them, then, as if in resignation, leaned his body against the sofa behind him and closed his eyes.
I’m not afraid, I’m confused. He had said it as if being afraid was an impossibility, but in truth, he couldn’t be sure.
He was no longer sure of anything. Not even his own existence.
If he faced a mirror, he felt he wouldn’t be able to find his own reflection in it. He couldn’t say that wasn’t fear.
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