Chapter 3: Claimed in Daylight
Donghae surfaced from a sleep so deep it felt like drowning in black velvet. Consciousness returned in layers. First, the ache. A deep, bruised throbbing in his hips, his lower back, the tender junction between his thighs. A sweet, persistent soreness that radiated with every slight shift. He was sticky, skin tacky with dried sweat and other things.
He shifted his legs. A crust of dried, flaking seed pulled at his inner thigh. The memory of its heat, the endless pulses of it filling him, flooded his senses, making his stomach clench.
The second layer was scent. It was everywhere. It was the room. Hyukjae’s dark, possessive Alpha musk was woven into the very fabric of the sheets, the pillows, the air he breathed. Underneath it, sharper now that the fever had passed, was his own Omega scent—cleaner, like sea air after a storm, but irrevocably tangled with the other. They were one smell. A banner hanging in the still room.
The third was warmth. A solid line of heat pressed against his back. And a hardness. Hyukjae, even in sleep, was firm and insistent against the curve of his ass.
A low hum vibrated through Donghae’s chest, unbidden. A contented sound. He pressed back, a fractional movement, seeking more of that blunt pressure. The arm slung over his waist tightened, pulling him flush.
Hyukjae’s lips brushed the nape of his neck. “You’re awake.” His voice was sleep-rough, a pleasant scrape against Donghae’s nerves.
“Mmm.”
“How do you feel?” The question was careful, laced with a concern that felt incongruous with the hard line of his cock nudging Donghae’s crease.
Donghae considered. His body felt used. Wrecked. Resonant, like a bell that had been struck too hard. His mind was quiet, the frantic, desperate claws of the heat gone, replaced by a heavy-limbed clarity. “Sore,” he said truthfully. “Sticky. Good.”
Hyukjae’s hand began to move. It slid from his waist, mapping the territory it found. His palm smoothed over Donghae’s flank, his fingers tracing the raised welts left by his own grip the night before. He found a love bite on Donghae’s shoulder, pressing his thumb into the purple bloom. Donghae hissed, a spark of pain-pleasure arcing through him.
“I marked you up,” Hyukjae murmured, no apology, just a feral sort of pride. His hand continued south, over the curve of Donghae’s ass, his fingers slipping through the cleft to brush against his hole. It was puffy, sensitive, and embarrassingly wet. Fresh slickness had gathered, the Omega body’s stupid, eager response even after the storm had passed. Hyukjae made a low sound in his throat, circling the rim. “Still so open. Still leaking for me.”
Donghae closed his eyes, his face heating. “Shut up.”
“Why?” Hyukjae’s finger pushed in, just to the first knuckle, and Donghae’s hips jerked. It was so easy. His body yielded without thought, a well-used sheath. “It’s the truth. Your body remembers what it’s for. What we did to it.” He added a second finger, a slow, twisting stretch that made Donghae gasp. “All those times. Fucking you on your back. On your knees. In the shower. Riding me. Telling me to breed you.”
“Stop.” The word was weak, a whisper.
Hyukjae’s fingers stilled, but didn’t withdraw. “Do you want me to stop?”
Donghae didn’t answer. He pushed back against the intrusion, answering with his body. Hyukjae understood. He removed his fingers with a wet sound that sent a jolt of shameful arousal straight to Donghae’s cock.
Then, in one smooth, powerful motion, he rolled Donghae onto his stomach. The pillows swallowed his startled gasp. Hyukjae’s weight settled over him, not crushing, but enveloping. He kissed the back of Donghae’s neck, his shoulders, the knobs of his spine. His hands slid under Donghae’s hips, lifting them, arranging him. Presenting him.
Donghae buried his face in the pillow that smelled like sex and them. His heart hammered against his ribs. This position felt more vulnerable than all the others. He couldn’t see Hyukjae. He could only feel. Anticipation was a live wire under his skin.
He felt the broad, hot head of Hyukjae’s cock nudge his entrance. It wasn’t the frantic, slamming push from the peak of his heat. It was slow. Deliberate.Torturous. Hyukjae applied pressure, letting the resistance build before yielding, millimeter by millimeter, until the fat head popped past the tight ring of muscle.
Donghae moaned, the sound muffled by linen. His fingers clawed at the sheets.
“Easy,” Hyukjae soothed, but his voice was strained with his own control. He didn’t thrust. He sank. An endless, melting slide that filled Donghae so completely, so deeply, it felt less like being fucked and more like being inhabited. His breath hitched in ragged sobs as Hyukjae bottomed out, hips flush against his ass, the sheer, stretching fullness stealing the air from his lungs.
Hyukjae held there, buried to the hilt, his body trembling with the effort of stillness. He leaned down, his chest plastered to Donghae’s sweaty back, his lips against his ear. “You take me so deep like this,” he breathed. “Feel it? Every inch. In your gut.”
Donghae could only nod, a frantic little motion. He was stretched, pinned, speared. The ache was profound, a sweet, relentless pressure on something essential inside him. He felt owned. In a way that was calm, certain, and terrifyingly right.
Then Hyukjae began to move. Withdrawing almost completely, until just the tip caught, then sliding back in with that same slow, devastating precision. Each stroke was a lesson in patience, a deep, grinding caress that dragged over every raw, sensitive nerve. It wasn’t about frantic release. It was reclamation. It was affirmation.
Donghae sobbed into the pillow. Tears, different from the night before, wet the fabric. These weren’t tears of fear or breaking. They were tears of overwhelming sensation, of a connection so physical it blurred into something spiritual. His body clenched rhythmically around the thick intrusion, milking it, begging for more even as it screamed at the intensity.
“That’s it,” Hyukjae grunted, his rhythm faltering for a second, succumbing to a harder, faster thrust before he wrestled it back to that maddening, deep cadence. “Squeeze me just like that. Fuck, you’re perfect. Gonna make me come just like this, fucking you slow and deep. Gonna fill you up all over again. Keep you full of me.”
His words, filthy and reverent, were the final trigger. Donghae’s orgasm built from his toes, a slow-rising tide rather than a crashing wave. It crested without his cock ever being touched, wrenched from him by the relentless, deep friction alone. He cried out, his body seizing, clamping down on Hyukjae in a series of pulsing, convulsive grips.
The violent tightness pulled Hyukjae over. With a guttural roar, he slammed home and locked, his hips grinding in shallow circles as his knot swelled rapidly, irrevocably, locking them together. The hot, liquid pulse of his release seemed to go on forever, flooding the already-overflowing channel. Donghae whimpered, oversensitive and raw, as he felt the stretch of the knot, the final, plugging claim.
Hyukjae collapsed onto him, his weight a crushing comfort. They were stuck, tied, his release leaking out around the knot in a warm trickle. Hyukjae kissed his shoulder, his neck, his hair. “Okay?” he panted.
Donghae nodded, his face still hidden. “Yeah.”
They lay like that until the knot subsided, a slow, softening separation that was its own intimate agony. Hyukjae rolled off, pulling Donghae with him so they lay on their sides, facing each other. The morning sun was properly high now, cutting bright stripes across the wreckage of the bed.
Hyukjae looked wrecked. His hair was a mess, dark circles under his eyes. He looked more sated than Donghae had ever seen him. He reached out, tracing the line of Donghae’s jaw. “You’re gonna be sore for a week.”
“I know.”
“Hungry?”
“Starving.” He was. A hollow, gnawing emptiness in his belly that had nothing to do with sex.
“Stay. I’ll bring you something.”
Hyukjae slipped from the bed, his naked body moving with a tired grace. Donghae watched him go, listened to him pad to the kitchen. He felt… quiet. The seismic shift had happened. The landscape of his life was permanently altered. The scent on his skin was a collar he had asked for.
He dozed, drifting in the warm pool of sunlight until Hyukjae returned with a tray: toast, orange juice, a bowl of yogurt with honey. He set it on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed.
“You should eat.”
Donghae sat up, wincing at the protest from his muscles. He took a slice of toast. It tasted like ashes. His stomach churned. He took a bite, forced it down. The smell of the honey in the yogurt suddenly seemed cloying, sickly sweet. A wave of nausea rose, sharp and undeniable. He shoved the tray away, bolting from the bed and stumbling to the connected bathroom.
He made it just in time, collapsing on his knees as his stomach violently emptied itself of the single bite of toast and nothing else. Dry heaves wracked him long after there was nothing left.
He felt Hyukjae’s presence in the doorway, a silent, worried shape. When the spasms passed, Donghae leaned his head against the cool porcelain, spent. He reached up, flushed the toilet, his hand trembling.
It wasn't the heat. The fever was gone.
A cold, clear knowing settled in its place. He remembered his own words, screamed into the steam of the shower, into the dark of the room. "Put a pup in me."
“Hae?” Hyukjae’s voice was soft, afraid.
Donghae pushed himself up on shaky legs. He turned on the tap, splashed cold water on his face. He caught Hyukjae’s eyes in the mirror. His own were wide, dark pools of shock.
“It’s too soon,” Hyukjae said, as if reading the terrifying thought. “It’s just… aftermath. Your system is shocked. The suppressants, the heat… it’s a lot.”
Donghae nodded, wanting to believe it. But his body, which had just been so loudly, viscerally communicative, had gone eerily quiet. He turned off the water. “I need a shower. A real one.”
“Okay.”
An hour later, clean, dressed in soft sweatpants and one of Hyukjae’s old shirts, Donghae sat on the sofa. The domestic normalcy of it was surreal. Hyukjae was on the phone in the kitchen, his voice low, canceling meetings for the week. His voice was calm, professional. The Alpha who had growled filth into his ear was tucked away.
Donghae’s hand drifted to his own flat stomach. A hollow thrum of fear, or maybe anticipation, vibrated there.
Hyukjae came back in, sitting beside him, not too close. Giving him space. “I cleared my schedule. We can just… be. However you need.”
“What if it’s not just aftermath?” Donghae asked, his eyes fixed on the blank television screen.
Hyukjae was silent for a long time. “Then we deal with it.”
“I’m not… I wasn’t built for that. I never planned…”
“I know.” Hyukjae’s hand covered his on his stomach, warm and sure. “But if it’s true… it’s ours. And we’ll deal with it. Together.”
The word together hung in the air. It felt heavier than love, more binding than mate. It was a promise that stretched into a terrifying, possible future.
Donghae looked at him, really looked. He saw the exhaustion, the concern, the unwavering steadiness. He saw the man who had shattered him and put him back together with a new, fundamental piece of himself lodged inside.
He turned his hand, lacing his fingers with Hyukjae’s.
“Okay,” he whispered.
It wasn't acceptance.Not yet. It was a ceasefire with the universe. A pause on the precipice of a cliff, looking down into a foggy, unimaginable valley. But Hyukjae’s hand was in his. The scent that filled the apartment was theirs.
For now, it had to be enough.
For now, it had to be enough.
Two weeks carved a new, tentative shape into their lives. The initial shock, the haunting possibility of a pup, receded into a background hum when Donghae’s body stabilized, his cycle refusing to clarify yes or no. They existed in a strange, shared breath. Hyukjae’s care was a constant, quiet force—meals prepared, soft clothes laid out, his touch always gentle, asking permission.
Their sex during those weeks was different. It was deliberate, almost cautious. Hyukjae would open him with a torturous, worshipful slowness, his kisses apologetic. Donghae would arch into it, savoring the fullness, but he missed the feral edge, the Hyukjae who had roared and claimed. He’d claw at Hyukjae’s back, whispering, “I’m not glass,” but Hyukjae would just shush him, moving with a maddening, protective tenderness.
Then, on a Tuesday evening thick with humid air, the change began.
Donghae was washing dinner dishes. Hyukjae came up behind him, pressing close, nosing at his gland. His breath was scorching. “Hae.”
The single word was strained, shredded. Donghae turned, his hands dripping. Hyukjae’s eyes were black, wide, the pupils swallowing the brown. A fine tremor ran through his arms. His scent, usually so controlled, was a crashing wave of pine and dark soil and something sharply metallic. It filled the kitchen, aggressive and suffocating.
“Hyuk?”
“It’s… a rut.” Hyukjae choked out the words as if they were shards of glass. He took a stumbling step back, hitting the counter. “Fuck. I haven’t had one in years. Not since before… you. I need to… I should go. Lock myself in the spare room. I don’t want to scare you. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Fear, acrid and bright, flashed in his eyes. It was the fear of the beast he carried inside. The fear of becoming what Donghae had once hated.
Donghae looked at him. He saw the man who had spent two weeks treating him like a precious relic. He felt the ghost-ache of his own heat, the desperation, the animal need that had stripped him bare. A slow smile touched his lips, then a chuckle bubbled up from his chest.
He laughed. A real, unfettered sound.
Hyukjae stared, bewildered, his knuckles white where he gripped the counter. “What? Why are you laughing? This isn’t funny.”
“It is,” Donghae said, wiping his hands on a towel. He walked toward him, each step deliberate. The scent should have sent him cowering. It ignited something else entirely. A calm, solid certainty. “For two weeks, you’ve been walking on eggshells. Treating me like I’ll break. Now look at you.” He stopped a breath away, tilting his head. “You’re the one coming apart.”
“That’s the point,” Hyukjae gritted out, his body trembling with the effort to stay still. “I lose control. I get rough. Animalistic. I could—”
“You could what?” Donghae interrupted, his voice dropping, a challenge. “Fuck me hard? Use me? Isn’t that what you think I’m afraid of?” He placed a palm flat on Hyukjae’s heaving chest. The heart beneath hammered against his hand. “You took care of my heat. Every raw, filthy second of it. You gave me exactly what I needed, even when I was sobbing for it.”
He leaned in, his lips brushing the shell of Hyukjae’s ear. “Now it’s my turn.”
Hyukjae shuddered violently. “Donghae…”
“No.” Donghae’s hand slid down, palming the rigid, daunting bulge in Hyukjae’s pants. He was already leaking, the dampness seeping through the fabric. “No spare room. You’re not locking yourself away. This is what you are. And I want all of it.”
He dropped to his knees right there on the kitchen tile.
The view was obscene. The thick line of Hyukjae’s cock strained against his zipper. Donghae made quick work of the button and fly, pulling the fabric down just enough to free him. He sprang out, fully erect, ruddy and veined, the head glistening. The scent of pure, uncut Alpha musk here was overpowering, a biological command.
Donghae didn’t hesitate. He didn’t tease. He took the whole head into his mouth, sucking hard, his tongue swiping the slit to taste the bitter-salt pre-come.
Hyukjae cried out, a raw, broken sound. His hands flew to Donghae’s hair, not guiding, just fisting, holding on. “Oh god. Oh fuck. Hae—”
Donghae took more, relaxing his throat, working down the formidable length until his nose pressed into the coarse hair at the base. He sucked like he was starving, hollowing his cheeks, using his hand to stroke what he couldn’t take. He wanted to drown in it. To consume this primal part of Hyukjae that was surfacing.
“Yeah, just like that, use your mouth, fuck, your mouth is so good—” Hyukjae’s words tumbled out, filthy and grateful, his hips beginning a shallow, involuntary thrust. Donghae let him, relaxing his throat, taking the gentle fucking. His own cock throbbed in his sweats, neglected, a secondary concern.
This was service. This was power. The Omega on his knees, willingly, joyfully swallowing down his Alpha’s rut.
He pulled off with a wet pop, saliva stringing from his lips. He looked up, meeting Hyukjae’s wild, desperate gaze. “You need to come in something tighter.”
He stood, turned, and bent over the kitchen table, pushing their plates aside with a clatter. He shoved his own sweats and underwear down to his knees. “Do it. Right here. I’m ready.”
He was. His body, still loose and responsive from weeks of constant attention, wept slickness. He presented himself, open and wanting.
Hyukjae was on him in an instant. No prep, no gentle guidance. His hands gripped Donghae’s hips, fingers biting deep into the flesh. The blunt, wet head of his cock nudged the fluttering entrance and pushed. It was one relentless, burning slide, a filling so immediate and complete it stole Donghae’s vision for a second. The air left his lungs in a punched-out gasp.
Hyukjae didn’t pause. He set a brutal, piston-like rhythm, slamming into him with a force that shook the table. Each thrust drove a grunt from Donghae’s chest. It was raw, uncivilized fucking. Exactly what they both needed.
“Is this—” Hyukjae panted, his voice unrecognizable, guttural, “—is this what you wanted? This crude shit? Fucking you like an animal?”
“Yes!” Donghae shouted back, the word morphing into a moan as a particular deep stroke lit his nerves on fire. “Harder! Use me! This is what you are! Give it to me!”
The permission shattered the last of Hyukjae’s restraint. He fucked into Donghae with a mindless, driving force. The table screeched across the floor with their momentum. One hand fisted in Donghae’s hair, pulling his head back. The other hand slid around his hip, rough fingers wrapping around Donghae’s aching cock, stroking him in a harsh, jerking rhythm that matched his thrusts.
The dual assault was overwhelming. Pain and pleasure fused into a single, white-hot wire. Donghae chanted nonsense, a litany of “yes” and “more” and “Hyuk, please.” He was a vessel, being filled and used, and a profound, shocking joy roared through him with every slam of Hyukjae’s hips.
“Gonna knot you,” Hyukjae snarled, his thrusts becoming erratic, shorter, deeper. “Gonna lock my fucking knot in this perfect cunt and pump you so full you’ll taste it for a week.”
The vulgar promise tipped Donghae over. His orgasm ripped through him, violent and blinding, his come striping the table leg and floor as his body clamped down viscously on the cock pounding him open. The intense, pulsing tightness triggered Hyukjae’s. With a roar, he slammed home, his knot swelling rapidly, thick and unforgiving, tying them together as he emptied himself in hot, endless spurts.
They collapsed over the table, a mess of panting, sweaty limbs. Hyukjae’s weight was heavy, crushing. His mouth was on Donghae’s neck, not biting, but open, panting against the skin. The rut’s fever hadn’t broken. It had only been momentarily sated.
Donghae, impaled and filled, reached a hand back, tangling his fingers in Hyukjae’s damp hair. He felt the knot, the ultimate claim, and smiled, spent and victorious.
“See?” he whispered, his voice rough. “I can take it. I can take all of you.”
Hyukjae made a sound, half-sob, half-groan, and held him tighter. The kitchen was a wreck. They were a wreck. The scent of sex and rut was overwhelming.
Donghae knew it wasn't over. The rut would last for days. There would be more. On the floor, in the shower, against every wall. His body would be used relentlessly.
He closed his eyes, waiting for the knot to soften, a deep contentment settling in his bones. He was finally returning the favor. Serving his Alpha. And he was enjoying every single, raw, filthy second of it.