Chapter 6: The Choice
The scent was the first thing that hit him—old paper, dust, and the ghost of his teenage self, a boy who smelled of aspirations and cheap body spray. It was utterly alien. There was no trace of coffee, of clean linen, of Hyukjae. Donghae stood in the doorway of his old bedroom, a place he hadn’t slept in for years, and felt like an intruder.
He’d fled here after the call. After Heechul’s voice, sharp with uncharacteristic fear, had sliced through the fragile peace they’d built.
“It’s bad, Hae. The car… it’s totaled. They’ve got him in surgery. Internal bleeding. They won’t let anyone in.”
The penthouse, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and Hyukjae in every molecule of air, had become a torture chamber. So he’d driven on autopilot, back to this suburban silence, to his parents’ empty house while they vacationed abroad. He’d walked in, gone straight to the linen closet, pulled out every spare blanket and sheet, and then, trembling, he’d unpacked the single duffel bag he’d thrown together. He’d pulled out one of Hyukhae’s worn-in hoodies, a soft t-shirt, a pair of sweatpants that carried his alpha’s musk deep in the fibers. He’d built a nest on the twin bed, a pathetic, desperate circle of fabric that smelled like the only thing that could keep him sane.
Now, he sat in the center of it, his back against the headboard. The faded poster of a soccer player curled at the edges. A dusty model plane sat on the shelf. This room was a museum to a person who no longer existed, a person who hadn’t known what it was to have his guts scooped out through his throat.
The ultrasound photo was warm in his hand, the paper crinkling from how often he’d clutched it. It wasn’t the clear, congratulatory image from movies. It was a grainy, black-and-white landscape of shadows and echoes. Two small, pulsing sacs. Two heartbeats, flickering like distant stars on the monitor. The technician had pointed, her voice clinical. “There. And there. You’re having twins.”
He hadn’t told Hyukjae.
The thought was a barbed wire garrote around his lungs. He’d been waiting for the right moment, nursing the secret like a stolen ember, wanting to see that devastating joy light up Hyukjae’s face when the world felt stable again. After the last false negative, they’d been cautious. Happy, but guarding their hearts. And now… now Hyukjae might never see it.
The phone rang, shattering the dusty silence. Heechul’s name flashed.
Donghae fumbled, almost dropping it. “Hello?”
“He’s out of surgery.” Heechul’s voice was drained. “They stopped the bleeding. He’s in the ICU. Sedated. They won’t know about brain function or… other damage until he wakes up. If he wakes up.”
The if hung in the air, a monstrous, silent syllable.
“Can I see him?”
“They’re only letting immediate family in right now. His parents are here. I’ve tried to explain, but the hospital’s dynamic protocols…” Heechul trailed off, the unspoken words clear. You’re not his bonded mate. You have no legal standing. You’re just an omega.
The old fury, the one that had been soothed by Hyukjae’s hands and promises, sparked back to life. It was white-hot and desperate. “I’m carrying his children,” Donghae said, his voice low and vicious. “I am immediate.”
A pause. “You’re what?”
“Twins.” The word felt like a confession and a weapon. “I have the ultrasound in my hand. Tell them that. Tell them if they don’t let me in, I’ll call every news outlet and tell them this hospital is denying a pregnant omega access to the alpha who fathered his pups.”
He heard Heechul’s sharp intake of breath, then a low, approving chuckle. It was devoid of humor. “That’s my Hae. Okay. Give me the photo. I’ll make it happen. Be here in an hour.”
The call ended. The silence rushed back in, but it was different now. Charged. He was vibrating with a terrible, galvanizing energy. He looked around the shrine of his childhood, at the posters of heroes who couldn’t save anyone, and felt a profound disconnect. This wasn't him. The person he was now—the one knotted, claimed, filled with life—was a creature forged in Hyukjae’s penthouse, against his glass windows, in his bed.
He needed to feel that. He needed to feel him.
His hand slid under the borrowed hoodie, his fingers splaying over the still-flat plane of his stomach. A different touch than in the foyer days ago. Then, it had been about absence. Now, it was about presence. His pups. Their pups. A fierce, possessive need roared through him, a physical ache that centered deep in his guts and between his legs.
He shucked off the sweatpants, pushing them out of the nest. The cool air of the unused room hit his bare thighs. He kept the hoodie on, pulling the collar up to his nose, inhaling until his head swam with the fading scent of Hyukjae’s skin, his shampoo, him.
His cock was already half-hard, a needy, indifferent response to the storm in his head. He didn’t stroke it. He reached further back, his fingers finding the pucker of his hole, still loose, still remembering. He’d showered before he left, but he could still feel the ghost of Hyukjae’s girth, the deep, full ache that was now a comfort.
He spit into his palm, a crude, wet sound in the quiet room. He slicked his fingers and pushed one inside himself. It wasn’t enough. It was a mockery. He added a second, scissoring them, fucking himself with his own hand, but the stretch was pathetic. He needed the burn, the split, the ownership. He needed to be fucked so full he couldn’t think, couldn’t fear, couldn’t see anything but the alpha who put him in this state.
“Fuck,” he whispered to the empty room, his voice ragged. He twisted his fingers, searching for that spot that made his vision blur. He found it, a sharp, electric pulse that made his toes curl and his cock leak a hot stripe onto his belly. He rubbed it furiously, his hips pumping against his own hand. He imagined it wasn’t his fingers. He imagined Hyukjae was here, pinning him down in this stupid twin bed, the frame slamming against the wall of his teenage prison.
“You did this,” he muttered, fucking himself harder. “You fucking put these pups in me, you bastard. You don’t get to leave. You don’t get to fucking die.” The words were a litany, a prayer and a curse. He was stretched around three fingers now, panting, the hoodie soaked with his sweat. He could almost hear Hyukjae’s growl in his ear, feel the bite of his teeth on his mating gland, the hot, insistent push of his cockhead against his entrance.
“Come on,” Donghae begged the phantom, his knees falling wider apart. “Come on, alpha. Fucking claim it. It’s yours. All of it is yours.” He was babbling, tears mixing with the sweat on his face. He pulled his fingers out, shiny and wet. He needed more. He looked around wildly, his gaze landing on the handle of his hairbrush on the dresser. It was thick, ridged.
He lunged for it, almost falling out of the nest. He wiped it clean on the hoodie, then poured a generous amount of lotion from the bedside table onto it. The scent of artificial coconut filled the air, clashing violently with Hyukjae’s scent on his clothes. It didn’t matter.
He lay back, pushed his knees to his chest, and guided the blunt, plastic end to his hole. He pushed. The stretch was immediate, unforgiving. It wasn’t the same give as living flesh, but it was full. He groaned, a broken sound, as he forced it past the tight ring of muscle. It burned, a dry, plastic burn even with the lotion. He pushed until the widest part was seated inside him, stretching him obscenely open.
“Yeah,” he hissed. “Like that. Just like that.” He began to move it, in and out, a shallow, brutal mimicry of sex. The ridges dragged against his walls, the handle bumping that sweet spot with each thrust. He was a mess—sobbing, sweating, his cock painfully hard and bouncing against his stomach. He fucked himself with the brush, his hips meeting each thrust, the plastic base slapping against his ass.
He pictured Hyukjae over him, his eyes dark with intent, his hands gripping his hips hard enough to bruise. He imagined the moment of conception, that raw, furious joining against the window as the city woke up below them. His own come shot out of him then, hot and sudden, painting his stomach and the soft gray of Hyukjae’s hoodie in white streaks. His body clamped down on the invader, milking nothing, and the orgasm was a desolate, lonely peak that left him hollow and shaking.
He lay there, spent, the brush still lodged inside him. The physical release had done nothing to quiet the terror. It had only carved the emptiness into a sharper, more precise shape.
He slowly pulled the brush out, dropping it to the floor with a clatter. He was sore. He felt used and alone. He looked at the ultrasound photo, now slightly crumpled on the pillow.
He could survive this. Omegas did. They raised pups alone. They endured. His body would do what it was designed to do.
But as he wiped himself clean with a corner of the hoodie, as he gingerly redressed and gathered the photo, the fundamental truth settled into his bones, colder and harder than any fear.
He didn't want to survive it.
He wanted Hyukjae. He wanted his stupid coffee-making in the morning, his quiet strength, his patient hands, his possessive fury. He wanted the man who saw his broken parts and called them beautiful. Surviving wasn't the point. The point was the life they were supposed to build, the one that was now growing inside him against all odds.
He stood up from the ruined nest, leaving the ghosts of his childhood behind. He had a hospital to storm. He had an alpha to claim, in every sense the world had so far denied him. The fight was just beginning.
The fight was just beginning. The cool sterility of the hospital corridor was a physical slap after the heated desperation of his childhood room. Donghae strode past the nurse's station, his focus a laser on the double doors marked INTENSIVE CARE UNIT - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Heechul leaned against the wall beside them, a lithe, dangerous sentinel in designer black.
"Took you long enough," Heechul said, pushing off the wall. His eyes raked over Donghae—the wrinkled hoodie, the fierce, hollowed-out look. "You look like shit."
"Where is he?" Donghae’s voice was gravel."Bay four. Parents are inside. Nurses kicked me out." Heechul handed back the ultrasound photo, a corner now bent. "I showed them. They consulted. It's 'a delicate legal situation.'" He made air quotes, his face a mask of contempt.
Donghae took the photo. He didn't knock. He pushed through the heavy doors, the swoosh of air a cold sigh. The ICU was a forest of beeping machinery and low lights. Curtained bays held private agonies. He found bay four, the curtain partially drawn.
Hyukjae’s mother, a slim woman with her son’s eyes swollen red, stood beside the bed. His father, stern and ashen, hovered near the foot. They turned as the curtain rings rattled.
“Donghae,” his mother breathed, her hand fluttering to her chest.
Before they could say more, Donghae’s gaze locked on the bed. The air left his lungs. Hyukjae lay amidst a tangle of wires and tubes. A ventilator hissed, its plastic tube taped cruelly to his mouth. One side of his face was a landscape of purpling bruises and sutures. His right arm was in a cast. A thick bandage wrapped his head. He was a broken sculpture of the man who’d bent him over a sunlit window.
“You can’t be in here,” Hyukjae’s father said, his voice low, a worn-out alpha command. “This is family.”
“I am family,” Donghae said. He didn't look at them. He moved to the bedside, his shoes sticking to the floor. He reached out, his fingers hovering over Hyukjae’s uninjured hand, the one with the long, graceful fingers that had traced his spine so many times. He didn't touch. The scent was wrong. Beneath the sharp, chemical tang of antiseptic and Betadine, he could just catch it—the faint, fading base note of Hyukjae’s own scent, buried under trauma and medicine. It was weak.It was dying.
His own scent, omega, distressed, thick with the complex, new notes of early pregnancy, bloomed in the enclosed space. Hyukjae’s mother inhaled sharply.
“We appreciate your concern,” his father tried again, stepping closer. “But you need to leave this to us. The doctors—”
“The doctors don’t know him.” Donghae finally turned, meeting the older alpha’s gaze. “They don’t know what he needs to come back.” He lifted the ultrasound photo, holding it between their faces. “These are his children. He made these with me. I am his. This,” he said, gesturing to the bed with the photo, “is mine.”
“A photo proves nothing of your bond,” his father said, though his eyes wavered on the grainy image. “You’re not marked. You’re not registered. This is a medical facility, not a soap opera. Your little emotional scene isn’t helping my son.”
The word "little" snapped something. The careful restraint he’d practiced for months, the patient understanding he’d learned from Hyukjae himself, evaporated. The raw, possessive animal he’d fucked himself open for in his old bedroom roared to the surface.
“Get out.” Donghae’s voice was quiet, deadly.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” Donghae squared his shoulders, stepping away from the bed to face them fully. The electrical hum of the monitors was the only sound. “I said get the fuck out. Both of you.”
Hyukjae’s father’s face flushed with affront. “You have no authority here, boy.”
“He has my scent in his lungs,” Donghae said, his words coming faster, sharper. “He has my come in his sheets. He has his knot locked in my ass more nights than I can count. He fucked a child into me so hard I screamed for a whole city to hear. I have his DNA multiplying inside my body right now.” He took a step forward, jabbing the photo toward the alpha’s chest. “You gave him life. But I am his life. And he is dying because he can’t smell me. Because he can’t feel me. Now get out and let me fix what your hospital bullshit is killing.”
The vulgar, graphic truth hung in the sterile air like a bomb. Hyukjae’s mother gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. His father stood rigid, shocked into silence by the explicit fury of the omega before him.
Heechul, who’d slipped in behind Donghae, let out a low whistle. “You tell ’em, tiger.”
A nurse, drawn by the raised voices, peeked around the curtain. “Is there a problem? You need to lower your voices, this is—”
“They’re leaving,” Donghae interrupted, never breaking eye contact with Hyukjae’s father. “Or I start screaming that this hospital is deliberately harming my pregnancy by stressing me. Your choice.”
The older alpha’s jaw worked. He looked from Donghae’s fierce, tear-bright eyes to his son’s broken body on the bed. Something shifted, a grudging, horrified understanding. He took his wife’s arm. “Come on. Let’s… get some air.”
They filed out, the curtain falling shut behind them with a final whisper. Heechul gave Donghae a sharp nod and pulled the curtain fully closed, sealing the bay.
Silence descended, broken only by the rhythmic, artificial sigh of the ventilator. Donghae was alone with the ruins of his alpha. The bravado drained out of him, leaving a terrifying, quiet certainty.
He moved to the bedside. He ignored the tubes, the wires, the beeping. He leaned down, his lips close to Hyukjae’s bruised ear. “You’re in there,” he whispered. “I know you are. You’re too stubborn to leave.”
He straightened. His hands went to the hem of the hoodie. He pulled it off over his head, letting it drop to the clean floor. The cool air raised goosebumps on his skin. He unlaced his shoes, toed them off. He unbuttoned his jeans, shoved them down his hips along with his briefs, and stepped out of the puddled fabric.
Naked in the ICU, he was a vision of pale skin and sharp angles, the only curves the soft swell of his belly that held their secret. He carefully, so carefully, lifted the edge of the starched hospital sheet and the thin blanket. He slid into the narrow bed beside Hyukjae, his body aligning against the unnervingly still one. He was mindful of wires, of the cast, of every injury he couldn't see.
He wriggled until his back was pressed to Hyukjae’s side, his ass fitting against Hyukjae’s hip. He reached back, finding Hyukjae’s uninjured hand. He pulled it around him, settling the heavy, limp arm across his own waist, over his stomach. He interlaced their fingers, pressing their joined hands firmly against the skin where their pups grew.
“Smell me,” Donghae murmured, arching back to press his bare ass against Hyukjae’s thigh. He ground against him, a slow, sensual roll of his hips, anointing the hospital gown with the scent of his skin, his sex. “Come on, alpha. Smell what’s yours.” He brought their clasped hands to his mouth, licking the back of Hyukjae’s fingers, wetting them with his saliva. He dragged their damp fingers down over his own chest, pinching a nipple until it peaked, then further down, over his belly, through the coarse thatch of his pubic hair.
He guided Hyukjae’s hand lower, between his own legs. He was already slick, his body responding to the taboo, desperate act. He pushed Hyukjae’s middle finger against his hole, which was still loose and soft from his frantic earlier imitation. “Feel that?” he whispered, rocking back, forcing the tip of Hyukjae’s finger just inside him. “That’s you. You did that. You opened me up. You own this.” He moaned, low and genuine, the stretch and the intimacy a shocking comfort.
He fucked himself slowly on Hyukjae’s inert finger, his own cock hardening and pressing against the rough hospital sheet. He turned his head, nuzzling at the bandage on Hyukjae’s head, then lower, finding the unmarred column of his throat. He licked a wet stripe over Hyukjae’s dormant scent gland, then opened his mouth and bit down.
It wasn't the clean, fierce bite of a mutual claiming. It was a desperate, possessive suckle, a wet, open-mouthed branding. He sucked a dark bruise into the skin, marking him with his mouth where his teeth couldn't break the skin alone. He moved lower, biting at Hyukjae’s collarbone through the gown, leaving another darkening claim.
“You’re mine,” he panted against the damp skin, riding the finger deeper. “You fucking live. You wake up. You see what you made. You don’t get to die when you just learned how to live. Do you hear me, Hyukjae? You come back to me.”
He was close. The absurdity, the raw intimacy, the scent of their mingled sweat and his own slick rising in the air was pushing him over. The heart monitor’s beep seemed to increase, a fraction faster. He glanced at the screen. The rhythm was the same. A trick of his ears.
Then Hyukjae’s finger twitched inside him.
Donghae froze. It was a minute, spastic curl, a reflex against his velvety inner walls. He held his breath.
Hyukjae’s hand tightened around his own, the pressure faint but unmistakable. A weak, grinding squeeze.
A ragged sob ripped from Donghae’s throat. He turned, scrambling in the narrow bed to face him. Hyukjae’s eyes were still closed, the ventilator still breathed for him. But his brow was furrowed, a deep line of strain or effort between the bruises.
Donghae kissed his forehead, his eyelids, his taped lips. “Yes,” he chanted between kisses. “Yes. That’s it. Come on. Fight your way back. Follow my scent.”
He settled back, pulling Hyukjae’s hand back to his stomach, keeping their connection. He didn't care about the nurse who might come in. He didn't care about the parents waiting outside. He had planted his flag in this sterile battlefield. He was a naked omega in a hospital bed, his alpha’s finger inside him, their children a secret weight between them.
And his alpha was holding his hand back.
It wasn't a victory. Not yet. But it was a front line. And for the first time since the phone call, Donghae felt the ground firm beneath him. He closed his eyes, breathing in the scent he was creating, willing it into Hyukjae’s broken body.Hyukjae
He would not be moved.