Chapter 287

“...No, that’s not right?”

At Siron’s denial, Lewis furrowed his brow.

“Don’t lie.”

“...I’m pretty sure you did? ...Maybe something similar?”

A dry laugh escaped Lewis.

His bloodshot eyes and the reddened shadows beneath them gave him a decadent, exhausted look.

Decadent didn’t suit Lewis at all. What suited him was the refreshing smile that made your chest feel clear just by looking at it. Realizing that Lewis no longer looked at him the way he used to, Siron’s disappointment swelled until he broke down, sobbing pathetically with clear mucus running from his nose.

“Hhkk... When you were all over me, talking like... hff, as long as I stayed by your side, hkk, you didn’t care if you lived like you were on borrowed time and then, hff—died!”

Because of the tears blurring his vision, Siron didn’t notice the subtle shift on Lewis’s indifferent face. The faint expression forming there was unmistakably irritation. Lewis exhaled a long, tired sigh.

“Stop deluding yourself.”

The cold tone froze Siron in place. It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over his entire body.

Lewis released Siron’s wrists. Bracing his hands on either side of Siron’s head, he spoke sharply, almost snapping.

“That line was Baekgyeong’s.”

Siron’s tears stopped.

“You don’t remember what I said, do you.”

“...What?”

Sensing Lewis’s sour mood, Siron’s eyes darted in a panic he couldn’t explain. But no matter how hard he searched, no memory surfaced—only the intense way their bodies had moved.

“W... what did you say?”

“I told you I would...”

Lewis began, but then his mouth closed. A hollow light flickered in his eyes as he looked at Siron. And then, in the next moment, that emptiness was swept away by a surge of emotion.

“I told you I’d protect you.”

Lewis’s gaze changed. Red veins burst through his eyes, veins stood out on his forehead, and his breathing grew rough. The suppressed fury in his exhale vibrated like a swallowed sob. The pheromones rolling off him were so sudden that Siron felt it like a blow to the skull. There was nothing sexual in it—only something familiar and overwhelming—flooding through him like an adrenaline shock. Siron froze in shame at his own reaction, cutting off his breath.

“Lewis. Was your repentance not enough?”

The moment Dylan’s voice cut in, the pheromone wave vanished as if it had never existed.

“Choose. Become prey—or repent and become one of our brothers.”

Lewis’s breathing was wrong. Slowly rising to his feet, he glared at Dylan with burning red eyes.

Instead of being intimidated, Dylan smiled—pleased. Lewis’s resistance delighted him. If Lewis’s mind had collapsed completely after only a few rounds of indoctrination, Dylan would have been disappointed. True superiority required a will that did not fall easily.

Lewis stepped off the omega and strode toward Dylan, seizing him by the throat.

“No. I’ll hunt you.”

His voice was a low, animal growl scraping out of his throat. Dylan felt a thrill so sharp it bordered on euphoria.

Dylan’s study had been a museum of persecuted “truth.” David Starr Jordan’s writings advocating restricted breeding for the “unfit,” Benjamin Kidd’s evolutionary social theories, Francis Galton and Madison Grant’s works on eugenics—rows upon rows of such books, all worn by frequent use. Late at night, he would take Hitler’s Mein Kampf into the bedroom and fall asleep comforted by its fanatic sentences. To him, humanity was not made of individuals with unique worth—it was a herd to be culled and sorted by hierarchy. And now, the most exceptional specimen—the man he envisioned as a sun-king ruling over the superior—was choking him.

But even he was flawed. So focused on the presence of an omega in the room, Lewis failed to notice the movement behind him.

There was a deafening gunshot.

The strength drained from Lewis’s hand as his body collapsed. The middle-aged man behind him hit the wall hard, almost folding into it. Taking his place, recovering from a kick posture and moving back into combat stance, was 3543. He looked down at the fallen Lewis with frustrated regret at having acted a fraction of a second too late, then raised his eyes with renewed fury toward Dylan.

“Puzzle piece bastard. Don’t worry. It was a tranquilizer. He won’t die.”

Dylan closed the distance between them. As expected, the attack came immediately. He caught 3543’s ankle mid-strike and nudged him forward mockingly. 3543 lost balance and crashed onto the thin topper against the concrete bed. The impact twisted his body with pain.

“Ah—fuck! That—hurts—what the—fuck—!”

Dylan, now more relaxed, flipped him and pinned him down. Then he slid his hand between the topper and the man’s stomach to undo his belt. 3543 panicked, misunderstanding the intention, screaming and thrashing.

“Calm down. I’m not going to rape you.”

“Le—let go!”

Dylan bound 3543’s wrists tightly together with the belt and pressed his shoulder down.

“Baker. Get it ready.”

The man who had been kicked into the wall staggered to his feet. His forehead was swelling like a whale bump, but he didn’t complain. He opened the aluminum case, snapped an ampoule, and drew the liquid into a syringe.

“D–don’t! Don’t—!”

“It’s... it’s just local anesthetic. I—it’ll hurt a lot more without it.”

“I don’t want it. No—please—”

“S... sorry.”

Baker disinfected the area on 3543’s upper back and injected the needle. It was only a needle prick, yet 3543 screamed as if being violated. Dylan was irritated, though his expression barely changed.

“Biopsy tool.”

“Now? It needs at least two minutes—”

Dylan only held out his hand. Baker hesitated, then surrendered the tool—a pen-shaped metal cylinder with a hollow circular blade at the tip.

Dylan pressed it into the recently sterilized spot—but something inside stopped the blade.

“Ah—fuck—IT HURTS—!”

He couldn’t get more than half the length in. He removed a different chunk of tissue instead and placed the samples into tubes. Baker stored them in the cryogenic container while Dylan held 3543 still.

“Fuck—hkk—fuck—you—hurts—fuck—”

Dylan picked up tweezers and rummaged inside the incision, extracting a small capsule-shaped object. He rinsed it in saline and held it to the light.

While Baker disinfected and bandaged the wound, Dylan examined the object. A thin translucent tube—half-filled with blood from the biopsy damage inside. But enough was clean to identify it:

A subdermal implant chip.

Dylan released him and removed the belt. 3543 scrambled away, crawling to Lewis’s unconscious body. Dylan, still inspecting the damaged chip, spoke calmly.

“You’ve got something interesting in you.”

“Wh—what does that mean?”

3543 looked up at him with tear-shined eyes full of wary panic. Dylan turned his gaze instead to the omega clinging to Lewis. The watery black eyes glistened like distant stars, streaked with pain and humiliation. Beautiful enough to hold his attention longer than intended.

“Fucking—hff—creep. Quit staring.”

3543 wiped his tears and snot with the back of his hand and smeared it on Lewis’s shirt, muttering something that clearly wasn’t friendly.

Dylan looked between Lewis and 3543 and shook his head.

“It’s a shame. It would have been better if you’d been born with good genes.”

The sorrow vanished from 3543’s eyes instantly.

“What the hell did you just say.”

“If you had been a white man with blond hair and blue eyes, everything would have been perfect.”

“...Great. Then go find a white omega who fits your standards and let me go.”

The sarcasm made Dylan’s lips twitch into something almost like a smile.

“That’s impossible now. Shame, but what can we do. I’ll have to settle for you.”