Chapter 305

The body of an Alpha is a resource that supports the future of the entire community. ...Abstinence is the first gate that pulls an Alpha up into a more evolved being, and the only way to pass Hybris’s ideals on to future generations.

— Part 2, Chapter 3, “A More Evolved Human”

Human beings instinctively seek something to believe in. Whether it is God, fate, or an intelligent existence beyond human intellect, each person has their own thirst for faith. And Hybris’s Designer was the only person who satisfied the thirst of a young man who wanted to understand himself after becoming an Alpha—through an enlightenment text called .

But theory and practice were as immeasurably distant as heaven and hell. The young man was sick of practice. He did not want to become a more evolved human. He just wanted to relieve his sex drive. But the him of today was losing his freedom and dying, surrounded by sanctimonious prudes who forced that goddamned abstinence on him.

“If you can’t escape your desire, we’ll have no choice but to castrate you in your place.”

He wanted to snort at his comrade’s words as hard as he could, but he couldn’t bring himself to. Because the prude in front of him looked like the type who would order someone else’s dick cut off without blinking.

For days now, he couldn’t shake the thought of the Omega locked upstairs. Rumors had spread everywhere that a mythical being—one that only appeared in the Designer’s stories—had been dragged into this underground tunnel in reality. Books& Literature

According to , an Omega’s pheromones excessively stimulated the dominance instinct Alphas possessed, bringing about an uncontrollable upheaval. The young man wanted to feel an Omega’s pheromones. If he could only get drunk on them and have sex with him—or her—he felt like he could pay any price.

In the end, taking advantage of the chaos after Jackson Cliff’s betrayal, the young man stole a security key. But comrades who found his words and behavior suspiciously different from usual immediately tailed him and ruined everything.

“Fuck! You bastards think about sex dozens of times a day too!”

He shouted in a humiliating position, face-down on the floor with his hands tied behind his back. At that moment, the sound of a corridor steel door unlocking echoed out. He felt the Alphas surrounding him lift their heads at an unfamiliar presence.

Then, a crisp breeze flowed into the stale air. Like a cold snap that stung the tip of his nose—air so fresh it felt cold. And in the indescribable, multilayered pheromones mixed into it, the young man was seized by the sensation that his heart was dropping through the floor.

“Fuck, what, what is that.”

A researcher with a dull, unremarkable expression was opening the door and stepping into the corridor. The young man wasn’t allowed onto the first floor, but he still knew most of the abducted researchers’ faces. Yet the man in front of him was a face he’d never seen before. Strangely, the instant he saw him, his body temperature rose and cold sweat and pheromones poured out of every pore and pheromone gland.

It had to be the rumored Omega who had been dragged down into the underground tunnel days ago. A hollow laugh slipped out on its own. He wondered if this was what cavemen had felt—when, before fire was discovered, only moonlight shone with solemn dignity in pitch-black darkness, and they looked up at the moon in awe.

He realized it. The Designer’s words had been right.

Omega was an existence that excessively stimulated the dominance instinct Alphas possessed, bringing conflict and the collapse of order. And if it was an order that would collapse anyway, there was no reason to step back. The young man threw off his restraints with brute strength, shoved away the comrades pinning his back down, and sprinted toward the Omega.

“W-what is that.”

Siron’s whole body went rigid when he saw a man charging at him at full speed. His legs went weak with the kind of fear you’d feel if you met a chainsaw-wielding serial killer at a dead end. Siron only managed to snap back to his senses when the distance between them had narrowed to around ten meters.

He shoved himself into the huge steel door he had passed through moments ago, dodging the man who tried to pounce on him. The instant he slammed it shut, a metallic sound rang out as the steel door automatically latched.

“F-fuck, what the hell is wrong with that lunatic.”

Siron couldn’t relax. The man’s eyes were completely gone. And what was with those pheromones pouring out so violently? He ran without thinking, and when a cell came into view, he swiped the card key and slipped inside. The interior was submerged in darkness, not a speck of light anywhere.

The plan to go up to the surface through the Ventilation Vent, and the plan to pass through the sector where the abductees were held and find an exit—both had been thrown off completely. Only then did Siron realize that everything he’d suffered so far had been nothing but a prologue. The optimistic expectation that he could somehow fight through the situation was useless now.

That lunatic—no, any Alpha—would find Siron before long. Identical cells lined both sides of the corridor, so they wouldn’t be able to tell immediately where he was hiding, but if they took their time, there was no reason they wouldn’t find him.

‘What do I do? What am I supposed to do?’

No matter how hard he racked his brain, no method came to him. All he had to rely on was his own body, but with legs trembling like an aspen, he had no confidence he could beat anyone.

More than anything, perhaps because he’d been exposed to pheromones as intense as a storm, between his legs was unpleasantly soaked. A dull throbbing began deep in his lower abdomen.

Siron’s fear-stricken thoughts drifted, at last, to Jackson’s warning—the one he’d forgotten for a moment.

“Whether you take the pills or not is your choice. Your heat cycle is close.”

‘Fuck! Heat cycle!’

Remembering the heat cycle he’d forgotten, Siron hurriedly rummaged through the research coat’s pockets. He suspected everything—the heat-cycle suppressant Jackson Cliff had handed him, whether it was real or fake, and Jackson’s intention in offering it—but at this point he couldn’t delay taking it.

He had just pulled the vinyl bag of pills out of his pocket when a chilling roar sounded outside the door, followed by a scream so sharp it felt like it could tear.

‘Gunfire?’

Through the crack of the door, the acrid stink of gunpowder seeped in. Screams poured out until throats would burst, echoing along the walls. He couldn’t tell what was happening outside from sound alone.

“You bastard! I’m going to kill you! Hah, hah, it hurts, I feel like I’m dying. You think my grandfather—hah—will just sit still? You think he’ll let you go?!”

A young man sobbed, spitting a vicious curse through his tears. Even in fear, the thought that he’d avoided being raped at any moment let Siron breathe out a sigh of relief.

He held his breath and listened to the sounds outside. With all the indoor lights off, the interior was suffocatingly dark, but he didn’t have the courage to open the peephole and peek into the corridor. Then it happened. Someone knocked on the door.

Siron sucked in a sharp, useless breath. That small sound felt like thunder.

“Would you open the door for me.”

Siron felt cold sweat slide down his back. The peephole’s shutter slid aside, and a face appeared. It was so close to the door that he could see nothing but eyes. He didn’t blink, didn’t speak, and for a long time he simply stared into Siron’s face, sunk in darkness.

His eyes resembled golden sand, and his thick, dark eyelashes were striking. His lower lashes were particularly full and long, and because of that, he oddly reminded Siron of the figure on the poster for A Clockwork Orange.

A mint scent came from him. In the bitter yet refreshing pheromones—like crushed fresh grass—there wasn’t even the faint, musky stink of wild beasts that often lingered in other Alphas’ pheromones. It felt like looking at an exquisite mannequin, as though the savagery unique to Alphas had been completely deleted. In that crisp fragrance, Siron instead felt an inhuman sense of otherness.

The lock clicked. A huge man slowly walked into the cell, cutting through the darkness. Siron understood instinctively.

The man in front of him was Hybris’s Designer.

Baekgyeong sipped his coffee, staring at a door that still bore traces of being patched up like a tattered quilt. It was a panic room they had made to lock Lewis McCarthy inside so he wouldn’t cause trouble while he rode out a rut cycle.

Come to think of it, when rut hit, Lewis had escaped the panic room, wandered the city looking for an Omega, and finally broke into Curry King—already closed for business—to try to pounce on Siron. Remembering what had happened around the time he reunited with Siron, Baekgyeong’s anger suddenly flared.

“That fucking piece of shit.”

“‘That fucking piece of shit’? What does that mean?”

“Your brother’s nickname.”

The moment Baekgyeong mentioned Lewis, wariness flickered across Anna’s face.

“You just cursed at Lewis.”

At Anna’s confident tone, Baekgyeong snorted and drained the hot coffee in one go.

“Yeah. If that bastard’s still alive and breathing, he’ll die by my hand.”

Anna, who had been about to snap back immediately at Baekgyeong’s provocation, sucked in a breath—then, as if giving up, let out a long sigh. With no way to know whether Lewis was alive or dead, what would she gain by defending him?

A little while ago, after Baekgyeong and Anna had run into each other unexpectedly at the Psychological Health Center, they had hurriedly moved to the McCarthy siblings’ house nearby. Before Rachel could get tangled up any further with those two catastrophic men—Baekgyeong and Isaac—Anna had sent her straight home.

Baekgyeong and Anna sat facing each other across the dining room table and gave each other brief reports of what they’d been through while each fought to survive their own crises. From the moment Baekgyeong was abducted on the plane he boarded to go attend his mother’s funeral, the McCarthy siblings, too, had been hit by turmoil no less severe than his.

Anna, who had hoped to find a trace of Lewis through Baekgyeong’s story, looked visibly disappointed when she heard nothing that could serve as a lead to chase her brother.

“Can you really swear Lewis wasn’t on the island where you were held?”

“I’m telling you, he wasn’t.”

As Anna’s relentless questioning continued, Baekgyeong answered sharply, his patience worn thin. Just looking at Anna’s face made his anger surge.

Because of a pack of incompetents who didn’t know their place and shoved themselves into the case, Siron and Lewis had vanished at the same time. And that wasn’t all. Even though Baekgyeong had left behind Rut Suppressant, Lewis, that bastard, still put Siron through a rut.

Siron’s face flashed in his mind—taunting him about having had sex with Lewis—and even while worrying about Siron’s safety, Baekgyeong’s stomach churned.