Chapter Text
Yoongi jolts awake with a sound stuck in his throat. Not with a scream, or a word, no, just a thin, pathetic noise.
He doesn't sit up or move, he kind of just lies there, clutching a fistful of blanket. His eyes are open, but it still feels like dreaming like he’s halfway underwater, vision grainy, throat dry. His pillow smells like someone else. Like he’s been claimed and unclaimed and carried around.
Maybe he has.
His pulse is too loud. A moment ago, he swears, there was a hand on his chest.
Just… there. Heavy enough to wake him. He lies there and tries not to breathe too loud. Tries not to move.
He waits for the hand to return. Or for the flickering light from earlier to annoy him, but nothing happens.
Just the wind. And the birds. And the wrong-colored sky outside the window.
The sky outside the window is way too bright for his taste, for the beginning of autumn, this place feels awfully bright and full of life. The window is cracked open slightly, the air is chilling, and while Yoongi feels warm under the covers, he feels this off sensation.
Someone touched his neck in the dream. Not hard. Not rough. Just a thumb pressed right under his jaw. Warm. Centered. Like they were checking something.
Yoongi didn’t flinch. He let them. That was the weirdest part. He usually startles awake when people get too close—especially there, especially that spot—but in the dream, he just breathed through it. Laid there like he was allowed to be touched. Like he didn’t have to hide.
And whoever it was, he didn’t know, but the hand felt familiar.
When he awoke, the room was quiet. The air had gone cold.
The blankets are too soft. That’s the first problem. They're heavy, expensive, made of something stupid like cashmere, and they trap heat in a way that feels suffocating. Yoongi’s not even cold, but someone keeps turning the heater on. Or maybe it’s just him. Or he’s getting sick. Or just his skin.
Either way, he never stays comfortable for long. Even sleep doesn’t stay, his body overheats, his mind spirals, and when he finally wakes, he’s ten times more restless than before.
The sheets are tucked in too tightly, the bed is too big. The mattress doesn’t dip when he moves—it’s too firm, too still.
He turns his head. The snow globe is still there. Balanced on the nightstand.
It’s not even winter-themed—more like a miniature ballroom. Carved pillars. A chandelier made of crushed glass. Two dancers in the middle, frozen mid-spin.
Yoongi doesn’t touch it. He just stares.
When the light hits it wrong, it reflects across the walls. Little bursts of shimmer like the room’s glitching. Sometimes, when he’s too tired, he mistakes it for a portal.
The whole thing has gone red. Not glowing, exactly but the glass is catching something from the window—some far-off light, maybe, blinking from the outer wall and it refracts through the tiny chandelier inside. Throws it back across the room in fractured, glowing lines.
Red.
This red is softer, richer. It looks expensive. Old. Almost ceremonial, like the velvet robes he’s seen in old temple depictions, or the tint of wine that catches in candlelight, but it still scares him. Scares him precisely because it isn’t ugly. Because it’s beautiful.
Yoongi stares.
It shouldn’t even be possible. The water inside is clear. The dancers are pale. The base is silver. But the light refracts through something hidden, and suddenly the walls pulse with a faint crimson shimmer.
It isn’t even the color that scares him. Not really. It’s that the red feels familiar. Not bad—just intimate.
He swears—he swears—the dancers inside have turned just a little, but not enough to prove it.
And that little piece of something—whatever it is—just keeps glowing.
Somewhere outside, a tree scratches the window. Over and over. Same rhythm. Like it’s trying to get in.
Yoongi flips onto his back. Then his side. Then back again.
Nothing helps.
His eyes won’t close properly. His jaw aches from clenching.
His wrist itches. He scratches it without thinking. The scar there is healing wrong again—tight and shiny, a cut that was once too deep. He thought it would fade, like the others.
The clock on the nightstand ticks. Only now does he realize it’s analog. Round-faced, brass. One of those old-school ones with a bell on top that looks like it should belong to someone’s grandfather. The hands are moving, but the ticking is wrong.
Yoongi shuts his eyes, opens them again, and the second hand jerks. Stops. Waits. Starts again.
Birds are making noise somewhere and it feels like the night is endless-each moment staring at the ceiling thinking, is another moment wasted.
The sky’s wide awake, so he’s wide awake. It's too pretty outside for his liking; nothing about it looks right, not like home.
Dark clouds litter the sky unevenly and the stars look unaturally large. It's unlike anything he's ever seen and known.
The sky's one thing but his mind is another. Every little thing feels turned up to max. He can hear his heart thumping. His stomach grumbling, the blood pulsing through his veins.
His cheeks are hot. His lips are plump.
His thoughts are driving him mad—and while he does want to forget, at the same time, he simply can't.
There’s that slow, burning feeling within him, and he's definitely been ignoring that—he’s tried everything. Punching pillows, scratching at his skin until it's all raw. Lying perfectly still for what felt like hours, eyes squeezed shut and willing himself to sink into nothingness.
Nothing, absolutely nothing works, and well, Yoongi wants to scream.
For a heartbeat he’s sure the room is shrinking. The ceiling seems lower. The corners are watching him. Not really, just enough for his skin to prickle. He blinks once, twice, but the walls don’t settle back.
His hands tremble under the covers. Nails leave half‑moons on his palms. It isn’t pain exactly, more like a static charge crawling from bone to skin.
Seokjin.
A hand at the back of his neck, a low command in a language his body knew before his mind. Scruffed down into something soft and endless. His lungs had filled with it. He’d floated. Then gone dark.
Now his mouth still tastes faintly of him. He drags a thumb across his bottom lip and it comes away damp, though he isn’t sure from what.
He doesn’t even know the name for the place he was pushed into, only that this wasn’t this room, and this isn’t sleep.
Something’s been taken out of him. Or put in.
Outside, a bird screams once, sharp, human for a second, and then it’s just a bird again.
Yoongi presses the heel of his hand to his eye. It’s hot. He thinks of the sky, the kiss, the scent that wasn’t his, the way his body had folded under that grip. He thinks of ledges. He thinks of screaming.
He can’t tell if he’s awake now, or still inside whatever that was.
So yeah, sue him? He’s at his breaking point. If he replays that kiss one more time, if his mind insists on dragging him back to it, he’s going to combust. No, worse, he’d rather die than let it happen again. Over his dead body.
Maybe it’s snooping; maybe it’s not— but who actually cares, because staying still isn’t an option anymore.
He’d never pictured himself sneaking around somewhere like this; that thought never even crossed his mind.
Growing up, “luxury” wasn’t a word he could relate to. It belonged to some distant, unreachable world.
Standing alone in whatever this is, feels all kinds of wrong—no, not just bad, but downright illegal.
The open hallways stretch out with ceilings so high they seem to vanish, and the walls are lined with portraits of people who probably had more money in their names than he could ever dream of.
Artistic marble floors echo under his feet, smooth and cold, they reflect chandeliers that could be sold to buy his entire childhood neighborhood.
Every room is a gallery of furniture that feels more like art, or things that should be stored in a historical museum, than something anyone would use.
The air here smells crisp and clean—too clean, like even dust refuses to settle in a place like this, which is odd, he’s never walked through a place so old yet so clean.
It feels like a crime, just to let his eyes wander, to take in every detail he knows doesn’t belong to him.
What is he even doing here? This world of quiet wealth and freedom with the side cost of your soul, is someone else’s life—not his.
He doesn’t even know what to call this place—a mansion, an estate, some kind of fortress?
The silence here is heavy, pressing into his ears and filling the spaces around him. There’s no distant sound of a car driving by, traffic, no faint laughter through the walls, only an empty echoing hollowness.
Just an empty, isolating place.
Just like home.
It’s like this place is so big, it makes him feel smaller than he’s ever felt before. It’s like being reduced to nothing.
So who the hell?? Why does he live here?
So many questions and Yoongi doesn’t get any answers.
He passes by tall, arched windows, he glances down and feels the distance between himself and the ground below.
More and more, he catches himself staring at the ledges, at the sharp angles and edges of the walls, imagining what it would feel like to step forward, to let gravity take him.
How long would he fall? Would he feel anything at all?
There are ways out, he realizes.
If he wanted to, he could find an unlocked window or some ledge just wide enough to stand on or break through one of the massive stained-glass panes. Maybe the shattered glass would be the only sound in this lifeless place.
Would anyone notice? Would anyone hear him? Or would the sound be absorbed like everything else he’s ever tried to voice?
Would it be quick? Would it be peaceful to finally let himself disappear into the silence?
Seokjin must’ve known exactly what he was doing, bringing him here. If Seokjin thinks he knows him better than he knows himself—well, the bastard might just be right.
Yoongi trails his fingers along the walls as he walks, he tries to carry himself with confidence—it’s as if Seokjin himself has left each door unlocked on purpose, inviting him, daring him to explore, maybe even find a way out.
Oh he will, one way or another, even if it might be extreme—
He doesn’t mean to get lost, but he finds himself walking through unfamiliar halls without a second thought, passing by staff members who barely glance his way.
It’s a strange comfort—their indifference makes him feel like he could belong here, or at least blend in. His nerves tell him not to ask for directions, and nobody offers them anyway. Everyone is absorbed in their life, moving quickly, unfazed by his presence.
Except… no. Not unfazed. Just acting like it.
He catches it in the corners: the too‑sharp glances, the way a shoulder tilts just enough to block a corridor, how every footstep lands in the same rhythm, like a single heart beating through many bodies.
They’re not human. He knows that much.
The first one he passes is a woman, at least, she looks like one, high collar, silver tray balanced on long fingers. Her eyes flick to him, pale like frost, then slide away. She’s tall. Everyone here is tall. Shoulders like statues.
His brain jumps to the old diagrams from high school: dominance charts, scent pyramids, hormone cycles. No, the scent isn’t right. Too muted. Too… refined.
Beta, then, but not the kind from the pamphlets. Not “average.” Nothing average about the way her pulse seems to be visible at her throat.
He tries again, scanning the next one, a man? A boy? Broad back, long hair braided down the spine, carrying a stack of documents without looking. His skin glows faintly gold under the chandelier. His shoes make no sound.
Think, Yoongi. C’mon. What were they called in that unit? Sub‑something. Para‑something.
He presses his fingers harder to the wall as he walks. The marble feels warmer than it should.
Another figure slips past: neither male nor female exactly. Androgynous. A head tilt. Hands gloved. Smells like salt and metal, but faint, like it’s been scrubbed clean.
Betas, he tells himself. Has to be. The second tier. Not as strong as alphas. Still stronger than him. Still beautiful enough to make him nervous.
But if these are betas, what the hell were those two at the door? The ones with eyes like knives and veins like cables under their suits.
His pulse kicks. He wants to shrink but forces his shoulders back, tries to look like he belongs. The walls stretch forever, lined with portraits and glinting eye catching windows. Every turn reveals another corridor of them, tall, perfect, indifferent.
Somewhere in his head, a teacher’s voice recites: betas maintain structure; they enforce the code. Another voice, quieter: betas are safe. betas are neutral.
Nothing about these feels neutral.
They still move like predators, graceful, restrained, pretending at civility. He wonders if they’re pretending at being alive, too.
Yoongi swallows.
His hoodie feels too big all of a sudden. He tugs the sleeves down over his hands and curls his fingers into the cuffs, lets the fabric swallow his knuckles. Just for something to hold onto.
His steps grow quieter. Not on purpose, it just happens. Like his body wants to take up less space here, not because he’s sad, but because he’s scared.
He rounds another corner. Freezes.
There’s a man ahead, or, rather what looks like one. Long black gloves. Slate-grey uniform. Expression blank, but not empty. Just waiting. His eyes flick to Yoongi’s face and then lower, slowly, to Yoongi’s neck. Not leering. Just… assessing.
Yoongi looks away so fast it makes him dizzy. He keeps walking, faster, but even as he moves, he’s looking. Always looking. Counting them in every corridor. Watching how they turn their heads in sync. How they open doors without touching the handles. How none of them speak.
And then it hits him. None of them blink. Not once.
His stomach twists.
He stops again. Stares at his own reflection in a glass panel, breath fogging up the surface. His face looks too soft here.
This is wrong.
He blinks and stares at himself again.
Is he even real? Why doesn’t anything feel real?
Okay. Think. Think.
You’re in a house. No, a mansion. No, a… fuck, a compound?
You kissed someone. No…someone kissed you. You know which someone. You blacked out. You fell asleep. You woke up.
And now you’re here, but what is here? The walls feel too close and too far at once.
Something is wrong.
With the space around him, but most of all…him.
Yoongi blinks again. He feels hot and cold at the same time. Like his joints are one step ahead of him and already preparing to fail.
There’s glass on his right. A window, maybe. Or a mirror. He steps toward it — slow, cautious — and stares at the faint fog of his own breath on the surface.
He looks too soft. Too wrong.
And behind him—there’s a shadow.
A shape cast in faint red. Slanted like the hour is wrong, bleeding in from one of the high stained-glass windows that line the eastern wing.
The panel must be tinted—deep burgundy or something—but it catches just enough light to spill red across his shoulder, down the side of his throat.
It looks like something standing behind him.
Yoongi flinches. Whips around.
Nothing.
Just the corridor. Just more portraits and closed doors and people—no, not people—things that walk like people but aren’t. Not really.
He stares back at the window. At the red sliver draped across his own neck. He lifts a hand and it’s shaking. That’s new. Or maybe it’s not.
He touches his temple. His wrist. Checks his own pulse.
He feels like this is the beginning of a cold, the way his body had begun to ache sometime in the middle of the night.
He looks down. Sees his bare ankles between the hem of his sweatpants and the tops of his socks. The air brushes cold against them.
His skin is full of goosebumps now. His spine tighten with each step like there’s something wrong with gravity.
It takes effort to move. Like they’re bracing for something his mind hasn’t caught up to.
He swallows. Tries to calm his breath, but even that feels…off. Like his chest is too small. Like his hoodie’s too tight, even though it hangs loose. He tugs the sleeves over his hands again. Shoves his fingers into the cuffs, tighter this time, like he needs to feel where he ends.
The corridor tilts slightly. He steadies himself against the wall.
Then he shivers. Once. Then again. His teeth don’t chatter, but it’s close.
This is just… jet lag. Stress. Adrenaline burnout. Or maybe the blood sugar crash after being kissed like that. Maybe he’s still high off it. Maybe he never came down.
His chest is tight. Tighter than it was upstairs. It’s why he left the room, to walk, to distract, to turn his brain off because he couldn’t stay still. Couldn’t breathe properly.
So he wandered. He told himself it was curiosity. Exploration. But it’s not. Not really. It’s panic. Not full-blown. Not loud. Just… quiet. Can’t get comfortable. Can’t calm down.
He’s aware of every figure in the hallway. Every beta that hasn’t blinked. Every closed door that could open. Every eye that might be watching.
None of the staff seem surprised to see him.
He tries to remember what betas were called in that one lesson, the lecture with the powerpoints. Tries to sort the categories, dominant, neutral, submissive, but the words feel stupid now.
Like trying to describe a nightmare with grammar, and even the act of it is pointless now, because he’s stuck here and no amount of words or description will chage that.
Yoongi finds the stairs by accident. Not a grand staircase, like the kind you’re supposed to see first when you walk into a place like this. No, this one is tucked behind a narrow alcove with a weird vase and a dusty curtain that doesn’t match anything else in the hallway.
It’s spiral. Of course. Of course it’s a spiral, because why wouldn’t this place make him walk in circles, down and down and down, like some kind of fever-dream descent into hell?
He hesitates. Then steps on the first one.
The marble doesn’t creak under him. It’s too perfect for that, but he still walks slow, like it might betray him anyway. One hand brushing the rail. One foot after the other.
Down. Down. Down again.
He’s not even sure why he’s going this way. He doesn’t know what’s at the bottom, but his feet won’t stop moving.
The lights get dimmer. The air changes.
Smells like… stone. And something vaguely sweet. Something he doesn’t recognize, but it clings to him wherever he goes but gets more and more potent the more he walks.
He passes a man on the stairs. No, not a man. Something broader. Alpha, probably. Hair slicked back. Nose straight. Dressed like a professor who could snap your spine. He doesn’t move aside, Yoongi has to squeeze to the edge. Doesn’t breathe until the man is gone.
Then a pair. Women? Kind of? Maybe? Suits too smooth, smiles too symmetrical. Their shoes don’t make a sound. They speak in language Yoongi doesn’t know. One glances at him. Tilts her head. The other doesn’t even look.
He grips the railing tighter.
“Maybe I died,” he mutters.
Just to test it out. Just to hear the sound of his own voice.
It echoes. A little.
He keeps going.
And okay, yeah, maybe he’s overreacting. Maybe he’s just hungry. Or dehydrated. Or having some kind of medical emergency from stress.
It’s possible. He did get kissed. Kissed. With tongue. By someone who looked like they wanted to eat him or worship him, he’s not sure which.
Maybe this is just a panic dream. Maybe he’s in a hospital bed somewhere. Or the back of a van. Or a coma.
He reaches the bottom of the stairs. Finally.
The room here is darker. Quieter. Like sound gets eaten before it can bounce back.
There’s another hallway. Of course there is. He hesitates in the doorway, sleeve-covered fingers still curled around the rail. His body’s trembling, just slightly, but it’s not dramatic. Just an anxious little thing, barely visible unless you look at his wrists. His lashes. The way his lips part without sound.
There’s a staff member ahead.
Small-framed, but angular. Blonde buzzcut. Eyebrows too perfect. Lifting a tray of what looks like steel scalpels onto a cart.
Yoongi flinches back a step. Doesn’t mean to.
The staffer pauses. Turns. Doesn’t smile.
Just watches him.
Yoongi’s heartbeat skyrockets.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay he needs to get out of here. Or into a room. Or under a table. Or inside a hole in the wall. Or into a hoodie four sizes bigger. Or—
He wipes at his eyes. They're hot again.
He is not going to cry in this castle basement while some terrifying wax-statue beta with medical equipment watches him have a breakdown. No.
Absolutely not.
He sniffs. Stands straighter. Puts one foot forward.
Then another. The ground doesn’t move. Good start.
Left, right, left.
He doesn’t even know where he’s going anymore. The hallways keep doubling back on themselves. This feels like some kind of nightmare fever dream. He kind of wishes he never left his room at all.
He passes another set of staff—tall, silent, unatural eyes polished. He ducks his head automatically. Hopes they don’t see how scared he is.
Stop. Don’t think about it. Just walk. He rounds another corner, sees an unmarked door, and before his brain can catch up, he walks towards it like he’s drawn to it.
He hesitates. Just for a second.
But his hand still lifts. Knuckles brush the wood.
And the door opens.
By itself.
The hinges don’t creak. The air doesn’t shift. It just opens. Silently. Like it was waiting.
Inside is… not much. Not at first glance.
Just a room. High ceiling. No furniture. No guards.
But something’s off.
The light is wrong. It doesn’t come from the ceiling—there’s no fixture. No bulb.
It spills in from above—from an arched stained-glass window high on the far wall. One Yoongi hadn’t seen from the outside. One that shouldn’t even be there.
The glass is all red. Deep. Layered. Too rich for light to pass through cleanly.
And yet, the room is soaked in it. Bathed in that red. Drenched from ceiling to stone.
It bleeds over his hands. His sleeves. Like he’s been dipped in it. Like it knows him.
He steps inside, slow. The door shuts behind him. Quiet. Final.
Yoongi turns—then stops.
The room has no reflection. No echo.
He exhales, but there’s no sound. No shift in air pressure. Like this space exists outside of the rest of the property.
And the red moves. It crawls over the walls like water. Dances across the floor.
He blinks. Shivers.
Something inside him pulls toward it. Like the light is saying, come, come.
His breath fogs again. He looks down.
His skin looks wrong under the red. Not sick.
Just…new.
He drags a sleeve over his face and when he lowers it—
The red has formed a shape on the floor.
Not glowing. Not burning. Just… there. Drawn in shadows.
An old symbol. One he doesn’t recognize but it feels familiar.
He stares. Doesn’t blink. His pulse is loud in his ears. Something inside him is waking. Stretching.
His knees feel weird. Wobbly. Like if he tries to stand up straight for too long he’ll tip over. He slides down until he’s sitting on the floor, hoodie pooling around him, sleeves still over his hands.
He tries to breathe.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Doesn’t work.
His joints pulse. Ankles. Knees. Fingers. A crawling warmth that makes it hard to tell if he’s feverish or freezing. He rubs at his arms, but it’s like rubbing at static. The sensation doesn’t go away; it grows.
He squeezes his eyes shut. Just a cold. Just nerves. Just—
A tremor runs through him. His breath catches.
He presses his palms to his eyes until little fireworks and weird ass spirals burst behind them. “Get it together,” he whispers. “C’mon. Just—get it together.” His voice cracks on the last word.
He tucks his knees up. Rests his forehead against them. Hums under his breath, some half‑remembered tune from childhood. It comes out shaky. He hates that it comes out at all.
Now his joints feel like they’re packed with wet sand—thick, aching, like gravity’s gotten meaner in this room. It takes so much effort just to move his fingers.
What the hell is happening. Why does it feel like something is—clicking.
Inside him.
It smells like dust in here. Dust and something faintly sweet coming from him.
He bites the inside of his cheek. Hard. Wants to ground himself. Wants to be anywhere but here.
He thinks about Seokjin’s hand at the back of his neck, that moment where his body just… stopped fighting. How the world went soft and endless for a second. Like floating.
He wants it again.
Doesn’t know why. Doesn’t even have a name for it. Just knows that if someone grabbed him now, pushed him down into that soft place, he might finally stop shaking.
The thought makes him panic more.
He grips his hair, tugs lightly, rocking a little on the floor. “Stop,” he mutters. “Stop stop stop stop—” It comes out like a childish whisper.
His cheeks are wet. He didn’t even feel himself start crying. He hides his face in his sleeves.
He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. Doesn’t know why he smells weird to himself. Why his skin feels too hot. Why every sound feels like a hand reaching for him.
He just knows he wants out. Out of the room, out of the house, out of himself.
Somewhere outside, footsteps pass. Slow, deliberate. Don’t stop. Don’t knock.
He closes his eyes and wishes—childishly, desperately—that someone would find him and pull him back into that soft place, whatever it was. Wishes he could sink. Wishes he could disappear.
His shoulders tremble. He hugs his knees tighter.
The light above him flickers once.
He doesn’t look up.
He tries to count. Counting always helped in school, when he got overwhelmed. One, two, three… he loses his place after eight. Starts again. One, two—
“I’m fine.” Then quieter: “I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine.”
Another hiccup.
He bites his lip to stop the sound but it just trembles instead.
His head tips sideways, resting against the boxes. His eyelashes stick together. He blinks slow. Everything feels heavy.
He wants… he doesn’t even know what he wants. A blanket.
Outside, footsteps pause.
He holds his breath, eyes wide in the hood, like a kid caught sneaking cookies. His heart rate is so high he can hear it through his ears.
The footsteps move on.
He exhales.
He’s so scared his thoughts start looping into nonsense.
One, two, three, four, fiv—
No. Start over. Clean this time. One. Two. Three—
His brain skips, repeats things, makes static noise behind the numbers, like a busted radio.
There’s a part of him that wants to whimper into his sleeve until someone comes. Another part that wants to claw through his skin. Another part that just wants to sleep. For like a year.
He curls tighter.
“I’m not—I’m not like that,” he whispers. To no one. To himself.
Whatever that means.
His stomach twists again. It’s like the nerves have rewired, coiled up under his skin. He keeps getting flashes, images that don’t make sense. Teeth. A hand at his throat. The pull of gravity.
And that soft thing again. That place in his brain he didn’t know existed until Seokjin pressed him into it. Not pain. Not even fear. Just… surrender.
He hates that part of himself. He hates that it wants.
He hugs his legs and presses his face down into the fabric until it muffles everything. The sound of his breath. The way his bones rattle. Even the faint noises from the hallway.
He tries to think of something funny. It comes out sideways, like: do they even have wi-fi in hell?
It almost makes him snort. Almost. But it turns into a sound he doesn’t recognize, and his throat closes again.
He just wants—
The word won’t form. It’s too soft. Too stupid.
He wants—
No. He buries it.
Wants aren’t safe here. Not when he doesn’t even know what’s real. Not when his whole body feels wrong. His clothes hang weird. His own scent feels loud, and he doesn’t know how he knows that, but he does.
He doesn’t want to be like this. Doesn’t want to be wrong.
Doesn’t want someone to come in here and find him like this, curled up in a dusty corner, drenched in red light like something weak, crying over nothing, wanting hands on his neck just to make the noise stop.
But more than anything—
He doesn’t want to be alone.
That’s the worst part. The way his thoughts don’t sound like him anymore.
He tips his head back and blinks up at the flickering light.
“…Please,” he whispers.
It’s not loud. It’s not even directed at anything, like a coin in a fountain,a wish he didn’t mean to make.
He hiccups again. Breath shakes.
And then— a sound.
Not footsteps or talking.
Just… something.
A shift of air.
The sense that someone’s alert. That static feeling between his shoulder blades, crawling up his neck.
It’s probably nothing. A draft. A rat. The walls settling.
Still, the hair on his arms stands up. Still, his eyes dart to the door.
Still—
The light goes out.
Click.
Total black.
Oh hell naw.
Yoongi chokes on a breath and scrambles to his feet—only to slam into a box, stumble, hit his shin, hiss in pain—
But then—nothing.
Silence again.
No movement.
Just dark.
His hoodie sleeve brushes his lips as he tries not to whimper.
He presses himself into the corner and sinks back down, chest tight, throat closing, lungs too small. He can feel his pulse in his teeth.
It’s okay. It’s okay. He’ll wait.
The red lights will come back. Someone will find him, or they won’t.
Maybe he’ll just stay here. Maybe this room doesn’t exist. Maybe he doesn’t.
Maybe he’s dreaming.
Maybe he’s not.
He shuts his eyes.
This is when things begin to change. In the castle. In the world around him.
We zoom out from the shape of him—
Curled in the farthest corner of the room, sleeves pulled past his hands, shoulders hunched so tight his hoodie bunches around his ears. His knees are pulled to his chest, socked feet tucked beneath him, like he’s trying to disappear inside himself.
His eyes are squeezed shut. There’s a smudge of something, dust, maybe, on his cheekbone. His lips are parted just slightly. He looks so small. So pale. So young.
Like a little pup who ran away during a game of hide-and-seek but forgot what he was hiding from.
And it’s so quiet in here now, that the room itself seems to hesitate around him. Like it’s not sure if it’s allowed to exist while he’s like this.
Then we move.
Through the room.
To the door. We pass through it like mist, and Yoongi disappears from view.
On the other side, the hall is long. Silent, but not still.
And the door to the room Yoongi’s in—
doesn’t exist.
Not to the staff. Not to the castle. Not to the coded blueprints etched into the estate’s master keyframe. There is no record of it. No coordinates. No name.
The corridor folds around it but wrong if you look too closely. Anyone who passes by will glance at the stretch of wall and feel nothing.
No curiosity. No pull. No sense of absence.
Because the mind is designed to move past what it cannot hold.
The staff don’t see it.
Their eyes skip over the space like it offends them. Like their bodies know better than to notice.
They don’t walk that part of the hallway unless they’re ordered to. And no one ever orders them to.
Because the door is not a door.
It’s ecret the castle keeps for itself.
Something shifts, not loud or dramitc, at first…the walls creak in strange, synchronized tension, like every beam of the estate just felt something.
Down the long corridor: the chandelier trembles, once. A chain clicks.
One of the oil lamps on the wall flickers twice. Then steadies.
Down the hall, a mounted suit of armor shifts just a hair on its pedestal. Not from wind. From gravity.
The velvet runner rug that stretches the length of the hallway lifts at the edges, an invisible breeze stirring from somewhere far away. A breeze that shouldn’t exist.
Stillness. So still it hurts.
And then, quietly…the wind changes.
Something has changed.
Out the window, the wind stirs through the trees like a shiver down a spine. The lake that was perfectly still—mirror-flat—ripples once.
A single leaf detaches. Spins, slow. Falls.
Down in the stables, a hound lifts its head, ears twitching. Its nose flares once, twice, and then it rises—graceful, slow, cautious. Not alarmed. Just… alert.
Somewhere deeper in the forest, the horses shift in their stalls without sound, hooves sliding softly across hay. A single tether unclips from a post.
A doe, hidden at the forest’s edge, lifts her nose. Sniffs the air. Her ribs expand like drawn bowstrings.
Then, still silent, she turns and flees, vanishing into the trees with three quick bounds.
The sky has not changed, but something under the earth has. Even the clouds seem to hush. Like they’re waiting for something to happen.
High above the courtyard, set into one of the western turrets, a narrow stained-glass window catches the dimming light.
It’s old, centuries old. Framed in lead, its colors dulled by time and dust, but not broken.
The image is simple. A child curled in the hollow of a tree. Around them: animals watching from the brush. Owls in the branches. A fox curled by their feet.
Above them, from the sky, a golden thread descends—shimmering down from the hands of a faceless figure cloaked in stars.
It’s a window no one ever notices.
Too high to reach. Too dim to catch the eye. But now—
The glass vibrates. The golden thread inside the image flares once. Not bright. Just enough to catch the dust on the inside of the pane.
And then—crack.
Barely audible.
A hairline fracture slices through the glass, right across the child’s cheek.
Deep in the foundation, something clicks.
In one of the forgotten servant tunnels, a lantern guttered long ago flares back to life. Along the castle’s vaulted ceiling, a spiderweb trembles. The spider retreats into a crack in the stone.
Far above, somewhere in one of the unused towers, a locked drawer eases open with a sigh.
The castle remembers.
It’s the energetic resonance of fate completing its circuit.
For the first time in an age, the warded stones register a pulse that does not belong to the Warden. A second heartbeat.
Untrained, unbitten, untethered but the right frequency.
It rides on panic, not power. On tears, not teeth. On a boy curled small in a forgotten room, hoodie too big, breathing too shallow, trying to make himself smaller still.
Dust flees because his scent is unfurling, sharp and soft all at once, filling places it should never reach.
This isn’t ordinary presenting, not an ordiary omega, like many in the realm. This is a vessel waking, one born for a Warden.
This is what happens when the royals mate finally steps into the right realm: the locks sigh open, the windows fracture, the animals lift their heads, the air thickens.
Yoongi doesn’t know. He only feels sick and hot and wrong. He thinks he’s weak, thinks he’s losing it.
He thinks his panic is weakness, a flaw, proof that he’s fragile.
He’s wrong.
Every shudder of his breath is a signal. Every tear that slips past his sleeve is a current. Every anxious heartbeat is a pulse the old stones recognise.
He is a sealed vessel and he’s starting to leak. He is an echo‑bearer; his fear is an antenna, pulling ancient things toward him, stirring them awake.
He is an instinct‑oracle; even curled small, even crying, he’s reading the castle without knowing it, cataloguing scent shifts, temperature changes, the silence. His mind keeps offering words he’s never learned, pictures he’s never seen. It scares him.
He hugs his knees tighter, thinking he’s coming apart. In reality he’s broadcasting, a low, throbbing frequency of need and recognition that slips between walls and windows, down the spiral stairs, out into the courtyard, up into the turrets.
He castle vibrates back like a low lullaby, sensing its lost child.
And the realm answers. The castle answers.
He is presenting. He is presenting and has no language for it and somewhere on the other side of the fortress, the one who was built to find him is already moving.
Before the split between worlds. Before the taking. Before the fracture of balance between alphas, betas, and omegas, there is something that used to happen, back when the realm was whole.
When the bond chose first, and the body followed. When the vessels were born empty—but made to hold one thing only.
And this place—this fortress, estate, compound, citadel, whatever it is—It was built on that belief.
Carved into a faultline of old power, where ley lines meet like threads sewn into the spine of the earth.
The castle was never neutral. It remembers patterns. It remembers blood and it knows what this is.
The presenting of a vessel. The unfurling of a frequency too rare to mistake.
In one of the upper towers, a second stained-glass window flares dimly to life.
This one buried under gauze and dust. Forgotten.
Its image:
A fox curled at the feet of a faceless child. The child’s hands are cupped around a hummingbird.
Behind them: an orchard on fire. Not burning fast, just glowing. Controlled. Inevitable.
And overhead: a second figure, taller, cloaked, hand raised, not touching the child, but shielding them from ash.
No one alive remembers who made this window, but it’s always had a twin.
And now—just like the other—the glass vibrates. The orchard glows.
And a second crack appears, this time slicing down the raised palm of the cloaked protector.
Elsewhere, deep in a subterranean chamber lined with ceremonial fruit bowls long since petrified, the air shifts.
One pear, shriveled to stone centuries ago, collapses to dust. The orange beside it softens. Warms. Ripens.
We pass through these moments.
The castle begins to wake.
A chandelier over the east stairwell tilts slightly, glass beads chiming like a distant bell. Carved into the bannister, unnoticed until now, are six fruit motifs, all in a line. Peach. Fig. Orange. Plum. Apple. Pomegranate.
The fig cracks open on its own. Sweet, dark, wet inside. The pomegranate bleeds down the railing. The hallway fills with scent.
Not blood. Not death.
But ripeness.
In a hall of old tapestries, stitched depictions begin to twitch.
A white hound, once stitched static in the corner, lifts its head. A serpent embroidered along the hem of a war banner flickers its tongue, and in one massive wall-hanging—larger than the others, the kind woven for royal births—
A scene begins to move. A boy kneeling at a river. Another figure standing behind him, cloaked in gold and blood-red—hand held not possessively, but firmly.
A guardian. A Warden.
The boy in the image glows.
He looks just like Yoongi.
The grounds begin to respond now. Bees stir in a hive that hadn’t produced honey in decades. A vine crawls one inch up the side of the greenhouse, its tip curling like a question mark.
In the orchard, two pears drop at once.
And in the observatory’s mirror—a three-panel artifact older than the regime, a blurred outline appears where no one is standing.
Something is forming. A presence.
Yoongi doesn’t know any of this.
He only knows that his chest feels tight, his teeth ache, and his hoodie feels wrong. Like it’s too small for something he hasn’t grown into yet. Like it’s holding him back from some terrifying expansion.
His scent is turning. Strange and magnetic and soft and sharp and wrong, and he doesn’t know that wrong doesn’t mean broken. This is what happens when a sealed vessel lands in a castle that was built to receive him.
When an instinct-bearer steps on holy ground.
Yoongi is not just someone’s mate. He is someone’s fixed point.
And the castle knows whose.
Far across the estate—
Seokjin stills.
Mid-stride. Mid-word. Mid-breath.
He’s in the west corridor. Three floors up. A place with no windows. No wind, but his coat flutters anyway.
The candles on the wall gutters. Then flares. Then still.s
He doesn’t speak. Just stands there, listening, or maybe feeling, because something just changed in the architecture.
Something clicked into place. A vibration, somewhere beneath perception. Not a sound. Not a scent. Something older than that. Something he hasn’t felt since—
He falters. Head bowed. Brows furrowed.
That pull.
His next inhale comes slow. Deep.
Jin’s lips part. Eyes flutter. A sound escapes him, soft and involuntary. Not pain. Not exactly. It’s closer to awe. Or hunger. Or both tangled together.
A moan, not human. Not entirely. More like the way a storm sighs before it splits open the sky. He straightens with a sharp breath.
It’s happening.
Someone has touched the thread.
The right one.
He reaches for the wall, steadying himself. The painting beside him flickers. Not visibly. Not like light. Like memory. The subject shifts an inch to the left—an ancestral portrait—and for a half-second, the painted figure’s expression matches his.
Recognition. His pupils dilate.
There’s a thrum in his blood now. A long-forgotten algorithm reactivating in his DNA. It’s not instinct. It’s something programmed into the realm long before kings or packs.
The lock has turned and he can feel it. Feel him.
Not see. Not scent. Not hear. Jin doesn’t need those. That’s not the kind of bond this is.
This is something divine.
Jin breathes through his nose, jaw clenched, hands twitching like he’s been hit with adrenaline. The scentless pull of submission—not his own—but of someone else’s, bleeding through the walls, the trees, the stone.
He tilts his head back. Closes his eyes. The sharp line of his jaw catches the lamplight.
Lets this power in, it finds him, reaches into him.
Seokjin, warden of the western spire, firstblood of the line of astra, the most powerful alpha in the known dominion—
feels himself unlock.
It should not be possible.
It’s not just the bond humming awake inside him. It’s the same feeling when he first stood in the temple of tethering, knelt before the relic, was marked. When his name was still a title and his title still a fate.
It burns now. Quietly. Like red lightning.
The overhead sconces flicker again. The red ones. The ancient ones. The ones that only answer when a warden's bond activates inside the estate.
They come to life in staggered order—like an artery re-pressurizing.
One—then three—then five at once.
Their crimson glow licks over the stone like blood finding its way back through a severed body. One hallway at a time.
Jin lifts his head.
His eyes are dark and ancient, full of worlds no one’s survived long enough to ask about.
The mark behind his ear, hidden for decades, begins to pulse.
He doesn’t touch it, doesn’t need to. He knows what this is.
The castle shifts again. Something behind the chandelier trembles. In the greenhouse, an orchid unfurls its petals out of season. A fruit splits on the vine.
The castle knows. The ground knows.
Jin knows.
There’s a boy somewhere in his walls. Small. Shaking. Overflowing. Broadcasting need so potent the warded roots of this place have unlocked themselves to answer.
Yoongi.
Jin breathes again—deeper this time.
The air carries new taste. Sweet and potent. Thick like honey.
Newborn scent.
Unclaimed. Still feral. Still free.
And the castle is reacting because the castle remembers what this bond is capable of when it completes.
He can feel it in his spine. His chest. His tongue.
His omega is presenting.
But not just that.
Something in this realm—somewhere high in the orbit of power and ruin and binding magic—has just decided to choose again. And it’s chosen him.
A forgotten role. A sacred one.
And Jin is its axis.
And then, faint. Fainter than a whisper. Fainter than breath.
A voice:
He's here.
He can taste it now. The scent isn’t just sweet, it’s primal. Sacred. Still raw, newborn, yes, but not in the weak way people mean. Not helpless. Not empty.
No. This scent has edges. Flickers of spice underneath the softness. Something tender curling around something lethal. The beginning of a bond so powerful the walls themselves already began to bend.
It’s Yoongi. Of course it is. Jin knew before he had a name.
Before he had a face. Before he had a body to cradle this much power inside.
Because this is why Jin made the Taking.
Not for war. Not for conquest. Not even for power.
But because he was promised something.
Still new. Still forming. The scent that’s starting to flood these corridors, it’s one that will never exist again.
There is no second one like it.
Jin feels his breath catch in his throat.
Vanilla, but not the artificial kind. More like fresh vanilla bean scraped from the pod, warmed on skin. Familiar. Intimate. The kind of sweetness that makes your mouth water without knowing why.
Storm-soaked clove. The faintest trace of snowmelt on granite. Clean, ancient, high-altitude purity—like the scent of wind that’s never touched anything human. The kind of scent that only exists at mountaintops or in dreams.
It’s blood-orange rind torn open with bare hands, citrus-sharp and sugared. There’s salt from crying too hard in a shirt that smells like someone he loves. It’s orchid resin from a place that doesn’t exist on any map.
But the part that really undoes Jin is—
There is no name for this scent.
It’s golden. Soft. Like beeswax and sunlit dust. The kind of scent you only smell when the light hits just right.
It smells like something that was locked away for centuries until now.
He presses a palm to the stone wall beside him. It’s hot. Alive. The boy is leaking into the walls.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing. That’s what hits Jin the hardest, he doesn’t know. He thinks he’s breaking. Thinks he’s fragile. Thinks he’s too much.
And he is too much—for anyone but Jin, because the truth is, he wasn’t made for anyone else.
Jin moves.
Each step he takes sends a low-frequency knock through the floorboards, felt more than heard. His coat flares behind him, tugged by wind that should not exist.
He passes a window. Outside, the trees are blown. The sky has turned red.
Far below, deep in the sub-chambers that run beneath the orchard, a door unlatches. A sealed room. One that hasn’t opened since the first treaty.
Inside: a chair. A basin. A shard of mirror. And one long-coiled braid of silver cord.
It was supposed to stay locked until the vessel cried out.
It’s open now.
Jin doesn’t even glance that direction.
He’s already turning the corner.
His eyes have darkened entirely. The red sconces cast blood-rings along the walls, and he walks right through them—untouched, unbothered, unstoppable.
Power doesn't announce itself in him, it simply waits and coils.
He rounds the bend into the west stairwell—and pauses.
The temperature drops behind him. Red light burns above every door he passes.
The closer he gets—the stronger that scent becomes.
Yoongi is bleeding into the seams of the world now.
Jin could fall to his knees.
Instead, he grits his teeth and walks faster. Not running…yet, but his stride lengthens.
Jin’s pulse jolts in his throat.
Too sweet. Too fresh. Too potent.
It’s calling.
And that’s the problem.
He exhales through his nose, jaw clenching, because that scent—his scent, his—is too loud in a place like this.
It’ll call others.
Predators. Old ones. Hungry ones. Ones who will smell the innocence and softness and want to taste it. Even just once.
Even just enough to ruin it.
No.
The corridor lights up behind his eyes. All red. The kind that flashes when prey is near.
And this is his prey. His pup. His omega.
Other predators in this house. Ones who would recognize that scent for what it is: new, raw, unbound. An omega freshly bloomed, terrified, bursting with power he doesn’t know how to carry yet. Power that could be harvested. Used.
Or claimed.
He’s aware of how he looks—feral, boots moving too fast, coat slicing behind him, hair catching on firelight. His eyes are entirely black now, no gold, no white, no kindness left in them. Only focus. Only fury.
He takes the steps two at a time.
Jin grits his teeth again—his jaw aches from how hard he’s clenching it.
Yoongi isn’t ready.
He’s presenting—yes. Shining, glowing, flooding with potential.
But he’s scared. Confused. Alone.
And he’s so young.
Too young to be hunted.
The idea makes Jin’s vision blur.
Another wave of scent hits him, stronger now. Closer. Vanilla laced with heat. Coiled in cinnamon this time. Ripe. So perfectly ripe it could ruin him.
And that’s the moment Jin truly loses it.
He grabs the next railing hard enough to snap it. Turns the next landing like he’s turning into battle. His boots thud down the last stair. He’s not walking now.
He’s tracking.
Back straight. Shoulders squared. Chest heaving like he’s been running for miles.
Red light pours across the floor. From the windows. From above. From behind. It follows him, trails him. Like it’s being pulled too.
Jin wasn't made to chase things, he was made to catch them.
This miracle of scent and soul and instinct? This is his.
His to protect. His to touch when the time comes—not yet, not yet, not yet—but soon. His to lift. His to hold.
A turn. Another. Jin barely registers the movement now. His hands twitch at his sides. His mark is burning again. Behind his ear, the skin feels scalded. The light above his head flares white—
Then extinguishes.
He's close.
So close it aches.
And he can feel it now—
Yoongi is fighting it.
He’s shaking somewhere. Curling up on instinct, probably trying to hide it, plug it, stop it. Trying to contain something that was never meant to be contained.
And Jin knows what that will do to him.
It’ll burn. It’ll spiral. It’ll turn inside out.
Unless someone gets to him.
Jin is not letting anyone else find him first.
His hands twitch.
The backs of his fingers are glowing faintly now. Magic. Age. Memory. Bond-mark activation. A thread humming hot through the marrow of his knuckles.
He’s close.
He swears the floor vibrates beneath his boots. Another pulse of scent rolls out, and it’s gorgeous.
Like honey soaked in smoke. Like sugar and wildfire and warmth.
Jin nearly stumbles, because that note—that new note underneath it is fear.
Jin’s pupils snap wide.
Someone else is near him.
He knows how these halls work. How old wards flicker when new blood enters. How rival houses build scent traps into corridors. How quickly things devolve when magic flares without claim.
His face turns to steel.
If they touch him—
If they so much as look at him with claim in their scent—
He will dismantle this place. Stone by stone. Soul by soul. He does not care.
Yoongi is glowing and no one is supposed to see that but him.
He smells the boy now like a stormfront—too much, too soon, too unprotected. So fresh. So unclaimed it aches. So soft it’s like the first breath after crying. He can barely stand it.
He’s going to—
No. Not yet.
The scent flares again. Almost delirious now. A note of disorientation. Of the body overtaking the brain. Of instinct overriding logic.
Presenting. Fully. Right now. Now.
Jin halts.
The red through the nearest window burns like sunset and blood mixed together. The sky is wrong. Streaked. Flushed. Every warning sign glowing in reverse.
And right ahead of him—
The room that opened without permission. The one he never dared to enter.
And pouring through it—
The scent.
Jin exhales once.
He’s pulled forward.
Not gently. Not delicately.
But fully.
The pact he made centuries ago—to wait for this exact moment—is ready to unspool, Jin knows it in the deepest, quietest part of his blood. The place where all Warden lines hold their bondmark.
The part of him that’s been asleep. The part he buried, locked, sealed in ritual and rage.
That part is awake now. Jin stands there a moment longer, hand hovering. Not because he’s hesitating. He’s already claimed this moment a thousand years ago.
He’s just trying not to ruin it.
Because what waits on the other side—is soft. Is sacred. Is his.
And the scent—fuck, the scent—is beyond feral now. It’s flooding the hallway, melting the seams between magic and matter. Sugared clove and candlewax vanilla. Burnt gold and citrus-cracked silk. Blood-orange nectar soaked in something celestial.
And under it all—
Terror. Not danger-terror. Self-terror. The kind that happens when your body opens before your mind is ready. When your instincts click in before your language can name them.
The kind of fear that only happens to omegas when their soul cracks open and no one is there to catch it.
Jin presses his palm to the door.
A sound escapes him. Small. Not even a word. Just breath. Grief. Awe.
And then—
He sees him.
Yoongi is—
Oh.
Yoongi is in the far corner, exactly as Jin’s bones told him he’d be. Small. Curled. Hoodie up to his ears, sleeves swallowed over his fists, socked feet dragging on the floor like he tried to stand and couldn’t. His knees tremble. Tiny sounds spilling out of his mouth like he’s trying not to make them.
Like his body is betraying him. Like he thinks this means something’s wrong.
It doesn’t.
But try telling a newly presenting omega that. Try telling Yoongi that.
His scent rolls through the air in dizzy pulses now—raw sugar and burnt spice and something ancient under it all, something molten and perfect and pure.
And he’s trembling. Not just with fear. With instinct. With pressure. With power. With need he doesn’t understand. His thighs are drawn tight, shaking slightly.
His pupils are blown. Cheeks damp. His mouth parts on a pant like he’s trying to breathe around it, but it’s not working.
There’s too much. Too much heat. Too much scent. Too much feeling. He lets out a sharp gasp and claws his fingers into his sleeves like maybe that’ll hold him together.
It won’t.
Jin can feel the heat coming off him even from here. The unsteady pull of instincts kicking in without guidance. Omega space blooming blind.
Yoongi senses him.
Looks up—slowly.
Eyes wide, chest rising like he’s mid-panic. But the moment he sees Jin, he freezes.
Yoongi doesn’t know what’s happening. Doesn’t know why his body is doing this, or why it hurts so much, or why the sound of footsteps outside the door made him press his face to the wall and cry like a baby—
The moment Jin walks in, something inside Yoongi quiets.
Not completely. Not fully. But just enough for him to take his first real breath in what feels like an hour.
And then—he whimpers.
Small. Sharp. Accidental. Like it was dragged from his throat without his consent.
It undoes Jin.
“There you are.”
The omega he’s been promised.
Yoongi’s breath catches. His head tips back an inch. His lips part, but no word comes out.
The alpha crosses the room in three strides, crouches without thinking, long coat pooling around his boots, eyes black and ancient and fixed on the boy.
Yoongi’s fighting it and it’s hurting him.
“Look at me,” Jin says quietly. Something between the two. His hand hovers in the air — not touching yet. Waiting. “Right here. Just me.”
Yoongi’s lashes tremble. He drags his eyes up, slow, unfocused. Pupils huge. He’s shaking so hard his hoodie sleeve slides down his wrist.
Jin’s fingers twitch. He could take him. Lift him. Bite him. Claim him. He doesn’t.
“Shhh. Hey, pup.”
Yoongi whimpers again. Hides deeper in the hoodie, his scent spikes—hot with confusion. Fear. Sweetness.
Yoongi shakes his head faintly. “Too much,” he breathes. Barely audible. “S-s’much—”
“You’re not broken.” Another pause. “You’re just…loud. Everything’s loud inside you. I know.” He reaches out then — not to grab, but to place two fingers under Yoongi’s chin. A slow tilt. Enough to bring his gaze up, to catch his eyes without force. Jin’s thumb brushes the edge of his jaw, not a stroke, just weight. A grounding point.
Yoongi’s pupils flutter. His breath trembles out in a soft whine. His knees draw tighter to his chest.
Jin’s palm slides from chin to cheek, thumb resting just below his eye. He can feel the heat radiating off him, the scent rising even stronger. Fresh, unclaimed. So young. So precious.
“You must be so confused,” Jin murmurs, voice lower still. “Poor thing. No one told you what this feels like, did they?”
Yoongi makes a sound — small, slurred, more a hum than a word. His fingers curl into his sleeves.
Jin shifts closer, one knee on the floor now, the other bent. He slides an arm behind Yoongi without asking and draws him out of the corner, slow but inevitable, until Yoongi ends up on his lap.
Yoongi blinks slowly, eyes glassy. “I c-can’t—” His voice cracks. “It’s in m-my teeth, it’s—won’t stop—”
Jin cradles him against his chest. One broad palm spreads across Yoongi’s back, warm through the hoodie, pressing just enough to anchor, not enough to trap. His other hand cups the back of his head, fingers threading through his hair, massaging at the base of his skull in slow circles.
Yoongi makes another soft sound. A little moan, a little sob. His thighs twitch. He curls tighter. “Feels w-wrong,” he slurs.
“Easy,” he says, not soothing, not commanding —a hybrid of both. “Don’t fight it. Just breathe. Let it happen.”
Yoongi trembles again, a soft sound caught in his throat. His eyes flutter shut. His head tips forward until his forehead presses to Jin’s collarbone. His scent blooms even fuller, dizzying, wild.
Jin inhales it like oxygen. He’s waited centuries for this.
“D…dunno…wh‑what’s…happ…happnin’…t’me…”
Jin lowers his mouth to Yoongi’s ear, voice a rumble that feels older than the language itself. “You don’t have to know,” thumb brushing just under Yoongi’s jaw. “Not yet. Just…let it happen.”
Yoongi lets out a shaking exhale. His fingers twitch. His nose wrinkles, like he’s scenting without meaning to—and the moment Jin’s scent brushes his cheek—
Jin’s on him in a breath. arms around him but not caging, just there. Present. One palm to the nape of his neck, thumb pressing a spot that makes Yoongi melt.
“Little thing,” he murmurs. “You’re glowing.”
Yoongi whines. Barely a sound. His whole body shudders. “Shhh,” Jin whispers.
“Y’r real?” he murmurs, drunk on scent, too hot to think. “You smell—like—you feel like—”
“I know,” Jin murmurs. “I know.”
He shifts, cradling Yoongi closer.
“Don’t think.”
Just that, and Yoongi listens.
Then Yoongi whispers, almost slurred, “Why’s it—feel like this—?”
Jin doesn’t answer yet, his hand drags slow down the boy’s back.
Then—a whisper right to his ear.
“Because you were never meant to do this alone.”
One hand cups behind his neck.
Yoongi lets out a wrecked, high sound that’s not even a word. His head tilts toward the warmth of Jin’s chest. He can’t help it.
“There it is,” Jin breathes.
A pause. His thumb strokes the side of Yoongi’s neck, where a bondmark will one day sit.
Yoongi shivers.
That’s all he does. Just shivers. Hands limp now and body folded. His nose bumps Jin’s throat. His breath goes all syrupy and slow. There’s drool at the edge of his lip.
“Too much—s’wrong—can’t—”
Jin strokes a thumb across the back of his neck. Circles once. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he says.
Yoongi whimpers again. Almost angry this time. Like he’s trying to bite back the submission bleeding out of him.
“Shhh.” Jin kisses the crown of his head. Closed-mouthed. Still. “You’re doing so well, such a good boy,” he says, quiet.
Yoongi jerks in his lap. Another surge of scent bursts off him— helpless, rich, impossibly sweet.
Jin’s jaw flexes. He closes his eyes. Breathes through his teeth. Holds.
Not yet.
“Fuck,” he mutters.
Yoongi’s heart thumps against his chest, fast and terrified. His hands are curled tight, little fists balled in the fabric of Jin’s coat.
And Jin feels it again—
How divine and pure this gift is— new, unscented, unclaimed—not too young for the world but not yet ready.
And some part of Jin — ancient and patient and cruel with want — knows he should have waited.
He’s waited before. He’s waited longer than anyone has a right to. Waited through empires. Through oceans drying into salt plains. Through languages dying on the tongues of gods.
He could’ve waited another year. Another week. Even just one more day.
But the moment he felt it —the moment the temple turned red —waiting became impossible. Because red means the bloodline has answered.
Red means: there is one.
No one ever expects red. Most alphas go their whole lives without feeling it—that gut-split certainty, that pull. Because most don’t get a fated mate. Most don’t deserve one.
Most just pick.
They walk the mortal world, watching classrooms, parties, subways—looking for the right scent. The right shiver. The omega that is fit for them.
But that’s a gamble. That’s a choice.
A fated mate is something else entirely. You don’t choose them. You find them.
Only the oldest lines still carry the fated bond. Most have thinned out over time — watered down through generations, bred out by power-hungry dynasties and human wars.
Some alphas choose their mates. Build them. Claim them. Take them, but fated mates — promised mates — they’re not chosen.
They’re given.
And only a few are born every century. Rarer still are the ones who survive long enough to bloom.
Not every human is an omega. Most aren’t. The omega gene sleeps, buried under layers of ordinary blood. Hidden. Silent. Inactive. Some live their whole lives without ever waking it. They pass for human. Die human. Are never found.
But if it wakes—if the conditions are right, if the world tilts just slightly in the wrong direction—the scent cracks open.
And the world comes for them.
Because omegas don’t belong in the human world. They were never supposed to be here. There’s a reason only the most alphas can feel it when a promised omega starts to bloom.
Yoongi won’t stop shaking. “W-Wasn’—wasn’t me,” he stammers, jaw slack, lips barely moving. “Didn’t mean to—I didn’t, I just—I walked, I was—”
His breath hitches. He blinks too slow. The room rocks under him.
Jin hums low in his throat. Not soft. Not cruel. Just listening.
“Was red,” Yoongi whispers. “It—it touched me. It was—moving, it moved, it saw me—” He shudders. “God—what was that—what the fuck was that—?”
Jin watches. Still. Breath measured. Unreadable.
Yoongi’s hands curl against his chest like he can claw his way out of his own skin. “Can’t—can’t breathe right—feels like—” He swallows hard. “Feels like something’s inside me—like m’mind’s not—fuck—”
His legs give a twitch. His knees won’t lock. His shoulders won’t hold. Every breath sounds thinner than the last.
“Too hot—too—s’cold—feels wrong—” He gasps.
Yoongi looks up slowly. Tears tracking without sound. His lips part. His breath comes out shallow and trembling, like he’s trying to form a question but forgot what words are.
“Hurts,” he whimpers. “My joints—s’like—I can’t—feels like my blood’s wrong—”
“It’s not wrong,” Jin says. “It’s changing.”
Yoongi gasps. “M’scared—hurts, hurts, hurts—was red, Jin—was red—don’t wanna die—don’t—don’t wanna—don’t wanna disappear—”
Jin adjusts him silently. Not to comfort. To study. To see. The boy's scent is still changing — unstable, acid-sweet, barely tethered. Half of it is new. The rest is memory. The kind that makes Jin’s mouth go dry. “You’re not disappearing.”
“Then what’s happening to me—”
“You’re becoming,” Jin says.
Silence.
“M’sorry—” Yoongi mumbles into Jin’s chest. “I didn’t mean to—feels bad—feels like I’m floating too fast—can’t—can’t slow down—”
“The gene took,” Jin says, like it’s already done. “It’s too late to outrun it now.”
Yoongi whines. Soft. Wordless. Instinctual. “Why’s it doing this—what’s wrong with me—”
“Don’t worry.” Jin’s gaze flicks downward—neck, clavicle, pulse. He lifts his hand. Places two fingers against the side of Yoongi’s throat. “You won’t be human much longer.”
“No—no, no I wasn’t— I— I don’t want this.”
Jin doesn’t answer.
Yoongi lets out a breathy sob. His chin wobbles.
“It— it knew me. The light. It—” He gasps again. “It got in.”
Jin doesn’t look pleased. Or sympathetic. He looks fascinated.
“In what way.”
Yoongi whines. It’s not conscious. “I wanna go back,” he whispers. “Out of the light. I wanna— I wanna go back.”
Jin closes his eyes for a moment. “Fresh,” he murmurs. “Too fresh.”
Jin comes from a royal line. One of the last. His ancestors wrote the original blood laws in stone. They burned sigils into the land. They built the temples.
And the temples do not lie.
He’d gone once. Long ago. When he was still foolish enough to believe he might be worthy of a mate. He bled into the altar. Waited in the cold.
The stone stayed dark.
He didn’t go back for years.
He lived. Fought. Broke kingdoms. Built others. Took and lost and burned and rebuilt. Started to believe he’d been spared because fated mates are not a blessing.
They are a reckoning.
But then the temple turned red. He felt it before the messengers arrived. Woke in the middle of a dreamless century. Sat up with blood in his mouth and fire in his throat. He knew.
The temple had spoken. The coordinates came first. Then the name. Then the timeline.
Jin knew where Yoongi would be.
He just didn’t know when.
So he watched. Waited.
Yoongi was one of the hidden.
A rare phenomenon. An omega born dormant. Human on the outside. Something else underneath. There are only a few—scattered across the globe, coded deep in their blood. The omega gene—recessive, buried, silent.
Until something wakes it. Jin watched Yoongi blur between human and not.
The first flare happened in winter. Barely a flicker. Weak. Unstable. Like a match that flared and died, but Jin felt it and he knew. The gene had activated.
It was beginning. Yoongi didn’t know. No one ever does.
So maybe fate made the first move.
Jin’s been alive long enough to forget what it means to yearn for something.
The temple wanted it to go this way. It always does.
The bloodline answers when it’s ready. Not when you are, so maybe this—this trembling pup in Jin’s lap, scenting, fingers balled into fists like it’s the only thing keeping him from falling apart—
Maybe it’s not too soo . Maybe it’s the moment the gods promised him, back when he still believed in them.
Jin strokes the pup’s spine with one slow pass of his palm. Not to soothe. Just to feel.
The humanness of him. So small. So soft. So unaware.
Just trembling and sweet and cracked open in Jin’s arms, the way all fledglings are, before they understand what they’ve been made for.
Jin closes his eyes, sees it again—that night.
The red light spilling from the altar. The temperature dropping so fast his breath crystalized in the air. The names that wrote themselves in fire across the obsidian walls.
And the taking was no longer theoretical.
Jin didn’t just inherit the ritual, he made it. Centuries ago, after watching too many hidden omegas burn out before they were found. After losing too many packs to chaos and hunger and the cruelty of delay.
He wrote the laws that let the strongest alphas stake claim. He built the channels, the codes, the underground ports. He gave them a name. A season. A time.
But that was never the real reason. Not deep down.
He made the taking to build a door for himself. A door that would lead to the one thing he was fated to have.
Yoongi.
Jin has paid. In blood. In time. In every kingdom he let burn while he kept searching. In the ache he carved into himself to keep from touching him now.
He presses his lips to Yoongi’s temple. Breathes him in. Lets the sugar-sharp scent hit the back of his throat.
Yoongi’s too young to understand what power costs.
Not the kind you earn. The kind you are.
Jin is power. Leashed. Focused. Old in ways that don’t age. Buried in rules he wrote with his own blood. He could take Yoongi right now—make him his in every language that ever meant possession.
But he doesn’t because power isn’t taking, power is waiting.
Jin feels him twitch. Feels the bond pulse. Feels the way Yoongi’s hips tip just slightly like he’s trying to curl in, trying to scent-mark by accident, trying to find something that isn’t hurting.
“You’re mine,” Jin says, voice low. “This body. This scent. This gift—” He brushes his nose along Yoongi’s temple, scenting him gently. “—this was never meant to be handled by anyone else.”
Yoongi exhales. Long. Shaking. Soundless. His eyes flutter open.
Wide. Glossy. Unfocused. Blown pupils swallowing the color whole. Like he’s dreaming with his eyes open.
Like he’s been—taken.
His mouth parts just barely.
A tremble. A pause.
Then, breathless—
“…alpha?”
The first word he speaks in omega space. The only one that matters.
Jin closes his eyes and everything stops.
The room stills. The corridor quiets. The red light flickers once behind the windows, then recedes.
It’s the moment.
The omega has presented.
The alpha has answered.
The bond is beginning.
Every ancient part of him stirs. Answers.
Not out loud.
Just—yes. In every part of him that matters.
It means the bond is real. Means Yoongi’s instincts recognized him before his mind did. Means the Temple wasn’t wrong.
Jin curls an arm tighter around his waist, palm flat to his lower back.
Then softly whispers into Yoongi’s ear, “You only say that word to me.”
Yoongi’s head dips forward—nuzzling without meaning to—his breath catching on Jin’s collar. He doesn’t speak again, just whimpers.
He’s so deep in it, he can’t tell where his body ends and Jin begins. His scent is everywhere now—vanilla, innocence, sugar cracked open under pressure. Unripe peaches. Something new.
Something unclaimed.
Jin stares at him, his glowing omega, gone under, and adjusts his hold. One arm under Yoongi’s thighs, the other curled around his shoulders. Cradling. Not caging.
And Jin feels it before it happens.
The light. As presence.
Somewhere behind him, the red returns.
Soft at first. Barely noticeable. A glow that shouldn’t exist, but does.
Jin’s eyes flick up.
The stained glass. It’s glowing again.
No storm outside. No moon. No sun. Just red. Bleeding in through the patterns etched centuries ago. Swallowing the room in color.
Jin’s jaw flexes.
He shifts slightly, adjusting Yoongi in his hold. One arm tighter under his thighs. The other curling up, cradling the back of his head.
Yoongi stirs. A faint twitch. A soft noise, like he might open his eyes.
“No,” Jin murmurs, so quiet it’s almost breath. “Don’t.”
His hand moves immediately, instinct over thought. Fingers long and precise, gliding up to cradle the back of Yoongi’s head. He shifts just slightly—adjusting the angle, thumb brushing along the edge of Yoongi’s temple—not possessive, but deliberate. Shielding.
Not just to hold him. Not just to comfort. To protect, because the stained glass is already glowing again.
That light—creeping in through fractured color, crawling down the walls like it’s alive, is almost terrifying.
The temple has answered.
And Yoongi, trembling in his arms, has no idea. He’s not ready to see it. Not now. Not like this. Jin won’t let him, because if Yoongi opens his eyes, if he sees what the room looks like now, bathed in blood-light and omen, it’ll frighten him more. It’ll break something Jin hasn’t even finished mending yet.
And Yoongi—god. Just look at him. He’s all lashes and flushed cheeks, soft mouth parted, tiny gasps. Still caught in the undertow of instinct, dazed and breathless.
His skin is glowing. Radiant with scent and heat and the haze of presentation. Hair messy against Jin’s coat. Eyelashes fluttering. Chin tipped up, unknowing. There’s a sheen of sweat at his brow, glittering, and a drop of drool tracing from the corner of his mouth to the edge of his jaw.
It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.
Because he’s perfect.
So heartbreakingly beautiful and undone—like something sacred that wandered into the wrong century.
A fledgling.
Jin can barely stand it.
The bond is loud now. Not fully formed—but screaming under the surface. Every instinct Jin has is flaring with need. With want. With unbearable restraint.
But he stays still.
Covers Yoongi’s eyes. Keeps him soft. Keeps him warm. Keeps him unaware.
“Keep them closed,” he whispers. “Don’t look. You don’t need to see any of that.”
Because the red is not for Yoongi. Not yet.
It’s for Jin.
For what’s coming. For the bond blooming between and it’s power capabilities.
Yoongi nestles in—unknowing, unbearably sweet—and lets his lashes fall fully shut again. His breath evens, just barely. A hiccup in the rhythm, a twitch of his tiny nose. He’s clinging with no idea what he’s clinging to.
And Jin—ancient, forbidden, already-ruined Jin—just watches him. Watches the glow ripple across his face, watches the stained glass throw red across his features. Watches a miracle fall asleep on his chest like it’s something that’s always belonged there.
The temple doesn’t lie. Jin is going to destroy the world to make sure he survives this.
Even if Yoongi never understands the blood on Jin’s hands. Even if he never sees the window burning red behind him.
Not yet. Not ever, if Jin can help it.
There are some things fledglings were never meant to see.
So for now—
Jin covers Yoongi’s eyes and lets the red light spill across the floor in silence.
His thumb brushes just under Yoongi’s eye. “Shh.”
Another flicker from the window. The light stretches out further this time—across the stone floor, the walls, the ceiling. Up, up, up—
We’re above them now.
Watching.