It’s like walking into a wall. Hongjoong’s pheromones, thick and heady and so concentrated in this small classroom that the air is saturated with them, filling my nose and mouth and coating the back of my throat. Alpha pheromones, but not the normal ambient kind that I’ve grown used to after years of being surrounded by alphas. These are dense and layered and unmistakable, carrying that specific sharp-sweet edge that I’ve only ever smelled a handful of times, always from a distance, always with enough warning to remove myself from the situation.
Rut.
I straighten up, my spine going rigid, and I stare at him.
“What the hell are you doing here if you knew you were going into rut?” I ask, my voice coming out sharp because my heart is hammering now and there’s a spike of panic at the realization that I’m alone in a dark room with a rutting alpha and nobody upstairs knows where either of us went.
Hongjoong shakes his head in a weak, jerky motion. “I didn’t know.” He swallows thickly. “It’s early. Wasn’t supposed to hit for another few weeks.” He lets out a laugh that sounds more like a cough, bitter and humorless, and his head drops back againstthe chair behind him. “I’ve been popping suppressants for weeks straight to get through finals. Guess the rebound’s catching up to me now.”
Shit. Shit. Alpha suppressants aren’t illegal the way omega ones are, but they’re not exactly gentle on the body either, and taking them consecutively for weeks is the kind of stupid, reckless thing that Hongjoong would absolutely do because he never thinks about consequences until they’re already sitting on his chest. Suppressants work by delaying the cycle, pushing it back, but the body keeps building up the hormones regardless, and when the dam finally breaks the rut comes back harder and faster than it would have naturally, a compressed wave of everything the suppressants were holding at bay crashing down all at once.
Which is exactly what’s happening to him right now, on the floor of our old homeroom, on graduation night, with only me here to witness it.
I can see how much he’s suffering. His muscles are twitching under his skin, involuntary spasms running through his arms and legs, and his jaw is clenched so tight I can see the muscles bunching at the hinge of it. His whole body is coiled and rigid, fighting against itself, and the pheromones are getting thicker by the second, filling the classroom until I can practically taste them on my tongue.
I need to get him help. Says the part of my brain that’s been trained by years of being the responsible one in this group of idiots.
“Okay,” I say, already shifting my weight to stand. “I’ll go check if any of the guys upstairs have spare suppressants on them. Dokyeom usually carries—”
Hongjoong’s hand shoots out and catches my wrist.
His grip is tight, fingers wrapping all the way around and locking down with a strength that surprises me even though itshouldn’t, because he’s an alpha in rut and his body is running on pure hormonal overdrive right now. He pulls with a sharp downward tug, and I’m yanked back down to the floor beside him, my knee hitting the linoleum with a dull thud.
“Hongjoong, let go, I need to—”
The words die in my throat because Hongjoong leans in and presses his nose directly into the side of my neck, right against the scent gland below my ear, and he inhales deeply and groans. The sound comes from somewhere deep in his chest, low and resonant, vibrating against my skin where his lips are barely brushing, and every hair on my body stands up at once.
“You smell so fucking good right now,” he mumbles against my throat, the words slurred and hot against my skin, his grip on my wrist tightens as he presses closer, his nose dragging along the line of my scent gland like he’s trying to burrow into it.
My pulse spikes. My whole body goes taut, every nerve firing at once, Hongjoong’s rut pheromones are pouring off him in waves now, rolling over me in thick, suffocating pulses that fill my lungs with every breath I take, and my omega biology is responding to them with a swiftness and intensity that I am not prepared for. Heat floods through my lower belly, pooling heavy and liquid between my hips, and I feel my cock thicken in my slacks, stiffening against my thigh in a rush of blood that makes me lightheaded. And worse, much worse, I feel the telltale slick of arousal leaking from my hole, warm and wet, soaking into my underwear in a spreading dampness.
I try to shift away from him, try to put even a few inches of distance between his mouth and my neck, but Hongjoong’s grip on my wrist doesn’t budge and his other hand comes up to curl around the back of my neck, holding me in place with a firmness that isn’t aggressive but isn’t gentle either.
Then he drags his tongue up the column of my throat.
A long, hot, wet stripe from the base of my neck to just below my jaw, his tongue flat and pressing firm against my pulse point, the sensation is so sudden and so searingly intimate that my entire body locks up and then goes liquid in the space of a single heartbeat. I go fully hard instantly, my cock straining against my slacks, and my head swims as arousal crashes through me in a wave so strong that my vision blurs at the edges and I have to catch myself on the desk beside me to keep from tipping over.
I know this is bad. I know I should get up and leave, should pull his hand off my wrist and walk out of this classroom and go back upstairs and send one of the other alphas down here to deal with this, because I am an omega and he is an alpha in rut and we are alone and everything about this situation is a terrible idea that could ruin everything between us. I know all of that. It’s clear and logical and completely correct.
But my will falters.
Because the thing is, it’s not just the pheromones. It’s not just about being an omega responding to an alpha in rut, the hardwired instinct to submit and yield and present. If it were only that, I could fight it. I’ve been fighting that my whole life, proving that I’m more than what my designation says I should be, keeping up with alphas and refusing to be treated as less. I’m good at fighting it.
What I can’t fight is the fact that it’shim.
It’s Hongjoong. Hongjoong, who I’ve wanted since first year when he threw his arm around my shoulders for the first time and told the entire lunch table that I was the coolest omega he’d ever met. Hongjoong, who I’ve watched date a parade of small, delicate, conventionally pretty omegas and told myself each time that it didn’t sting, that it didn’t matter, that he’d made it clear enough what his type was and I wasn’t it. Hongjoong, who once told me, laughing, that I was basically one of the guys, and I’d smiled and agreed and gone home and sat on my bedroomfloor for an hour staring at the wall because being “one of the guys” meant I would never be something else to him. Years of that. Years of swallowing it down and locking it away and being his friend, his best friend, his ride-or-die, the omega who was basically an alpha, the one he never looked at twice.
All of that is tangling with the pheromones flooding my system right now, years of suppressed wanting braiding together with the biology, and the combination is so overwhelming that I can feel my resistance crumbling under everything I’ve refused to let myself feel.
Hongjoong tilts his head and catches my mouth.
The kiss is clumsy. Desperate. His lips land half on mine and half on the corner of my mouth before he adjusts, his hand on the back of my neck tilting my head to the angle he wants, and then he’s kissing me properly, his mouth open and hot and tasting faintly of soju and mint gum. His tongue slides against mine, slick and searching, and the sound that comes out of me is embarrassing, a soft, broken noise.
It’s better than anything I’ve imagined, and I’ve imagined it a lot. Late at night in my bed, in the shower, during boring lectures when Hongjoong was sitting two seats ahead of me and I could see the line of his jaw and the curve of his ear and the way his hair fell across his forehead. I imagined what it would feel like to kiss him, and I was wrong every time, because I couldn’t have predicted this, the way his mouth moves against mine with a hunger that feels like it’s been building for longer than just tonight, the way his fingers tighten on the back of my neck like he’s afraid I’ll pull away, the way his tongue curls against mine and sends heat cascading down through my chest and into my belly where it pools and spreads and makes my whole body feel like it’s glowing from the inside.
I’m already gone. I know I’m already gone because I’m kissing him back, my free hand coming up to grip the front of his stupidred shirt, fingers twisting in the fabric and pulling him closer instead of pushing him away. My mouth opens wider under his, letting him in, and the taste of him fills me up until I can’t breathe around it, don’t want to breathe around it.
Slick is soaking through my pants now, a warm, spreading wetness that I can feel against my thighs, and I should be mortified but I’m not because Hongjoong groans into my mouth when he smells it, a gutted sound that vibrates through both of us, and his hands move down my body with a single-minded focus that makes my stomach flip. His palms slide from my neck to my shoulders to my waist, gripping hard, fingers digging into the fabric of my shirt, and then down to my hips where he pulls me toward him in one firm motion that drags me across the linoleum.
