The ride back to Do-hyun's apartment was a blur of jarring speed and suffocating silence. Do-hyun drove tersely, foot tamping hard on the accelerator as he avoided the main roads, his alpha scent a dense, urgent shield of cedar that threatened to choke the small space.
Jaemin, curled beside him, was a statue carved from ice. He shivered beneath Do-hyun's sweater, the wet chill of the icy water clinging to his skin, but the shock was deeper than the cold. His eyes were wide, focused inward, seeing not the interior of Do-hyun's car but the hostile faces of the restaurant patrons, feeling the cold vindication in his father's eyes, and reliving the sheer, raw humiliation of the spectacle.
Do-hyun kept one hand tight around Jaemin's thigh, murmuring assurances. "We're nearly there, jagi. You're safe. I'll handle the rest, just stay with me." He tried to infuse his voice with calm, soothing conviction, but the sheer force of his recent rage and the cold fear of the consequences made his voice rough.
Jaemin finally moved, the motion painfully slow. His trembling hand weakly patted Do-hyun's chest, a vague signal to stop. He didn't look up.
"My phone," he whispered. The sound was a damaged string, thin and strained. "I need my phone."
Lifting his hand from Jaemin's leg, Do-hyun quickly fished it out from Jaemin's coat pocket. He expected Jaemin to call his mother, or perhaps Manager Park to preempt the gossip. Instead, Jaemin's trembling fingers painstakingly navigated the screen until he found a single contact.
"Hyung," Jaemin managed, his voice cracking with relief. "Hyung, I... I need you." He whispered Do-hyun's address, then ended the call before Do-hyun could ask a single question.
Do-hyun felt a sudden, illogical spike of possessiveness mixed with resentment. Kwon Jaehyun. The constant, familiar comfort, the first call for help. The man who had counselled Jaemin through his darkest times, the one whose emotional orbit was closer than anyone else's, the one who held all the secrets Do-hyun was only now learning about Jaemin.
When they reached the apartment, Do-hyun hurried out and around the car to scoop Jaemin up without asking, carrying his frozen mate through the building and straight into the bathroom. He set Jaemin gently on the counter and stripped off the wet sweater and soaked shirt, his movements precise but gentle. Jaemin shivered, his body refusing to regulate temperature.
"You're freezing," Do-hyun murmured, concern overriding everything else.
He gently helped Jaemin peel off the ruined coat and the soaked sweater. Jaemin was cold to the touch, and the sight of the wet shirt, still sticky with fruit soda, made Do-hyun's stomach clench with renewed fury. How he wished he had wrung that woman's neck before kicking her out on the curb. But he had to focus now, and get his mate clean.
He ushered Jaemin under the hot stream, keeping his own clothes on but shielding Jaemin from the cold tile with his body. He took a fresh washcloth and gently, meticulously wiped the remnants of sugared water from Jaemin's face and neck. Jaemin remained silent, a pale shadow in the steam, only shivering occasionally.
When all traces of humiliating stickiness were gone, Do-hyun quickly wrapped Jaemin in a fresh, thick towel and helped him dry, then swiftly dressed him in a clean set of the softest clothes he could find and settled Jaemin on the living room sofa, covering him with a heavy quilt. Jaemin immediately curled into a tight knot, his eyes still wide and fixed on nothing.
"We're safe now, jagi," Do-hyun murmured, cupping the white face in his hands and trying to infuse warmth into the cold skin. But the chill in Jaemin's cheeks brought back the violent image of the iced drink, the shaking hands, the public sneer, and Do-hyun's carefully suppressed alpha rage flared, spiking his scent with a fresh wave of raw, aggressive cedar.
Sensing his anger, Jaemin flinched. It was a tiny, subtle movement—just a slight pull away from the heat of Do-hyun's hand—but Do-hyun withdrew as if burned, instincts reeling.
Rejected. His mate was rejecting him. The recoil was worse than any public insult. But before he could say anything else, the doorbell chimed. Kwon Jaehyun had arrived with frightening speed.
He opened the door to find the man standing there, radiating calm, detached composure, the precise opposite of Do-hyun's current chaotic anxiety. He was exactly as Do-hyun remembered him, a quiet, unassuming beta with no noticeable scent beyond the faint citrus smell of his laundry detergent, yet his presence felt like an immediate challenge to Do-hyun's alpha authority.
Scanning the room, Jaehyun's eyes took in the situation. While he couldn't sense the high spike of cedar, he registered the aftermath in Do-hyun's damp hair and shirt collar, his hyper-vigilance, and the unnatural stillness in the apartment. When he spotted Jaemin on the sofa, a bundle of quilted fabric, his expression of detached neutrality tightened almost imperceptibly.
"Thank you for coming, Jaehyun-ssi," Do-hyun said, struggling to keep his tone level. "He was ambushed. Someone threw water on him."
Jaehyun nodded slowly, his gaze moving from the water rings left on Do-hyun's shirt collar to the tense set of the alpha's shoulders. "I see. May I come in?" Stepping past Do-hyun, he set his bag down and headed straight to the sofa. He didn't offer to shake Do-hyun's hand, nor did he acknowledge the tension in the room. His focus was absolute.
"Jaemin-ah." Jaehyun kept his voice low and even as he knelt before the figure on the sofa. "Jaemin. I'm here."
At the sound of the familiar, calm voice, Jaemin's frozen control broke. He let out a small, choked sound—a whimper of pure relief—and unfolded from the quilt.
"Hyung," Jaemin whispered, and in an instant, he scrambled off the couch and buried his face immediately in the beta's shoulder, clinging tightly as he sobbed. He didn't rush to his alpha mate for comfort; he sought the safe familiarity of this other man.
Jaehyun received the impact, his own arms wrapping securely around Jaemin's shaking body, rubbing steady circles on his back to ground him.
Do-hyun watched, frozen, his protective instinct screaming at him to intervene, to yank his mate back to himself, to demand that he be the comfort. He was the alpha. He was Jaemin's mate.
But Jaemin was clinging to the beta like a lifeline, and Jaehyun just held the omega like he knew exactly what to do to calm him down.
Do-hyun's chest tightened with a vicious, cutting jealousy. It wasn't rooted in physical threat, but a rivalry for the role of being Jaemin's core emotional reliance. Realizing that, in this moment of raw trauma, his mate had prioritized the quiet, non-possessive comfort of this beta over his frantic alpha protection, Do-hyun felt a profound, aching sense of failure. He turned away, feeling utterly useless and completely alone.