CHAPTER 40: CHAPTER 40

Yu Jin’s POV

One second I was still shaking from the last round, Park Min’s cum sliding out of me and pooling on the table under my ass. The next second something thick, dark impossible wrapped around us both.

Cedar. Smoke. Pure alpha.

My spine snapped straight like someone yanked a string.

Park Min froze with his mouth still on mine, eyes blown wide. He pulled back an inch, lips wet, breathing hard.

"...Yu Jin?"

I couldn’t answer. My tongue felt heavy. The scent hit the back of my throat and my whole body answered with a violent shiver. Slick rushed out of me so fast it dripped off the edge of the table.

He swallowed. "What the fuck is that?"

I grabbed his wrist, shoved two fingers against his pulse. Racing. Skin burning hot. And the scent kept pouring off him, wave after wave, until the cheap motel room felt too small to hold it.

"You’re human," I whispered. My voice cracked. "You’re supposed to be."

He stared at me like I’d lost my mind. "I am."

Except the scent said no.

I laughed, low and shaky and half insane. "Congratulations, CEO Park. Looks like you just presented at thirty-two. Late bloomer."

His hands clamped onto my hips so hard I knew I’d bruise. "Yu Jin..."

I dragged my tongue up his throat just to watch him shudder. He did, full-body. A growl ripped out of him, raw, animal, nothing like the cold bastard who’d wanted me to disappear five years ago.

Fresh slick soaked my thighs. My legs shook. I bit the spot under his jaw hard enough to mark and he jerked like I’d shocked him.

"Urgggh," he rasped, voice shredded. "I can smell how wet you are."

I grinned, mean and ruined. "Welcome to the food chain, alpha."

That did it.

He lifted me off the table like I weighed nothing, spun, and slammed me against the nearest wall. Plaster cracked behind my back. His forearm hooked under my thighs, the other hand braced by my head, and his eyes were black, completely black.

I laughed right in his face. "Scared of your own biology, baby?"

He answered by driving into me.

One brutal thrust. His knot caught, stretched me open, popped past the rim and locked us together. I screamed. He snarled mine mine mine against my throat with every tiny jerk of his hips. He couldn’t pull out far, just short, savage pumps that shoved another load deep while the knot swelled bigger.

My nails clawed his shoulders. "That all you got?"

He growled so loud the picture frame next to us fell and shattered. His mouth went back to my neck, teeth scraping the untouched gland. I should have stopped him.

I tilted my head and bared it.

"I want to do it," he breathed. "No fucking way you want to....mark me?"

"No no Park min stop!"

What was I expecting from someone who took advantage of me twice.

And like that he marked me.

His whole body locked. The knot throbbed once, twice, impossibly bigger. Then his teeth sank in.

Pain exploded. Blood flooded my mouth where I bit my own lip. Bonding pheromones detonated between us. I came again just from the bite, clenching so hard he roared into my skin and pumped another wave into me until I felt it in my stomach.

He pulled his teeth free, panting, blood on his lips. "Yu Jin..."

"Too late," I said, licking the blood off his mouth. "You’re the same as always."

That’s when the knock came.

Three sharp raps on the door. "Everything okay in there? Heard screaming."

Park Min didn’t even turn. The growl that came out of him rattled the windows. The door handle jiggled.

"I said we’re fine!" I yelled, voice hoarse.

The handle stopped. Footsteps retreated fast.

Min’s hips were still jerking, knot still locked. He dropped his forehead to my shoulder, breathing like he’d run ten miles.

"We gotta move," I muttered. "Your scent’s leaking through the walls."

He nodded once, eyes wild. Carefully, still tied together, he carried me toward the bathroom window. My legs dangled around his waist, cum running down both of us.

A shadow fell across the doorway.

I looked up.

Some guy in a cheap suit stood in the hall, door half open, staring at Min’s back. His nostrils flared. His face went white.

"Impossible..." he whispered. "He smells like a fallen-class alpha..."

Min snarled. The guy stumbled backward, slammed the door, and ran.

I laughed, shaky. "Friend of yours?"

Min’s voice was gravel. "Never seen him before in my life."

He kicked the bathroom window open with one foot. Cool night air rushed in, doing nothing to cut the cedar-smoke choking the room.

"We’re leaving," he said. "Now."

"With your knot still in me?"

He grinned for the first time all night, sharp and dangerous. "Try and stop me."

He stepped up onto the toilet lid, still carrying me, still locked, and climbed out the window like that. My back scraped brick. His arms didn’t shake once.

We dropped into the alley behind the motel. His car was parked two spots over. He walked us straight to it, opened the back door, and laid me across the leather seat without pulling out. The knot tugged; I hissed.

"Drive," I said, reaching up to grab his hair. "Before we figure out what the hell you just became."

He slammed the door, climbed into the driver’s seat, and peeled out so fast the tires screamed.

I watched the motel shrink in the rear-view and felt the fresh bond burn under my skin.

Five years ago he paid me to disappear.

Now he’d just chained us together forever.

And some stranger in the hallway had called him a fallen-class alpha.

Whatever the fuck that meant, it wasn’t good.

Min’s hands gripped the steering wheel so hard the leather creaked. His knuckles were white.

"You okay?" I asked.

He didn’t look at me. "I can still taste your blood in my mouth."

"Yeah. You bit pretty deep."

"I wasn’t in control."

"Newsflash, alpha. You still aren’t."

He laughed once, short and broken. "What’s happening to me, Yu Jin?"

"I don’t know. But that guy back there? He looked like he saw a ghost."

Min’s jaw clenched. "I’m getting us somewhere safe. Then we figure it out."

I closed my eyes, feeling the bond pulse between us like a second heartbeat.

Safe.

Funny word, coming from the man who just claimed me in a fifty-dollar motel while the world started burning outside.

Whoever that stranger was, whatever "fallen-class" meant, one thing was clear.

Park Min wasn’t human.

And whatever he was becoming, it was just getting started.