DOTH Volume 4 Chapter 14.4

“Hand Jung Heeyeon over…”

Director Yeon casually grabbed Jung Younggil’s collar. The leather glove creaked with an unpleasant sound as it tightened. Hoisting an alpha up with his grip alone was hardly difficult for him.

Smack!

For what should have been just a slap, the sound was terrifying. The tough, brutal leather tore through fragile human skin.

“Guh, urk!”

A strangled groan escaped Jung Younggil’s throat. A piercing ring filled his ears, and the flesh inside his mouth split open.

“Don’t tell me just a slap is all it takes to break you, Chairman Jung?”

Director Yeon let a faint smile tug at his lips before swinging his hand again.

Blood spattered from Jung Younggil’s mouth, staining his expressionless cheek, but the man’s face remained utterly indifferent. Only when the old alpha’s face had turned ragged did he release his grip, letting him drop. He knew better than anyone that an alpha’s body, no matter how aged, did not break so easily.

“You had a habit of hitting the baby’s face, didn’t you, Chairman?”

Director Yeon curled one corner of his lips into a bitter smile.

Suddenly, he remembered the words of the small omega who had once woken trembling from a nightmare in his arms.

‘I got a nosebleed from the slap too.’

The man, lowering one knee to the ground before the collapsed body, reached out and seized the limp face as if the other had fainted. When he pressed down harshly on both cheeks, a wrecked, bloodied sight came into view. Blood was running from that mouth, and from the nose as well.

“Ghhk… Ugh, khhk.”

“My baby must have felt hurt like you now… Don’t you think this is a bit too much whining for you, Chairman?”

Confirming the steady flow of blood, the man rose to his feet at a leisurely pace.

‘Did you get hit at another place?’

‘No, I didn’t… Ah, but I fell and twisted my ankle.’

‘Hmmm, is that so?’

His sharp gaze now fell on Jung Younggil’s ankle. Looking up, he saw Kim Chulwoo shaking his head in alarm.

“We hadn’t prepared for that… I apologize.”

“Haa….”

Director Yeon sighed again, brushing back his fallen hair. His glove, stained red with blood, made his hair maroon, but he paid it no mind.

“Well, since he’s going to endure in this hutch for a long time, sooner or later, his ankles won’t stay intact.”

The man raised his polished shoe.

“Aaagh!”

The agony of a bone being struck was entirely different from that of flesh alone. Jung Younggil curled up like an insect, clutching at his ankle. Reflexively, he covered it with his hand, only for another merciless kick to crush his knuckles.

“Ghh, hrrrk—Ack… I-I did wrong….”

“Wrong?”

Director Yeon let out a short laugh.

“To who?”

“T-To… you… Aaaack!”

Before he could finish, the fancy shoe slammed down again, grinding into his shabby trousers.

“Shouldn’t you be apologizing to the baby instead of me?”

As if he hadn’t kicked him right before, Director Yeon coolly examined Jung Younggil’s condition. Unlike the old alpha who was wheezing and gangging, the man’s breathing held steady. He had promised Jung Heeyeon not to kill him here. The heavy stench of blood filled his nose, but Director Yeon’s expression remained as calm as if he were reviewing documents. Narrowing his eyes slightly, he merely thought it fortunate the old man wouldn’t die from only this much.

Stepping back, he looked up at the hutch. At his signal, Kim Chulwoo lowered an object attached to a chain through a gap. The veined, bloodied hand reached for the battered aged body.

“Watching you choke the baby made me want to kill you on the spot.”

The last sense to remain at the brink of death was hearing. The man’s voice came low, rumbling against his throat.

“I don’t care about you nearly as much as you think, Chairman.”

Jung Younggil barely managed to blink. His sticky blood clung to the leather glove tightening against his throat. Soon, a rough, coarse texture encircled his entire neck. He wanted to look down, to see what it was, but he had no strength left.

“If you’d just left the baby alone, we would never have crossed paths again. The only job I promised was to keep you locked in here.”

Clang.

The harsh sound of metal against metal struck his ears. Before he could realize what had encircled his neck, the choking began.

“Ghhhk—!”

His body, betraying his will, rose into the air. Jung Younggil clawed desperately at the coarse cloth strangling him. His head tilted back, and as the sky came into view, he finally locked eyes with another alpha he had never noticed before—Kim Chulwoo, always standing behind Yeon Woobeom. Jung Younggil recalled the name only then.

Kim Chulwoo was pulling the chain that fell into the hutch.

“Khkk—ghhkk! Cough—!”

Thrashing wildly, his ragged nails tore against the chain biting his neck, snapping off one by one. At last, he realized the thing strangling him was a dog collar.

“Ghhkk—!”

Kicking frantically, his toes barely scraped the ground. Above, Kim Chulwoo fastened the chain to the ceiling of the cage.

“N-no way…! Ghkk—!”

Kim Chulwoo had deliberately set it so that only his toes could touch the floor. Jung Younggil was forced to balance on one foot. The ankle crushed beneath Director Yeon’s kick was useless.

“This brings back old memories, it’s quite fun, isn’t it?”

Director Yeon grabbed that reddened face with one hand, holding him steady. At last, Jung Younggil understood what those ‘old memories’ meant. One method of training fighting dogs was to make them walk endlessly on a tilted conveyor belt, with a rope tied to the ceiling. Stop moving, and they would choke. Exactly like him right now.

“If it were up to me, I’d strangle you myself…. But this time, I might not be able to hold back and end up killing you.”

Director Yeon’s tone stretched out, slower than usual. The moment he saw Jung Heeyeon being strangled, he had wanted nothing more than to tear the old alpha apart with his bare hands.

The man flexed his fingers, clenching and releasing them, and let out a breath that sounded somewhere between a sigh and a laugh.

“My baby is too kind. He wants me to leave you alone… so I can’t exactly be the one to kill you, can I?”

Yeon Woobeom had been quick to realize early on that the world didn’t always bend to his will. When money and power had become his playthings, he had also learned exceptions existed. From then on, he had lived as one of those exceptions.

Jung Younggil’s fate was no different. Playing with the old man had simply grown dull, he could kill him at any moment.

What he had not expected was that a single word from his lover would make him once again taste the bitter truth that the world did not move solely at his command.

“Chairman, I hope you’ll live long enough for my anger to wear off. What choice do I have?”

Still gripping both of Jung Younggil’s bloodied cheeks, the man began slowly releasing his pheromones.

“But as you know, Chairman… leaving things be isn’t really in my nature.”

The old man’s wrinkled forehead, flushed scarlet, swelled with pulsing veins of blue.

“Ghhk! Kkrrhk—cough—!”

Jung Younggil hacked and gasped between shallow breaths. It wasn’t just the choking. It was the sheer, gut-ripping flood of alpha pheromones tearing through him.

Weakened by drugs and a lifetime of violence, his body reacted with hypersensitivity. Pheromones of the same breed ravaged his decaying glands, battering them toward collapse. Overloaded, they writhed in one last desperate spasm.

“Khrrk—hrrhhk—!”

“I heard experiencing pheromone shock is agony.”

Director Yeon’s lips curled, out of habit. Slowly, his gloved hand pulled away from the bloodied face.

“Try surviving until tomorrow, when someone comes for you.”

“Y-you bastard… Ghhhk, krhhk!”

“You’ll have to live a long, long life, Chairman.”

The alpha who owned everything whispered it in a voice unexpectedly gentle.

“Until my anger is gone.”

Stepping out of the cage, he tossed his blood-soaked gloves into a waiting oil drum. Kim Chulwoo had prepared it in advance knowing this would happen. As the leather hit the flames, thick smoke rose with a sharp hiss and crackle.

“I’ll have to stop at the hotel first.”

Director Yeon muttered as he discarded his coat, suit jacket, even his shoes into the fire. While changing into a fresh suit, Kim Chulwoo ventured a question.

“Are you not going straight to Heeyeon-ssi?”

Jung Heeyeon was spending the evening at Lee Haejin’s house.

“I went to the trouble of doing all this in secret just so he wouldn’t see things like this….”

The man, adjusting his coat sleeve, spoke in a voice stretched thin. Kim Chulwoo immediately closed his mouth.

“Wouldn’t it just frighten him if I showed up like this?”

“…I apologize. That was careless of me. I’ll contact the hotel right away.”

Director Yeon sighed quietly and walked toward the car.

The sudden urge hit him, to bury his face in that fair nape and breathe in the omega’s scent until he was drunk on it.

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