Chapter Text
The scent of polished oak and anxious sweat filled the Bang pack hall. Minho stood beside his servant, her grip on his arm like a vice. He’d spent weeks preparing for this—the wedding of the season, the alliance between the powerful Bang pack and his own, the esteemed Lee line.
He’d also spent years quietly watching Alpha Bang Chan from a distance. At inter-pack gatherings, Chan was always surrounded, but never with anyone. He carried himself like a sword kept sheathed—potent, restrained, solemn. Minho, who prided himself on reading people, had seen the focused intensity in Chan’s eyes during strategy games, the unexpected patience he showed a young beta who’d dropped a tray. Once, after a harsh training session, Minho had seen Chan sitting alone, looking at the sunset with an expression of such profound solitude it had stolen his breath.
Maybe, a foolish, secret part of him had whispered. Maybe with me, he wouldn’t look so alone.
“Do you, Alpha Bang Chan, accept Omega Lee Minho as your bonded mate, to honor and cherish?”
The silence stretched. Minho’s heart hammered against his ribs. He dared to look up.
Chan’s eyes weren’t on him. They were locked on his own father, Head Alpha Bang, a man whose face was carved from granite. Chan’s jaw was clenched so tight a muscle ticked. When he spoke, his voice was low, clear, and utterly cold.
“I refuse.”
The word wasn’t a shout. It was a guillotine blade dropping. The air rushed out of Minho’s lungs. The gasps around him sounded underwater. His father’s outraged roar was a distant noise.
Refuse.
He wasn’t just rejecting a contract He was rejecting Minho. In front of everyone. The humiliation was a white-hot brand, searing through every layer of his composure.
Head Alpha Bang stood, a wave of oppressive dominance silencing the room. “The contract is signed. The alliance is sealed. Your reluctance is noted, Christopher. It changes nothing.”
The ceremony that followed was a blur of incense and empty vows. Chan’s hand was cold when it touched his. When he bit down on Minho’s bonding gland during the claiming, it was not a kiss; it was a punctuation mark. A period at the end of a sentence Minho hadn’t gotten to write.
That night, in the cavernous master suite that smelled of unfamiliar alpha (storm clouds and iron), Chan finally looked at him. Not in the eyes, but at a point just beyond his shoulder.
“This union requires an heir,” Chan stated, his voice stripped of any emotion. “It is a duty for the pack. For both of us. Let’s… get this over with.”
Minho said nothing. He had sworn to himself he would not give this man his tears. He simply turned down the covers, his movements mechanical. As Chan blew out the candle, plunging them into a darkness that felt thick and suffocating, Minho stared at the ornate canopy above.
“So this is my life now“, he thought, the numbness spreading through his veins. “ I am a duty to be gotten over. “
As Chan turned away afterward, the silence felt heavier than the darkness. Minho’s voice, small and raw, broke it.
“Was it just me?” he whispered to the dark. “Or would you have refused anyone?”
A long pause. The sheets rustled.
“ Anyone, ”Chan’s voice came back, flat and final.
It was no comfort. It meant he was not special. He was just the unfortunate soul caught in the crossfire of Chan’s rebellion.
**********************
Minho became a ghost in the Bang estate. He was given a luxurious wing—a gilded cage with silk curtains. His only company was a young, kind-eyed beta attendant named Hyunjin, who spoke in hushed, sympathetic tones.
Communication with his husband came through Jisung, Chan’s personal beta, who always appeared looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.
“The Alpha… requests your presence in his quarters,” Jisung would murmur, eyes fixed on the floor. “At ten.”
Requests. Such a polite word for a summons that felt like a march to the gallows.
The encounters were always the same. Chan would be waiting, often still dressed in day clothes or a robe, a ledger open on his desk as if he’d been interrupted from more important work. He rarely spoke. His touches were efficient, devoid of passion or even curiosity. Minho learned to disappear inside himself. He’d focus on the intricate pattern of the rug, the whisper of the wind outside, the exact number of panels on the wall—anything to be anywhere but here.
One afternoon, desperate for a reprieve from the oppressive silence of his rooms, Minho wandered into the main library. It was a magnificent, dusty room, smelling of parchment and forgotten stories. He found a section on botany and pulled out a heavy, illustrated tome on rare flowering vines. He lost himself in it, curled in a deep window seat where a shaft of sunlight warmed the velvet cushion.
The crunch of a boot on the parquet floor made him flinch.
Chan stood there,
“This section is for historical archives and tactical manuals,” Chan said, his voice colder than the marble floor. He didn’t look at Minho, but at the book in his hands. “It is not for leisure.”
Minho’s cheeks burned. “I wasn’t—“
“Your recreational materials are in the east wing library,” Chan interrupted, his tone leaving no room for argument. “Do not disturb the order here again. It’s… inconvenient.”
Inconvenient. A word for a spilled cup of tea, not for a person seeking knowledge. Minho snapped the book shut, his throat tight. He stood, keeping his eyes downcast as he brushed past Chan.
Later, after dinner he didn’t eat, Minho passed the library again. The door was open. On impulse, he peeked in.
The book on flowering vines was back on the window seat. Not on the shelf. Not in the “correct” east wing. It was placed precisely on the cushion he’d warmed, as if waiting for him to return.
He stared at it for a long time. Was it a taunt? A reminder of his place? Or… something else? He didn’t dare touch it. He left it there, a silent, confusing monument in the empty room.
***************************
A virulent flu swept through the lower town of the Bang pack territory, a merciless tide of fever and cough. The estate’s clinic was overwhelmed. From his window, Minho watched the grim procession of carts, heard the distant, helpless cries of children. The fear was a palpable fog over the land. His own gilded cage felt suddenly obscene.
“Hyunjin,” he said one morning, his voice firm. “We’re going to help.”
The beta attendant paled. “Sir, the Alpha… the risk…”
“The Alpha is busy securing borders and stockpiling medicine,” Minho said, already tying back his sleeves. “He won’t even notice. Gather clean linens, broths, whatever soothing herbs we have in the kitchen. We’ll go to the nursery house.”
He knew it was reckless. He knew Chan would see it as defiance, or worse, sentimentality. He couldn’t sit among silk and polished wood while children suffered.
For three days, Minho and Hyunjin worked in the makeshift infirmary. He didn’t heal; he comforted. He cooled brows with damp cloths, spooned broth into small, reluctant mouths, and sang soft, old lullabies his mother had sung to him. He held the hand of a trembling beta girl as she cried for her mother, her scent sour with fear. He ignored the aching protest in his own body, the scratch in his own throat.
On the fourth day, the headache struck like a mallet. The world tipped. Hyunjin, his own eyes glassy with the early stages of the illness, caught him as his knees buckled. “Sir… we need to get you home.”
The ride back to the estate was a blur of jolting pain and chills. By the time he was laid in his bed, the fever had him in its teeth. It was worse than any illness he’d known. It was a fire in his veins and ice in his bones, a terrifying rollercoaster where one moment he was burning in a desert, the next he was drowning in an arctic sea.
In a moment of lucid agony, he saw Chan in the doorway. A dark, furious silhouette against the hall light. He’s going to yell, Minho thought dully. He’s going to say I was stupid, that I brought this on myself, that I’m a burden. He braced for the cold words.
They never came.
Chan strode in, his scent a rolling thundercloud of panic and alpha command. “Out,” he snarled at the physician and a weeping Hyunjin. “Everyone out. NOW.”
The door slammed. Then, the bed dipped. A large, blessedly cool hand seized his chin, forcing his face up. Minho tried to focus on Chan’s eyes. They weren’t cold. They were wild. Terrified.
“You idiot,” Chan breathed, the words a hot, angry gust against Minho’s face. “What were you thinking? Putting yourself in the middle of a plague zone? Do you have a death wish?”
Minho tried to speak, to defend himself, but only a weak cough came out. The shivers took him again, violent, rattling tremors that felt like they would shake his teeth loose. “C-c-cold…”
A raw sound, almost a growl, ripped from Chan’s throat. Then, the blankets were being pulled back. Chan was kicking off his own boots, sliding into the bed in his day clothes. He hauled Minho’s shuddering body back against him, wrapping himself around Minho like a human shield against the cold.
The heat was immediate, overwhelming. Minho melted into it with a broken sob.
“Stupid,” Chan muttered again, but his arms were arranging Minho carefully, tucking his head under his chin, wrapping the blankets tightly around them both. One hand came up to cradle the back of Minho’s head. “Reckless, stubborn, impossible Omega.”
The insults were familiar, but the tone was all wrong. It was layered with a frantic, tender fury. Minho, in his delirium, nuzzled closer, chasing the scent of storm and safety. “Chan…?”
“I’m here,” the Alpha’s voice rumbled through his chest, a steady drumbeat against Minho’s ear. “I’m right here. not going anywhere.”
*******************************
When the report had come that Minho had collapsed at the nursery, Chan’s vision had gone white. The fear was a physical thing, a clawed beast ripping through his gut. He’d run, ignoring his father’s shouts, his mind a single, screaming note: No. Not him.
Finding Minho flushed and trembling, his brilliant eyes glassy with fever, had unleashed something primal. The anger was a mask for the sheer, gut-wrenching terror. He could die. He could die because he was kind, because he cared for strangers, and I was too busy being a ‘strong Alpha’ to care for him.
Holding him was both torture and salvation. Feeling the violent tremors wrack that slender frame felt like a personal failure. Each whimper was an indictment. You did this. You made a home so cold he had to seek warmth among the sick and dying.
He lost all sense of time. He became a single-purpose machine: regulate Minho’s temperature, trickle water past his lips when he was lucid, hold him through the chills, murmur reassurances when the fever brought nightmares.
“Don’t go,” Minho begged once, clawing weakly at Chan’s shirt as a chill seized him.
“Never,” Chan swore into his hair, the promise absolute. “I’m not leaving you.”
He didn’t. For three days and nights, Chan was a fortress. He barked orders for supplies from the doorway, ate meals brought by Jisung while perched on the edge of the bed, and slept in fitful snatches only when Minho’s breathing was deep and even. The world outside—the pack, his father, his duties—ceased to exist. There was only this room, this battle, this Omega.
***********************************
When the fever finally broke, leaving Minho weak and sleeping peacefully, Chan felt like a man emerging from a war. He was hollowed out, bleary-eyed, his clothes rumpled. He gently untangled himself, tucked the blankets around Minho, and stumbled into his private study.
He was pouring a stiff drink when Jisung entered, clearing his throat.
“Sir. The Head Alpha requests your presence in the war room. The outbreak is contained. Strategies are being discussed.”
Chan didn’t turn. “Later.”
Jisung didn’t leave. He took a step forward, his voice low but firm. “Sir… with respect. I’ve served you since we were boys. I’ve seen you face down rogue alphas, negotiate with tyrants. I’ve never seen you look like this.” He paused. “Not even when the western border was breached.”
Chan finally looked at him, his eyes red-rimmed. “What’s your point, Jisung?”
“My point is,” Jisung said, lifting his chin, “that a border is land. What was in that bedroom… that was your heart. And you looked like a man watching his heart stop beating.” He took a shaky breath. “He almost died saving pack children. He is the bravest, kindest Omega I have ever known. The pack whispers that he is the best thing that ever happened to this family. Stop pretending he’s just a political arrangement, sir. Before it’s too late.”
Before Chan could process the blow of those words, the door opened again. Hyunjin stood there, pale but resolute, having just come from Minho’s side.
“Is he awake?” Chan asked immediately, his voice rough.
“Resting,” Hyunjin said. Then, he did something unthinkable. He looked his Alpha directly in the eyes, his own filled with tears. “He called for you in his sleep. Just your name. Over and over.” The young beta’s voice broke. “He went to help those children because he knows what it’s like to feel alone and scared. He knows it better than anyone. Because you made sure of it.”
Chan recoiled as if struck.
“He deserves an Alpha who sees his strength, not just his usefulness,” Hyunjin whispered fiercely. “He deserves you… but not the you that you’ve been. The you that stayed. The you that was too scared to leave.”
Both betas left, leaving Chan utterly shipwrecked.
******************************
Minho healed slowly. He was moved to a sun-drenched sitting room for convalescence. Chan, outwardly, returned to his duties. But he was a ghost of his former self.
He would end meetings abruptly, his gaze distant, before murmuring, “I need to check on something.” The “something” was always a discreet pass by Minho’s rooms.
He intercepted the physician daily, demanding minute details about Minho’s lung capacity, his appetite, his sleep. He ordered special, nutrient-rich foods, citing “post-illness protocol,” but the dishes were all Minho’s favorites, things Chan had noted him eating more of in the past.
One evening, Minho was struggling to stay awake in his chair, a book slipping from his fingers. From the shadowed hallway, Chan watched. He saw the exhaustion on Minho’s face, the slight tremble in his hand as he tried to lift a cup of tea.
Without a word, Chan turned and found Hyunjin. “He’s tired. Help him to bed. And… make sure the fire in his bedroom is built high tonight. He still feels the chill.”
Later that night, long after the estate slept, Chan stood outside Minho’s door. He didn’t enter. He just stood there, his forehead pressed against the cool wood, listening to the soft, even sound of Minho’s breathing from within. It was the most precious sound in the world.
Inside, drifting to sleep, Minho felt a familiar, comforting scent—petrichor and safety—linger faintly by his door before fading away. He pulled the blankets closer, a fragile, budding warmth in his chest that had nothing to do with the fire in the hearth.
The illness had been a crucible. It had burned away pretense. Chan could no longer hide his terror of loss, and Minho could no longer deny the shelter he found in the Alpha’s arms. The betas had spoken the truth aloud, shaking the foundations of Chan’s carefully constructed world. And now, in the quiet aftermath, both Alpha and Omega were left standing in the rubble, staring at each other across a field of shattered ice, with only the raw, vulnerable truth left between them.
****************** **************
The monthly pack dinner was a trial Chan had learned to endure. He sat at the head of the table, his father to his right, a silent, judgmental presence. Minho was to his left, a beautiful statue picking at his food. Chan hated these dinners. He hated the way the elders leered at Minho, the way his father’s gaze dissected every interaction.
His father cleared his throat, a sound that commanded silence. “The southern meadow,” the old Alpha began, his voice like grinding stones. “It looks… unkempt. Wild. Sentimental.” His eyes slid to Minho. “An Omega’s domain is a reflection of his Alpha’s control. This reflets a lack of discipline.”
Chan saw Minho’s hand freeze, the knuckles whitening around his fork. The southern meadow was Minho’s project. He’d seen him there for weeks, on his hands and knees, planting seeds he’d sourced himself, a look of fierce concentration on his face that was the most alive Chan had ever seen him. It wasn’t just a garden; it was a piece of Minho’s soul, laid bare on the Bang estate’s soil.
A hot, protective anger surged in Chan’s chest, bypassing his father’s conditioning. Before he could think, he spoke.
“The rewilding initiative was my directive, Father.”
The table fell silent. Chan kept his voice level, tactical. “The native species Minho selected increase pollinator populations by an estimated forty percent. This has already improved the yield in our medicinal herb plots. It’s a long-term strategic investment in estate sustainability and resource independence.” He forced himself to glance at Minho, who was staring at him, utterly still. “His botanical knowledge proved… highly valuable.”
He was lying. It was all Minho. But he was building a fortress of logic and utility around Minho’s heart, a fortress even his father couldn’t breach.
His father’s eyes narrowed, but he could not argue with strategy and yield percentages. He gave a grunt that was neither approval nor disapproval, just acknowledgment of a point well-defended.
Afterward, as they left the hall, Chan felt a light touch on his sleeve. He stopped. Minho stood there, closer than he’d been in months, his eyes searching Chan’s face.
“Why?” Minho’s voice was a whisper, full of confusion. “Why did you do that?”
Chan looked down at the hand on his sleeve. He wanted to cover it with his own. He didn’t. “Because they weren’t just flowers,” he said, his own voice rough. “And you shouldn’t have to defend a thing of beauty from people who only see battlefields.”
He pulled his arm away gently and walked on, leaving Minho standing in the dim corridor, the ghost of a touch burning on his skin.
Minho
did not expect the shield.
Chan’s voice, cool and authoritative, spun a web of strategy around his wildflowers. Pollinator populations. Medicinal herb yield. Strategic investment. Minho listened, stunned. Chan was lying through his teeth, and doing it masterfully. He was defending him. Not out of affection, perhaps, but out of… what? A sense of fairness? A rejection of his father’s pettiness?
When Chan said “His botanical knowledge proved highly valuable,” Minho’s breath hitched. Valuable. Not ‘sentimental.’ Not ‘foolish.’ Valuable.
Afterward, in the hallway, courage—or sheer bewilderment—made him reach out. He touched Chan’s sleeve. The fabric was fine wool, warm from his skin. Chan stopped, and for a moment, Minho saw not the cold Alpha, but a man who looked… weary.
“Why?” he asked.
Chan’s gaze dropped to Minho’s hand, and for a heart-stopping second, Minho thought he might pull away as if burned. He didn’t. He just looked, then met Minho’s eyes.
“Because they weren’t just flowers.” The words were low, almost gentle. “And you shouldn’t have to defend a thing of beauty from people who only see battlefields.”
He pulled away then, and the loss of contact felt strangely acute. Minho watched him walk away, his broad back straight, carrying the weight of the pack and now, apparently, the defense of Minho’s wildflowers.
That night, for the first time, there was no summons. Minho lay in his bed, staring at the moonlight. He replayed the words. A thing of beauty. Had Chan… had he actually seen it? Seen him?
The ice around his heart didn’t melt, but a single, hairline crack appeared, and through it seeped a dangerous, confusing warmth.
**********************************
The arrival of Alpha Seo Changbin was heralded not by fanfare, but by a palpable shift in the estate’s atmosphere. He was an old friend of Chan’s from their academy days—a mountain of muscle with a disarmingly bright smile and a scent of warm oakmoss and sun-drenched earth. He came to rest for a few days before continuing his journey south, to the Lee-Soon pack territories.
“Just a pit stop, old friend,” Changbin said, clapping Chan on the shoulder in the main hall. “Needed to see a friendly face before I dive into… well, you know how these formal visits can be.”
Chan knew. He knew exactly why Changbin was going to the Lee-Soon pack. To meet the Lee family’s youngest Omega, Felix. It was a potential match that had been in discussion for months. The thought was a dull, familiar ache—a reminder of the clinical transaction his own marriage had been.
“You’ll stay as long as you need,” Chan said, his tone even. Duty to a friend. That was all.
The introduction to Minho happened at dinner. Chan performed it with stiff formality. “My husband, Omega Lee Know. This is Alpha Seo Changbin, an old associate.”
Minho, who had perfected the art of the polite, empty smile, offered it now. “Welcome, Alpha Seo.”
Changbin’s reaction was immediate and unguarded. His smile widened, genuine and warm. “Lee Know? You’re from the main Lee family? Felix’s older cousin, then? It’s an honor.” He bowed, deeper than protocol demanded for another Alpha’s mate. His eyes were curious, appreciative, and entirely without the pity or dismissal Minho was used to.
“The honor is mine,” Minho replied, but the smile thawed at the edges, becoming slightly more real. Someone who knew Felix. Someone from outside.
***********************************
Changbin was like a ray of sunlight piercing the perpetual grey of the Bang estate. He didn’t tiptoe around Chan’s coldness or treat Minho like fragile, ignored porcelain. He simply… engaged.
He found Minho in the conservatory two days later. “Hyunjin said I might find you here. By the gods, you’ve done wonders with this space. Is that a Jeju haenyeo violet? I thought they were impossible to cultivate this far north.”
He knew plants. More than that, he spoke to Minho as an equal, asking for his opinion on soil amendments, sharing funny stories about his own pack’s disastrous attempts at a vineyard. He made Minho laugh—a real, startled sound that echoed off the glass panes and felt foreign in his own throat.
It was exhilarating and terrifying. For a few hours each day, Minho wasn’t “the Bang Omega” or “Chan’s burden.” He was just Minho. Someone interesting. Someone worth talking to.
He saw Chan watching them sometimes, a dark, still figure in a doorway or across a garden. His expression was unreadable, but the air around him grew heavy, like the pressure before a storm. Minho braced for the inevitable confrontation, for the cold command to cease this “unseemly familiarity.” But it never came. Chan just endured, a silent, brooding shadow to their sunlight.
*********************************
It was a special kind of torture.
Seeing Minho’s face light up with a true, uncalculated smile was a knife to Chan’s heart. He never smiles like that for me.
Hearing his laugh,bright and clear, was salt in the wound. I’ve never given him a reason to laugh.
Changbin was everything Chan had forced himself not to be: open, warm, emotionally available. Every moment they spent together, heads bent in conversation or strolling through the gardens, was a performance of the life Minho should have had.
Chan’s Alpha instincts snarled with possessive jealousy, but a deeper, more shameful emotion drowned it out: guilt. Changbin was treating Minho with the basic respect and interest he deserved. How could Chan begrudge him that? How could he, the architect of Minho’s loneliness, now demand he be lonely again?
So he endured. He clamped down on the growls in his throat, forced his expression to neutrality, and let the sun shine on his Omega, even if it made his own world feel darker by contrast.
*******************
One afternoon, seeking a moment of peace, Chan walked along the high-walled path beside the conservatory. The glass was slightly open. He heard their voices.
“…and I’m nervous, honestly,” Changbin was saying, his usually confident voice softer. “Meeting his family, the formalities. I want to make a good impression. On him, most of all.”
“Felix is… light itself,” Minho replied, and there was a fond, wistful tenderness in his tone that Chan had never heard directed at anyone. “He deserves a grand romance. Proper courtship gifts, stolen moments, letters full of promises.” A small, sad sigh. “The whole song and dance.”
A pause. “Minho,” Changbin’s voice was hesitant, gentle. “Forgive me, but… did you… I mean, with Chan…?”
The silence that followed was louder than any answer. Chan could picture Minho’s face—the careful mask sliding into place, the eyes shuttering.
“There was no courtship,” Minho said finally, the words flat and precise. “There was a contract. And a wedding.”
The sentence hung in the air, simple and devastating. Changbin’s responding murmur was too low to hear, but it was undoubtedly an apology.
Chan didn’t wait to hear more. He walked away, his feet carrying him numbly. No courtship. The words echoed. He had denied Minho the “whole song and dance.” He had given him duty and frost while Changbin spoke of grand romance for another.
That evening, he watched Minho from across the dinner table. The lively spark from the afternoon was gone. In its place was a quiet, profound sadness that Minho thought he was hiding. He played with his food, his smiles at Changbin’s stories not quite reaching his eyes. He was mourning something he’d never had.
The jealousy was gone, burned away in the furnace of Chan’s own shame. All that remained was a crushing, clear-eyed need.
He couldn’t give Minho the past. He couldn’t rewrite their beginning. But perhaps… perhaps he could give him the courtship now. In secret. Without the pressure of his presence, his history, his failures.
**************************
The next morning, as Minho took his breakfast in the solarium, a small, plain wooden box sat on the table beside his teacup. No note. No ribbon.
Frowning, he opened it.
Inside, nestled on a bed of raw white silk, was a single, perfect camellia blossom, its petals a deep, impossible red, like a drop of heart’s blood against snow. It was fresh, dew still clinging to it. Camellias in their language of flowers meant longing, passion, and perfection.
Minho’s breath caught. He looked around. The room was empty. Hyunjin hadn’t mentioned anything. His heart, foolish and hopeful, gave a frantic flutter. Changbin? But why would he? He was courting Felix.
He brought the flower to his nose. It had no scent but its own. But for a moment, he could have sworn he felt the faint, ghostly echo of a storm on the air.
In his study, Chan watched from the window as Hyunjin carried the breakfast tray back. The camellia was gone from it. A fierce, desperate satisfaction flooded him. It was a start.
He had found the flower at first light, in the farthest, most sheltered corner of the estate’s oldest greenhouse. It had made him think of Minho: beautiful, resilient, blooming in the cold.
He would never sign his name. But every day, for as long as it took, he would send a piece of his heart to his Omega’s door. A secret courtship for the husband he’d never wooed, a silent apology written in petals, paper, and promises he was still learning how to make.
*************************************
The conservatory had become Minho's sanctuary, a place where the scent of damp earth and growing things overpowered the sterile cold of the estate. Today's mysterious gift lay on the worn wooden workbench, a small box wrapped in plain, unbleached linen, tied with a simple twine bow. His heart did its now-familiar, treacherous little flip.
He untied the twine with careful fingers. Inside, nestled on a bed of raw silk, was a pair of gardening shears. But not the heavy, utilitarian kind used by the groundskeepers. These were elegant, their handles crafted from dark, polished cherrywood, fitted perfectly to his grip. The blades were honed to a razor's edge, gleaming silver. Etched along the steel in delicate, almost invisible script was a line of poetry: "Even the sharpest edge can tend the most fragile bloom."
He ran his thumb over the etching, a shuddering breath escaping him. Who was this? Who saw the contradiction in him—the sharp tongue, the resilient will, and the hands that trembled to nurture delicate life?
The door to the conservatory creaked open. Jisung entered, his usual brisk pace slowing as he took in the scene: Minho standing in a shaft of sunlight, the beautiful shears in his hand, the open box before him.
"Omega Lee Know," Jisung began, then his eyes snagged on the box. He froze. His expression shifted from polite neutrality to stunned recognition.
"Jisung? Is something wrong?"
"That box..." Jisung whispered, pointing. "The linen... I saw it. This morning. In the Alpha's private office. On his desk."
The world stopped. The gentle hum of insects, the drip of water from a leaf, the very beating of Minho's heart—all silenced.
The Alpha's private office.
No. It couldn't be. The gifts were too tender, too seen. They were everything Chan was not. Weren't they?
"Are you certain?" Minho's voice was a thread.
Jisung nodded. "Positive, sir. He was... he was polishing those very shears with a cloth when I brought in the dispatches. He hid them when I entered, but I saw the box."
The shears grew heavy in Minho's hand. The delicate etching seemed to burn his skin. Chan. It had been Chan all along. The midnight orchid. The book of sonnets. The wooden cat. The river stone. The lilac sapling. All of it. A silent, secret courtship from the man who had vowed never to court him.
A wild, impossible hope, fragile as a soap bubble, swelled in his chest. It was immediately punctured by a sharper, more familiar pain. Why hide? Why this secret, shameful generosity? Was he so ashamed of caring that he had to do it in the dark?
Seeing the storm of emotions cross Minho's face, Jisung stepped closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. "Sir... you must understand. The Alpha... he wasn't always like this. Before his mother passed, he was different."
Minho looked up, clinging to the words. "Different how?"
"Kinder. Softer. He'd smile. He used to help the kitchen cats find shelter in the rain." Jisung's eyes grew distant with memory. "But after Lady Bang died... the Head Alpha, he... he changed. He said the world had made her weak, that it was sentiment that killed her. He drilled it into Alpha Chan: emotion is a flaw. Caring is a strategic error. The Alpha fought it, I think. For a while. But the Head Alpha's words... they're like poison. He built walls to survive. Thick, high walls."
Hyunjin, who had been quietly arranging pots nearby, approached. He placed a comforting hand on Minho's arm. "Jisung speaks the truth, sir. And... forgive my boldness, but we see him with you. Even in the beginning, when he was at his coldest." He took a deep breath. "The summons, at night... they were never... violent, were they? Not in the way an angry Alpha can be."
Minho flushed, looking away. The memories were clinical, detached, often painful in their indifference. But Hyunjin was right. There had been a strange, rigid control to it. A focus on efficiency, not cruelty. A lack of true malice.
"And since your illness," Jisung pressed gently, "have the... the encounters changed?"
Minho's breath hitched. He thought of the last few times. The cold silence had been replaced by a different kind of quiet—tense, charged, almost awkward. Chan’s touches, while still fulfilling the dreaded "duty," had lost their robotic edge. Last time, Chan had paused, his hand hovering over Minho's hip, before he pulled away and turned to leave without a word. It hadn't been gentleness, not yet. But the harshness had evaporated, leaving behind a bewildering, hollow space.
"He... he doesn't speak during," Minho admitted softly, the confession torn from him. "But he... he's not rough anymore. It's like he's... going through the motions, but he's not there. Or he's too present. I don't know."
Hyunjin and Jisung shared a knowing look. "The walls are cracking, sir," Hyunjin said firmly. "The poison is leaking out, and the man he was before is trying to get through. These gifts... this is him. The real him. Trying to reach you the only way he knows how right now—in secret, because he's been taught that wanting you is his greatest shame."
Minho looked down at the shears in his hand. The elegant tool for tending fragile things. A gift from a man who was himself a fragile thing, hidden behind fortifications of his father's making.
The hope wasn't a bubble anymore. It was a seed. A hard, small, resilient seed, buried under months of frost. And for the first time, he felt the faintest, most terrifying warmth in the soil above it
*****************************************
The late afternoon sun was warm on Minho’s back as he knelt in his wildflower patch. The soil was rich and dark under his fingers, the scent of damp earth and crushed mint rising around him. He was carefully thinning a cluster of stubborn chickweed, his world narrowed to the simple, satisfying task.
A shadow fell across the plants. A large, familiar shadow. Minho didn’t need to look up to know who it was. The air itself shifted, charged with a storm-scent that was trying, and failing, to be calm.
He kept working, his heart beating a nervous rhythm against his ribs.
Chan stood there for a long moment, a statue in fine linen and boots. He cleared his throat.
Minho finally glanced up, shielding his eyes from the sun. Chan looked… painfully out of place. He was holding a pair of brand new, pristine leather gardening gloves, clutched in one hand like a foreign artifact.
“Omega Lee Know,” Chan said, the title stiff on his tongue.
“Alpha,” Minho replied neutrally, returning to his weeding.
Another silence. A bee buzzed lazily between the lavender sprigs.
“Your… garden is… growing,” Chan tried, the words landing with the grace of dropped bricks.
“That is generally what gardens do,” Minho said, unable to resist the dry remark. He heard Chan inhale sharply.
“Yes. Of course.” Chan shifted his weight. He looked at the gloves in his hand, then at Minho’s dirt-streaked fingers. “I… brought these. For you. If you need them.”
He extended the gloves like a peace offering, his arm rigid.
Minho sat back on his heels, wiping his hands on his trousers. “I don’t like gloves. I like to feel the soil.”
Chan’s arm dropped as if the gloves had burned him. “Oh.” He stared at them, his brow furrowed in confusion, as if the concept of not using a tool for a job was fundamentally baffling. “I see.”
He stood there, the useless gloves dangling. Minho almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“Was there something you needed, Alpha?” Minho prompted, trying to keep his voice even.
“No. Yes.” Chan took a breath, his gaze finally lifting from the ground to Minho’s face. “I wished to… inquire. If you required… assistance.”
Assistance. The word was so formal, so utterly wrong for the quiet, earthy scene. Minho almost laughed. The mighty Alpha Bang Chan, offering to help weed a flower bed.
“Assistance with what?” Minho asked, tilting his head.
Chan’s eyes swept the garden patch desperately, like a soldier scanning an unfamiliar battlefield. “With… the removal of… undesirable plants.” He pointed vaguely at the chickweed with the hand still holding the gloves.
“The weeds.”
“Yes.The weeds.”
Minho studied him. Chan’s jaw was tight, his shoulders tense. This wasn’t a command. It wasn’t even a strategic move. It was a genuine, fumbling attempt to be near him, to do something, anything, that wasn’t causing pain. The absurdity of it was disarming.
A strange, soft feeling unfurled in Minho’s chest. Not forgiveness. Not yet. But perhaps… curiosity.
“Alright,” Minho said softly.
Chan blinked. “Alright?”
“You can help.” Minho pointed to a patch of clover a few feet away. “Those. The ones with the three leaves. Try to get the root. Not just the tops.”
Chan looked at the clover as if it were a complex tactical diagram. He gave a sharp, serious nod. “The root. Understood.”
He carefully, almost reverently, set the new leather gloves down on a clean stone. Then, to Minho’s utter astonishment, the Alpha of the Bang pack lowered his large frame to his knees in the soft, damp soil. He was still wearing his expensive trousers.
He reached for a clover plant, his large, calloused hands—hands that wielded authority and signed treaties—closing with ridiculous gentleness around the stem. He pulled. The top came off, leaving the root firmly in the ground.
Chan stared at the pathetic green snippet in his hand, then at the beheaded plant, his expression one of profound failure.
“The root,” Minho reminded him, a hint of a smile touching his lips despite himself.
“Right.” Chan’s voice was gruff with concentration. He dug his fingers into the soil beside the plant, his movements careful, intense. After a minute of focused excavation, he pulled, and this time the tiny white root came with it. He held it up, a tiny triumph lighting his eyes before he quickly schooled his features back to neutrality. “Like this?”
“Exactly like that,” Minho said, and the smile reached his eyes.
They worked in silence for a while, side by side in the dirt. Chan was painfully slow, agonizingly deliberate, treating each weed like a precious, fragile thing. He got dirt under his nails. He smudged his cheek. He was the most awkward, earnest gardener Minho had ever seen.
And for the first time since the wedding, the space between them didn’t feel like a frozen wasteland. It felt like a sun-warmed garden, where something new and fragile was, against all odds, tentatively putting down roots.
Ah, perfect. That's a crucial, tender, and awkward moment. The gifts have started, Minho is suspicious but hopeful, and Chan is trying to bridge the chasm with something other than silence or a summons. Let's write that missing conversation.
---
It was a rain-soaked afternoon, the kind that turned the estate into a world of grey mist and the steady drum of water on stone. Minho was in the small, informal sitting room attached to his wing—a space he’d slowly made his own with a few books, a soft blanket, and the latest anonymous gift: a delicate porcelain cup warmer shaped like a sleeping fox.
Chan appeared in the doorway. He wasn’t wearing his usual formal jacket, just a dark sweater, and he held two steaming mugs. He looked… uncertain. Like a man standing at the edge of a cliff he’d decided to jump off.
“May I come in?” he asked, his voice unusually quiet, almost lost in the sound of the rain.
Minho looked up from his book, his heart giving a traitorous little leap. He nodded, setting the book aside. “Of course.”
Chan entered, moving with a care that seemed foreign to him. He held out one of the mugs. “It’s… the spiced honey tea from the market. The one you liked last winter.”
Minho took it, his fingers brushing Chan’s. The tea was his favorite. A small, warm detail noticed and remembered. “Thank you.”
Chan sat in the armchair opposite, not next to him on the settee. A respectful, careful distance. He sipped his own tea, staring into the steam. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t the old, oppressive silence. It was… waiting.
“The rain is good for the wildflowers,” Chan said finally, the words stiff. It was a statement about the weather, but it was also an acknowledgement of Minho’s garden.
“It is,” Minho replied cautiously. “They’re resilient. They need the deep soak to set strong roots.”
Chan’s eyes flicked to him, then back to his mug. “Roots are important.” He took another sip. “I was reviewing the trade logs from the southern Lee pack. Their textile yields are impressive this season.”
It was such an abrupt, formal shift. Minho almost smiled. Chan was trying to make conversation, and all he had in his arsenal was pack business. “My aunt oversees those mills. She’s very innovative.”
“Is she?” Chan leaned forward slightly, a spark of genuine interest in his eyes. It wasn’t about the textiles; it was about Minho’s family. “The patterns she introduced last year—the ones with the geometric waves—they were well-received.”
Minho blinked, surprised. “You noticed those?”
“I notice the ledgers,” Chan said, then quickly corrected himself, his ears turning faintly pink. “I mean… they were noted as a successful line.”
Another silence, softer this time. The rain pattered against the window.
“Jisung tells me the orange cat has taken to sleeping in the stable loft,” Chan ventured, his voice dropping into something softer, more personal.
“Soonie,” Minho supplied, a real, small smile touching his lips. “He’s fickle. One day he’s my shadow, the next he acts like he’s never seen me before.”
A low, rough sound escaped Chan—it was almost a chuckle. “He has his own mind. I can respect that.”
Their eyes met across the space. For a moment, it wasn’t Alpha and Omega, tormentor and victim. It was just two people in a quiet room, talking about cats and rain and family.
“The… the tea is good,” Minho said, because he didn’t know what else to say with this strange, new Chan sitting across from him.
“I’m glad,” Chan said. He looked like he wanted to say more, his fingers tightening around his mug. He looked at the fox cup warmer on the table beside Minho. His gaze lingered, and a complicated expression—part pride, part fear—crossed his face. He knew Minho knew. Or he suspected.
But he didn’t mention it. Instead, he stood up, the moment ending. “I should let you rest. Don’t… don’t let the tea get cold.”
He paused at the doorway, looking back. “The evening meal will be served in the small dining room tonight. The one with the… the view of the garden. If you’d like to join me.”
It wasn’t an order. It was an invitation. Fragile and full of unspoken hope.
Minho held his mug a little tighter, the warmth seeping into his bones. “I’ll be there.”
Chan nodded, once, a sharp, pleased motion, and then he was gone.
Minho sat for a long time, listening to the rain, the taste of spiced honey on his tongue, the memory of an almost-chuckle in the air. The fox warmer seemed to smile in its sleep.
It wasn’t a reconciliation. It wasn’t a confession.
It was a beginning. The first, hesitant step out of the silent war and into the delicate, terrifying territory of a possible peace. And for the first time, Minho dared to believe the ground beneath that step might just hold.