The cold night wind slipped through the half-open window of the old storage hall, making the torchlight flicker. Kael descended the stone steps slowly. The air still carried the scent of dried wood dust and aged wine. This was a forgotten place—

the only place he could breathe.

A sharp sound echoed from the dark corner. Breathing—rapid, uneven.

Kael turned quickly. “Sarith?”

A shadow shifted in the darkness, and then a familiar face emerged into the light. His skin was drenched in sweat, his eyes bloodshot, and his hands were trembling.

“Go… Kael… get out of here.”

But Kael didn’t move. He stepped forward—and then…

A scent—heavy, warm, strange—hit him. His heartbeat quickened. The scent of desire, of temptation, of... heat.

“You… you’re an omega?”

Sarith clenched his teeth. His eyes flared. “Not the time for questions… just go!”

But it was already too late.

The pheromones coiled around them like a wave of heat. Kael’s body flushed, his breath slowed, and—for the first time—his mind stopped obeying reason.

He stepped closer, drawn by force, by instinct. His hands rose—not to push, but to touch. To calm the one trembling before him like fire.

Sarith said, “You don’t want this… you’ll regret it later…”

But his eyes weren’t pleading. They held pain, fury, need.

Kael no longer knew which urges were his and which were summoned by the cursed scent saturating the air.

And in that old storage room, between the howl of wind and the flickering flame,

a bond was forged—

not of love,

not of choice,

but of fever,

of instinct,

and of a fate neither of them could escape.