That terrible, choked sound that Do-hyun had made was still hanging in the air when the door, slowed by the closer, clicked shut after him. Jaemin sat frozen, staring at the empty space where he had been.
He left. Do-hyun left. He knew the alpha had been fighting to stay in the room like he had promised, but the things Jaemin had had to tell, they had all been too much in the end.
It was too much. I said too much. I shouldn't have told everything I did. I shouldn't have—
"Jaemin."
He startled, looking up to find Ji-young on her feet and making her way around the desk. She was looking at him with an expression he couldn't quite decipher. Not the lawyer's precision, nor the careful sympathy she'd held throughout his telling. Something far more urgent.
She crouched by his chair to take his hand, eyes locked on his.
"Listen to me carefully, Jaemin." Her voice was low and swift. "Do-hyun didn't leave because of you. Believe me. It's not you he's upset at."
Jaemin's voice was a whisper. "I shouldn't have told—"
"You said exactly what you needed to." Ji-young's expression softened a fraction. "You survived it, and you've been holding on to the truth for far too long, all on your own. And I'm sorry to have to ask this of you right after you've had to be brave and tell it to us, but Do-hyun needs you right now. He'll tear himself apart in there if someone doesn't reach him." She paused before finishing, "It has to be you."
"But… what if he doesn't let me in?"
Ji-young looked at him for a long moment, her gaze complicated, before squeezing his hand and saying quietly, "Please. Go to him."
…
He nearly bowled Nakyung over in the main corridor. She was standing very still, head lifted, trying to read the cedar permeating the air. As soon as Jaemin emerged, her eyes snapped to him, wide and startled.
"What's—" she began to ask, but her arm was already coming up before she could even voice the question, instinctively pointing toward the west wing. Jaemin sprinted in the direction, her voice following him down the hallway.
"What's going on??"
He didn't have an answer for her, and no time now to give one if he had. There would be time to explain later. But for now, he had to chase the cedar.
He dashed down the hushed corridors, vaguely recalling the way, following Do-hyun's scent where he could. It was everywhere, the intensity of it disorienting him, but he pushed himself forward until he found himself before the door of the room at the end.
The old bedroom. It had to be this one. The intense cedar leaking from the gap under the door was a sure tell.
He stepped up close. "Do-hyun."
A strangled noise, muffled through the wood. The scent of distress surged.
Heart aching, Jaemin reached for the doorknob. "Do-hyun—"
"Don't." The word was choked out on a sob. "Don't come in."
Jaemin closed his eyes, leaned forward to brace his forehead against the door, and pulled in a full, deep breath.
Distraught cedar coursed through him, overwhelming, raw and ungoverned in a way that Do-hyun, no matter how emotional he was, never let his pheromones be.
It wasn't the sharp, defensive spike that had risen back inside the room as Jaemin told his story. Just his alpha, falling apart on the other side of the door.
Jaemin pressed his palm flat against the wood, let his own scent settle — cherry blossom, unhurried, unguarded — and just stood in it, remembering.
How he had sat on the pavement in Seoul, outside Do-hyun's gate. How he had pressed the buzzer over and over again into silence, the windows of Do-hyun's house dark and indifferent above him. How he had sat on the ground through the night, with a violin case in his lap and a coat around his shoulders that smelled of cedar, and told himself He'll call, he promised, he said he would call.
Somewhere in those hours of waiting without answer, he'd stopped believing it, but he hadn't left. He hadn't fully known what had kept him there, sitting in the cold, and then again, here, in the weeks that Do-hyun had made himself scarce.
He thought he understood it better now.
He leaned his forehead against the door. "Don't shut me out," he said quietly. "Not again."
The silence shifted. Something in the quality of the cedar changed, the locked, straining edge of it cracking open, giving way to something that was no longer trying, no longer able, to hold its shape.
Then the sound of the lock turning.
Jaemin straightened, and pushed the door open.
The room was dim — curtains drawn, the only light what crept in around the edges — and Do-hyun had retreated to the far end of it, the width of the bed between them. He turned away as Jaemin stepped inside and closed the door quietly behind him.
If the cedar had been overwhelming through the door, in here, it was an assault, burning his lungs and making his head spin. But Jaemin just stood inside the door, letting his pheromones settle around him, merging with Do-hyun's. Defenseless, broken open.
Heartwood.
"He had you on the ground." Do-hyun's voice was unrecognisable. His shoulders were rigid, his head slightly bowed. "After everything he did to you already, he— you—" He drew a trembling breath, "And you— you had to face it all alone."
Jaemin was quiet for a moment, listening to Do-hyun's breath come out shaky and wrong, before softly saying, "But I'm not alone now. I have you."
The words, meant as comfort, only seemed to break Do-hyun more, the broad shoulders hunching further into himself, away from Jaemin's eyes.
"... The Commands." It came out fractured. "I— He forced himself on you, and I—"
"Do-hyun—"
"I'm exactly the same." Jaemin heard the alpha swallow hard, then choke out, "I did exactly the same thing to you. In the car. You were so frightened — begging me, crying, and I—"
"Do-hyun, you didn't—"
"I overrode you. After promising your father I would never—" He took another tight, shaking breath. "I knew. I knew what I was doing. I told myself it was different, it was to keep you safe, but I— I never—" His voice cracked, fist falling against the wall. "You shouldn't be here," he croaked.
Jaemin looked at him helplessly. "But…"
"You shouldn't be here. In this room, with me. Alone. You shouldn't let me near you, let me— let me touch you." He was barely audible now. "How could you let me in like that, after everything? After what I did to you, you still— still trusted me, last night—"
Jaemin crossed the room.
He didn't speak. He didn't explain or argue, simply walked to where Do-hyun was and reached out, cherry blossoms blooming in the midst of terrified cedar, and took Do-hyun's face in his hands and turned him towards himself.
Do-hyun flinched at the touch, but with nowhere else to turn, he finally met Jaemin's gaze.
His face was a ruin of tears, eyes red and jaw trembling with how tightly he was clenching it; not quietly undone, not a careful grief, but a man far gone past the point of containment.
As his eyes fell to Jaemin, whatever traces of control remained fractured visibly.
"Don't," he rasped, fresh tears spilling down his cheeks. "Don't forgive me."
"I know what you did," Jaemin said quietly, "and I know why you did it." He took a deep breath. "You are not him."
Do-hyun's face crumpled. Slowly, as if the last of what had been holding him upright had quietly given way, he sank to his knees, hands coming up to grasp desperately at the fabric of Jaemin's shirt as he went down.
"I'm sorry." A muffled, broken sob. "Jaemin, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"
Jaemin folded down to curl around his alpha and hold him, one arm across the shaking shoulders, his cheek pressed against the top of the bowed head. Do-hyun's hands tightened in his shirt, clutching on as he wept.