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The absence does not feel like a void but rather like a heavy presence weighing down on Yoongi's shoulders like armor made of lead.
Three months have passed since he let Jimin go in that damp bunker. Three months since he signed his own spiritual death warrant by lying in his official report. According to high command records, the rebel spy Park Jimin is dead, buried under tons of mud and rock in the northern sector.
Yoongi sits in his office, a sterile cubicle in the heart of headquarters. In front of him is a cup of black coffee, now cold. He can't taste it. In fact, he hasn't been able to taste anything since that day. His sense of smell, once his sharpest tool as an Alpha, has become a punishment.
The world smells of ash, metal, disinfectant, and the stale scent of other soldiers. No one has the nuance of ripe peaches, and nothing has the sweetness of honey.
Yoongi closes his eyes and clenches his fists on the desk. He feels that familiar violent tug in the center of his chest, just below his sternum. It's like an invisible string that tightens every time he breathes. Yoongi already knows what it is; his family doctor told him three weeks after the collapse, and the Alpha tries to ignore it because it is considered a biological weakness: priming.
It wasn't just sex. It wasn't just heat. In that bunker, under the pressure of the storm and danger, Yoongi's alpha decided that this omega, this enemy, was his beginning and his end. He has imprinted. His soul has been engraved with Jimin's essence, and now that they are separated, his body is beginning to get sick. His inner wolf howls in a corner of his mind, demanding the return of his mate, rejecting any other scent, any other food, any other peace.
Peach. Honey.
“Where are you, damn it?” Yoongi whispers to the empty room.
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Three hundred kilometers away, in a safe house hidden in the bowels of the port city, Jimin is dying in a different way.
He is lying on a rickety sofa, wrapped in three blankets even though the heating is on. His body is shaking, but it is not from the cold; it is the phantom heat that hits him every time he closes his eyes. His inner omega is screaming for the alpha who filled him, who knotted him, and then let him go.
“Take this, Jimin,” says Taehyung, a fellow resistance fighter and his best friend, handing him a high-powered suppressant. “You look like a corpse.”
Jimin takes the pill with trembling fingers. His skin is pale, his hazel eyes surrounded by deep, dark circles. He has lost weight, and food tastes like cardboard unless it is imbued with Yoongi's scent, something that is impossible to obtain.
“I'm fine,” Jimin lies, his voice barely a whisper.
“No, you're not.” “Since you came back from that failed mission in the North, you haven't been the same,” his friend scolds. “What happened in that bunker, Jimin? You said the alpha died in the collapse, but you... you smell like him. Even after three months, your scent has a note of burnt wood that won't go away.”
Jimin shrinks under the blankets. He can't tell him. He can't admit that he's fallen in love, or worse, that he's instinctively bonded with the man he should hate. Imprinting in omegas manifests as a physical need for protection and belonging that, if not satisfied, weakens the immune system.
“I just need to sleep,” Jimin says, turning toward the back of the sofa.
But when he sleeps, he sees it.
He sees Yoongi on top of him, feels his large hands marking his skin, hears his voice calling him “rebel” in that tone that made him tremble. The ghost of Yoongi's knot seems to beat inside him, an imaginary pressure that leaves him moaning in the darkness of the room.
Jimin knows he can't go on like this much longer. His body is giving up. The bond is breaking because the distance is too great, and the breaking of an imprint usually ends in tragedy.
- ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
In Yoongi's world, nothing is left to chance. The alpha uses every legal and illegal resource at his disposal. He hacks intelligence databases, tracks stolen medical supplies of suppressants, and follows the trail of the resistance not as a manhunter but as an animal tracking its wounded prey.
He follows an intercepted transmission, a code name, and an address on the docks of the farthest city when he finally locates it.
Yoongi doesn't ask for permission and doesn't bring assault gear. He puts on civilian clothes, hides his service weapon on his back, and heads to the port in rain that cruelly reminds him of the night everything changed.
The safe house is a dilapidated apartment building. Yoongi climbs the stairs with silent steps, but his scent precedes him. His alpha pheromones, now intensified by months of deprivation, flow through the hallway like an invisible tide.
Inside apartment 4B, Jimin jumps up from the sofa, his heart beating so hard it hurts. His scent glands explode, releasing a peach fragrance so sweet it's almost painful.
“Jimin?” Taehyung stands up, alarmed. “What's wrong with you? Your scent... it's too strong...”
“He's here,” Jimin gasps.
“Who?”
The door isn't kicked down, but it opens with an authority that brooks no argument. Yoongi enters the room. He's soaked, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, his eyes shining with a wild, golden light that Taehyung immediately recognizes as the state of an alpha in mating mode.
“Get out,” Yoongi growls. It's not a request; it's the commanding voice that makes Taehyung's knees buckle.
“He's a soldier!” Taehyung shouts, trying to draw his weapon.
“Taehyung, go!” Jimin pleads, staggering forward. “Please go. He's not dangerous; he came for me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, and don't tell anyone. I'll contact you later.”
Taehyung looks at Jimin, sees the desperation in his eyes and the way his body seems to come back to life just from Yoongi's proximity. With a gesture of frustration and fear, he runs out of the apartment, leaving the two enemies alone.
The silence that follows is thick, charged with electric tension.
Yoongi doesn't move; he just stares at Jimin. His gaze travels over the thinness of his cheeks, the trembling of his hands, and the paleness of his skin. The pain in Yoongi's chest subsides a little, calmed by the visual confirmation that his omega is still alive.
“You look terrible,” Yoongi says, his voice breaking.
“You look like you just came out of a graveyard,” Jimin replies with a trace of his former spark, even though his legs are failing him and he has to lean on the table.
Yoongi crosses the room in a flash. He doesn't hit him, he doesn't arrest him, he simply wraps his arms around him, pressing him against his chest with a force that almost takes both their breaths away. Jimin lets out a muffled sob and buries his face in Yoongi's neck, inhaling the smell of burnt wood and ozone as if it were oxygen in the middle of a fire.
“I'm dying, Yoongi,” Jimin sobs against his skin. “My body... can't be without you.”
“I know,” Yoongi growls, rubbing his cheek against Jimin's hair, marking him again with his scent. “Me too. The imprint has screwed us both.”
Yoongi lifts Jimin's face and kisses him. It is filled with desperation, longing, and tastes of tears and absolute surrender. They both know that there are no sides anymore. There is no rebellion or government. There are only two beings biologically chained to each other.
Yoongi lifts him up and carries him to the small bedroom. He lays him on the bed with a gentleness that contrasts with the storm of his instincts.
“I came to take you away,” Yoongi says as he takes off his wet jacket. “I can't leave you here to wither away.”
“Where would we go?” asks Jimin, lying on the mattress, looking at the man who has destroyed his world. “There's no place for us. I'm a traitor to my people, and you're a deserter if you stay with me.”
Yoongi lies down beside him, pulling him into the crook of his arm.
“I have a property on the south coast. It's in my mother's name; no one knows about it. I have money saved up and contacts to get us out of the country. But we have to leave now.”
Jimin looks at the peeling ceiling of the apartment. He thinks about the rebel cause, his ideals, the struggle. Then he looks at Yoongi, feels the warmth of his body and the almost mystical relief his nervous system feels now that they are together.
The war seems small and distant compared to the universe between them.
“Why are you doing this?” Jimin whispers. “You could have had a brilliant career. You could have found a submissive omega who didn't try to kill you every time you turned around.”
Yoongi smiles crookedly and kisses his forehead.
“Because none of those omegas were a stubborn spy who smells like peaches and bites my lip until it bleeds. Because my wolf chose you. And because I'd rather be a traitor with you than a hero without you.”
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Six months later.
}The sound of waves crashing against the cliffs is the only noise that fills the wooden cabin. It's a constant sound, but unlike the rain in the bunker, this one is peaceful.
Yoongi enters the kitchen carrying firewood for the fireplace, his shoulders more relaxed and his face no longer bearing the harshness of military command. He is wearing a simple flannel shirt and worn pants.
At the table, Jimin is peeling some fruit. He has regained his weight, his skin has a healthy glow, and his hazel eyes are once again sparkling with that dangerous mischief that Yoongi adores.
As Yoongi walks past him, Jimin reaches out and gives him a light slap on the butt.
“You're late with the firewood, Captain,” Jimin teases.
Yoongi sets the firewood aside and grabs Jimin by the waist, pulling him toward him.
“We had a long night, rebel. My back still has the marks of your nails.”
Jimin laughs, a clean, joyful sound. He leans down and gently bites Yoongi's earlobe.
“You deserved it. You were being...demanding.”
“It's the privilege of having me as yours,” Yoongi replies, burying his nose in Jimin's neck.
There, at the base of Jimin's neck, is a mark. It's not a battle scar or a war wound. It is the deep, clear, permanent mark of mating. Yoongi made it three months ago, the day they arrived at the cabin, sealing their bond forever.
Now, the scent of both of them is indistinguishable. They are a perfect blend of sweet and smoky, a fragrance that fills the house and announces to any intruder that this territory belongs to a bonded couple.
Sometimes, at night, they talk about what they left behind. Jimin misses the adrenaline, and Yoongi sometimes wakes up looking for his gun. But then they look at each other in the dim light of the room and know that the price was worth it.
The war continues outside; the sides continue to kill each other over borders and ideologies that now seem absurd to them. They have found their own peace in the sweetest betrayal in the world.
Jimin pulls away slightly and offers Yoongi a piece of peach.
“You know what's funny?” Jimin asks as Yoongi eats the fruit from his fingers.
“What?”
“That I spent years hiding from you. And now, if you walk more than ten meters away, my body starts to complain like a little kid.”
Yoongi hugs him from behind, crossing his hands over Jimin's slightly bulging belly.
“I'm not going anywhere. Ever again.” I chased you halfway across the continent, Jimin. Now that I have you, you're going to have to put up with me for the rest of your life."
Jimin leans back, resting his head on his Alpha's shoulder, closing his eyes as he enjoys the warmth of the sun coming through the window.
“That seems like an acceptable punishment,” he murmurs, leaving a kiss on the Alpha's neck.