Two days later, Jaemin was alone in the music room when he heard it: voices outside, too many and too loud for delivery or staff; Ji-young's voice, clipped and precise, coming from somewhere near the entrance.
Then, distantly, the clang of something metallic being forced, and Ji-young's voice again at a different register—not raised, exactly, but stripped of its usual composure.
Jaemin was on his feet in an instant. He rushed out of the music room into the corridor and nearly bowled into Nakyung, who was already heading toward the front of the house with her phone in her hand, jaw set.
"Stay here," she said. He didn't.
Morning light flooded the entrance hall through the tall windows, and through the glass he could see figures at the inner gate: a man with a camera, another with recording equipment, and a third who had somehow gotten through the inner gate and was on the path that led to the house itself, about thirty metres from the front door, shouting questions toward the house as he barrelled past the guards.
"Some media don't know when to quit," Nakyung growled, and Jaemin felt her scent spike with aggression. "How did they even get this far in? Omma, shall I—?"
Ji-young, standing perfectly still at the inner door, raised a single finger to stop her. Her phone was pressed to her ear as she spoke into it, voice low, but firm and cold.
The man on the path was still advancing at twenty metres and closing. Jaemin watched, pulse rising, as one of the security guards attempted to tackle him, to no avail.
How did they find them here, all the way up in the mountains? Did Choi Seungcheol track them to Pyeongchang? And if they managed to get in—
Just then, something shifted in the house—a change in the air, a pressure of protective cedar that Jaemin felt before consciously registering it—and a figure came swiftly through the side entrance leading from the west wing.
"Oppa!" Nakyung's voice was stark with relief. "These idiots managed to break in, one of them's right outside the door."
Lips pressed into a tight line, Kang Do-hyun didn't reply. He didn't look at Jaemin, or anyone in the hall. He strode past them all to the front door, opened it, and stepped outside.
Jaemin watched through the glass. The journalist was an alpha, he could tell even from inside the house: the aggression in the man's advance, the way he hadn't stopped moving when security stepped into his path. He'd shouldered the guard aside without breaking stride, camera gripped tightly in hand, now twenty metres from the front door and closing.
Do-hyun stepped off the path to meet him. Seeing him appear, the man's eyes widened, as if he couldn't believe his good luck. He immediately raised his camera to snap a few shots.
Seemingly uncaring, Do-hyun didn't move to stop him, but he must have said something, because the journalist lowered the camera and straightened, chin lifting, offended; one alpha being challenged by another.
His mouth opened in reply. Whatever he said, Do-hyun's response to it was brief—a few words, level, unhurried. But the journalist only gave a short laugh, derisive, and took a step forward. Still testing. Still pushing.
Do-hyun held his ground, unfazed, but then the journalist said something that made the line of his shoulders go rigid.
From behind the glass, Jaemin flinched as the flaring pressure of angry cedar hit him. When he saw the journalist take another step forward, sneering, he already knew what was going to happen before Do-hyun closed the distance.
A sharp gasp sounded close to him, but Jaemin didn't have time to register that it was Nakyung, not him, before he saw the man shove Do-hyun back hard, a move to establish hierarchy. Do-hyun caught it, feet finding purchase on the gravel, but the journalist was sturdy, even if shorter, and the impact drove Do-hyun back two steps.
The alpha, reading the stumble as weakness, pressed his advantage immediately, swinging for Do-hyun's face before Do-hyun could fully recover his balance. Do-hyun ducked, but not cleanly; the fist caught the side of his jaw in a glancing blow that snapped his head to one side. Jaemin's stomach lurched.
A second hit to the ribs, an ugly sound even through the glass, and Do-hyun folded slightly at the blow, one hand and knee landing heavily on the gravel.
Nakyung started towards the door. "That's it, I'm going out there—"
"No."
"But Omma—!"
"No." Ji-young's order was sharp and absolute. "Stay here. Trust your brother."
The intruder drew back to jeer, giving Do-hyun time to straighten slowly.
Something had shifted in his expression, in the air around him. A glint of gold in his eyes. A pressure, sudden and concentrated and all too familiar, one that made the hairs on the back of Jaemin's neck rise, prickling all along the length of his spine. Even behind the safety of the walls, even at this distance, Jaemin suddenly felt like he couldn't breathe, gasping as his knees threatened to buckle.
The intensity barely lasted a second before it receded, a wave that had gathered to crash but then pulled back at the last moment.
But the journalist had felt it, his expression of contempt faltering before hardening into something feral.
His next lunge was wild, triggered by instinct rather than strategy or judgment—all forward momentum, a mindless, knee-jerk retaliation.
But Do-hyun was ready for it. He stepped into the arc of the man's swing, rather than away—too close suddenly for the blow to land with any force—then catching the other alpha's arm and sweeping it downward, using the man's own momentum to send him to the ground.
The man went down hard. He sputtered, immediately trying to push himself to his feet, but in the next moment Do-hyun had his knee planted firmly in the middle of his back, one hand twisting the journalist's arm up behind him at an angle that made it clear who the victor was.
Unable to fully bite back his alpha instincts and concede defeat, the man struggled anyway, snarling furiously against the gravel.
But Do-hyun only needed to leverage his weight, leaning down to speak in a low voice beside the man's ear. Jaemin watched the man go still at last.
In the wake of the receding pheromonal pressure, the estate security rushed in. As they hauled the man up and away, gravel embedded in his reddened cheeks, Do-hyun bent to retrieve the camera that had fallen to the ground nearby. He stood on the path for a moment, camera in hand, staring out at nothing in particular. Then he turned and made his way back into the entrance hall.
His eyes moved first to his mother, who gave him a single small nod as he handed her the camera, then to Nakyung, who was regarding him with an expression that was part relief, part exasperation at witnessing the display of her older brother's competence.
"About time," she grumbled. "Why'd you let him get you like that?"
Do-hyun shrugged. "Well-trained to keep visible evidence of assault, I suppose."
Then his gaze reached Jaemin, and stopped.
Ten days. Ten days of absence before his mate was finally standing in the same room, looking at each other across the entrance hall.
"I think I need a cup of tea to steady myself," Ji-young said quietly. "Come and help me, Nakyung."
Nakyung murmured acknowledgement, quickly slipping out of the hall behind her mother, and then they were gone with the efficiency of women who knew that certain things needed resolution without an audience.
Silence fell in the wake of their exit. Jaemin's gaze never left Do-hyun's face. He didn't dare to, afraid that his mate would disappear again if he so much as blinked for a moment too long.
But Do-hyun didn't seem to want to run anymore. He looked… not closed. Not guarded, exactly. Exhausted. Like he had been carrying something very heavy for a very long time, and had not yet been given permission to set it down. Jaemin didn't know what he had expected, but he hadn't expected that, somehow.
"You…" the alpha started hesitantly, as if he had begun the sentence with no idea what it would say. "You… look well. I'm glad they've been taking care of you."
The words were careful and inadequate and Do-hyun seemed to know it, because something shifted in his expression, and in his scent. His cedar was everywhere now, warm and familiar and filling the space between them. Jaemin's body recognized it before his mind did: the slow unspooling of tension he hadn't realised he'd been carrying, the ease of a pheromonal signature that had spent months becoming the smell of safety, even if it now cried uncertainty.
He hated, a little, how easy it was.
"And you…" Jaemin's words came out on a rasp, and he paused to clear his throat. "You look injured."
Caught off-guard by the comment, Do-hyun laughed, then grimaced, one hand coming up to touch the bruising on his jaw gingerly. "Could've been worse, I suppose. He was really set on getting the story."
Jaemin looked at him for a long moment more, then finally turned and stepped toward the music room.
"Come and hear what I've been working on," he said.