Chapter Text
Mingi screams.
He screams as he sees Youngkook fire his gun into Charles’ skull, the shot fired close enough that the force of the blast created a large crater in his forehead, fragments of brain and bone erupting out of the entry wound like a grotesque piñata. Charles’ body goes limp, muscles releasing all tension and leaving him in a growing puddle of his own waste. Mingi has to fight the urge to vomit.
Youngkook holsters the weapon and turns back to face Mingi. “It’s his own fault, beautiful” he coos, trying to soothe the omega “Just behave yourself and you’ll be fine.” He walks over and caresses Mingi’s neck with his clammy hands, fingers brushing across his skin until they catch on the edge of Mingi’s scent patch.
Youngkook grabs hold of the patch and rips it off.
Mingi’s cinnamon scent floods into the space, the smell warmed and sweetened by the beginning stages of his heat. “You smell so sweet” Youngkook leans in to get a lungful of Mingi’s scent. “If my son hadn’t already claimed you I’d be tempted to take you for myself.”
“I don’t belong to anybody. Much less your piece of sh*t son.” Mingi grits out.
Youngkook backhands Mingi, his head going sideways at the force of the smack. “Hold your tongue bitch! We’ll leave you here until your heat sets in it won’t exactly matter. You omegas are born slu*ts after all; you’ll be so busy begging for a knot that it won’t matter whose it is.” Youngkook smiles
Mingi feels a chill shoot down his spine as a counterbalance to the sharp, heated pain that’s radiating from his cheek where Youngkook smacked him. He bites the inside of his cheek to keep from saying anything else, opting instead to glare at the man. Youngkook looks pleased at Mingi’s compliance and Mingi feels the urge to vomit return.
His smile widens “so you can be trained! Wonderful.” Youngkook gets closer, shoving his hand into Mingi’s pants pocket. Mingi’s muscles tense underneath his fingers as he grabs ahold of Mingi’s phone and pulls it out of his pocket. He steps back and waves the device at Mingi. “This is the last thing I need from you doll.”
“Why?” He was never very good at tempering his curiosity.
“I need to make a call to that little beta you hang around.” He doesn’t wait for Mingi to respond, instead turning around and leaving the room. As he walks out Mingi can make out the beginning of the call “I don’t swing…” it fades out as Youngkook shuts the door. Leaving Mingi alone in a concrete room with only a corpse and the putrid mingling of mold, waste, and gunsmoke as company.
In the hours that follow Mingi feels like he’s properly losing it. The first thing that gets to him is the smells, his overwhelmed nose leads to a pounding headache that ends with him vomiting to the side of the chair he’s tied to. The relief was short lived, the acidic scent of stomach bile added to everything else and left him constantly nauseous and gagging intermittently. Everytime he gagged his stomach seized up and a sharp cramp went through his body. The only thing he could look at without straining his neck was Charles’ corpse; closing his eyes didn’t help either - it only greeted him with a replay of Pendelton’s last moments alive. Mingi thought it was a small mercy when the fluorescent lighting started messing with his eyes, making him feel blind even when they were open from the number of spots dancing in his vision.
Through it all Mingi could feel with a creeping dread that his heat was hitting in full force. His body started pumping out scent like it was the only thing it could do to attract a suitable mate. His cramps got even worse, randomly leaving a stabbing pain in his abdomen or a flare of deep burning that felt like someone deposited smoldering coals right into his cervix. He felt the terror in his veins as he slowly slid farther into his heat mindset. The horrifying moment that he felt his slick pool in his seat, staining his pants between his legs, Mingi whimpered. He started to shake, crying as quietly as possible but unable to stop the growing panic at the thought of what was going to happen to him
—-
It took Yeosang three hours to trace the SIM card and send them the location.
By the time he sent the location the pack had been forced to more properly restrain Yunho by cuffing his hands and binding his feet; and after he managed to bite San again Seonghwa pulled a muzzle out of storage and managed to get it on the beta.
Which leads them to now, half of the pack in a car going as fast as they can to try to reach the destination with a bound Yunho alternating between growls and whines in the back seat.
“How much longer ‘til we get there?” Wooyoung complains from his spot beside Yunho. “I don’t know how much more of loverboy’s growling I can take.”
“Nav says we’re close” Hongjoong responds before turning off into a side street near the shipyard of Gunsan. He kills the headlights on the car and parks not long after. “This is as close as we can get without tipping them off” He announces.
Jongho, Hongjoong, and Wooyoung exit the car first, Jongho keeps watch while Wooyoung scouts out the area. The silence surrounding the area is heavy and tense, like a rusted bridge cable about to snap. Wooyoung returns a handful of minutes later.
“The nav led to an admin building. I could see a handful of plainclothes guards around the perimeter” He reports.
Hongjoong nods “good. Are we all clear on the plan?”
The two nod before Jongho responds “Mitigate Birdwing’s damage and leave as little trace as possible.”
Hongjoong nods again before signaling the two to go ahead. Once they’re out of sight he opens the passenger door and unties Yunho’s legs.
Yunho huffs at him, almost in question as his legs are freed and he steps out of the car.
Hongjoong pulls him down enough to make eye contact “Keep yourself together for a few more minutes and then you can do whatever you need to, got it?” He stares at Yunho until the beta nods in understanding. Hongjoong grabs his arm and leads him within eyesight of the building, only stopping once Yunho starts trying to pull away, his growls shifting to high pitch whining.
He undoes Yunho’s muzzle. The beta looks dazed, his pupils dilated “mate” is all he can manage to say to Hongjoong. In response Hongjoong undoes his handcuffs and hands him a knife. Yunho takes off toward the building as soon as the knife is in hand.
“Go get your mate Birdie.” Hongjoong says to the air before heading back to the car - he’d promised Seonghwa he would be the getaway driver this time.
It might just be his mind playing tricks, but as Yunho takes off toward the building he swears he can make out the faintest hint of Mingi’s warm cinnamon scent amongst everything. Even the phantom of him is enough to have Yunho charge toward the building, being met by a guard at the entrance who tries to stop him. The poor bastard barely has time to react before Yunho has knocked him over, stabbing the knife into the man’s eye and leaving him writhing on the ground. Yunho withdraws the knife with enough force to pull his eye out with it, Yunho dislodges the organ from the blade on the door frame as he heads inside.
The interior hallway seems empty, but then again it’s not like Yunho is paying attention. His singular focus is on getting to the source of the cinnamon, and God help anyone who tries to get in his way. He rushes to the end of the hallway and turns, only to be met with two more guards who draw their weapons in response to his presence. Yunho lunges at the first one, tackling him to the ground. The guard tries to get a hit on him, managing to kick Yunho’s shin a few times before Yunho grabs the man’s ear and pulls.
The man screams as Yunho tears his ear off, he takes the moment the guard is stunned by the pain to shove the knife into his chest cavity. The guard stills; it would be hard to tell if the man was killed by the knife or by the force he was stabbed with, his chest cavity dented inward slightly. As Yunho stands he’s met by the other guard. The guard manages to land a slash on his arm before Yunho manages to grab his arm and twist, not stopping until a sharp crack is heard. The guard screams and drops his weapon, falling to the floor soon after. Yunho grabs the second knife and continues on.
He continues down the hall, no longer rushing so much as he is stalking. Moving with the intensity of gravity as he makes the way further into the building. It’s only a few minutes later that he finds a stairwell behind a door that leads down. When he reaches the bottom the smell of cinnamon grows stronger ‘close’ his inner huffs in his mind. A split second after smelling Mingi he picks up the smell of mold, mildew, waste, and most troubling decay. Yunho picks up his pace again, mind running wild with the thought of being too late.
He’d never forgive himself if Mingi was dead.
—-
Mingi had curled into himself as much as possible while restrained to the chair. His mind was fully enveloped in the haze that comes with a heat; his stomach cramping hard enough to elicit small groans from him. He’s leaked enough slick that he can feel it running down his leg and forming a small puddle around his feet. He’s scared, dehydrated, and feels like he’s two degrees away from being the next case of spontaneous human combustion. The only upside in this nightmare is that his heat brain is strong enough now that he feels himself dissociating, like he’s floating just to the right of his body.
It’s times like this that he curses himself for being weak. ‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have a f*cking smell sensitivity. I wouldn’t be in pain if my body knew how to f*cking work. My parents were right to wish for me to present as a beta.’ He thinks bitterly. He’s angry at himself for seemingly giving up so easily; but even if he did escape this room what could he do? It normally hurts to move during his heats, and even if he did push through that pain, then what? It’s more dangerous for an omega in heat to walk around in public than it is for him to stay put and take his chances with Youngkook and Jongki. f*ck he doesn’t even know where he is!
He feels water run down his face ‘when did I start crying?’ Once he notices he can’t stop, tears flowing freely down his face, wetting the top of his shirt. Mingi’s so lost in the void he’s built that when he starts smelling the faint scent of lemongrass he thinks he’s lost his mind. The scent is tainted, sour and acidic in a way he can’t quite put together in his current state. Mingi and his inner cry at the phantom scent ‘What if something happened?’ f*ck what if they got to Yunho?’ Mingi starts to cry harder.
Mingi cries until he hears footsteps coming towards the room. He tries to recompose himself before his guests enter the room. The omega may be going through a personal nightmare but he’ll be damned if either of the Lees or any of their lackeys enter the room.
The door slams open and what sounds like three sets of footsteps come in before closing the door behind them. Mingi flinches despite himself when the door opens but keeps his head down to not draw attention to himself.
“God it’s foul in here, can’t we guard the asset from the hallway?” One of the guards complains to his buddies.
“Shut the hell up man” another one barks at him. “We gotta keep an eye on Lee’s slu*t. Who knows maybe if you do a good enough job the boss’ll let you use it’s mouth after.” Mingi can practically hear the smirk in his voice and feels another wave of nausea hit him.
The guards continue on like this for sometime, their comments fade into background noise when Mingi gets tired of hearing them speak. Realistically Mingi knows that the guards aren’t in the room with him for longer than 45 minutes, but in his mind it feels like hours; especially once they start getting a little scent drunk on his cinnamon scent and his slick.
The scent of lemongrass gets stronger.
Mingi tries to focus on it, regardless of if it’s fake or not. It smells like Yunho and he’s desperate for any amount of comfort he can get. The lemongass is still tainted with an acidic undertone; but as it gets even stronger Mingi’s traitor heart can’t help but to hope that Yunho’s come for him. ‘Why would he though?’ The part of his brain that hates him whispers ‘Yunho can’t fight. He probably doesn’t know you’re here.’
The door handle rattles.
The guards go silent at that, and ready their weapons.
There’s a loud bang.
The door falls with a deafening sound.
Mingi is resolute to keep his head down, to avoid notice. The acidic lemongrass is overpowering his nose. He can feel his inner yip and his legs itch with an urge to run toward the source. ‘Mate! Our mate is here!’ Mingi hopes his inner is right. There’s sounds of combat going on around him, lots of grunting and small cries and occasionally the clashing sound of metal hitting other metal. He heard a deep, bone rattling growl and it compels him to finally look up.
Yunho! It’s Yunho! He’s here! He came! Mingi could barely believe his eyes but his heart soared at the sight of the beta. Yunho was currently fighting two of the guards, the third lying in a pile of viscera near the door. He’s wielding two knives and absolutely covered in blood. His arms are coated in it up to his elbow and it’s dripping down from his mouth and staining his shirt. Mingi can’t tell if he’s injured or not; but he certainly doesn’t move like it. His fighting style looks like a dance, he moves with a hypnotizing rhythm and strikes with a precision more benefitting of a ballerina than a brawler. It’s elegant and strong and captivating in a way that’s just so painfully Yunho that Mingi finds himself unable to look away.
He only regains focus after Yunho uses the hold he has on one of the guards to knock the other one over. Leaving them both on the floor. Mingi watches as he lodges one of the knives into the mouth of the man he knocked down; blood starts to bubble up in his mouth like a morbid fountain. Yunho turns his attention to the guard he previously grappled before Mingi finds his voice.
“Yunho!”
Yunho looks up, eyes instantly finding Mingi’s. The moment their eyes meet Mingi swears he can see all the tension leave his expression; Yunho’s eyes softening like Mingi is the only thing he sees.
“Yuyu, pup, please” Mingi takes a shaky breath, “don’t kill him, he hasn’t done anything.”
Yunho tilts his head like a confused dog, giving Ming a once over with his eyes. “He hurt you” he responds, like that’s worth killing a man over.
Mingi shakes his head “he didn’t. That man only came in here recently. The only one who hurt me was Youngkook.”
There’s a quiet growl in the back of Yunho’s throat while he mules over Mingi’s words. The last living guard watching from his spot in Yunho’s hold, smartly not moving in hopes the feral beta on top of him will let him go. Yunho seems to come to a decision, he gets off the guard and takes a few steps back. “Leave” he orders, voice rough and deep in a way that sends pleasant tingles down Mingi’s spine. The guard scrambles to stand up shouting a shaky thank you as he sprints out of the room.
As soon as the guard leaves the line of sight Yunho turns back to Mingi, rushing over to him and using the knife to cut him free of his binds. “I’m so sorry Mingi” he whispers, massaging each limb as he frees them to help the circulation. “I should have been faster, shouldn’t have left you. He rubs his hands up and down Mingi’s legs below the knees, “I’m sorry I’m not better, princess.” His voice starts to break.
“Pup, yuyu, look at me” Yunho looks at him. “You’re here, I don’t know how but you are.” Mingi brushes his hand through Yunho’s hair, not caring about the sweat and blood in it. “You saved me” he moves the hand in his hair down, caressing his face before gently cupping his chin “thank you.”
A soft whine comes from the back of Yunho’s throat and he leans up to try and kiss Mingi, which Mingi dodges. “Not yet baby, let’s go home first and clean up okay?”
Yunho nods, moving again to help Mingi stand up and wrapping a possessive arm around his waist. “Anything for my princess”
The walk back to the car is more difficult than it should be. Mingi’s fairly certain the only reason he made it out of the building is a combination of adrenaline and Yunho supporting him. The adrenaline fades as the step outside, and his cramps return with a vengeance, he can feel his thighs and hips tense and spasm with each step. It adds an additional haze to his brain that is already fuzzy from his heat and the concussion he most likely sustained earlier.
Yunho notices when it gets harder for Mingi to walk because of course he does. He doesn’t ask before picking Mingi up in a bridal carry and continuing to go back to the car like nothing happened. Normally Mingi would hassle him for doing something like this but after everything that happened he’s just happy to be in the beta’s arms again. His abdomen is still cramping but the minute he feels himself relax in the beta’s hold he feels exhaustion take a hold of him.
Mingi falls asleep in his arms before they reach the car.
—-
Mingi wakes up in his bathtub mid-bath to the feeling of gentle fingers washing his hair. He tenses only to relax a moment later when he smells the comforting scent of lemongrass.
“Are you with me princess?” Yunho asks softly, pulling his hands away so he can rinse Mingi’s hair.
He hums in response, taking in the moment and relaxing. The hot water in the bath relaxed his muscles, and the soft vanilla aroma coming up from the water puts a small smile on his face. ‘He must have found my bath oils.’ Mingi shifts his leg slightly to find a more comfortable position and is surprised to feel his underwear is still on.
“You left my underwear on?” He asks in mild surprise.
“Of course” he answers like it was the obvious thing to do. He pops the cap of something before closing it and returning his hands to Mingi’s hair. “We never talked about what you wanted for your heat and I thought leaving them on would reassure you nothing happened before you woke up.”
Mingi doesn’t say anything to keep himself from crying again. It’s such a small thing but after the events of the past day it feels monumental. He takes a deep breath before he speaks again “are you okay Yuyu?”
He hears a hum behind him, Yunho happily giving him a scalp massage before rinsing his hair out again.
“Yuyu?”
“Huh? Oh yeah” he sounds embarrassed for not responding “I’m okay. I got nicked at some point but my friend Wooyoung patched me up before dropping us off here.”
After that they drift into a comfortable silence, basking in each other’s company after everything. Yunho help’s Mingi out of the bath and dries him off even after Mingi pouts that he can do it himself. They only separate when Yunho leaves Mingi in the bedroom to change his clothes. Yunho goes back into the bathroom to quickly shower.
Mingi strips and lays the underwear somewhere it can dry before he digs in his dresser to pull out the lounge wear he prefers to wear during his heats, it’s a matching oversized set of pajamas that are light enough to keep him from sweating but still managing to be soft to the touch. When he’s dressed he sits on his bed to wait for Yunho to come back. He reflexively goes to pick up his phone to pass the time, only to remember that Youngkook took it. Mingi lays back, allowing his legs to dangle over the edge while he stares up at the ceiling. He almost dozes off again before Yunho comes back into the room.
“Are you comfortable baby?” He hears Yunho ask from the doorway. He hums in response but sits up anyway, taking in the view. Yunho’s hair is still damp, stray droplets dripping down onto his bare collarbones, a few running further down his torso. He appreciates the beta’s lean form, the definition of his muscles, the slight softness that clings to his form around his stomach and chest.
“I wanna jump your bones” Mingi blurts out in the few seconds his brain is rebooting from looking at his hot boyfriend.
Yunho cracks a smile “yeah princess?” He teases, putting the towel on the drying rack before sitting on the bed next to Mingi, a scant few inches between them. “How would you do it?”
Mingi scoots closer, leaning his head on his shoulder “hmm well first I would lay you down.” He says, placing a soft kiss to his scent gland. “I would worship your body while unwrapping you like the gift you are.” Mingi gently bites his shoulder “and then I’d flip our positions so you could have your way with me.”
“f*ck” Yunho exhales “you really are such a princess.”
“Only for you” Mingi moves further, practically crawling into Yunho’s lap, straddling him. He leans in and they share a kiss “anything for you Yuyu.” They start to lazily make out, Mingi moaning softly when Yunho trails his hands down his back to hold his ass, fondling it and using his hold to move Mingi closer to him. Mingi starts to grind on Yunho, mind going hazy with thoughts of how the bulge he feels twitching against him would feel f*cking him. He’s about to ask for just that when Yunho pulls away to speak.
“What’s wrong?” Mingi asks, breathless from kissing.
“I don’t want to go farther than this tonight” he responds, moving his hands to Mingi’s tiny waist and kneading the flesh there. “We’ve both been through a lot today and we never got to talk about how you want to spend your heat.”
Mingi nods, leaning in to steal a kiss “you’re right.” He wraps his arms around Yunho in a great koala impression “can we still cuddle?”
Yunho chuckles fondly before stealing a kiss of his own “of course baby.”
