Chapter Text
It’s Yukhei that bring him the news, during a cold and fragrant evening of early spring. Mark is in the courtyard, his back on the ground, dust in his eyes and on his brows and under his nails, dust inside his nostrils and throat as he breathes heavily, open mouthed. He’s holding his chest with one hand, where his lungs are burning – asking for mercy, asking for more, – and his hip with the other, covering the bruise the swordmaster left on him during training.
He can smell Yukhei’s scent when the boy is still in the garden, its strong, bossy note crushing the shy aroma of flowers. Yukhei is leather and jokes by the fire, the smell of Mark’s best friend, the smell of the second in command when Mark will be king. Today, though, there’s some kind of spice to him, some kind of urgency.
“Mark!” he screams, adding a choked, “Your Highness!” when the swordmaster glares at him for his lack of manners.
“What?” Mark exhales. He blinks, but even his eyelashes hurt from the movement. He can faintly make out through the thin sheen of sweat perched on his nose, the way Zhoumi, swordmaster, first knight of the kingdom and the prince’s personal fencing teacher, glares at his young cousin.
“The prince is training, Yukhei,” he starts, very disapproving, but Yukhei cuts him off – something he would never, ever do unless it was a real emergency – and stares at Mark with wide eyes, panting against the cold air of the night.
“You have to come… Now…” He can barely speak through the gulps of air. “Something… Something happened… Your father…” He must have run straight from the throne room. Mark rolls up to his feet, despite the pain, despite the fatigue weighing his limbs down, at the mention of his father. His hand finds the sword on the ground and he’s barely aware of Zhoumi unsheathing his own, ready to defend his king, when Yukhei raises his hand to stop them.
“No, no, no danger,” he says, the words scratchy against his throat. “A messenger, from the South.”
Mark’s eyes narrow in confusion for a moment, before Yukhei continues.
“Your betrothed, she just presented… She’s an Alpha, Mark.”
A deep silence falls on the courtyard, broken only by Yukhei’s harsh painting and the sharp sound of Zhoumi’s sword finding its place in the sheath. There’s silence in Mark’s head too, for a moment, some kind of white, empty sound, before his thoughts rush back in with enough force to break the dam of his stupor.
An Alpha. Which means she can’t give Mark an heir. Which means the marriage, the alliance, is off. And with the North in arms, ready to march on their lands, what kind of hope do they have without an alliance with the Southern Islands? There is no future for them if the war happens.
“Are you sure?” he asks, breathless.
“The messenger came from the palace. It had the seal of the royal family, there’s no doubt about it.”
What now? What to do now? “Are we really going to war, then?” To our annihilation, to our utter defeat. First us and then… the islands. Just because one girl couldn’t be an Omega, or even a Beta.
“No,” Yukhei says, shaking his head. “The engagement is still valid.”
“I can’t possibly marry an Alpha,” Mark replies. “Who’s gonna bear my children, then?”
He can read in Yukhei’s eyes that he won’t like the answer, but he asks anyway. This is the small relief his parents have accorded him. At least he can know in advance, and from his best friend – as if that could be enough to soften the blow – instead of from the lips of a cocky messenger from the South, what is going to happen to him and to his kingdom.
“The Crown Prince, her twin brother, he also presented on the same day. An Omega.”
Mark’s blood runs cold at the thought, so cold it feels like it’s stopped running altogether and there’s just ice in his veins, as if someone were to touch him he’d shatter in thousand little pieces. He’s faintly aware of both Zhoumi and Yukhei taking a step back, giving him space to organize his thoughts before they explode.
“Honestly,” Mark says when he finally manages to calm down, “losing a war might almost be a better option than this.”
❃
The thing is, Mark thinks, as he lets his mother braid flowers in his hair – traditional flowers, red and white, for prosperity, for luck, for a new beginning, the flowers you can only wear once in your life, the day of your vows – he’s not even sure he’s the one who’s gonna suffer the most from this arrangement.
Sure, he hates Donghyuck, and Donghyuck hates him back with an intensity that Mark is not sure he can match, (although he tries, oh, he tries.) But at least Mark still has his kingdom, his people, his family. His life.
Donghyuck was raised to inherit, to be a king. No one ever assumed he could be anything other than an Alpha, no one taught him humility. Mark is not sure anyone could have, anyone ever could, which is really disheartening considering that this inconvenient duty now falls upon him. Because if he lets Donghyuck misbehave, if he lets Donghyuck disrespect him, out of pettiness or out of ignorance or simply out of despair, if he can’t even control his husband, his mate, his Omega, how is he supposed to control a kingdom? Mark knows, he’s perfectly aware of it, that Donghyuck is untrained, that Donghyuck is untamed and possibly untameable, that Donghyuck is impossible, out of anyone’s control.
“Donghyuck agreed to do this, you know?”
Mark turns abruptly to meet his brother’s gentle face, escaping the gentle pressure of his mother’s hands on his hair.
“Don’t upset him too much,” she says, braiding the last small daisy in Mark’s hair before she leaves her two boys alone.
Sungmin flops down on the chair, crosses his legs and stares at Mark like he used to stare at the little birds in the aviary when he was a child. With a mixture of pity and amazement.
“I went to talk to Dongsoon yesterday,” he says, his eyes fixed on the crown of flowers on Mark’s head. “She told me her brother volunteered to take her place.”
Mark’s heart squeezes painfully at the idea of Dongsoon talking to his brother and not to Mark himself. They were never particularly close, Mark and Dongsoon, but he liked her. He had imagined a future with her. And not with… her asshole of a brother who always told Mark he would never, ever let him marry his sister, since they were six and seven years old and Donghyuck was taller than him.
“He didn’t have to do that, his parents wouldn’t have forced him to marry since he had never prepared for this life. They could’ve waited until one of the younger princes presented.”
Still, they could’ve both presented as Betas, Mark thinks. And with boys, only an Omega can carry. And this marriage will not be valid without a child, a son or a daughter sharing the blood of their two royal families. Moreover, Mark suspects Donghyuck simply didn’t want any of his siblings to end up marrying Mark. He probably even thought he was saving them. From Mark. What a fucking martyr, Mark thinks, clicking his tongue.
“Be nice to him, Minhyung,” Sungmin says, using Mark’s birthname, the name he had to give up when he presented and was chosen as the Crown Prince for right of blood. Sungmin is the only one who still uses this name, the only one who has the right to. By presenting as an Alpha, Mark took the kingdom away from him, the Beta eldest son. There’s no animosity between them, but sometimes Sungmin still uses that old name, to remind Mark that, Alpha or not, he’s still the second born.
“Has he ever been nice to me, though?”
“Just,” Sungmin repeats, eyes narrowing. “Don’t be mean. He has nothing left.”
Somehow, the thought that other people – Mark’s own family, even – are really seeing Donghyuck as a martyr, that they’re already siding with him and not with Mark in an imaginary war that hasn’t even begun, makes Mark’s blood burn even hotter.
He shakes his head so violently a couple of petals fall down, like small red and white snowflakes, on the cold stone ground. He turns his back to his brother to leave the room, catching his image reflected on the window, just for a moment. Red and white, with a dash of gold. The crown on his head has never been lighter and has never felt heavier.
❃
Donghyuck is wearing gold, Mark faintly realizes, when they stand next to each other in front of the stone altar to pronounce the vows under the sun and the clouds, before the goddess of the sky.
They haven’t seen each other in years, the last time before either of them presented, and Donghyuck must have changed, just like Mark is sure he has changed from the gangly, awkward kid he used to be in his teens. Yet, Mark doesn’t want to look at Donghyuck. He doesn’t know if it’s the subtle fear of finding him suddenly attractive, of discovering that presenting has honed him, reshaped him in a way that might make people – even Mark – find him delectable instead of the big pain in the ass he’s always been. Or maybe he’s just trying to delay the inevitable. Having to stare in the eyes of the person who will stand next to you for the rest of your life and finding only hatred there is a heavy burden to carry on a wedding day.
Donghyuck shifts and Mark feels the impalpable caress of silk against his ankles, the fluttering of Donghyuck’s tunic echoing his fidgeting. From the corner of his eyes, Mark can only see the faintest glittering of gold. He cannot smell Donghyuck over the fragrance of the flowers the boy is carrying, the same flowers burning in the braziers and lying pressed and tied together in little baskets scattered around the venue. Jasmine, lemonflower and freesia. Honeysuckle.
It’s an old tradition, the practice of keeping the two mates from smelling each other before the ending of the ceremony. Mark has heard two servants at the palace say it’s romantic, a way to build the anticipation, but it couldn’t be farther from the truth. It started as a precaution, in case the spouses were not compatible and decided to break the engagement upon their first meeting. Now, in present times, most betrothed meet each other at least once, to confirm their affinity, but both Donghyuck’s parents, as well as Mark’s, decided that there was no need to do that. Affinity or not, they would have to marry anyway – they are marrying anyway, right now, because an alliance is the less painful, the fastest, truly, the only way to prevent a war. Well, at least Mark already knows he and Donghyuck are not compatible, though he can’t find any solace in this particular knowledge.
Mark cannot smell Donghyuck and he stubbornly refuses to look at him, but there’s no way to avoid hearing the sound of his voice when Donghyuck pronounces his vows. It used to be high-pitched and annoying in the past, the voice of a kid who talked too much and always about the wrong things, in the wrong way. It used to give Mark some of his worst headaches. Now it’s soft, curling at the edges, like nectar trickling down the wounds of the trees in summer, like a lazy, sunny afternoon to spend lying on the grass, listening to the droning buzz of cicadas, like…
“I do.”
“You may now exchange the rings.”
Donghyuck turns first and the first thing Mark sees is gold powder on his cheeks, his brow, the Cupid’s arc, smeared on the upper lip. It’s light and impalpable, capturing all the fading light of the day and making it shine on his skin, a golden rainbow.
The second thing Mark sees is the hardness in Donghyuck’s eyes, a harsh contrast with the softness of his features, with the light sculpting his cheekbones. There’s rage in those eyes, there’s fear and defeat and in defeat there’s a challenge, there’s a resistance, and behind everything there’s a weariness, a helplessness that Mark recognizes because he’s seen it in his own eyes too. They’re here because it’s their duty. Mark’s first duty as a future king, Donghyuck’s last duty as a future king. They’re here because of hope. But they don’t want to be here, neither of them, and there’s not turning back.
The third thing Mark sees is his mother’s golden chain, the one she was wearing on her own wedding day, glinting faintly at the dip of Donghyuck’s collarbones. He doesn’t immediately understand why the sight of it stirs an uncomfortable feeling inside him. There’s something amiss, something he’s not catching. It is tradition for an Omega to wear this kind of golden trinkets, chains and lockets and circlets, shining at their neck and wrists to point the way of the mating bite like a precious compass. Then he realizes, it’s not the chain. It’s Donghyuck, who was once the Crown Prince, and a Crown Prince would never wear a chain, such a powerful symbol of constraint, on his body. But this is also Donghyuck, and he’s an Omega, and his neck is bare under the chains, like an offer, and Mark has never seen him show so much skin before and he can’t help but follow the glimmer of gold smeared on Donghyuck's throat, mesmerized.
Then, Mark realizes he has stared a little too much, that everyone is waiting, that Donghyuck has stopped breathing, his body tense like a bowstring, stretched thin and held in position, ready to shoot. Donghyuck’s archery posture has always been better than Mark’s, it’s always been perfect. There’s not a single instance of hesitation in the way he extends his fist towards Mark and opens it slowly, revealing the simple gold band in it. Mark has been holding his own so tight he’s surprised he’s not bleeding.
Their hands brush slightly as Donghyuck puts the ring on Mark, as Mark does the same with Donghyuck. Donghyuck’s fingers are hot and clammy, Mark’s cold and nervous. Mark closes his eyes for a moment, willing himself to calm down when he misses Donghyuck’s finger on the first try. They don’t let go – they cannot let go, not until the ceremony is over. The cry of the cicadas drones out the cheering of the guests, but not the words of the officiant.
“You may now kiss.”
Mark takes a step forward, eyes finding Donghyuck’s. He’s pretty, prettier than Dongsoon has ever looked in Mark’s eyes, but he has been raised to be a king when she hasn’t. She will be a queen, and she will be a beautiful queen, but Donghyuck has been groomed to look like the most precious, the most powerful, the brightest star in the firmament. He was raised to be a king and now he will have to spend the rest of his life serving another king. A king he hates.
Mark doesn’t kiss Donghyuck on the lips. He slowly raises his hand – the hand still clasped against Donghyuck’s, their twin rings kissing silently as they move together – and takes Donghyuck’s wrist to his mouth. Donghyuck smells like wild flowers, like wedding flowers, like honey, like the sweet wine he had to drink before the ceremony, and under all that perfume and the silk and the fear, he smells like ruin.
Mark understands now, all the things they say about Omega and the way they smell and the way they taste, enticing, like something too good to have. For a moment he forgets where he is, for a moment he wishes he could follow Donghyuck’s veins like a secret path that leads to his scent gland, where he would be able to breathe him in him without the disturbance of the perfume, and then further, to his mouth, to taste him at the source and see if he’s really as sweet as he smells – and how could he not be? He’s an Omega, honeymouthed and full of wildflowers.
Mark presses his lips to the inside of Donghyuck’s wrist instead, where the skin is smooth and thin like pink paper, pulled taut over the vein, where every kiss is like a prayer whispered to Donghyuck’s pulse, his scent is so thick it’s almost solid on the tip of Mark’s tongue.
Donghyuck freezes and his scent flares up, impossibly sweet. He looks like he wants to pull his hand away, but he doesn’t dare.
There’s a moment of silence, like the entire universe is standing at the edge of a crevice, ready to capsize into the darkness or become light enough to fly, where silence condenses the world into the expanse of skin where Mark’s lips are kissing Donghyuck’s heartbeat. Then, everyone gets up and starts clapping, throwing flowers and coins at the feet of the newly married couple. Only then Mark lets Donghyuck’s wrist go, and then boy yanks his hand back and hastily hides it under the golden sleeve of his tunic.
It is done. Almost.
❃
Later, when Yukhei asks him why he didn’t kiss his husband, Mark shrugs and says he didn’t really feel like doing it. “He’s just Donghyuck, you know? He’s an insufferable brat, Omega or not. Why would I want to kiss him?”
Yukhei blinks, and it’s unclear whether he drank from the chalice of Mark’s lies or not, but he does not ask further, something Mark silently thanks him for. To everyone else’s questions about the kiss Mark just answers he didn’t want to overwhelm Donghyuck, who wasn’t even supposed to be an Omega, by claiming him in front of everyone. His subjects praise him for being a considerate mate before a considerate Crown Prince. His parents smile, proud and a little emotional. His brother nods, approving. Only Donghyuck scowls, unimpressed and even a little offended, the beginning of an incredulous scoff making its way on his carefully painted face. You could’ve tried, his dark eyes seem to say, under all that contempt. You should’ve tried, Your Highness. Mark imagines Donghyuck’s airy, breathy voice saying it. (It makes his blood boil and not all of it is rage.)
Truthfully, Mark would have liked to try. Truthfully, for a moment there was nothing Mark wanted more than to try, even just to put this Omega – this particular Omega – in his place in front of everyone. Judging from Donghyuck’s murderous expression, he’s not sure he would still have his lips intact, had he really tried.
Mark sighs, turns around and asks Yukhei to find him some flower wine, thick and sweet. Yukhei’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise.
“You’re not supposed to drink,” he whispers, but he leaves to do that anyway, forever Mark’s best friend and only ally, even when Mark is doing something he shouldn’t do – especially when Mark is doing something he shouldn’t do.
He’s right. Mark shouldn’t drink, not when the banquet is almost over and soon it will be time for the wedding night. But, if these are the premises, Mark is not even sure he will survive the night, so he takes the goblet Yukhei holds out for him and takes a tentative sip.
The wine is warm, just taken from the fire, and after the first strong taste of alcohol burning his throat it leaves behind an aftertaste of honey and flowers. Mark meets Donghyuck’s eyes on the other side of the room and before someone, anyone, can stop him, he marches towards his new husband, sliding on the chair next to Donghyuck and turning over, slightly, until their thighs are touching.
Donghyuck is alone. His sister is dancing somewhere with Mark’s brother, his parents are making small chat with the Lord that controls the coastal line in front of their kingdom. Even Jeno, Donghyuck’s best friend and his advisor (if Donghyuck had been king, of course) is nowhere to be found. Yet, Donghyuck doesn’t seem out of place at the table. Mark would look awkward, sitting there with nothing to do, almost forgotten, but Donghyuck just looks intimidating and too royal to mingle.
“Drinking before your wedding night?” he asks, without looking at Mark. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll miss the target?”
His hair has come down, he must have ran his hand through it one time too many. He looks soft in a fragile way, unkempt, like a crumpled petal ready to fall on the ground at the first murmur of summer rain.
Wouldn’t you like that? For me to be too drunk for our wedding night? The question dances on Mark’s lips. He purses them to keep the words from spilling out and upset Donghyuck, and wordlessly lays the goblet on the table between the two of them. Donghyuck studies it for a moment, his face unreadable. The smell of the wine is almost stronger than his scent, and they’re both so sweet that even Mark’s Alpha nose can barely pick them apart.
“For me?” asks Donghyuck in the end, finally looking up and into Mark’s eyes. It could be a sign of trust but somehow Donghyuck turns it into an act of defiance. “You think things will be easier if I’m drunk? Is that how you want me? Pliant?”
“Pliant and quiet, if possible” Mark answers, and this time he can’t stop himself, the words tumble down from his mouth like a ravine, propelled down by at least ten years of having to suffer Donghyuck’s verbal jabs, unable to talk back.
It feels fucking good, but only for a moment. Mark smells it before he sees it, the way rage burns through Donghyuck’s scent. It doesn’t sour it, just makes it stronger, deeper, like adding pure pigment to colored water and watching it darken in lazy, billowing wreaths.
“Then you married the wrong person” Donghyuck hisses. “I will not be pliant, nor quiet, I’m not a...”
“You are,” Mark cuts him off. He catches Donghyuck’s wrist, ignores the outrage in Donghyuck’s face at being touched without permission. He holds tighter. “You are going to calm down now. There are people here.”
Donghyuck immediately deflates.
There are indeed people here. Traders, nobles, ambassadors from other countries. A young prince of the Northern Empire, probably sent to check how strong this union would be in wake of a possible march South, though he seems more interested in flirting with the wine boys. There are people and they pretend not to look, but they’re all looking, they’re all waiting, for a slip or a crack, for the dam to break. And Mark and Donghyuck, they have to look unbreakable, they have to look invincible and Donghyuck knows. The way he digs his nails in Mark’s wrist doesn’t match the way he sits back and smiles, the myrth never reaching his eyes.
They sit together in silence and Mark can only blame himself for the awkward tension. He doesn’t regret what he said, Donghyuck deserved it after all, but Mark still pushes the goblet towards him.
“You should drink it,” he says, “it’ll hurt less that way.”
“I’d rather hurt than enjoy it,” Donghyuck answers through gritted teeth, and Mark is for a moment too long tempted to talk back, to bend Donghyuck on his lap and teach him how to talk to an Alpha, but he just gets up, brushes imaginary dust from his paint and flashes Donghyuck a fake, brilliant smile.
“It shall be as you wish, darling,” he says, before he saunters away to dance with his mother.
Fuck Donghyuck. Really, fuck him. Mark should, some day.
❃
But not tonight. Tonight he can’t, Mark realizes, as he follows Donghyuck into the room, their room.
(Not Mark’s room, the room where he was born, where he grew up, where he presented. Where he had his first rut, where he had his first kiss – a girl who smelled like mint and river – and his second – a princess of the Southern Islands, who tasted like honey and flower wine and whom Mark would never wed. Mark’s room smells like him, like all the seasons of him, what he was, what he’s always been, and the foreboding of what he will be. He would have brought someone who loved there, to tell them, “This was my world and now it’s our world.”
But Mark doesn’t love Donghyuck, and their room is new, so that they can imprint both their smells on it, so that Donghyuck doesn’t feel like an intruder. It doesn’t matter what the room smells like, Donghyuck is an intruder. Donghyuck is an intruder and he smells like ruin, like blinding heat, the imprint of the sun on your eyelids at noon, the harsher you squint to get rid of it the hotter it burns in your mind. And Mark can’t, he can’t, he won’t.)
This is what he decides when he sees the tense line of Donghyuck’s back. He’s clenching his muscles, like an animal caught in a trap, ready to dash, looking for escape routes. There are many, in this room, and none of them would work because there aren’t any escape routes in life. Even this, what Mark is going to do – what Mark is not going to do – is not to give Donghyuck an escape route. Mark is not kind like that. He grew up to be a conqueror, he grew up to be a king. (So did his husband.)
Donghyuck doesn’t even try to escape, Mark has to give him that. He’s too proud for games, he’s made of gold and light and glory and glory doesn’t show its retreating back. Mark can smell fear on him, but Donghyuck wears it like a bridal veil, he shrouds himself in it as he walks towards the bed and sits down on it, then looks up, in Mark’s eyes. Mark can still smell the fear but Donghyuck only shows him determination and defiance.
Neither of them says a word as Donghyuck rids himself of the tunic, tearing it to pieces when he gets stuck in the golden chain.
Mark wants to look away, but he can’t. There’s so much to look at, so much he could mouth at. Donghyuck’s collarbones, his neck, framed by the golden links of the chain – Donghyuck is not allowed to remove it until the night is over, but Mark wants it gone, he wants to rip it away with his teeth – and the curve of his hips, all silky, tanned skin.
“Aren’t you going to come over?” Donghyuck beckons. “To take what is yours, Your Highness?”
It always feels like an insult when he says it, but Mark is glad his husband doesn’t call him by name. He would probably like it, and that would be a mistake.
There are people standing outside the door, six trained guards and the chambermaids and the priestess, listening, waiting, but Donghyuck doesn’t shake and doesn’t shiver as he spreads his legs. He blushes, in anger or shame. He bites his bottom lip.
“Should I lie on my stomach? Would it make it easier for you?”
“No,” Mark says, too fast and too dry.
Donghyuck’s eyebrows shoot upwards. He lets himself fall back, in the middle of the big bed, arching his neck so he can keep looking at Mark. His sex is limp between his legs and Mark’s – Mark’s is not, not at all, it's straining and screaming at him to just go there and let centuries of instinct take over, but there are ten people outside the door waiting to hear them fuck and Donghyuck hates him.
“You think you can get it up while having to look at my face? I’m not my sister.”
Mark laughs hysterically inside his head. Donghyuck’s face is the last of his problems. He does want to come on his face, on his arrogant little pout, those heart-shaped lips. He wants to bite them until they bleed and he wants to tease Donghyuck until he cries, until his voice is dry and broken and raspy, until he can only shake in muted gasps, breathless and undone.
It would be really easy, because that’s what Donghyuck wants. He’s been glaring at Mark, riling him up, mocking him under his breath for the whole night. He wanted Mark angry, he wanted him furious, he wanted their first time to be merciless and rough and vicious, and he wanted to feel it in his body for days, each day reminding him of what Mark did to him. He wanted Mark to lose control and to be the evil one, because that will make it easier for him to hate Mark.
Mark only looks at him, sees the nervousness and impatience trickling down Donghyuck’s armor of boldness, his fingers imperceptibly digging harder on the skin of his thighs to keep himself from closing his legs, hiding from Mark’s gaze.
“Are you going to do it? We don’t have the whole night.”
“Oh, we do,” Mark says, very low. He takes a step closer, watches Donghyuck’s eyes harden, his whole body tensing as he stops breathing and… “But I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”
He watches the fury clear in Donghyuck’s eyes just for a moment, knowing it will burn even brighter later.
“What do you mean you won’t?”
“I mean I won’t have sex with you, not if you keep acting like it’s the worst punishment in the world. Cover yourself, I don’t want to see you.”
It comes out harsher then he meant it and he doesn’t regret it one bit, not for the way it shatters Donghyuck’s composure, lights him up like a summer bonfire.
“Are you crazy?” Donghyuck says in a whispers, eyes blazing, face twisted in such an outraged expression Mark would find it funny, if his husband wasn’t looking positively murderous. “There are people behind that door, waiting for us to consummate this marriage!”
“Let them wait for the whole night then, I will bite you and then I’m going to sleep.”
Donghyuck jumps off the bed, all golden glitter and naked skin, too much skin. “You can’t just…”, he starts saying, trying to shove Mark, but Mark catches his wrists before Donghyuck hits him in the chest.
“No, the thing I cannot do now is fuck you,” he says, very low, and if Donghyuck wasn’t so furious he would maybe realize Mark is doing for him, for his honor, because he doesn’t want the people outside to know how harshly he’s rejecting Donghyuck. This is a rejection, and it is harsh, and it is worth it, the humiliation on Donghyuck’s face, after all the times he humiliated Mark. It is worth it. “I can’t and I won’t sleep with an unwilling partner.”
“I am willing to do my duty,” Donghyuck hisses, trying to break free from Mark’s hold, but Mark squeezes him tighter, leans down to whisper in Donghyuck’s ear, his nose brushing against copper curls.
“But I don’t want duty. The day I get to fuck you, it won’t be for duty.”
“Never.”
Donghyuck yanks himself back and this time Mark is not fast enough to stop him. Donghyuck's fist collides with his face, strong enough to make him stagger, maybe to bruise, but not to break skin. A relief, because that would've been awkward to explain tomorrow morning. Still, it hurts when Mark brings a hand up to his cheek to inspect the damage. He winces at the sudden sting. Never, Donghyuck says. Oh, never would be nice, but neither of them can afford it. Mark needs a royal heir and Donghyuck… Donghyuck will need Mark once his heat comes, and Mark will not be so cruel as to refuse him. Tonight, though, tonight he wants to be cruel.
“It shall be as you wish, darling,” he repeats, the same words he said during the feast, and finally something akin to hurt shows up on Donghyuck’s face. So he can be hurt. He can bleed and he can cry – he’s so close to crying now, and Mark was the one who did it. What a fucking useless achievement.
“I still need to mark you,” Mark says, when Donghyuck grabs the sheet to cover himself. He can get away with not fucking Donghyuck tonight – people will talk, but he can make them shut up – but they need to come out of this room as mates. It will hurt, since they have not had sex before the bite. Mark wishes Donghyuck had accepted the flower wine. He regrets not drinking more himself when Donghyuck tilts his head on the side, exposing the elegant curve of his neck, the constellations of moles dotting his skin, his sweet, summery scent making Mark’s mouth water.
Mark closes his eyes, breathes him in. The hatred, the humiliation, the anger. The fear. Underneath everything else, Donghyuck still smells like something Mark should never be allowed to touch, like gold and glory. His skin tastes like ruin, sweet, exquisite ruin.
Mark bites down and, just like he had predicted, just like Donghyuck wanted, it hurts.