Chapter 490: The contrast from the past and now

I chewed slowly, the sweetness of the fruit finally starting to cut through the lingering taste of the heat. Across the room, Jin-Yeok was watching me with an unreadable expression, his arms crossed over his chest.

"The house is in the hills," Seo-Jun said, cracking his neck as he stood up from the foot of the bed. "Far enough from the city that the paparazzi won’t bother trekking up there, but close enough that we can... visit."

I looked at him, catching the slight hesitation in his voice.

"Visit?" 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"What? Did you think we’d just barge in?" Seo-Jun asked with that snarky look on his face.

I rolled my eyes away. That did sound like something Seo-Jun was capable of doing. I’m not even joking.

"The world is still ugly, Jo-Pil," Jin-Yeok added, his tone slicing through the room, "Especially after what happened at the gala. We’re doubling the external security. Nobody goes up that driveway without passing through a checkpoint."

"I don’t mind that," I whispered. I wasn’t stupid. I knew Hang-Dae wasn’t the only shark in the water. "As long as the inside is... mine."

"It’s yours," Seo-Jun confirmed, his red eyes softening. "I even picked out the bedding myself. Silk, but the kind that doesn’t slip around so much. Figured you’d had enough of sliding across the sheets for a while."

I flushed, the memory of the last forty-eight hours hitting me in a sudden, vivid wave. I looked down at the bowl of strawberries, suddenly finding it very interesting.

"Thank you, Seo-Jun."

"Don’t get mushy on me," he grunted, though he reached out and flicked my ear gently. "Just get your strength back. I’m not carrying you through the front door like a damn bride. You’re walking in on your own two feet."

"I can carry him!" Min-Cheol volunteered instantly, waving a strawberry in the air. "I’m not tired at all!"

"You’re always ’not tired,’ you brat," Ki-hoon muttered, but he was smiling.

I leaned back, the tension in the room finally settling into something that felt like a family—a weird, high-stakes, slightly territorial family, but a family nonetheless.

The ’scandal’ was being buried, the ’cage’ was being dismantled, and for the first time, the future didn’t look like a script I had to survive.

It looked like a home.

"One more thing," Jin-Yeok said, his eyes locking onto mine. "About the foundation for the newly freed... They’re looking for a liaison. Someone who knows the transition better than any suit in a boardroom."

I looked at him, my heart skipping a beat. "You want me to work for the foundation?"

Wasn’t that the foundation he made after he had the government abolish slavery? Those slaves...

"I want you to do whatever makes you feel like Jo-Pil," he corrected. "But the offer is there. If you want to see the papers you helped sign actually change lives, the door is open."

I looked at the four of them, feeling a lump form in my throat. They were giving me everything. My body was sore, my hips were aching, and the world outside was probably still a mess, but as I took the last strawberry from Min-Cheol’s hand, I knew I had finally won.

"I think," I said, my voice steady, "I’d like to see the house first. And then... I’d like to see those papers."

Ki-hoon squeezed my hand, his thumb tracing the back of my knuckles.

"Whatever you want, Jo-Pil. Whatever you want."

I nodded slowly, the sweetness of the strawberry suddenly turning to ash in my mouth. My mind drifted back to that moment—the heat, the desperation, and the vow I’d made to finally stop hiding behind the veil of this new life.

I looked at the four of them. They were so different now. Ki-hoon’s hands were gentle, no longer bruising. Seo-Jun was massaging my feet without breaking them, Jin-Yeok was protecting my privacy instead of evading it. And Min-Cheol... well, he felt ’normal.’

The contrast to them of this life and the previous one was a jagged blade in my chest.

Once we get to the house, I thought, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. Once I am on my own ground, behind a door that only I can lock. I will...

"Jo-Pil? You went quiet," Jin-Yeok noted, his sharp eyes narrowing as he sensed the shift in my mood. "Is the pain coming back?"

"No," I lied, forcing a small smile. "I’m just... thinking about the house. And what I told you before. About my past."

The room went still. The air seemed to thin out as the weight of that promise settled over us. They remembered. Of course, they did; Alphas like them never forgot a challenge or a mystery, and I was both.

"The offer still stands," Ki-hoon said, his voice low and steady. "We will listen. No matter what it is. We aren’t going to call you crazy, and we aren’t going to walk away."

You say that now, I thought bitterly. But will you still say it when I tell you that in another life, you were the monsters in my nightmares? When I tell you that I’ve already died once because of the ’love’ you claimed to feel back then?

I looked at my hands, pale and trembling against the dark silk of the robe. This was my third life. My first was a scar that refused to heal. I had been their bird, their toy, their broken thing. I had felt the cold bite of the chains they now swore would never touch me. My second, however, had been unremarkable, a blur of mundane struggle.

I wanted them to know. I needed them to see the ghosts that stood behind them every time they reached out to touch me. I wanted them to atone for sins they hadn’t committed yet—or rather, sins they had committed in a timeline they had been lucky enough to escape.

"I’ll tell you," I whispered, my voice gaining a sudden, sharp clarity. "Once I’m home. Once I’m in the house you promised me. I’ll tell you everything."

Seo-Jun let out a heavy breath, his hand pausing on my ankle. He looked like he wanted to say something—to protest, to demand the truth right now—but he caught Jin-Yeok’s warning glance and subsided.

"Fine," Seo-Jun grunted, his grip tightening just a fraction. "The house. But you’d better be ready, Jo-Pil. Because once those words are out, there’s no taking them back."

"I know," I said, my gaze flickering to the gold lily brooch on the dresser. "I’m not taking them back."

I could never. But they would probably be the ones wishing I could take it back by the time I tell them about it.

I closed my eyes again, leaning back into the pillows. I needed to prepare. I needed to find the words to explain the impossible—to tell four powerful men that the ’reality’ they lived in was just one version of a horror story I had already finished reading.

I was going to break them. I knew it. I was going to take the pedestal they had placed me on and shatter it with the truth of what they were capable of.

And as much as I feared their reaction, a dark, primal part of me—the part that still felt the weight of the collar choking me—ached to see them bleed for it.

"Rest now," Jin-Yeok murmured, his hand resting on my forehead. "We shall leave for the hills this evening."

I didn’t answer. I just drifted, the taste of strawberries and the weight of a hundred-year-old secret pulling me back toward a dreamless sleep.