There’s a moment between the pain and the blackout—when your body’s screaming but your mind is still clinging to consciousness—where the world feels unreal. Like you’re floating above it. Detached. Distant.

That’s where I was when I first heard her voice.

“BP is dropping—get me a line and prep for surgery. Now!”

Sharp. Commanding. Soft, but steely. A voice that didn’t match the chaos around me. The lights overhead flickered like dying stars. My shirt was soaked red. Somewhere behind me, Taeju was still screaming my name, his hands pressed against my side, begging me not to die.

Stupid kid. I told him not to go near that debtor’s bar.

But Taeju never listens.

So when the knife came out—rusty, jagged, meant for him—I stepped in. Like I always do.

I took the hit.

Right in the gut.

And now I was here—ER floor, Seoul General, sterile lights burning my eyes. Cold table beneath me. And her voice anchoring me to this plane.

“I need suction. Clamp. Let’s go—don’t lose him!”

I opened my eyes—or tried to. Everything blurred. But I caught a flash of her. Dark eyes, furrowed brow. Hair tucked under a surgical cap. The scent of antiseptic and something else—warm, soft, calming.

An omega.

But not just any omega.

Her.

The one who saved my life.

Everything after that was darkness.

When I woke up again, the world was quiet. No shouting. No flashing lights. Just a low beep from a monitor, and the dull ache of stitches in my abdomen. The kind of pain that tells you you’re still alive.

I shifted—barely—and groaned.

“Careful. You had internal bleeding and a pretty nasty laceration.”

The voice. Same as before. Calmer now. Warmer.

I blinked, turned my head. And there she was.

Wearing navy scrubs. ID badge clipped to her chest.

Dr. Koh Kaori.

Twenty-seven, if I remembered the chart right. Head ER resident. Omega. And now, apparently, the woman who pulled me back from the edge.

I tried to sit up. “Taeju—my brother—”

“He’s fine,” she said quickly. “Just a broken arm and a bruised ego. You took the worst of it.”

I smirked, wincing. “Story of my life.”

She tilted her head, studying me. “You shouldn’t be talking. You lost a lot of blood. We almost lost you.”

I watched her for a moment. The way her brow furrowed slightly. The tension in her jaw. The exhaustion in her eyes like she hadn’t slept since the night I came in.

“You stayed?” I asked, voice raspier than I meant.

Kaori looked down at her clipboard. “I was on shift.”

“Still. You didn’t have to.”

“I know.”

Silence stretched between us. Comfortable, strange. The kind of silence where something unspoken lingers just beneath the surface.

Then I said the thing that had been pressing at the edge of my thoughts since I opened my eyes.

“Thank you.”

She looked at me again. Directly. No flinching.

“You were lucky,” she said. “If the blade had gone two centimeters deeper—”

“It didn’t,” I interrupted. “Because you were there.”

That made her blink. Just once. But I saw it. The crack in her armor. She wasn’t used to gratitude. Not from alphas like me. Not from men twice her size who could have bled out and never known her name.

“I don’t usually get attached to my patients,” she murmured. “It’s a rule.”

“Break it,” I said.

She stared at me like I’d spoken in tongues.

“I’m not just some guy who got stabbed,” I continued. “I run a construction firm. I’ve built towers, cities. But none of it matters if I’m six feet under. You kept me breathing, doc.”

“Kaori,” she corrected, voice barely above a whisper.

I nodded. “Jueon.”

Another pause.

Then she smiled—just a little. The kind of smile that wasn’t professional. That wasn’t in the rulebook. That belonged to the part of her that felt something the moment I came in bleeding and broken.

I didn’t believe in soulmates. Not until that night.

But now, looking at her across my hospital bed, her scent grounding me more than the morphine drip ever could—I started to wonder if maybe… just maybe… fate didn’t miss after all.

Maybe it just waited.

For the right wound.

And the right healer.