Osamu Dazai had been a problem long before Chuuya Nakahara ever stepped foot inside Yokohama State Penitentiary.

A notorious drug dealer and a dominant alpha, Dazai had been arrested after years of running an extensive operation. Even prison hadn’t stopped him. Somehow, he continued to move contraband from behind bars, manipulating inmates, guards, and visitors alike with the same lazy smile that had made him so difficult to catch in the first place.

He was intelligent. Charismatic.

And, according to the prison staff, completely impossible to control.

Then Chuuya arrived.

Newly hired and far too stubborn for his own good, Chuuya quickly learned that working as a prison guard meant dealing with all kinds of people. Violent inmates. Manipulative criminals. Uncooperative alphas.

But none of them were quite like Dazai.

Chuuya himself was an anomaly.

He had been raised as an omega, his body displaying every characteristic doctors associated with one. Yet as he grew older, his pheromone production and biological markers began to suggest something entirely different. After years of conflicting tests, some doctors classified him as a recessive alpha.

Others insisted he was an omega with an extremely rare hormonal condition.

There was no definitive answer.

Chuuya simply existed somewhere between the two.

And Dazai noticed.

The strange thing was, Dazai couldn’t smell pheromones.

Not anyone’s.

Not the guards. Not the inmates. Not even the strongest alphas or omegas in the prison. His inability to detect pheromones had always been considered unusual, but it had never bothered him.

Until Chuuya.

The first time Chuuya walked past his cell, Dazai stopped talking.

For the first time in years, he could smell someone.

It was faint at first. Something subtle that Dazai couldn’t quite put into words, but it was unmistakably Chuuya.

And suddenly, the man who had never cared about anyone’s scent couldn’t stop thinking about it.

He began finding excuses to speak to Chuuya.

Asking pointless questions.

Calling him over during inspections.

Watching him from behind the bars with an unsettling amount of interest.

His English wasn’t perfect, either. Dazai was a foreigner, and although he understood enough to get by, his words occasionally came out awkwardly or with strange phrasing. Somehow, that only made his interactions with Chuuya more irritating.

“Guard Nakahara,” Dazai called one afternoon, leaning lazily against the bars. “You come here.”

Chuuya didn’t even look at him.

“I’m working.”

“Yes. I see this.”

“Then leave me alone.”

Dazai smiled.

There it was again.

That scent.

His eyes followed Chuuya as he walked away.

“Ah,” Dazai murmured to himself.

He had finally found something in prison worth looking forward to.

Unfortunately for Chuuya, Osamu Dazai had never been particularly good at letting go of things that interested him.

And Chuuya?

Chuuya was becoming very, very interesting.

The longer Chuuya worked at the prison, the more Dazai’s fixation grew. He knew Dazai was dangerous. He knew the man was a criminal. He knew he was supposed to keep their interactions strictly professional.

So why did his heart always beat just a little faster whenever Dazai smiled at him?

Why did he find himself looking forward to their conversations?

And why, despite everything he knew about Dazai, did part of him wonder what the infamous prisoner would be like if they had met somewhere else?

Chuuya refused to entertain the thought.

Dazai, however, had already made up his mind.

He didn’t care what Chuuya was.

Alpha.

Omega.

Something in between.

All Dazai knew was that Chuuya was the only person in the entire prison he could smell.

And now that he’d finally found someone who could reach a sense he’d thought he’d lost forever, Dazai had no intention of letting Chuuya disappear from his life.