By Zephyria 
“You’re good with the children, kind to me—if you weren’t a good person, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you. Really.”
“Extreme Alphas have no sense of guilt, Koi.”
Ashley could no longer hold back and spat out the words he had been keeping inside.
“My father killed the Omega who gave birth to me and then killed himself. If you knew how cruel Dominic Miller was to him, you could never say such a thing.”
Moreover, Ashley was no different. Hadn’t he damaged his own brain just to have Koi? Watching Ashley like that, he didn’t spare a single thought for how much it would torment Koi.
No, in fact, he thought it was even better. The more it hurt, the less you’d be able to leave me.
“And you’re an Omega. Even if you’re an Dominant Omega, your own children might go mad and attack you. Have you never thought of that?”
“I’ll be careful.”
“You don’t need to be careful. It’s common sense that even beasts don’t do such things.”
“Yeah, let’s teach them that. Okay?”
Despite the harsh words, Koi didn’t give up. Looking up at Ashley’s heavily distorted face, Koi tried to soothe him again. His utterly unyielding attitude instead broke Ashley’s spirit. Ashley raised his hands up, then let them drop weakly before irritably blurting out.
“It was just a failure of control. It’s not something to attach such great meaning to.”
“But it happened.”
Koi said, tenderly stroking his own belly.
“This child is a gift, Ash. So let’s cherish it, okay?”
Ashley looked at his earnest face with a bleak mood. Because of the brain damage that had already occurred, something like this might happen again in the future. But if Koi was this stubbornly resistant, he couldn’t force him onto the operating table.
“Haa…”
In the end, Ashley covered his face with both hands and slumped onto the sofa. Koi sat down beside him, who was hunched over with his elbows on his spread thighs, and just stroked his shoulder with a worried expression, unable to say anything.
“…Surgery.”
“Huh?”
At the muttered words with his face still buried in his hands, Koi hurriedly asked, and Ashley spoke without removing his hands from his face.
“This time, I’m definitely getting the surgery. So I never have to go through this shitty situation again.”
At the terribly subdued voice, Koi could only say, “Okay.” Until then, there was still hope. Ashley thought that if he just had the surgery, such misfortunes wouldn’t happen anymore. So he canceled Koi’s surgery and scheduled his own. The process went smoothly. There shouldn’t be any more variables. He thought so, but reality was different.
“The surgery is difficult.”
Looking at the doctor’s troubled face, the color drained from Ashley’s face once more. Another damn trait was getting in the way. Extreme Alphas don’t respond well to medication, so the risk of addiction is significantly lower, but conversely, that also makes anesthesia difficult.
The specially formulated drugs for them could have unknown effects on Ashley, whose brain was already partially damaged. The anesthesia itself might not even work. Faced with countless risk factors, the doctor was reluctant to perform the surgery. Ashley even felt a sense of self-loathing, as if he were cursed by God.
Damn it.
Ashley closed his eyes and tilted his head back.
Is this karma?
He couldn’t help but think that. The result of ruining himself to have Koi was precisely this. Then Ashley had no choice but to accept it. No matter the cost, if he could have Koi, he would gladly bear it.
Even if it was a calamity.
Hearing the unfortunate news, Koi was flustered but tried his best to comfort Ashley.
“It’ll be okay, Ash. I can take birth control, use condoms, there are plenty of other methods. New drugs might be invented too, right?”
Koi took Ashley’s hand and placed it on his own belly.
“Don’t worry, this baby will look like both of us, half and half.”
But instead of being comforted by those words, Ashley’s face twisted.
“No, I already have three children who look like me. I want a child who looks entirely like you.”
He barely held back from saying he was sick of faces that looked like his, but his cold tone was full of disgust. Koi hurriedly corrected himself.
“Okay, then. A child who looks like me.”
Watching his face nod with a ‘Yeah,’ Ashley finally calmed down and reached out. Pulling Koi into an embrace and kissing him, the seething discomfort, self-loathing, and all sorts of anger in his chest somewhat subsided.
Yes, this child will be different.
Stroking Koi’s body, he thought. Wasn’t this already the fourth child? This time, it must look like Koi. Three is enough, the ones that look like me. Statistically, it’s believable this time.
Maybe this happened so a child who looks like Koi could be born.
As he repeated it, it became closer to a conviction. The closer Koi’s due date got, the more Ashley believed it. This time, a child who truly looks like Koi will be born. Whether it’s a daughter or a son doesn’t matter. As long as it doesn’t look like me, that’s enough.
And so, the long-awaited child was finally born, but…
As expected, there are no miracles in this world.
Seeing the baby’s sickening platinum hair, Ashley’s heart turned cold.
Several more years passed, and Koi gave birth to two more children. Finally, after the youngest who looked like him was born, Ashley could finally feel relief. And ahead of them, perhaps only happiness…
…or so he thought.
Koi stood with his mouth agape, unable to find words, just staring into the dressing room. Even after reading countless books about children, he had no idea what to say in this situation.
“Wh-wh-wh-what are…”
He barely managed to open his mouth but couldn’t form a proper sentence. Seeing their Daddy, pale and stammering repeatedly, the three children who had been playing glanced at him disinterestedly before immersing themselves in their play again.
In a way, it was a normal situation. Children showing interest in adult belongings, or making a mess by taking out miscellaneous items, were common occurrences.
If only those items weren’t the vicious things bought for their—more precisely, Ashley’s—secret pleasures.
“W-wait, wait a minute, kids!”
Seeing Grayson taking out the terrifying item from the box, Koi cried out in shock. What he hastily snatched from his hand was the fishnet stockings Ashley had bought a few days ago.
“Wh-wh-what are you doing here? Why are you playing here?”
Hiding the stockings behind his back in a panic, Koi asked repeatedly. Stacy, sitting on Koi’s Cheongsam dress and holding it up to her chest, spoke.
“Daddy has lots of interesting clothes.”
“Look at this! There’s a big hole here like this!”
As soon as Stacy finished speaking, Grayson exclaimed in surprise and picked up the garment. Seeing the child pull his head out of the hole he had demonstratively stuck it into and laugh gleefully, Koi stopped breathing. He couldn’t bring himself to say that the hole wasn’t for the head but for the buttocks area. That wasn’t the end. He hurriedly reached out, but before he could, Stacy fired off a sharp question first.
“This is strange. All these clothes have holes.”
“Here’s one too! Is this how you wear it?”
This time, seeing Grayson trying to put his head through the hole in the crotch area, Koi almost screamed.
“Wait, wait, wait!”
In his urgency, Koi repeated the same words several times as he grabbed the children.
“You can’t play here, you can’t mess with things like this. Go to the playroom…”
“Look at this, Grayson!”
Suddenly, Stacy shouted. Koi, who had turned his head without thinking, was startled. Chase had a cherry pin in his hair and was wearing Koi’s cheerleading uniform. This, too, was something Ashley had bought in the past. Of course, the uniform was ridiculously large on the child, but it still suited him incredibly well. His cheeks, puffed up as if in anger, and his flushed face amplified the cuteness even more. Seeing Koi unconsciously sighing in admiration, Stacy asked her brother with a triumphant face.