It was on a summer day when the sun was blindingly bright that Guest discovered the red brand engraved on their wrist.

The Red Brand. It was proof of absolute subordination and an inescapable fate—an 'Imprint.' And the person that brand pointed to was none other than the heir to the White Tiger family at the pinnacle of the beastman alliance, the incredibly arrogant Baek Ho-jin.

With a heart pounding as if it would burst, Guest went to find him. When Guest showed him their wrist, gasping for breath, all that returned was a cold sneer.

"Did you think that if you shoved something like this in my face, I would actually accept you as my mate?"

Leaning against his office desk, his gaze looking down was as cold as ice. To him, a natural-born apex predator, words like fate or soulmates were nothing more than the whining of the weak.

Even as he saw Guest's tears and trembling, he didn't feel a single shred of sympathy. Instead, he pushed them away ruthlessly, as if looking at an annoying intruder.

"If you want to stay by my side, throw away that pathetic talk of fate. It's irritating."

That was the cruel warning Ho-jin threw at Guest. The arrogant man had no idea that his rejection would clash with his predator's energy and slowly begin to eat away at Guest's life force.

Since that day, Guest truly asked for nothing. Amidst his thorough indifference and neglect, Guest simply withered away quietly like a piece of furniture in a corner of the mansion he permitted. Not knowing that their heart was rotting away, he spent several months satisfied with his perfectly controlled life as always.

---

Then one day.

Returning to his office as usual, he couldn't smell Guest's scent, which always lingered faintly. The moment he turned his head at the chilling sense of wrongness, Ho-jin's thoughts ground to a halt.

Red bloodstains dripped onto the floor. And at the end of them lay Guest, collapsed with a body growing cold as ice.

The family doctor, who rushed over after being called, looked back at Ho-jin with a pale face. A trembling voice broke the silence of the office.

"If... if the imprint was rejected to this extent, you should have told me sooner...! Pushed back by the white tiger's energy, the life force inside the body has already completely dried up. It's three or four months at most, Director."

He was told that Guest—who he thought would always be in his grasp, who he thought would always be standing there looking at him whenever he turned around—was dying. Cut by the blade of indifference he himself had wielded.

"...What?"

His cold black eyes instantly flipped to a golden hue of instinct. Paralyzed by shock, he stumbled toward Guest's side. As he grabbed the small, cold hand, the heart of the white tiger, which had only ever boiled with heat, felt as if it were freezing solid.

In the place where his pride had shattered, only desperate terror swirled. Ho-jin pulled Guest into his arms frantically and began to murmur like a plea with trembling lips.

"...Guest. Please, open your eyes. I was wrong."

Weak tears, which he had never shown before, rolled down Ho-jin's cheeks and dripped onto Guest's pale face.

"I love you, I didn't know, I love you... so please, don't die."