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Chapter 1
Episode 1: The Match
The notification appeared at 3:47 AM.
Ha-neul stared at his laptop screen, coffee growing cold in his hands, as the familiar popup blinked in the corner of his display.
SOULBOND AI - INTERNAL TEST Match Found: 99.7% Compatibility Your Fated Match: Park Sung-jae
"No," Ha-neul whispered. "No, no, no—"
He slammed the laptop shut, heart pounding.
This was the third time this week. The third time his own algorithm—the one he'd spent two years building, the crown jewel of MateLink Technologies—had matched him with the one person in the entire company he absolutely could not be matched with.
Park Sung-jae. CEO. Alpha. His boss.
His insufferable, arrogant, impossibly handsome boss who smelled like dark roasted coffee and winter pine and something underneath that made Ha-neul's omega instincts sit up and beg every time he walked into a room.
Ha-neul opened the laptop again, fingers flying over the keyboard.
There had to be a bug. A glitch in the pheromone analysis module. Something in the compatibility matrix that was skewing the results. Because there was absolutely no way—no scientific, rational, algorithmic way—that Park Sung-jae was his fated mate.
They were opposites in every conceivable way.
Sung-jae didn't even believe in fated mates. He'd said so publicly, in interviews, dismissing the concept as "romantic superstition dressed up in pseudoscience." Which was ironic, given that his company's entire business model was based on Ha-neul's algorithm proving fated mates were real and findable.
Ha-neul pulled up the code, scanning line after line.
Nothing.
The algorithm was working exactly as designed. It had analyzed their pheromone signatures (gathered from the mandatory company health screenings), cross-referenced their psychological profiles (from the employee assessment database), calculated compatibility scores across 147 different metrics, and determined—with 99.7% certainty—that Park Sung-jae was Ha-neul's perfect biological match.
His fated mate.
The one person in the world whose bond would be permanent, unbreakable, soul-deep.
"Bullshit," Ha-neul muttered, slamming the laptop shut again.
He was an omega working in tech. He knew better than to trust romantic fantasies. Fated mates might be real—his algorithm proved they were—but that didn't mean he had to accept his match. Plenty of people rejected their fated mates. Plenty of people chose differently.
He would choose differently.
He just had to make sure no one ever saw this result.
"The investors want a demonstration."
Ha-neul's blood ran cold.
It was nine AM, and he was sitting in MateLink's glass-walled conference room, trying not to breathe too deeply. Sung-jae sat at the head of the ta...
About the Author
Sora Kim
Sora Kim grew up between Seoul and New York, sneaking manhwa under her textbooks and falling asleep to K-drama OSTs. After years of translating BL webtoons by day and writing Omegaverse on AO3 by night, she finally merged her two worlds. Now she writes the fated mates, possessive alphas, and slow-burn heat she always wished she could find on bookstore shelves. When she's not writing, she's hunting for good boba, arguing about who's the real seme, or napping with her cat in her Brooklyn apartment.