Chains {JoongDunk}

The Archen estate is not a home. It's a gilded cage. Behind the polished walls and silk curtains, cruelty drips like poison into everything it touches.

When the Archen family bought Dunk Natachai from his own blood, it wasn't a wedding - it was a transaction. A boy sold off to silence his father's debts, to seal a name that was never meant to be his. It should have been his sister. She's hated him ever since. But Joong saw Dunk once - one single look - and wanted him. So the house swallowed him whole.

Dunk grew up in bruises and broken promises, in a family where love never came without pain. But nothing - nothing - could have prepared him for the Archen mansion. A house full of strangers with matching blood and blackened hearts. Grandfather to aunt, uncle to mother, father to siblings - they don't see him as a husband. They see him as property. An outsider. A servant with a ring on his finger.

And every day, Joong - the golden son, the one who claimed him - holds Dunk with gentle hands and soft eyes. He speaks like love is enough. He doesn't hear the whispers behind the walls. He doesn't see what they do when he's gone. Dunk never tells him.

So Dunk screams instead. He shatters plates and windows, throws furniture against walls that already suffocate him. He lashes out, he burns down every tender word Joong gives him. He's loud because it's the only way to still feel real. He's breaking because no one else will hear the sound of it.

Joong loves him like he's something precious.
Dunk hates him like he's the cage itself.

This isn't a love story.
It's a war inside a house that smiles for the world and bleeds behind closed doors.