Fang Fengqin hesitated for a moment and backed down.
He took the inhibitor and tucked it into his pocket. “No need to examine it anymore, I’m leaving first.”
With that, he turned around to leave.
“Hold on a second,” Qings Tingfeng called out to him. “Does it hurt when you smell pheromones or when your gland acts up usually?”
“No, it doesn’t,” Fang Fengqin answered honestly. “It only hurts when I smell them two days before my heat.”
“Tell me, when you were marked by an alpha… did it hurt?” Qings Tingfeng looked at him with a probing gaze.
Fang Fengqin stood in place in awkward silence for a long while before vaguely replying, “No.”
Qings Tingfeng fell into deep thought. Based on Fang Fengqin’s condition, he was in no position to be marked by an alpha at all.
His gland condition was terrible, sensitive and fragile, barely capable of secreting any pheromones. Long-term injections of inhibitors would only make his pseudo-heat increasingly severe.
Generally, what could completely suppress and soothe a low-level omega, aside from an exceptionally high pheromone compatibility, was a high-level alpha.
Just by smelling the scent, the alpha who had marked Fang Fengqin possessed extremely overbearing pheromones, practically shouting his desire for control right across his forehead.
Understanding dawned on him, and a trace of a smile flashed in his eyes. “Is this fellow your lover?”
Fang Fengqin’s scalp went completely numb upon hearing that. A lover? Shen Jiyun?
He had just been plotting to find someone to beat that guy up, and now he was a lover? They were more like mortal enemies.
“His rank shouldn’t be low,” Qings Tingfeng rubbed his chin. “You should let him mark you a few more times; it’ll be good for you.”
It might even promote the secondary development of Fang Fengqin’s omega sexual characteristics.
Of course, Qings Tingfeng didn’t say that last part out loud.
Fang Fengqin couldn’t be bothered to listen to his nonsense any longer, paid the bill, and decisively walked out.
As soon as he got into the car, Gu Song’s call came through.
Ever since Fang Fengqin lost his temper at him last time, the two of them hadn’t been in contact for several days.
Fang Fengqin answered the phone, but the person on the other end didn’t make a sound, seemingly waiting for him to speak first.
However, Young Master Fang was never one to bow his head first. Having been pampered for so many years, when he heard no movement after two seconds, he hung up the phone with a sharp click.
Gu Song on the other end cursed under his breath, then immediately dialed back again.
“Fang Fengqin, you really think you’re some kind of big shot!” he said sarcastically. “I, Gu Song, am not one of those people who live by reading your facial expressions. You…”
Fang Fengqin hung up the phone again.
An alpha, why say such sappy, sour things? Hearing them made his very teeth ache.
When the third call came through, he answered unhurriedly, stepped on the gas pedal, and drove toward Lakeside Apartment.
“Ancestor! Fang Ancestor!” Gu Song finally broke his composure and cursed with a string of profanities. “You’re my damn ancestor, alright?”
“I don’t have an unfilial grandson like you.” Fang Fengqin let out a cold laugh. “What do you want?”
“I heard from little Liu that you packed up your things in the dorm? What, are you really planning to join the company?”
At the mention of this, Fang Fengqin suddenly remembered: where was his bass guitar?
That night after taking the injection, he had been completely out of it. Having so many embarrassing things happen in front of Shen Jiyun made Fang Fengqin feel for the first time that having too good of a memory was also a kind of trouble.
Thinking of that bastard Shen Jiyun, Fang Fengqin’s delicate little face instantly collapsed.
He actually said he was a substandard alpha?!
Damn it.
“Hello? I asked you a question, are you coming over for a drink tonight?” Gu Song called out to him impatiently from the other end of the phone. “I’ve already taken the initiative to look for you, if you don’t give me face again, that’s going too far.”
“I’m going,” Fang Fengqin clicked his tongue. “Come pick me up.”
“Understood, young master,” Gu Song replied, finally satisfied.
With matters weighing on his mind, upon returning to Lakeside Apartment, Fang Fengqin’s first step was to safely place the inhibitor into the drawer.
He lifted the hem of his shirt and sniffed it, inhaling a wave of cool galbanum.
So thick.
So fragrant.
Fang Fengqin endured for a while, but still couldn’t resist. Like a thief, he lay down on the master bedroom’s big bed, took off his clothes, and buried his face in them.
His slender figure curled up into a ball, tightly hugging the clothes to his chest. The scent of the pheromones lingered persistently, and Fang Fengqin had to admit that he was somewhat stirred.
By the time late last night rolled around, he had actually regained consciousness, but he still couldn’t help asking Shen Jiyun for a temporary mark.
The second before his teeth sank into the gland, his body had still been tense from nervousness, like a fully drawn bow.
Yet as that person’s warm lips descended, Fang Fengqin could no longer feel anything else, subconsciously arching his body backward into the man’s embrace.
So being embraced felt like this.
Fang Fengqin buried his cheek in the clothes and took a few soft breaths, his body trembling uncontrollably.
An omega who had been marked would feel an exceptional yearning for an alpha’s embrace and possession.
Yet these things could never happen between him and Shen Jiyun.
He and that person were separated by an uncrossable chasm.
Gu Song didn’t come to pick him up until seven in the evening, as it was a night out, and going too early was meaningless.
He familiarly entered the passcode and pushed open Fang Fengqin’s front door.
Fang Fengqin lived year-round in Lakeside Apartment, which Elder Fang had grandly given him after his secondary gender presentation.
It was a spacious flat of nearly two hundred square meters, where Fang Fengqin lived alone. His active areas were limited to the living room and master bedroom, while the rest of the space remained completely empty, resembling a show apartment.
It lacked a shred of human warmth.
As soon as Gu Song walked in, he caught a whiff of Fang Fengqin’s galbanum scent, causing his knees to go weak and nearly bringing him to his knees.
“Damn it,” the robust alpha muttered a low curse, then in the next second raised his voice and yelled, “Orange, rein in your scent!”
Fang Fengqin lifted his head from the shirt, his cheeks still flushed with a faint pink.
Hearing Gu Song’s words, Fang Fengqin silently touched the back of his neck.
Rein it in his foot. He couldn’t rein it in at all.
Gu Song found it utterly bizarre. He had known Fang Fengqin for so many years, so why hadn’t he noticed that this guy’s pheromone scent was so formidable before?
“Has your rut arrived?” He glanced toward the master bedroom’s door. The closer he got, the stronger the galbanum scent became. Alphas were naturally incompatible, and their pheromones carried an overbearing sense of exclusion toward one another.
Gu Song only smelled it for a short while before his head began to ache. “Old Song said last time that he almost got choked to his knees by you, and I didn’t believe it.”
Now it was his turn to almost drop to his knees, and he really had no choice but to believe it.
“Hold on,” Fang Fengqin’s voice sounded a bit muffled, inexplicably soft, not matching up with this highly aggressive pheromone at all.
Gu Song’s mood carried a faint trace of melancholy, as if his child had grown up and grown distant from his father.
“Orange, ah, you’ve grown up.”
Fang Fengqin hadn’t heard Gu Song’s words at all. He buried his nose into the shirt for a heavy inhale, then reluctantly placed it back into the duvet, planning to continue hugging it when he came back at night.
Opening the door, Gu Song saw his lazy, exquisite brows and eyes, and his voice came to an eerie halt.
With such an exquisite and pretty face, how could his pheromones be so fierce?
“Wait for me to change clothes,” Fang Fengqin waved a hand casually at him and headed toward the walk-in closet.
As he turned around, his loungewear hung loosely on him, revealing a large expanse of fair skin. Right on his slender nape, a large, square suppression patch was firmly stuck in place.