Even with two full sentences, Shen Hui’s knees went weak. His jet-black hair was slicked with sweat against his pale, translucent cheeks, looking utterly pitiful.
He gripped Yan Jiu’s wrist tightly, a fierce desperation flashing deep in his eyes like a cornered beast.
That look instantly turned the Alpha hard. A scorching, uncontainable pheromone wrapped tightly around Shen Hui’s neck, slipping deep into the collar of his shirt.
Yan Jiu gently wiped the beads of sweat from his cheeks, his calloused fingertips burning the delicate skin. In a husky voice, he murmured, “Don’t be afraid. This is something that will bring you pleasure.”
His words proved more potent than any medicine. Shen Hui’s breathing turned heavy, his vision slowly blurring.
Meeting the aggressive, naked hunger in the Alpha’s gaze, anger flared in Shen Hui’s chest, leaving the world spinning around him.
As if reading his thoughts, Yan Jiu chuckled softly. “Relax. You won’t pass out.”
He was determined to make Shen Hui see clearly who exactly was in control.
Gripping Shen Hui’s wrist, Yan Jiu used a bit of force to pull the sweat-soaked body straight into the crook of his arm.
Too light.
He strode toward the second-floor bedroom, sparing just a fraction of his racing, forbidden impulses to note that he needed to pamper and fatten this person up properly later.
The second-floor bedroom of the villa maintained the lavish, classical design of a Central European castle, with flickering flames dancing in the fireplace and a soft sound of wood cracking.
Shen Hui was tossed onto the bed, the wave of dizziness making him curl up his body before he was forcefully pinned down.
The Alpha displayed endless patience toward his captured prey, pressing his lips down in the dim, shifting light to capture the lips he had craved for so long.
Soft, moist, and cool, yet burning his blood and making his soul shudder, even his fingers trembled. Yan Jiu could no longer hold back the primal, aggressive dominance carved into his Alpha bones. His pheromones went wild, savagely biting down on his lips and tongue to plunder every last breath.
Rip!
With a savage motion, the Alpha tore open the soaked white shirt. Yet the hand cupping Shen Hui’s cheek remained as gentle as if touching a precious treasure, his scorching palm feeling the desperate, forced swallow of Shen Hui’s throat as it slid down his sweat-slicked skin.
“Shen Hui, look at me. Who am I?”
Sunk deep into the soft mattress with scattered eyes and limbs too weak to lift, Shen Hui was entirely enveloped by the Alpha’s gaze, completely unaware of how delectable he looked at that moment.
His hair was disheveled, his breathing chaotic, and a roaring sound filled his ears. Though he was merely a Beta who could not smell pheromones, at this moment he felt as though he had stepped right into an inferno, melting entirely.
The person before him was like an erupting volcano, a scorching aura wrapping around him from every direction with no escape.
He instinctively shook his head in resistance, only to have his chin forcibly pinched and turned upward.
“Shen Hui, look at me. Who am I?” The Alpha’s breathing was heavy, clearly pushed to the absolute edge of his endurance, yet he demanded an answer with arrogant tyranny.
Struggling in agony yet unable to shake off the shackles, Shen Hui spent a long while struggling to focus his gaze, instinctively answering the Alpha’s question, “Yan. Yan Jiu.”
The instant those words left his lips, overwhelming ecstasy drowned every ounce of the Alpha’s reason, a fire that burned everything in its path blanketing Shen Hui from head to toe.
The Alpha plunged fully into the heat of rut.
Shen Hui was baked through, a scorching fire galloping through his veins as even his tears were licked clean. Just as he neared the brink of total collapse, the Alpha pinned him down relentlessly, burying his face against the back of his neck.
His body’s basic instincts dragged Shen Hui’s reason back, but a Beta was utterly powerless against an Alpha in rut. He murmured in sheer terror, “No, you can’t bite. I am a Beta.”
Yan Jiu had already clamped his teeth onto that slightly swollen patch of soft flesh at the back of his neck. A Beta’s glands were hardly prominent, and the tip of his tongue keenly detected a subtle roughness, the lingering scars from Shen Hui’s two previous gland revision surgeries.
“I know.” Consumed entirely by possessive desire, the Alpha whispered cruelly, “A few more markings will fix that.”
“No, Yan. Yan Jiu!”
“I’m right here.”
The flames pierced his skin, turning his blood to a boil. Shen Hui opened his eyes wide in a daze, unable to even let out a scream.
At least for now, Shen Hui belonged entirely to him, and to him alone.
Seven days later.
“Ding.” The microwave chime sounded.
Clad in nothing but oversized boxer shorts, his muscular and lean upper body bare and wearing a pastel pink Peppa Pig apron, Yan Jiu hummed a cheerful tune as he pulled a roasted squab from the microwave. The tender, exquisite aroma instantly flooded the kitchen. Looking at the glossy, red, crispy-skinned and tender-meat bird, Yan Jiu nodded in satisfaction.
Simmering over a low flame behind him was a pot of black chicken soup, tossed with half a root of century-old Changbai Mountain ginseng.
The seller had said that normal people only needed a tiny slice, but Shen Hui was too frail, fainting midway every single time.
Frowning down at the half-root of old ginseng in his hand, Yan Jiu’s mind drifted right back to Shen Hui.
An Alpha’s physical strength far exceeded a Beta’s tolerance. When they first touched, Shen Hui had struggled violently, sinking his teeth fiercely into his neck, leaving a bright, clear bite mark that remained to this day.
He could not keep thinking about it. Feeling a twinge of a guilty conscience, Yan Jiu gave two dry coughs, sliced another small piece of old ginseng into the pot before snapping the lid shut with satisfaction, plated the roasted squab and lychee pork ribs onto the dining table, and tossed together a blanched bok choy, a few cold vegetable dishes to cut the richness, and finished off by turning off the stove and ladling out the soup in one fluid motion.
Everything was Shen Hui’s favorite food.
Only then did Yan Jiu untie his apron and head upstairs to wake Shen Hui for dinner.
The curtains of the master bedroom had been sealed shut for seven days, leaving the interior dim and warm. Parting the heavy bed curtains, Yan Jiu found Shen Hui curled up and sleeping deeply right in the middle, entirely unaware that someone had sat down beside him.
Watching his defenseless appearance, Yan Jiu had not the heart to disturb him, a wave of inner satisfaction swelling to the brim.
Shen Hui was dead to the world, half his face buried in a soft pillow, his long eyelashes clumped with moisture, his slightly parted lips somewhat swollen, and the bite marks on the back of his neck layered upon one another, too raw and swollen to even touch. He looked utterly pitiful.
Betas had never been built to withstand an Alpha’s rut phase. Lacking pheromones to soothe them, the Alpha would simply claw it back twofold inside their reproductive tract.
He could not even remember how many times Shen Hui had begged for mercy in his unconscious state, but a rut-crazed Yan Jiu refused to listen to reason, wanting nothing more than to stamp every inch of this person inside and out with his own scent so that no one else could ever covet or peer at him.
Just looking at him like this caused satisfaction and desire to climb and intertwine in his heart, desperate to carve this person permanently into his very marrow.
“Shen Hui, wake up.” Yan Jiu gently patted his cheek, hoping to coax him awake softly, but the moment his palm brushed the skin, something felt wrong.
Too hot.
“Shen Hui!” The dreamy euphoria evaporated from Yan Jiu in an instant, replaced by sheer panic as he scooped him straight into his arms, only to find Shen Hui burning like a furnace. “Wake up!”
Shen Hui closed his eyes, slumping limply and mindlessly into his embrace.
Even a low fever from a Beta being marked should not burn this hot. This was by no means normal.
Discarding all other thoughts, Yan Jiu scooped Shen Hui up horizontally and bolted toward the hospital.
The heavy doors of the operating room slammed shut with a boom, and the glaring red “In Surgery” light lit up.
Only then did Yan Jiu step back from exhaustion, his back hitting the wall as he lowered his head to look at his trembling hands, his mind flooded entirely with memories of Shen Hui’s fragile, near-death state.
For the first time in his life, he tasted the flavor of genuine terror and bone-deep panic. He did not even dare to look at those medical charts.
Yet years of handling crises forced him to instantly suppress every shred of violent emotion, flying through loopholes in his mind to arrive at a conclusion: Shen Hui had lied to him.
He had undergone a gland replacement surgery.
He had lied to him, and he still chose Chen Shenzhi.
A fierce, bitter wave of resentment and fury instantly smashed through his sanity, the ringing in his ears so loud that he failed to notice Gu Yu sprinting down the end of the corridor with a medical chart and a face full of fury.
“You actually dared to mark him at a time like this!”
Gazing at the skyrocketing examination data sheet, Gu Yu’s professional and moral ethics spiked into the red zone simultaneously, unleashing all his strength into a punch aimed straight at Yan Jiu’s handsome face.
Bang!
Without even lifting his head, Yan Jiu caught Gu Yu’s fist. His body reacting faster than his brain, he twisted backward in a counter-maneuver, pinning Gu Yu’s arm against the wall with a sharp wrench.
Gu Yu felt as though his punch had struck a wall of solid iron, followed by a blur of motion and a sharp agony in his wrist.
“Hiss! You damn rapist, let go!”
Recognizing Gu Yu from vague memory, Yan Jiu eased his grip slightly and stated flatly, “He underwent gland revision surgery.”
Gu Yu comprehended the cause and effect instantly from that single declarative sentence, torn for a moment between whether he should rush into the operating room to let that self-destructive disaster go, or call the police and throw the man in front of him into a cell.
Ultimately, all he could do was roll his eyes while rubbing his wrist.
“What else did you expect?” Gu Yu snapped sourly. “You had better just pray he makes it off the operating table alive.”
With that, he turned to snap at the intern who had just sprinted up behind him: “Who is the lead surgeon?”
The breathless intern blinked blankly before pulling out his phone to check, but after flipping through the screens for a moment, his voice choked.
Gu Yu snatched the phone away directly, only to find the lead surgeon listed in the system as: Invited Expert Chen Shenzhi.
Yan Jiu caught the crisis playing out across his expression. “What is it?”
Gu Yu muttered, “You’ve been backstabbed.”
The harsh operating lights made Shen Hui frown as he tried to force his eyes open. With a chaotic mind, he frowned and turned his head away, dazedly thinking Yan Jiu had come back to torment him again, and murmured, “Yan Jiu, stop messing around.”
The entire operating room fell into a dead silence. Every doctor present looked toward the lead surgeon, a collective jolt freezing their hearts.
Though the lead surgeon was completely bundled up in full sterile operating gear, one could still tell he was an exceptionally tall, broad-shouldered, and narrow-waisted handsome young man. His brows and eyes were filled with affectionate gentleness, but his scrutinizing gaze sent a chill down one’s spine.
“Delay the anesthesia. Use a recovery stimulant to wake the patient’s consciousness first.”
The assistant doctor paused. “That’s against protocol.”
Chen Shenzhi cast a mild, gentle gaze toward her. “This surgery concerns the patient’s life and death. The patient himself must know the risks of the procedure.”
Giving her a chill down her spine with that look, the assistant doctor moved to comply immediately.
Five minutes later, Shen Hui slowly fluttered his eyes open. Shielding them from the blinding surgical lights, the first person he saw through his blurred vision was Chen Shenzhi behind a surgical mask.
“How long has it been, and you’ve already tortured yourself into this state?”
Chen Shenzhi looked at Shen Hui with tender affection, wearing the helpless expression one might reserve for a mischievous, disobedient child.
Yet Shen Hui knew this was nothing more than a disguise. Beneath that smile beat a heart cold as iron.
Chen Shenzhi continued softly, “Play time’s over. Come back now, and stop throwing tantrums.”
If not for the strict rules of the operating room, he likely would have gently stroked Shen Hui’s cheek right now, as intimate as a lover.
Though still trapped in the exhausted, high-fever weakness of his ordeal, Shen Hui’s eyes burned with an unusually bright and dazzling light. He flashed a faint, shallow smile at Chen Shenzhi.
“I knew you would come, and that you would bring that thing with you.”
Chen Shenzhi raised an eyebrow slightly, subconsciously glancing toward the freezing container placed off to the side.
Shen Hui’s smile grew even more pronounced. “So, I prepared a gift for you, too.”
Chen Shenzhi’s alertness spiked in an instant, but it was already too late.