The trials were set to begin tomorrow, and Jiang Wu had fallen asleep very early.
Pei Yu’s bedding was filled with the mint scent that slowly squeezed in, these pheromones wrapping around her waist like vines, winding tighter and tighter.
She gently bit her lower lip, opening her eyes with forbearance beyond endurance.
Her pale amber peach-blossom eyes were misted with moisture.
Pheromones had no physical form, but AOs who had marked each other could mentally sense that substance clinging to their bodies.
The stronger the craving, the more pronounced it felt.
She could sense the pheromones forming an extremely faint arc of a curve across her lower abdomen.
Clearly, it wasn’t even that big yet.
That foolish hound was conceptualizing things in her subconscious all over again.
Yet stubbornly, Jiang Wu was fast asleep.
Curled up on the tiny cot, her whole person exuding a sweet, heavy fragrance of deep sleep, all warm and flushed.
How aggrieved she felt.
The pheromones around her waist were still tangling, messing her up in a complete tangle, while the primary culprit slept so soundly.
Lowering her gaze, the silk ribbon tied around her nightrobe’s waist slipped over the edge of the bed. Unaware, she got out of bed and squatted down beside Jiang Wu’s cot.
That fingertip stained with a hint of moisturizing warmth pressed against the puppy’s lips, applying a tiny bit of pressure.
The sleeping person must have been dreaming of something, gradually furrowing her brows while her lips parted slightly, taking in her fingertip with a faint, gentle hold.
The soft texture enveloped her. Pei Yu paused slightly, and before she could even react, that finger was spat back out, the original taste wiped away by the Alpha’s tongue tip to be replaced with a fresh, mint-flavored saliva.
She lifted her gaze, locking eyes with the obsidian pupils that had opened before her, God knows when.
Pei Yu lowered her gaze, her dense, feathery eyelashes trembling softly as her heartbeat hammered against her ribs, one beat after another, almost threatening to shatter her.
Caught between a splitting, agonizing shyness and desire, she unconsciously found herself thinking: so what if she admitted it was hers?
Jiang Wu was supposed to serve her; even if she sat right down on this person’s face, the other person would only have to open her mouth and endure all of her weight.
Suppressing her voice, just as she wanted to say something, another husky, low tone dropped right beside her ear, setting off fireworks that exploded across her entire mind.
“Mommy.”
Mom, Mommy?
Pei Yu trembled, her lower abdomen aching and going weak even more intensely from the unfamiliar address. She bent down to look eye-to-eye with the quiet person before her who was watching her obediently.
“Jiang Wu, have you lost your mind?”
Their child was still growing inside her, yet this foolish hound was calling her mommy just for a bite to eat?
The person before her lowered her gaze, heavy eyelashes shedding teardrops that plummeted downward one by one, crying without making a single sound, looking utterly aggrieved, completely unable to accept being abandoned by her mommy.
Her heart felt as though it had been scorched by a teardrop, aching with a dense, fine pain.
Feeling somewhat at a loss, Pei Yu half-knelt on the bed, holding Jiang Wu in her arms and awkwardly patting her back.
Her voice was gentle too.
“What are you crying for? If you miss the Prime Minister.”
Before she could finish her sentence, the sobbing, hiccuping puppy suddenly parted her lips, biting down on the hem of her robe and releasing it a few seconds later, leaving behind a patient trace of teeth pressed into the folds of the fabric.
Colliding straight into that pair of damp Phoenix eyes, Pei Yu looked closer and finally realized the person before her wasn’t awake at all; rather, she had fallen into some sort of nightmare.
The child nuzzled against her chest, teardrops soaking through layer by layer, warm and damp, while fragmented, tiny murmurs chanted mommy over and over again, begging mommy not to throw her away because she only had mommy left.
Pei Yu pressed against the puppy’s randomly nuzzling head, so full of reliance, so full of lingering attachment, as if it didn’t matter if mommy pushed her away, or if she was scolded, beaten, or cursed at.
She only wanted mommy, only wanted to be gazed upon by mommy’s eyes.
She only wanted to exist within mommy’s vicinity.
Why did she feel so agonizingly painful, so deeply guilty? Clearly, failing to give a growing child this much a sense of security was the Prime Minister’s dereliction of duty.
Clearly, she had never abandoned a puppy that relied on her wholeheartedly anywhere in the world.
The puppy in her arms whimpered as she called out to her, then suddenly stopped, turning instead to lightly sniff at her chest.
The infatuation deep within those eyes gradually morphed into bewilderment.
There was the scent of breast milk.
Why was there?
Of course, she knew she wasn’t biological; she was a foundling, which was why she was terrified to her core that mommy might have other children.
Teardrops broke through the dike again, falling relentlessly. Before Pei Yu could recover from her suffocating emotions, she was forced to lower her gaze and meet the aggrieved puppy’s eyes in her arms.
A faint, obscure possessiveness drifted quietly into those obsidian pupils. Being stared at like that, Pei Yu unconsciously bit her lower lip to hold back the soft moan desperate to slip past her teeth.
“Mommy, are you going to have another child?”
“Is this why you don’t want me anymore?”
Who was it that made mommy pregnant?
Did mommy have a lover? Had she been as intimate with her lover as she had been with them?
Her child was supposed to be born in love and a warm cradle, not picked up in a cardboard box by the trash can like her, right?
Mommy had no reason to keep her anymore. Her whimpering grew fainter and deeply repressed, as if she were afraid of disturbing something, as if she were afraid of being loathed by someone.
“Can you not throw me away?”
“Mommy, who is he? Is he better than us? Does he love you more than I do?”
Pei Yu fought down the urge to slap Jiang Wu awake.
She was already foolish enough; forcing her out of a nightmare could cause brain damage.
Yet how on earth did this little puppy even think to ask whether she was going to have another child?
Who on earth molded her into this state?
What kind of script was she even dreaming up? Did she dream that she gave birth to her, only to go look for someone else to bear a second child?
How could she? How could she ever go look for someone else?
The person’s eyelashes were soaked, clumping together in clusters. With just a gentle droop, they brought down a string of teardrops.
That pair of pretty Phoenix eyes suddenly curved, smiling brightly through her tears. When a scorching palm pressed firmly against her lower abdomen, Pei Yu instinctively retreated an inch.
“Is she here?” the child murmured softly. “I’m so envious of her. Older sister, was there ever a moment when you wished I had been born this way too?”
“Actually, you never wanted to be my mom at all. That’s why you were unwilling to give birth to me, that’s why you want to throw me away.”
Pei Yu covered her mouth, the corners of her eyes flushed red, stimulated by words that were far too brazen.
What kind of random things was she dreaming about? Usually such a timid person, yet she was actually, actually wishing in her dream to be born by her?
Then what about the Prime Minister? What was the Prime Minister supposed to do?
How could a person simultaneously possess two biological mothers? Besides, Jiang Wu was the child’s other parent.
She felt like she was descending into complete chaos, torn apart continuously by reason and some inexplicable emotion, sinking inch by inch into the obsidian depths of the child’s eyes.
Finally, she closed her eyes, pulling Jiang Wu into her embrace beneath the aggrieved, wet gaze of the puppy.
Her life shouldn’t have included a period dedicated to nursing anyone.
This was the last time.
There wouldn’t be a next time; she wouldn’t indulge Jiang Wu’s wild antics anymore.
They were not going to get any closer.