Li You was smart. So when he cowered in his arms, trembling with fear, was he truly afraid of Lin Xun’s absence, or was he terrified that his husband had suffered a terrible fate? When he reverently kissed the wound and said he felt sorry, was he hurting for Lin Xun, or for his husband? When he stared at him and pleaded with him not to get hurt, was he warning Lin Xun, or his husband?!
Just who was this beta seeing through his eyes?!
Lin Xun’s temples throbbed with a terrifying violence. His mind was flooded with memories of Li You’s smiling face, from childhood, adolescence, to the present. Suddenly, he felt small again, standing helpless inside a dense, dark forest that blocked out the sun. As night fell, the air filled with the deafening sound of cicadas and unknown insects, buzzing incessantly.
Little Lin Xun hugged his arms, hiding behind a tree trunk. For miles around, there was no sign of human life. The abandoned child felt lost and helpless. His parents were gone, his older brother had discarded him, and he was alone in the wilderness, forced to be a blood vessel for poisonous mosquitoes.
“Who are you? Why are you here?”
Lin Xun heard a voice and looked up in disbelief. A young boy was standing in front of him, he had large eyes, pale skin, and wasn’t very tall, watching him with a watchful glare.
Lin Xun whispered softly, “I’m lost.”
In truth, he was so terrified he was on the brink of tears. It was his first time going on a school summer camp as a first-grader, and being left behind was hardly a pleasant experience.
Li You, who had just finished school, bit his lip. After a moment’s hesitation, he extended a hand toward the stranger: “My name is Li You. Come with me, my mom will help you find your family.”
At that time, Li Qingyun was still alive, though her health was much worse than in previous years. Twelve-year-old Li You took six-year-old Lin Xun by the hand, leading him back home under the dappled moonlight that littered the ground.
They ate together and slept together. Li Qingyun adored children, and her heart broke seeing the insect bites covering Lin Xun’s body. She applied medicine to his skin, and when the two boys sweated from the heat in their sleep, she sat beside them with a cattail leaf fan, fanning them gently through the night.
The next morning, Li You had to go to school. Before he left, Lin Xun tugged at his clothes, repeating earnestly, “I’m Lin Xun! Remember it, Lin, like double trees, and Xun, like the philosopher Xunzi. Don’t forget me!” He was so anxious because he knew he probably wouldn’t be there when Li You returned. Li Qingyun chuckled beside them, “Does Xunxun like big brother that much?”
Lin Xun pulled a serious face and said solemnly, “I do! I like Big Brother!”
He had only spent a few hours with Li You, but he adored him to death. Li Qingyun took it as a child’s natural affection for an older brother and merely smiled without saying more.
But Lin Xun didn’t view it that way. There was a world of difference between brothers, a subtle boundary he couldn’t quite put into words. He was willing to listen to his mother and try to like Brother Zhaoning, but he never wanted to share a bed with him. Brother Li You was different. He smelled sweet, and if possible, Lin Xun wanted to sleep beside Li You forever, never to be separated.
Not long after Li You left, the butler picked Lin Xun up and took him home. Lacking the worldliness of an adult, the child reported the truth honestly. He told Yang Guan that his brother had brought him to the woods, and later his brother vanished, along with his teachers and classmates. But before he could even finish, Yang Guan slapped him hard across the face. Looking at her husband’s darkened expression, she shouted furiously, “You’re so young, yet you’ve learned to lie?! Is this how I’ve been teaching you all these years?!”
She forced Lin Xun to kneel in the ancestral hall to reflect on his actions. Lin Xun was confused and aggrieved. His mother had taught him to obey his father and play with his brother, saying they were his closest family. His mother was a gentle and virtuous wife in front of his father, and a warm, loving mother in front of his brother. Only in front of him did she turn into an entirely different person.
She felt sorry for his father working day and night for the company, and she praised and validated everything his brother did. Yet, she had never offered him a single word of praise. He desperately craved his mother’s approval, even trying to grow up mimicking Lin Zhaoning’s demeanor, suppressing his own nature that clashed with those traits. But when Yang Guan discovered it, all he received was a harsh, furious beating and three broken bamboo slats. The scars on his back served as a permanent warning: You cannot become a second Lin Zhaoning. You can only be yourself.
Little Lin Xun knelt in the ancestral hall for three days. By the time he came out, he was severely dehydrated and predictably ran a high fever, remaining bedridden for half a month. By the time he fully recovered and tried to return to find Li You, he discovered that the mother and son were already gone, Li Qingyun’s illness had worsened, and even moving to the county town with better medical facilities was merely a drop in the bucket.
That was the first time Li You had abandoned Lin Xun.
For the next ten years, Lin Xun returned to that remote village once every year just to take a look. But Li You never appeared again, and he could no longer find the handsome older brother from his childhood memories. It wasn’t until his freshman year of high school that Lin Zhaoning, who was close to graduating from college, publicly announced the boyfriend he had been dating for four years.
Returning home, Lin Xun saw the person sitting on the couch. Looking at that familiar yet distant face, the heart that had been quiet for ten years surged back to life. But Li You seemed to have forgotten him entirely; he didn’t remember the little boy he had picked up years ago. He had become his brother’s boyfriend, his future brother-in-law. His former savior had turned into a tormentor.
Ten years ago, Lin Zhaoning had thrown him into a remote forest, and Li You was the one who personally brought him home. Ten years later, Li You stood beside Lin Zhaoning as his boyfriend, offering a smile as he asked, “Is this Xunxun? My name is Li You.”
Lin Xun coldly slapped away Li You’s extended hand, ignored him completely, and went upstairs with his backpack. He never came down again that night.
Li You had abandoned him for the second time.
Later, he accidentally learned that Li You had applied for a two-year exchange student program at a university in Europe. Lin Xun’s lifelong regulated existence experienced its very first act of rebellion, he was going to follow Li You. Wherever Li You went, he would go. Sooner or later, he would snatch Li You away from Lin Zhaoning’s hands.
Because of this, Lin Xun clashed with Yang Guan. He felt like a bird about to break free from its cage, yearning for the blue skies and fresh air outside. Almost as soon as his approval came through, he embarked on his journey to a foreign land.
Lin Xun waited nervously, counting down from the first month to the third, then half a year, until he graduated from high school. Two years passed, yet he never caught so much as a glimpse of Li You’s shadow.
Because right before the final confirmation of the process, Li You had given up his study abroad status. On one hand, it was because of Lin Zhaoning’s insistence, they had never been apart since they began dating, and a two-year long-distance relationship was too difficult to endure. On the other hand, they were approaching the age of marriage. Lin Zhaoning’s family background was far out of his league, so Li You needed to work hard to earn money, striving to make himself worthy of that out-of-reach Alpha.
And just like that, Lin Xun was abandoned for the third time.
He quietly finished high school, attended university, and completed his master’s degree. The moment he returned to the country, he began taking over the family business. Lin Zhaoning didn’t fight for power, and while their aging father refused to relinquish control, Lin Xun ignored him entirely, seizing power through sheer force. During that period, Lin Zhaoning’s personality changed drastically following a car accident, and Li You was busy taking care of him. He only heard rumors of the bloody storm Lin Xun caused when seizing control, offending almost every relative in the family along the way.
The white fluorescent light fell against the dark curtains, casting a tilted, swaying shadow of the Alpha.
Lin Xun stood at the very beginning of the story, endlessly reliving how Li You had abandoned him, masochistically savoring the memory of Li You’s smiling eyes filled entirely with Lin Zhaoning’s shadow.
He had calculated Lin Zhaoning’s affair and threatened Li You into tying himself to him, yet Li You still couldn’t let go of that man. His body was trapped here, but his heart and mind belonged entirely to his husband. He was even stupid enough to use something like an engagement to test Li You, wanting to see if it would spark any discontent in him.
And what was the result?
Li You couldn’t wait to cast off this nuisance, eager to discard him just as he had done in the past.
Lin Xun hated Li You to the absolute extreme.
He let out a long breath, suppressing the impulse to lean down and bite the man awake countless times. In the end, he merely restrained himself, gently sucking on the soft lips of the sleeping man.
They were impossibly warm, soft, and sweet.
Lin Xun was dazed. He suddenly realized that as long as Li You lay here, even with his eyes closed, he had the power to bewitch him.
So, Lin Xun changed his mind, he didn’t want that tiny, pathetic scrap of love from Li You. He wanted to claim all of Li You’s love.
Because that love originally belonged to him in the first place; it was what Li You owed him.
What was owed to him had to be returned in full, without a single piece missing.
If Li You was unwilling, he would simply take it by force.
Lin Xun lowered his eyelids listlessly. He felt no aversion toward the act of “snatching.” After all, the only education he had received growing up was to “take.” Though it was a bit more troublesome, the results were undeniably effective.
Love was no different.
So, Li You, you must love me.
From now on, your lover can only be me, and will only ever be me.