The young Alpha visibly froze, his head dropping in a sudden wave of guilt.
Xiao Shuqing didn’t even need to hear an answer to know that the kid had absolutely snooped through it.
Just the mental image of this little creature coming home in the middle of the night, catching the scent of Alpha pheromones, looking here and there, and even padding over to rifle through the dog bed in the corner of the living room.
Xiao Shuqing couldn’t help but smile.
“I, when I came back, I was playing with Saisa and accidentally smelled it.” The boy muttered.
Tsk, lying again.
Xiao Shuqing remained silent, his eyes quietly resting on him.
The boy shifted his toes uneasily.
Under the scrutiny, he cautiously amended his statement. “Well, it wasn’t entirely an accident.”
“Oh,” Xiao Shuqing replied. He then began fiddling with his phone. “I believe I told you before—to keep an eye on Saisa, I installed a security camera in the living room.”
Yu Siyuan: “!”
Panic-stricken, the boy immediately stood on his tiptoes and grabbed Xiao Shuqing’s arm.
“Don’t, don’t look!”
“Professor Xiao, please don’t look!”
The young Alpha frantically strained upward, both hands gripping Xiao Shuqing’s forearm, his eyes nervously darting toward the phone screen.
The older man looked down, his gaze falling on the fabric of his sleeve being crumpled by the tight grip.
Suddenly, a low laugh escaped him.
So silly. And a little dense.
“I was teasing you,” he said, casually pocketing his phone.
The boy looked up blankly, his mouth slightly agape. Because he had stayed up all night, his hair was sticking up in messy tufts.
Pfft. Even dunderheaded now.
Suppressing his amusement, Xiao Shuqing stepped forward and gently smoothed down the Alpha’s stray hairs. “There was no Alpha here. A, well, a friend felt that it wasn’t good for me not to have an Alpha around, so they bought it for me. They were worried something might happen to me without an Alpha’s soothing presence.”
It was a half-truth.
Since he couldn’t tell the absolute truth, he could only let Yin Yu take the fall. Who told him to buy such bizarre novelties anyway?
Xiao “Grudge-Holder” Shuqing told the fib without batting an eye.
“I’m not particularly sensitive to Alpha pheromones, so I didn’t think much of it. I just set the robot vacuum to mop the floors and went to bed. I’m sorry it made you uncomfortable,” he said.
He then turned around to switch on the apartment’s ventilation system.
“If something like this happens again, just take care of it yourself first. Bottling it up and staying awake until past three in the morning, aren’t you tired?” Turning back to face the boy, a soft, subtle curve touched the corners of his eyes.
Because he had just woken up and wasn’t wearing his glasses, his long, beautiful eyelashes were fully exposed under the light, making his narrow eyes look exceptionally clear and striking.
He hadn’t even fully done up his pajamas; his collarbone was naturally and clearly revealed, and right in the hollow of his clavicle sat a perfectly round, blood-red mole.
He looked like a siren.
Chilly, yet intensely alluring.
The boy took only one glance before hastily averting his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Professor Xiao, I didn’t mean to. It’s just that pheromone was everywhere, except inside my room. It felt incredibly provocative. I guess I just lost my mind. I mean, with the Alpha gender, you know how it is.”
“I’m sorry for misunderstanding you!”
By the end of his apology, his tone had grown excessively formal, and a flush of pure pink crept all the way from his neck to the tips of his ears.
“Tsk.”
Xiao Shuqing leaned down slightly to bring himself to eye level with the boy. A stray lock of hair fell between them, which he carelessly tucked behind his ear. Looking at the young Alpha’s burning face, he raised an eyebrow.
“Yu Siyuan. Are you about to bow to me next?”
“A, Ah?”
The kid opened his mouth, barely managing to squeeze out a single syllable. In his dark, luminous eyes, confusion and helplessness swirled.
Pfft. What a bewildered little rabbit.
He actually felt a sudden urge to ruffle his hair.
Unfortunately, the kid already had an ambiguous romantic interest, so it wouldn’t do to be overly affectionate.
Abandoning the thought with a tinge of regret, Xiao Shuqing straightened up and lightly rapped his index finger against the boy’s forehead. “Just playing with you. I’m telling you this so you won’t treat me like an outsider—looking like a mouse that just spotted a cat. Alright, it’s late. Go to sleep. Don’t you have to work tomorrow?”
“Oh, okay.”
“Um, Professor Xiao. I, you drank tonight. Was it because you were in a bad mood?” the Alpha asked, lifting his head.
Only then did Xiao Shuqing recall what he had told Yu Siyuan before: Smoking doesn’t mean I’m in a bad mood; when I’m in a bad mood, I drink.
The corners of his lips curled up involuntarily. So, he actually remembered.
“I wasn’t in a bad mood. I just felt that I was being far too rational, and needed to numb my nerves a bit to do something irrational.”
“Irrational?”
Xiao Shuqing let out a brief chuckle and looked helplessly at the bewildered youth. “Indeed. But, classmate Alpha, do you realize that if you keep pressing this topic, it’s going to get very awkward?”
Yu Siyuan: “!!!”
Realization hit the boy late, sending a fierce blush scorching across his entire face.
“I’m so—sorry!”
Xiao Shuqing waved his hand dismissively as he headed back to his room. “It’s fine. I’m older, so my skin is thicker. Go to bed.”
A week flew by in the blink of an eye. The temperature in City H behaved like a roller coaster—even though it was only April, the thermometer had already pierced past thirty degrees Celsius.
The magnolias on campus had mostly withered, while the wild roses were quietly forming heavy buds.
Two Sweet Osmanthus trees planted on the east side of the teaching building were blooming in full splendor this season, sending a delicate fragrance drifting through the open windows.
Xiao Shuqing’s class was the final period of the day. As he dismissed them, he overheard his students gossiping:
“Hurry up, let’s go! They say a sandstorm is hitting today. If we’re late, we might get caught in it!”
“Seriously?”
“Of course it’s serious. Weather warnings were sent out all morning and afternoon. It’s blowing over from the neighboring country.”
Glancing down at his phone, which he hadn’t touched all afternoon, he indeed found several push notifications from his weather app:
Sandstorm Approaching: Yellow Smog Alert Issued for City H.
The City H Meteorological Observatory issued a Yellow Smog Alert at 15:27 on April 21, 2023: The sandstorm is expected to reach our city tonight between 19:00 and 23:00. Blown sand and suspended dust will occur, and air quality may reach moderate-to-severe pollution levels in the short term. Citizens are advised to wear masks when going out, minimize travel, and close all windows and doors at home.
Xiao Shuqing couldn’t help but frown. The weather had seemed perfectly fine when he left this morning, so he hadn’t closed the windows. He always left early, so he wasn’t sure if Yu Siyuan had closed his.
He quickly packed his things and walked out, texting the boy as he moved:
— Siyuan, did you close the windows at home? They say there’s a sandstorm coming tonight.
As a programmer, Yu Siyuan’s work was demanding and exhausting, and he was frequently tied up in meetings. Usually, texts sent to him took a long time to yield a reply.
Assuming he wouldn’t get a response anytime soon, Xiao Shuqing was surprised when his phone rang the moment he stepped into his car. Yu Siyuan was actually calling him directly.
“Hello, Siyuan.”
He popped in his Bluetooth earpiece and started the engine.
The line hissed with static, accompanied by the loud, steady drone of traffic—cars passing by one after another. Yet, no one spoke.
“Yu Siyuan?” He called out again, his brow furrowing.
The next second, a familiar voice came through the earpiece, speaking with righteous indignation: “Tao Jing, don’t do this. I’m already married and I love my partner very much.”
Xiao Shuqing raised an eyebrow.
His long fingers tapped lightly against the steering wheel as the corners of his lips tilted upward.
Tao Jing. If he recalled correctly, that was the Omega from Yu Siyuan’s school reunion—the one the kid claimed to have been repaying a three-year debt of gratitude to.
Judging by the audio, it sounded like the kid was being hounded again.
Through the earpiece, the confrontation continued:
“But you haven’t marked each other, have you? Yu Siyuan, didn’t you always like me? Or do you think I’m dirty because I was marked by someone else before?”
“I never liked you. Besides, I haven’t clocked out yet, I still have a lot of work to do. I need to go back.”
Then came the sound of a physical scuffle.
“Stop pretending! Back in school, the entire student body knew you liked me, and now you claim you don’t? I even had the mark surgically removed—do you still think I’m dirty? Yu Siyuan, I never thought you were this kind of Alpha!”
“I don’t think you’re dirty. You’re the one who thinks that about yourself.”
“You married that Omega but didn’t mark him. Do you know what everyone is saying about you? They say you’re either impotent or you’ve been conned!”
Yu Siyuan fell silent.
“Siyuan-ge, Ge. just mark me. Be my Alpha, okay? I’m the Omega you loved for so many years. Don’t you want to marry me and bring me home?”
“Tao Jing, let go. I don’t want to look at your gland!”
Sitting in his car, Xiao Shuqing had initially been listening in as a mere spectator, but his expression darkened the further it went. This was no longer “pursuit”—it was blatant sexual harassment. If Tao Jing were an Alpha, he would have been criminally detained on the spot.
Heh. Thinking you can bully a rabbit just because it doesn’t bite, are we?
The man’s eyes turned cold. He pressed his earpiece and said in a low, quiet voice, “Wait for me.”
With a twist of the key, he shifted into gear, slammed on the gas, and surged out of the school gates.
Yu Siyuan’s employer was one of the top tech giants in the country, housed in the tallest and most sprawling office building within the City H Industrial Park. Xiao Shuqing didn’t even need a navigation app; he drove straight there from memory.
In fifteen minutes, he pulled up below the building.
The spot where Yu Siyuan and the other man stood wasn’t particularly hidden. However, at this hour, the tech employees were all buried in intense overtime. The entire campus was practically deserted, meaning almost no one noticed an Alpha and an Omega pulling at each other outside.
But Xiao Shuqing spotted them instantly.
“Why are you rejecting me? Setting aside how my qualifications aren’t any worse than that Omega who won’t even let you mark him, those three years of liking me in high school alone are something he can never compete with.”
Tao Jing was still relentlessly pestering him.
However, because Yu Siyuan had firmly refused him and threatened to call security, his physical actions had become much more restrained. His words, though. Heh, repulsive.
Frowning, the older man adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, threw open the car door, and stepped out.
Within a few strides, he closed the distance and wrapped his arm around the Alpha’s waist.
The boy’s waist was unexpectedly narrow. With just a slight curve of his arms, he pulled the youth securely into his embrace.
Looking down, he realized the boy was looking up at him as well. Long eyelashes cast feather-like shadows across his lower lids.
He really was more than just a little beautiful.
For a fraction of a second, Xiao Shuqing lost his train of thought. Sensing the hostile gaze staring at them from the side, he snapped back to reality.
Cradling the boy close, he smoothly slipped into character, his voice dripping with gentle warmth. “How did you get tangled up with such unsavory people again, hm? Your colleague called me a quarter of an hour ago asking me to come down. Have you still not managed to get away? Yuanyuan, seeing you like this makes me quite sad.”
The young Alpha obediently dropped his head, taking the gentle reprimand.
His arm hesitated at his side a few times before slowly, tentatively reaching up to wrap around Xiao Shuqing’s waist.
“I’m sorry. I won’t let this happen again. Please, don’t be angry.”
His voice was soft and sweet, making his apology sound entirely like a spoiled pout.
So compliant. Intoxicatingly sweet.
Xiao Shuqing’s throat tightened slightly, and he found himself forced to look away.