Around noon the next day, Qiu Nan woke up with a pounding headache in the luxury Riverview suite on the sixth floor of the Wave-Calming Tower.
He stared at his surroundings in sheer horror, then tugged at the pristine white pajamas he was wearing. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember a single detail of how he had ended up here.
He clearly recalled that before they left the restaurant, Xie Yunnian had said he would drive him home. How on earth did a ride home detour into a high-end luxury hotel?
Director, do you have any sense of propriety at all? Weren’t you worried I’d fall into the river by myself?
Qiu Nan called down to the front desk to inquire. The answer he received was: “Mr. Xie booked the room last night, and the bill has already been settled. Mr. Xie left early this morning, but Mr. Qiu is welcome to continue resting in the suite. Lunch can be delivered to your room whenever you wish.”
Only then did his heart settle back into his chest.
The rest of the receptionist’s words didn’t matter—what mattered was that the bill was paid. Otherwise, he was seriously terrified that his bank account balance wouldn’t have been enough to cover the damage!
Today was a rest day, so he didn’t have to report to work. Since the front desk mentioned he could stay until evening and that lunch was included, he wasn’t in any rush. He took a long, comfortable shower and decided he would leave after eating.
After his shower, he tried calling Xie Yunnian.
It wouldn’t go through.
Staring at the “unable to connect” prompt on his phone, he figured the director was probably busy. Since it was the weekend, he didn’t want to keep bothering him.
He pulled up Xie Yunnian’s WeChat instead and typed out a text message.
【Director, thank you for the hospitality last night. I’ll transfer the money for the room back to you tomorrow.】
After a brief pause, he added a smiley face emoji at the very end.
Polite, proper, and thoroughly endearing!
Qiu Nan closed his phone with a satisfied nod. Just then, a waiter arrived with his lunch, along with the clothes he had been wearing the previous day.
His outfit had been professionally laundered and pressed so neatly it looked brand new.
After finishing his lunch, Qiu Nan changed into his clothes. Before heading out, he couldn’t help but marvel at his reflection in the mirror.
My poor clothes. Aside from the day you rolled off the factory line, this is probably the most glorious highlight of your entire existence. Even the person wearing you looks significantly sharper!
Baring his teeth in a grin at the mirror, Qiu Nan gathered his small box of personal belongings. His wallet, keys, and credentials were all there. His scent-blocker was safe too, but his backup suppressant was completely missing.
It’s impossible for someone to steal something like that, right? Did I use it myself?
Qiu Nan strained his brain trying to piece together the events of last night. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a massive, highly abnormal shadow looming beneath the river surface through the sweeping floor-to-ceiling windows.
That was.
A sharp jolt of alarm shot through him.
That was a monster!
He caught sight of a yacht packed with tourists cruising right toward that ominous shadow. Without wasting a single second, he whipped out his phone to call Huo Honghai while simultaneously bolting out of the room.
As for the missing suppressant, it was entirely wiped from his mind!
He tracked down a waiter. “Is there any way to contact the boats out on the river right now?”
Seeing him look like his hair was on fire, the waiter replied hastily, “You can contact the Maritime Bureau or the river patrol to request the communication details for that vessel.”
“Is there a way I can reach them immediately?”
“Our PA system loudspeaker?”
The moment Qiu Nan finished explaining the situation to Huo Honghai, he had already thrown himself into the building’s broadcasting room. Employing his old trick, he flashed his Bureau badge, passed it off as a police ID, and commandeered their radio station.
They were all brother agencies anyway; Qiu Nan was confident they would understand the emergency!
Out on the water, the tourist boat was charting a direct collision course toward the shadow. Qiu Nan used a pair of binoculars to lock onto the vessel’s registration number, cranked the PA system volume up to its absolute maximum, and began shouting across the open air.
“Vessel 52535, this is the Wave-Calming Tower!”
“There is danger in the waters ahead! Abandon your current course immediately and head for the nearest dock to disembark!”
“Repeat, there is danger in the waters ahead.”
He bellowed the warning over a dozen times, his voice on the verge of cracking, until he finally saw the tourist boat slow its speed. The boat flashed a flag signal back toward the Wave-Calming Tower—which Qiu Nan couldn’t read to save his life—before swinging around to head back.
Qiu Nan let out a massive sigh of relief.
The tourist boat had been less than a hundred meters away from the shadow.
Shortly after, an order to quarantine the entire body of water crackled through the radio waves. It looked like Huo Honghai and the others had successfully coordinated with the relevant authorities.
A few minutes later, the heavy thrumming of helicopter rotors roared overhead. Out on the river, several assault boats flanked a compact naval vessel, advancing toward the shadow. Upon reaching a safe distance, the vessel cut its engines and launched a micro-torpedo, slicing a white wake through the water.
A second later, the torpedo struck its target. A colossal swell erupted across the river surface as a massive, horrifying head breached the water, its jagged fangs flashing a cold, menacing glint under the sunlight.
This thing is at least a C-rank!
Qiu Nan’s spirits instantly surged. He spun on his heel, ready to rush down and join the fray, but a fatal realization stopped him dead in his tracks.
He was out of suppressants.
God damn it!
This monster looked incredibly formidable; it might even be a B-rank. If it hit B-rank, the ambient pressure would one hundred percent trigger an immediate heat cycle in an Omega on the spot. Going down there now would be nothing short of a public execution!
Utterly depressed, Qiu Nan could only stand inside the Wave-Calming Tower and watch with wide eyes as his Bureau colleagues utilized their specialized containment nets to beat the monster into submission, crate it up, and haul it away.
Mi Zhu’s call came through almost instantly: “Captain! Old Huo said you were on-site. Where are you? How come I didn’t see you?”
Exceeded from the action, Qiu Nan replied listlessly, “I’m not far from the scene. Let’s meet back at the Bureau.”
By the time the monster was securely processed, locked away in basement sector B7, and the Bureau had synchronized their public relation statements with the local government, it was already pushing midnight.
The city’s waterways were supposed to have stringent defensive measures against monsters. For a creature of that scale to slip past security and saunter right into the city center meant there had been a massive breach in the system.
Bizarrely, nobody could get ahold of Director Xie. The Bureau’s PR head had no choice but to step into the vacuum, engaging in an endless, agonizing back-and-forth negotiation with the municipal departments. Of course, none of that was Qiu Nan’s problem.
Right now, he had practically become a living legend within the Bureau. Everywhere he walked, he carried a natural spotlight.
Wu Jiada poked his head into Qiu Nan’s office as he passed by. “Incredible work, Captain Qiu! Talk about hawk eyes! You could actually spot a threat buried that deep underwater?”
Lan Mingliang tapped a knuckle against Qiu Nan’s table in the cafeteria. “Captain Qiu, your handling of the situation was exceptionally precise and timely. You saved a whole boat of civilians. This will be recorded as a major merit!”
Sang Yongyi caught sight of him near the restroom and followed him right inside the men’s room. “Captain Qiu! Our Squad Four is definitely going to see our year-end bonuses doubled! I heard it straight from Old Lan! Ahhhhh.”
Qiu Nan remained unfazed, but Mi Zhu—who was mid-way through zipping his trousers—suffered a violent jolt of fright. “Sis! What exactly are you looking at?”
With a thoroughly exhausted expression, Qiu Nan watched Sang Yongyi cover her face and sprint out of the men’s room, shaking his head in sheer resignation.
Still, the news Sang Yongyi brought about the bonuses doubling cheered him up quite a bit.
Speaking of money, he finally remembered that he had originally planned to get the mark washed off this weekend. The sudden monster crisis had driven it entirely out of his mind.
Once they stepped out of the restroom, Qiu Nan asked, “Xiao Mi, about that money you mentioned lending me yesterday—do you have it?”
“Uh.” Avoiding his gaze, Mi Zhu scratched his head awkwardly. “Qiu’er, I asked my mom when I got home last night, and she said she already spent the savings on something else.”
Qiu Nan blinked. Mi Zhu was usually incredibly reliable; how could he drop the ball at such a critical moment?
“Well, how about you just lend me a smaller amount? I can try to scrape the rest together from other people.”
Mi Zhu thought to himself: Scrape together from who? Anyone in the Bureau who dares lend you money right now is going to suffer a massive stroke of bad luck.
“Qiu’er, I really don’t have a single cent to spare right now. A bit of a situation popped up at home. I’m really sorry!” Mi Zhu let out a heavy sigh.
The day before in the cafeteria, Xie Yunnian hadn’t resorted to threats or bribes. Once he confirmed that Mi Zhu genuinely harbored no romantic intentions toward Qiu Nan, the director had simply dropped a single sentence: Our compatibility rating is 99%. I will handle his allergy issue. You had better not lend him any money to wash off that mark. Trust me, you do not want to find out the consequences.
Mi Zhu had been utterly shell-shocked by that “99%” figure.
A 99% compatibility rating—what did that even mean? It was the biological equivalent of being ordered to marry on the spot!
Using his own money to let Qiu’er wash off that man’s mark? What kind of homewrecker would that make him? He’d be struck down by lightning!
Even so, he hadn’t forgotten his duty as a friend at the time, arguing: Fine, Director. I won’t lend him the money, and I won’t tell him you approached me. But you cannot bully him, and you absolutely cannot force him into anything, or I won’t stand for it!
Xie Yunnian had regarded him for a long moment before offering a cold, decisive nod.
That had put Mi Zhu’s mind at ease, leaving him with a bizarrely comforting sense of satisfaction, as if he were sending his own son off to marry a wealthy tycoon to live a life of luxury.
He knew the director had shared all this with him not just because he was Qiu Nan’s friend who intended to lend him money, but because he was the only person who knew Qiu Nan’s deepest secret: that he was an Omega.
Qiu Nan didn’t harbor a single shred of suspicion that Mi Zhu was lying to him. In an instant, all the energy drained from his body, leaving him completely deflated.
He forced a smile. “It’s fine. I’ll just save up for a bit longer.”
Mi Zhu thought it over and decided to test the waters to see where Qiu Nan’s head was really at.
“Qiu’er, realistically speaking, you don’t actually have to be in such a rush to get the mark washed off, do you?”
“Huh?” Qiu Nan looked at him, his reaction a bit sluggish. “Why not?”
“I mean, the director hasn’t treated you any differently, right? What if he doesn’t even view this as a big deal? We live in completely different worlds from someone like him. Even if you carry his mark, you’re never going to cross paths with his actual life anyway, right?”
As Mi Zhu finished spinning this web of lies, he silently chanted in his head: Forgive me, forgive me! Sorry, brother. It’s truly because a wealthy tycoon with a 99% compatibility rating wants to stop you from scrubbing that mark. Besides, washing a mark ruins your health. To save you the trouble of doing it twice, you’re better off waiting a few days.
Qiu Nan fell silent.
He began reviewing everything that had transpired over the past few days.
The day they captured NB-420, he had gone into heat, and the director had followed him into the woods. Well, that was only because the director didn’t know he had a backup suppressant on him, so he was just trying to help.
In the car after the victory banquet, the director had completely blacked out. His ambiguous, intimate actions toward a marked Omega were purely driven by raw Alpha instinct; he didn’t remember a single thing afterward. If he hadn’t been drunk, he definitely wouldn’t have acted that way.
At the police station, the director had bought out the company of the Alpha who tried to assault him on the spot. That was clearly just an opportunity to make a profit; it couldn’t possibly have been to exact revenge on his behalf. At most, it just proved he was a protective boss who looked out for his team. Although his sudden move to advance the medical bills was a bit abrupt, didn’t he demand the money right back the very next day?
As for turning suppressants into a monthly perk, that was just a corporate favor to help his friend’s brand move some stock.
Mi Zhu was right. Their two worlds would never intersect. Besides, didn’t the director already have someone else he could share a romantic candlelight dinner with? Uh, even if he did get stood up by them.
Going out to the rooftop that night must have been because he was worried about him too, right? He even promised to sponsor the orphanage and he had wished him a happy birthday! Looking at it this way, Director Xie really was an incredibly good person!
At this thought, Qiu Nan let out a sigh of relief and nodded. “True, but I still feel a bit weird about it. Didn’t they say in sex-ed class that a permanently marked Omega exerts a strange, magnetic attraction over the Alpha who marked them? It’s not like the two of us can just never see each other at work.”
Oh, he exerts a strange attraction, alright! You have no idea! Mi Zhu grumbled inwardly.
“I’m just saying you can wait and see. I mean, wait a while before making a decision,” Mi Zhu said, nearly letting his true thoughts slip. “Wait until you’ve saved up enough cash before getting it washed. That way, you won’t have to put yourself under so much financial strain.”
His main goal was to wait and see if there was a legitimate chance for the two of them to end up together. If things started going south, forget lending the money—he would gladly foot the entire bill himself to get Qiu’er’s mark scrubbed clean.
After all, being permanently marked was already the absolute worst-case scenario. His Qiu’er couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to voluntarily take fertility medication and have babies with Director Xie, right?