This wave of heat quickly swept through his entire body. Lucivita felt as though beads of fine moisture were about to seep from the gaps in his bones, desperate to extinguish this relentless burning sensation.
The female before him possessed neither pheromones nor spiritual power, yet this sudden, uninvited proximity inexplicably triggered Lucivita’s impending rut.
Damn it… Is it some kind of drug…?
He bit his lip to maintain his grip on reason, a trace of metallic blood welling up at the tip of his tongue. Shoving the female away, he commanded in a hoarse voice, “Get out.”
Rhein clearly recognized that something was wrong with him. Although Lucivita had pushed him away, his fingers were still instinctively gripping Rhein’s fingertips with a trembling clutch. He figured this must be Lucivita’s rut cycle once again.
When Rhein had first picked up Lucivita, the Zerg had been a filthy little kid with neither a rut nor pheromones. Rhein hadn’t viewed him as a female at all, but rather as a complimentary little servant.
It wasn’t until Lucivita reached adulthood and was locked alone in his room, driven to silent tears because he couldn’t endure the torment of his rut, that Rhein finally realized with sluggish comprehension: Oh right, this is Zerg society. I am a male, and Lucivita is a female.
At that time, since it wasn’t within the normal operational window of his mission, 058 had no way to open the system’s exchange function. Furthermore, suppressants for a female’s rut could only be purchased by noble females at an exorbitant price. With no external means available to help Lucivita through that period, Rhein had initially planned to let nature take its course, but his heart softened in the end.
He actually hadn’t done anything special; he simply held Lucivita during those moments. A male’s pheromones were no different from an aphrodisiac during a female’s rut, but fortunately, Rhein was able to control his.
Back then, Lucivita’s mental landscape had been deliberately shattered, making any form of psychological counseling completely impossible. In that instant, the absolute most Rhein could manage was to anchor himself as an ordinary, everyday human, his body temperature icy cold, just enough to make the burning-hot Lucivita feel a little more comfortable.
Strangely enough, even without any active soothing from Rhein, Lucivita would gradually quiet down, eventually clutching Rhein’s fingertips with trembling care and falling asleep in that cold embrace with tear tracks still staining his face.
Perhaps it has to do with his physical constitution…? Rhein couldn’t figure it out. He only thought that carrying out this routine wasn’t particularly troublesome, he could still play games with one hand, treating it as hugging a large-scale collectible figurine.
The figurine looked decent enough, so he just went along with it.
Yet for some reason, Lucivita’s rut was hitting with far greater ferocity this time, proving infinitely more intense than in the past. The once-stiff-backed, arrogant female was now flushed scarlet from head to toe, as though vibrant colors had been artificially smeared across a blank white canvas.
To keep himself under control, Lucivita even partially insectified his right hand, preparing to drive it ruthlessly into his own waist.
Rhein’s body moved faster than his brain. Without thinking, he reached out, grasped Lucivita’s wrist, and pulled him up from the floor. Hesitating for a moment, he asked, “Where do you keep your suppressants?”
Later on, once he had money, Rhein had indeed prepared suppressants for Lucivita, but the other had never used them, claiming they were entirely ineffective. Lucivita’s physique seemed genuinely different from ordinary females; who knew what the Cesia family had done to him in the past.
“Go find Hall… and have him knock me out.” Lucivita didn’t believe the female in front of him possessed any combat prowess; even in the middle of a rut, he could easily kill him. Yet this onslaught was too ferocious. Feeling as though he wouldn’t survive it, and knowing suppressants were completely useless, his only option was to render himself unconscious.
That is entirely too brutal… While Rhein was debating whether to follow orders blindly, Lucivita completely lost his grip on reason.
A female whose rut went unsoothed would first spike a high fever, and if it remained uncontrolled, slip into a full insectoid transformation. Bound tightly by prison shackles that prevented him from shifting, Lucivita would face catastrophic consequences if this continued.
Rhein let out a sigh. He caught Lucivita just as he was about to collapse back to the floor, cradling him like a doll against his chest before settling back onto the bed. Two tightly intertwined figures squeezed together onto the narrow twin mattress.
Fortunately, Lucivita occupied a solitary cell, and no one would dare plant surveillance cameras inside his quarters. In Rhein’s memory, he had never performed mental soothing for any female, but he still released a wisp of spiritual energy, pressing it gently against Lucivita’s forehead.
The moment he was caught in that embrace, Lucivita seemed to shed all instinct to resist, instinctively pressing his face into Rhein’s fingers to beg for comfort. For a fleeting moment, Rhein could feel the damp texture of tear-soaked droplets lingering against his fingertips.
The oversaturated moisture radiating from Lucivita made Rhein feel profoundly ill at ease. Like a drowning creature clutching at its final straw, the female wrapped his arms tighter and tighter around Rhein, pressing him directly against the wall beside the bed. In that cramped space, they slowly melted together into a single entity.
Rhein’s spiritual energy penetrated Lucivita’s mental landscape. Inside lay a realm of pitch darkness, where wind and lightning tangled together like a wasteland on the eve of apocalypse. Only by pushing forward could one spot a tiny cottage casting a warm, yellowish glow.
Pushing the door open, Rhein discovered a sanctuary inside that was safe to the point of feeling genuinely cozy. He thought the interior furnishings looked somewhat familiar. Looking closer, he realized the person sleeping soundly on the sofa was none other than himself.
Rhein fell silent for a moment, thinking that it defied belief to find himself inside Lucivita’s mental landscape. He certainly hadn’t misjudged the kid back then; the fellow genuinely knew how to repay a kindness.
That “version of himself” was curled up asleep on the couch, the gaming device slipping from his hand onto the carpet. And huddled miserably in a corner of the sofa was a filthy, silver-white little fluff ball.
Rhein squatted down, recognizing it as a young Lucivita from the exact period when he had first dragged the fellow home.
Back when Rhein had been preparing to make his escape, he realized every male in the Empire was subjected to layers of strict protection and registry tracking. Naturally, he had disguised himself as a female and fled to a remote, third-tier star far away from the capital.
Yet living as a female turned out far more miserable than he had anticipated upon arrival not only was the pay pitiful and welfare nonexistent, but he also faced constant harassment from males. The credit card he had pilfered along the way was on the verge of bottoming out. If he continued to slack off, he would literally starve to death, leaving him no choice but to head down to the underground fighting rings to pick up some quick cash.
It was right around then that he stumbled upon the pitiful little Lucivita. He originally hadn’t planned to get involved, but unfortunately, Lucivita possessed an uncanny knack for shamelessly latching onto people.
Too many specific fragments floated up from the depths of a mind he deliberately avoided revisiting. Deciding to put those thoughts aside, Rhein pivoted back to the urgent business at hand.
The injuries on the little milk-ball in the corner had only been crudely bandaged. The child sat in absolute silence beside Rhein, as though this spot alone offered him a sense of security.
Rhein walked over and scooped him up. Having no idea what the standard procedure for mental soothing was, and figuring he had nothing better to do while standing around inside the landscape, he decided he might as well clean up the filthy little female while he was at it.
The young Lucivita put up an instinctive struggle, but upon realizing it was Rhein, he immediately curled back inward, pressing silently against Rhein’s shoulder as he was carried straight into the bathroom.
Rhein dumped him right into the bathtub, dragged over a small stool to sit beside it, rolled up his sleeves to test the water temperature, and then aimed the showerhead right at Lucivita’s head.
The little female flinched slightly, his silver hair still caked with dried blood crusts softening and parting smoothly under the stream of water. Squeezing a dollop of shampoo onto his palms, Rhein set to work washing the child’s hair, offering a patient, reassuring reminder: “Tell me if the water gets into your eyes.”
Lucivita kept his eyes tightly shut and nodded. It reminded Rhein of how he used to love calling the kid a “little mute” back then, though for the life of him, he never figured out why Lucivita refused to speak during those days.
Suddenly struck by an urge to tease the small female within his mental landscape, Rhein rinsed the shampoo from his hands, made the child face him, and reached out to give a playful flick to the bridge of his nose. Beaming with a bright, cheerful smile, he asked, “Who am I?”
For reasons unknown, that simple question struck a nerve. The little female suddenly lurched forward in nervous panic, burying himself straight into Rhein’s arms. At the exact same time, the warm lighting inside the bathroom began to flicker erratically. The instant Rhein instinctively squeezed his eyes shut, the weight resting in his embrace abruptly multiplied.
Before he knew it, the adult version of Lucivita had materialized in his arms. Even his waist-length silver hair couldn’t entirely conceal his sleek, well-proportioned physique. A sudden wave of intense heat washed over Rhein, prompting him to instantly avert his gaze.
“You…” he began, weighing his words carefully as he remained unsure of Lucivita’s current state.
“Lord Husband,” Lucivita murmured with a clingy, affectionate tilt of his head.
–Lord Husband?
Rhein frowned, using his fingertips to lift the other’s chin. His frosty demeanor acted like a self-possessed blade, cutting straight through Lucivita’s lingering, intimate murmurs as he pressed:
“Who is your Lord Husband—?”
“Lucivita, who are you looking at?”
“I am looking at…” Lucivita echoed mechanically, though the words died on his tongue before he could finish them, as though uttering a specific name would force out an unspeakable secret hidden deep within his heart.
His gaze began to scatter, threatening to drag him right back into involuntary agony. Clicking his tongue in annoyance, Rhein abandoned all notions of propriety, directly clamping his hand firmly around Lucivita’s jaw to force his focus back onto him.
“Who am I? Lucivita, I’ll ask you one last time. Who am I?”
This inquiry apparently proved far easier to answer than the last. Lucivita curled closer into his embrace, raised a hand to hook his arm around Rhein’s waist, and buried his entire face against his chest.
He muttered softly, “Lin Yin.”
Lin Yin, the random name Rhein had tossed out off the cuff the very day he found Lucivita.
Rhein fell abruptly silent. All the complicated, muddled emotions he hadn’t known how to process moments before instantly evaporated. Pausing for a beat, he finally lifted a hand and gently ruffled Lucivita’s silver locks.
Whatever. Who told him to go and die right in front of the kid anyway? If he wanted a Lord Husband, so be it at least he didn’t mistake the identity this time around.
Besides, what kind of pathetic excuse for a Lord Husband was Lucivita dealing with anyway? Not only did he toss him into prison, but he also left him to suffer through such a brutal rut?
He entirely deserved to have his spot stolen. After all, wasn’t he the one tasked with a romance mission right now?
As Lucivita drifted into a peaceful sleep against his chest, Rhein withdrew his consciousness from the mental landscape and snapped back to reality.
The real Lucivita had completely calmed down by now, his eyelids drooping heavily in a drowsy haze. His long hair spilled across Rhein’s shoulders, tangling with the golden tips of Rhein’s own hair like shimmering ripples across a river under the morning mist.
Rhein let out a sigh. After a moment of thought, he decided he ought to slip away and fetch Hall to check on him just in case there were any lingering aftereffects.
Fortunately, only basic survival instincts operated during an insectoid transformation, or else Rhein’s disguise would have blown up in smoke right then and there.
The moment he stepped away, the female on the bed let out a subtle flutter of his long eyelashes and slowly blinked his eyes open.