The silence of the faculty lounge was no longer clinical; it was jagged, a landscape of broken glass where every breath felt like a laceration. Silas Shen remained kneeling on the frozen linoleum, his fingers still white-knuckled as they clawed into the fabric of the varsity jacket. The garment, thick with Hunter's scent, was the only thing keeping his world from dissolving into pure white noise.
"Let... go." Silas's voice was a mere thread of sound, yet it carried a frantic, sharp-edged ferocity.
"Let go?" Hunter crouched before him, his shadow swallowing the smaller man. He reached out, his long fingers hooking under Silas's chin to tilt that flushed, tear-stained face upward. "Professor, you're huddled on the floor huffing my scent like a drug, and now you're telling me to let go?"
Hunter let out a low, melodic chuckle that held a terrifying edge of sadistic delight. "Where is your logic now? Where are your peer-reviewed medical journals? Right now, Silas... you look like the cheapest kind of Omega, a creature driven mad for a scrap of Alpha comfort."
Slap!
Silas summoned the final, flickering embers of his strength. His palm struck Hunter's cheek with a wet, stinging crack that echoed off the cold walls.
Because of his sheer exhaustion, the blow lacked true force, but the symbolic weight of it turned the air into a vacuum. Hunter's head snapped to the side, his golden bangs falling over his eyes to shroud his expression. The sweet orange scent in the room instantly curdled, turning acrid and violent—the smell of a high-tier Alpha whose pride had been drawn in blood.
"Hunter Huo... do not project your own... filthy thoughts... onto me." Silas's hands shook as he released the jacket, pushing it away with a shudder of revulsion as if it were a heap of rotting offal. He grabbed the edge of the sofa, his muscles screaming as he forced himself to stand. His legs were visible tremors, yet he locked his knees, forcing his spine into a line of rigid, uncompromising steel.
"I held that garment because I am ill. Because your primitive, non-consensual marking and forced induction have caused a systemic physiological collapse." Silas reached up with a trembling hand to steady his sliding glasses, his eyes turning into twin glaciers, devoid of a single degree of warmth. "In biology, this is defined as Parasitic Adaptation. I do not want you. I am merely managing the biological refuse you left behind."
"Biological refuse?"
Hunter slowly turned his head back. A streak of crimson had bled into the whites of his eyes, a sign of a predator losing its grip on civilization. He stood up, and the sheer explosive pressure of his presence made Silas's lungs seize. The professor felt as though he were being nailed to the wall by the weight of the air alone.
"You really are a piece of work, Silas." Hunter's voice was a subterranean growl. He stepped into Silas's personal space, his large hand snapping around Silas's waist with a grip that threatened to snap the fragile vertebrae. "You'd rather call yourself a host for a parasite—you'd rather call yourself disgusting—than admit you feel a single spark for me?"
"A spark?" Silas's lips curled into a self-derisive sneer. A stray tear was still wet on his cheek, but his tone was a razor. "Hunter Huo, you are nothing more than a parvenu with a lucky genetic lottery win. You are a beast driven by mating instincts and nothing else. Did you truly believe I would feel 'a spark' for a brat who can't even regulate his own pheromones?"
He leaned in, his breath a frost against Hunter's ear. "You make me... physiologically nauseous."
BOOM!
Hunter's fist slammed into the wall inches from Silas's ear. Dust and plaster rained down like gray snow onto Silas's shoulder.
"Fine. Perfect." Hunter laughed, but it was the sound of a beast being pushed past the point of no return. His breathing was heavy, ragged, and hot. Without warning, he reached out and grabbed the front of Silas's shirt—the one buttoned meticulously to the chin—and ripped.
The sound of buttons snapping and hitting the floor was like a series of small explosions in the dark.
"Since you think it's 'biological refuse,' then I'll make sure you're filled to the brim with it."
He didn't go for the neck. Instead, he seized Silas's wrists, pinning them above the professor's head against the cold wall. He descended, his mouth crushing Silas's in a kiss that was a brutal act of retribution.
This wasn't comfort.
This was an invasion. It was a scorched-earth policy, a frantic attempt to grind Silas's soul into the dirt until there was nothing left but surrender.
Silas let out a muffled whimper, struggling against the iron weight of the Alpha, but he was drowning. The orange scent was no longer a fragrance; it was a flood, a tide of fire that swept through his veins, battering against his final defenses.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to beg. He wanted to die.
But in the deepest, darkest hollow of his despair, he discovered the thing he feared most: his body. Even as his mind screamed in hatred, his treacherous biology was awakening, responding to the violence with a frantic, rhythmic pulse of its own.