The heavy click of the electronic lock reverberated through the silent lounge, severing Silas Shen's last thread of biological hope.
Hunter Huo was gone. He had walked away with a cruelty that was absolute, taking with him the life-sustaining, sun-kissed warmth of his orange pheromones, leaving behind only a mockery that cut deeper than any surgical blade:
"Stay here then. Rot with your precious rationality for the rest of your life."
Silas lay collapsed on the frozen hardwood floor, his body feeling as though it had been cleaved in two. One half was a mass of primal instinct, screaming in the throes of Interrupted Marking Syndrome—a state of near-combustion where every nerve ending shrieked for the Alpha's touch. The other half was the remnant of Professor Shen: a pride that was thinning but remained as unyielding as tempered steel.
"…Hunter… Huo."
He spat the name through gritted teeth, the friction drawing a metallic tang of blood to his tongue. His eyes flickered to the canister of suppressant spray Hunter had tossed aside—a gesture of pity, a silent laugh at his expense.
No.
With fingers that trembled like dry leaves in a gale, Silas did not reach for the spray. Instead, with an agonizing, glacial slowness, he braced his palms against the edge of the velvet sofa and forced himself upward. His legs were fluid, nothing more than useless columns of water; the violent intensity of the previous encounter, followed by the jagged withdrawal of the Alpha's presence, had triggered a catastrophic "detox reaction." The scent gland at the nape of his neck was a throbbing, crimson knot of heat, pulsing with a rhythmic demand that vibrated through his skull: Go to him! Find him! Beg him to sink his teeth in!
It was the sensation of a thousand fire ants burrowing into his marrow, a wildfire fueled by his own DNA.
Silas's vision began to fracture. The once-ordered lounge warped and overlapped in his sight, the edges of reality blurring into a feverish haze. He knew, with the cold clarity of a scientist observing his own expiration, that if he did not receive stabilization soon, his internal systems would face pathological collapse. This was the most base, most humiliated form of biological dependency—the Omega's ancestral debt to its predator.
"Silas Shen… you are a professor… you are a doctor… you are not… a tool for breeding…"
He murmured the words like a mantra, a broken incantation whispered into the void. It was his only anchor.
With a desperation that bordered on the grotesque, he crawled toward the small ensuite bathroom attached to the lounge and fumbled for the faucet.
Splash.
The shock of ice-cold water hitting his skin made him shudder violently. Silas looked into the mirror at the creature staring back—face flushed a frantic carmine, lips swollen and distorted, eyes glassy and devoid of their usual intellectual frost. A wave of visceral, self-destructive loathing washed over him.
He cupped his hands, catching the freezing stream, and slammed it against his face.
"Ngh..."
The ice water met the radiating heat of his skin, kicking up a faint, ghostly mist. Silas didn't stop. He threw the water again and again—at his eyes, at his throat, and finally at that cursed, frantic gland that refused to stop its rhythmic screaming for an Alpha.
Pain.
Because the gland was in a state of extreme congestion and hypersensitivity, the shock of the cold was like a thousand needles stitching through his flesh. Silas let out an oppressed groan, a sound more harrowing than a sob. He bit his lower lip so hard the iron-rich blood dripped into the white porcelain sink, blooming like macabre red flowers in the water.
This "self-purification" was an act of extreme, pathological stubbornness. He would rather endure the systematic dismantling of his nervous system than bow to that arrogant scent of oranges.
Two hours passed.
Silas finally turned off the tap. He was drenched to the bone, his skin a deathly pallor, his lips a bruised shade of violet. His body shook with uncontrollable tremors, but the light of "purity" in his eyes was fiercer and more resolute than ever before.
He fumbled through the lounge cabinets, finding an old, discarded lab coat left behind by some forgotten assistant. He pulled it over his damp, ruined shirt, buttoning it to the chin. Then, with a precision that defied his lack of glasses, he fished the unused isolation patch from the wastebin and slammed it over the bleeding gland at the nape of his neck.
The pain flared into a fresh white-hot spike, but he didn't even flinch.
He walked to the door and tried the handle. Locked from the outside.
Silas let out a cold, rattling laugh. He didn't pound on the wood for help; he didn't reach for his phone to call Hunter. Instead, he turned and walked to the narrow sofa, sitting down with a terrifying, funereal elegance.
He closed his eyes, crossing his hands neatly over his lap, maintaining a posture of impeccable rectitude. He looked like an ice sculpture awaiting a final thaw that would never come.
The lingering, ghost-scent of oranges continued to tease his nostrils, trying to dissolve his resolve from the inside out. This "phantom smell" was invasive, burrowing into his pores, triggering deep, involuntary tremors of longing.
Silas did not move.
One hour... two hours... three...
Time became a viscous, stretching thing in the dark. Silas felt his body becoming lighter, his consciousness slipping away like sand through an hourglass. It was the sign of physiological limit. Even the strongest will could not indefinitely override the fundamental laws of biology.
He cast one final look at the door, his lips curling into a faint, frozen arc of mockery.
"Then you can wait, Student Huo. In this lifetime... you will never see the day I beg you."
Thud.
Silas's rigid spine finally gave way. He slumped sideways onto the sofa, his hands sliding lifelessly to the floorboards. The discarded backing of the isolation patch fluttered in the draft of the air conditioner, a tiny, silent white flag in a room where no one had surrendered.