The air in the laboratory seemed to stop flowing at this very moment. The faint hum of the fluorescent lights vanished, and the distant ringing of a bicycle bell outside faded away. The world was stripped down to nothing but Hunter Huo's sharp, scorching breath and the frantic, erratic thumping of Silas Shen's heart.
Silas did not speak. His hands—usually as steady as bedrock while handling cold, precision instruments—carried an undetectable tremor as they slowly and gently covered Hunter's eyes.
The moment his vision was obscured, darkness rushed in like a tide, and Hunter's other senses were magnified infinitely. He could feel the cool touch of Silas's palm, carrying the faint scent of disinfectant and a whisper of fir. The youth's eyelashes fluttered violently, like a pair of trapped butterfly wings, brushing precisely against Silas's heart with an itchy, rhythmic motion that sent a shiver of intense longing through him.
"Stop crying."
Silas finally spoke. His voice was incredibly raspy, yet it was saturated with a brand-new, nearly overwhelming sense of tender helplessness. "You're a grown man, crying like this in a laboratory. Have you no shame?"
"I'm not crying," Hunter muttered, his voice thick with a heavy nasal quality. He sounded like a large dog trying to maintain its dignity after a great injustice. He instinctively nuzzled into Silas's palm, greedy for that tiny bit of warmth named "indulgence." "Some dust just got in my eyes... these are physiological tears."
Silas's fingertips moved slightly, his thumb gently brushing across the corner of the boy's eye.
His thumb caught a hint of moisture.
Silas lowered his gaze, staring at that crystal-clear teardrop. The ice wall named "Logic" that he had built over twenty-eight years let out one final, thunderous roar as it collapsed completely.
He had always thought that love was a programmed script in the genes, a loss of control hijacked by pheromones, a biological surrender an Omega felt toward a top-tier Alpha. He resisted the humility of being dictated by instinct, so he had turned his life into a perfect formula.
But at this moment, the boy kneeling before him with a bright red nose—did he look anything like a high-and-mighty, dominant Alpha?
The clumsy cups of coffee Hunter left on his desk; the footsteps guarding the hallway through a crack in the door no matter how late it was; the rainy night in Haicheng where the boy took a blade to protect him... these fragments flickered through Silas's mind like film reels.
In every scene, there wasn't a trace of pheromone scent, yet they made him feel more lightheaded than any chemical signal ever could.
Those weren't things that compatibility could fake. They were a breach Hunter had smashed open in this cold laboratory with nothing but raw courage and absolute sincerity, leaping over the barriers of instinct.
Silas thought: If this isn't love, then human language is far too impoverished.
He leaned down slightly, retracting his hand from Hunter's eyes. His gaze became soft and profound under the dim light.
"...Hunter Huo."
"Yeah?" Hunter looked up. His handsome but disheveled face was streaked with drying tears, his eyes filled with the trepidation of someone awaiting a final judgment.
"You're coming with me to Lin's wedding."
Silas's voice was soft, yet it rang out with authority in the empty lab, carrying a sense of unquestionable finality.
Hunter seemed to have been hit by a pause button. He stared with dark, watery eyes, his nose still red from crying. If the students of Beijing University saw him like this, their jaws would have hit the floor.
"You... what did you just say?" Hunter's voice was floating. He even suspected he was hallucinating as a delayed side effect of blood loss.
"I'm not saying it twice."
Flustered by that scorching gaze that seemed capable of melting a person, Silas pursed his dry lips. He instinctively tried to pull his hand back from Hunter's iron grip.
However, in the next second, Hunter acted like a hound spotting a momentary opening in his prey. Instead of letting go, he gripped Silas's wrist with even more force.
"I heard it! I heard it clearly! Silas Shen, you said you want me to accompany you to the wedding!"
Hunter lunged upward, his movement so clumsy that his knee struck the leg of the lab stool with a heavy thud. But he couldn't feel the pain. He was like a orange-scented firework exploding in the middle of the night, brilliant to the point of being blinding.
"'Plus-One'! Professor Shen, that's the spot reserved for family!" Hunter stepped closer to Silas, the thick, boiling aura of joy surrounding the Professor in layers. "A title! This is an official title, isn't it? You're officially admitting I'm yours, right?"
The force of Hunter's momentum pushed Silas's back against the edge of the lab bench. His wrist ached slightly from the boy's burning palm—the unmasked strength of a young Alpha.
He looked at the boy before him, who was so happy he seemed to have lost his bearings. Seeing the near-miraculous ecstasy in Hunter's eyes, the last cold corner of Silas's heart was finally smoothed over.
"...Think whatever you want."
Silas turned his face away, attempting to maintain the last shred of his "Professor" dignity. But the corners of his mouth—usually as cold as frost—curved upward uncontrollably in the shadows where the light could not reach.