Sihan and Yichen both started to protest, their mouths falling open. But before a single word could escape, Haoran raised a sharp, silencing finger—a firm gesture.
"I know you're worried," he said, his voice dropping to a low, steady hum. "But he's the reason I'm standing here. Last night, a group forced their way into my clinic. They cornered me and they nearly tore the place apart. If it weren't for Qixian, I wouldn't have walked away from that."
"Someone tried to hurt you?!" The two men—Sihan and Yichen—erupted in a simultaneous roar, their faces pale with shock.
"Yes," Haoran replied firmly, his gaze unwavering. "And he's the one who saved me."
A heavy silence fell over the room. Sihan's shoulders dropped, but his eyes remained fixed on Qixian.
"Still..." he whispered, his voice laced with a new kind of caution. "You have to be careful. He's still an Alpha."
"I know, I mean it," Haoran warned, his voice dropping to a low growl. "His family has already disowned him, so don't you dare bully him. I'm the only one allowed to give him a hard time—you two are strictly off-limits."
Yichen's eyes narrowed, a predatory glint appearing. "How about this? Since we're both S-tier Alphas, why don't we just… give his pheromones a little test?"
"He's an A-tier, so you could," Haoran replied, his expression shifting into a deadly serious glare. "But if you overdo it, I'll kill you both. Understood?"
Across the room, Qixian's blood ran cold. His grip on the plates tightened until his knuckles turned white, the ceramic nearly snapping under the pressure. 'If they do that, it's over,' his mind raced frantically. 'They'll realize I'm an Omega. They'll know everything, everything I built all this years will be ruined, I haven't found that person yet, ai can't protect anyone if I don't know who is it.' He felt a wave of nausea hit him. If his true secondary gender was exposed, the person who had spent years trying to kill him would finally have the opening they needed. He looked toward his twin brother. 'They might even go after Haoran.'
Qixian's fist clenched so hard his nails bit into his palms, leaving angry red crescents. 'I have to stay away. I have to keep my distance before I drag everyone into this mess, before I catch that person.' With his heart hammering against his ribs, he turned toward the sink, trying to drown out the conversation with the sound of running water.
A split second after the door chimed, the air in the clinic turned heavy—suffocating. The ceramic plate slipped from Qixian's nerveless fingers, hitting the floor with a deafening shatter that echoed off the walls.
Qixian clutched at his chest, his lungs burning as if the oxygen had suddenly vanished. He was gasping for air, but all he could inhale was the thick, overwhelming scent of an Alpha. His own Omega pheromones—those he had fought so hard to bury—began leaking uncontrollably, a desperate, sweet scent that he knew would betray him in seconds.
He heard the sharp rhythm of footsteps approaching—Haoran and the others, no doubt—but he couldn't let them see him like this.
With a final, racked breath, Qixian bolted for the exit. But as he hit the cool night air, he froze. A figure stood in the shadows. Qixian didn't even need to see the face, the scent alone made his stomach churn with a dark, familiar dread. It was a smell he had memorized through years of running.
Every instinct screamed at him to flee, but rage won. With his pheromones surging in a wild, jagged wave that could choke a man, Qixian threw himself forward. He didn't just want to escape—he wanted to shatter the person who had turned his life into a nightmare. He lunged, his fist flying toward the man's face with a primal, desperate strength, it sent the man sprawling on the ground.
"Qixian!" Haoran's voice cut through the chaos like a blade. Qixian's head snapped up, his vision blurring. His brother was getting too close—too close to the suffocating, poisonous aura of Qixian's own pheromones. The scent of deadly spider lilies—a beautiful but lethal warning—was thick enough to choke anyone in its path.
Qixian's fingers were still buried in the attacker's collar, but he couldn't risk it. He couldn't let his own lethal scent touch Haoran.
With a racked, desperate breath, Qixian forced his pheromones back, constricting the flow until the lethal scent faded to a mere whisper. The sudden drop in pressure was a mistake.
Seizing the opening, the attacker shoved Qixian back, his own Alpha presence surging forward like a tidal wave. Qixian hit the pavement, his strength failing him as the man pushed him away and stood over him, a predatory shadow.
"Long time no see, Young Master, I quite had a hard time following you, you know? Shouldn't you compensate for that?" the man hissed, his voice dripping with malice. He let out a low, menacing cackle. "Since... you have no guards, no walls to protect you anymore. And I just heard the news—you've been cast out like trash by your own father at that. You are now nothing but disowned, and all alone. No one is left to protect the little bird, is there?"
As the stagnant, predatory scent of his attacker flooded his lungs, the edges of Qixian's vision began to fray. The past was clawing its way back, threatening to pull him back into that cold, sterile room.
No. Not again.
With a final, agonizing surge of will, Qixian forced his pheromones to contract, wrapping them around his body like a toxic shroud. But his breathing was a ragged, shallow mess, trying to leash such lethal power while his lungs were failing was a suicidal gamble. He could feel the internal pressure clawing at his organs, threatening to rupture from the inside out.
"Qixian!" Haoran's roar cut through the haze. Before the attacker could move, Haoran was a blur of motion. His foot connected with the man's jaw in a vicious, bone-cracking strike—a reminder he was also a Taekwondo black belt.
As the world finally turned to black, Qixian's knees buckled. He collapsed, his body hitting the floor just as Haoran reached him, his name a frantic, desperate plea as it slowly faded away.
Seeing Haoran's distress, Sihan and Yichen snapped. Their protective instincts erupted into a violent, suffocating wave of pheromones—A monkshood that is mixed with Agapanthus—The alkaline, glassy barrier of the Agapanthus merges with the bitter, medicinal frost of the Monkshood. The result is a scent that smells like deep-seated ice and crushed herbs. It is sterile, clean, and completely heartless—The man felt like a physical paralysis that he find it hard to speak or move, as the pheromones signal a calculated, absolute dominance. It is the scent of a trap that has already closed—it tells the victim they have already lost. They only drew back when Haoran's voice sliced through their rage, commanding them to help him move Qixian.
"Enough!" Haoran snapped, his hands shaking as he checked Qixian's pulse.
Seeing the chance the attacker scrambled to his feet, desperate to vanish into the night.
"Yichen, don't you dare let him escape!" Haoran's voice snapped through the air like a whip. "Sihan, with me—help me carry him!"
Without a second's hesitation, they moved in perfect, obedient sync. As Sihan stepped forward to help Haoran lift Qixian's limp form, Yichen turned his gaze toward the fleeing man.
Before the attacker could take another step, a colossal, suffocating wave of a strong S-tier alpha, no stronger than that, but the attacker couldn't think any longer as Yichen's pheromones slammed into him. It wasn't just a scent, of crisp and medicinal, with a faint undertone of damp earth and moss, it acrid and stinging, like a chemical burn. The "frosty" quality turns into a bone-deep chill that seems to radiate off the person's skin, signaling a cold, calculated fury rather than a hot rage—a physical weight that crushed the air from his lungs. The man's muscles locked, his nervous system screaming in protest as if his very limbs were being torn from their sockets by an invisible force.
He collapsed to his shadows, his knees hitting the pavement with a sickening thud.
"Don't you dare run away," Yichen said, his voice dropping to a lethal, ice-cold register. He stood over the man, his presence so dominant that it forced the attacker into a humiliating, paralyzed submission even being an A-tier Alpha couldn't get away from it.