Bear the consequences

Bai Ling​‌⁠​‌​‍⁠​​⁠‌‍⁠​⁠‌​​‍​‌⁠⁠ stepped into the hospital room, and a wave of disinfectant blended with the distinct medicinal scent of the hospital washed over his face.

It was thick enough to mask the alpha’s pheromones.

Only a small desk lamp was lit in the room, its light spinning and swirling to cast overlapping shadows across the furniture, lending a hazy, surreal quality to the surroundings. Bai Ling instinctively quieted his breathing as his gaze focused onto the silhouette on the bed.

The old man wore a hospital gown, the standard striped pattern, made of the most ordinary cotton fabric imaginable, yet framed by his coat-hanger-like build, it somehow looked refined and noble. His breathing was even, and under the effect of the medication, he slept profoundly, his profile looking serene and elegant.

Bai Ling watched him silently for a moment, then walked light-footedly to the wardrobe, grabbed a towel, and headed into the bathroom. He needed to clean himself up.

Soundlessly closing the bathroom door, he stripped off all his clothes and placed them in a cubby. Only then did he slide open the glass partition, stepping barefoot onto the freezing tiled floor.

So cold. The temperature gave Bai Ling a sharp shudder.

He adjusted the water, deliberately keeping the flow low to avoid generating too much noise. The wash didn’t need to take long—just a thorough rinse inside and out. Logically speaking, this sort of thing was second nature to him, but for some unknown reason, his mindset this time felt exceptionally delicate.

Perhaps it was because he shared an emotional entanglement with the man outside. With this relationship in play, his heart inevitably felt a bit hesitant, yet full of anticipation. Just thinking about what he was about to do made his fingers twitch and curl.

Bai Ling suddenly lifted his head. Through the steam-fogged glass, he caught sight of his own face, flushed with an abnormal, feverish heat.

He was actually a little nervous…

Stop that. What are you doing? The merman outside isn’t going to eat you. Besides, the man is securely bound; even if he wakes up halfway through, he won’t be able to kick up any storm.

“Buzz-buzz, buzz-buzz—” The terminal vibrated in his pocket.

An ankle turned deep pink by the hot water stepped out, followed by a lean, straight calf. A hand so thin its bone lines were evident reached over, answering the call and bringing it to his ear: “Hello? Dr. Woodpecker, is something wrong?”

Having just received the nurse’s report, Zhuo Liangmu had called immediately with frantic urgency, demanding: “You haven’t unlocked the straps, have you?”

“Not yet.”

“Good, good…” Zhuo Liangmu breathed a massive sigh of relief, then instructed: “The Old Emperor was struck by a bone-ash bullet, and the genetic attack prevents his wound from healing. To heal him as quickly as possible, we forcefully stimulated his beast-blood. Consequently, his aggression and possessiveness are currently doubled. You better keep your distance, just take a couple of looks and come back out.”

Bai Ling lowered his eyelids. “He is my guardian.”

Zhuo Liangmu countered: “This was the Old Emperor’s explicit command when he was still lucid.”

Taking a series of deep breaths, Bai Ling finally said, “Alright, I understand.”

Hanging up the call, he stared at the screen for two seconds, then suddenly pressed the power-off button. Not only that, but he stepped into the outer room, locked the ward door securely from the inside, and activated the media screen, driving the volume keys all the way up. He let the chaotic broadcast from the news channel completely drown out any sound about to occur within the room.

This way, no one could interrupt them ever again. Even Yu Chen himself wouldn’t be able to stop it.

Bai Ling peeled back the blanket, lifting his knee to crawl onto the bed. His prosthesis straddled the alpha’s firm waist and abdomen, like scaling a range of overlapping mountains.

The merman possessed broad shoulders and long legs, and his physical proportions were exceptionally blessed. Furthermore, compared to anything Bai Ling had previously encountered, this guy’s dimensions absolutely ranked at the absolute apex among males.

He wasn’t used to handling a size like that.

Hooking his fingers along the waistband of the hospital trousers, Bai Ling felt the gland at the back of his neck give a sudden shudder, and his cheeks burned hot as he averted his gaze.

A golden jungle.

To make things easier, Bai Ling wore only a tight-fitting black tank top. Pressing his calves against the merman’s sides, he shifted his positioning slightly backward. Aligning himself properly, the muscle lines of his legs instantly tautened as he gritted his teeth, slowly lowering his aching, strained spine.

His abdomen felt incredibly uncomfortable.

Yet he had long since grown accustomed to this brand of hardship. Steadying his breath for a moment, he wordlessly began to seek out his own rhythm.

He had heard that alphas would release courtship and soothing pheromones during such moments to reduce an omega’s panic and grant maximum sensory comfort. Bai Ling had never experienced that kind of treatment.

To him, release was merely release—nothing more than a painkiller used to treat wounds in a miserable life. Whenever he reached the absolute limit of exhaustion, his emotions collapsing along with his body, his broken womb would deliver a heavy blow, subjecting him to a burning, pulling ache that made sleep impossible during countless nights on the battlefield.

When the pain reached the point of tinnitus, he would simply grab any prisoner of war to settle it, discarding them into the trenches once finished. Even if he passed by the exact spot the next day, he wouldn’t spare them a second glance. Bai Ling was a person who drew an exceptionally clear line between physical release and emotional affection.

Perhaps in the eyes of Commander Bai from his past life, only Mr. D—with whom he chatted casually across the network lines—was worth holding a small blanket for late at night, his face illuminated by the screen’s glow as he bit his lip to let slip a tiny, trembling whimper.

Toward this person… he had always harbored a deep emotional dependency.

“Old bastard, why do you have such excellent nutrition? Did you grow like this just to torment me?” Hot sweat welled from Bai Ling’s temples, the tremors shaking his frame growing increasingly severe until his knees felt too weak to even maintain their stance.

In the past, he would simply grit his teeth and push through moments like this. But today, he instinctively glanced downward, and a trace of an indescribable yearning unexpectedly floated into his heart.

So tired. If only Yu Chen could take control of him.

Pursing his thin, cold lips, he recalled in a daze that he actually missed the way that waist-hugging demon would pin him against the bathroom tiles, pinching the flesh of his waist until it throbbed with pain.

As his body temperature continued to climb, the merman’s brow gradually knit together in his sleep. His lips, originally pale and bloodless, slowly took on a volatile, flushed color.

“Are you uncomfortable?” Breathing heavily with a feverish heat, Bai Ling barely came to a halt, leaning his torso down to look over him.

The merman’s expression was anxious, his neck turning against the pillow as the contours of his face sank deeply into the shadows, looking as though he were wrestling against a nightmare.

“Am I being too much?” Bai Ling slowly pressed himself against that broad chest, placing his ear against the heart to listen to the robust, powerful thumping within. “You’re already injured to this extent, yet I’m still pestering you.”

“But I simply can’t control myself…”

He buried his face into the merman’s neck, his breaths filled with the scent of that rich golden hair—so warm it nearly choked his throat.

“…I truly, truly dare not imagine what it would look like if you died. Why did you block that bullet for me? You are the former Emperor; how could you throw away your life for an omega you’ve only known for a single month? You are simply…”

Bai Ling lifted his head, his detached exterior peeling away to expose nothing but a pair of intensely reddened eyes. “…spoiling me far too much.”

The merman’s breathing grew abruptly heavy, and he shifted with an anxious agitation.

A faint scent of pheromones permeated the air—a fermented aroma of sea algae, settled within a damp moisture that felt like an ancient, decaying shipwreck. A single whiff of it caused one’s tongue to tingle and his lower abdomen to tighten in a spasmodic contraction.

Bai Ling’s mind went blank for a second before he scrambled up in absolute shame. Testing the sheets beneath him with his trembling fingers, he found a patch of warm moisture. He had caused it himself.

How could it be this fast? Clearly, in the past, even after a prolonged struggle, he might not necessarily achieve a release.

At a total loss, Bai Ling yanked a shirt over, lowering his head to wipe the mess away in confusion. Once finished, he padded the clothing beneath his frame. Like a young mother bird nesting for the very first time, he tilted his hips upward, exposing his slender white neck—entirely unaware that danger was quietly closing in.

An alpha is born with the primitive instincts of a beast—deeply possessive, fiercely driven by desire, and intensely covetous.

The exact instant they discovered a female offering itself at their doorstep, they would inevitably—

Lose sanity.

In the gloom, a pair of dark green eyes snapped open, the nictitating membranes slipping across the eyelids like those of a cold-blooded snake.

He caught the scent of fresh, hot blood flowing enticingly inside the omega’s vessels and on the bitten lips.

A cluster of metallic blue scales materialized along the merman’s neck near his jawline. His dry throat rolled; he could clearly sense the endless waves of heat radiating from deep within the other’s abdominal cavity.

To a gravely wounded Rotting-breed merman, this was a fatal temptation.

Yet he quickly discovered that his entire body was tightly bound by three leather straps, rendered completely immobile like a shark caught and pinned to the deck.

Right at that moment, a pair of warm lips suddenly brushed against his freezing nasal bridge.

His Little Bird kissed him. Failing to comprehend the cause of his sudden agitation, the younger man murmured softly, “What’s wrong? Does the wound hurt? I’ll get off the moment I’m finished.”

Just as Bai Ling prepared to arch his waist and prop himself up, he unexpectedly locked eyes with a pair of dark, turbulent pupils.

The merman was distinctly semi-conscious, his eyeballs swiveling purely on primal instinct as his gaze slowly tracked over him with the look of a predator examining its prey.

Desiring to violate and possess.

Bai Ling’s heart skipped a beat, clearly reading those two intentions within the man’s gaze.

—His aggression will be terrifyingly intense…

Bai Ling’s heart hammered frantically against his ribs, recalling the repeated warnings of the old Woodpecker. The merman right now possessed no conscious sanity; no one could guarantee what manner of maniacal, unhinged act he might execute in the next split second. If Bai Ling dared to recklessly push forward—

He would have to bear the consequences entirely on his own.

Yu Chen continuously drifted between chaos and a scalding fever. He felt as though he had swum straight into the eruption zone of a deep-sea volcano, every single scale dripping with a hot sheen of moisture.

Where’s this heat coming from…?

Where’s his bird? He must take his Little Bird away first.

Suddenly, a spark of light ignited between those green eyes. Relying on his unparalleled willpower, Yu Chen forcefully compelled himself to attain a fraction of a second of clarity.

Immediately following that, a thoroughly chaotic scene mapped itself across his turbulent retina.

His omega was propping himself up on both arms, the sweat dripping from his forehead slid along his exquisite, detached features to meet at his jaw. Trembling precariously with his movements, the droplets fell continuously onto Yu Chen’s abdominal muscles, pooling into an intimate little puddle within his navel.

The rims of the bird’s eyes were deeply flushed.

Yu Chen couldn’t be certain whether this was entirely a physical reaction, or if the younger man had secretly wept behind his back.

Or perhaps it was both.

A person who spent his years piloting mechas consistently maintained a high level of athletic conditioning. The bird’s muscle layer was lean, and the line of his flexed, narrow waist carried a fatal allure when he moved, threatening to melt the very eyeballs of anyone watching.

Yu Chen let out a raspy, gravelly sound from his throat, suppressing a wave of anger: “What do you think you’re doing?”

The bird’s entire frame underwent a violent jolt, lifting his head to stare at him in utter disbelief.

Following that, his Little Bird’s eyelashes trembled slightly. Under his immensely oppressive scrutiny, the young man subconsciously pulled his shoulder blades inward; resembling a raptor returning to its nest, tucking its chilled wing-tips safely inside.

To his eyes, it looked heartbreakingly pitiable.

Bai Ling clenched his palms tightly, forcing himself to maintain his habitual detachment despite being caught red-handed. His breath was scalding, yet his face remained completely expressionless as he stated:

“Exactly what it looks like. I’m taking advantage of a man’s vulnerability to enjoy the nightlife.”

Still putting on a brave front.

A piercing ache shot through Yu Chen’s temples. He closed his eyes, delivering a hoarse command:

“Get off.”

Bai Ling’s body turned rigid. Doubting his own ears, he asked, “What?”

“I said, get off.” Yu Chen let out a rough, volatile breath, yet his gaze uncontrollably wandered across the omega’s frame—from the swaying pearl against his neck, to the small nipples pushing against the fabric of his black cotton tank top, down to the lean, slender waist wrapped in a thin layer of flesh.

Further down lay a bold, audacious engulfment.

Yu Chen’s pupils underwent a turbulent tremor, and he averted his gaze with a frantic restlessness. “I don’t want you to conceive my egg.”

Bai Ling lowered his torso abruptly, his grey eyes turning as cold as frost as he cross-examined him: “Why? Are you out of your mind?”

Pressed down by him, Yu Chen’s nerves tautened to the absolute limit, nearly snapping. His gaze turned profoundly deep: “My energy is limited.”

Perched high above him, Bai Ling adopted the absolute posture of an interrogator confronting a convict: “So?”

The merman stated: “So, I only want to dote on you —my one and only child.”

A perfect answer.

Bai Ling ground his teeth in shared indignation. Reaching back with one hand—click—the leather strap unlocked.

The suppressed beast was on the absolute verge of being unleashed.

He ruthlessly seized the collar of the old man’s hospital gown, pressing nose-to-nose against him. As their tense gazes locked onto one another, his lips trembled as he delivered his command:

“The child is right here. So dote on me.”

---

Author’s Note:

Little Bird: (Playing rogue) (Backing away) The golden pony has run off the track, I’m not playing anymore!

Old Merman: (Aristocratic elegance) (Kidnaps the bird, tucking him under his arm) (Forcefully saddles him onto the golden mount) A good child must naturally ride the entire course. There will be a reward upon reaching the finish line.

Little Bird: ? Reward, what reward? (Believing it to be true) (Gritting his teeth to endure until the finish line) (Rubbing his hands together in anticipation of the prize)

Old Merman: Congratulations, baby. The reward: one more time.

Here it is, here it is! A bit of an unsettling matter cropped up yesterday, but I finally recovered my mood in the middle of the night to code these words (gets beaten.jpg). Happy New Year, everyone!