Sorry, too many wicked thoughts; I can’t shock him anymore.

He closed his eyes, feeling the test tube of concentrated extract wreaking havoc in his body, igniting raging fires that scorched his internal organs.

In a daze, he felt the merman’s powerful arms tighten around him. He was anxiously lifted from the water, dried with towels, and wrapped in a thick blanket.

Along the way, dim and bright lights filtered through his thin eyelids.

The merman strode quickly. From time to time, his fingers smoothed Bai Ling’s hair, and he couldn’t help but lean down to kiss his temple.

He was placed on something soft. His heels and calves pressed against thick, dense fur. He buried his face deep into it, and inhaled the decadent, warm fragrance that always clung to the merman’s clothes.

Strangely, at this moment, he felt both pleasure and pain, as if he had rediscovered that secret, cozy feeling of being full.

The little robot’s voice spoke calmly: “Master, we must induce vomiting. Otherwise, the high-concentration pheromones will destroy his developing gland functions.”

The merman held him by the waist. One hand undid his buttons, patiently stripping away his soaked clothes. He was forced, like a featherless fledgling, to hide against the merman’s burning chest.

It was as if he were hiding under the hot wings of a parent bird, waiting to be fed.

A hand with rough knuckles touched his trembling lips. A finger bone pushed in forcefully until his teeth were pried open.

Two lean, long fingers sank into his soft throat. The callouses on the finger pads rubbed against his tongue, reaching deep into his throat before pressing down—

“Ugh…!”

His constricted throat suddenly spasmed, catching the merman’s finger in a bite.

He seemed to hear the old bastard let out a pained, labored breath before suppressing himself again.

He wanted to mock the man.

But immediately after, his stomach churned into a knot. A surge of intense sourness flooded up his esophagus, forcing tears into his eyes.

“Bai Ling… don’t hold it back. Throw it all up.”

It was the merman’s worried voice.

Long fingers gently wiped away the moisture at the corners of his eyes, tenderly smoothing the damp little feathers in his hair.

The vomiting was agonizing. His teeth pressed against the merman’s knuckles, and he bit down on the callouses of those finger pads in a fit of aggrieved venting.

“You’re like a teething puppy.”

Nauseous saliva overflowed from the gaps in his teeth, leaking down the merman’s wrist and soaking the stiff fabric of his cuff. The man handled it with indifference, showing no sign of disgust.

“Ngh…”

A large palm anxiously stroked Bai Ling’s tense back. Like someone caring for a sick, pitiful child, the merman pulled him onto his lap, using his knee to support Bai Ling’s abdomen while quickly and gently patting his back. His movements were meticulous and full of warmth.

But it wasn’t enough…

What he wanted had long since surpassed this.

He gasped for breath, unconsciously rubbing his one remaining calf against the animal fur as his toes curled in a spasm.

The concentrated extract surged toward his limbs and bones along with his heartbeat. In his clouded consciousness, he had the illusion that his abdominal cavity was about to catch fire. The intense burning made him instinctively reach out with his claws.

The sharp fingertips of the raptor suddenly gripped tight and he heard a muffled groan; his long, slender fingers were sinking into the muscles of the merman’s chest.

He buried his head there, pressing his cheek against it. It feels so comfortable…

The claws of the sub-adult bird spasmed and tore through the shirt. The force of his fingers left a chaotic mess of scratches on the chest. Every time his sweat-soaked finger pads brushed past, they elicited a wave of hot, stinging pain for the merman.

“Do you take me for a pigeon…”

Yu Chen whispered to himself, letting the boy claw at his chest.

The AI quickly read the real-time values: “Master, the hormone levels I’m monitoring are still fluctuating wildly. The effect of inducing vomiting is limited; he has already absorbed part of the drug. We must now adopt more powerful intervention measures.”

To carry out more detailed treatment, the AI took a drop of blood with a needle and analyzed Bai Ling’s condition on the spot.

A moment later, the AI spoke in surprise: “This is bad. His situation is unique. I’m afraid we cannot use artificial drugs to force a withdrawal.”

Yu Chen used a towel dipped in water to bit by bit wipe the sweat from Bai Ling’s neck. Hearing this, he turned his cold, emotionless eyes and commanded:

“What kind of unique situation? Explain in detail.”

“His omega pheromone levels are extremely low. He has symptoms of [Pseudo-heat].”

The medical community defined pseudo-heat as a chronic condition characterized by a lack of hormone secretion.

Because the pheromone concentration of an immature omega was insufficient to trigger a full heat, the omega became like a kettle of water to which a boiling inhibitor had been added—it could never truly boil.

One never knew when the temperature would suddenly soar, becoming agonizingly hot, or when it would abruptly end, falling from the peak of desire into a valley of icy thorns.

It was uncontrollable and completely irregular.

It might stab you in the back while you were working hard during the day, or break into your dreams at night, soaking your sheets and forcing you to wake up in shame and cold sweat.

Over and over, it would accompany one for a lifetime. It was enough to drive even a sane omega to a mental breakdown.

“Pseudo-heat is very difficult to cure completely. Long-term conservative treatment can only be carried out through two means: supplementing with artificial alpha pheromones or stably stimulating the secretion of omega pheromones.”

However, all medicine has its side effects. Artificial alpha pheromones carry the risk of liver damage; once the duration of use exceeds ten years, the probability of organ failure increases annually. Therefore, endocrine experts suggested that it is best to use natural alpha pheromones to stabilize the condition.

After a rigorous analysis, the AI said: “If this is allowed to continue, my calculations show that the failure rate of his differentiation in the next six months is as high as 98%. Therefore, it would be best if you…”

The AI stole a glance at the electric shackle around its master’s ankle.

This thing had been flashing every now and then just a moment ago. But when the mechanical little bird bonelessly burrowed into its master’s arms, curling into a ball while hugging its own knee, Master’s shackle had already stopped working.

Shackle: Sorry, too many wicked thoughts; I can’t shock him anymore.

Yu Chen could feel the slender body huddled in his arms beginning to tremble. Warm breath puffed against the side of his neck, and a sour, feverish fragrance was completely triggered by the concentrated extract.

He also gradually became agitated, standing on the precarious edge of losing his restraint. He impatiently asked: “What is the best course of action?”

The AI offered a sincere suggestion: “It would be best to give him a mark.”

The principle of a temporary mark is to ingest a large amount of high-concentration pheromones at once.

Generally, an alpha will use their teeth to scratch the soft nape of an omega’s neck, achieving their goal in a simple and brutal way. Whether the teeth marks left behind will embarrass the omega, whether the wound will become infected, or whether it will affect the development of the spinal nerves are not within the alpha’s consideration.

Yu Chen has always disapproved of this approach of completely shifting the consequences onto omegas.

Considering the unique characteristics of the differentiation period, he’d make some modifications to the procedures.

The air grew thick and heavy. He turned his unfocused, forest-green eyes, tightened his strong arms, and held the restless omega firmly in his embrace.

“Whole milk…” In his hazy consciousness, Bai Ling touched the strong, hot body, murmured, and clung tightly to Yu Chen’s shoulders, rubbing him dry, hot lips against his soft, beautiful hair.

Yu Chen’s long fingers stroked Bai Ling’s tender nape glands, lingered there for a moment, then cradled Bai Ling’s head against his own neck.

He turned to the AI ​​and ordered in a deep voice, “Go to the top shelf of the cabinet in the study and find a box with a bite stopper that fits my jaw size. Bring it here.”

Author’s note: Thank you to all my sponsors for subscribing!!! Love you all! (Give each of you a little bird dumpling) (M1zushi: this is the first VIP chapter)

Romain Gary’s Promise at Dawn is an autobiography by the French author, reminiscing about his mother.

This complex about birds is quite common; it can be described as Freudian repetition of childhood compulsive memories, or the Oedipus complex in Lacanian psychoanalysis. Although called “mother,” the “mother” in psychoanalysis does not actually refer to human gender, but rather to a sensual tendency, which can represent inclusive, selfless, and downward-dedicating love.

Furthermore, to those of you who were wondering why the merman was being smeared and called a “demon,” I’m just saying, is it possible that his controlling nature beneath his gentle exterior is actually quite terrifying? Haha.

M1zushi: the full book’s quote:

“You mustn’t tell her, Monsieur Romain. It just got me in the end. Course she’s your mother, but then the way she speaks about you, as if there had never been anyone like you . . . I just couldn’t help it. I just had to find out. Mother or no mother, there will never be another woman to love you the way she does. That’s God’s honest truth.”

It was. But I didn’t know it then. It was only after my fortieth winter that I began to understand. It is wrong to have been loved so much so young, so early. At the dawn of life, you thus acquire a bad habit, the worst habit there is: the habit of being loved. You can’t get rid of it. You believe that you have it in you, that you have it in you to be loved, that it is your due, that it will always be there around you, that it can always be found again, that the world owes it to you, and you keep looking, thirsting, summoning, until you find yourself on the beach at Big Sur, with only your brother the ocean, and his tortured tumult, with only your brother the ocean able to understand your heart. In your mother’s love, life makes you a promise at the dawn of life that it will never keep. You have known something that you will never know again. You will go hungry to the end of your days. Leftovers, cold tidbits, that’s what you will find in front of you at each new feast. After that first encounter so early in the dawn, each time a woman takes you in her arms and presses you to her heart and murmurs sweet words into your ear, you will always do your best to forget and to believe, but you will always know better. You will always crawl back to your mother’s grave and howl like a lost dog. Never again, never again, never again. Lovely arms embrace your neck, gentle lips whisper sweetly into your ear, and in those eyes you will catch glimpses of beauty now and then, but it’s too late, too little, you know where all the beauty lies, and from this first and final knowledge not even the sweetest breast can bribe you away. You have long since found the spring and you have drunk it dry. You will walk through the desert from mirage to mirage, and your thirst will remain such that you will become a drunkard, but each sweet gulp will only rekindle your longing for the one and only source. Wherever you go, you carry within you the poison of comparisons, and you spend your days waiting for something you have already had and will never have again.

I am not saying that mothers should be prevented from loving their young. I am only saying that they should have someone else to love as well. If my mother had had a husband or a lover I would not have spent my days dying of thirst beside so many fountains.

Author likes to use books and paintings as inspiration for the worldbuilding. Btw they also leave tons of foreshadowing, I’m curious to see if someone has already seen one 🙂