The rain was pouring from the sky, and the speeding Maybach was like a blade cutting through the curtain of rain.
Qi Han leaned back in his seat, his bloodstained arm resting over his eyes, the rain pouring in through the half-opened window, wetting the hair on his forehead and the wound on his shoulder.
The proud son of heaven, who had always been calm and strict, was like a wretched half-drowned dog at this moment.
“How much longer?” His voice was hoarse as if he had swallowed sand.
“Ten minutes.” The driver replied with trepidation.
“Drive as fast as you can.”
The half-hour drive was compressed into twenty minutes in the pouring rain.
When Qi Han arrived at the dilapidated building again, the heavy rain had turned the dust into thin mud, and the dark brown dirt ran down the walls. He dared not think how long Fu Ge had been lying naked in such a place.
He rushed in as fast as he could, bypassing the bodyguards, and pushed his way in just to see Uncle Gu pick up the unconscious Fu Ge. The young Beta’s eyes were tightly closed, one arm hanging down limply.
“Call an ambulance!” Qi Han ordered sharply, running towards Fu Ge frantically, cradling him in his arms like a dying puppy.
“Xiao, Xiao Ge, it’s okay… It’s okay, I’m here…”
His heart felt as if a knife was twisted in it; his arms holding Fu Ge didn’t dare to use any strength. He clumsily wiped the dirt and tears from Fu Ge’s face, but the blood on his hands kept staining Fu Ge’s face, smearing more and more, staining his hair fishy red.
Ding…
Fu Ge’s other hand dropped as well and something fell to the ground with a crisp sound. Qi Han stiffened and shifted his gaze down.
With just one glance, he was stunned.
In Fu Ge’s palm that had been slashed by a glass shard, was a navy blue ribbon wet with blood, and two diamond rings were all stained crimson.
When he was tortured to death by the twenty-three-year-old Qi Han, the seventeen-year-old Mr. Bear Cub was his only comfort.
But comfort couldn’t save anyone, it only added to his humiliation and hatred.
“I’m sorry, Xiao Ge, I was wrong… I know everything…”
His tears streamed down his chin and onto Fu Ge’s face, a broken, low, choking sob caught in his throat.
When the unconscious young Beta heard his voice, his whole body trembled. With his eyes closed, he cried and begged incoherently.
Qi Han leaned closer to listen, “What?”
“Don’t do it… I’m really scared…”
Qi Han’s voice trembled, “I won’t do it, don’t be afraid, I won’t do it…”
Fu Ge looked like he didn’t believe it, shaking his head hard, tears slipping down from his tightly closed eyes, “Ah Han… Help me, please help me… Why… give me to someone else…”
The few words were like a crossblade arrow plunging into his chest and cutting his heart into four pieces of meat.
Qi Han opened his eyes in a daze, knowing that this was the same plea for help that Fu Ge couldn’t shout out the night he was dragged into the alley five years ago.
Because of his malicious refusal to explain, Fu Ge had always thought that his offer of closure was to give him over to someone else as a plaything.
That was why he was so determined to cut his neck. Because there was no way for him to save himself other than death.
I’m sorry… I made a mistake…
The pupils of Qi Han’s eyes quivered and his fingernails stuck deep into his palms, the pain of regret overwhelming him.
Fu Ge was taken to the hospital for resuscitation.
The good thing was that the bloody injuries only looked scary, but in reality, apart from the damage to his head caused by being hit by a motorcycle, only the palm of his right hand was covered in cuts from the glass shard, and the rest was Qi Han’s blood.
But until the third day of his transfer to the general ward, he still had a high fever and didn’t wake up.
In the consultation room, the doctor took a few x-rays, pointed to the place on Fu Ge’s lower abdomen, and said to Qi Han, “The patient’s inner cavity is inflamed, that’s why he has a fever. Are you his Alpha?”
Qi Han hesitated for two seconds before nodding. He didn’t know if he could still be considered Fu Ge’s partner after five years of separation.
“Then may I ask the doctor, is the inflammation due to the cold or to something else?” He remembered that he hadn’t entered Fu Ge there.
“Ah, don’t worry, it has nothing to do with your sex life. He only has some slight redness and swelling in his rear. This is the sequelae from the operation to remove the mark.”
When the words were said, Qi Han stood up abruptly, “What?”
“Removing the mark…” Fear flashed in his eyes, and a fake smile of disbelief appeared on his face, “Did you make a mistake? Or did you get the wrong medical records? He is a Beta and cannot be marked.”
“You don’t know?” The doctor looked at him incredulously, “Are you the patient’s partner or not? Or has he had other Alphas before you?”
“I am, but he’s a Beta and Betas can’t be marked.” Qi Han opened the medical records in a panic, flipped to the page on gender and said excitedly, “See, it’s clearly written here that my lover is a Beta!”
“Ha.” The doctor rolled his eyes speechlessly.
“Haven’t you taken a physical hygiene class in junior school? Beta can also be marked, as long as you enter his atrophied inner cavity multiple times and leave pheromones there. It’s just that the probability of marking is very low and extremely difficult, and the Beta will be in a lot of pain in the process—”
The doctor glanced at him as he said, “Few Alphas are willing to treat their Beta partners like this.”
Qi Han grabbed his hair and looked around blankly.
Fu Ge was marked by him…
When?
He had entered Fu Ge there a total of two times.
The first time was when he had a sudden rut period, when their relationship was perfect, and the process was painful and sweet. But after learning that Fu Ge had betrayed him, Qi Han told him that it was a scam he deliberately designed.
The second time, during the half month of Fu Ge’s captivity, Qi Han was so emotionally out of control that he didn’t even know what he had done, and when he came to his senses again, the little Beta was dying.
So which time was Fu Ge marked?
And how did he get through the years after he was marked…
Qi Han’s body stiffened and his dry lips twitched as he asked with the last shred of hope, “Does the mark mean a temporary mark, or…”
“A lifetime mark.”
The last glimmer of hope was also gone.
He dropped back in his chair, his chest heaving violently as if there was one last breath of air left in his body.
“Will Beta be in estrus after the lifetime mark?”
The doctor said, “Yes, estrus is just the most basic response.”
Qi Han nodded woodenly, “So when he is in estrus, does he have to take inhibitors like an Omega? Won’t the inhibitors fail over time?…”
“They won’t fail.”
Qi Han sighed in relief, and the next second he heard the doctor say, “They’re useless at all. Betas don’t have pheromones or glands, inhibitors don’t do anything for them, they can only rely on the comfort of their partners.”
The last breath exploded in his head.
Qi Han’s neck stiffened and cramped, and his whole body was as cold as if he had plummeted into an ice cellar.
“If… I mean if he can’t use inhibitors and he doesn’t have a partner… Then, then how is he going to get through the once-a-month estrus?…”
The doctor glanced at the picture of the young Beta in the medical records and asked, “What do you think?”
“Just… nothing can be done at all?…”
“That’s how Betas are.”
The evolution of species in the past thousand years had given Beta a body mechanism without pheromones and estrus, making it impossible for them to be marked and completely possessed. This was the source of distress of countless Beta partners.
Qi Han had been chagrined and annoyed many times by his inability to mark Fu Ge, and Fu Ge had always regretted that he was not an Omega and could not leave his own exclusive smell on his lover.
It was not until today that Qi Han realised that they had had a chance.
It might have been during that sudden rut period.
He had tricked Fu Ge into going on a trip and hid in his room to endure it, but because the trip was cancelled due to a rainstorm, Fu Ge came back early, saw him in excruciating pain and was so distraught that immediately rushed to him to comfort him.
It was a difficult time for both boys. They were parched, cracked and in severe pain.
They snuggled up to each other and cried for a long time, their tears silent. Fu Ge cried because he was sorry for Qi Han, and Qi Han cried because he was sorry for Fu Ge.
It was a difficult but sweet experience, and perhaps God had really taken pity on them and quietly handed out a lifetime mark with a probability of success of only a few tenths of a percent.
But Qi Han didn’t cherish it.
The doctor said that Betas didn’t know themselves when they were marked because they were not born with the experience in their genes to deal with such situations.
Therefore, Fu Ge had to be confused for a long time trying to figure out what was wrong with his body, and then his fear of unknown “strange disease” would turn into joy.
Qi Han remembered that half a month before the wedding, Fu Ge was always giggling for no reason, the colours coming from under his brush grew brighter and cuter, and his whole body seemed to be enveloped in a pink bubble of happiness.
But whenever Qi Han asked, he would only shake his head mysteriously, and when he was pestered too much, he would squeeze the brush and draw a line on Qi Han’s face, saying softly, “Have to keep it a secret first, ah. But on the wedding day, maybe I can give you a surprise.”
But things changed and the surprise was never given.
His lover became unrecognisable on their happiest day, and Fu Ge never got to tell him he had a lifetime mark.
Had it not been for this reunion, Qi Han might never have known that he had once completely possessed that boy.
But once the mark had been removed, it could never be formed again, and he had lost the only chance he had ever had.
Everything around him was full of noise. It was as if the whole hospital turned into an oven, and the corridor beneath his feet was the hottest shelf.
Qi Han was skewered through his chest and strung to hang on that shelf, like a piece of bacon.
Endless remorse scorched him. His heart was chopped to pieces, then soaked in salt water to heal, and chopped again, and so on and so forth, with no end in sight.
The doctors and nurses who came and went were in a hurry, and the patients to be resuscitated whizzed past him, and Qi Han walked among them like a well-preserved corpse, with only the many open wounds to show that he was still alive.
No matter what the reason was or what misunderstanding there was, what he had done was clearly there.
It was impossible for the damage to Fu Ge to stop abruptly on the fourteenth day. The pain and the shadows would stay with him for the next five years or even the rest of his life, not letting him go. Nor would Qi Han be let go.
The Alpha felt like he was about to lose his breath.
He dragged himself into the bathroom, hid in the farthest cubicle and fell to his knees as his legs gave out.
The doctor’s words repeatedly echoed his ears, but he didn’t dare to connect those words into sentences in his mind.
“What’s rather odd is that the examination shows the patient was marked five years ago, but it wasn’t until three years ago that he made an appointment for surgery to have the mark removed. Were you still with him for the first two years?”
“And the institution he chose was very irregular, which is why such serious sequelae are left. If it is not handled well, there will be problems in future life. How can a young man joke with his body like this?”
An outsider could tear his muscles and break his bones with a casual question.
Why did it take two years to do it? Why not choose a regular hospital? Qi Han knew it now.
It wasn’t because Fu Ge’s partner was still around, it wasn’t that he was joking with his body, and it wasn’t that he was still attached to the few drops of pheromones that the Alpha had left in his body.
Fu Ge just didn’t have money.
He couldn’t even afford to buy French fries when they reunited, so how could he possibly afford the expensive surgery?
No one knew what he’d been through these past five years, probably just hiding in some dark little corner, letting the raging fever of estrus assault his body over and over again.
The inhibitors didn’t work, his partner wasn’t around… He had given up half of his life to help relieve Qi Han’s rut. But when it was his turn, he couldn’t get a single word of affection, no matter how much he cried and begged.
It took two years for the mark to be removed, but countless sequelae followed.
His reactions were dulled, his emotions were impaired, and his already weak perception of the outside world was slowly being lost.
Fu Ge wasn’t born to love pain. He had just had too many unwanted sexual experiences and was no longer able to get pleasure from normal intercourse.
But just three days ago, Qi Han had used the word “lewd” to describe him. He called Fu Ge, who had lost his memory, wagging his tail and begging for mercy, “sexy”.
The door of the cubicle shook with a crash.
The desperate Alpha held onto the water tank with one hand and covered his face with the other. A few seconds later, suppressed sobs echoed through the bathroom, warm liquid trickling through Qi Han’s fingers.
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