“Body temperature 37.2, normal.”
“Cerebral cortex in brief dormancy.”
“Pupils show mild light reflex.”
“Knee-jerk response weak—increase the dosage.”
From the moment the omega fell asleep, the doctors began monitoring his vital signs every five minutes. They bustled around the bedside, murmuring quietly among themselves while occasionally probing the strength of his carotid pulse with the most basic methods. Once they reached a conclusion, they scribbled furiously in their notebooks, while the data streamed in real time to the anesthetist for further adjustments.
Physiologically speaking, the omega’s gland should have been throbbing with intense pain, but the drugs had numbed his brain, so he felt nothing for the time being. This was their first attempt at anesthetic administration, however, and the dose was extremely small. The omega could expect only a few hours of calm before the long ordeal of pain set in.
Prolonged anesthesia would turn him into a vegetable, locking his brain in permanent deep sleep. The downsides of intermittent dosing were already rearing their head. Now all the doctors, fully equipped and on high alert, waited for him to wake. They strove to time his return to consciousness down to the minute—and with repeated trials, to the second.
These were people who normally raced through operating room corridors or stood at the operating table. Since arriving at this hospital, they had stepped away from the operating rooms. From that morning onward, they had been utterly idle, confined entirely to the ward.
The large crowd crammed into the space made the room feel oppressively crowded, the atmosphere tinged with an eerie tension. They kept their eyes lowered, minds on their own tasks, not daring to utter a word.
The S-level Alpha reclined against the headboard, eyes half-closed in feigned sleep. The soundly sleeping omega rested on his thigh, the Alpha’s hands cradling his chin at all times to keep pressure off the open wound at the back of his neck. The position was exhausting, and exhaustion showed plainly on the Alpha’s face. In just a few short days, he had wasted away even more than the omega. His brow bones stood out more sharply, his nose bridge seeming even more prominent. Every so often, he cracked his eyes to check if the omega had stirred, then gently stroked the hair from his forehead.
It was a posture of profound tenderness—one that looked utterly out of place on the Alpha.
Yet such gestures were his secret routine. On countless late nights returning home, he would tiptoe into the omega’s room amid the darkness, sidle up to the bed, and tuck the omega’s bare calf back under the covers. The omega had a fresh, handsome face, but his sleeping habits were atrocious: curled into a tight ball one moment, sprawled every which way the next. He never kicked off the blankets but had a knack for hogging them all.
Some nights, when exhaustion weighed heaviest on the Alpha, he would simply lie down beside him, still fully clothed. A single roll from the omega would yank every last bit of bedding away. But if the Alpha activated his wristband to release pheromones, the omega would unconsciously burrow against him, clinging with needy affection, as if he craved the Alpha’s presence.
These were their rare moments of intimacy.
The Alpha’s work was endless and labyrinthine, no matter how relentlessly he tackled it. His sole comfort came during the commute home each evening, when updates from Oak Bay arrived ahead of him: the omega had baked cookies with the child today, stuffing themselves until they slept late; the omega had hunkered down in the study, crafting clay figures with the child; the omega had played with the child all day and turned in early.
If the omega stayed up late, the Alpha could only pass by his door before retreating to his own room to wait.
If the omega turned in early, the Alpha could twist the knob and slip inside to watch him sleep from the bedside.
The omega slept like the dead, impervious to thunder. Little Alpha had inherited the trait perfectly—no difference at all. Even at six years old, he still had those endearing quirks that weren’t true flaws. It was precisely these petty domestic trifles that wove a family together: a place where someone waited, someone longed. They saw each other every day, stayed side by side. Even if the Alpha and omega drifted apart on the surface, mere togetherness held infinite potential. But the world turned capricious, snatching away what it had only just bestowed.
Fortune harbors misfortune within; misfortune harbors fortune within.
The world was ever thus… ever thus cruelly imparting this timeless truth to humankind…
Night had fallen. In the hushed ward, medical personnel padded about now and then; otherwise, silence reigned. To avoid disturbing the omega’s rest, even the heart monitor’s beeps had been muted to their lowest. Yet after three hours and thirty-four minutes of anesthesia, Wen Yan showed signs of stirring. His eyes remained shut, but fine beads of sweat dotted his forehead. The anesthesia was fading; pain would soon drag him back to wakefulness.
Sure enough, he awoke less than five minutes later—an hour ahead of the doctors’ projections.
Liang Shijing carefully straightened up, gazing down to study his expression.
Wen Yan’s brows knitted tight at first, a groan of agony slipping from his lips. Moments later, he was fully awake. The instant his eyes fluttered open, a tear traced down from the corner, his face pallid and drawn.
No further doses could be given. They had to endure eight hours until the anesthesia’s half-life fully elapsed—the ward’s darkest hour.
How would they bear it?
Liang Shijing cleared the room of everyone, Liang Wangyou included.
In the split second before the medical personnel shut the door, they glimpsed him turning Wen Yan over, bundling him in the blanket, and drawing him close. A heartrending whimper rose from beneath the covers. With the door sealed, the room became a no-man’s-land for the next eight hours. No one could disturb this pair of Alpha and omega, bound to each other.
At a certain pitch of physical agony, speech failed; response became impossible. Gradually, even Wen Yan’s sobs grew faint. At first, his body shuddered uncontrollably from the pain, his teeth chattering in a frantic staccato. After an eternity in that state—or so it seemed—he reached back to claw at the gland on his neck, desperate to trade throbbing torment for a sharper sting.
For the first time, Liang Shijing let his guard down, and Wen Yan managed to grab him. Wen Yan’s fingernails immediately snagged chunks of decayed gland tissue. Liang Shijing seized his wrist and pinned his shoulders with both arms, immobilizing him completely. Wen Yan had no choice but to pry open his blurry eyes and strain to make out Liang Shijing’s expression. His lips were a bruised purple, but his eyes remained forever clear and bright. His tear-streaked gaze seemed to beg the alpha: Please, please…
Liang Shijing pressed his lips into a thin line, his throat working against the surge of bitter acid he could barely suppress.
An omega could surrender to the pain, but an alpha could not yield a single inch.
Yet witnessing such suffering in an omega up close, how far could an alpha truly go? He could only avert his eyes from that pleading stare, building his defenses on a foundation of self-deception and deliberate blindness.
“I hate you…” Wen Yan forced the words out one syllable at a time, halting and ragged through clenched teeth.
Hate was still too mild a word. Love was the cruelest weapon of all.
When someone who cherishes love hears words of hate, the speaker finds release in that instant, while the lover is left alone, sifting through the venom for any scrap of lingering hope. The moment hate is spoken, love has already lost.
He lost track of how much time passed before Wen Yan began sobbing again in fits and starts, his hair damp and plastered to his forehead. He still strained desperately to wrench free from Liang Shijing’s arms.
Hate or love—it made no difference. Liang Shijing held him with a thorough, almost cruel indifference.
But only a mere ten minutes had elapsed… Seven hours and fifty minutes remained until the next anesthesia attempt. Slowly, Wen Yan stopped shedding tears. His eyes grew vacant, as if death were closing in…
Alarms blared to life, red lights strobing.
Doctors poured out of conference rooms, offices, and laboratories, all fixated on the upper right corner of the ward door. The oval warning light spun in circles, emitting a harsh glare.
Hu Li led the rush inside, while the rest lingered in the deep, hushed corridor.
“He’s stopped breathing again!” Hu Li shouted in panic. “Hit him with another round of anesthesia to stabilize!”
Liang Shijing was forced to step aside as Wen Yan underwent resuscitation right before his eyes once more. Seven hours and forty-three minutes left now—only seventeen minutes since the anesthesia had worn off, and Wen Yan was already at his limit. His body simply couldn’t take it…
So how had the omega endured the past five years?
Hiding alone in the little cabin after having his gland sewn shut a dozen times—how did he survive each agonizing flare-up? What went through his mind when he learned of his gland degeneration? And later, facing the alpha’s demands for pheromones, how did he bear it time and again, silently unfastening his neck ring?
The alpha believed he had cared for the omega in every conceivable way. But what had he truly given him?
After another massive, ferocious dose of drugs, the omega pulled through by sheer luck. One soft-hearted nurse dabbed at her tears in secret.
The room was an utter disaster. The bedsheet, once neatly tucked, lay balled up from his thrashing; the blanket’s soft stuffing spilled out. The water glass had toppled on the bedside table, droplets still trailing down its side. The omega’s chest rose and fell in rapid gasps, flecks of dark red caked under his right fingernails. He lay thinly amid the chaos, whimpering softly. The alpha stood mute nearby, his neck and chin streaked with blood. His wounds needed tending too, but no one made a move.
“Fill the bathtub with ice,” Hu Li directed the medical personnel, his voice heavy.
When painkillers wore off and anesthesia couldn’t be dosed repeatedly, there was one plain, if marginally effective, alternative: numb the nerves chemically with drugs, or physically with cold. But it was perilously risky. The sudden chill could provoke a violent stress response, and any slip might send the omega into hypothermic shock, requiring yet another rescue. Caregivers had to monitor his temperature vigilantly.
Medical staff filed in with ice buckets, the clattering rush of cubes echoing faintly from the bathroom.
Hu Li turned to Liang Shijing. “Three minutes left on the anesthesia. Get Little Yan up and have him walk in himself.”
Prolonged bed rest stagnated blood flow, harming circulation and the omega’s natural reflexes. Liang Shijing nodded and approached stone-faced. He scratched the omega’s palm. As always, it was exquisitely sensitive; Wen Yan’s eyes rolled blankly.
“Time for a bath,” Liang Shijing murmured. “Can you get up on your own?”
The omega had long lost any desire to eat—nutrient injections kept him going, so he had strength left. He’d been bedridden for days and desperately needed to move like a normal person. At those words, Wen Yan stirred, fingers twitching slowly. Liang Shijing caught them preemptively as Wen Yan levered himself upright bit by bit. Liang Shijing slipped slippers onto his feet, and Wen Yan rose on trembling legs like a rusty wind-up doll. Hand in hand with Liang Shijing, he shuffled toward the bathroom under the watchful eyes of everyone.
Liang Shijing shut the door and began undressing him.
Emaciation was Wen Yan’s most blatant death warrant: legs straight and slender as bamboo stalks, shoulder blades straining against his skin, spine jutting in stark ridges. He was so fragile, yet awareness lingered. His unfocused gaze turned away as he shuffled step by step toward the tub, back to Liang Shijing.
Even with his mind dulled to this degree by the drugs, his subconscious clung to that lie forged by the alpha. Wen Yan perched first on the tub’s edge, steadied himself, then swung in one leg. Ice shifted with a loud clatter. Only after planting his foot did he maneuver the other leg in.
“The water’s hot,” he said tonelessly, head cocked to one side, perched amid the ice blocks.
The alpha stared at him for several seconds, then slowly lifted a hand to cover his eyes…
