Chapter 31: His Omega Part 2

Wei Tingxia set down the glass, his gaze clear and cold, his brows furrowing almost imperceptibly.

Among all who might come, the one Wei Tingxia least wanted to see was this little brother.

“15 minutes from now, I’ll see him in the drawing room.”

…

Wei Tingxia finished washing up and stepped out of the master bedroom just ten minutes later.

He did not head straight to the drawing room but detoured to the corner of the second-floor corridor, stopping at the guest room door and knocking.

The door opened, revealing a woman’s face full of panic and exhaustion—she was the female beta the assistant had mentioned last night.

“Wei Tingxia…”

Upon recognizing the visitor, the woman’s eyes widened abruptly. Her gaze swept rapidly over him in shock and suspicion, as if searching for traces long meticulously erased.

A moment later, she withdrew her gaze, leaving only wariness in her eyes.

“You really are the prince.”

The smile deepened in Wei Tingxia’s eyes: “The real deal.”

The woman instinctively shrank back toward the door: “What do you want?”

“What I want is almost in hand,” Wei Tingxia said flatly. “The question now is, what do you want?”

“…”

The woman fell silent for a full half minute before speaking with difficulty: “I’ve done everything I could, and I gave you what you wanted… Can you let me go?”

“Release you?” Wei Tingxia asked back, his voice betraying no emotion. “What if you spread the news? You know my current situation is… quite delicate.”

There was not the slightest intention of letting her go in his words. The woman’s urgency instantly turned into panic.

“What more do you want from me?!” Her voice suddenly rose sharply, the whites of her eyes threaded with blood vessels as she rasped her question. “I admit, I shouldn’t have threatened you! But before that, before I knew who you were, wasn’t this a good thing? Was it wrong for me to be happy? Was it wrong for me to want to tell the leader?”

Her questions carried intense fear, her ending tones trembling uncontrollably. She was terrified, terrified of becoming an object silenced by this Second Prince, terrified of vanishing soundlessly amid the brutal struggles of imperial power.

“Precisely because you meant no harm,” Wei Tingxia flatly cut off all her panic, “you’re still alive right now.”

The woman blinked, tears silently sliding down before she viciously wiped them away.

“I understand.” She clenched her teeth, her voice carrying a ruthless determination as if she’d staked everything. “I can stay by your side forever. You feed me, guarantee my safety—no harm to my life—and I won’t say a word.”

Since Wei Tingxia was dead set against releasing her, she could only strive to secure a relatively stable prison for herself. This woman had dared to slice open a patient’s belly with a knife at six years old; she knew how to scheme for her own survival.

Watching the ruthless resolve reignite in her eyes, Wei Tingxia nodded in satisfaction. “Very good. What was your name again?”

“Lin Tao.”

…

Five minutes later, Wei Tingxia sat in the parlor, hearing footsteps approaching from the corridor.

“Second Brother!”

The person hadn’t arrived, but his voice did, carrying just the right amount of surprise and intimacy. Wei Shu’s figure then appeared at the door, a warm, jade-like smile on his face as he walked in with light steps.

Accompanying him was a fresh scent of pheromones, carrying the smell of rain-soaked earth and some cool herbal plant, faint and subtle, as if the isolation patch hadn’t fully covered the gland, leading to this leak.

As the youngest child in the imperial family, Wei Shu was known among the three brothers for his quiet temperament and devotion to academics, universally regarded as the most harmless. His pheromones matched his persona—gentle and innocuous, with seemingly zero aggression.

Wei Tingxia lazily stood up. As Wei Shu opened his arms in enthusiastic welcome, he subtly slid back half a step, precisely dodging what seemed like a brotherly embrace, and extended only one hand.

“Where’s your isolation patch?”

Wei Tingxia’s gaze sharply swept over the deliberately exposed, slightly reddened gland at the back of Wei Shu’s neck, his tone laced with mockery. “If you’re not going to apply it properly, might as well cut the damn thing out.”

As his words fell, the room plunged into a momentary silence. The flawless warm smile on Wei Shu’s face suddenly stiffened.

Deep in those eyes that always held gentle smiles, a flash of sinister cold light passed extremely quickly— so fast it almost seemed like an illusion.

Wei Shu casually withdrew his empty arms, pretending the awkwardness had never happened, and naturally grasped Wei Tingxia’s extended hand with his slender fingers.

His fingers were ice-cold, carrying an undeniable, clammy stickiness, like some cold-blooded creature quietly coiling around.

“Second Brother is still so humorous.”

Wei Shu’s voice remained gentle, even carrying a hint of helpless amusement, but the depths of those newly curved eyes held no warmth whatsoever—only bottomless darkness.

“I was just thinking, when meeting family, why be so distant?”

As he spoke, his fingertip extremely lightly, with some evaluative intent, brushed over the back of Wei Tingxia’s hand before releasing it.

Wei Tingxia sensed the touch, his expression unchanged as he coolly withdrew his hand and sat back on the sofa.

That light touch on the back of his hand turned into a clammy, disgusting wet mark. Wei Tingxia could almost sense through it what Wei Shu was thinking.

He said casually, “I’ve thought of many people who might come see me. Didn’t expect you’d be the first.”

At that, Wei Shu lowered his head with a smile, perfectly playing the good little brother. “Second Brother, I’m your blood brother. You’re home—I naturally had to be the first to see you.”

“Happy enough to forget your isolation patch?”

Wei Shu smiled and nodded. “If Second Brother thinks I’m rude, I’ll reapply it now.”

With that, he made to raise his hand.

“Never mind,” Wei Tingxia rolled his eyes, interrupting the motion. “It’s already hard to stomach. Taking it off would only make it worse.”

Faint alpha pheromones wandered through the enclosed parlor. Wei Tingxia felt his body torn in two—the omega instincts screaming danger, while the alpha defenses stirred restlessly.

He impassively shifted his posture, propping his chin with one hand, his gaze like a knife carving into Wei Shu’s smiling eyes.

Wei Shu’s pheromones had low aggression and generally wouldn’t alert or provoke a same-level alpha. But for an omega, they still packed a punch.

Reuniting with his second brother after three years apart, getting overexcited and forgetting to apply the isolation patch properly—perfectly reasonable. And if Second Brother unwittingly caught his pheromones upon meeting and his expression drastically changed, wouldn’t that reveal something?

For example, that Second Brother was actually an omega disguised as an alpha, undeserving of inheritance rights.

Wei Tingxia sneered inwardly and glanced at the time. “We’ve met. If there’s nothing else, you can go.”

“Three years without seeing Second Brother, and you’re so cold to me?” Wei Shu’s tone turned pitiful. “At least tell me where you’ve been all these years. Don’t make me worry forever.”

Wei Tingxia raised a brow. “Wherever I was before, I’m back alive now. I’m still your second brother. Isn’t that enough? Even Father isn’t pursuing it—why do you keep asking?”

“Second Brother is blaming me for talking too much.”

“Not really. I’ve always had this temper. You haven’t seen me in so long; maybe you’ve forgotten.”

Wei Shu clearly had more to say, but Wei Tingxia’s barrage of veiled sarcasm left him unable to continue. He could only force his gentle facade, stand, bid farewell, and leave.

The moment he left, before Wei Tingxia could speak, System 0188 automatically took over the smart butler and cleaned the parlor inside and out.

Wei Tingxia shifted to lie down, propping his calves on the armrest, and drawled his complaint. “So——stinky——”

[I’m disinfecting it!] System 0188 sounded a bit irritable too. [It’ll be odor-free in a moment!]

“You’d better hurry.” Wei Tingxia feigned a weak, frail look. “I feel like I might puke any second.”

Wei Shu had wanted to use his pheromones to induce Wei Tingxia into heat, even provoke something more unseemly. But in reality, after smelling his pheromones, the only unseemly thing Wei Tingxia wanted to do was vomit all over him.

That was the natural reaction. Marked omegas, pregnant omegas, and… none responded positively to strange alpha pheromones.

Wei Shu had considered that Wei Tingxia might be hiding his identity, might be injecting camouflage pheromones. But the one thing he hadn’t imagined was that his brash, unrestrained second brother would allow another alpha to mark him.

So he gained nothing.

System 0188 worried, [What if he spills your identity?]

“If he does, people will just think it’s madness.” Wei Tingxia scoffed. “All his years of pretense wasted in the process.”

Others might not have smelled Wei Tingxia’s pheromones, but they’d all seen the Second Prince from three years ago kick through the outer armor of a top-tier warship.

Such physical prowess could never belong to an omega.

System 0188 fell silent for a moment. [……I still suggest you return to Yan Xinfeng’s side as soon as possible. It’s better for both of you.]

“I know.”

Wei Tingxia stared at the ceiling and murmured to himself, his palm unconsciously pressing near his lower abdomen. He could feel an icy pain piercing his body—a continuous mutation, flesh reshaping only to be severed, a dull ache.

Hormones controlling the body—this uncontrolled vulnerability soured his mood. A shadow flashed in Wei Tingxia’s eyes; he was deeply dissatisfied with his current weakness.

He could have been stronger. It was all Yan Xinfeng’s fault; stabbing him would be going easy.

“How’s the Old Emperor’s health?” he asked System 0188.

[He’s recovering. He can hold on for another five years no problem.]

Enough time for a trip to the border to settle things with Yan Xinfeng and return.

Wei Tingxia nodded, deciding in his heart, a roguish grin finally curling his lips.

“Contact the border forces for me. Get them moving,” Wei Tingxia said with a laugh. “We need to add some proper pressure on the Old Emperor.”

Otherwise, while bedridden, he might forget he had such a war-talented child. What a pity that would be.

Meanwhile, in the remote star systems.

A report, after multiple high-intensity frequency-hopping encryptions and crossing countless star domain barriers, finally arrived like a pigeon through an interstellar storm at the command hub of the Deep Blue Fleet’s flagship, heavily loading into the leader’s light brain.

After Yan Xinfeng read it, he immediately crushed the alloy desk beneath his hand.

The out-of-control light brain flew from his grasp, flipping onto the floor. The screen flickered stubbornly a few times before relighting.

Beside the dense byte analysis, a photo slowly loaded—

Wei Tingxia leaped down from the scout mecha, winds billowing his clothes. On that exquisite omega face, his expression was coldly indifferent, as if long accustomed to mecha piloting—no trace of panic or helplessness.

That was footage from half a month ago. From a training ground on an unnamed border planet.

Analyzing the timeline, Wei Tingxia’s mecha piloting this time was preparation for his escape half a month later—he needed to understand the mecha’s warp settings and average speed.

Yan Xinfeng, fully aware of this, clenched his teeth. The wound at his waist, nearly healed, split open again, staining red.

After several deep breaths, Yan Xinfeng picked up the light brain, his dark eyes deadlocked on the oblivious omega at the photo’s center.

He’d slept with Wei Tingxia for three years—this was Yan Xinfeng’s first time knowing his omega could pilot a mecha.

His omega was hiding so many secrets.