Chapter 32: Border Military District Part 4

The light cycles in the Border Military District differed from those on the Capital Star; day and night alternated slightly faster here. When Wei Tingxia activated the mecha, the sky was still bright. By the time he landed at Deep Blue Base, the distant light had faded.

[Key accepted, verification passed, surveillance fully covered.]

The mecha slid silently into the underground parking bay. The hatch opened, and Wei Tingxia leaped down. The moment his feet touched the ground, a familiar heartbeat struck heavily into his perception across the vast distance.

The detailed map from System 0188 instantly lost meaning. Before Wei Tingxia’s eyes unfolded a vast net woven from instinct and pheromones, clearly guiding the direction—Yan Xinfeng was there, in a position he could sense distinctly.

Alpha.

The long-dormant craving for pheromones took root and sprouted at that moment. The forcibly suppressed desire, like a seed meeting sweet rain, burst forth, growing wildly and entwining every nerve.

Sweat soaked the back of his shirt. Wei Tingxia felt a hidden dull pain in his lower abdomen. He stopped in place, took a deep breath, steadied his nearly collapsing reason, and then raced toward the source drawing him, driven by the most primal instinct, leaving the parking bay behind.

His powerful physique allowed him to climb the vertical metal framework as if on flat ground, straight to the third partition level. On the straight-line map projected by System 0188, the light spot representing Yan Xinfeng rapidly closed in.

And even more coincidentally, Yan Xinfeng was alone at the moment.

[Distance closing: 60 meters, 50 meters, 20 meters…]

…

Yan Xinfeng felt somewhat restless.

In the empty maintenance room, only the low hum of mechanical arms operating filled the air. He removed his control glasses and looked up at the preset maintenance program executing methodically.

Cold mechanical arms were disassembling and adjusting the battered mecha body in the center of the maintenance room. The dark, tough shell was covered in deep scratches and impact dents, patches of oil stains like congealed scars blanketing the metal surface.

Yan Xinfeng frowned, feeling his accelerating heartbeat. The bite mark behind his gland throbbed faintly with each beat, and a surging, restless heat craving slowly awakened.

He had not felt this way since Wei Tingxia left.

What was going on? Gland malfunction?

Yan Xinfeng stood from the ground, wiping the oil from his arms with a rag in disgust while puzzledly pressing the gland behind the barrier patch. The strange burning and pulsing sensation lingered.

Just as he focused on sensing the anomaly in his gland, two crisp electronic beeps suddenly rang out in the deathly silent maintenance room.

Beep… drop.

Password correct, facial recognition passed. The heavy alloy door lock sprang open with a click.

A familiar scent, painful enough to make old wounds ache, drifted in through the opening gap, instantly shattering the cold machine oil smell in the room. What followed was a pitch-black, scorching figure bursting in.

The person moved fast, bringing a scalding, sweet aroma, crashing heavily into Yan Xinfeng’s unprepared arms. The alloy door locked shut behind them, and intense, cloying omega pheromones erupted like a tidal wave from the gland at the back of that person’s neck.

In less than half a second, Yan Xinfeng’s instincts led him to recognize who it was.

Wei Tingxia.

Hadn’t he run off? Why had he come back?

His heartbeat thundered in his ears like war drums. Yan Xinfeng, bewildered, sank into a vortex of desire born from surging affection.

He reflexively tightened his arms, letting instinct guide his movements, hugging the approaching person even closer. With a press and lift of his arms, he pulled that person onto his waist, burying his nose deeply into the side of their neck and inhaling forcefully.

The bite mark on the back of his neck hurt even more, but what bewildered his mind more was the disbelief of loss and recovery.

“What did you come back for?”

Yan Xinfeng forced a thread of clarity and asked, “Didn’t you run? Hm? What did you come back for?”

Drunk on the pheromones, he could not articulate properly. He just nibbled at the omega’s neck while repeatedly asking the same question, his voice growing lower until it sounded like a beast’s threatening growl deep in his throat.

Wei Tingxia grew annoyed at the questions.

Yan Xinfeng was merely frantic from the pheromones, but it felt like a piece had been carved out of Wei Tingxia’s body. The void screamed wildly, starving him to dizziness; he did not want to wait another second.

“You mind why I came back!”

He mumbled indistinctly, and without thinking, tilted his head and bit down hard on the taut skin at the back of Yan Xinfeng’s neck. He missed the gland, but it was extremely close to that fatal spot. This bite was like a spark hitting an oil barrel, instantly igniting and exploding the already boiling flames in Yan Xinfeng.

Few omegas would directly touch an alpha’s gland—it was seen as disrespectful—but Yan Xinfeng was used to being bitten. The pain mixed with a strange numbing itch, not sparking rage but rather turning a key in a deeper lock.

His muscles tensed like iron in an instant, the arms around Wei Tingxia’s waist clamping with force nearly enough to snap him.

A suppressed grunt burst from deep in Yan Xinfeng’s chest, carrying a bloody tang and utterly ignited frenzy.

“Wei! Ting! Xia!”

He ground the three words out through clenched teeth, each syllable tempered in the fire of losing control.

But his response was Wei Tingxia’s even more reckless actions.

The omega clung like a drowning man to the only driftwood, hands gripping Yan Xinfeng’s shoulder and back clothing tightly, nails digging deep into flesh through the fabric. No longer satisfied with the faint comfort from that shallow bite, he needed more.

“Shut up and…”

Wei Tingxia’s voice trembled; rather than a command, it was more like a whimper on the verge of collapse.

“Mark me! Hurry…”

He recklessly offered his vulnerable nape gland to Yan Xinfeng’s mouth, hoping for more soothing. In the sealed maintenance room, the concentration of alpha pheromones had already reached a somewhat stifling level, yet Wei Tingxia was still not satisfied.

He had never been good-tempered. He might soften his voice for a bit of coquetry, but now nothing felt right all over his body, so irritability took over.

Seeing that Yan Xinfeng showed no further action, Wei Tingxia unhesitatingly cursed, “Are you impotent? If you can’t do it, then let…”

Before he finished speaking, a large hand suddenly pressed down on the back of his head, and Yan Xinfeng kissed him fiercely.

As their lips and tongues intertwined, the heat throughout his body eased for a moment. Wei Tingxia softened his body in satisfaction and rubbed against him, seeking more. However, Yan Xinfeng abruptly paused during the deepening kiss and asked incredulously, “You went to another alpha?”

Once artificial synthetic pheromones entered the body, they would self-adjust according to the host’s constitution, having long shed the obvious chemical scent from when they left the factory. Yan Xinfeng had not detected anything amiss at first.

At those words, Wei Tingxia narrowed his eyes.

When he had left the Border Military District, his face had still been pale, but after tangling with Yan Xinfeng for just a few minutes, a seductive flush appeared on Wei Tingxia’s face. Moreover, their kiss had been so intense that even the corner of his lips was rubbed a faint pink.

Soft strands of hair brushed over his eye corner. Wei Tingxia ignored Yan Xinfeng’s murderous gaze and continued rubbing against the side of his neck, kissing and tentatively nibbling.

“Yeah,” he admitted leisurely after the kiss, “So what?”

So what? He still dared to ask so what?

Yan Xinfeng felt split in two—one half about to die of anger, the other half about to burn to death. Seeing Wei Tingxia’s provocative look that said whether he was coming or not, Yan Xinfeng stopped hesitating. He grabbed the man’s waist and threw him into the mecha’s inner cabin.

The world spun. Wei Tingxia was wedged into the narrow space inside the mecha. He had just half-propped himself up on his arms when Yan Xinfeng, following close behind, pressed heavily on his chest and pinned him back down.

“You only have one alpha,” Yan Xinfeng declared slowly. The flickering lights inside the mecha danced at his open collar, outlining the contours of his firm muscles. “After being bitten by me, you want a second one? Dream on.”

There was no such good thing in the world.

Fingers slid downward. Wei Tingxia let out a muffled grunt, got what he wished for, and happily welcomed it.

…

When the passion finally dissipated, the air purification in the maintenance room was turned to maximum. Wei Tingxia was helped to sit up and lazily sprawled over the naked back of the man in front of him, his fingertips poking idly at the scabbed bite mark on Yan Xinfeng’s gland.

Yan Xinfeng let him poke. With the tide of lust receded and reason returned, he finally sobered completely and realized he had fallen into a trap.

He said in a low voice, “So… you didn’t go to another alpha.”

Wei Tingxia was still lying there. At those words, he only half-lifted his eyelids and retorted, “Do I look like a masochist to you?”

After a lifetime marking, if an omega tried to cover the original mark with another alpha’s pheromones, the resulting agony was no different from suicidal torture.

Yan Xinfeng did not think so, but the doubts in his heart had not fully dissipated. He said slowly, “I don’t know.”

He had never truly understood his own omega. He once thought he did, only to realize later that he knew nothing.

Wei Tingxia heard the faint bewilderment deep in his words. After thinking for a moment, he slowly straightened up. His gaze slid downward and finally settled on the ferocious scar on Yan Xinfeng’s left waist and abdomen.

The wound there had already healed, but the scar had not faded and probably never would return to smooth skin.

Wei Tingxia reached out to touch it, but Yan Xinfeng grabbed his wrist in return. Raising his eyes, he met a pair of dark, sunken eyes.

“Xiao Xia,” Yan Xinfeng called his name, “Wei Tingxia.”

Since he would not let him touch the wound, Wei Tingxia relaxed his strength accordingly and obediently waited for Yan Xinfeng to speak.

However, after calling his name, Yan Xinfeng fell silent for a long time.

Just as Wei Tingxia was starting to lose patience, Yan Xinfeng seemed to snap back and said word by word, “I always thought it was a coincidence before, but later I felt it wasn’t… Baby, how do you have the same name as the Empire’s Second Prince?”

This guess had taken root in Yan Xinfeng’s mind on the second day of Wei Tingxia’s disappearance.

Three years ago, the Empire’s Second Prince mysteriously vanished on the eve of his coming-of-age ceremony; immediately after, a filthy, panicked omega fleeing for his life appeared outside Deep Blue Base.

Three years later, Yan Xinfeng’s bonded omega stabbed him and vanished into thin air; almost simultaneously, the Second Prince who had gone silent reappeared on Capital Star, showing up in his father’s Imperial Palace.

The clues overlapped so seamlessly that Yan Xinfeng could not help but connect them.

Heavens, what kind of person had he slept with?