Chapter 43
The steamed egg custard was smooth and delicate, each mouthful a comforting warmth.
Having experienced days of not only monotonous but also scarce food, Shi Nuo always ate with focused appreciation.
A bowl of egg custard and a small bowl of deep-sea fish roe from another planet made a nutritious breakfast.
Hugh Elvis had the same breakfast, his expression languid, his interest in the food minimal, but he still ate with Shi Nuo.
After finishing his meal, Shi Nuo looked up at Hugh expectantly. “Would you like meat and mushroom soup for lunch?”
He had gathered quite a few snow mushrooms yesterday, which he had stored in a preservation container, but they had returned too late to cook them, and dinner had been instant noodles.
“Mm,” Hugh nodded. He was picky about food but never contradicted Shi Nuo’s suggestions.
Shi Nuo gathered their bowls and took them to the kitchen. The meat slices Hugh had brought back from the black market were high quality, and only a small portion remained. It would be good for lunch today, before it spoiled in the refrigerator.
Now that they had plenty of rice, he didn’t have to ration it, and he could have steamed rice for lunch.
As he washed the dishes, he planned the rest of the meal. They were out of fresh vegetables, and he didn’t want dried wild vegetables, having eaten too many before. He still had plenty of the better quality dried vegetables Hugh had brought back. He would choose one and stir-fry it. And there was still plenty of meat in the freezer.
Hugh liked meat. He could stew some with potatoes and carrots.
A soup, a stew, and a stir-fried vegetable dish would be enough for the two of them.
After washing the dishes, Shi Nuo opened the pantry and took out a bag of dried bok choy, placing it in a bowl of hot water to rehydrate.
He didn’t need to take the meat out of the freezer yet. He would thaw it in the quick-thaw device half an hour before cooking.
He cut up a few of the red-skinned potatoes he had dug up earlier and soaked them in water, then prepared the carrots.
As he finished his preparations, he looked up and met Hugh’s gaze, the Alpha leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed.
Shi Nuo froze, feeling self-conscious under the Alpha’s scrutiny, unable to decipher his somewhat unreadable expression.
“M-Mr. Elvis, is something wrong?” he stammered.
There it was again.
Hugh Elvis frowned slightly. He had noticed that Shi Nuo was always nervous and hesitant around him, always using formal address, as if afraid.
But with Long Xu, the Omega showed no fear or hesitation, his words and smiles more open and relaxed.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked directly, his gaze unwavering, waiting for an answer.
Shi Nuo froze. It was true, and he couldn’t deny it. But having his deepest fear exposed like this made him even more uncomfortable and embarrassed.
He was naturally shy, and having this powerful Alpha, the type he instinctively feared, confront him so directly, made him want to disappear. He averted his gaze, unable to answer.
The answer was obvious.
Hugh Elvis didn’t understand. He had never been rough with Shi Nuo, always careful to control his strength, and yet the Omega was afraid of him.
He suddenly remembered that Shi Nuo had been timid from their very first meeting, even though they had never met before, and he had never harmed him.
“Why?” he asked, puzzled.
For Shi Nuo, shy and introverted, his usual response to discomfort was to withdraw, to hide. Having to explain his fear, to expose his vulnerability, felt like torture.
And the one questioning him was the Alpha he longed to trust and depend on.
“I-I don’t know,” Shi Nuo stammered.
Seeing the tears welling up in his mate’s eyes, Hugh Elvis paused. He hadn’t meant to make him cry.
The familiar, cold lotus scent enveloped him, and a moment later, Shi Nuo was pulled into a warm, strong embrace.
A large hand gently pressed his head against the Alpha’s chest.
Tears escaped his eyes, dampening Hugh’s shirt.
Hugh, still holding him close, said softly, “It’s alright. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
Knowing the Alpha meant what he said, Shi Nuo finally stopped crying.
His hair was gently kissed, the embrace tightening, the comfort effective.
The white-haired man, his patience restored, carried Shi Nuo to the living room and sat down on the sofa, pulling the Omega onto his lap. He kissed him softly, a slow, lingering kiss that Shi Nuo enjoyed.
“Don’t call me Mr. Elvis anymore,” he said when the kiss ended, Shi Nuo still catching his breath.
Tears blurred Shi Nuo’s vision, and he blinked, trying to clear his eyes. Before he could wipe away the tears, they were licked away.
His ears turned red.
“You’ve called me by my name before, Hugh,” Hugh Elvis said seriously. He didn’t care about anything else, but this, the way Shi Nuo addressed him, was important.
Seeing that Shi Nuo didn’t reply, he frowned. “Should I call you Mr. Shi Nuo then? Don’t you think that’s strange?”
He emphasized, “We’re mates. We’re bonded.”
His words left Shi Nuo speechless, unable to argue. He simply nodded. “O-okay.”
Seeing him agree, the Alpha’s brow smoothed, a faint smile touching his lips. He held Shi Nuo closer, rested his chin on his head, and turned on the holographic projector.
The “argument” was over, and neither of them mentioned the fear or the awkwardness again.
But Shi Nuo was still self-conscious, and every time he started to say “Mr. El—” he would be met with the Alpha’s disapproving stare, reminding him to change his form of address.
He had only called Hugh by his name once, during the Alpha’s rut, when he had been delirious. He hadn’t realized Hugh remembered.
The snow mushrooms were crisp and tender, their flavor sweet and delicate in the soup.
A good meal was a simple pleasure, and the warm soup and food chased away the lingering chill and the shadows of his earlier fear and embarrassment.
As night fell, soothed by the Alpha’s pheromones, Shi Nuo fell asleep.
Beside him, the white-haired man’s breathing was slow and even. After Shi Nuo was asleep, he opened Long Xu’s wristband terminal and reviewed the records from his hibernation period.
Long Xu’s “memories” during that time revolved entirely around Shi Nuo, all data collected and analyzed to ensure the Omega’s happiness.
This was the command he had given before entering hibernation, and Long Xu had executed it perfectly.
The Shi Nuo in the mecha’s recordings showed no fear or hesitation. He had asked Long Xu to take him out, his words direct, not pleading, his eyes crinkling in a smile as he looked up at the mecha, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
And Long Xu hadn’t told him any of this.
Hugh Elvis’s expression was unreadable, a flicker of annoyance in his eyes.
He had been negligent, forgetting to instruct Long Xu to report Shi Nuo’s behavior and emotional state during his hibernation.
He watched the video recordings from Long Xu’s memory.
He saw Shi Nuo building snowmen, his expression happy and carefree, and his own memories, hazy dreams from his hibernation, suddenly became clearer, aligning with the images on the screen.
The scent of the Omega’s pheromones, mingled with the cold, crisp air and the metallic scent of the mecha, was different from usual.
He had thought he was dreaming, but it had been real.
The Omega’s radiant smile in the snow, the carefree joy as he posed for pictures with the mecha…but since waking up, Shi Nuo hadn’t shown him any of those pictures or videos.
It was as if they were a secret shared only between him and Long Xu.
Neither Shi Nuo nor Long Xu had mentioned it.
A sudden surge of jealousy, born from the darkest corner of his heart, twisted and coiled within him, its venom seeping into every part of him.
Hugh Elvis was almost consumed by it, his blue eyes darkening, the only thing preventing him from waking Shi Nuo and demanding to know why he seemed to prefer Long Xu’s company was a thin thread of reason.
Long Xu was a part of him.
From its initial design, its core intelligence had been infused with his genetic material, built specifically for him, like a second body, a steel extension of himself.
But even the most advanced AI couldn’t fully replicate human consciousness. Long Xu had its own limited sentience.
He and Long Xu shared an unbreakable mental link, and during his hibernation, a part of his consciousness, influenced by the beast heart’s energy, had been projected into the mecha.
That fragment of consciousness had been hazy and indistinct, his primary focus on absorbing and processing the beast heart’s energy, the connection to Long Xu intermittent, making him mistake the mecha’s experiences for dreams.
As he was about to close Long Xu’s files, he had noticed something unusual, a new, inconspicuous folder in the mecha’s encrypted core files.
Opening it, he had unleashed the venomous serpent of jealousy, its coils tightening around his heart.
The pre-dawn light gradually brightened the sky. One slept soundly, the other lay awake, tormented by his own thoughts.
Two heavy snowfalls in the first month of winter had brought the temperature down significantly, making it difficult to get out of bed in the morning.
Shi Nuo woke up groggily at eight o’clock, glanced at the time, didn’t feel hungry, and promptly went back to sleep.
When he finally woke up, it was ten-thirty.
He had slept much later than intended. He had gone to bed early last night but had somehow managed to sleep in for almost two hours.
The man who usually slept beside him was gone. He must be outside.
Shi Nuo was a little surprised. Hugh usually didn’t like getting out of bed in cold weather, even in autumn.
Perhaps it was because he had been hibernating for so long.
Thinking this, he yawned, got out of bed, and went to wash up. As he was brushing his teeth, he heard a noise outside.
In the living room, the white wolf, in its full, three-meter-tall form, stood before him, its presence intimidating.
Two large branches lay on the ground in front of it, one covered in hard, round nuts, the other laden with oval-shaped fruits.
“Nuts. For you,” the white wolf said, its gaze fixed on him.
“For me?” Shi Nuo echoed instinctively, a sense of familiarity washing over him. He remembered Long Xu’s words when it had built the large snowman.
The cold air from the open door cleared his head.
He remembered that Hugh hadn’t touched him in two weeks. The nuts were payment.
The flicker of happiness he had felt was quickly extinguished.
He looked at the nuts and whispered, “Thank you.”
Not seeing the joy he had expected on the Omega’s face, the white wolf frowned, remembering how delighted Shi Nuo had been with the snowman Long Xu had built, a useless thing, not even edible.
It couldn’t understand.
It glanced at the snowman outside, its confusion growing.
