A little after eight in the evening, the sky outside was already dim.

But inside Suite A3012, the lights blazed bright as day.

The ceiling lamp in the living room was a round half-sphere, casting brilliant light downward like a sun watching over all things, illuminating the two figures inside, close together like mandarin ducks with their necks entwined.

Lin Zhu and Yan Ruojun were standing very close. The damp, burning heat of Lin Zhu’s breath brushed the side of the man’s neck, making him shiver involuntarily.

The redness at the roots of his ears quietly spread down his neck.

Lin Zhu opened his mouth, but before biting, he instinctively glanced at Yan Ruojun’s profile.

The man’s lips were pressed together, his face otherwise expressionless. Only the lowered lashes trembled slightly in rhythm with his breathing.

When Lin Zhu leaned in, Yan Ruojun simply shut his eyes completely, taking on a detached sort of coldness, as if saying, out of sight, out of mind.

For some reason, Lin Zhu hesitated, then couldn’t help giving a warning first.

“…I’m going to bite, okay?”

At those words, the hand resting casually on Yan Ruojun’s knee unconsciously tightened, wrinkling his suit trousers.

“Mm,” he replied lightly.

The position Lin Zhu was in at that moment was rather awkward.

His lower body stood a little farther away, carefully keeping a bit of distance from Yan Ruojun, but his upper body had no choice but to lean close. His hands had nowhere to go, so one braced itself on the back of the sofa while the other hung stiffly at his side.

Yan Ruojun had his head tilted slightly down, exposing the back of his neck, white as porcelain. His gland had been covered by blocker products for years, and the skin there was so pale and tender it almost seemed as if a heavier breath could cut it open.

Lin Zhu couldn’t help softening his breathing.

He still wore that world-weary, blank face, looking lazy, moody, and indifferent to everything.

Only the system—constantly monitoring the host’s physical data—knew just how hard he was enduring things right now.

“Host, your hormones are about to go out of balance. Hurry up and mark the protagonist! And… don’t you feel awful at all??”

The system urged him quietly, then sank into thought.

Wait, that’s not right…

That bug should only affect the host’s ability to sense his own and other people’s pheromones. Once in rut, the host should still have all the normal Alpha reactions, right?

What’s more, this was the host’s first rut. Compared to other ABO-world Alphas who had just come of age, his arousal response should theoretically be even more intense…?

And that was exactly why Alphas and Omegas who had just turned eighteen were required to spend their second differentiation period in the hospital, using medication to withstand the acute surge of desire that followed the end of differentiation, with further observation afterward to monitor recovery.

And the host had only completed his second differentiation last week. Faced with this kind of irregular acute rut, he should be suffering even more.

But instead?

With how slow and restrained the boy was acting, anyone who didn’t know better might think the chaos in the restroom just now had been an illusion.

The system began doubting itself, then looked again at the monitoring data—

and fell silent at once.

The hormone levels were nearly off the charts!

The host was ruthless. He could actually endure this much!

“Host… don’t bottle yourself up too hard,” the system finally warned hesitantly, thinking ahead. “What if it affects your fertility? The later key plot points require the protagonist to get pregnant…”

Lin Zhu shut his eyes and replied mentally, “I haven’t even managed to temporary-mark the protagonist yet, and you’re already thinking about getting him pregnant?”

“Was there really no other ex-husband roleplaying system available to bind to you? What a waste of talent.”

The system instantly shut up.

Yan Ruojun, who had waited and waited, finally seemed to run out of patience. He suddenly opened his eyes again and turned his face slightly to look back.

“Are you biting or not?”

Lin Zhu had already been close to the side of his neck. When Yan Ruojun turned to look over, the distance between them shrank again into something subtle and ambiguous—so close they were nearly kissing.

Yan Ruojun pressed his lips together, a faint line appearing between his brows, and said with mild impatience,

“If you’re not going to bite, forget it. I’m leaving. Figure it out yourself…”

As he spoke, he moved to stand—

Only for a hand to stop him.

That hand landed right at the line of his waist, and the scorching heat of the palm instantly penetrated through his suit jacket and shirt to burn against his skin.

Caught off guard, Yan Ruojun fell backward against the sofa.

In that back-and-forth movement, the distance between him and the boy widened, allowing the overhead light that had been blocked to stab directly into his eyes.

The next second, Yan Ruojun shut his eyes in discomfort, his brows drawing together more tightly, a sheen of involuntary tears gathering at the corners.

At the same time,

a shadow pressed down over him again, blocking the light once more.

Before Yan Ruojun could react, a sharp pain suddenly tore through the back of his neck. The skin there was broken by canine teeth as they barged ruthlessly into that flesh that had never once been opened before.

A wet, burning mouth enclosed the small gland, lips and tongue and sharp teeth pressing around it like two mountains, smothering him until he could barely breathe.

The moisture in the corners of his eyes quickly turned into tears and slid down his face. His whole body trembled. He had never expected that something as simple as a temporary mark could hurt this much.

Unable to hold back, he raised a hand and shoved Lin Zhu away.

“…It hurts a lot! Let go!”

Lin Zhu was pushed back hard enough that his calf struck the low table before he came back to himself from that brief daze, his expression stunned.

His head had already been buzzing painfully from all the strain. Unable to sense Omega pheromones and therefore denied relief for too long, the Alpha instinct for possession buried in his bones had surged the moment he heard the Omega declare his intention to leave…

He hadn’t expected that in just one brief lapse, he would act on pure Alpha instinct and bite hard into the back of Yan Ruojun’s neck.

The room was brightly lit, nothing hidden.

Yan Ruojun looked like he was in serious pain. He was turned partly to one side against the sofa back, and a fleeting tear mark still remained on his cheek. Even the glare he threw over had a glossy wetness to it.

He didn’t raise a hand to cover the wound where he had been bitten. Instead, out of habit, he curled his index finger toward his mouth and bit down on it—but quickly realized he was in front of someone and lowered it again.

The first knuckle of that index finger, already covered in faint and deep scars, now bore one more fresh reddish bite mark.

Lin Zhu lifted his brows, not daring to move closer without permission. All he could do was stay where he was and ask in a low voice,

“…Are you okay?”

Tonight was Yan Ruojun’s first time being in such close contact with an Alpha, and also the first time anyone had bitten his gland. But he was hardly some ignorant young Omega.

What he should know, he had long known.

When an Omega’s gland was bitten, feeling pain at first was normal. But very soon the Alpha’s injected pheromones would stir up a wave of heat, and once the pheromones blended and intertwined, that sensation should have been enough to drown out the pain…

But all Yan Ruojun felt was pain.

A lot of pain.

At that moment, he sincerely began to doubt the accuracy of the hospital’s report—and he had actually let this boy, whom he had just met tonight, mark him like a madman possessed.

The key point was that the temporary mark hadn’t even succeeded!

100% pheromone compatibility.

…This?

Yan Ruojun’s face had gone pale. Not only were there tears in the corners of his eyes, but a fine sheen of sweat had appeared on his forehead, dampening the black hair there and weakening the usual composure and elegance of his appearance.

His eyelids half-lifted as he stared at the golden-haired boy standing one meter away. After quite a while, he said softly,

“…You really are a little brat.”

He had no idea that Lin Zhu was already so embarrassed his toes could dig a hole through the floor. He only thought to himself:

Could all those rumors outside really be false?

Yan Ruojun looked Lin Zhu over from head to toe and couldn’t find even a trace of flirtatious recklessness in him. On the contrary, he only found him clumsy and awkward, with a mouth that seemed almost muted—hardly the sort who would have the ease to tease and flirt with an Omega.

Yan Ruojun had spent years in the business world and had seen all kinds of people, including many dissolute rich young masters from prominent families.

He could tell what those people were like at a glance.

He had originally assumed Lin Zhu was the same.

Never had he imagined that this young Alpha, whose public reputation was so rotten it had spread far and wide, would actually behave with the awkward greenness of a proper, honest student.

—The kind who had probably never even held an Omega’s hand.

Thinking this, Yan Ruojun directly asked,

“Have you ever marked an Omega before?”

Ever since Lin Zhu had been shoved away by Yan Ruojun, the system had crept out again and started screaming inside his head:

“Host, that mark just failed! You still have to do it one more time!”

Lin Zhu had only just managed to suppress the full-body discomfort he felt and was expressionlessly arguing with the system in empty space.

“The protagonist is already crying from that bite. Do you really think he’ll still let me bite him again?”

Just as he was saying this, Yan Ruojun’s cool voice reached his ears, and Lin Zhu answered reflexively:

“…Of course not.”

After all, he had only been transformed into an Alpha by the system today. His grasp of things like “pheromones” and “temporary marking” was only half-baked, and deep down he was honestly baffled…

Did biting someone’s neck really make them so weak in the knees with pleasure?

Yan Ruojun’s earlier bite on him still pulsed now and then as a dull pain, and Yan Ruojun’s face was still pale, with only a trace of red left at the corners of his eyes, making him look pitiful.

After giving that answer, Lin Zhu really had no other choice. He steeled himself and asked awkwardly,

“Um… Mr. Yan… uh… Mr. Yan, could you let me bite you one more time?”

“The mark didn’t take just now,” he said stiffly.