“Bang—!”

Chen Yuan slammed the car door shut, grabbed his briefcase, and strode briskly into the inpatient building of First Hospital of the Northern Capital.

After registering at the first-floor counter, he smoothly boarded the elevator leading to the Omega Glandular Department’s special care ward.

He was heading to the fifth floor, and arrived in the blink of an eye.

Chen Yuan made his way to his boss’s hospital room with practiced familiarity.

Upon arriving at the door, he pushed up his glasses first before raising a hand to knock, signaling his arrival.

“President Yan,” he called out.

It took about a minute and a half before his boss replied from inside, his voice sounding slightly more muffled than usual, carrying a hint of nasality.

“Come in.”

Chen Yuan pushed the door open and walked in, only to find that his boss wasn’t the only one in the room. There was someone else… a young Alpha who looked exceptionally familiar to him.

Blonde hair, a cool expression, and those deeply impressionable droopy eyes—at least since their first meeting, Chen Yuan had formed a very strong impression of him, accompanied by a violent internal earthquake.

Setting aside his appearance, ever since Chen Yuan learned of the boy’s name and identity yesterday, the natural disaster in his heart had been artificially upgraded to a level two, with aftershocks that refused to subside.

The youth’s surname was Lin, and his given name was Zhu.

He was the half-brother of his boss’s fiancé. It was said that he was still a high school student, yet he was widely known in Beidu’s nightclub scene for his frivolous and wild lifestyle.

Such a young Alpha seemed to share an indescribable, ambiguous relationship with his boss.

…He recognized every single word in that sentence, yet when put together, he couldn’t seem to comprehend it.

On the surface, Chen Yuan appeared perfectly composed, but internally, rocks were starting to loudly crash down again.

Having worked beside Yan Ruoyun for many years, he was very familiar with his boss’s way of doing things. He knew that the other man had always strongly repelled being too close to Alphas, to the point where he wasn’t even very affectionate when interacting with the eldest young master of the Lin family… They didn’t look like an engaged couple; rather, they resembled close friends.

But the two were indeed childhood friends who grew up together.

Because of this, outsiders oblivious to the inner truth wouldn’t sense anything amiss, and even believed their relationship was so deep that they could be called a model engaged couple.

Ultimately, the people who knew about Yan Ruoyun’s genetic illness were extremely few. Although Chen Yuan was his capable subordinate, he wasn’t among them…

Therefore, faced with this complicated ethical and moral dilemma, Chen Yuan relied entirely on the mental fortitude honed from years of work to stand here without changing his expression.

And this was already the second time Chen Yuan had stumbled upon a scene of his boss acting intimately with this young Alpha.

He was a Beta and could basically smell no pheromones. Because of this, the faintly restless pheromones in the hospital room couldn’t affect him, nor could they reveal any unspeakable, ambiguous signals to him.

But Chen Yuan wasn’t blind.

He was a Beta who had been married and raised a child.

At this very moment, a certain sticky and sweet atmosphere was clearly flowing between the two people in the room… Not to mention, President Yan’s lips were abnormally swollen and red, seemingly foreshadowing exactly what kind of scene had just played out in the room.

Chen Yuan: “…”

Unable to help himself, he pushed up his glasses again and bit the bullet as he walked in. He first nodded at the youth standing by the window, offering a polite greeting, before walking straight to his boss’s side.

Following that, he pulled out a few documents packed in kraft paper envelopes from his briefcase and handed them over:

“President Yan, these are the project proposals and contracts you mentioned in your text message to bring over.”

Yan Ruoyun sat in the single sofa chair. In a rare display of improper posture, he had his legs crossed, and replied with a faint tone,

“Just leave them on the table, I’ll look at them later.”

“Understood…” Chen Yuan smoothly set the document envelope down and calmly reported, “Today’s regular meeting has been changed to an online meeting at three in the afternoon. I’ve already notified everyone.”

After chatting about work matters for about half an hour, Chen Yuan took the initiative to ask, “You’ll need to turn your camera on for the online meeting. Should I bring a suit over for you?”

“Alright, thank you for making the extra trip.” Yan Ruoyun nodded, then turned his head to ask the youth by the window, “Lin Zhu, you took a few days off to stay with me at the hospital, is there anything you need? I’ll have Secretary Chen bring it to you later.”

The man’s hair at the nape of his neck wasn’t considered long, so with this turn of his head, the dense cluster of bite marks on the back of his neck could not be hidden at all.

Standing right beside him, Chen Yuan had an unobstructed view. He could only quickly shift his gaze away, letting it land on the youth who had just been called out.

Hearing this, the youth slowly turned around.

Only then did Chen Yuan see his face clearly, and his heart immediately experienced another tremor.

There was no other reason.

It was only because two red marks adorned the sides of the youth’s cheeks, looking exactly like they had been pressed out by someone’s palms. His lips were pressed tightly together, yet it couldn’t hide the bite marks on his lip…

Aside from that, countless faint pink hickeys trailed from his cheeks down to his jaw and neck… The Adam’s apple, in particular, was an absolute disaster zone, as if someone had sucked on it and then meticulously gnawed over it once more.

As to who the culprit was, there seemed to be no alternative answer.

Chen Yuan sank into silence.

At this time, the blond youth, wearing his stoic “cool guy” face, pondered for a moment before slowly spitting out a very abstract sentence.

“Could you bring me a copy of ‘Past Years’ College Entrance Exam Questions’? I can do a few sets to kill time when I’m bored. Thank you.”

He even said ‘thank you’ to me.

…

Fortunately, his professional competency was solid. He only zoned out for a split second before quickly replying in a businesslike tone:

“…No problem.”

As Chen Yuan was leaving, the door behind him hadn’t completely shut yet. He vaguely heard President Yan speaking to the other person in the room with a tone he had never used before—akin to solidified honey melting under the sun, becoming exceptionally sticky, even pulling into strings.

Chen Yuan: “…………”

Who am I?

Was the person who just spoke with that drawn-out tone really…?

With a subtle mood, Chen Yuan walked several meters away before realizing in hindsight… Weren’t all the documents President Yan asked him to organize and bring over related to the cooperative projects between the Yan and Lin families from recent years??

“Ding-dong.”

Just then, his phone vibrated violently.

Chen Yuan picked up his phone and saw that President Yan had sent him a text message.

The other party concisely assigned a multitude of tasks.

He had barely finished reading the text when his phone buzzed abruptly again; the next message had arrived.

[President Yan: Transfer a few people from the PR department to handle the news articles and online drafts regarding me and Lin Xiujie. Don’t make any big moves at first to avoid sparking baseless speculations from netizens.]

Chen Yuan read it up and down, yet from these few text messages, he discerned the exact same underlying subtext—

…It seemed like President Yan wanted to break off the engagement?

And he seemed to be in a rush.

Is this for real??

–

The hospital room door was closed once more.

The lock sprang back, emitting a crisp click.

Standing by the window cosplaying as a wooden block, Lin Zhu abruptly let out a sigh of relief. He had just been coaxed by Yan Ruoyun, and all the suppressed emotions in his heart had been swept clean, so he had started agonizing over how to answer Yan Ruoyun’s question again…

Suddenly, someone knocked on the door.

It was Yan Ruoyun’s secretary, Chen Yuan.

Chen Yuan’s visit had not only interrupted the intimacy between Lin Zhu and Yan Ruoyun, but also interrupted the mental draft he had spent so long preparing.

Even though the person had left and the room was once again left to just him and Yan Ruoyun, Lin Zhu opened his mouth, yet simply couldn’t find the emotions from just a moment ago.

But Yan Ruoyun was sharp-eyed and didn’t give him the chance to avoid it. Pinching the document envelope on the table, he drew out his words and asked, “Little dog Lin, what were you trying to say to me earlier?”

Lin Zhu was just about to shake his head when he heard the man say, “I already saw you open your mouth. If you lie again this time, I’m really going to smack your palm.”

Lin Zhu paused his movements. Taking two steps, he arrived at the man’s side, his expression shifting hesitantly for a few moments, before silently extending his left hand toward him, exposing his palm.

The man who said he was going to smack his palm cast his eyes down, then lightly rested his chin onto it… This action surprisingly didn’t stop him from tearing open the document envelope and pulling out the documents inside to read.

Lin Zhu: “…”

Even though the System was as quiet as a chicken right now, he felt as if he could hear It setting off fireworks in his consciousness again, crackling loudly, blasting his head until he was dizzy and seeing stars.

This was the first time in Lin Zhu’s life that he realized… a man, a man many years older than him, could actually be this adorable.

So adorable that it was somewhat unbelievable.

He didn’t dare to move, continuing to cosplay as a wooden block as he stood in place, his hand steadily supporting the man’s chin.

As time passed, his hand gradually relaxed, his knuckles shifting from straight to slightly bent. When his thumb hooked upward, it happened to touch the man’s soft lower lip.

Perhaps the sensation transmitted from his finger pad was too plump and soft. Lost in thought, Lin Zhu unconsciously began to press down on the man’s lips, again and again, like how one simply had to play with some object in their hands when spacing out.

Since Yan Ruoyun didn’t make a sound, he also remained distracted for a long time.

For a while, only the trivial sound of paper pages occasionally being flipped remained in the room.

A moment later.

Lin Zhu’s thumb suddenly couldn’t move; a slight stinging sensation came from the surface of his skin.

Actually, it couldn’t really be called pain. It was more like being lightly pricked by something not too sharp.

He subconsciously lowered his eyelids, his gaze falling on the spot where he felt the anomaly, only to see Yan Ruoyun’s lips slightly parted, coincidentally holding his thumb between them.

The man sounded seemingly impatient as he asked: “How much longer are you going to rub? The skin is about to break…”

Because his lips and teeth couldn’t close normally, his enunciation was somewhat slurred.

Only then did Lin Zhu realize what he had done.

Strangely, he didn’t feel embarrassed, angry, or awkwardly uncomfortable right now. Perhaps it was because of all the intimate actions of a couple that had occurred between him and the man over the past two days, which had somewhat desensitized him.

Lin Zhu stayed silent for a moment, then suddenly crouched down and buried his head against the man’s waist and abdomen. Looking very much like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, he asked in a very tiny voice:

“Ge, can you accept being permanently marked by me?”

Without waiting for the man to answer, he closed his eyes, inhaling the lingering tail notes of the pheromones on the man’s hospital gown, and continued to ask:

“…The kind that will make you pregnant with a baby.”

Lin Zhu paused, his tightly shut eyelids trembling uncontrollably. Clenching his jaw, as if making a prophecy, he spoke the subsequent plot from the original novel:

“What if the baby can’t be born…”

The following words were incredibly difficult to spit out, as if a handful of knives or glass shards had been shoved down his throat.

At this time, Yan Ruoyun spoke.

The man clicked his tongue heavily, hugged his head, and forcefully stroked his hair, but his tone was completely carefree.

He said:

“…What? You still want to make me miscarry?”