After he made that request for a second marking, the man stayed silent for a long time. Those deep eyes tinged with gray-green remained fixed on Lin Zhu the whole while, impossible to tell what he was thinking.

A long moment passed.

The same man who had just called Lin Zhu a “little brat” looked colder and colder, his gaze growing more and more impatient. Just when Lin Zhu thought he was about to be refused—

Yan Ruojun merely turned his face away and stopped looking at him, while his body tacitly allowed Lin Zhu to come closer.

From this angle, Lin Zhu could see the gland he had bitten earlier. That slightly raised little patch of pale skin was already swollen, a deep ring of teeth marks pressed into it. The places where the canines had pierced it were even bleeding faintly.

For once, Lin Zhu felt a bit at a loss.

He stepped forward carefully. As he passed the low table, he casually pulled out a tissue—and suddenly heard the man say coldly,

“Be gentler. There won’t be a next time.”

“Mm.” Standing beside him, Lin Zhu held the tissue and said, “…Should I wipe it for you first?”

Yan Ruojun refused. “No need. Aren’t you going to bite it again in a second?”

That was true enough.

Lin Zhu awkwardly lowered his hand, adjusted his position, and bent down again toward Yan Ruojun’s neck. But the moment he opened his mouth, he remembered how Yan Ruojun had shoved him away in pain earlier, and couldn’t help hesitating…

What if the mark failed again this time?

He had said it himself. No next time.

Lin Zhu took a deep breath and started reviewing his patchy, half-understood knowledge of Alpha-Omega marking in his head.

Neither he nor Yan Ruojun had any marking experience.

For Alphas and Omegas whose marking did not go smoothly, biology textbooks recommended that the Alpha perform certain soothing actions on the Omega—caresses, kisses, hugs, and other intimate behavior—to ease the Omega’s tension and promote pheromone blending.

In short, it required intimate contact.

Hesitating, Lin Zhu lifted his left hand and lightly set it against Yan Ruojun’s lower back. The slim waist beneath his palm stiffened immediately.

Grinding his teeth, Lin Zhu thought, better short pain than long pain, then directly extended his tongue and touched it to the man’s slightly swollen gland…

His tongue was soft, damp, and warm.

It licked over the nearly dried traces of blood.

Yan Ruojun had already endured the hand at his waist as much as he could. It wasn’t until Lin Zhu had licked his gland two or three times that he suddenly snapped back to himself. His upper body jerked forward at once, trying to get away from that tongue that made the muscles of his back go taut.

Terrified that the second marking would fail too, Lin Zhu quickly thrust his other arm across Yan Ruojun’s chest and gripped his shoulder to stop him from moving around.

His lips still pressed against the man’s gland as he mumbled a muffled reassurance.

“Sorry. The book said this can ease tension. It probably won’t hurt as much this time…”

As he spoke, his breath covered the man’s gland in heat.

Yan Ruojun’s hand clamped tightly around Lin Zhu’s forearm, with such force that his fingertips nearly dug into the flesh.

Lin Zhu’s muscles jumped from the grip. Instinctively, without needing to be taught, he began lightly patting the man’s lower back, while his lips and tongue still never left the gland.

Yan Ruojun was going insane.

He felt like his brain was about to break. More than that, he was beginning to suspect whether this entire chain of abnormal behavior tonight might really be the effect of that 100% pheromone compatibility.

This kind of excessive, intimate licking made every hair on his body stand on end.

And yet, his body was growing weaker and softer, his strength slipping away…

It was just as Lin Zhu had said.

Even though Yan Ruojun’s body had gone soft, his mind only grew more tense. Unable to hold back, he urged,

“That’s enough.”

Was it enough?

Lin Zhu wasn’t sure. He pulled away to look. At the moment his lips and teeth separated from the skin, there was a soft pop, and if one listened closely, even the faint wet sound of moisture could be heard.

Of course Yan Ruojun heard it too.

The roots of his ears went numb.

The gland, having lost the searing heat borrowed from the boy’s mouth, cooled rapidly—

and even turned a little cold.

That chill passed in a flash.

Then, inside his body, Yan Ruojun suddenly felt a swelling ache surge upward, immediately followed by a tormenting heat. Wave after wave crashed over him like a tide, battering his consciousness with unstoppable force.

This feeling was one Yan Ruojun knew all too well.

—He had gone into heat.

The moment he realized that, he couldn’t help shifting his legs slightly, as though trying to hide something.

Lin Zhu, however, thought he was about to struggle away again. Not daring to delay, he gripped the man’s waist with one hand and his shoulder with the other, then opened his mouth and bit directly into the gland he had licked until it was flushed red.

The instant he bit down, Yan Ruojun let out a short muffled sound.

“…Mm!”

Lin Zhu thought he had bitten too hard and hurt him, so he hurriedly moved his tongue again, spreading it broadly over the gland and stroking lightly.

The system had been right after all: how to mark an Omega was an instinct carved into every Alpha’s DNA.

Lin Zhu held Yan Ruojun’s gland in his mouth and refused to let go. Even though he still couldn’t sense the scent of Yan Ruojun’s pheromones, the agitation that had tormented him for so long was soothed by this action.

All at once, he sank into a strange perception he had never experienced before—

like walking alone through a desert and suddenly encountering an oasis, something that filled a person with exhilaration and made them chase after it without a second thought.

He didn’t know how long passed.

At last, Lin Zhu emerged from the buzzing deep in his mind, only to hear a faint intake of breath by his ear.

The body in his hands was trembling. It was also trying to pull away.

For an Alpha toward an Omega he had just marked, possessiveness would be at its peak. Lin Zhu instinctively tried to stop him—

only to be met with even stronger resistance.

Yan Ruojun struggled forward, losing all his usual elegant composure and looking somewhat flustered.

His voice came low and urgent:

“Let me go first!”

During all of this, Lin Zhu still had his gland between his teeth, instinctively giving it two light nips, as if tasting some sweet and delicious snack. Only after he clearly heard Yan Ruojun’s cry did he reluctantly let go.

The very instant he released both mouth and hands, Yan Ruojun quickly grabbed a throw pillow from beside him and placed it over his lap, covering an embarrassing bodily reaction.

The lights in the living room were too bright.

So bright that nothing could be hidden.

So bright that they made one’s heart race with panic.

Heat of arousal still clung to both of them. Their breathing came rapid and faintly uneven. When their eyes accidentally met, they both looked away at once.

In normal circumstances like this, an ordinary Alpha-Omega couple would choose to get physically intimate. Rolling straight into bed would not have been unusual.

But neither of them moved closer.

Instead, they put even more distance between themselves.

Silently, Lin Zhu sat down at the far end of the sofa and hugged a square throw pillow himself, planning to wait for his body’s reaction to cool down naturally.

After quite some time,

their breathing gradually steadied and returned to normal.

Lin Zhu had already set his pillow aside, but Yan Ruojun still kept his pressed over his lap. Then he suddenly spoke:

“…The marking is done. If you’ve got nothing else to do, then leave first.”

Logically speaking, an Omega who had just been marked by an Alpha should feel dependent on him and only want to remain by his side.

But in Yan Ruojun’s tone there was only coldness, carrying the feeling of having used someone and then discarded them.

Yet that wasn’t really the case.

Lin Zhu understood perfectly well that it had been he himself, trying to complete the roleplaying mission, who had twice bitten down on Yan Ruojun in an attempt to mark him.

Yan Ruojun could have refused from the start.

But he had still agreed.

Again and again.

In the original novel, the scumbag ex-husband had deliberately released pheromones to trigger Yan Ruojun’s heat, allowed him to fall into acute sexual fever, watched his distress, and only after Yan Ruojun could no longer endure it and took the initiative to beg—

had roughly grabbed him by the throat and given him a temporary mark.

It had certainly satisfied him in the moment, but once Yan Ruojun sobered up, he hadn’t let the scumbag off lightly. He had almost driven him out of Beidu entirely, and the matter had sparked plenty of private gossip.

Later, when Yan Ruojun’s next heat came, the Omega—after experiencing that first mark—could no longer endure the physical torment alone. Left with no choice, he went to the scumbag ex-husband again, and the two reached an agreement.

In the end, it was that 100% pheromone compatibility that had saved the bastard’s dog life.

And as for Yan Ruojun—

amid one temporary mark after another, his reason collapsed, and in a haze he accepted a lifelong mark…

The lifelong mark had an enormous effect on him.

It made it so that he could no longer leave the other person, and he had no choice but to enter a marriage alliance with him. Then, over the course of a year of married life, the man went from treating the scumbag coldly, to yielding step by step, to giving him whatever he wanted…

And finally, with his heart dead, he was reborn through fire.

…

Coming back to himself,

Lin Zhu nodded. “Okay. Then I’ll head back first.”

As he said this, he removed the blocker collar still hanging around his neck and set it on the low table beside the gloves.

Then, after another thought, Lin Zhu felt some concern about an Omega’s physical condition and couldn’t help asking:

“If you stay here alone, will you be okay?”

At those words, Yan Ruojun turned his head and gave him a speechless glance.

“If you stay here, that’s when I’d really be in danger.”

Lin Zhu felt awkward, but had to admit the man was speaking the plain truth. In the original novel, Yan Ruojun had indeed fallen into the scumbag’s trap exactly this way.

Lin Zhu walked to the door and had just turned the handle when the system popped up to stop him.

“…Wait, Host! I just checked the mission. The progress bar is already at 95%. There’s still 5% left. It should be the key line that still hasn’t been completed…”

It paused for a second, then announced its conclusion.

“So you still can’t leave yet.”

Lin Zhu: “…………….”

Oh, shut up.