Chapter 28: Damn puppy love! The place where I had kissed countless times...

Pei Jiqing was still immersed in the pursuit in his dream, as if immersed in darkness, unable to break free or wake up.

The two black cars behind him were extremely close, their paintwork swallowed up, and their low-keyness was almost deliberate, like beasts lurking in the dark.

By the time Pei Jiqing noticed, the hustle and bustle of the downtown area had faded into a distant hum, and the scenery outside the car window had become unfamiliar and cold.

He was supposed to go for a prenatal checkup.

In the rearview mirror, the two cars were still following him at a steady pace, like two ghosts that could not be shaken off.

Fear, like a fine spider web, silently wrapped around his back.

At that moment, he instinctively wanted to find Chen Huixing. The name was like a spell to avoid the wind.

He was being followed.

As the wife of an executive, Pei Jiqing had experienced this before. One year, even at the height of Chen Huixing's fame, he was stalked and even received threatening letters. He told Chen Huixing about it, and she pulled him into her arms, caressing the skin of his neck with her fingertips, whispering, "Don't be afraid, I'll handle it."

And Chen Huixing had indeed silently and repeatedly dispelled these hidden threats.

But today was different.

He had left secretly. He

dialed the phone—one, two, three rings. The mechanical busy tone, like a blunt knife, pierced Pei Jiqing's nerves.

He didn't consider asking Chen Huixing for help shameful. In the face of life and death, dignity was nothing but empty dust.

But five times he called, five times without a response.

Pei Jiqing's fingers clenched the steering wheel, his knuckles turning a cold white.

He spun the car around, the tires screeching harshly on the asphalt, and the car shot off like an arrow, plunging onto a deserted old road.

The abandoned factories on either side were like silent giants, casting jagged shadows.

At this moment, the phone screen lit up - the words "Wei Ji" jumped out.

He answered and said only two words: "Save me."

They had experienced being on the run before, so Wei Ji knew almost the moment he heard his voice that Pei Jiqing was in a serious condition.

"Where are you?" Wei Ji's voice was deep and cold.

Pei Jiqing gave the name of the place, but before he finished speaking, the other party had already said two words: "Wait for me."

- Short, sharp, and with unquestionable ruthlessness.

Wei Ji was incredibly fast. When Pei Jiqing was forced into a blind spot by the two black cars, their headlights approaching like the pupils of wild animals, the roar of the engine tore through the silence. Wei Ji's car was like a black lightning, slashing out from the darkness, and the loud sound of metal colliding shook the night sky.

He slammed one of the cars into the wall of the abandoned factory, bricks and stones crumbling and dust rising. The front of the car was twisted and deformed under the heavy blow, like a beast nailed to a chopping block.

The driver fainted.

The people in the other car fled in panic.

When Pei Jiqing broke out of the nightmare in the ward, there were fine beads of cold sweat on his forehead.

His eyelashes trembled, and the moment he opened his eyes, he met Chen Huixing's stern gaze.

The man sat silently beside the bed, with the cuffs of his gray shirt rolled up to his elbows, revealing his sculpted arms. The posture of his arms crossed was oppressive in his silence. His three-dimensional facial features cast shadows of varying depths in the dim light. When he was silent, he always had a deterrent effect and looked like he had been in a state of silence for a long time.

What made Pei Jiqing dare not speak was that his jawline was extremely tense, and his eyes were so dark that they seemed to devour light.

He didn't know how long he had been sitting like this. The stagnant coldness in the air almost had substance, like a layer of invisible frost.

Pei Jiqing's voice unconsciously revealed a soft, moist feeling, which lingered gently, with a strong sense of coquettishness: "Hubby, I'm scared..."

After all, this was caused by Pei Jiqing getting rid of the bodyguard first, so he thought it would be best to let Chen Huixing not mention it.

Chen Huixing's gaze lingered on his face for a moment, and then he lowered his eyes. He reached for the water glass on the bedside, and the water in the glass swirled around his knuckles through a layer of water: "Want some water?"

When the warm water was passed to his lips, Pei Jiqing obediently lowered his head and sipped half a glass from Chen Huixing's hand, his Adam's apple rolling gently as he swallowed. The water temperature was just right, and it flowed smoothly through the tight throat.

The water was finished.

Pei Jiqing suddenly reached out and put his arms around Chen Huixing's waist, burying his face in that broad chest. The fabric of the high-end custom-made shirt was slightly cool against his skin, but he could clearly feel the warm heartbeat underneath.

Pei Jiqing took a deep breath, his voice muffled by the fabric of his clothes, as if frightened and desperately in need of comfort. His tone trembled with the slight tremor of someone who had just survived a disaster. "It was truly terrifying. You almost couldn't see me. Who did this?" Chen

Huixing's palm rested on the back of his neck, his thumb unconsciously rubbing the fragile cervical vertebrae. "We're still investigating."

The next moment, Chen Huixing suddenly inquired, "What were you and Wei Ji doing there?"

Pei Jiqing detected a subtle sense of oppression in his tone, like an undercurrent surging beneath the surface of a calm sea.

He raised his head, his eyes tracing the lines of Chen Huixing's tense face.

Pei Jiqing had no serious injuries, only a few scrapes on his arms and legs, faintly red. A shallow bruise on his face had been bandaged with clean gauze, the edges neatly fitting the skin.

The wounds, carefully tended, still spoke of the shock of danger.

Chen Huixing, now swathed in his hospital gown, accentuated his pale complexion. The white bandage across his forehead glared, revealing a fragile delicacy. His eyelashes cast a faint shadow in the light.

Pei Jiqing's lips trembled slightly, and a thin layer of water formed in his eyes, fading only just before it faded, making his pupils even more translucent. He said in disbelief, "I just escaped such a dangerous situation... and you're actually asking this right now?"

A hint of disappointment crept into his eyes.

Chen Huixing seemed oblivious to his vulnerability, a cold frown forming between his brows. "The doctor has examined it."

His knuckles drummed a dull rhythm on the edge of the bed. "Answer me, Pei Jiqing, don't lie to me," he said,

his last two words emphatically.

Pei Jiqing turned sideways, tucking himself tightly into the covers, and muffled his response: "I'm being followed... He just called..."

"You've been in touch quite frequently," Chen Huixing's voice echoed from above.

Pei Jiqing suddenly threw back the quilt and turned around, an abnormal blush appearing on his pale face. His lips trembled, but his voice was unusually clear: "Have you looked at my phone?"

Chen Huixing looked at Pei Jiqing with a very complicated look at that moment.

Like a surging sea under the night sky, it is calm on the surface but hides countless unspeakable whirlpools, and it is deliberately stretched, as if restraining some kind of emotion that is about to burst.

Pei Jiqing felt that his secrets were exposed under the other's gaze, like a clams peeled off its shell.

His head was swollen by Chen Huixing's inexplicable silence, and he conceded that Chen Huixing had looked at his phone.

His temples were throbbing, and Pei Jiqing chose to use anger to cover up his fear. His voice was trembling imperceptibly when he raised it: "You don't respect me at all! You doubt me about everything! Even my privacy is not spared..."

The last words suddenly faded, becoming a choked sob. Pei Jiqing began, "I don't even know what I did wrong..."

Chen Huixing interjected with precision, "So, what did you want to do by shaking off the bodyguards?"

Pei Jiqing's expression froze, and after a moment, he mechanically replied, "I..."

His voice caught in his throat, like a rusty gear suddenly turning.

"Is it okay if I don't want to live a life under constant surveillance?" The last few words suddenly gained life, but like the final struggle of a trapped animal, a stubborn, bluffing defense.

This explanation sounded too clumsy to Shen Huixing's ears, like a piece of thin paper that would break with the slightest poke.

Chen Huixing's gaze roamed over his Omega, as if examining an object.

His gaze, with a metallic, cold quality, moved from Pei Jiqing's hair to his eyes, finally resting on his pale lips.

"If two can't keep an eye on you, then four. If four isn't enough, then eight."

The light from the hospital room cast varying shades of shadow on Shen Huixing's chiseled face, accentuating his already sharp features.

He leaned forward slightly, and his shadow enveloped Pei Jiqing like a cage: "You have to remember," his voice was very low, but every word was weighty, "you are the wife of an executive, don't create those scandals that can't be made public."

He bit the last few words very hard, as if to burn into the other person's flesh and blood. Pei

Jiqing's pupils contracted suddenly, as if stung by these words.

"What do you mean by a scandal that can't be made public?" Pei Jiqing asked subconsciously, with a whimper like a wounded little animal in his voice.

The light divided Pei Jiqing's delicate face into two halves of light and dark, stubborn and fragile.

A layer of mist appeared in Pei Jiqing's eyes, and his voice was so light that it almost drifted in the air: "...You actually didn't even think about letting me go back to work, were you? It was just a delaying tactic?"

The ending tone was trembling with fragments, like a spider silk swaying in the wind.

Chen Huixing's silence was like an invisible wall, freezing the air in the ward into ice.

As expected.

Pei Jiqing's lips curled into a bitter smile, a hint of self-mockery, yet also of resignation.

He'd anticipated this answer, yet the truth, laid bare before him, still stung his heart.

The pressure of the past few days washed over him like a tide. Chen Huixing's ambivalent attitude hung like a sword of Damocles, leaving him clinging to a shimmering hope, torn between hope and despair.

His hand unconsciously caressed his belly, where a growing life was nurturing. How ironic! He'd begged for Chen Huixing's love for so many years, yet never received it. Could their child be like that?

What if he, like himself, was merely a being of low pheromone levels?

The thought pierced him like a thin, sharp needle, bringing a lingering, subtle pain.

He didn't want to be like Yin Ning, worried about his child being looked down upon because of his low pheromone levels. Such a situation was commonplace in Ling City's upper circles, and the mere thought of it was enough to suffocate him.

He'd go crazy.

S-class Alphas have their pride etched in their bones. They only feel an irresistible urge towards highly compatible Omegas, a desire that's almost instinctive, passionate, and exclusive.

The media once touted S-class Alphas as "existences beyond the constraints of pheromones," as if they were above primal desires, calm and self-possessed, undisturbed.

And what about lower-class Omegas? They're like lone boats drifting in a torrent of pheromones, susceptible to any even slightly stronger Alpha scent. Their bodies react uncontrollably to Alpha pheromones, as if they were born without the reserve and the right to choose.

This physiological "cheapness" is the most deadly humiliation.

The reason Pei Jiqing fell seriously ill while fleeing with Wei Ji was because when Wei Ji left home, Pei Jiqing, wanting to find him, was surrounded by several Alphas. In the humid alleys, the Alphas' pheromones were like a sticky spider web, entwining layer upon layer, bringing a sickening sense of oppression.

Their laughter was shrill, and their gazes were like dirty hands, peeling away his defenses inch by inch.

They called him an "innocent bitch," suppressed him with pheromones, and forced him into horny moods.

Fortunately, Wei Ji returned in time and beat those men half to death.

But Pei Jiqing's passion surged like a tide, and cold inhibitors were injected into his blood vessels one after another, destroying the stability of his body's pheromones. The disease came on fiercely, and the high fever burned his consciousness into a blur.

In his delirium, he always felt that those hands were still wandering on his body, and those breaths full of desire and offense were still puffing at the back of his neck.

Wei Ji's arms were his only safe haven, and later even this warmth was stinging.

Pei Jiqing's lips curled up in a sarcastic arc: "Executive wife? I feel like a puppet now."

His pale fingertips unconsciously clutched the sheets, making messy wrinkles on the fabric.

"Chen Huixing," Pei Jiqing raised his eyes, with a fragmented light flickering in his eyes, "Don't make me hate you!"

Hate him?

Chen Huixing's pupils suddenly contracted. The past years between them were clearly like still waters running deep - those nights of sleeping in each other's arms, those intertwined fingertips, those kisses on the hair, weren't they all real?

Chen Huixing felt that Pei Jiqing was crazy. Their marriage had been so stable and happy in the past few years.

Their marriage should have been a rose that never faded in a glass cover, stable, perfect, and spotless.

It was Pei Jiqing who was restless first, so why was he the one being questioned and resented at this moment?

This absurd sense of dislocation caused a violent rage to surge in Chen Huixing's chest.

"You can't even speak properly now." He lowered his voice very low, and Chen Huixing's palms hanging by his side clenched unconsciously.

Pei Jiqing closed his eyes, refusing to communicate with Shen Huixing.

He suddenly realized he'd swallowed too many bitter compromises, swallowing the shackles Shen Huixing had imposed on him, like drinking poison to quench thirst.

Those silent concessions had settled in his bones, ultimately corroding him into his current state—a prisoner trapped in an ornate cage, where even struggle seemed a luxury.

"Don't feel wronged!" Shen Huixing's voice fell with undeniable coldness. His words, like a judge reading a verdict, each word resonant and unassailable. "I warned you, stay away from that Alpha, a former fraudster!"

He repeatedly emphasized his correctness.

Wei Ji was the intruder with a notorious record!

As long as Pei Jiqing continued to look up at him with moist eyes and cling to him with a gentle gesture, their lives would remain a flawless picture.

But then, Wei Ji appeared.

This realization coiled in Shen Huixing's heart like a venomous snake.

Yes, only when he appeared did everything turn upside down!

Chen Huixing repeatedly confirmed this simple cause and effect in anger.

The dusk deepened outside the window, stretching the two people's shadows very long, and finally merged into a blurry shadow on the floor of the hospital room, making it impossible to distinguish one from the other.

Pei Jiqing slowly raised his face, a faint red at the corners of his eyes: "You always felt that I betrayed you, didn't you?" Chen

Huixing just wanted to see Pei Jiqing surrender - just like when he suppressed him with the Alpha pheromones, and admired him from above the moment of collapse and loss of control.

He didn't want an explanation, but Pei Jiqing's submissive gesture, begging for mercy by clinging to the corner of his clothes, saying in a sobbing voice, "Hubby, I won't dare to do it again."

The pleasure of that almost sadistic torture was far more reassuring than trust

. Chen Huixing pressed his palm heavily on his forehead, and his knuckles left pale marks on his temples. His expression rarely revealed a hint of anxiety, and his eyes were so sinister that ink could drip out of them: "Cheating? Ha, I always thought you were just uneducated before," each word seemed to be squeezed out from between his teeth, "but you actually fell in love too early, damn puppy love!"

This was the first time that Chen Huixing added such an emotional modifier before a noun.

Puppy love.

Damn puppy love!

These two words were bitten repeatedly between his lips and teeth, with some unspeakable jealousy and hatred.

It was as if the feelings that sprouted in those green years were more unbearable to him than any actual betrayal.

The light from the window cut in obliquely, casting half of his face in shadow, making his gloomy expression even more terrifying.

Pei Liu and Pei Jiqing were somewhat similar. Later, when Pei Jiqing began to appear frequently, many people mistook him for that shadow, and the Pei family never spoke out to correct it, allowing this ambiguous misunderstanding to continue.

And what Pei Liu had done was naturally blamed on him.

"The tattoo on your body is exactly the same as that Alpha who was a fraudster."

His knuckles pressed against the side of Pei Jiqing's neck: "He deliberately kept the photos of you two in front of me to provoke me--" Each word was like a blunt knife scraping across the bone, "Are those just mistakes you made when you were ignorant?"

The place where he had kissed countless times has now become evidence of his wife's love for someone else.

How ironic!

Pei Jiqing's whole body was stiff, his eyes frozen like the surface of a lake in deep winter, with countless broken reflections sealed under the ice.

The moment Chen Huixing finished speaking, his breathing stagnated, as if even his blood froze at this moment, and his whole body was like a glass statue whose soul was suddenly taken away.

His mind was full of thoughts, Chen Huixing knew, he knew.

Chen Huixing's voice was low: "Pei Jiqing, do you remember that you said I was your first love?"

Pei Jiqing could no longer remember how many lies he had woven to Shen Huixing-those sweet, light, blurted-out love words.

What is first love? It's nothing but a coquettish expression to please the other person when passion is aroused.

Chen Huixing suddenly leaned forward and approached, his slender figure looming over him like a dark cloud pressing down on the city. Pei Jiqing smelled the familiar scent of redwood, which was cold and oppressive. Almost instinctively, he shrank back, his fingers curled up unconsciously, and clenched the bed sheet under him.

It was this subtle movement that made Chen Huixing's nerves explode like a lit powder keg.

"Are you resisting me so now?" His voice was very low, but every word was like a knife, cutting into Pei Jiqing's eardrum.

Pei Jiqing seemed to have been drained of all the blood in his body, and even his fingertips were cold and numb.

At this moment, in Shen Huixing's eyes, his "affair" with Wei Ji was probably a done deal - how ridiculous, a subconscious avoidance became ironclad evidence of guilt.

Pei Jiqing's thoughts were like falling into an icy cave.

There was only one thought spinning wildly in his mind - Chen Huixing already knew.

He just had to keep investigating.

Those secrets, those carefully disguised illusions, will eventually shatter like peeling wall paint, revealing the ugly truth underneath.

And what will Chen Huixing do? He will probably want to kill him.

A lowly Omega from the lower city dared to dream of becoming a shackle on the neck of an S-class Alpha, trying to bind him like a vine entwined around a towering tree.

How ridiculous, how absurd, how... ignorant of life and death.

"Speak!" Chen Huixing's voice exploded like thunder.

Pei Jiqing seemed to suddenly wake up from a nightmare. He opened his mouth, but found that his throat was so dry that he couldn't make a sound.

"Give up," Chen Huixing's voice was as cold as the polar permafrost, "As long as I live one day, you can never be together again."