Chapter 36: Brother, I don't feel wronged. I thought... in this world...

Pei Jiqing's thoughts weren't just a spur-of-the-moment thought.

They had been there since she became pregnant, so for a while he'd wanted to confess to Shen Huixing.

He didn't grow up in a healthy family. Pei Jiqing's childhood was like a leaky house, love constantly leaking through the cracks, leaving behind empty echoes.

The malice of others and his mother's harshness transformed into a greedy longing for warmth in his blood. If someone offered him a faint light, he would willingly burn himself to ashes for a moment of illusory warmth.

He knew too well what it felt like to be deprived of love, like a desert traveler longing for an oasis, willing to give everything even for a mirage.

A stable home was the dream he'd pursued for half his life.

Whether it was sincerity or falsehood, as long as it could maintain the integrity of that small space, he would rather weave a web of lies, layering the truth. Like a child stubbornly gluing together a broken porcelain bowl, afraid of being scolded, even if it cuts its finger, it's determined to pretend the crack never existed.

Pei Jiqing felt bad.

That almost humble yearning embarrassed even him—like laying his heart on a chopping block, ready to be chopped off.

He gazed down at his slightly swollen belly, feeling that this child deserved to live in the sunshine, nurtured by a double dose of unreserved love. No need to learn to read expressions, no need to swallow grievances alone, and no need to surrender all dignity for a little warmth.

Pei Jiqing had originally assumed that the offspring of an S-rank Alpha would be quite troublesome, but aside from the initial setbacks, there had been no further trouble. Unlike Chen Huixing, the gifted and domineering creature Liang Yi had described as having revealed his domineering nature in the womb, his little one was like a gentle cloud, quietly curled up in his belly.

The curve beneath his palm grew more pronounced, yet the reassuring beating remained.

Pei Jiqing thought, "Just being ordinary is fine." He didn't need to be Chen Huixing's son, or the pinnacle Alpha everyone admired. He just needed to be an ordinary little wave, a healthy throw into his arms.

The ABO hierarchy was like gilded shackles, a gift of genes on the surface, but a game carefully designed by those in power—a way to perpetuate the power of the strong, to ensure wealth and power flowed through the veins of those with so-called "superior genes."

He thought of Chen Huixing's body, sculpted to near perfection by his S-class genes. Even the most powerful Alpha couldn't escape the curse of pheromone frenzy, like the mythical Achilles, who ultimately couldn't escape the fatal weakness of his heel.

How ironic! Predators who prided themselves on being at the top of the food chain would ultimately kneel before their compatible Omegas, like wild beasts yielding to the tamer's whip.

Pei Jiqing gently stroked the flat nape of his neck, where Chen Huixing's mark still remained.

Pei Jiqing didn't know how his lies had somehow managed to last so long, allowing him to feel a lingering sense of luck. To this day, when he reflects on his marriage to Shen Huixing, aside from this Alpha-marked body, there seems to be nothing else he cherishes.

Shen Huixing always used such precise words to hurt him, like a scalpel slicing through flesh, exposing his flaws under the operating light.

He clumsily patched each flaw in their marriage, only to tear more threads. Those bigger lies, told to cover up a small one, ultimately became the snowflakes that crushed trust.

Looking back now, their relationship was like a castle built of sand, crumbling from the inside before the tide even arrived.

Pei Jiqing knew that he was both annoying and hard to let go of to Shen Huixing. But he was beautiful, like a gilded thorn, knowing it would prick, yet making one want to hold on tight.

Shen Huixing was obsessed with his body.

I remember a time on a business trip when the mirrored ceiling of the hotel illuminated the scene below, revealing everything below.

Chen Huixing had his room checked several times before settling in. He looked at Pei Jiqing with a reproachful look, but Pei Jiqing felt wronged. The front desk had simply asked if he was staying with his partner and recommended the room.

Besides, Chen Huixing might have been disgusted, but after it was settled, he showed no sign of wanting to change.

Later, Pei Jiqing caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror through the misty air. A rouge-colored blush stained the corners of his eyes, his lips bitten to the color of ripe cherries. Tears rolled down his flushed cheeks, and the silhouette of Chen Huixing pressed down

on him as he moved with abandon. Chen Huixing forgot his identity, everything about him.

Pei Jiqing felt as if he had transformed into a spring stream, melting into ripples in the Alpha's palm, each ripple wetting his fingers, each ripple clinging to his body heat.

He could sense that Chen Huixing was looking at him like a wolf looking at meat.

Pei Jiqing was all too familiar with that gaze, the ghostly fire of a predator locking onto its prey, so intense it almost burned into his skin. Every time the Alpha's gaze passed over his neckline and the dimples of his waist, it was as if he was measuring a treasured possession of his own, with an almost brutal possessiveness.

Pei Jiqing knew too well that his most irreplaceable value in this relationship was this body, tamed inch by inch by Chen Huixing.

The entanglements in the middle of the night were never gentle whispers, but rather a declaration of ownership carved into his bones by the Alpha with pheromones.

An overly dominant partner always makes marriage another cage.

Pei Jiqing felt that there shouldn't be a hierarchy in relationships.

Pei Jiqing had long been accustomed to finding opportunities to turn the tables even when he was at a disadvantage at the start. So what if his first marriage fell apart? He had crawled out of the thorn bush, and because of that, he knew better how to avoid the thorny branches. He had already tasted the worst of this world, and every step forward should be uphill.

Lin Qin had the astringent scent of a green apple, that unripe sweet and sour flavor that made Pei Jiqing want to take a bite whenever he got close, but hesitated because of the sourness.

The thoughtfulness of a young man was like the breeze of early summer, invisible but omnipresent - he would squat down on the beach to roll up his soaked trouser legs, help him rinse the foam out of his hair when his pregnant belly made it inconvenient to wash his hair, and hold up a camera to capture moments he hadn't noticed.

In the photo, Pei Jiqing was standing by a fence covered with blooming bougainvillea, holding a blue forget-me-not on his fingertips, so blue that it seemed to have captured a corner of the clear sky. His palm rested on his slightly bulging belly, and his eyes were filled with a softness that he himself hadn't noticed.

Pei Jiqing felt that Lin Qin's lens had a kind of magic, and that college students had good taste.

Lin Qin said that he was in the university photography club, and if Pei Jiqing liked, he could take pictures for him all the time.

When Lin Qin talked about photography, there was a glint of light in his eyes.

The figure frozen in the photo made Pei Jiqing feel for the first time that even the slightly swollen outline due to pregnancy could show a different kind of softness in the interweaving of light and shadow.

Lin Qin showed Pei Jiqing her portfolio, which contained various landscape photos and stray cats curled up under the eaves.

Pei Jiqing asked half-jokingly: "Am I the first human model in your lens?"

The tips of Lin Qin's ears instantly turned red, and her fingers unconsciously stroked the edge of the camera, and she responded with a low "hmm".

That answer with a youthful echo, like an unripe green plum, quietly rolled into the lake of Pei Jiqing's heart, stirring up circles of slightly sweet ripples.

The sea breeze blew past, blowing the fine hair on Lin Qin's forehead, revealing a pair of eyes filled with pure enthusiasm, which made Pei Jiqing turn his face away.

One drowsy afternoon, he dozed lightly on the sofa on the second floor. Hazy, he could smell the approaching scent of lime mixed with sunlight.

Opening his eyes, he met the young man's gaze, his gaze so close. Lin Qin froze in place, his neck flushed to the tips of his ears, like a child caught hiding candy.

Pei Jiqing gazed at that handsome face, seemingly on the verge of smoldering, and whispered, in a strange, unspoken whisper, "Do you... have a quirk? A penchant for married women?"

Before he could finish his words, Lin Qin leaped up like a startled deer, and the sound of frantic footsteps echoed down the wooden stairs.

The approach of the unfamiliar Alph scent, like a strange key trying to glide through a keyhole, stirred a subtle tremor in the glands at the back of Pei Jiqing's neck. That place had been permanently marked by the scent of redwood, and every sensitive inch of flesh remembered the pain and pleasure inflicted by Chen Huixing.

Omega biology is so unfair. A marked body is like a locked box; unless the mark is completely erased, it cannot accommodate a second key.

During the day, he admired the youthful energy of the young, green-apple boy, but at night, he was betrayed by the instincts of a low-level Omega—in his dreams, he was trapped in a swamp of passion, Chen Huixing's muscular body heaving in his imagination, sweat pushing his shirt up to his collarbone, revealing skin that had been repeatedly bitten.

He had taken several tubes of Chen Huixing's pheromone extract from the Shen family's safe, intended to ensure the healthy growth of the unborn child. Those redwood-scented glass tubes were a common "survival insurance" for upper-class Alphas.

Pei Jiqing suddenly remembered the bottle he had deposited with the ABO Association years ago. Perhaps it was that bottle of pheromones that Chen Huixing had used to reconstruct their compatibility.

Otherwise, everything could have been buried under the car accident.

Regarding Lin Qin's hidden thoughts, Pei Jiqing thought he should at least warn the two elders. A young person's momentary excitement was understandable, but the absurd idea of "becoming a father" was best extinguished as soon as possible.

Unexpectedly, the affable Uncle Lin smiled with wrinkles at the corners of his eyes upon hearing this, and said with a hint of sarcasm: "When he wasn't back yet, when I was video chatting with him, the camera panned to you hanging out clothes, and the boy stared at the screen with his neck red."

Pei Jiqing had no idea there was such a thing.

Uncle Yan held the newspaper in silence.

Pei Jiqing asked in surprise: "Don't you all object?"

Uncle Yan finally raised his eyes from the newspaper: "Since you plan to have a child, it will be better for you to live with us than on your own."

At first, Uncle Yan really couldn't like Pei Jiqing. He acted like a spoiled child, picky about the softness of the mattress, particular about the food, and dressed very nicely every day, which was all evidence of pretense in the old man's eyes.

Until one evening, when a rainstorm was about to come, the dark clouds were very low. When he and Uncle Lin went out to buy things, they saw Pei Jiqing from a distance coming to give them an umbrella.

Uncle Lin was so anxious that he kept waving his hands: "You kid, take care of yourself."

Pei Jiqing's hair was blown against his cheek by the wind, but he stubbornly handed over the umbrella handle: "I saw the weather forecast that the rain will not stop for a while, I'm afraid you won't be able to come back."

Since that time, Uncle Yan was not so cold to Pei Jiqing, and would let him drink tea with him, while Pei Jiqing could only drink hot water. He was good at handicrafts, and later the old man began to slowly polish a few pieces of cherry wood with sandpaper, and the small cradle was finally placed in the corridor.

Uncle Lin joked that it was inevitable that it would be rough for Old Yan to do this for the first time, but he saw that when Pei Jiqing's fingertips gently stroked the wood grain, a drop of water fell on the unpainted wood, spreading dark dots.

When Pei Jiqing saw it, his eyes were red, and Uncle Lin asked him if he didn't like it?

Uncle Lin's question, tinged with a smile, drifted into Pei Jiqing's ears. When he shook his head, a soft, sour feeling choked his throat: "I thought... I was the only one in the world, counting the days to wait for this child."

Pei Jiqing thought about it and felt that Lin Qin was still too young. Uncle Yan and Uncle Lin were too good to him. He couldn't trample on this relationship.

The sea breeze, carrying a salty and astringent dampness, brushed across his cheeks. Pei Jiqing looked at the profile of the young man beside him, which was gilded by the setting sun. In the end

, he gently uttered the words that were lingering in his heart: "Little Qin, you have to understand... I'm not looking for a partner for myself, I'm looking for a father for this little guy." Lin Qin's steps suddenly stopped. When he turned around, his eyelashes cast a trembling shadow under his eyes: "Can't I?"

This sentence made Pei Jiqing's throat tighten, and he almost coughed: "... This is really unfair to you."

The sound of the tide suddenly became very distant.

Lin Qin's eyes sparkled: "Brother, I don't feel wronged. Your child is my child. You don't have to feel sorry for me. No one will dislike you after knowing you."

"This is the first time I like someone since I was a child. I feel good. If you don't like it, I can control myself. I don't want to give such a bad impression to the person I like."

Lin Qin's expression was a little serious after he finished speaking, as if he had made up his mind.

Pei Jiqing seemed to see a sincere heart, which was held in front of him without reservation. It was so pure that even touching it felt like a blasphemy.