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It’s a lovely day, until the world ends.

They’re at the Shengfang Biotech office. Hua Yong brings a cup of tea to Mr Sheng. They exchange a glance, and talk about picking Hua Sheng up from school. Hua Yong leans down to capture his beloved’s lips in a kiss.

Later on, he’ll be grateful to have had that—to have that kiss imprinted in his memory, to cherish it for years.

Out of nowhere, the air explodes. Even with his Enigma strength, there’s nothing Hua Yong can do against the shockwave that rips through the room.

There’s a bomb. It kills Mr Sheng instantly; it destroys the entire building. Hua Yong is the only one left (barely) alive. He stays that way long enough to learn who was behind the attack. He breathes his last mere hours later, not willing to try and hang on in a world without Mr Sheng.

And then he opens his eyes in his bedroom in his old house in Country P.

***

Hua Yong pieces it together quickly, his mind too sharp to let him linger in a haze. He is, somehow, in the past. He has been thrown ten years back—he was thirty when he died, and his current circumstances indicate that he is twenty now.

X Holdings isn’t X Holdings yet. It’s not even his yet. He’s only just gathered his power behind the scenes, his useless siblings still labouring under the misapprehension that they have a chance.

And Mr Sheng… Mr Sheng is not here for Hua Yong to hug, to kiss, to clutch closer to himself and promise never to let go. Seven years, a child, a family—all gone, wiped out in the blink of an eye. But what if—

Does Mr Sheng also remember?

Hua Yong, heedless of anyone’s concerns, rushes to Jianghu. He runs to the Shengfang Biotech building—the one that was blown up, the one that vanished into flame—and freezes near the doorstep as he sees Mr Sheng walk out with an Omega woman by his side.

Mr Sheng is still beautiful and commanding, but he’s younger, softer. Not the man Hua Yong had last held in his arms. And evidently not the man with the same memories, either, as he turns to the Omega near him and flashes her that charming playboy smile.

Hua Yong clenches his fists. Mr Sheng would never do this, now. If he knew—if he remembered—

A void of despair opens in Hua Yong’s chest, a vortex threatening to swallow the whole universe. He’s alone, again. He has to win Mr Sheng, again. He is facing years, again, without his beloved, after years with him, and the torture is such that this time, he’s not sure he can stand it.

His new habits, nurtured by Mr Sheng’s care, tempt him to cry. But what’s the point, when there’s no Mr Sheng to comfort him? Hua Yong’s tears have only ever been for Mr Sheng.

His eyes stay dry as he follows the couple. They’re still dry as he slits the Omega’s throat after she separates from Mr Sheng. Truly, under the circumstances, Hua Yong can’t be held accountable.

“It hurts, Mr Sheng,” he whispers, crouching in an alley, blood-stained hands over his head.

But he has hurt before. He summons, with ruthless effort, the memories of the other hurts he’s lived through, and reminds himself that he’s overcome them all. He’s strong enough to face this, too—he has to, for Mr Sheng. If he doesn’t, Mr Sheng will be lost to him forever.

***

Foreknowledge, much as it is a curse, is also Hua Yong’s greatest weapon. Some answers he took months to find in the past, he already has now; he knows who will betray him, and who stays loyal; he has his skills, and the memory of chemical formulas that once took years to develop. And in the most important matter, his love with Mr Sheng, he is also forewarned of where the pitfalls hide.

They had been happy, last time. Hua Yong had made sure of that. But—

Some people live, now, who should die. People who envy Mr Sheng, or desire him too much. People who will want to harm Mr Sheng—to kill Mr Sheng. People who will succeed, if Hua Yong doesn’t stop them. He’d been too merciful, before, and paid the price. He won’t make that mistake again.

Hua Yong’s own lies about his designation and his victimhood at Shen Wenlang’s hands—the old plan to win Mr Sheng’s affection—will hurt Mr Sheng when it is revealed, will nearly tear them apart. Hua Yong never should’ve crafted a deception that would inevitably crumble—never should’ve let Mr Sheng realise the full extent of what he’d done to bring them together. Mr Sheng blamed Hua Yong for his changed biology, and there had been fights, and tears… This is where Hua Yong went wrong. Mr Sheng never should’ve seen Hua Yong as a problem—only as a solution.

And the child… Hua Yong still wants the child, the adorable menace that Hua Sheng turned out to be. He wants their family, the oasis of peace he’d built with his own hands. But the birth had nearly killed Mr Sheng, and that can’t stand. Hua Yong can fix this, now. He can fix Mr Sheng. He can fix them, before Mr Sheng even knows they must be fixed.

Hua Yong can do this. He can do this better. Mr Sheng will be his, and this time it will be perfect.

Step 1: Get rid of the competition and plant the seed of doubt

Lately, Sheng Shaoyou can’t help but think his luck is cursed. Tragedies strike in quick succession—the woman he was dating dies; the next person he goes out with, an Omega man, ends up in the hospital after a life-threatening fall; and his brother Shaoqing gets killed in a car accident. That last, admittedly, is not just Sheng Shaoyou’s matter but also his whole family’s, and yet the past few weeks have felt like one thing after another.

“Perhaps a consultation with the feng shui master wouldn’t be amiss,” his father muses at the office. “We wouldn’t want to develop… a reputation. It looks inauspicious for Shengfang Biotech.”

So here Sheng Shaoyou is, opening the door of his villa to the qi advisor. He’s met with this master before, but today the normally serene man looks somewhat rattled before their session even starts. Nervous, almost.

“Is anything amiss?” Sheng Shaoyou wonders politely.

“Oh, no, no. Let us begin.” The daoist seemingly gathers himself and conducts a walkthrough of the house, doing compass readings.

He then holds Sheng Shaoyou’s wrist with a frown, checking the flow of his qi.

“There is nothing out of order with the layout of young master’s dwelling,” the expert says, in the end. “It is all in accordance with the harmony that we established last time. But I sense a turbulence in your qi. There is… a great change coming. Your pheromones… your very nature… yes, there will be a great change. Young master should take care.”

Sheng Shaoyou is an S-class Alpha. What can be wrong with his pheromones? Still, he pays the expected consultation fee to the daoist who seems only too willing to leave the premises, and reports the findings to his father—who then recommends a check-up at HeCi.

“Just in case,” he says. “These masters can sometimes see beyond normal medicine, you know.”

Well, normal medicine can’t see anything wrong with Sheng Shaoyou at this time.

“You’re at the peak of health, if we don’t consider your stress hormones,” his usual physician tells him. “Please don’t worry, Mr Sheng.”

So Sheng Shaoyou puts this whole thing out of his mind.

Step 2: Begin the pheromone treatment at an opportune time

Sheng Shaoyou’s luck doesn’t improve. His significant others keep suffering misfortune, in ways that start seriously affecting his reputation and rattle his own emotional equilibrium. Shengfang Biotech’s scientists fail to make any progress on the application for the genetic scissors technology, even as a newly emerged competitor—the HS Group—manages to do just that. And then Sheng Shaoyou’s father gets diagnosed with gland cancer.

Now, on top of everything else, Sheng Shaoyou has to take on more responsibility at Shengfang Biotech, sooner than anyone expected. His father is still trying to work, but his condition is deteriorating quickly. They’ve started a new division whose goal is to develop a gland cancer treatment. Such a drug is reportedly also in the works at Country P’s Beichao Holdings, but the company is harder to get any information on than a fortress. Beichao Holdings has recently begun a massive international expansion, every investment turning up gold, after allegedly going through a change in leadership. But there are rumours of continued power struggles at the top. It would be hard to approach them at the best of times, never mind now. And yet the clock is ticking, and Sheng Fang fades more every day.

Sheng Shaoyou grits his teeth and forges on, because what else is he going to do? He’s an S-class Alpha. He’s strong enough to bear any weight that tries to crush him.

HeCi invites him for a preventative check-up appointment in light of his father’s diagnosis. Sheng Shaoyou goes, his own health the last thing on his mind.

He arrives to find that his usual physician has quit and been replaced by a new doctor—an Omega with the slightest accent.

“Would you say you have been under stress lately?” the doctor asks delicately, and Sheng Shaoyou contains a snort.

“Some,” he says.

“That would explain the small disturbance in your pheromones,” the doctor says, nodding at Sheng Shaoyou’s blood test result. “It is unusual for an S-class Alpha, but perhaps not under your circumstances.”

Somehow it doesn’t help to know that, between Sheng Shaoyou’s romantic woes and his company’s problems, he’s officially under sufficient strain to shake even his constitution.

“I can give you some supplements, and then we’ll check in a few months to see if things have improved,” the doctor says, hand-writing a label on a large bottle. “There’s no cause for alarm yet.”

Sheng Shaoyou nods. He’s got more important things to worry about. He’s sure this pheromone hiccup will clear up soon.

***

It doesn’t clear up.

Over the next few months, Sheng Shaoyou starts having sporadic trouble controlling his pheromones; it’s nothing major, but enough to concern someone who’s had iron-clad control all his life. His instincts are acting up, as well: he grows more anxious, somehow, and a couple of times reacts with emotional upset instead of his usual dominant anger. Worst of all, on the rare occasions when he does seek out a partner nowadays, his performance in the bedroom proves unreliable.

“I’m sure this happens to everybody,” the lithe and extremely appealing Omega says, evidently trying to be supportive. Still, she can’t quite hide her surprise at the fact that it might happen to an S-class Alpha.

Sheng Shaoyou has never suffered a worse humiliation. And it’s not a one-off, either. Sex just feels off—like something’s missing. Like there’s a scent he should chase, and keeps not finding. Like there’s an urge he can’t release.

During his next rut, his knot fails to come out at all.

That’s when Sheng Shaoyou, freaked out enough to set aside his embarrassment, returns to the doctor.

“This truly is unusual,” the doctor says, eyebrows furrowed over his readings. “I’m afraid we now have to diagnose you with a pheromone disorder. If I didn’t know better, I’d say…”

“What?” Sheng Shaoyou asks, mouth dry.

“Well, your body seems to be exhibiting some Omega patterns and characteristics,” the doctor says cautiously.

“That’s ridiculous! I’m an S-class Alpha!” Sheng Shaoyou all but recoils.

“Yes, yes! And you’ve been under a lot of stress for quite some time… It may be that your system is overloaded and seeking a retreat… Could you possibly take it easier in the next couple of months?”

“No.” Sheng Shaoyou’s father spends more and more nights in the hospital. It’s clear, now, that Sheng Shaoyou will have to step in as the company’s president in the near future.

“Perhaps having a stable partner would help you,” the doctor suggests. “Someone to balance out your pheromones, longer-term.”

Sheng Shaoyou clenches his jaw. Even if he overcomes the bad luck that dogs his conquests and starts a real relationship—would anyone have an Alpha who can’t fuck their partner properly? Alphas are meant to be strong, reassuring, virile. Lately, Sheng Shaoyou is none of those things, much as he maintains the facade.

The doctor sighs into the silence.

“We’ll increase the supplements,” he says, taking out another large unmarked bottle. “And in the meantime, we’ll monitor your condition.”

Step 3: Act pitiful while intensifying the pheromones

Sheng Shaoyou is on his way home from a long day at the office, the responsibilities of a company president resting heavy on his shoulders, when his car stops with an abrupt screech.

“Sir! I’m sorry, I swear I didn’t mean to—he just appeared!” the driver babbles.

Sheng Shaoyou steps out to see that they’ve hit somebody—a man, clad in white, lies crumpled before the front wheels. Then the figure stirs and gives a faint moan.

“Sir? Sir, are you all right?” the driver bends down to check on him.

The victim lifts his face, and Sheng Shaoyou’s breath leaves him.

This is the most stunning person he’s ever seen in his life.

His face is exquisite, as if sculpted by a renowned master. His lips look plush and kissable, his brows are straight and perfectly shaped, and eyes are clear and vulnerable and glittering with tears.

“I’m—I’m fine,” the incredible vision says, in a weak voice.

“You clearly are not,” Sheng Shaoyou says, offering the Omega—for this is obviously an Omega—a hand as he tries to get up. “Be careful! Should you be moving?”

“Please don’t worry,” the lovely thing murmurs, even as he wobbles and unconsciously leans into Sheng Shaoyou’s side. His orchid pheromones wash over Sheng Shaoyou, refreshing and somehow soothing on his strained nerves. “You’re so kind, but—please don’t worry.”

He’s got scrapes and bruises, and he winces as his elbow brushes against Sheng Shaoyou. There’s blood, dripping. His injuries could’ve been a lot worse, but it’s still hard to see someone so fragile this hurt.

“My car hit you,” Sheng Shaoyou says. “I should take responsibility. My name is Sheng Shaoyou. I’ll take you to a hospital.”

The Omega glances at him, obviously undecided.

“Trust me,” Sheng Shaoyou says, trying to look as reliable as possible. “Despite the accident, I truly mean you no harm. Please.”

He ushers the Omega into the car, giving the driver a speaking glance.

“What is your name?” he asks, on the way to the hospital.

For some reason, the Omega has to think a little, frowning. His hand massages his temple. “Hua… Hua Yong,” he manages finally.

“Did you hit your head?” Sheng Shaoyou asks. That could be rather serious indeed.

“I… maybe.” The Omega frowns, looking distressed. “I… I don’t remember.” Then his eyes fly open wider, and he throws a panicked glance at Sheng Shaoyou. “I don’t remember! I don’t remember… anything… anything before the car…”

Sheng Shaoyou reaches out and squeezes his fingers. “We’ll let the doctors check.”

***

The doctors at HeCi confirm it: Hua Yong has amnesia. He remembers his name and language, but no personal history or people.

“You must’ve hit your head in the accident,” the emergency doctor explains. “In most cases, mild retrograde amnesia goes away on its own after some days or weeks.”

The Omega looks awfully small and lonely sitting on the examination bed. Sheng Shaoyou can’t help releasing his comforting pheromones, and stands straighter when he gets a teary-eyed grateful look in return.

On the bright side, Hua Yong’s injuries are really not severe. He’s coherent, and apparently not concussed, which means he doesn’t require in-patient care.

“Thank you. That’s a relief,” Hua Yong says, with an admirable attempt at composure.

The Omega’s fortitude is visibly tested when it becomes clear that the hospital can’t help to identify him. He has no wallet, no phone, no ID on him. The name he gives turns up nothing in their system. The police, when called, try the national database, but that leads nowhere too. The officer suggests Hua Yong may be misremembering his own name—or that he might not be from Jianghu at all. They conclude that he should report it if he remembers anything, and until then they’ll just have to wait.

The Omega wipes his tears and tries for a smile.

“Does that… does that mean there’s no information about my address? Or… or work?”

Naturally, there is not.

“But we could, ah, provide you the location of the nearest shelters?” a nurse suggests awkwardly.

Sheng Shaoyou’s hair stands on end, imagining this delicate, unearthly beautiful Omega in a homeless shelter, alone out there with no memories and no money to his name.

“You can come with me,” he blurts.

The offer is rash, but he doesn’t have time to regret it before Hua Yong lifts his luminous eyes and demurs:

“Mr Sheng, you’re so kind. You’ve already helped so much by staying with me. I could never impose on you more.”

“What impose,” Sheng Shaoyou says, becoming more convinced by the minute. “It’s my fault you’re like this!”

Hua Yong is touchingly stubborn in his pride. He has no clue who Sheng Shaoyou is—how little it would cost him to provide one of his empty apartments for his use. He doesn’t want to be a burden, which is new in Sheng Shaoyou’s experience—mostly, the people around him love to depend on him for material things.

“You’re coming with me, and it’s final,” he says in the end, taking Hua Yong’s hand.

“If you’re sure, Mr Sheng,” the Omega murmurs, a little more of his orchid scent unfurling, and Sheng Shaoyou’s spirit sings at the victory. 

He hasn’t been lucky lately, in love or otherwise. He hasn’t even felt like himself, what with his pheromone disorder. But Hua Yong’s beauty tickles his heart, and his fragility makes him stand tall again. His orchid scent, too, is balm on Sheng Shaoyou’s senses. It’s enough to make Sheng Shaoyou think—maybe, this time…

He makes plans for seeing the Omega again soon as he leaves him alone at the apartment for the night.

***

He returns to visit Hua Yong after work the next day, only to find giant blisters marring the Omega’s soft palms.

“What happened?” Sheng Shaoyou exclaims.

“I’m fine, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong smiles at him, tired and in pain but with a clear attempt at brightness. “I’ve found a job! I can soon repay you for your kindness!”

“Who’s asking you to repay me!” Sheng Shaoyou protests. “What job is this?”

Turns out, Hua Yong has spent all day, having barely recovered from his injuries, washing dishes in a restaurant by hand.

“It was the only work I could get,” he earnestly explains. “It doesn’t pay much, but if I’m careful and I save—”

Sheng Shaoyou feels like his mind is boiling.

“That job isn’t fit for you!” he says. Then an idea strikes him. “Come work for my company instead!”

Hua Yong tilts his head. “Mr Sheng’s… company?”

Sheng Shaoyou takes the time to spell out who he really is, and how little of a bother it would be to have Hua Yong join his secretarial staff. Hua Yong’s eyes grow wider and wider the further he goes.

“But Mr Sheng, I can’t depend on you so much!” he says. “Besides, you don’t even know if I’m good at anything!”

Hua Yong will do Sheng Shaoyou a service just by staying nearby and not distracting him with horrifying imaginings of him doing gruelling menial labour. But putting it like that might crush the Omega’s pride.

“It doesn’t hurt to try and see what you are good at,” Sheng Shaoyou says instead. “Maybe it will jog your memory. You obviously weren’t working with your hands before.” They are too delicate, too easily damaged.

Hua Yong has to concede at that.

Sheng Shaoyou prepares to leave, promising to pick him up tomorrow morning, when Hua Yong shyly holds him back and says that he’s made dinner. He’s been so keen to show his gratitude to Mr Sheng somehow, he says, and won’t Mr Sheng stay and try it?

Hua Yong has thought enough about Sheng Shaoyou to cook him dinner with those hurting, blistered hands after a hard day’s work. Sheng Shaoyou scolds him for not taking care of himself, but his heart feels like a cat is scratching it with a paw, gentle.

***

Sheng Shaoyou is as good as his word, and the next morning he takes Hua Yong over to Shengfang Biotech.

Hua Yong promptly proves to be shockingly competent. He has an easy head for numbers, casually makes connections senior employees miss, and corrects an error that’s crept into a report. Whoever he was in the life he’s forgotten, he clearly worked in an office and dealt with paperwork. That’s rather convenient, because Sheng Shaoyou quite likes having this beauty nearby, and now he’s got a great excuse to make him stay.

It becomes a habit, to take Hua Yong to the office and to bring him back at night. A habit, to have Hua Yong deliver tea to his desk. A habit for Hua Yong to make him little snacks, and daily cookies, and dinner on occasion, and for Sheng Shaoyou to inhale his lovely orchid pheromones. They are… surprisingly strong sometimes, almost domineering, and yet somehow the scent makes Sheng Shaoyou’s anxiety and irritation settle. He feels better around Hua Yong—stronger, more centred.

Perhaps having a stable partner would help you. Someone to help balance out your pheromones, longer-term.

Sheng Shaoyou doesn’t plan for longer term, with anybody. Still, he starts staying over at the apartment some nights, in a separate bedroom, pointing out how it’s a waste to drive back and forth. Hua Yong agrees, looking a bit flustered, and demands to cook for him to give back for all his help.

It’s… comfortable. Reassuring. Domestic, almost, in a way Sheng Shaoyou doesn’t want to consider but finds eases something inside him.

One night at home after dinner, he leans over and covers Hua Yong’s lips with his own.

Hua Yong gasps. He blooms under Sheng Shaoyou’s kiss, the orchid scent opening, and then withdraws, unsure, moisture in his eyes and on his mouth.

“I… I don’t think I’ve done this with anyone else before,” he breathes.

Every possessive Alpha instinct within Sheng Shaoyou stirs to life at that. He really can’t be blamed for claiming Hua Yong’s lips again, or for the hour he then spends persuading Hua Yong, in between kisses, that it’s fine for them to date. They are boss and employee, and Sheng Shaoyou will step back if it truly makes Hua Yong uncomfortable, but Hua Yong’s main concern seems to be about how this will reflect on Sheng Shaoyou. As usual, he spares no worry for himself. Sheng Shaoyou will just have to do it for him.

Falling to sleep in his bed that night, he has a flash of fear that the curse of his lovers will find Hua Yong, too. That something terrible will happen.

But something terrible has already happened to Hua Yong. Maybe this is his way of breaking that curse—taking them both into the light.

***

Unlike what would’ve been his wont even a year ago, Sheng Shaoyou doesn’t rush them into sex. Intimate relations haven’t been the most stable part of his life lately, and he doesn’t want to start something he can’t finish—especially with Hua Yong, who’s so evidently virginal. It’s only right to take it slow, for both their sakes.

Still, he dreams, and his dreams are strange, unsettling. He dreams of drowning under waves of scorching, arousing heat. He dreams of a thumb brushing his lower lip and dipping inside his mouth, tasting like come. He dreams, most embarrassingly, about fingers massaging the opening between his ass cheeks, and slipping something inside him, something that melts and burns.

It’s all nonsense, but disturbing nonsense—all the more for how it has him waking up covered in his own spend. These wet dreams always have him passive, gasping, giving in, and yet they make his body sing and shudder.

Your body seems to be picking up some Omega patterns and characteristics.

That can’t be true. Perhaps he’s just… projecting what Hua Yong might feel. Nervous about being good for him.

He manages to convince himself of this until the day when he and Hua Yong are kissing in the kitchen, more intense than normal. He breathes in that orchid scent, and his cock twitches, and a slick wetness appears between his buttocks.

He freezes.

“Mr Sheng?” Hua Yong’s eyes blink open, dazed. 

Sheng Shaoyou takes a panicked step back. The wetness slides into his underwear at the movement.

“I’ll just… I remembered something,” he says, and flees to the bathroom.

Once there, he locks the door and shoves his pants down. There’s a damp spot at the back. Transparent, slippery liquid glistens on the tissue he hurriedly swipes over himself.

Sheng Shaoyou, an S-class Alpha, is leaking slick after kissing his Omega.

“Mr Sheng?” comes Hua Yong’s worried knock.

Sheng Shaoyou takes a deep breath from where he’s apparently huddled down on the tile floor.

“I’m fine,” he rasps out.

He isn’t fine.

Step 4: Train his new instincts

This time, there’s a counsel of doctors, and it’s mortifying in the extreme, because they all look at Sheng Shaoyou in fascination. An S-class Alpha with Omega symptoms must be very interesting for them academically, but Sheng Shaoyou wants to crawl out of his skin by the time the blood tests and the… other… samples are taken, and he’s in consultation with his treating physician again.

“Can you fix me?” he asks, trying for a calm tone.

The doctor gives him a sympathetic look.

“That depends on what we’re dealing with, Mr Sheng. We’ll have to wait for all the tests to come back, and monitor what happens in the meanwhile. But it could be that this is your body’s own… evolution. It’s an incredibly rare case, of course, but you wouldn’t be the first person in history to inadvertently transition—”

“I’m not becoming an Omega!” Sheng Shaoyou shouts.

All the medics have made references to this: Sheng Shaoyou’s Omega transformation. Like that’s a real thing that can happen.

“Mr Sheng, you have to remember that all of us are born with the potential to differentiate into any of the genders,” the doctor says. “We only present at 6-8 years of age, and some even as late as 12. This means we carry the latent traits of every designation. For the vast majority of people, these latent traits never manifest in an active form. But it doesn’t mean that they can’t, under some exceptional circumstances.”

“There are no exceptional circumstances!” Sheng Shaoyou is fine! Well, okay, he isn’t fine, and hasn’t been for a couple of years, but—

“You did suffer a number of traumatic losses in a short amount of time,” the doctor points out gently. “Your brother’s death—even if you weren’t close. Your father’s diagnosis. And perhaps, most crucially for the matter at hand—a series of deaths and injuries involving your romantic partners. You’ve mentioned none of these relationships were serious, and yet… Your pheromone problems started at about the same time. Do you think all of this may have… shaken your inner Alpha? Made you retreat emotionally, in some way? Made you wish for stability, for someone to give you comfort?”

Sheng Shaoyou hunches his shoulders. “I don’t think so.”

Suddenly, he wants Hua Yong’s scent next to him.

Hua Yong… Hua Yong doesn’t know about any of this. Can Sheng Shaoyou even be a good partner to Hua Yong if he’s so broken?

“There has to be something I can take,” Sheng Shaoyou insists, swallowing against the dread rising in his gut. “Some treatment. Medicine. Something to fix this.” He can’t live like this!

“Nothing is safe until we figure out exactly what’s causing this,” the doctor tells him. “We will carefully study if there is perhaps—a mutation of some kind in your DNA.”

A mutation. Like Sheng Shaoyou is some freak of nature.

There is… a great change coming. Your pheromones… your very nature… yes, there will be a great change.

Sheng Shaoyou clenches his fists and refuses to let his steps falter as he leaves the doctor’s office.

***

The scent of Hua Yong’s orchid pheromones soothes Sheng Shaoyou instantly when he gets home. He can’t help clutching the Omega in his embrace for longer than usual.

“Mr Sheng, are you all right?” Hua Yong asks sweetly, squeezing him back.

“I am now,” he says, face tucked into Hua Yong’s neck.

Sheng Shaoyou can’t be transitioning into an Omega if he’s attracted to one. He finds his Omega’s scent comforting. Isn’t that proof that he’s still an Alpha? Even if he’s got… problems.

“Can I sleep in your room tonight?” he asks.

Hua Yong stills for a moment, and Sheng Shaoyou can practically feel the blush radiating off him. He smiles despite himself. Hua Yong can always bring up his mood.

“Just to sleep,” Sheng Shaoyou coaxes, trying to ignore the part of him that wonders if he’s even capable of doing more than that. If he’s leaking slick now, what does that mean for the rest of him? Does he dare start anything with Hua Yong at all? And yet: “I just want to hold you for longer.”

“Okay,” Hua Yong says shyly. “Just to sleep.”

It is immensely better, somehow, to fall asleep while holding Hua Yong, surrounded by his orchid scent. Like everything will be fine. Like Sheng Shaoyou’s instincts trust that no bad things will happen while Hua Yong is here.

Sleeping in Hua Yong’s room tonight becomes sleeping in Hua Yong’s room every night. And they are both still men: it doesn’t stay just about sleeping.

They kiss in bed, softly, and then with rising intensity. Sheng Shaoyou’s hands can’t help but wander. Hua Yong, too, is growing bolder with his explorations, tentatively touching Sheng Shaoyou’s chest and making him moan when he accidentally grazes a nipple with his nails. He likes kissing Sheng Shaoyou’s neck, and Sheng Shaoyou indulgently tilts his head back to give him better access. A sweet, simmering heat builds between them—something Sheng Shaoyou has never experienced before. 

And it would’ve felt heady, romantic, if arousal didn’t have him slicking up every time. Sheng Shaoyou is almost always the one to break up their kissing sessions, ending things as soon as wetness wells up between his legs.

(The doctors have him come in for weekly injections. They have explained very seriously that the treatment is experimental and might not work if his own biology is against him—which looks to be the case—but Sheng Shaoyou will try anything.)

He can see that Hua Yong doesn’t understand what’s wrong. Hua Yong is opening up to him, so trustingly, and—Hua Yong is readier and readier to go to the next step with him. Recently, Hua Yong has ventured so far as to shakily, earnestly, put his hand on Sheng Shaoyou’s cock and give it a few strokes—before Sheng Shaoyou grabbed his fingers and turned them over to kiss him instead.

He wants Hua Yong. But—he doesn’t know what to do. How to explain.

One day, when Sheng Shaoyou tries to draw away in bed again, Hua Yong looks at him with wide, wounded eyes.

“Mr Sheng… am I doing something wrong?”

Sheng Shaoyou’s heart falls.

“No! No, of course not,” he says, reaching for the Omega.

But Hua Yong dodges him and looks determined.

“I want to make Mr Sheng feel good,” he says.

And then he shimmies lower, pulls down Sheng Shaoyou’s pyjama pants, and puts his mouth on his cock.

“Hua Yong!” Sheng Shaoyou means to stop him, but it comes out as a gasp.

The sight of his dick between those plush lips jams his brain. Hua Yong inexpertly sucks at the tip and stretches his mouth open to take him deeper.

This is—this is—

Sheng Shaoyou fists his hands by his sides, willing himself not to thrust into that warmth and breathing hard with the orchid pheromones swirling around him. He almost doesn’t register Hua Yong’s hands on his inner thighs until Hua Yong lifts his mouth off his dick and says, in surprise: “Mr Sheng…”

There’s moisture shining on Hua Yong’s fingers. Moisture that came from Sheng Shaoyou’s ass—and not from his cock.

Sheng Shaoyou flushes, mortification battling his arousal. He tries to close his legs, except that Hua Yong is between them.

“I—”

“Can I touch you?” Hua Yong’s expression doesn’t change from that earnest wonder, and Sheng Shaoyou doesn’t even process the question before a finger is already there, already prodding at his leaking hole.

“No, don’t—” Sheng Shaoyou chokes out, but every nerve ending in his body suddenly seems to be concentrated where Hua Yong’s finger is—where it’s now easily slipping in and accidentally brushing something inside him that— “Ah!” Sheng Shaoyou arches off the bed.

“I… I think Mr Sheng likes that?” Hua Yong says, innocent hope in his voice, and then puts his lips back on Sheng Shaoyou’s dick even as his finger keeps gently massaging that spot inside which makes Sheng Shaoyou see stars.

Sheng Shaoyou’s rational mind retreats under the onslaught of sensation. At some point, that finger in his ass becomes two, and he has no words for how it feels, but he’s rocking forward, onto those fingers and into that mouth, forgetting himself, until he explodes with a strangled shout.

He hasn’t come this hard in… years.

When Sheng Shaoyou regains some sense of self, he finds Hua Yong gazing up at him shyly, eyes brimming with physiological tears. Come lingers at the corner of his swollen lips.

“Was I… was I good?” he asks, in a quivering voice. “Did I please Mr Sheng?”

Sheng Shaoyou has absolutely no idea how to respond. He can’t lie and say this didn’t feel good. It’s just—so much happened, so quickly, and he hadn’t wanted Hua Yong knowing—seeing... He hadn’t wanted anyone ever touching his… But then it had been so—

“Come here,” he says, drawing Hua Yong into his arms. “You… you didn’t have to do that.” He stops short of you shouldn’t have done that. That feels too harsh to say to the Omega, and the sentiment is rather at odds with the bliss still coursing through Sheng Shaoyou’s veins. He just—he hadn’t wanted—but now—

“I want to please Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says, with sweet resolve.

“You… don’t you have questions?” Sheng Shaoyou swallows.

Hua Yong blinks at him. “I already asked.” Was I good? That can’t be all Hua Yong cares about.

“I mean, questions regarding…” Sheng Shaoyou doesn’t actually have the vocabulary to talk about his own messed up biology.

“I don’t know? I like everything about Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says helplessly. He fidgets. “I just want Mr Sheng to be happy. I’ve never… done this with anyone else before.”

I’ve never done this with anyone else before, either, Sheng Shaoyou thinks, somewhat hysterically.

No lover of his had touched those parts of him. Most of them would’ve recoiled at the very idea; the rest would’ve treated it as some kind of power play. But it’s clear that Hua Yong is too naive to think in those terms. He saw a way to please Sheng Shaoyou, and didn’t think beyond that. It’s… disarming. And reassuring, somehow.

Maybe Hua Yong doesn’t realise how broken Sheng Shaoyou is, even with the evidence in front of him.

“Do you, ah…” The proof of Hua Yong’s own unsatisfied desire is poking at Sheng Shaoyou’s leg. He grasps Hua Yong’s dick in a loose hold and strokes it, to indicate what he means. Hua Yong’s cock is thick and heavy in Sheng Shaoyou’s hand, which makes his heart beat faster for some reason. 

“Oh!” Hua Yong cries, and trembles in his arms. “Please, Mr Sheng!”

Sheng Shaoyou tightens his grip, really letting himself feel it, and rubs Hua Yong’s dick again. It’s just so… firm and long and… He loses himself in the motion, and then suddenly Hua Yong is falling apart, a rush of orchid pheromones bursting out and clouding Sheng Shaoyou senses.

There’s worship in Hua Yong’s eyes when he looks at him.

“I think I love you, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong whispers.

Sheng Shaoyou should probably dismiss this as an orgasm-induced high, but he wants to believe the words regardless.

***

Sheng Shaoyou’s friends have been ringing up his phone for a while, but this time Li Baiqiao really won’t take no for an answer.

“It’s my birthday, Shaoyou! Abandon your hermit ways and come celebrate with me, or I’ll be offended!”

Sheng Shaoyou truly has been a bit of a hermit. He can’t remember when he’d last gone to a club. But between his abysmal dating life prior to Hua Yong, his work, and everything else, he hasn’t exactly been in the mood. And since Hua Yong came into the picture… well, he hasn’t had the urge to go carousing, either. But it would be nice to see his friends.

“Fine,” he concedes.

He brings the matter up to Hua Yong, later.

“Would you like to come along? It might not be your kind of place,” he warns, half-hoping that Hua Yong will decline. If Hua Yong accompanies him, everyone will be bowled over by the Omega’s beauty, and Sheng Shaoyou will have to fend off his admirers all night. But it feels rude not to make the offer.

Hua Yong looks at him, evidently unsure. Then, he nods, lowering his eyelashes. “I’d like to meet Mr Sheng’s friends,” he says bashfully. “Besides… maybe that place will help me remember something?”

Sheng Shaoyou starts guiltily. He hasn’t been thinking so much about helping Hua Yong regain his memory, lately. He’s grown to take Hua Yong’s presence in his life for granted, but…

What if Hua Yong remembers his past? What if Hua Yong leaves?

I think I love you, Mr Sheng.

What if he doesn’t think that anymore, after his memories come back?

It is with a heavier heart that Sheng Shaoyou helps Hua Yong select his clothes for the evening. He makes sure to garb him in an outfit which is appropriate yet modest, and even then Hua Yong stuns the room when they walk in.

“Shaoyou, I didn’t realise you were dating again,” Li Baiqiao says, delighted, fluttering up to them immediately. His eyes stay riveted on Hua Yong.

“This is Hua Yong,” Sheng Shaoyou says. Then he frowns. “You’d better not bother him, birthday boy or not.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Mr Li,” Hua Yong says timidly.

Everyone else clamours to greet him as well, of course. This is the first partner Sheng Shaoyou has brought by in quite a while. Sheng Shaoyou’s instincts stir uneasily as the celebratory dinner goes on. All these Alphas crowding around, with their pheromones in the air… They’ll make Hua Yong uncomfortable. Sheng Shaoyou sticks close to the Omega’s side and inhales his scent.

“I’m here, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says, the orchid flaring a tad stronger, and Sheng Shaoyou’s shoulders relax.

Yes. His Omega is here, and he’s fine. Sheng Shaoyou must be overreacting.

Still, alcohol fuels that curl of possessiveness and anxiety in his chest, and when they get home, he drags Hua Yong right into his arms. They end up on the couch, kissing intently, and Sheng Shaoyou’s head is still spinning when Hua Yong slides to his knees in front of him.

“I… I would like to taste Mr Sheng again,” Hiua Yong says, flushing to the tips of his ears, his hand ghosting over the crotch of Sheng Shaoyou’s pants.

Sheng Shaoyou barely keeps his composure. Like this, Hua Yong is a wet dream, the perfect picture of a submissive Omega—at Sheng Shaoyou’s feet, looking up at him with that beautiful face, pupils widened in arousal. No Alpha could resist him, much less one as wound up as Sheng Shaoyou seems to be tonight.

“Yes,” Sheng Shaoyou says, voice hoarse. “Yes.”

This time, the beauty is a little more experienced at navigating a cock in his mouth. He sucks, hollowing out his cheeks and holding on to Sheng Shaoyou’s spread thighs, and then—

Matter-of-factly, he slips a finger into Sheng Shaoyou’s wet hole.

Sheng Shaoyou tries to scramble up on the couch. “Wait! Ah—”

Does Hua Yong think this is a normal part of blowjobs? Just because it happened last time, that doesn’t mean—

Hua Yong’s finger brushes that spot that leaves Sheng Shaoyou breathless.

“Yes, Mr Sheng?” Hua Yong asks, pulling off his dick. “Don’t you like it?”

He pushes his finger in and out in a rhythm that—that really—oh—

“I—”

Sheng Shaoyou must tell Hua Yong to stop, but he’s tumbling towards an orgasm at record speed. Hua Yong takes him in his mouth again, and jabs at that spot inside, and then Sheng Shaoyou is gone, light bursts breaking out before his eyes.

Hua Yong scrambles into his lap, gaze bright and looking like he hopes for a pat on the head.

“You’re a little menace,” Sheng Shaoyou rasps, loose-limbed and dazed.

What can an Alpha like him say to an Omega who, endlessly wanting to please him, has… has fingered him twice now? He buries his face in Hua Yong’s neck, inhaling his scent, and puts his own hand on Hua Yong’s cock. Hua Yong moans, so loud and unrestrained that it’s clear he has no control over his reactions at all—that, as usual, he’s far from thinking about artifice or any awkwardness between them. Hua Yong just wants, transparent and open to Sheng Shaoyou in all things. And he wants Sheng Shaoyou.

That’s just as well. Sheng Shaoyou wants him too—so much, sometimes it pulls him under.

***

Hua Yong continues to impress at work. Between the fact that he’s a stunningly competent secretary and also Sheng Shaoyou’s lover, it’s a no-brainer to bring him to the next industry event.

“I just hope I don’t embarrass Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong frets.

“You won’t. And—” Sheng Shaoyou steels himself. “—it’s good for you to meet more people. Maybe you’ll see someone you remember. You clearly worked in a technology company of some kind, before.”

Sheng Shaoyou’s instincts don’t want Hua Yong to meet more people. Hua Yong has already met him. Who else does he need?

But that’s unfair. Hua Yong is suffering from amnesia. Out there, someone’s probably looking for him.

Let them look, Sheng Shaoyou’s instincts snap, petulant.

And yet he hasn’t got this far in life by ignoring his duty to others.

At the event, Sheng Shaoyou sends a pouting Hua Yong off to mingle on his own. Sheng Shaoyou does try to keep an eye on him, but he’s got his own schmoozing to do, and sometimes they lose sight of each other. An Omega flirts with Sheng Shaoyou, under the mistaken impression that he’s single and open to a night together. Unsettlingly, an Alpha makes courting overtures as well—a first in Sheng Shaoyou’s experience. Still, Sheng Shaoyou hears whispers—I know he’s handsome, but sister, don’t try, he’s cursed. His lovers always die.

He does look for Hua Yong, then, just to make sure he’s all right. He doesn’t quite calm down until he finds Hua Yong and inhales his scent, always so comforting—and just a little dizzying, right now. Though maybe Sheng Shaoyou just downed his champagne too fast.

“I don’t know what to do here without you, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says, gripping his arm. His hold is almost unyielding. “Don’t leave me alone again.”

“I won’t,” Sheng Shaoyou says, leaning into him.

Evidently, Hua Yong has met these people and remembered nothing. It’s fine for Sheng Shaoyou to keep him to himself, now.

He stays near Hua Yong for the rest of the night. Hua Yong appears tense, upset somehow, and this just makes Sheng Shaoyou want to stick closer and reassure him. No more romantic prospects approach Sheng Shaoyou—perhaps the rumours of his curse have fully spread throughout the room. That one Alpha tries to come back and then for some reason blanches and turns away.

It’s a tiring evening, and Hua Yong is still seemingly on edge when they get home. Sheng Shaoyou makes sure to gather him tightly in his arms as they drift off to sleep.

Sheng Shaoyou wakes up the next morning lying on his front, naked, with fingers plunging in and out of his ass.

“Mmph—what—Hua Yong!” he gasps, muddled, turning his face away from the pillow and inhaling orchid pheromones.

“Good morning, Mr Sheng!” Hua Yong says brightly from between his legs. Mortifyingly, he’s still moving two fingers inside Sheng Shaoyou, squelching in the slick. One of his hands is squeezing Sheng Shaoyou’s butt cheek, keeping him open. His face is right there, and he’s looking at—at—

Sheng Shaoyou shudders, twisting away even as he feels more slick leak out of him.

“Wait!” he says, struggling to find words. “Hua Yong… You can’t just—” He rolls to the side and tugs at the Omega, pulling him up by the shoulders. Hua Yong’s fingers slip out of him, and it’s—

It’s only odd because Sheng Shaoyou isn’t used to having stuff up there, he tells himself. It’s not that he feels empty without those fingers. That would be ridiculous.

“Have I done something wrong?” Hua Yong asks in a wobbly voice. His eyes are very wide.

Sheng Shaoyou is a mess of warring impulses, his mind and body at odds. Has Hua Yong done something wrong? He hasn’t taken liberties to do anything they haven’t done together before. But to have found himself lying there, passive, while someone was—was—

It’s just Hua Yong, Sheng Shaoyou reminds himself. He doesn’t mean anything by what he’s doing. 

Sheng Shaoyou leans in for a light kiss, trying to hide the tremor in his body and shamefully aware of how wet he still is. “I was just surprised.”

“I’m sorry. I only wanted Mr Sheng to have an extra nice morning…” Hua Yong nuzzles into him. Then, without any apparent self-consciousness, he lifts his hand to his face and licks the fingers he just took out of Sheng Shaoyou’s hole. “Mr Sheng tastes so good everywhere…”

Sheng Shaoyou’s breath stutters. His heart hammers. What on earth!

“I think it’s my turn,” Sheng Shaoyou says, deciding to ignore all of that.

Clearly, the best way to reestablish his equilibrium as an Alpha is to have Hua Yong panting under him instead.

Sheng Shaoyou flips Hua Yong on his back, eliciting a soft oh! and slides down his body to take off his pyjama pants. This gives Sheng Shaoyou his first up close look at Hua Yong’s cock—flushed, hard, and honestly a little bigger than Sheng Shaoyou’s own. Down here, the orchid smell is different, deeper, and—

Sheng Shaoyou licks his lips. He’s gone down on his partners before, but this feels new—this sudden desire to feel the weight of Hua Yong’s dick on his tongue.

“You need my cock in your mouth, Mr Sheng?” Hua Yong asks, hand stroking Sheng Shaoyou’s hair, and something is odd about that wording, but Sheng Shaoyou can’t process it over how much he wants to taste Hua Yong.

Some part of Sheng Shaoyou seems to relax once his lips close around Hua Yong’s length. It just—it feels so good to have him in his mouth. To take him inside his body. Sheng Shaoyou’s eyes close as he sucks mindlessly, giving himself over to that orchid scent.

Then, Hua Yong makes a slight, seemingly irrepressible thrust, and Sheng Shaoyou’s eyes fly open, watering, as Hua Yong’s cock hits the back of his throat.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m trying, it just feels so good—” Hua Yong babbles, and his hips move again, pushing his dick inside Sheng Shaoyou.

A large blob of slick leaks out of Sheng Shaoyou’s ass.

“It’s—fine,” he manages to rasp.

He’s never liked his partners trying to fuck his mouth before—has never let them—but his pulse thunders at Hua Yong’s evaporating control, and at losing some of his own to this overwhelming feeling of Hua Yong’s dick on his tongue. When Hua Yong’s pleasure crests, Sheng Shaoyou finds himself swallowing his come, a weird satisfaction stirring inside him. He’s almost reluctant to release Hua Yong’s cock from his lips, after, but now Hua Yong is the one pulling him up.

“I love you, Mr Sheng,” he breathes, kissing Sheng Shaoyou tenderly.

In this sex-drunk state, it’s easy to let Hua Yong hitch Sheng Shaoyou’s leg up a little, parting his thighs. He’s still so wet, and Hua Yong’s fingers enter him without resistance one by one, sinking into his body and making him shake. Before he knows it, Sheng Shaoyou is moaning into Hua Yong’s mouth and humping against his thigh as he comes.

“You’re so good to me, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong whispers, and Sheng Shaoyou cuddles closer.

This, between them, just feels so right. At the moment, Sheng Shaoyou can’t quite recall what he’d been concerned about.

***

This, too, becomes a pattern. They fall into living like this, sleeping together and working together and bringing each other off with their hands and mouths. Sheng Shaoyou often jerks Hua Yong off, but he particularly likes blowing him when they have time, when he can get lost in this feeling of Hua Yong surrounding his senses. He does offer to play with Hua Yong’s ass, too, awkward though it seems that they’d both get off on the same thing, but Hua Yong shyly confides that his instincts somehow don’t want it yet. Sheng Shaoyou will of course not push him. Meanwhile, Hua Yong stays adorably determined to be good for Sheng Shaoyou, and studies all his reactions like an obedient pupil. He never questions the fact that Sheng Shaoyou gushes slick around his fingers. He delights in it, even, with a kind of shameless innocence, once asking if he can “kiss Mr Sheng there” and then eating Sheng Shaoyou out on a mortifyingly pleasurable afternoon that Sheng Shaoyou refuses to mentally revisit and has no idea how he even allowed.

Sheng Shaoyou is the problem in their arrangement, because Hua Yong’s fingers inside him have started feeling too good, and somehow also not enough. It’s strangely satisfying when Hua Yong sinks a digit into him, but while he won’t admit this to Hua Yong, he often doesn’t just want one. The stretch from two is better, and lately Hua Yong has been squeezing a third one in and it’s—it’s maybe happened that Sheng Shaoyou has come from that alone, his cock untouched while three fingers thrust in and out of his hole. But sometimes even that doesn’t quite sate his hunger.

This desire stirs all the more on the day when Sheng Shaoyou wakes up a bit under the weather, and only Hua Yong scent makes him feel better.

“Would you like a cup of tea, Mr Sheng?” Hua Yong offers, peering at him in concern.

“No. Just sit with me,” Sheng Shaoyou says, latching onto his sleeve and all but sulking.

He wants Hua Yong nearby. Not off somewhere in the kitchen.

He coaxes Hua Yong to sit with him on the bed and read. Soon, sitting becomes lying down, and reading is forgotten in favour of drowning in each other’s arms. Sheng Shaoyou feels hot, and impatient, and maybe he shouldn’t be having sex while sick, but the idea of not having his Omega’s body pressing against his is a thousand times worse.

“I’m here, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong soothes, and his pheromones spread out, the orchid blazing strong and so enticing that Sheng Shaoyou spurts more slick from that alone.

“I—I need—” He doesn’t know what he needs. Hua Yong, that’s all.

“Anything, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong promises, and kisses down Sheng Shaoyou’s body as he removes their clothes. He nuzzles into Sheng Shaoyou’s throat, Sheng Shaoyou automatically baring his neck to him, and bites down lightly on his nipples, and sucks on his hipbone, until Sheng Shaoyou is somehow even hotter and has to demand—

“Don’t tease!”

He grasps at Hua Yong, but his limbs feel strangely weak. It must be that oncoming flu.

“I’m sorry, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says, and pecks the head of his dick in consolation before swallowing him down to the root.

Sheng Shaoyou screams. Then he chokes on a breath when two fingers push into his hole at once.

Hua Yong sets a fast rhythm—faster than Sheng Shaoyou thought he was capable of—but it’s still not enough. He squirms, and Hua Yong pulls off his dick to kiss his hip and align a third finger by his entrance. When he momentarily withdraws his fingers altogether, leaving Sheng Shaoyou empty, Sheng Shaoyou whines.

“Wow, Mr Sheng, you really are… Are you feeling all right?”

“Yes! No! I need—” He can’t articulate it. “Don’t leave.” This is paramount.

“Never, Mr Sheng.”

Sheng Shaoyou shoves down on Hua Yong’s fingers, taking them as deep as he can. The orgasm bursts, but it’s barely a flicker against the heat building inside him. Instead of cooling the flames, it only stokes them higher, and he smells his own orange scent souring in the air, out of his control. 

“Shhh, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says, holding him close, their faces inches apart.

Hua Yong’s hard dick pokes at Sheng’s Shaoyou’s stomach, and that’s—

Sheng Shaoyou burrows closer. He throws a leg over Hua Yong, and like this, if he angles just so, Hua Yong’s cock glides between Sheng Shaoyou’s cheeks. Sheng Shaoyou groans, and writhes, and the cock he’s chasing catches on his rim before sliding past.

“Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong exhales, keeping still. “Do you… want this?”

Sheng Shaoyou maybe loses his mind, and whines again, and grinds his ass against Hua Yong, but Hua Yong’s dick is not getting in—

“Please,” he gasps. “Please—Hua Yong—I want…” His eyes well up with tears.

“Okay, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says, and kisses him. “Shh, don’t be sad. I will give Mr Sheng everything he needs.”

Hua Yong turns them over, and then Sheng Shaoyou is on his back with his legs spread wide, and Hua Yong’s cock, thick and larger than anything that’s ever been in Sheng Shaoyou, is pushing inside at last. Sheng Shaoyou breathes hard as it fills him, little by little. It feels so huge, and it’s exactly what he wants, and he needs it right now, so he bears down on the intrusion even as tears run down his cheeks. His heartbeat thuds in his ears. Every instinct is telling him that this, finally, is the answer.

And then Hua Yong starts moving.

He sets off slowly, with a torturous drag of his dick against Sheng Shaoyou’s inner walls, but even at this pace it’s instantly clear why fingers never would’ve been enough. Fingers can’t do this, fill Sheng Shaoyou until he’s stretched to the limit, rock his entire body with Hua Yong’s thrusts, make him feel like there’s nothing else in the world. And then Hua Yong’s hips snap faster, and Sheng Shaoyou can only hang on to his shoulders and pant out helpless ah! ah! ah! as Hua Yong fucks into him.

It’s heaven. It’s hell. Sheng Shaoyou has no memory of how he got here, but this is the only thing he wants.

When he comes, it whites out his entire brain. He doesn’t resurface until sometime later, when Hua Yong is holding him in his arms and murmuring, “I love you, Mr Sheng. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

Chances are high Sheng Shaoyou is very much not okay.

His head feels clearer than it has all day, though this isn’t saying much. He shifts and realises multiple things at the same time: he’s stark naked; his ass is tender; and he’s leaking slick and also… maybe something else. The air smells like come, and like a mix of orange and orchid pheromones.

He lurches out of Hua Yong’s hug, jagged fragments of memories coming back to him. The searing heat inside him—his leg thrown over Hua Yong’s body—shh, don’t be sad…

He… he made his Omega fuck him. 

“Mr Sheng!” rises up Hua Yong’s voice, but Sheng Shaoyou can’t hear him over the buzzing in his ears.

He’s still hot, but now also cold, and hollow, and he’s the worst Alpha in the world.

“I’m sick,” he forces out. “I need to go to the hospital.”

There’s something seriously wrong with him.

Step 5: Seal his transformation with a permanent mark and “reveal” the “truth”

“You’re in heat, Mr Sheng,” the doctor says, after an examination. He’s extra gentle given Sheng Shaoyou’s visibly shaken state, and Sheng Shaoyou hates that almost as much as he hates his inability to stop emitting distressed pheromones.

Sheng Shaoyou has evicted Hua Yong from the hospital room, not wanting to assault him with the pheromone barrage. For some reason, Hua Yong’s absence is making him feel worse.

“Am I that far gone, then?” Sheng Shaoyou demands, willing his eyes to stay dry. “Am I enough of an Omega now that I go into heats?” Enough of an Omega lost to his pheromones that he begs for the nearest cock, even forcing his Omega to service him?

“The hormone levels in your blood are in line with an Omega’s heat,” the doctor says calmly. “I think we should give you a sedative. We will put you into deep sleep, give your system a rest, and closely examine your gland. In its own way, this is an excellent chance for us to observe how your body is working.”

“Fine,” Sheng Shaoyou says bitterly. He doesn’t want to be conscious one moment longer. “Give me the drugs. And… don’t provide any details to my subordinate if he asks what’s wrong.”

Chen Pinming is, at this point, aware that Sheng Shaoyou has a pheromone disorder, but he doesn’t know what kind, and if Sheng Shaoyou has his way, he never will. He’s just told Chen Pinming over the phone that he’ll be out for a few days. That should be enough.

Sheng Shaoyou accepts the syringe in his arm without a protest.

He then wakes up, groggy, to a nurse coming into his room to change his IV. Turns out, he’s been unconscious for the past six days.

He feels like it. His body aches, his head swims, and they’ve definitely examined his gland, because it hurts like a steel clamp has been put on it. His ass is also still oddly sensitive.

Worst of all, his doctor’s face is grave. Sheng Shaoyou’s stomach plummets.

“Mr Sheng, I know this will be difficult to hear,” the doctor says. “And we tried our best to ascertain and rule out some options, but… your Omega transition is far further along than any of us had thought.”

“What do you mean?” Sheng Shaoyou asks through gritted teeth.

The doctor rubs his forehead. “The examination has revealed that… Mr Sheng. You are now capable of bearing a child.”

Sheng Shaoyou sits up straight in his bed, wincing as it pulls on his muscles.

“That’s not possible!”

“It should not be, certainly, for an Alpha,” the doctor agrees. “But it’s very clear that you have developed a strong set of Omega traits, which now dominate. Your gland is producing Omega pheromones. Your body is equipped with an Omega’s physiology—it produces natural lubrication, it can bear children, it’s not capable of siring them any longer—”

“That’s—that can’t be true!” Cold sweat washes over Sheng Shaoyou. His ears are ringing. His pheromones—wrong, sour—lash out.

More doctors are called in. They show him documents. His blood test results. Everything makes it look like he really is—he really is an—

“I can’t be,” Sheng Shaoyou says, once he’s alone with his treating physician again, a suppressant patch leashing his scent. “I can’t.”

How is he supposed to face the world like this? An S-class Alpha, fallen to an Omega?

“Being an Omega isn’t shameful.” The doctor frowns, and Sheng Shaoyou belatedly remembers that the doctor is an Omega himself.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Sheng Shaoyou says.

“Didn’t you?” the doctor asks. “I think we should arrange for some psychological counselling. The change in you is irreversible, Mr Sheng. The last thing we want now is you rejecting your own biology. There are some Omegas like that—who live on suppressants and hate their own bodies—”

“I’m not an Omega!” Sheng Shaoyou shouts.

“But you are, Mr Sheng,” the doctor insists softly. “It will do us no good to pretend otherwise. At this juncture, we’d classify you as an S-tier Omega—stronger, certainly, than most others… perhaps due to your start as an Alpha. Your primary biology now is that of an Omega, with everything this entails. This will surely be a challenging emotional period for you. I hope you have friends and loved ones who can help you through it?”

Sheng Shaoyou’s mind flashes to Hua Yong. This is the person who should despise him the most—but who else does Sheng Shaoyou have? His hands shake at the thought of what his father would say if he were awake, of how his half-siblings will mock him, how his business rivals might exploit this opportunity—

“Oh dear, I think this suppressant isn’t enough,” the doctor mutters. “Is there anyone we can call for you, Mr Sheng?”

“No,” Sheng Shaoyou says, and once the doctor leaves he just sits there, alone in the ward, the air itself growing oppressive.

Sheng Shaoyou is—he is—

“Mr Sheng!” Hua Yong bursts into the room, wild about the eyes, and Sheng Shaoyou will blame his hormones for the way he starts crying.

“You—you shouldn’t be here,” he says, turning away and wiping his cheeks.

“Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong breathes. “Please, please, can I hug you? I was so worried. Please, Mr Sheng.”

Sheng Shaoyou gives in. Of course he does. He wants to hold Hua Yong more than anything in the world. Even if they’re both Omegas, now, this orchid scent is still his favourite, most calming thing in existence.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into Hua Yong’s shoulder.

“What is Mr Sheng talking about? There’s nothing to be sorry for.” Hua Yong rubs his back gently.

“I’ve been hiding things from you,” Sheng Shaoyou confesses, tears soaking Hua Yong’s shirt. “I—I have a pheromone disorder, and this is why I’ve been… this is why my body is… not like a normal Alpha’s. I told you I’m an Alpha, but I’m turning—I’ve turned into an Omega, somehow, because of some genetic mutation, and I went into heat, and I… I forced myself on you…”

“Mr Sheng didn’t force anything,” Hua Yong says firmly. “I love Mr Sheng and want Mr Sheng always. In any way. I thought Mr Sheng didn’t want to do that with me, or I would’ve done it with him before. I want anything Mr Sheng gives me.”

“Oh.” Then another notion occurs to Sheng Shaoyou. “But maybe you only think that because you don’t remember anything. I ran into you and caused your accident, and now you’ve forgotten your life, and… Maybe once you meet other Alphas—or if you remember who you are—”

He doesn’t know where this awful, sinking insecurity is coming from, but Hua Yong feels like his only raft in a roiling ocean. If Hua Yong is gone—

“There is no universe in which Mr Sheng isn’t the most important person for me,” Hua Yong says with sweet, unshakeable conviction. “I promise you, I will always love you, Mr Sheng. Every version of you. Alpha, Omega, it doesn’t matter. I’ll always be with you.”

“Okay,” Sheng Shaoyou says, leaning into him.

I think I love you too, he thinks. You’re the only thing I’m sure of, anymore.

Which is bitterly ironic, because two days later, Hua Yong gets kidnapped.

***

The weekend starts about as well as it can. Once Sheng Shaoyou is discharged from the hospital, he spends his days in a daze. He’s still recovering from his… his heat, and trying to understand how he’s meant to navigate the rest of his life.

He’s an Omega. What is he supposed to tell people? How is he supposed to hide this? Can he hide this at all?

He can’t hide from his new scent, not when the hospital has forbidden the use of pheromone inhibitors so soon after his transition. Apparently, it could be dangerous for him. Sheng Shaoyou doesn’t care right now, but Hua Yong does, looking at him wide-eyed and scared, making him promise he won’t jeopardise his health by ignoring medical advice. Promise me, Mr Sheng. So that means he has to smell it—the bitter orange scent turned sweeter, riper. The rum gaining sugary tones. An undefinable fresh floral undertone weaving between them.

Most of the time, this scent is sour with Sheng Shaoyou’s distress, which he also can’t conceal. Hua Yong hovers near him, soothing him with his orchid pheromones, making him meals, and assuring him that Mr Sheng is always strong, and smart, and wonderful, whether he’s an Alpha or an Omega. Sheng Shaoyou alternates between wanting to hug him and feeling ashamed of how much he needs it. He can’t focus enough to read or work. He barely sleeps.

And then, on Sunday, Hua Yong volunteers to go grab a comforting snack—some steamed buns from the corner store. Lost in his own thoughts, Sheng Shaoyou nods absently as Hua Yong gives a cute wave before leaving the flat. Sheng Shaoyou doesn’t notice the time passing until his stomach rumbles and he thinks it’s been a while since Hua Yong left.

He calls Hua Yong’s phone. The number alleges to be out of service.

Sheng Shaoyou paces the flat in escalating worry as Hua Yong fails to reappear or get in contact. He dials Chen Pinming and asks for help finding answers. His fear for himself retreats into the background as a new terror seizes him.

Where is Hua Yong?

The concerns in his rational mind are almost drowned out by the anxious clawing of his instincts. He wants Hua Yong here. He sits, holding Hua Yong’s pillow in his arms, and tries to inhale every little bit of the lingering orchid scent. He’s almost constantly on the phone, trying to get answers, trying to distract himself from the horrible churning in his gut.

It’s an exhausting, terrifying twelve hours before he gets a lead: a black van, barely caught on a security camera, taking Hua Yong to the warehouses in the south of the city. He rushes there with a suppressant patch on his gland and a team of guards at his command, and arrives at a scene of violence.

Hua Yong is facing off against three thugs, swaying like he’s been drugged. He’s clearly been beaten, with blood running down his face. The scent of orchid pheromones hangs in the air, heavy and sharply dominating and the best thing Sheng Shaoyou has ever smelled. 

“Help him!” Sheng Shaoyou barks at the guards as he steps towards Hua Yong.

But then Hua Yong catches sight of him, shouts: “Mr Sheng!” and barrels past everyone to get to Sheng Shaoyou’s side. 

He crashes into Sheng Shaoyou and closes his arms around him, breathing hard. Sheng Shaoyou clutches at him just as desperately. Hua Yong is here. He’s alive. His orchid scent is right in Sheng Shaoyou’s nose. Everything will be okay, now.

“I’m sorry,” Hua Yong murmurs. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Mr Sheng.”

And then he collapses in a faint.

“Hua Yong!” Sheng Shaoyou cries, worry spiking again, and quickly instructs his men to deal with the kidnappers as he carries Hua Yong to his car.

The driver might or might not break some speed limits getting them to the HeCi hospital. Sheng Shaoyou holds on to Hua Yong tightly the entire way, trying to staunch the bleeding from the back of his head.

“He’s got a head injury,” Sheng Shaoyou tells the emergency doctor, running in. “And he’s been dosed with something.” That’s got to be important.

“Thank you. Please wait here, Mr…”

“Sheng Shaoyou. I’m his partner.”

“We’ll tell you when you can come in,” the doctor says, and then they wheel Hua Yong away.

Sheng Shaoyou’s instincts don’t like that. He’s alone, again. He can’t see Hua Yong. He can’t smell him. He doesn’t know if he’s okay. 

Sheng Shaoyou sits, then jumps up and paces, then sits again and calls the guard squad leader.

“Did you find out who these people were?” he demands, trying to direct his thought somewhere productive.

“It’s got to do with Country P,” the squad leader says. “With Beichao Holdings.”

What?

“What did they want with Hua Yong?”

“We’re not yet fully sure. We’re still interrogating. But it looks like Mr Hua is involved in the Beichao Holdings succession struggle, and a brother of his arranged to get him out of the way. Apparently, they thought he was dead until recently. They were trying to figure out what he knew and what he’s told anyone.”

“He has amnesia,” Sheng Shaoyou says through unfeeling lips.

“I don’t think they believed that,” the squad leader says. “Hence holding him for longer and not eliminating him at once.”

Eliminating him. Sheng Shaoyou has come this close to losing Hua Yong.

The rest of the wait is a blur. People come and go from the waiting room. Someone gives him a cup of coffee. Sheng Shaoyou barely tastes it, barely notices the warmth.

Finally, after what feels like hours, the doors slide open.

“Mr Sheng? You can see the patient now.”

Hua Yong is still pale and unconscious against the hospital bed. Machines are hooked up to him, and there’s an IV needle in his arm.

The orchid pheromones are missing. Sheng Shaoyou didn’t know much he was expecting to inhale the familiar scent, and the absence cuts into him.

“What happened to him?” Sheng Shaoyou asks, taking Hua Yong’s lax hand.

“A heavy blow to the head,” the doctor says, pursing her lips. “And several toxic injections—including the kind of pheromone inhibitor I’ve never encountered or seen mentioned in any medical literature. Scrapes and bruises too, but most importantly we had to get the chemical cocktail flushed out of his system. We’ve got him on a suppressant now, temporarily, until his control returns.”

Sheng Shaoyou squeezes Hua Yong’s hand.

“Will he be okay?”

“Yes, provided he wakes up in the next eight hours,” the doctor says. “You can stay with him, if you like.”

“Can I do anything to help?”

“An Omega’s comforting pheromones might’ve helped,” the doctor says. “But it needs to be someone close to him. He reacted badly to the pheromones of one of the nurses.”

Sheng Shaoyou swallows.

Your gland is producing Omega pheromones.

“I… can try,” he says.

The doctor’s eyebrows fly up.

“Oh, you’re an Omega? I’m sorry, sir, I just assumed—”

He certainly has an Alpha’s physique. That’s one of the few things he has left of his designation.

Sheng Shaoyou steels himself and takes off his suppressant patch.

It’s his first time trying to use his new pheromones since that life-changing heat. He hasn’t felt so unsure of his pheromone control since he first presented.

His soothing pheromones are now—softer, more entreating, more honeyed than before. Unfamiliar. Like those of an Omega.

I am an Omega, he thinks, and grits his teeth against the tears threatening to fall.

No. He can’t think about that now. He has to focus on Hua Yong. Hua Yong needs help. This thought has sustained Sheng Shaoyou for the past twenty-four hours, staving off his existential crisis. It can sustain him a little longer.

The balmy orange pheromones fill the room. The doctor nods approvingly, and even Sheng Shaoyou can see how Hua Yong responds, breathing in deep.

“Very good. I’ll check in on you soon,” the doctor says. “We mustn’t tire you out, either.”

I’m an S-class Alpha, Sheng Shaoyou almost assures her. But he isn’t, anymore. So he nods.

***

Hua Yong beats expectations by stirring to wakefulness only three hours later.

He is still weak, and disoriented, but his eyes blink open and he immediately tries to sit up.

“Mr Sheng,” he rasps.

“I’m here,” Sheng Shaoyou says, stepping up his soothing pheromones.

Hua Yong inhales, and visibly relaxes. Then his eyes fly open again.

“Mr Sheng! I’m so sorry! I didn’t remember—they injected me, I didn’t know—”

“What are you apologising for?” Sheng Shaoyou chides him, heart lifting to see Hua Yong awake again, and presses the button to call the doctor. “You’re here. You’re well. That’s what counts.”

The doctor bustles in, and Sheng Shaoyou is temporarily expelled from the ward as another examination takes place. By the time he’s allowed back in, Hua Yong looks worn out but a little more mentally with it. The bed has been tilted so he can sit up, leaning against pillows.

“How do you feel?”

“Like a lifetime of memories has rushed into my head at once. And like someone hit me with a crowbar to make it happen.” Hua Yong’s lips stretch into dismal smile.

Sheng Shaoyou stops mid-step, freezing before the bed.

“You remember who you are?”

“Yes. And who I’m not.” Hua Yong closes his eyes, seemingly bracing himself, and reopens them. “Mr Sheng. I have inadvertently led you to believe some incorrect things about me. But I can tell you everything now.”

Sheng Shaoyou sits down—this time in a chair, instead of on the side of the bed. A new reserve constrains him. This is a Hua Yong he hasn’t met. This is a Hua Yong who recalls his past, and maybe remembers things that will alter the relationship between them. Maybe it’s come back to him that he loves someone else, and not Sheng Shaoyou. Maybe everything between them, everything that has felt so profound, was just an insignificant blip in the course of Hua Yong’s life.

A void wants to open in Sheng Shaoyou’s chest when he thinks about that. So he doesn’t. He straightens up, holds himself taut, and waits for Hua Yong to speak.

“My name is Hua Yong,” Hua Yong says. “I’m from Country P—that’s probably why we couldn’t find me here. My father was Hua Yanwuming, the head of Beichao Holdings.”

“You were part of the succession fight when he died,” Sheng Shaoyou says, a statement more than a question. The interrogation of the men who’d kidnapped Hua Yong has yielded this much.

“Mr Sheng. I won that fight,” Hua Yong says, clenching his fists.

Sheng Shaoyou stares. Hua Yong, his home-making, delicate Omega—

But Hua Yong proved frightfully good at his secretarial job, didn’t he? No wonder he was so sharp with paperwork, and with calculations, and with business metrics. He’d handled all of this before, at the highest echelons of power.

Then how—

“Well, I thought I won that battle.” Hua Yong’s beautiful face still makes the same sad expressions as before. And tears tremble on his lashes just the way Sheng Shaoyou recognises. “My father wanted me to take over, and the senior leadership was on my side, and… I thought it was over. But Fourth Brother didn’t agree. Because everyone was supporting me, he didn’t want to go after me openly. I remember him ambushing me, and injecting things to disable me, to mess with my pheromones. He was using research from Beichao Holdings that was stopped, that my father said was too dangerous—” Hua Yong bunches up the blanket in his hands. “He bundled me away to Jianghu, where nobody knew what I looked like, for his hired men to get rid of me here. But I—I managed to wake up and run. And then I met Mr Sheng…”

Sheng Shaoyou’s head is spinning. He’d thought his family was bad.

“So your fourth brother has taken over the company?”

“I guess so.” Hua Yong puts a hand to his head. “I’ll have to call people, I have to ask… I did have allies…”

“Then why did no one look for you? Why is there no public search for the missing heir?” Sheng Shaoyou asks. Then it catches up to him: “It’s the scandal, isn’t it? The company wanted to avoid a loss of face.” That’s certainly what his father would’ve done. The company’s reputation before any of his children’s lives.

Hua Yong nods.

“I imagine that’s what Fourth Brother told them. My allies must’ve searched in Country P regardless, but they might’ve presumed me dead by now… My brother’s people only found out I was still alive by accident—they saw me with Mr Sheng at an event…”

It’s hard to fit into his head, the concept of Hua Yong as the head of a multi-national corporation that prints billions. But the picture he’s painted makes sense: if he was the favoured heir, then it wouldn’t have been a matter of climbing up to the throne with bloody hands, which Sheng Shaoyou had initially imagined. Rather, Hua Yong must’ve been in the same situation as Sheng Shaoyou—knowing he was meant to inherit the whole. Except then he had it cruelly ripped away from him by his brother.

Like Sheng Shaoqing would’ve done to me if he could’ve, his mind uncharitably whispers. His brother is dead, and Sheng Shaoyou shouldn’t think ill of him, but—he can relate to Hua Yong nonetheless.

“I’ll help you in any way I can,” he says, leaning forward. “If you need to get in touch with your allies, or if you need manpower, or Shengfang Biotech’s resources—just say the word. If… if you want it.”

Does Hua Yong even need him, now?

Perhaps he does, because he smiles with tremulous gratitude. “Thank you, Mr Sheng. You’ve been so kind to me… And now I can help you too! The gland cancer drug Beichao Holdings is developing—I’ll give it to you, for your father, as soon as I get the company back. I believe I can do it, if you’re by my side.”

“I’m here as long as you need me.”

“I’ll always need Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says. “I love you so much.”

Sheng Shaoyou stills.

“You… do?” Even now?

“Mr Sheng!” Hua Yong’s expression turns frantic, and he tilts forward, almost ripping out the IV needle in his arm. “Mr Sheng, I told you, I love you always and forever. Of course.”

“Be careful!” Sheng Shaoyou says, automatically moving closer to restrain him. “You shouldn’t move so much.”

“Then Mr Sheng shouldn’t sit so far away from me,” Hua Yong says pitifully, and latches onto Sheng Shaoyou’s hand.

Sheng Shaoyou sits down at the side of his bed again.

“Better?” he asks, pretending calm, but his own instincts purr at being closer to Hua Yong. The hand in his feels like a lifeline. He wants—he wants to lean into Hua Yong, and hug him. He misses his orchid scent.

“I only hope Mr Sheng will still want me once I’ve finished telling him everything,” Hua Yong says quietly. “Please… please hear me out for this last part, Mr Sheng. For… why there was a pheromone inhibitor in my body.”

“Is there something wrong with your pheromones?” Sheng Shaoyou would be the last to judge.

“There’s something wrong with my designation,” Hua Yong says, eyes downcast. “I told you my brother used some experimental research on me in order to incapacitate me. This is something he more or less had to do. He couldn’t have faced me otherwise, not even with all of his hired thugs.”

Sheng Shaoyou frowns.

“He was that afraid of an Omega?”

“Well… You see, everyone always thought I’d differentiate into an Omega,” Hua Yong says. “I look like one. Everyone always takes me for one. But when I presented, nobody knew what I was.”

What?

“I definitely wasn’t an Omega or a Beta. But I wasn’t an Alpha, either. Turns out… Mr Sheng, I too have an unusual genetic mutation.” Hua Yong looks him in the eyes. “I’m an Enigma. One of the few to have ever existed.”

“Enigmas are…” made up is a difficult thing to say to someone who looks so very earnest and pale and fragile as they’re making this confession. But this sounds impossible.

“I know it’s hard to believe. I know. But it’s the truth.”

Hua Yong picks a metal spoon off the saucer on his bedside table. He grips it around the middle with two fingers and presses down, his joints turning white.

Stainless steel crumbles into dust. Severed halves of the spoon fall down on the wooden surface with a clang.

Sheng Shaoyou stares. Even at the height of his S-class Alpha power, he couldn’t do that.

“I’m very strong,” Hua Yong says, almost apologetically. “That’s why my brother had to drug me before he could even try to get rid of me. And because of the drugs… none of us knew what I was, once I lost my memory. Of course we all thought I was an Omega. Everyone has always believed that about me.”

Sheng Shaoyou thinks about Hua Yong’s fluctuating pheromones, how they sometimes felt so strong and dominant. He remembers how relatively uninjured Hua Yong had been after getting hit with a car. How quickly his blistered hands had healed. 

He recalls, with a sudden swoop of his insides, how Hua Yong had never wanted his ass touched. How that hadn’t felt right to him. And all the while, Sheng Shaoyou had gushed slick and moaned on Hua Yong’s fingers and salivated for his cock. So from the start, there had only been one Omega in their bed: Sheng Shaoyou.

His mouth twists.

“Mr Sheng!” Hua Yong is looking at him in worry, holding tight onto his hands.

Sheng Shaoyou hadn’t noticed trying to move away. He hadn’t realised his pheromone control had slipped, either—the orange scent in the room has turned acrid. Sheng Shaoyou wants to stop it, but the thoughts in his head will no longer be contained, and his emotions flare, and now it’s like there’s a distressed Omega in this room, and it’s him, and—

Hua Yong reaches behind himself to wrench the suppressant patch off his gland, and tears the IV needle from his arm. The orchid scent surges, stronger than Sheng Shaoyou has ever smelled it, but instantly, devastatingly comforting. Moisture wells up in Sheng Shaoyou’s eyes as his body slumps, tension draining. Hua Yong cuddles up to him, gathering him close.

“I’m sorry if this upsets Mr Sheng,” he whispers. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mr Sheng.”

“It’s not your fault,” Sheng Shaoyou says into his neck. “You didn’t lie to me. You didn’t know. We didn’t know. It’s just…”

It’s been a long day. A long few days. Sheng Shaoyou has gone from devastation to devastation, losing himself and then losing Hua Yong. And now Hua Yong is here, and the truth is out, and he still loves Sheng Shaoyou—but their world is funhouse mirror-warped, and their roles have flipped. Is Sheng Shaoyou now the Omega, vulnerable and dependent? Is he going to lose his role as CEO once his shareholders learn what he is—is Hua Yong going to become the CEO between them, instead? Who is Sheng Shaoyou going to be, next to Hua Yong?

“Please, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says. “It’ll be all right. I promise you. As long as you’re with me, as long as we’re together, we can survive anything. Just please stay with me. Please don’t leave. Please, Mr Sheng. I need you so much.”

“I’m not leaving,” Sheng Shaoyou murmurs.

I don’t think I can survive any of this without you, either. 

Step 6: Use the fake crisis to create urgency and speed up his acceptance

Hua Yong stays in the hospital for two days. Sheng Shaoyou spends as much time by his bedside as he can, working on his laptop from his room. He has a couple of meetings he can’t avoid at work, so he grits his teeth, slaps on a suppressant patch, and goes in, praying that not a whiff of his new scent escapes. It’s hard to concentrate on Shengfang Biotech’s affairs with everything else that’s going on, but he’s got his responsibilities, and he won’t shirk them. Still, it’s a relief to leave the office and get back to Hua Yong’s ward. The orchid scent keeps him grounded, and apparently his soothing pheromones are still helping Hua Yong, too.

“The two of you clearly have very high compatibility,” the doctor says. “I’m almost sure it would come up in the ninetieth percentile if you got tested.”

“Our meeting must’ve been fate,” Hua Yong says, smiling sweetly.

It really must’ve been. What are the odds of two genetic mutations running into each other?

Sheng Shaoyou’s people help them track down the allies Hua Yong needs to get in touch with—as discreetly as possible, without alerting whoever’s after him. Hua Yong makes those calls while he’s at the hospital, getting the lay of the land. 

On the day he’s released with a clean bill of health, a council of war convenes at Sheng Shaoyou’s flat.

“This is Shen Wenlang,” Hua Yong says, introducing the head of the HS Group.

Shen Wenlang’s eyes run over Sheng Shaoyou, and Sheng Shaoyou’s hackles rise instinctively at the other man’s scent. This is an S-class Alpha in Sheng Shaoyou’s home. A predator, a potential threat—

A threat to whom? Hua Yong isn’t an Omega who needs protecting. What are Sheng Shaoyou’s instincts complaining about?

It’s all just… twisted in his head at the moment.

“Chang Yu,” Hua Yong says, welcoming the next man to come through the door. “Mr Sheng, this is… this was my secretary.”

Another Alpha.

“I’m still your secretary, Boss,” the new arrival says calmly. “I have a lot to tell you.”

They sit down in the living room.

It’s odd, to see Hua Yong with underlings. He’s the same Hua Yong from before in all the ways that matter, but he’s holding himself subtly differently now, since he’s regained his memory. Looser, more confident, holding his head higher. Clearly stepping back into the skin of a young master. He’s taking it for granted that people will be reporting to him, and speaking with respect. His bashful, timid ways have faded from his interactions—except with Sheng Shaoyou, with whom he’s still soft and disarmingly affectionate.

Perhaps it was real, what they’ve built between them. Perhaps it can withstand the turbulence that’s taken over their lives.

“All right, Chang Yu, take it away,” Hua Yong says. “What’s been happening at the company?”

Turns out, Hua Yong’s fourth brother has had trouble holding on to power in his absence. The support behind Hua Yong was too strong, and suspicions have mounted—spurred by people like Chang Yu—that the fourth brother deliberately got Hua Yong out of the way. The man hasn’t been able to countermand any important initiatives at Beichao Holdings, or to install too many of his own people. Maybe this was why he was so keen to interrogate Hua Yong upon catching him—it is remarkable, how well Hua Yong’s control has held. His fourth brother may well have suspected him of sending instructions from the shadows.

Little did he know Hua Yong has been working at Shengfang Biotech all this time, instead.

“This is good news,” Sheng Shaoyou says. “If your board is unhappy with your brother, and loyalists remain, you have a lot of leverage.”

Hua Yong nods and takes Sheng Shaoyou’s hand, heedless of their audience.

Sheng Shaoyou throws a glance at Chang Yu and Shen Wenlang, to gauge their reactions. During introductions, Hua Yong hadn’t qualified what they were together, just saying, this is Mr Sheng! in a thrilled voice, as if everyone should already know what Sheng Shaoyou is to him. Perhaps they do—have been told over the phone—because neither balks at this display. Chang Yu gives no indication that he’s noticed at all. Shen Wenlang seems to deliberately avoid looking.

Neither mentions Sheng Shaoyou’s scent, either. Hua Yong persuaded him not to use suppressants or inhibitors for this meeting—you can’t keep relying on them, Mr Sheng, they’re bad for you! please!—and it’s hard not to feel… exposed. On edge. But Hua Yong’s orchid pheromones bolster him, and hopefully cover most of the difference in his scent. Besides, Hua Yong is right—he can’t just live on suppressants. Not if he’s looking at the rest of his life. He’s got to try, at least, to be without them in public on occasion. And as occasions go, this is a relatively safe one. Hua Yong trusts both these people with his life, and they’re not Sheng Shaoyou’s shareholders or family, from whom he’d like to keep the truth as long as possible. Granted, Shen Wenlang is a business rival, but Hua Yong has vouched for his discretion, and even the rivalry might be changing now that they’re both on Hua Yong’s side. Doesn’t Shen Wenlang dislike Omegas? Sheng Shaoyou pointed out, almost choking on the idea that he is now an Omega Shen Wenlang might look down on. He won’t dare dislike mine, Hua Yong declared, and that sentence kept bouncing around in Sheng Shaoyou’s head all day afterwards.

Is he… Hua Yong’s Omega?

His mind shies away from the thought.

“President Sheng is right,” Chang Yu says. “With matters as they are, we can hope for a clean transition. It would help us, too, to have the evidence from the kidnappers who tried to kill you, Boss. President Sheng, if you could transfer them to our custody?”

“Consider it done,” Sheng Shaoyou says.

His first impulse had been to hand the kidnappers over to the police, but he’d naturally consulted Hua Yong, as the affected party. Hua Yong had foreseen something much like this, and now it’s a good thing that they still have the culprits captive. Let the justice system in Country P deal with them.

“Thank you,” Chang Yu says. “Boss, over the next week we can lay the groundwork for your return—quietly probe some key executives, and prepare legal channels. And then—”

“I’ll have to go back,” Hua Yong says, frowning. “And deal with this in person.”

“Yes, Boss.”

“I don’t want to leave Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says unhappily, squeezing Sheng Shaoyou’s hand, and everything in Sheng Shaoyou agrees.

Hua Yong—to leave? To Country P? For how long? Forever, maybe?

It makes sense, that he’d have to go. It should’ve been obvious to Sheng Shaoyou from the start. Hua Yong can’t resolve the Beichao Holdings crisis from here. But Sheng Shaoyou just got him back.

But how are they going to—if they’ve both got their companies, in different countries, how are they—

Sheng Shaoyou clamps down on his scent, which threatens to escape. Perhaps Hua Yong senses it anyway, because he shifts nearer still, and his pheromones flare.

“I won’t be gone for long,” he says. “I refuse to be away from Mr Sheng. It’ll take me—maybe a couple of weeks.”

Sheng Shaoyou’s instincts teeter between distress and the urge to yield to the soothing orchid scent. He maybe leans a little closer to Hua Yong.

“A couple of weeks to resolve a succession crisis?” he mutters, fighting to keep his voice calm.

“Fourth Brother won’t know what hit him,” Hua Yong says, with a grim note in his tone, and tilts his chin up. “I’ll take the company back, trust me, Mr Sheng.”

His pheromones spike, suddenly aggressive and dominant in a way Sheng Shaoyou has never even known an Alpha’s to be.

Sheng Shaoyou drops at once. His head hits—something. A shoulder? It doesn’t seem important in the lassitude taking over his limbs. He registers an arm around him, and someone talking. There’s a voice murmuring in his ear, maybe saying his name. Hua Yong, his mind supplies vaguely, and that one thought is enough to relax him entirely, because Hua Yong means safe. He doesn’t quite remember what’s happening, but if Hua Yong is here, it’s fine. That becomes all the more true once the orchid scent turns calming, and Sheng Shaoyou breathes in deep. There’s maybe a hand steadying his jaw. Something warm presses at his lips, and he lets it in without thinking. Now that his mouth has something to hold, the dizziness settles into something softer, heavier.

Time passes, maybe.

When Sheng Shaoyou blearily blinks his eyes open, he’s—he’s in Hua Yong’s lap.

“What,” he tries to say, stirring ineffectually.

“Mr Sheng!” Hua Yong kisses his temple. “I’m so sorry, I lost control of my pheromones for a moment, and then—I’m sorry!”

Memories creep back in. The orchid scent flaring in domination, Hua Yong saying he’s going to take down his fourth brother, the—the meeting!

Sheng Shaoyou raises his head, frantic, but Shen Wenlang and Chang Yu are gone. Sheng Shaoyou and Hua Yong are the only ones in the room.

“Where—”

“We had limited time, so we had to finish the meeting without you, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says apologetically. “You were—you were the most affected, because you are—well—”

An Omega, Sheng Shaoyou supplies, stomach sinking. Hua Yong’s momentary emotional lapse must’ve hurt the Alphas in the room, but they weathered the pheromone assault. Sheng Shaoyou, the only Omega present, conked out entirely.

He forces down the humiliation that wants to consume him at the thought of Shen Wenlang and Chang Yu witnessing him falling unconscious.

Hua Yong slides a comforting hand down his back, and Sheng Shaoyou realises he’s still in his lap. When did he even get there? He slides off, with as much dignity as he can manage. At least the other Alphas didn’t see that, him nuzzling into Hua Yong’s arms.

His mind flashes to nightclubs he’s frequented, where Alphas would play with Omegas while discussing business with each other. Sheng Shaoyou has never been that kind of Alpha, and he’s certainly not an Omega who would helplessly writhe in someone’s lap while Alphas talk over his head. He has no idea why he’s suddenly having these ludicrous imaginings with regard to himself and Hua Yong, of all people.

Sheng Shaoyou determinedly pushes these useless thoughts from his mind.

“What… what did you all decide?” It’s vexing in the extreme to have missed the meat of the discussion.

Hua Yong’s arm is still around Sheng Shaoyou’s shoulders, a thumb rubbing his shoulder.

“I’ll stay in Jianghu for the next week,” he says. “Chang Yu and the others will make arrangements for my return. If all goes well on their end, I’ll travel to Country P after.”

Sheng Shaoyou’s gut clenches.

“I could come with you,” he says. “I could help.”

Hua Yong burrows closer into Sheng Shaoyou, scent delicately curling around him.

“You’ve already helped, Mr Sheng. You’ve helped so much. You’ve kept me safe all this time. You rescued me in that kidnapping. And I wouldn’t have been able to get in touch with Chang Yu or Shen Wenlang without you. Everything that’s happening now—that’s only thanks to you.”

That may be true, but it doesn’t feel like enough. Sheng Shaoyou listens as Hua Yong details his plans to go head-to-head with his fourth brother in the boardroom, relying on his loyalists to force his brother from the company and reinstating himself as head. It sounds simple on paper, but Sheng Shaoyou knows how thorny company politics can be. The enterprise is not without danger. This fourth brother tried to kill Hua Yong, more than once. They’ll be prepared, this time, and they are not anticipating violence, but—

Sheng Shaoyou has a week with Hua Yong before Hua Yong disappears again. Will he return within a fortnight, as promised? And what will Sheng Shaoyou do if the answer is no?

And what if Hua Yong does return—what can their lives together even look like, now?

“I love you, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says. “I promise you, we’ll figure it out.”

“You have responsibilities to Beichao Holdings,” Sheng Shaoyou says.

“Yes. I don’t want Fourth Brother to get away with what he did, and I’ll take the company back, but—you saw, I have trustworthy people. I can be with Mr Sheng forever and supervise the company at the same time.”

He says it like running a multi-billion dollar corporation is child’s play.

“And if it comes to choosing between Mr Sheng and the company, I’ll always choose Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong adds.

“Don’t.” That’s madness.

“I don’t think I’ll have to choose. But I don’t want Mr Sheng to worry. You’ll always have me, Mr Sheng. I’ll stay with you here, or you can come with me to Country P. Anything you want, Mr Sheng.”

Hua Yong kisses him on the forehead, gentle.

Hua Yong is… is soothing Sheng Shaoyou, like he’s fragile, like their roles have really changed and Sheng Shaoyou is an Omega who needs comfort and reassurance. Worse, something in Sheng Shaoyou does settle at that. He’s been… it’s hard to deny that he’s been uneasy, like a newly claimed Omega unwilling to be separated from his Alpha.

“I love you,” Hua Yong repeats.

I love you too, Sheng Shaoyou thinks. And what do we do with that?

***

Hua Yong, seemingly, has no qualms about any of it. Enigma or no, head of Beichao Holdings or no, he makes Sheng Shaoyou his usual breakfast the next morning, and insists on going to the office with him as his secretary.

“You’re the president of your own company,” Sheng Shaoyou says. “You’re going to bring me cups of tea?”

“But I like bringing Mr Sheng tea,” Hua Yong says, pouting. “Besides, all I’ll be doing for Beichao Holdings is getting reports from Country P. I can do that just as well from my desk at Shengfang Biotech as from anywhere else.”

Sheng Shaoyou could fight harder against this, but what would be the point? It’s not like he wants to spend the day away from Hua Yong. Uncertain as their new equilibrium is, Hua Yong’s presence does make everything better.

And with Hua Yong nearby, his orchid pheromones more potent nowadays, Sheng Shaoyou’s own new scent is largely masked. He gets away with just wearing a suppressant patch, foregoing any inhibitors, and nobody notices that something’s changed—that their president is now an Omega. 

They spend the week like this, tiptoeing around a strange limbo. Hua Yong is still at Shengfang Biotech, but he’s also working on his return to Country P. At home, Hua Yong still cooks, but over dinner tries to persuade Sheng Shaoyou to close down Shengfang Biotech’s gland cancer research division, promising to give him all the information he wants from Beichao Holdings. They’re still together, but all they do is kiss and hug, as if going back to the early days of their relationship.

(Sheng Shaoyou had been careful with Hua Yong then. Is Hua Yong being purposefully careful with Sheng Shaoyou now? No, it can’t be.)

And all the while, the clock keeps ticking. With every new update from Chang Yu and Shen Wenlang, Hua Yong’s departure to Country P looms closer. And Sheng Shaoyou’s body winds tighter and tighter.

And then the date is set. Tomorrow morning, a private jet will take Hua Yong to Country P. Sheng Shaoyou smiles at Hua Yong supportively, and doesn’t taste any of the delicious dinner Hua Yong has made.

In bed, he holds onto Hua Yong with—he doesn’t want to call it desperation. But it’s not not desperation, either. Hua Yong, too, is clutching him with strength that sends a shiver down his spine.

“Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says, longing already in his voice, and kisses him.

This kiss, unlike the others, lingers. Sheng Shaoyou doesn’t want to let go, and Hua Yong clearly doesn’t either. By the time they resurface properly for air, they’re both panting. Orange and orchid pheromones suffuse the air. Hua Yong’s hands are on the buttons of Sheng Shaoyou’s pyjama top.

“Mr Sheng,” he whispers, again, and Sheng Shaoyou doesn’t stop him when he tugs the sleep shirt off—when he kisses down his neck, and mouths at his collarbone, and sucks on a nipple.

Somehow, Hua Yong knows every spot that makes Sheng Shaoyou shudder, and takes his time with each. It’s—it’s their last night for who knows how long. No matter what it means that he’s an Omega now, Sheng Shaoyou wants—

“Yes,” he says, when all their clothes are gone and their cocks rub against each other.

His hand dips down, grasping Hua Yong’s enticing hardness in his first. The feel of it—

“Please, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says. His hand kneads Sheng Shaoyou’s ass and dips between his cheeks, a finger massaging his opening. “Please, can I?”

Sheng Shaoyou’s hole is already wet enough that Hua Yong’s finger easily slides in. Sheng Shaoyou groans as another joins it. His arms wrap around Hua Yong’s neck.

“Please, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong repeats, tears glistening in his eyes as his cock nudges Sheng Shaoyou’s entrance. “Please, I’ll miss you so much.”

Sheng Shaoyou’s legs are parting to accommodate Hua Yong before he quite knows it. Some high-pitched siren that’s been thinly blaring in his brain quiets when Hua Yong’s dick pushes in. The way it fills him—Hua Yong’s arms caging him in—the heady orchid and orange pheromones circling around them—

Suddenly, Sheng Shaoyou doesn’t know why he’s gone without this for so long. Why he’s wasted this whole week not having this. Why he’s held off on sharing this closeness with Hua Yong.

“I love you, Mr Sheng. I love you, I love you, I love you so much.”

Hua Yong punctuates each confession with a thrust, and Sheng Shaoyou wraps his legs around his waist and throws his head back, unable to hold in the noises that want to burst out of him.

“You’re everything to me, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong whispers. “I never want to let you go.”

Then don’t, Sheng Shaoyou thinks.

But tomorrow, Hua Yong will leave. Sheng Shaoyou tightens his arms around his shoulders. He’ll savour these last hours with Hua Yong, and hold off the morning as long as he can.

***

The next day, Sheng Shaoyou is left with a sore rear and an absence of Hua Yong. All of this has him grappling with himself, umoored.

Sheng Shaoyou has spent all night—he’s let Hua Yong—

He’s let Hua Yong fuck him. That’s what it is. He’s allowed Hua Yong to take him, over and over, and he liked it. He wanted it.

He… he might want it again.

What on earth does that make him?

An Omega, his mind whispers.

And then, on the heels of that: if he’s an Omega… isn’t it okay for him to want it?

It’s just his new nature. It’s normal, for an Omega, to crave a cock in him. It’s only right to enjoy the way it stretches him. It’s fine to give up control. This doesn’t say anything about Sheng Shaoyou as a person or an Alpha. He’s not an Alpha who’s submitted to another—he’s not an Alpha at all. His body wants this. That’s not his fault.

(But if that’s true… is he Hua Yong’s Omega, now?)

Sheng Shaoyou and Hua Yong’s vigorous… exchange of scents means that Hua Yong’s pheromones linger on him for the whole of that first day. That’s steadying, and Sheng Shaoyou comes in to the Shengfang Biotech office, a suppressant patch on his neck.

He greets Chen Pinming. He sits down (gingerly) behind his desk. He reads reports and emails that await him.

He comes in the next day, and the next. The orchid scent gets thinner on his skin.

Multiple times every afternoon, Sheng Shaoyou lifts his head, expecting Hua Yong to enter with a folder, a cup of tea, a smile and a kiss—but Hua Yong never walks through the door. He sends messages—I love you, Mr Sheng! Don’t start drinking coffee while I’m away!—but his smile isn’t there to buoy Sheng Shaoyou when tiredness sets in. Once Sheng Shaoyou comes home, no one cooks him dinner, or looks at him with shining eyes as they eat it, or hugs him as he falls asleep.

Sheng Shaoyou is just… alone. All the time. He doesn’t know how he used to stand it, before.

The week goes decidedly downhill from that. Sheng Shaoyou is snappy and irritable at the office, and he knows this makes his new pheromones leak out, the patch on his neck not enough to contain them. People will be able to smell his distress—the distress of an Omega. They will know.

On Thursday, he leaves the office at midday and stops by a pharmacy, hesitating over a box of inhibitors.

Please, Mr Sheng.

He grits his teeth, and walks away. For the rest of the week, he works from home.

Hua Yong calls. He texts. It’s not the same.

Everything in the apartment reminds Sheng Shaoyou of Hua Yong’s absence—the couch where they’ve kissed; the kitchen where Hua Yong always flutters about the stove; the bed whose right side Hua Yong should be on. Fed up, on Saturday Sheng Shaoyou moves back into his main house.

He doesn’t last the night, because the villa holds no hint of Hua Yong’s scent. He returns to their apartment and burrows under the covers, wanting Hua Yong there.

He doesn’t whine, or cry. He’s fine. He’s not some lovesick Omega from a sentimental novel. He just maybe misses his… whatever Hua Yong is to him.

“Your Alpha, perhaps,” the psychological counsellor suggests gently.

His treating physician arranged several sessions, to help Sheng Shaoyou “cope with his transition.” So here they are.

“Hua Yong is not an Alpha,” Sheng Shaoyou says.

At this point this is, admittedly, semantics. It’s hard to ignore the mountain of evidence staring Sheng Shaoyou in the face.

(He… he is Hua Yong’s Omega, isn’t he. He is Hua Yong’s Omega whose stupid instincts won’t calm down until Hua Yong comes home.)

“How has it been at the office?” the counsellor asks.

“I haven’t gone in much.” Lately, Sheng Shaoyou has just turned up for unavoidable shareholder meetings. A few of the men have given him playful nudges, detecting the change in his scent and assuming this to mean he’s found an Omega. It hasn’t yet occurred to them that he is the Omega they’re smelling.

“It’s very good that you’ve been going in at all. You’re getting there, Mr Sheng,” the woman says bracingly. “You’re dealing with your shift in identity very impressively.”

Is he? She hasn’t seen him at home, when he’s chasing Hua Yong’s fading scent on their sheets. She hasn’t seen him turning down invitations to events, or pausing over syringes with pheromone inhibitors.

Sheng Shaoyou has always fought to be strong. He’s still trying. He’s just not sure what that looks like in the new reality he’s living.

“I miss you,” he finally admits in a video call, and blinks so his eyes don’t get ideas about welling up. His fingers are clenching the bed covers from which Hua Yong’s scent is now completely gone. He can’t keep the tremor from his voice as he asks: “When… when do you think you’ll be back?”

Hua Yong’s eyes flash, and then his whole face softens visibly.

“I’ve achieved almost everything I wanted, Mr Sheng. I’ll be there before you know it.”

***

The next day, financial publications write about a press conference with the new head of Beichao Holdings—renamed X Holdings, now. There are pictures of Hua Yong in a dashing black suit, with Chang Yu by his side. Sheng Shaoyou traces the photographs and ignores his wailing instincts which demand he call Hua Yong at once.

Hua Yong is busy. Hua Yong just took over his corporation. Hua Yong is—

Hua Yong is at home, his orchid scent filling Sheng Shaoyou’s nose the moment he steps through their apartment door after work.

“Hua Yong?” Sheng Shaoyou says, barely daring to believe it, and drops his briefcase.

“Mr Sheng!” Hua Yong—beautiful, real, here—dashes into the entrance hall and clutches him in his arms. “Mr Sheng, Mr Sheng, I’ve returned, I love you.”

Their lips crash together. Sheng Shaoyou’s back hits the wall. He can’t help the way his own pheromones burst forward, plaintive, and Hua Yong’s scent blazes stronger, soothing and everything Sheng Shaoyou has been craving so badly for days and days.

A sob bursts out of Sheng Shaoyou’s chest. He tucks his face in Hua Yong’s neck as his shoulders shake.

“Mr Sheng!” Hua Yong says, holding him tighter and stroking his hair. “Mr Sheng, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’ve been away so long. Shh, it’s okay. I’m here now. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m fine,” Sheng Shaoyou says, muffled.

He has no idea why he’s crying. Everything is all right. Hua Yong is here. Sheng Shaoyou hasn’t broken down in all the time he’s been away, no matter how his instincts howled. It’s stupid to fall to pieces now.

“I know.” Hua Yong kisses the side of Sheng Shaoyou’s face, and then just—sweeps him up, off his feet and into a bridal carry. “Shh. It’s okay.”

Sheng Shaoyou should protest the treatment, but instead a zing goes up his spine at the easy way Hua Yong holds him. He clings to Hua Yong, inhaling his orchid pheromones.

“I missed you,” he confesses, again.

“I missed you too, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says. “So incredibly much. I never want to be away from you again. Never.”

“Yes,” Sheng Shaoyou says, and then, again: “Yes,” when Hua Yong puts him down on the bed and wraps himself around him.

Hua Yong’s arms are tight bands holding Sheng Shaoyou close, and his face is in Hua Yong’s shoulder, and Hua Yong’s legs are tangled with his. It’s as it should be, his whole soul clicking together.

Sheng Shaoyou never wants to go without this again.

Hua Yong kisses him, and Sheng Shaoyou loses himself in the taste of Hua Yong’s lips. Hua Yong’s hands are everywhere, like he’s assuring himself that they’re together once more. Sheng Shaoyou’s head is spinning and his limbs grow slack, a lassitude taking over him in the relief of Hua Yong’s scent around him.

Hua Yong’s mouth trails down Sheng Shaoyou’s throat.

“I want to be with you forever, Mr Sheng,” Hua Yong says, more intently.

His teeth scrape Sheng Shaoyou’s neck. Sheng Shaoyou’s breath catches.

“Yes,” he says.

Maybe he should think this through. But he already knows he doesn’t want to be without Hua Yong.

There’s a wild glint in Hua Yong’s eye when he draws back. Their next kiss grows frenzied, and Sheng Shaoyou almost doesn’t notice slick dripping into his underwear, but Hua Yong seems to. He inhales, sharp, bites gently at Sheng Shaoyou’s lower lip, and flips him, manhandling him onto his front, like he weighs nothing.

The next thing Sheng Shaoyou knows, his clothes are on the floor, and Hua Yong lies between his splayed thighs, lapping at his entrance.

“Hua Yong!”

Sheng Shaoyou is obscenely wet by the time Hua Yong’s cock drives into him, pinning him from behind.

“Oh,” Sheng Shaoyou gasps, and arches his back.

“Mr Sheng, so good for me,” Hua Yong says, fervent.

His hips snap, every thrust setting Sheng Shaoyou’s nerves alight. He leans over Sheng Shaoyou, raining kisses on his shoulders. His fangs pause at the nape of Sheng Shaoyou’s neck.

There’s an unfamiliar note in his voice as he says:

“You’re mine, Mr Sheng. I’ll never let you go.”

And then he bites down on Sheng Shaoyou gland.

“Hua Yong!” Foreign, powerful pheromones rush into Sheng Shaoyou. He chokes on a breath and gushes slick and comes with a scream, mind wiped clean of thought.

Hua Yong keeps driving into him, gland between his teeth. When he lets go, he pulls Sheng Shaoyou up to his knees. Sheng Shaoyou is left moaning into his pillow, ass in the air, as Hua Yong pounds into him. Every instinct tells him this is right. Nothing matters except Hua Yong, Hua Yong, Hua Yong—

He stirs when something much larger than a cock nudges at his entrance. That’s—that’s a knot, making its way into his body. He’s not made for this—except it slots in so perfectly, and presses against the parts inside him that—

Sheng Shaoyou comes again, and sobs with how good this feels. So filled, and claimed, and owned—

“I love you,” Hua Yong whispers, spilling into him.

“L’ve you too,” Sheng Shaoyou murmurs, half-adrift.

He vaguely feels Hua Yong shifting them, drawing him back to lie against Hua Yong’s chest as the knot ties their bodies close. Hua Yong’s tongue laves the back of his neck. The heavy orchid scent swirls around them, pulling him under. Sheng Shaoyou closes his eyes.

Hua Yong is back. Everything will be fine, now.

Hua Yong rubs soft circles over Mr Sheng’s side as he falls asleep. Poor Mr Sheng. He’s been through so much lately.

But it worked.

A giddy smile grows on Hua Yong’s face. 

Mr Sheng is his, wholly and utterly. Mr Sheng is aware of Hua Yong’s designation, and his ownership of X Holdings, and he accepts it all—just as he accepts his own place as Hua Yong’s Omega. He submits so beautifully. The needy Omega pheromones, coupled with the way Mr Sheng unconsciously nestles into him, tell Hua Yong how reliant Mr Sheng has become. How strong their new bond is. How well Hua Yong has succeeded in wooing him.

Hua Yong kisses Mr Sheng’s gland and licks the glowing orchid of the latest mark. Mr Sheng will remember this as their permanent bonding, and Hua Yong is content to let him. The permanent mark he gave Mr Sheng all those weeks ago to seal his Omega transformation was a necessity, done under the cold lights of a hospital. This—this was tender, and freely given, and profound.

It took so long to get here. Mr Sheng is a miracle years in the making, the result of X Holdings’ best scientists pushing themselves, and the power of Enigma pheromones, to the limit. Sometimes, Hua Yong thought he’d go mad, being away from Mr Sheng for so much of it. But they’ve made it through. Hua Yong has weathered their time apart; he’s assumed control of X Holdings while pretending at ongoing strife; he’s feigned amnesia so Mr Sheng can’t blame him for hiding his designation. And he’s gently guided Mr Sheng on the path of becoming an Omega, without ever tipping his hand. He’s stacked his deck, and won his prize. And he’s never letting anyone or anything take Mr Sheng from him again.

Mr Sheng’s sweet orange scent wafts in the air, and Hua Yong’s knot twitches inside him. Mr Sheng stirs a little.

“H’Yng?” he mumbles. So cute. So good, taking Hua Yong so well.

Hua Yong gives a tiny rolls of his hips and revels in Mr Sheng’s soft gasp.

“Shh, Mr Sheng. You can rest. I’ll take care of you.”

“Mmm.” Mr Sheng barely sighs as he adjusts on Hua Yong’s knot. His body opens up so easily—used to accepting Hua Yong’s cock, his fingers, his tongue, anything Hua Yong will give him.

Hua Yong smiles into his hair. Really, though Mr Sheng wasn’t born an Omega, he takes to it so readily that there’s no doubt in Hua Yong’s mind—Mr Sheng is better off this way. This Mr Sheng won’t have to struggle like his old self did. He won’t have Alpha instincts upsetting his balance as he adapts to his place at Hua Yong’s side. He won’t find childbirth more dangerous than any other Omega, and maybe this time there will be more children—someone to keep Hua Sheng company…

Hua Yong squeezes his beloved tighter, hand dropping to his belly. His Mr Sheng is so naive, so unused to thinking of himself as an Omega. Even warned of his ability to conceive, Mr Sheng has eagerly let Hua Yong fill him with his seed more than once now. Bonded and fertile, chances are high that Mr Sheng is already carrying Hua Yong’s child.

His darling, most adorable beloved.

This time, Mr Sheng will never learn of Hua Yong’s lies. Mr Sheng will never know how many people died for them to get here. Mr Sheng will look at Hua Yong, and only see a man who loves him. He’ll keep his heart and his legs open for Hua Yong, and Hua Yong will be so good to him. So good.

Hua Yong kisses Mr Sheng, and feels his soul settle as the world stays quiet and peaceful around them.

They will be so happy together.

Hua Yong won’t allow anything else.