1122 - Chapter 13.2

As Chu Beiheng watched Jiang Yi follow the nurse in for the injection, he was about to ask the doctor something when the doctor spoke first: “Family members should also monitor the gestational hypertension in the expectant father. His blood pressure is slightly elevated. When I saw him massaging his forehead earlier has, he been experiencing headaches recently?”

At the mention of gestational hypertension, Chu Beiheng’s expression immediately turned serious. He thought of Uncle Gu Ranran’s father, who had suffered postpartum hemorrhage due to gestational hypertension years ago. A chill ran through his limbs.

“I think I’ve heard him mention it.”

“Then it’s crucial to pay close attention. With a twin pregnancy, overexpansion of the birth cavity can lead to uterine atony during delivery, resulting in severe hemorrhage extremely dangerous. Since he doesn’t have an Alpha with him now, you must monitor his emotional state closely and keep a close eye on the fetuses’ condition.”

After hearing this, Chu Beiheng didn’t dare delay. He immediately called his father to inform him about the situation.

Two days later, the obstetrics team from Galaxy Hospital boarded a private jet straight to Country M, a team of twelve specialists dedicated to Jiang Yi’s care.

But it seemed Jiang Yi’s emotions were quite unstable. After returning from the hospital, he refused to let the doctors from Galaxy Hospital check on the fetus, adamantly rejecting any examinations. Sometimes, he would wake up in the middle of the night and be found sitting blankly in the living room. When asked, he would only say he couldn’t sleep due to insomnia.

Yet, as someone who needed rest the most during pregnancy, how could he not sleep properly?

Chu Beiheng came up with a solution. Every week, he would fly back home on a private jet to fetch Yan Nanchen’s clothes and hide them under Jiang Yi’s pillow or beneath the bedsheet, placing them in spots Jiang Yi wouldn’t easily notice.

His goal was to let Jiang Yi catch the scent of Yan Nanchen’s pheromones.

He knew that while Jiang Yi claimed he wanted to forget, how could someone forget a love so deep? And if he didn’t love, why would he be so heartbroken?

Sure enough, after doing this, Jiang Yi no longer wandered to the living room at night. Sometimes, when Chu Beiheng secretly checked on him, he found Jiang Yi already fast asleep, which eased his worries.

He thought everything should be fine now.

This continued until Jiang Yi reached eight months of pregnancy. Under the careful care of doctors and nutritionists, Jiang Yi’s condition seemed relatively stable, though he did develop gestational hypertension. They could only do their best to regulate his health, and during prenatal checkups, they avoided mentioning the possibility of the child inheriting a secondary differentiation gene defect.

Fortunately, neither of the twins showed signs of a dominant gene defect. Even if one had it, it would be recessive though they didn’t know which one it might be.

One night.

Chu Beiheng couldn’t sleep, feeling an inexplicable unease. He decided to quietly check on Jiang Yi. When he opened the door, he found Jiang Yi sitting by the bed, clutching something in his arms and crying.

“Was it you who put this here?”

Chu Beiheng froze as Jiang Yi turned to look at him, his voice hoarse. The room was too dark to see clearly, so Chu Beiheng turned on the light.

The moment the light flickered on, he saw Jiang Yi holding the clothes he had secretly brought back, his face streaked with tears.

“Turn it off!!” Jiang Yi gripped the shirt tightly, his eyes red as he shouted at Chu Beiheng. But his voice, strained and hoarse, wasn’t loud only trembling violently.

With a soft click, the light went out.

The atmosphere instantly turned heavy.

After a few minutes, a choked sob broke the silence from the bedside.

“Who told you to give me his clothes?”

Chu Beiheng was at a loss for words.

“Why would you do this?” Jiang Yi could no longer hold back his emotions. Whether it was hatred or the longing he had desperately suppressed, the moment he discovered the shirt, it all came flooding out. He slowly bent forward, burying his face in the white shirt, his hands trembling.

The faintest trace of violet musk shattered the rationality he had maintained for the past year.

The nausea of pregnancy, the loss of appetite, the sleepless nights, the emotional turmoil, the headaches from gestational hypertension, and the sorrow over the possibility of their children having genetic issues all of it was dredged up by the alpha pheromones lingering on that white shirt.

And along with it came resentment.

“I was about to forget.”

Chu Beiheng couldn’t bear to see Jiang Yi so broken and defeated. Steeling himself, he walked into the bedroom and stood beside Jiang Yi. “Who was it that said being a single dad was cool too? You said that. So why does a single shirt make you cry like this?”

Jiang Yi buried his face deep into the white shirt. The texture brushed against the tip of his nose as he gently rubbed against it, as if clinging to something, only to struggle the next moment to suppress such emotions.

He clearly hated Yan Nanchen for deceiving him. A lie was a lie, unforgivable.

But why, despite all that hatred, could a single white shirt shatter him so completely?

Why?

“…I” Jiang Yi lifted his head to look at Chu Beiheng. That hesitant “I” trembled with a choked sob, thick with struggle.

Moonlight spilled through the floor-to-ceiling window, casting its glow on the floor, encircling the bed, and illuminating Jiang Yi’s face. The faint traces of tear stains were visible desperate, struggling, helpless.

“I don’t know.”

“I really hate him for lying to me. Because I had endless hopes for him. I thought about being with him, marrying him. He was the one who took care of me during the most painful time of my secondary differentiation. I was the one who begged him to mark me. Later, when I got pregnant, I was full of excitement, wanting to tell him the happy news.”

“I truly imagined spending forever with him.”

“So I poured all my hopes and dreams of love into this relationship.”

“But, he said his name wasn’t Chu Beiheng, it was Yan Nanchen. Yan Nanchen was the person I hated most at work. He always nitpicked, always said my clothes were ugly, that dress shoes didn’t suit me, that even the fountain pen wasn’t right for me.”

“And then at night, he was my puppy, promising to buy me nice shirts and suits, handsome leather shoes, even a custom-made fountain pen.”

“How could one person be like this? One person by day, another by night. Wouldn’t he go insane?” Jiang Yi broke down sobbing, letting out a bitter laugh. “Wouldn’t he be exhausted?”

Chu Beiheng couldn’t bear it and turned his face away, tilting his head back to take a deep breath. The bridge of his nose ached with suppressed emotion.

How could he not be insane? How could he not be exhausted?

Yan Nanchen had already lost his mind long ago.

This time, when he returned, Yan Nanchen could no longer function normally as the head of Galaxy Group. Severe depression wasn’t an illness that could be overcome by sheer willpower. They all knew Yan Nanchen’s determination to get better but his body was deteriorating uncontrollably.

Their uncle had returned to take over Galaxy Group.

A team of top psychiatrists was treating Yan Nanchen.

But they all knew only one person could save Yan Nanchen.

And that was Jiang Yi, standing before him now, eight months pregnant.

But how could he tell Jiang Yi that Yan Nanchen was suffering from severe depression? Even if he had to say it, now wasn’t the time. All he could do now was reassure his younger brother when he visited him at home: Don’t worry, I’ll help you find Jiang Yi.

All he could do was tuck his brother’s clothes under Jiang Yi’s pillow when his pregnancy mood swings kept him awake, helping him fall asleep.

Beyond these superficial gestures, he was powerless.

He didn’t understand why things had turned out this way, nor why their family so full of happiness had brought his brother such hardship. And in a way, this suffering was self-inflicted.

But no matter what, he was family. And family still ached for him.

“Jiang Yi, do you still love Yan Nanchen?”

Jiang Yi didn’t answer, only stared blankly at the white shirt in his hands.

“It was wrong of him to lie and deceive you using my identity, whether he was afraid of you finding out his true self or had other reasons. Putting that aside, just considering puppy as a person, can you feel that his love is genuine?”

Jiang Yi’s breathing became slightly rapid.

“If possible, then let time prove that sincere love can break through well-intentioned lies. Prove that Yan Nanchen initially deceived you only because he wanted to present his perfect self to you. He didn’t want you to dislike him; he wanted you to believe he was perfect from the very beginning. Let time prove that beyond this lie, the love he gave you was the most perfect, he loved you with his life.”

“Jiang Yi, life is inherently imperfect. What we can do is not let ourselves suffer. So can you give him another chance? Give yourself another chance, a chance to release each other, to ensure you leave no regrets behind.”

These words were like a demolition machine appearing in a dead-end alley, forcibly shattering the towering walls that had been erected.

Jiang Yi, his eyes red, looked at Chu Beiheng at that face identical to Yan Nanchen’s and pressed his lips tightly together. Could he do it? Could he really move past this hurdle?

“I—”

Just as he was about to speak, he suddenly felt the world spin violently. A sharp pain shot through his forehead, forcing him to double over with a muffled groan. His heart pounded wildly, racing so fast it was terrifying, as if it might leap out of his throat.

Abruptly, everything went black.

The next moment, he lost consciousness entirely, collapsing to the side.

Chu Beiheng’s expression darkened instantly. “Jiang Yi!!!”

That night, Jiang Yi suffered a sudden onset of pregnancy-induced hypertension, triggering premature labor at only 32 weeks. During the cesarean section, he experienced severe hemorrhaging. As a secondary differentiation patient, he could only receive blood from his Alpha partner but Yan Nanchen wasn’t there. In the end, they had no choice but to reluctantly use Chu Beiheng’s blood.

Jiang Yi, due to postpartum hemorrhage, fell into a coma and was transferred to the intensive care unit.

“July 28th, 04:36. Twins, a boy and a girl. The boy weighed three pounds; the girl, four pounds and two ounces. July 28th, 04:47. The boy passed away due to sudden Secondary Differentiation Gene Defect.”

When Chu Beiheng heard this outside the ward, his entire body swayed, nearly losing his balance. His eyes red, he grabbed the doctor. “Don’t joke about this, you’re doctors from Galaxy Hospital! How is Jiang Yi? What about the child?”

He tried to push into the delivery room.

How was this possible? How could the child be gone? Throughout the entire pregnancy, the baby’s health had been perfectly fine!

But the doctor stopped him.

“Young Master Chu, the girl has already been placed in an incubator. The boy’s passing wasn’t caused by Jiang Yi’s sudden hypertension, it was due to Secondary Differentiation Gene Defect. The child exhibited a sudden dominant secondary differentiation gene. A newborn manifesting ABO gender and undergoing secondary differentiation is excruciating even adults can’t endure it, let alone an infant.”

Chu Beiheng’s eyes were bloodshot. Dazed, he stood rooted to the spot, staring at the delivery room door, his lips trembling slightly. “The boy, what was his gender?”

“Omega.”

Chu Beiheng closed his eyes in anguish.

The doctor handed Chu Beiheng the “Placenta and Stillborn Disposal Plan.” “Young Master Chu, we need you to sign this stillborn disposal form. Will it be ‘handled uniformly by the hospital’ or ‘arranged privately by the patient and family’?”

Chu Beiheng’s eyes were streaked with red veins. His hands shook as he took the documents and pen from the doctor. When he saw the word “stillborn,” his vision blurred with tears.

“Did Jiang Yi ever open his eyes at all?”

“No. He remained completely unconscious.”

“How is he now?”

“He needs to be monitored for 48 hours.”

Chu Beiheng struggled to contain his emotions, his eyes red as he signed his younger brother Yan Nanchen’s name after the line “The birthing parent and family will handle matters independently.”

As he finished the final stroke of “Chen,” he thought to himself, this child would surely become an insurmountable pain between them.

Closing his eyes, he handed the document back to the doctor.

Crash, the sound of shattering glass.

Hearing the commotion, Chu Guzhi hurried into the room to find his son Yan Nanchen sitting on the edge of the bed, clutching his chest in agony, the glass cup he’d been holding now shattered on the floor.

“What’s wrong, Nanchen?” he asked urgently, rushing to Yan Nanchen’s side.

Bent over with tears streaming down his face, Yan Nanchen gripped the fabric over his heart so tightly it wrinkled, his eyes bloodshot. “Why does my heart suddenly hurt so much?”

Support