Low-Grade Omega - Chapter 4

Telling someone to their face that they are in heat is incredibly rude.

Li Yao’s lips parted as if to argue, but he hesitated. He wanted to retort, but it was painfully obvious that the man was stating a fact.

His body had already reached its absolute limit. Black spots danced across Li Yao’s vision, and his surroundings began to blur into a hazy mess.

Perhaps because his secondary differentiation was reaching its peak, an intoxicatingly sweet scent of roses suddenly exploded into the air. Aside from the physical discomfort and pain, the swelling sensation at the nape of his neck grew more intense. A wave of heat surged from that spot, invading his entire body and leaving him trembling with uncontrollable spasms.

Feeling as though he were about to be melted by the internal fire, Li Yao lost the strength to hold onto anything. The wooden club slipped from his hand and clattered to the ground.

The night wind, heavy with rain, lashed against his skin. The icy touch provided a flickering spark of clarity. He remained wary, his eyes fixed on the Alpha’s every move. “Since you know I might be undergoing secondary differentiation and am in heat, why are you still standing here, Student Ji?”

The taciturn Alpha didn’t respond. Instead, he looked past him toward the thugs lying on the ground, moaning and groaning in pain.

His lips moved, uttering a single word: “Beat it.”

A powerful, domineering scent of sandalwood descended like a physical weight. The crushing pressure of a top-tier Alpha’s pheromones terrified the lower-level Alphas. Ignoring their injuries, they scrambled to their feet, supporting one another as they fled in a blind panic.

Li Yao, standing at the very center of that sandalwood aura, wasn’t much better off. To an Omega in heat, an Alpha’s pheromones are a lethal attraction—the ultimate aphrodisiac. Li Yao couldn’t fight his biological instincts, and he found himself gripped by a sudden, desperate craving for this near-stranger to mark him, to possess him.

He dug his nails deep into the soft flesh of his palms, using the sharp sting of pain to cling to his remaining sanity.

Every fiber of his being radiated resistance. With a voice that tried to sound sharp despite his weakness, he snapped, “Ji Yiheng, marking an Omega against their will is a crime!”

Invoking the law in such a situation was almost laughable. If the Alpha wanted to do something, Li Yao had no way to stop him. But he had no other cards left to play.

The Alpha clearly didn’t care about the Omega’s feeble threat. He began to step forward, closing the distance.

As the space between them shrank, the sandalwood scent—as cold and detached as its owner, became like a beast marking its territory. It aggressively hemmed in the sweet, cloying rose pheromones, trapping them within its reach.

Li Yao wasn’t short for his age, standing at 180cm, but he seemed small in front of the nearly 190cm Alpha.

With effortless ease, the Alpha pinned him between the wall and his arms.

Li Yao furrowed his brow, his hands pressed against the man’s chest in a weak attempt to push him away. He had no strength left, and when he tried to voice a protest, he realized he had lost his voice entirely.

A flash of uncontrollable desire and struggle flickered in the Alpha’s eyes. The Omega in his arms was clearly losing his mind to the heat, instinctively leaning closer. Those hands that had been resisting were now somehow wrapped around the Alpha’s waist. His nose twitched, inhaling the cold pheromones like an addict seeking a fix.

The rosebud had fully bloomed, looking fragile, helpless, and ready to be plucked.

As if stung, the Alpha took a step back. Before the Omega could instinctively follow and press against him, the Alpha grabbed both of the Omega’s hands, pinning them behind his back. In a restrained, low voice, he soothed, “It’s going to hurt a little. Bear with it.”

In the rainy darkness of that narrow alley, the sweet rose and the cold sandalwood intertwined. Yet, they didn’t merge. After a momentary collision, the scents abruptly vanished.

Li Yao remembered it vividly. Despite the explosive tension of the moment, Ji Yiheng hadn’t marked him. Instead, he had injected him with a suppressor. The numbing sting and the sharp pain of the needle piercing his newly formed, fragile gland felt as though it had happened only yesterday.

It was that very injection that triggered the beginning of all his future misfortunes.

***

The sound of the shower stopped. Li Yao snapped out of his memories, his expression complex as he looked at the frosted glass door of the bathroom, now clouded with steam.

He truly couldn’t understand what this Alpha wanted. He didn’t understand him six years ago, and he understood him even less now.

There was a blood feud between them. The best outcome would be to never see each other again until they died. So why… why did he have to come back and provoke him?

Did he think Li Yao hadn’t lost enough already? But he had nothing left to lose.

The corners of Li Yao’s eyes reddened slightly. A heavy sense of suffocation made his stomach cramp, and he felt a sudden surge of nausea.

He gave a self-mocking laugh. It was just sleeping with Ji Yiheng. They had done it countless times five years ago. They had once been so intimate that they were permanently marked.

Since he had chosen to sell his soul and body for money to be Ji Yiheng’s lover, he would naturally fulfill the duties of a lover.

With a soft click, the bathroom door opened. The Alpha stepped out, wearing only a bathrobe and trailing a cloud of steam.

Ji Yiheng’s eyes instinctively sought out the Omega. He froze when he saw those slightly damp, incredibly fragile peach-blossom eyes.

Was he… sad?

Ji Yiheng didn’t know why that thought occurred to him, but the mere possibility sent a dull ache through his heart.

Before he could analyze the look further, the Omega suppressed all emotion. That careless, fake smile returned to his lips.

“Why are you just standing there? At a time like this, is the Great Head of the Ji Family suddenly acting shy?”

He watched as the Omega sat up. Those misty eyes were shimmering and seductive. The loose bathrobe slipped from his shoulders, revealing elegant collarbones that looked as though they could hold a pool of spring water.

The invitation was blatant. Ji Yiheng was no saint. His eyes darkened as the bathroom door shut heavily. With a soft click, the lights were turned off, plunging the room into darkness.

Outside, the wind and rain lashed against the night. Heavy raindrops drummed against the floor-to-ceiling windows, blurring everything inside.

The sandalwood scent, usually cold and thin, was now like an out-of-control beast, instinctively searching for its unique rose. But no matter how hard it tried, the rose that should have bloomed for it never appeared. The frustrated beast could only circle its territory, drenching every inch of the Omega’s skin and every strand of his hair in pheromones to assert its dominance.

Li Yao didn’t know how it ended. The last thing he remembered was the Alpha’s obsessive, fierce, ink-black eyes, devoid of their usual icy calm.

The near-death sensation of having his gland marked, even if it was just a temporary one, still left him with lingering fear.

He instinctively reached back to touch the nape of his neck. The texture of the skin told him clearly that there wasn’t a single patch of healthy flesh left there.

He grit his teeth, muttering bitterly to himself, “That damn Alpha is exactly the same as before, no sense of restraint at all when he bites.”

Because he had been pushed so hard, Li Yao only stayed awake for a brief moment before exhaustion dragged him back into a deep sleep. He didn’t manage to get out of bed until noon the next day.

He had slept for a full day and night before finally coming to. He thought Ji Yiheng would have left, but as soon as he opened his eyes, he saw the Alpha’s face inches from his own.

Startled, Li Yao instinctively shrank back.

“You’re awake?”

The Alpha seemed to be in a foul mood. His expression was visibly poor, tinged with a hint of exasperation.

He was staring intently at the side of Li Yao’s neck. “The scar on your gland, where did it come from?”

Li Yao had a habit of sleeping curled on his side, a classic sign of deep insecurity, but it now made things convenient for the Alpha. As he spoke, he reached out to the nape of Li Yao’s neck, his fingertips pressing against the long, thin scar on the gland, tracing its texture.

A gland is incredibly sensitive and fragile. No one is allowed to touch it except for a bonded partner.

To have such a long scar, one could only imagine how severe the injury had been. No wonder he couldn’t draw out the Omega’s pheromones last night, no matter how hard he tried. It wasn’t that the other man was resisting through sheer willpower, it was that the gland was damaged and could no longer secrete pheromones.

An Omega who cannot produce pheromones is essentially disabled.

He might never smell that rose fragrance that haunted his dreams ever again.

Realizing this, Ji Yiheng’s pupils contracted. A sharp, stabbing pain hit his heart. His touch on the scar lightened, as if the Omega might shatter if he wasn’t careful.

At the mention of the scar, Li Yao reacted violently, slapping Ji Yiheng’s hand away. Ignoring the ache in his body—which felt as if he’d been hit by a starship, he struggled to get out of bed.

“Li Yao!”

A frustrated roar came from the ignored Alpha behind him. Li Yao’s figure stiffened for a second.

He stood frozen, unable to fathom how Ji Yiheng had the nerve, the sheer audacity, to bring up that scar.

No one knew better than Ji Yiheng where that scar came from, right? How could he act like he knew nothing? How could he ask such an innocent-sounding question?

Li Yao’s scarred fingers curled into a tight fist before slowly relaxing. He exerted every ounce of his will to suppress the simmering rage in his heart.

He let out a cold, mocking laugh. “Great Head of the Ji Family, didn’t your childhood etiquette lessons teach you that prying into secrets people don’t want to share is incredibly boorish behavior?”

Without another word, he snatched his clothes from the sofa and walked straight into the bathroom. He didn’t give Ji Yiheng a single backward glance, though his stiff, straight back betrayed a hint of a panicked retreat.

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