Rank
Alternative
Author(s)
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A Beta protagonist who appears weak and harmless but secretly harbors a deep-seated hatred for everyone. An Alpha lead who acts like a cold, untouchable “flower on a high mountain,” but is actually an obsessive freak playing a double role to win his “wife.”
Duan Huaijing is a Beta who grew up under the crushing weight of his family’s expectations and neglect. He has a biased mother, a self-sacrificing father a flamboyant playboy for a younger brother, and a cheating fiancé.
While many people pity him, no one realizes that beneath his quiet exterior, he equally envies and resents everyone he knows, wishing daily that they would all just disappear. He never expected someone to actually fall for a person like him, let alone Xie Yun, his fiancé’s older brother.
Duan Huaijing’s internal reaction: If the younger brother is trash, how good can the older one be? Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting.
Xie Yun is the quintessential Alpha heir, raised with a strict education and a seemingly unbreakable moral compass. That is, until he met Duan Huaijing.
To Xie Yun, Duan is beautiful, soft-spoken and cries like a vulnerable little animal. He sees a man who is fragile yet internally resilient a “white lotus” who masks his deep-seated resentment with a harmless smile. Every interaction pulls Xie Yun deeper into an obsession.
While his morality tells him to stop, his feelings have spiraled out of control. He finds himself wishing more than once that he was the one standing beside the Beta. Eventually, his restraint snaps: If the family elders said a son of the Xie family should marry Duan Huaijing, why can’t it be me instead of my brother?
Duan Huaijing has a pinned contact in his phone that he’s had for years. He owes this person a massive debt. To pay it off, he is forced to submit to physical intimacy and “mock markings” every Friday night. This mysterious figure sends him constant, unsettling messages:
“Baby’s neck is so beautiful; it would be perfect with a few more hickeys.”
“Want to take your mother to the banquet? Be a bit more proactive tonight.”
“Baby, how about wearing a dress for me?”
Duan Huaijing wishes this person would drop dead, yet he can’t let go of the “benefits” the man provides. He uses this stalker’s influence to get closer to Xie Yun, then uses Xie Yun’s affection to deal with the “pervert” harassing him.
Just when “both” men think he is hopelessly in love with them, Duan Huaijing quietly slips away to the airport, leaving the chaos behind. He used to mock himself for being a bird in a cage; now, he is finally free.
Later, news breaks that the notoriously cold CEO of the Xie Corporation is frantically searching for his “missing wife.” Coincidentally, that wife happens to be a Beta.
One day, the younger brother regrets his actions and goes to Duan Huaijing’s place to beg for forgiveness. He knocks and apologizes for ages, unaware that just behind the door, the man he’s calling for is locked in a heated kiss with his own older brother.
His apologies only serve as fuel for the fire inside the room. The poor Beta’s nape is red and covered in bite marks. The feral Alpha bites down urgently, desperate to coat the Beta in his pheromones. “Why won’t the mark take?”
Duan Huaijing tilts his head back, his voice strained as he tries to appeal to the man’s last shred of sanity: “Your brother. He’s still outside.”
Xie Yun pauses, his eyes darkening with suffocating possessiveness. “Let him listen.”
Later, when the scumbag younger brother receives his brother’s wedding invitation:
