CH 21

“It’s a pity that I don’t want to.”

Fu Ge kicked him away with his toes, “Your pretending to be affectionate will only make me nauseous. I don’t want to have anything to do with you anymore, do you understand?”

Qi Han’s expression froze on his face, but his eyes were full of pain and loneliness.

He knelt there on one knee in silence for a long time before putting on his clothes and leaving. When he closed the door, he glanced back and saw Fu Ge pulling out a wet wipe from his bag and wiping his foot very hard.

The foot that had stepped on his shoulder.

The pheromone extraction the next day didn’t go well.

Because of the excessive extraction the day before and Qi Han vomiting all the food he had eaten, his mental and physical strength dropped drastically, and his glands were completely shrivelled.

Although the pheromones of the 3S level Alpha are much more powerful and abundant than ordinary AO, they couldn’t withstand Fu Ge pouring them out again and again.

After waiting for half an hour and Qi Han’s glands still being empty, the doctor could only advise him to fill up his body with nutrients to replenish his energy first.

It was said to be a nutrient, but in fact it was just a dry white solid mass with a taste similar to used toothpaste and a strong plastic smell.

It was the kind of thing that Qi Han would find disgusting even in a healthy state, but he had to eat it now.

In the end he hugged the toilet and threw up again.

He couldn’t stop the nausea because too much pheromone was extracted. His oesophagus and his throat were clogged with plastic-flavoured toothpaste that was swelling up in his stomach like a ball of cotton soaked up with water, and he had to vomit his bile to feel better.

All the seven or eight tubes of nutrients that he had eaten gritting his teeth were vomited. Qi Han slumped against the sink, exhausted, gathered some cold water and splashed it on his face, then rinsed his mouth again. His wet hair was limp and hanging down on his forehead.

He couldn’t hold on much longer, but he had to give Fu Ge this tube of pheromones today no matter what.

He grabbed a handful of nutrients again, opened them all at once and stuffed them into his mouth, swallowing them in large gulps, stopping only when his stomach began to burn.

The good news was that the nutrients worked quickly and the glands started to secrete pheromones right away. He leaned against the wall helplessly, the images from his nightmares flashing in his mind like a conditioned reflex.

After smoking a cigarette with his eyes closed, Qi Han walked into the extraction room again.

The third portion of pheromones was significantly smaller and lighter in colour than the first two. All the doctors involved were very careful with it, adding saline to dilute the colour and hiding it among medicines Fu Ge had to get every morning.

Qi Han thought that the Beta could use it with peace of mind if he didn’t see it, but he didn’t expect that this caused Fu Ge to resist even more fiercely.

“Get out! I don’t want an infusion!”

Fu Ge smashed all the potions brought by the doctor, refused to eat breakfast, and threatened to go on a hunger strike or jump off the building if he was given Qi Han’s pheromones again.

Fortunately, the young nurse kept an eye on it in advance and hid the pheromones in her sleeve, “Just try it, you don’t need to feel uncomfortable, let it be him who feels uncomfortable. Why not do something that can make you feel good and make the criminal feel bad at the same time?!”

Fu Ge glanced into her sleeve, “Give it to me.”

“I, I…  won’t give it! This is your life-saving medicine!”

“Are you going to help him too?”

The young nurse’s temper instantly dwindled and she defended herself, aggrieved, “I’m not… I’m with you…”

“Then give me the pheromones and be good.”

The young girl shook her head, “But without it you’ll have to have surgery and remove—”

A bang on the door interrupted her. Qi Han kicked the door open and strode towards Fu Ge. Passing the young girl, he took the pheromones and threw the tube to the doctor behind him, “You stay, the rest of you go, now!”

Fu Ge backed away warily, “What are you doing— ugh!”

Before he could finish, he was picked up by Qi Han by the waist and held down forcefully on the bed. The Alpha said word by word, “Coming and giving you your medicine.”

“Let go… let go of me! I won’t have it! Qi Han, are you crazy?!”

The man on top of him gave a bitter laugh, clutching one of his hands and tying it to the bedpost, then pressing the other hand to the bed tightly, “That’s the question. Haven’t I gone crazy a long time ago?”

Turning his head, he ordered the doctor, “Inject it!”

Stunned for two seconds, the doctor hurriedly ran over with the potion.

The cold tip of the needle was like the chilly wind that scraped the skin of the face in the coldest days of winter, and Fu Ge trembled all over as soon as it was pressed to his skin.

“No—” He choked and resisted, his eyes turning red as he cried in refusal. His hands were struggling with all their might, but he couldn’t shake off Qi Han.

Seeing that the tip of the needle was about to pierce his vein, Fu Ge jerked up his upper body convulsively and was slammed back down. His voice was on the verge of breaking when he managed to say: “Qi Han, I hate you… I hate you so much!”

The Alpha’s tear-filled eyes were like a deep, bottomless sea as he leaned down to the tip of his lover’s nose, “You already hate me to the bone anyway, do you think I’ll mind a little more?”

Fu Ge ducked away in disgust, “Get out of here! Get the hell away from me! I will never forgive you!”

Qi Han only smiled, kissing his face when he couldn’t touch the tip of his nose, and pecking and kissing his neck when Fu Ge turned away his face.

“Will you forgive me if I don’t inject it? Will you change your mind if you don’t use my pheromones? Will you fall in love with me again if I don’t kiss or touch you, huh?”

A tear dropped from his eye; Qi Han’s smile was filled with a rust-smelling bitterness, “You won’t.” He was sentenced to death.

“No matter what I do, you won’t forgive me, and you’ll never come back…”

Fu Ge shuddered and closed his eyes, “If you know that, just let me go.”

“As long as your health is bad, you won’t leave.”

The young Beta smiled, “How can it be good?”

“Use your pheromones for treatment and live with the smell of you again for the rest of my life?” He shook his head very hard, “But Qi Han, why…”

“Why couldn’t I have it when I needed it, no matter how much I cried or begged? And now that you are mercifully willing to give it to me, I have to accept it?”

He let out a few small sobs, like a kitten who couldn’t yet chew and had to lick the spoiled milk when he was hungry, “I don’t accept it… I don’t want you… I don’t want to…”

“I don’t want to be hounded by the doctors and nurses every time I manage to save up enough money to book an isolation room, asking what the pheromones on me smell like, what my Alpha’s level is and how the hell a Beta can be marked!”

He panted and roared, but soon fell into great melancholy again. His mouth opened and closed weakly several times but he couldn’t make a sound, and finally choked and squeezed out the words—

“Because I can’t smell your pheromones and I can’t find you…”

“I’m just a Beta that you marked for life and threw away, I was nothing for you when we were going to get married, what’s the use of giving me these things now?”

He used his arm to hide the Fu Ge who had changed beyond recognition and admitted in despair, “I have rotted in the mud a long time ago…” 

More desperately than hating the man he once loved the most, Fu Ge found that he loathed himself even more, his body and soul, both hopelessly broken and torn, as if exuding a rancid smell.

The room was silent for a long time, so long that Fu Ge thought Qi Han passed out and died.

His wrist was suddenly wrapped in Qi Han’s palm. The Alpha’s hand slid inch by inch down to the back of his hand, and there was a sharp flash of pain as Qi Han pulled out the needle and held the glass tube containing the pheromones in his hand.

“Don’t cry…”

With a snap, he personally crushed the third tube of pheromones that cost half of his life to extract.

The white bellflower-flavoured liquid flowed over his fingers and dripped on the floor. The Alpha’s red, swollen eyes curved slightly, like the eyes of a cute little bear holding a jar of honey.

“I’ll help gege destroy the nasty stuff.”

But Mr. Bear Cub would never show bouncing around again.

Again, the floor was covered in debris and the ward looked like there had been a fierce battle.

Qi Han went out and came back with a bowl of porridge in his hand, “No pheromones, but you have to eat.”

He scooped a spoonful and fed it to Fu Ge. The knuckles of his index finger were stained with his own blood. The young Beta looked there motionlessly. Qi Han withdrew his hand in embarrassment, “…sorry.”

The bowl of porridge was handed over to Fu Ge, but he didn’t move the spoon for a long time. He held the bowl awkwardly with both hands, but his thumbs were hidden under the edge of the bowl. He was secretly rubbing something.

Qi Han lowered his eyes and saw that it was half a bloodstained fingerprint that he had left there.

Suddenly, refusing to comply with him, the Alpha stubbornly held his hand, not allowing him to rub. His wet, flushed eyes were aggrieved; like a large dog thrown aside because its master was disgusted with it.

“Pheromones are not good, is blood not good either? Am I that dirty in gege’s eyes?”

“Uh-huh.” Fu Ge nodded without hesitation.

Qi Han glanced at the top of his head in silence and turned to leave the ward.

He strode out, walked out of the corridor, walked out of the elevator, and finally almost ran, rushing all the way to the corner of the hospital garden, letting himself go without any thought about his image and collapsing on the lawn.

Memories kept flashing in his mind. He remembered how Fu Ge used to love to stick to him naked. Even though he couldn’t smell his pheromones, he would relentlessly chant, “Our Ah Han smells so good, the flower-scented Alpha is just so cute it’s explosive!”

After Qi Han pinched his nose and told him not to say “cute”, he flattened his mouth regretfully and blinked his sly eyes, “No more saying cute, then can I invite you to make love to me?”

Raising his arm and shielding his eyes, Qi Han hid his face and laughed. With this laughter, a sour, stinging fire began to spread in his chest. He curled on his side like a cooked shrimp, burying his face in the prickly lawn.

“I don’t stink, I’m not dirty… you used to like me the most…”

Fu Ge had written hundreds of times in the sketch book that he liked Mr. Bear Cub the most. But from their reunion to now, in dreams and in reality, the young Beta said it a thousand times: he hated Qi Han.

Fu Ge didn’t know that there was another treatment option for his illness, a surgery to remove the mark. Qi Han signed a confidentiality agreement with everyone who knew about it that they were absolutely not allowed to divulge half a sentence. 

The young Beta was really too cruel to himself.

Three years ago, without money or regular medical resources, he would rather shave off a layer of flesh at any cost to wash away the lifetime mark. Once he knew he could have the surgery done, he would go for it without hesitation.

Qi Han didn’t want him to suffer more pain, so he chose to make a desperate attempt, but he didn’t expect that Fu Ge would rather die than use his pheromones.

“There’s one last way.”

Qi Han said, “Although 3S level bellflower pheromones are rare, I can’t be the only one in the country who has them. He doesn’t want my pheromones, maybe he can accept someone else’s.”

Chen Xing’s eye twitched, “You mean to find an Alpha with the same pheromones as you to use them for that little Beta? Big brother, stop it, who wants to pump their own pheromones for fun for no reason? It’s your dear darling, not someone else’s.”

“Of course I know that.” Qi Han’s fingers with distinct joints tapped on the table. He exhaled and said word for word, “He won’t need to pump pheromones, I just need him to put on a show for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Extract my pheromones, but tell Fu Ge it’s his.”

“No way! Absolutely not!”

Chen Xing stood up straight away in excitement, “You’re just pure fucking big idiot, isn’t this simply using your own life to make a wedding dress for someone else? What? When the time comes, you’ll be pumping yourself half to death day and night and Fu Ge will be grateful to others. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Qi Han tilted his head back in his chair, “That’s not how it is counted.”

“Then how else is it counted? Brother Han, you’re a businessman! You’ve been a businessman all your life, but now you’re just doing things that won’t bring you any gratitude. Unsung heroes aren’t popular anymore. I really don’t know what you’re thinking!”

“What else can I think,” the Alpha said helplessly, “I just want him to sleep peacefully at night… without waking up in agony, holding his belly in the middle of the night, shivering in pain… hallucinating and finally being able talk, only to find out after a while that it’s not real… Then he’ll hide under the covers and cry secretly, so…”

With a lump in his throat, he gestured stiffly, “…so helpless, so pitiful, like a kitten or a puppy abandoned for many years, unable to cry much louder.”

“He was obviously not like this before…”

Chen Xing let out a long sigh and rubbed his face hard, “Okay, I see. You don’t need to go to the library to find one.”

“3S level Alpha, bellflower pheromones, I happen to know of one. It’s a yellow bellflower, though.”

Qi Han’s eyes snapped open, “Who?”

“My son-of-a-bitch asshole ex-boyfriend.”

“……”

“Is that too vulgar to say so?” Chen Xing sincerely wondered.

“As long as you don’t use credentials like that when you introduce us to each other.”

“I really can’t bear it.”

In the suite on the top floor of Chang’an Club, a high-end private club in the city centre, Qi Han and Qi Chuan were sitting opposite each other, one with his arm raised to drink tea, the other playing with the clasp of his wristwatch. Both were high-level Alphas, with the pheromones of the same bellflower. Their oppressive auras were almost equal, except that Qi Chuan’s face was not as fierce as Qi Han’s. (They are different “Qi”; Qi Han is 戚 (qī) meaning “grief, sorrow” and Qi Chuan is 祁 (qí) for “large, vast”)

“President Qi is asking me to accompany him in playing a scene?” Lowering his eyes, Qi Chuan said indifferently.

“There may also be many scenes.”

“You should have heard that I have never made an unprofitable deal. Simple gratitude from President Qi, I’m afraid, won’t be enough to pay for the time I have to spend on this.”

Qi Han pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses, his tense jaw sharp like a knife: “The inhibitor sale rights are up for re-bidding, and the Qi family is involved.”

“Yes.”

“It’s yours.”

Satisfied, Qi Chuan rose and stretched out his hand, “Deal.”

“Ah, but I have an additional request,” he added.

Qi Han frowned, “President Qi, don’t go too far.”

In his opinion, the reward he had prepared was generous enough and the Qi family was indeed capable of taking on this task.

“You have misunderstood.” Qi Chuan pursed his lips, “I just want to see that troublesome kid.”

The hostile aura was instantly curbed, and Qi Han smiled, “Nothing can be easier.”

Outside the door Chen Xing secretly said: this son of a bitch has sold me out so quickly. He pulled up his clothes and ran, and heard Qi Han say loudly, “Stop him.”

The bodyguard who had smoked three of his Liqun cigarettes (very expensive cigarettes) before was blocking the corridor like a mountain, without a trace of guilt in his eyes under his sunglasses. Chen Xing was so angry that his teeth itched: “Give me back what you smoked!”

The bodyguard curved his mouth and said, “Can only come from the rear end. Do you want a fart?”

Chen Xing: “……”

He was caught like a defiant little panther. Since he wasn’t going to meet anyone at all, he wasn’t even properly dressed.

The wide-leg jeans were accompanied by a punk-style sleeveless vest, and a dusty blue wolf tail was tied to a random braid on his head. A few free strands of hair hung down, casually covering a flower tattoo on the back of his neck.

Huddling in front of two well-dressed big bosses, he was like a problem child who was caught after spending all night in an Internet cafe.

“Can’t get your clothes on properly?” Qi Chuan sized him up from head to toe.

“Ha, President Qi is very generous, my boss hasn’t even said a word yet. What’s your problem?” Chen Xing rolled his eyes.

Qi Chuan was not annoyed. Instead, he seemed to be in a good mood despite being disliked, and pointed with his chin at the teapot, “Pour the tea.”

“Me? I’ll fucking pour it for you?” Chen Xing pointed at himself with a glare and nodded vigorously at that cheeky face, “Okay, okay, I’ll pour it for you!”

He stood up with the teapot in his hands, a thin layer of muscles straining on his exposed arms, and when he poured the tea he deliberately raised the teapot so high that the water splashed all over Qi Chuan.

But the man didn’t even duck, looking at him as if he was a bear child (a brat), so Chen Xing found it pointless.

“Fuck!” He sat down and slammed the teapot down on the table, “You’re a real show-off.”

Qi Chuan took one look at the teapot and raised his eyebrows, “You’re pointing the spout at me? Have you forgotten all the rules you were taught?”

After pouring tea or drinks at the table, it was not allowed to point the spout at the elders. This was a rule that Qi Chuan had taught him countless times.

Chen Xing stared at him angrily: “My rule is to be polite only to the elders, you are not a fucking elder!”

Qi Chuan crossed his long legs and leaned back, “To be honest, you still have to call me Uncle.”

Chen Xing’s eyes immediately turned red, “How dare you say that? Uncle? I’ll just call you Dad! Don’t you dare say that to me!”

Qi Chuan’s face didn’t change, “Okay.”

“You—”

“President Qi,” Qi Chuan turned and raised the cup of tea to Qi Han: “This kid is used to being rude and disrespectful, so it’s hard for you to bring him up for so many years. There’s no need to give selling rights to the Qi family, we’ll take them ourselves, and I’ll do what I promised you.”

Qi Han didn’t seem surprised. He didn’t even sign the paperwork. He smiled and drank the cup of tea, “President Qi is benevolent and righteous. I’ll remember your kindness.”

Only Chen Xing was still clueless, “You don’t want the selling rights? Why?”

Qi Chuan got up to leave and rubbed the top of his head with his warm palm, “Because I drank your tea.”