CH 24

It was the most painful rut period Qi Han had spent in the past ten years.

There was no one.

The failed expectations of the birthday cake were the root cause of his sudden rut, and Fu Ge’s gentleness and teasing brought his heat and throbbing to the peak.

And the words “all this has been ruined by you” were like an ice knife stuck in boiling molten iron, spinning and slashing into his flesh, splitting and shattering him and his heart into pieces.

“Ugh… ahh…”

He groaned and fell to his knees, his spasming fingers clawing deep into his hair, his whole face purple from suffocation, streams of uncontrollable tears welling up in his inflamed eyes.

He was so uncomfortable that he was going crazy.

His sanity and physical strength were exhausted together; despair and pain joined forces to tear him apart, and Qi Han almost instinctively begged his mate.

“Xiao Ge… Xiao Ge….”

His voice was hoarse as he moved on his hands and knees to Fu Ge, clutching the corner of his little Beta’s shirt, stubborn and aggrieved, “Gege… don’t go, don’t go…”

Pop! With a crisp sound, Fu Ge slapped his hand away, squatted down and took out a handkerchief.

But it was not to help him wipe away the tears in the corners of his eyes, but to lightly and gently wipe the hem of his own clothes that were touched.

Qi Han was stunned. His fingers trembled and shrunk back. He sniffed and sobbed, saying in a dumb voice, “I’m not dirty…”

Fu Ge threw the handkerchief on the floor, “Don’t come and disgust me.”

The Alpha was so exhausted that he collapsed on the floor, his half-opened eyes watching the young Beta’s determined departure.

It was the same gesture he had used to sneer and leave after torturing Fu Ge nearly to death every time during the fourteen days he had held him captive.

He wondered if Fu Ge had been like that, dragging his torn body across the dirty bed, desperately keeping his eyes open and begging his lover to look back at him. But Qi Han hadn’t even given him alms of a single glance back.

Not only that; Fu Ge couldn’t move, couldn’t have a sip of water, couldn’t put on clothes to cover his humiliated body, and couldn’t even ask for help.

For he had long ago been tortured to the point of losing his voice in despair and pain that repeated over and over again.

Qi Han closed his eyes with a bitter smile and grasped the only remaining scraps of the sketch book in his hands as he thought to himself amidst the ashes floating in the air—

He had broken the glass with his own hands, so who was to blame for the sharp shards that had pierced him?

That night almost cost Qi Han his life.

When Chen Xing brought his men to find him, he was already lying unconscious in a bathtub full of cold water.

His right hand was hanging over the edge of the bathtub, looking like he had smashed it against an iron hook for the wall lamp in a frenzy. The flesh on the back of his hand was outturned, while his spasming left hand was clutching the charred fragments of the sketch book.

It took more than three hours to get him out of danger, and the day after he woke up, Qi Han was once again lying in the restraint bed in the pheromone extraction room.

Chen Xing couldn’t wait to knock him out with a punch at that moment.

“There is no need to tie him up, you see how he is, he doesn’t even have the strength to resist Lin Daiyu (female character of The Dream of Red Mansions, a frail girl). There is no need to control the dosage either, go ahead, pump him as hard as you can, just pump him to death and dry him out!”

Qi Han tsk’ed, annoyed by the noise he made, “Go out and find your 303, don’t make a scene here.”

“You don’t even fucking like me anymore? Without me you’d be dead! You’d be rotting in that bathtub! That little Beta was so cruel to just leave you there and not call anyone, if I had been a few fucking minutes late, you would have—”

“Chen Xing!” Qi Han’s brow furrowed, “Shut up, okay?”

“…okay, just great!”

He gave Qi Han a look and turned his head away, “I’m going to go tell him now whose pheromones he uses, I’ll see if he’ll still be that comfortable with—ah!”

A low growl exploded in his ears, and Chen Xing fell to the ground, unable to move, suppressed by the pheromones of the 3S level Alpha.

“Damn you, get off me!” He tried to get up but couldn’t break free even though he was sweating profusely. He laughed angrily: “Damn, man, you’re really fucking awesome, you’re still holding me down even though you’re this weak…. Genetic suppression is really nothing to sneeze at…”

Qi Han retracted his pheromones and exhaled with difficulty, “Don’t make trouble for me if you know I’m weak, go out and play.”

Chen Xing stood up and called him without giving up, “Brother Han!”

Qi Han closed his eyes, “Go!”

It was only his twentieth tube of pheromones and Qi Han’s glands were already drained. The doctors were worried about whether he could last until Fu Ge recovered.

Perhaps because there was not much pheromone left, or perhaps because he had already gone numb from pain, Qi Han didn’t react too much this time. Apart from the initial spasms and trembling, he didn’t scream or howl. Later, the doctors realised he was simply too exhausted.

After the procedure was over, he lay on the bed for a long time before slowly getting up. He watched blankly as the young nurse poured the pale pink pheromones into a test tube and put an easy-to-see label on it.

The label read – “Donor No. 046, Qi Chuan.”

He didn’t even get a chance to give his heart’s blood in his own name, and could only hide in the corner and listen to Fu Ge thanking another over and over again.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought of telling Fu Ge the truth, and he had even almost blurted it out that night during his rut, but Fu Ge was too strong. Once he knew that the pheromones flowing into his blood these days were all Qi Han’s, there was a good chance that the young Beta would never receive any treatment again.

He would choose to give up on his life at any moment, because there was nothing left to hold on to.

After Qi Han returned the small house and some of his assets to him, Fu Ge first paid all of his medical bills, then prepared to transfer the real estate to Qi Chuan and allocated another hundred thousand yuan or so to the little duck (male prostitute, hehe, we haven’t forgotten the little Omega with cat ears!) who had helped him in the bar.

Most of the remaining money was donated to the Academy of Fine Arts, which he wanted to apply for in high school. He didn’t have the chance to study there, so he did what he could to make one last contribution to it.

Other than that, Fu Ge made no plans for his future.

After suffering so much when he was poor, he could be happy for half a day with a portion of French fries; but now that he had money, he had no desire to enjoy it.

His only pastime was to sit by the window after three o’clock in the afternoon and look at the garden below, where a little boy would appear on the lawn, slowly carrying his easel to paint.

He didn’t know what the boy’s illness was that required a long stay at the hospital, but it was probably not too serious and his parents and brother were always by his side.

With his father holding the easel, his mother holding the paint tray and his brother making funny faces, the boy had the most unassuming happiness that Fu Ge could only dream of, yet the young Beta couldn’t even envy it now.

It was too much of a luxury for him.

He had no family, no lover, no healthy body, and his ability to hold a brush was forever lost.

He could only sit quietly by the window and watch, for two or three hours at a time. He would be happy for the little boy when he made progress, and found it cute when he doodled playfully and haphazardly.

Once Qi Han witnessed him being amused by the little boy’s mistakes, unable to resist correcting him: “You’re drawing wrong, baby, you have to draw that line first…”

But as soon as his right hand was raised, his voice stopped abruptly. The expression on Fu Ge’s face froze, and he was silent for several seconds before putting his hand down and hiding it in his sleeve.

As if he was hiding something unseemly.

After that day he asked the young nurse he knew well to buy a very expensive painting kit and quietly give it to the little boy.

One reason was to thank him for his “company” for so many days, and the other was to encourage the boy to persevere longer.

Whether it was a hobby or a pastime, painting was a joyful thing to do. His joy was gone, but he wanted the joy of others to continue.

Despite repeated instructions to the young nurse not to divulge that the painting kit was a gift from him, the little boy still found out about him.

On the day he received his gift the child was wrapped in a black and white dotted fleece coat over his hospital gown and had a hood over his head. His whole body sitting on a chair was like a plump black sesame dumpling.

The little dumpling was drawing something on a piece of paper using the painting kit Fu Ge had given him, and then he suddenly turned towards Fu Ge’s window and shouted, “Gege!”

Fu Ge was startled and stood up in a panic, using the curtain to hide himself. The little boy yelled several times in his tender voice: “Gege, gege, gege! Thank you for the gift, gege! Gege, look at me, I can’t reach it yet…”

Fu Ge couldn’t resist poking his head out of the curtain and shouted as loudly as him, “You’re welcome, do you want something?”

The little boy tore off the drawing he had made, folded it into a paper plane and ran up to throw it to the second floor, “I have a present for gege too! I hope you like it!”

Before he could finish his sentence, he fell on the lawn, the little dumpling’s ass almost exposed.

Fu Ge couldn’t hold back his laughter. He watched the boy get up with an effort. The boy was red-faced and embarrassed, but after seeing Fu Ge’s smile, he was instantly fully charged, holding the paper plane and running forward again. The baby fat on his face shook when he was running.

After finally delivering the paper plane to Fu Ge, the little boy looked up at him expectantly, and his two chubby hands motioned: “Gege, open it!”

Fu Ge listened to him and unfolded the paper plane, finding a big fat red heart drawn on the paper.

The young Beta curled his lips in a gentle smile and asked the boy, “Do you want to give it to me?”

The little boy nodded shyly and stood on his tiptoes to make himself look “taller”, his face flushed, “I give my heart to gege, it’s a big one, when I grow up I want to marry gege!”

Fu Ge was endlessly amused, but he carefully folded the piece of paper and teased the boy, “Then you have to work hard on your painting, I want to marry a young artist.”

The boy nodded vigorously and was about to make a promise when his family called him, “What are you looking at, Xiao Bao?”

The boy replied seriously, “I’m looking at my wife!”

As he said this, he drew a heart with his chubby hands on his chest, held it with both hands, tiptoed and pushed the heart to Fu Ge, “Wife, I’m leaving! It’s time for me to drink milk.”

Holding his hat, he ran away, then came back a second later, sheepishly picking up the easel he had forgotten.

It was the happiest day since Fu Ge had been hospitalised.

Qi Han stood outside the door, watching him rub the piece of paper pressed against his chest as if he had been given some valuable gift, then carefully pressing it down with a heavy object, trying to flatten the creases of the paper plane.

The child’s brushwork was still unskilled, and there was a small blank place in the colouring of the chubby heart. Qi Han could notice the blank from so far away, and Fu Ge could naturally see it.

He saw Fu Ge staring at the place in silence for a long time, and then he suddenly got up and took a brush from the painting kit that was gathering dust for a long time. Qi Han’s heart hung in his throat; he held his breath and looked at Fu Ge without blinking.

The young Beta took a few deep breaths before holding the brush and lowering it to the drawing paper. As the distance between the brush and paper continued to shrink, his hand trembled more and more severely, and a layer of sweat appeared on his forehead, dripping down in trickles.

Qi Han’s eyes were red; he was so nervous that his breathing stopped as he cheered on Fu Ge in his heart: It’s okay, baby, try again… try harder…

Fu Ge closed his eyes, his entire body began to shake, as the horrific mental shadows cut through his brain. He pursed his lips and let out a sharp choked sob, suddenly reaching out his left hand and pressing it desperately against his right wrist!

The next moment, however, the brush was flung away with such force that it rolled on the floor, splashing the paint onto the chubby heart.

The little boy’s gift was ruined by him.

Qi Han froze, hanging his head helplessly as he moved away from the glass and slid slowly against the wall.

Five minutes later, the sound of five or six slaps came from the ward, mixed with the sobs that Fu Ge could no longer suppress.

It cooked Qi Han’s heart in a frying pan.

That night the young Beta refused dinner, and the nighttime infusion was moved to the morning. He locked himself in his room and cut his arm with a utility knife again and again.

Qi Han watched through the one-way glass, not daring to call him, let alone go in, fearing that if he made even the slightest noise Fu Ge would simply cut open his artery and never give him any chance to atone for his sins.

It was not until the second half of the night that Fu Ge stopped and crawled into bed to sleep.

Qi Han immediately brought the doctor in to bandage him. Fu Ge’s arm was already cut to a bloody pulp, with small deep cuts every couple centimetres.

Qi Han held him like a piece of fragile glass, slowly releasing pheromones to comfort him. After the doctor had gone out and Fu Ge was deeply asleep, Qi Han found the piece of paper with the chubby heart under his pillow.

On the back of the drawing, there were a few lines of small, messy and crooked words—

“It’s late autumn, but I can’t feel the change in temperature for a long time, and the colours I can see are gradually fading.”

“Recently I keep dreaming of my father, but I can’t see his face; the last time I saw him was when I was six years old. You left and never came back.”

“I don’t have your picture. After the disaster they trashed my room. I wanted to draw your portrait from memory but I can’t pick up a brush anyway. I’m sorry, Dad.”

“I haven’t done many things I promised you…”

“Grow up well, paint well, be happy and healthy, be safe and full of joy. I’ve tried, tried for many years… but it’s just too hard for me…”

“They say that the relatives who have passed away will wait for the family to be reunited before they will go on the road. I have become like this, will you and Mom still wait for me?”

“If you are still there, come and save me…”

“Dad, I really can’t hold on anymore. I just want to be Fu Ge again and go clean, and have nothing to do with anyone…”