HOYSE CHAPTER 40

CH.40 — Who Cares, Hmph.

[As a seasoned creep, he is a very confident man. He probably did not realize he had already been exposed. The enemy is in the clear. We are in the dark. Good. This might just work.]

Gu Xi’s eyes curved. He heard it.

He had always thought this mind-reading thing was as useless as a chicken rib: too random, too noisy, and completely uncontrollable. Turned out even a chicken rib could have its moments and lift his mood.

Up ahead, Wu Hanqi called to Rong Jing. Rong Jing almost instantly hooked an arm around Gu Xi’s neck and, before Gu Xi could react, pushed him back into the car. At Gu Xi’s ear came a low warning: “Don’t get out yet.”

Given how deranged that man was about Gu Xi, if he caught wind that Gu Xi was here today, who knew what accidents might happen.

Gu Xi knew better than to add to the chaos. As Rong Jing stepped away, Gu Xi grabbed his arm hard. “Be careful.”

“Relax.” As long as no interests clashed, there was almost no real danger.

Gu Xi tracked Rong Jing with his eyes. Just thinking of that rose-red fountain pen made his skin pebble. If he was guessing right, it was the one he had thrown away. Even the tiny nicks on the barrel were the same.

He shut his eyes, cold and full of hate, pressing down the restless presence in his head. When he was lucid, he would never let that thing out.

Rong Jing had already guessed the young man’s name: Ji Jiongjie, one of the five scumbag attackers.
Wu Hanqi had picked that name. It meant something like light and steel. People like Wu Hanqi loved names that screamed “I am cultured.”

He was the legitimate eldest grandson of the Ji family, nominally the leader among his generation.
On paper, he sat about where Xie Ling did.

In reality he could not be mentioned in the same breath. Xie Ling had taken full control of the Xie conglomerate while Ji Jiongjie only ran the Ji family’s entertainment company. The Ji clan was a mess anyway, with several “aunties” and a succession battle in full boil. Even as eldest grandson, his climb would never be as smooth as Xie Ling’s.

He was cousins with Xie Jisheng. That was why, when Xie Jisheng could not lean on the Xie or Ji families at the station, he went to Wu Hanqi. Distantly related, a favor could still be called.

Ji Jiongjie had a flamboyant face and a flirtatious temperament. When he liked a beauty, he preferred to give courtesy before soldiers.

His gaze brightened a notch when he saw Rong Jing. That face and bearing were the kind that made people like you on sight. But being an Alpha himself, he sensed more directly that Rong Jing was not someone to provoke. Even through inhibitor, the man’s pheromones felt anything but mild.

“Hello, I’m Ji Jiongjie. I have heard from Xie Jisheng that he has a younger brother. Seeing is believing. Young and promising.” He offered his hand.

“Rong Jing.” Compared with Ji’s breezy warmth, Rong Jing was cool and terse. He did not lift his hand. “Sorry. I don’t shake hands with Alphas shorter and uglier than me.”

Ji Jiongjie: “…”

Where was he short at one eighty-three? And he was a widely acknowledged heartthrob among Chinese, thank you very much.

Alphas usually held some hostility toward their own gender, but most, seeing his status, would fawn. Where had this prickly little brat crawled out from?

Still, Ji actually preferred people who wore their temper on their sleeve. Safer than the deep-scheming kind.

Wu Hanqi laughed. “Xiao Jing is younger than you. He has a quick temper. You are the elder, don’t take him to heart.”

Ji Jiongjie’s shadowed gaze flipped to a smile. “Of course, Uncle.”

Nothing triggered at the airport. Rong Jing only wanted to get Gu Xi out of the danger zone. “Uncle Qi, next time I am in Shangjing, dinner is on me. I’m taking my friend home first.”

Wu Hanqi flicked Rong Jing’s forehead like it was routine. “So impatient to leave your uncle?”

Rong Jing scowled, properly impertinent. “I’m grown. Can you stop being so childish?”

Wu Hanqi did not get angry. He rather liked juniors who talked back. He had seen too many who cowered around him.

Watching them, Ji Jiongjie understood. His uncle liked this spiky, rebellious Rong Jing even more than the juniors of their own clan. He had never seen his uncle so indulgent with a younger generation. You could not fake that.

After Rong Jing left, Ji Jiongjie and Wu Hanqi went to the VIP lounge. Ji brought over refreshments and, dropping the earlier nonchalance, gritted out, “Uncle, I did not manage to pursue him.”

Wu Hanqi sipped the Tieguanyin the lounge staff had just poured and glanced at his deflated nephew. “He was in the car just now.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me?” He had faintly sensed someone in the other vehicle, but since Rong Jing had not introduced, he had not pried.

He would never have thought it was Gu Xi. Gu Xi had rejected him countless times. Whatever he tried, the man was a steel wall.

Ji had poured money, favors, and time like water. It was as if Gu Xi were asexual. Nothing worked.

“I really do like him. That one-of-a-kind pheromone… everything about him hits me just right. There will never be another. If I do not have him once, I will die unavenged.” In this world there were people you could never win over by spoiling them.

“He is not a dodder vine. The tricks you used on others are useless on him. If you want to tame him, you tame him like an eagle. You need patience. Break his spine inch by inch, break his pride, strip away what he relies on. Then he will slowly submit.” Wu Hanqi had no interest in his nephew’s romance. “Do what you want. Do not affect the business.”

“Rest assured, I…” Ji swallowed what he had been about to say and switched tracks. “I will collect his scent.” Gu Xi, my patience is almost gone.

He knew his uncle only cared about Gu Xi’s pheromones.

His uncle was as cool as a precision machine, a bystander at a play who rarely stepped on stage.

Gu Xi’s pheromone could drive all Alphas mad. Wu Hanqi wanted to extract that fragrance.

And once extracted, the uses were many.

A scent that makes people lose their minds was too interesting, was it not? Watch all the Alphas go crazy, disgracing themselves.

The trouble was the tech was highly restricted, and no one had ever harvested pheromones from a living host.

Among the Ji family’s Alphas, Ji Jiongjie was not outstanding. What he did have was this tie to the Wu family.

If he won Gu Xi, he would not only enjoy the beauty he had coveted for years, but he would also win his uncle’s special favor. The meaning of that was enormous.

Who could guess Gu Xi would be immune to both carrot and stick.

Most Omegas cared about power and money. Without those, looks would do.

Omegas were rare and had the right to be choosy, and he had all three.

He had not only thrown money at Gu Xi, he had tried to learn his tastes, to please him from the details up.

Yet Gu Xi would not spare him a glance.

His sincerity was ground into the dirt again and again.

He both loved and hated Gu Xi.

Maybe the hate went a little deeper. Gu Xi was stepping on his pride.

At that, Wu Hanqi opened the current hot search and slid the phone over. “His heat has ended. Keep an eye on the news. Do not wallow in bedrooms.”

Ji had indeed just crawled out of a lover’s nest and had not checked any trends.

He watched the clip and skimmed the hundreds of thousands of comments. Most condemned Gu Xi’s company for committing a crime by exploiting an Omega in heat.

Gu Xi carried a stormy fate. The slightest stir put him on the hot list, and this was no small stir.

“What is he thinking? A video like this is disastrous for his reputation.” Omegas were already at a disadvantage in entertainment. The public judged them harsher, and most Omegas cared about their name. A clip that looked like an almost assault was more harm than help.

“He kicked the pot from the bottom. An Omega who fears nothing is sharper than you think. There is fallout, but if handled well, many Omegas will be encouraged. His counterstrike was clean.”

Post a vague Weibo first and wait for the reversal.

Let public opinion ferment to a peak while he quietly recuperated.

When the tide finally turned and the crowd scolded him for skipping work and playing diva, drop the on-set footage to prove his condition. If any partner he had been forced to cancel with spoke up for him at that moment, both reputation and popularity would swing to Gu Xi, along with public sympathy and support, and his abusive company would be dealt with along the way.

He looked like a naïve little lamb. In truth he had counted every step.

Strangest of all, for years Gu Xi had never fought back, only swallowed it all.

Now it was as if his nature had been forced out, or perhaps he had finally woken up. This Gu Xi, compared with his former passive self, blazed a thousand times brighter. This was the bearing a top Omega should have.

If Rong Jing had not snagged his interest first, Wu Hanqi did not deny he would be watching Gu Xi very closely.

Even without that soul-catching pheromone, an Omega who carried secrets everywhere he went was too singular.

Wu Hanqi switched topics. “In ancient times, when a top-tier Omega fell in love, heat came weekly. The Alpha who first marked him had to keep nourishing him, or he would not live.”

“He is top-tier?” Ji Jiongjie’s eyes lit. His heart slammed. Who did not want to conquer the best and be that one man?

Wu Hanqi only smiled.

Ji quickly sobered. “He will not fall in love. In his eyes all Alphas are trash.”

Wu Hanqi remembered the scene when they left and smiled again. “Not necessarily.”

When they parted, Ji mentioned he had arranged several beauties on the private jet for his uncle’s enjoyment.

Wu Hanqi clapped his shoulder. “Not everyone gets near me. Send them all home.”

Watching his uncle’s back recede, Ji Jiongjie’s eyes darkened. What on earth could move this man? Was he really interested in nothing?

Rong Jing asked the Wu family driver to drop him downtown. From there he had Zhou You bring the repaired car. He and Gu Xi returned together to the Yushui Bay villa.

They barely spoke on the way, each deep in plans.

Rong Jing was thinking: in the original, Ji Jiongjie had to have Gu Xi. As things went on, his methods got more twisted. He would drug Gu Xi and drag him to his underground room.

He had a perversion. In that basement was an enormous golden cage. He liked putting beauties inside.

He locked Gu Xi in it, dosed him so he could not control himself, and set up a full suite of cameras.

That footage was what finally pushed an already exhausted Gu Xi over the edge.

Scum like that has to pay.

Tsk. But when?

The novel never gave dates. What could he do?

He needed a way to sense danger even if Gu Xi lost his phone.

Tracing that phone’s origin, Rong Jing got in touch with a hacker genius who was technically on the Xie payroll and chronically absent. He had already introduced the guy to Fun. A young, energetic, creative company like Fun fit a talent like that.

Why let the Wu group profit for nothing? He would not hand them even a crumb.

He remembered the hacker had mentioned that Pison Tech had just launched a watch for couples or spouses to talk in real time.

It did voice and video, even location.

The price was steep, and the surveillance vibe made most Omegas hate it.

Only Alphas with serious trust issues, or those who had done a permanent mark and were eaten up by possessiveness, would ask their Omega to wear something that felt like a shackle.

Rong Jing glanced at Gu Xi. After the storm, light slipped through the clouds.

It lay over his porcelain-fine face, catching the faint down on his skin. Gu Xi’s eyes, when not smiling, looked cool, a little distant, almost judging. That alone could drive off most Alphas who approached with bad intent.

Gu Xi blinked and turned to him. “?” What?

Rong Jing’s heart moved. He looked away. Faced with eyes that clear, he could not get the words out.

How should he say it?

Say I am worried you might be in danger sometime soon and I want you to wear this so I can find you at once?

Gu Xi would think he was crazy. 

And how would he know such a thing? It made no sense.

Gu Xi did not hear any of those thoughts. Anything that counted as a spoiler never came through his ability.

He had his own new headache.

Several texts had arrived, and then a call. The caller asked if he was free tomorrow afternoon to meet the Alphas matched to him.

Gu Xi remembered something he had almost forgotten: he had applied for pheromone matching.

The center sent a list of registered Alphas with match above 80 percent.

The rarer your pheromones, the more Alphas matched and the wider your choices.

An average Omega might match two to four. Seven or eight meant high-grade pheromones.

He had ninety-one. He would be speed-dating until the year of the monkey.

This was not helping him find a partner. This was picking a fight.

He did not know his number had broken the center’s record and stirred the higher-ups.

What Omega was this, with genes this good? He could pick a whole bouquet.

Gu Xi thought, then replied that he would not see anyone under 90 percent. That still left eighteen.

Eighteen was eighteen. Better than all of them.

He agreed to meet, and they set it for tomorrow after ten.

What surprised him was that the staff added, in a lowered voice, that one Alpha with a very high match had refused to meet and refused to share any information.

Given the population ratio, most Alphas never found their Omega. They usually settled for a Beta. Yes, settled. The internet joke went, with Omega it is true love, with Beta it is making do.

It did show how sought-after Omegas were.

Some Alphas chose to stay single rather than lower the bar. That persistent choice was now hurting the birth rate, which had become a national headache. So the matching centers encouraged AO matches to meet. It was like the state setting you up on a date.

An Alpha usually would not refuse such a meeting. Finding an Omega whose pheromones sang with yours beat free-range romance by a mile.

“Do you need us to contact this gentleman and ask him to reconsider?” The staffer had never seen such a clean refusal. With a match rate of 99.99999 percent, the so-called heaven-made match, skipping it would be a pity.

Gu Xi watched the scenery roll backward outside the window and said coolly, “No need.”

All he wanted was someone to help him through the pain.

Once heat stopped hurting so much, he would go to the hospital and erase every mark the man left.

If he did not want to, then forget it.

Begging after a refusal? Did he not want his dignity?

Who cares. Hmph.

He hung up and thought of Rong Jing, then thought of finding a tool to mark him.

His chest felt like a boulder sat on it. He could not breathe.

What was the point of being upset? Most Omegas lived this way. He was already years late.

A temporary mark was still a mark. Even if you could erase it, which Omega did not care about their first time?

Why did Omegas have to go into heat? Being a Beta seemed great. Not being ruled by biology.

His mood sank, but he didn’t want Rong Jing to notice. He kept his voice neutral.

“Can you come with me to the pheromone matching center tomorrow afternoon?”

Rong Jing didn’t pry. They were friends now, but friendship didn’t mean digging into someone’s private life. He agreed right away. He was still turning over how to tell Gu Xi that trouble might be on the horizon. Just thinking about it gave him a headache.

Silence settled between them.

Rong Jing suddenly remembered that Gu Xi would be attending a film festival soon. Lota had made it into an international competition category. Once Gu Xi came back, they would start work on the production together.

“What time is your flight tomorrow?”
“Seven forty in the evening.”
“I’ll take you.”

“Will it mess up your schedule?” Gu Xi knew Rong Jing was busy. Zhou You came by now and then for instructions.

“I will make it work.” He would not rest easy if he did not send him.

After a while, Zhou You turned a corner and Rong Jing’s knee brushed Gu Xi’s.

Rong Jing did not notice, but Gu Xi felt a little hot.

After getting away from the pervert, being alone with Rong Jing again made him awkward.

He turned off airplane mode. A flood of calls and messages poured in. Earlier when his phone had been on, he had replied to many, and he had told Guan Hongyi what was going on, so the man only wanted to know where he was staying.

Guan Hongyi: Where are you now, a hotel?
Gu Xi: No. I’m safe.
Guan Hongyi: Safe my a**. Hotels have people in and out. Don’t be a lone wolf every time. I can’t get off set. No one is at my place. Go stay there. You know the address. Spare key is on top of the tank.

Gu Xi glanced at Rong Jing outside the side window.

If Hongyi knew he was staying at an Alpha’s place and that only a wall separated their rooms, would he think he had lost his mind?

This was probably the wildest thing he had done in his life.

Gu Xi: Leave that aside. Hong, I don’t want to go to the matching center.
Guan Hongyi: You actually filed the application? I thought you were joking.

If he had not truly hit a wall, Hongyi did not believe Gu Xi would have applied. He admired Gu Xi for holding out so many years, and even more, he ached for him.

Gu Xi: I feel sick. I’m afraid I will throw up when someone marks me. He did not add that he feared the thing inside him would kill any Alpha who tried.

Guan Hongyi: “Stop beating yourself up. Be a little kinder to yourself. The first time always matters. How about this, find an Alpha you don’t completely hate and let him mark you once. Get used to it, then have it erased. It will hurt, but it will mess with your head a lot less.”

The words hit like a bell.

Gu Xi stared at the text, not daring to glance at the man beside him.

After daze came a sharp, crawling anxiety. His whole body was strung tight.

Guan Hongyi immediately undercut his own idea. There was no Alpha on earth Gu Xi did not hate.
Outside of acting, Gu Xi’s visceral disgust for any Alpha approaching him was practically a medical condition.

Guan Hongyi: Forget I said it.
Guan Hongyi: Xi? You there?

Gu Xi did not answer for a long time.

When Hongyi finally called, Gu Xi picked up.

He was a little muddled and felt like a kid caught doing something bad.

He touched the spot under his inhibitor patch. He had guarded it for twenty-something years. How could he hand it to a stranger?

Just once, he would be selfish.

There was someone he wanted to give it to. Only him.

Gu Xi opened the group chat the director had created for Sovereignty. They were discussing whether to have a kickoff dinner.

Everyone knew Gu Xi had just suffered something nasty and had been forced to cancel jobs. His health probably was not back. No one thought he could come.

He saw Rong Jing active in the chat, saying that if they decided to have it, he would go. As a newcomer, he could not turn down such a chance. Building relationships with the team was exactly his style.

Someone suggested that if Gu Xi could not come, they should skip it.

It felt wrong to celebrate when their lead had just gone through that.

Many agreed.

Gu Xi’s fingertips were cold. He typed: Have it. I’ll be there.

I never scheme. And when I do, it is only so you will see me.

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