Silas Shen had overestimated the power of his own intellect, and he had fatally underestimated the territorial brutality of a high-level Alpha's mark.
The high-potency chemical cleansing wash he had used the night before had successfully stripped the surface scent of sun-kissed oranges from his skin. But the chemical had acted like a rusted serrated blade, repeatedly sawing through his already hyper-sensitized nerves. It hadn't removed the mark; it had only enraged the biology beneath it.
Wednesday Afternoon. The Grand Lecture Hall of the School of Life Sciences.
Silas stood behind the podium, his long, slender fingers gripping the laser pointer so tightly that the blue veins on the back of his hand pulsed with visible strain. His face was a mask of translucent marble, deathly pale and slick with a fine, persistent sheen of cold sweat. Every breath he took felt like inhaling jagged shards of glass that had been heated in a furnace.
"Regarding… the… polymorphic analysis… of gene sequences…"
His voice, usually a steady, melodic baritone, suddenly fractured and died in his throat.
Below him, the sea of over two hundred students shifted, their expressions clouding with confusion and concern. But in the dead center of the very first row, Hunter Huo sat with a relaxed, arrogant posture. He had one leg crossed over the other, his expensive sneakers bobbing rhythmically. He was twirling a black executive pen between his fingers, his gaze cold, focused, and predatory as it locked onto the high collar of Silas's charcoal turtleneck.
Hunter wasn't listening to the lecture. He was staring at the "wound"—the patch of skin Silas had attempted to "lynch" with chemical agents. He was staring at his own stolen territory.
Hunter didn't say a word. He didn't offer the playful, "puppy-like" smiles of the previous weeks. He simply sat there, radiating a thick, suffocating aura of dry, bitter orange. The scent acted like a barbed hook, dragging through Silas's labored breathing and sinking deep into his parched, inflamed scent gland.
A violent wave of vertigo crashed over Silas. The PowerPoint slides on the massive screen behind him began to blur and overlap into a sickening kaleidoscope of data.
"Professor Shen, you don't look well." Hunter's voice cut through the silence of the lecture hall, sounding jarringly professional yet laced with a subzero chill. "Do you need me to escort you to the faculty lounge for a rest?"
Silas's nails dug into the wooden edge of the podium, the screeching sound lost to the beating of his own heart. He forced his head up, his gaze colliding with Hunter's amber eyes.
Hunter was waiting.
Silas realized it then: this sadistic Alpha was waiting for him to collapse in front of the entire student body. He was waiting for Silas to drown in his own biology, to reach out like a beggar for the only hand that could save him.
"That… won't be necessary." Silas bit down on the tip of his tongue, using the sharp metallic tang of blood to claw back a shred of consciousness. "Classmate Huo, sit down. We are continuing the lecture."
The remaining forty minutes became the longest interrogation of Silas's life.
He could feel the site of the mark on his nape undergoing a violent inflammatory response. It was his own body's protest against the Master's rejection. Heatwaves surged through his brain in rhythmic pulses. His inner shirt was completely drenched, clinging to his back with a freezing dampness, yet his core felt like it was melting into slag.
Finally, the bell rang.
The students filed out in a noisy blur. Silas leaned heavily against the podium, lacking even the strength to retract his USB drive. He hung his head, allowing the sweat to drip from the tip of his nose onto his lecture notes, blurring the ink into illegible smears.
Suddenly, a pair of familiar black high-top sneakers entered his line of sight.
"You washed yourself quite thoroughly, didn't you, Professor?"
Hunter's mocking voice dropped from above like a guillotine. Before Silas could react, a large hand clamped around his wrist, violently yanking him from behind the safety of the podium.
"Let… let go…" Silas stumbled, his knees buckling as he crashed into Hunter's rock-hard chest. The familiar, scorching temperature of the Alpha instantly invaded his senses. Like a man dying of thirst in a wasteland, Silas found himself instinctively leaning into the heat, even though he knew the "water" was pure poison.
"Does it hurt?" Hunter didn't release him. Instead, he tightened his grip around Silas's waist, while his other hand traveled upward with agonizing slowness, his fingers inching toward the back of Silas's neck.
Silas began to tremble violently. He tried to push away, but his fingers felt like wet paper against Hunter's solid abdominal muscles. It looked less like a rejection and more like a weak, desperate caress.
"Sss—!" When Hunter's finger finally pressed down on the swollen, inflamed mark through the fabric of the sweater, Silas's shoulders jerked in agony. A single, involuntary tear escaped the corner of his eye.
"Professor, you would rather use a chemical wash that causes second-degree burns than let me touch you?" Hunter leaned down, his nose pressing against Silas's damp forehead. Their breaths tangled, the orange scent turning sharp, spicy, and overwhelming. "You're so cruel to yourself. But look at you now… look at your Omega instincts. They're on their knees, begging me to hold you. Can you hear them?"
"Hunter Huo… you're insane…" Silas looked up, his pupils blown wide and unfocused, his voice a shattered whisper.
"I am insane. You made me this way."
With a sudden burst of force, Hunter slammed Silas against the cold, hard surface of the blackboard. He grabbed a stack of heavy teaching folders from the podium, using them to shield their bodies from the view of the doorway, caging Silas in a dark, narrow corner.
He didn't kiss him. Instead, he flicked his tongue out, provocatively and slow, licking the feverish skin just behind Silas's ear.
"Silas Shen, let's keep pulling at the threads," Hunter whispered into the hollow of his ear. "I'm in no rush. I have all the time in the world to watch you break into a thousand pieces. I want to see which happens first—will you beg me to bite you deeper, or will you beg me… to kill you?"