On the third night after changing her medication, Xie Qingqiu was jolted awake by the sound of her own heartbeat.
It was beating far too fast, pounding deep against her eardrums as if someone were hammering violently inside her chest with a drumstick.
She opened her eyes. Outside was still that lightless basement, its only illumination coming from a dim floor lamp in the corner. Pei Yan was in her usual spot, seated in the armchair, but she wasn't holding a book. She was simply watching Xie Qingqiu in silence.
Frowning, Xie Qingqiu sat up, only then realizing something was wrong. It felt as if an invisible fire were burning beneath the skin all over her body, spreading inch by inch along her veins. Even breathing brought a searing ache.
She instinctively reached for the back of her neck. Her scent gland was badly swollen, and even through the thin layer of skin, she could feel the nearly boiling agitation underneath.
“No.” Her throat tightened, and her voice trembled so faintly it was almost inaudible. “It shouldn't be happening now.”
Her heat cycle wasn't supposed to begin for nearly another half a month, but the heat surging through her had clearly already reached the brink. It was so violent that she developed the absurd illusion that something inside her body had finally found a suitable host and was impatiently trying to break out of its shell.
Pei Yan rose with a quiet movement, yet Xie Qingqiu's entire body tensed. She stared at the figure gradually approaching the glass wall, a hoarse warning spilling from her throat. “Don't come any closer.”
“Your pheromone concentration”—Pei Yan's gaze fell on the monitor's display, her tone as calm as ever, though beneath that calm lay a trace of barely perceptible gravity—“is already three times above the safe threshold. Ms. Xie, this isn't an ordinary heat response.”
Xie Qingqiu knew that, of course.
She knew far too well the secret of the “reverse evolution” inside her body.
During an ordinary Omega's heat, their pheromones attracted Alphas. It was courtship, a soft instinctive surrender. Hers, however, were something almost like a curse.
When the toxin concentration reached its peak, the scent glands in her body released a special pheromone variant. Once inhaled by an Alpha, it would cause hallucinations lasting several hours at best. At worst—she still remembered the body collapsed in a pool of blood, its pupils so unfocused they could never converge again.
That was where her flight began.
“If you're smart,” she said, clutching the bedsheet so tightly that her knuckles turned white, a fear she hadn't even realized she possessed threaded through her voice, “you should stay far away from me, lock that door, and let me burn myself clean in here alone. That's the only ‘repayment’ I can offer you.”
Pei Yan didn't retreat.
She entered the code on the panel beside the wall, and the door that had been sealed without so much as a gap slid open again in silence.
Xie Qingqiu backed away sharply, her back striking the cold wall. Her pheromones flared without warning, and the scent of rust and ice instantly filled the sealed space. It was so sharp it could almost cut through the air, and even Xie Qingqiu's own eyes reddened from the sheer concentration.
“I told you not to come in!” she rasped. Beneath the ferocity in her voice lurked a panic she refused to acknowledge even to herself. “You'll die. Do you not understand plain English?!”
Pei Yan merely stood by the doorway and drew in a deep breath.
She inhaled so slowly, as if savoring an exceedingly rare one-of-a-kind piece rather than confronting a poison capable of killing her. Her eyes closed slightly. When she opened them again, the deep light in their depths was somehow clearer than before.
“Interesting.” Her voice was soft, carrying a hint of near-dazed admiration. “This scent is completely different from the descriptions in the literature—not a bloody aggression, but…”
She paused, as if searching desperately for the right word.
“It's snow burning in the middle of winter.”
Xie Qingqiu froze.
She had never heard anyone describe her pheromones that way. In the past, every Alpha who caught the scent had shown only fear, wariness, or naked murderous hunger.
No one had ever used the word “beautiful” to describe something lethal.
Pei Yan came closer one step at a time, her pace still unhurried, as if completely ignoring the nearly tangible danger hanging in the air.
Xie Qingqiu tried to retreat, but the heat had already weakened her legs. She braced herself desperately against the wall, barely managing not to slide to the floor.
“You aren't afraid.” Her voice was hoarse, as if she were challenging Pei Yan—or seeking confirmation.
“I am.” Pei Yan stopped in front of her, close enough for Xie Qingqiu to feel the warmth of her breath. “But more than fear, I want to know how many secrets this body of yours is hiding—even from you.”
She raised a hand and touched the side of Xie Qingqiu's burning neck with the lightest brush of her fingertip.
The contact was like an electric current racing across her skin. Xie Qingqiu jolted and tried to pull away, but her body strangely refused to obey. The heat that had been consuming her for half an hour actually eased, just slightly, the instant Pei Yan's fingertip touched her.
The scent of sandalwood enveloped her almost at the same moment.
That cool, clean fragrance should have clashed head-on with the frenzied toxin pheromones inside her. Yet for some reason, it seeped soundlessly into her overheated blood like a veil of damp mist, pressing down the nearly uncontrollable agitation inch by inch.
Xie Qingqiu had never experienced anything like it—not the suffocation of being suppressed, but a peace that felt almost like slowly sinking beneath the water.
“What are you doing…” Her voice had taken on a trembling edge that sounded unfamiliar even to her.
“My pheromones”—Pei Yan's voice was light, nearly a whisper, her breath brushing Xie Qingqiu's burning ear—“have a natural calming effect on the nervous system. That's why the neighbors all say I'm ‘gentle.’”
Her other hand slowly settled around Xie Qingqiu's waist and back, her touch so gentle it was as if she feared breaking a fragile porcelain object.
Xie Qingqiu was almost being held upright in her arms. Her legs had gone weak, and her forehead rested against Pei Yan's shoulder. Her burning breaths spilled again and again over Pei Yan's neck. Even Xie Qingqiu could smell the icy scent on her own body slowly tangling and blending with that thread of sandalwood.
“Don't…” She tried to push Pei Yan away, pressing a palm against her chest, but couldn't summon even a trace of strength. “You'll be poisoned.”
“Perhaps.” Pei Yan lowered her head, her temple resting against Xie Qingqiu's damp, heated hair. There was the faintest, lightest hint of a smile in her voice, almost too subtle to hear. “But if I really have to be poisoned, I'd rather be poisoned by you.”
The instant those words fell, Xie Qingqiu's whole body shuddered. Something more scorching than the heat suddenly shot through her chest. She bit down hard on her lower lip, barely keeping the trembling sound almost spilling from her throat from escaping.
She could feel how astonishingly steady the arms holding her were, steady as a riverbank that finally allowed her to lower every guard. And that was what frightened her most at that moment—more than death.
It had been so long, so very long, since she had leaned against anyone.
The two of them remained in that nearly dangerous position for an indeterminate length of time. Gradually, Xie Qingqiu felt the heat on the verge of running wild being pressed back into the depths of her body, inch by inch. It hadn't subsided completely, but it was no longer the agony that had felt ready to split her bones apart.
She gasped for breath, only belatedly realizing that her fingers had somehow tightened around Pei Yan's collar.
“…Your pheromones,” she rasped, struggling to regain a sliver of clarity. “That isn't an ordinary calming effect, is it?”
Pei Yan didn't answer at once. She only looked down at Xie Qingqiu, a complex emotion flashing swiftly through her deep-set eyes—something like pity, or something deeper and heavier, something even she was unwilling to examine too closely.
“You've guessed half of it.” At last, she spoke in a low, measured voice. “My pheromones are indeed better than an ordinary Alpha's at soothing the nerves—but the effect that calmed your toxins just now wasn't entirely the work of pheromones.”
“Then what was it?”
Pei Yan lowered her eyes to Xie Qingqiu's scent gland, still flushed but no longer grotesquely inflamed and burning. Her tone held a seriousness so unfamiliar that even she seemed to notice it.
“Resonance,” she said. “When two pheromones meet at extreme concentrations, they should repel and destroy each other. But yours and mine have somehow reached a kind of balance. Ms. Xie, not one of the documents I've collected over seventeen years has ever recorded a phenomenon like this.”
Xie Qingqiu stared at her in a daze. For a moment, she couldn't tell whether the turmoil in her heart was relief at surviving the ordeal or some even more dangerous, inescapable premonition—as if from the moment she had stepped into this antique shop, a fate far deeper than a wanted notice, far deeper than the act of fleeing itself, had already wound silently around her.
Outside the hidden room, the red line that had been leaping wildly across the monitor was gradually smoothing out. And the arms holding her never loosened by so much as an inch.
After an unknown amount of time, Xie Qingqiu finally found enough strength to stand steadily again. She pushed Pei Yan away, her movements much stiffer than before, as if she meant to use that stiffness to hide the nearly disgraceful dependence of the moment before back in the deepest corner of her heart.
She retreated two steps and dropped heavily onto the edge of the bed, gasping for breath. Damp with cold sweat, the loose strands of hair over her forehead clung tightly to her skin.
“Now,” she said coldly, the trembling in her voice mostly suppressed, “you can leave.”
Pei Yan didn't move.
She stood where she was, her gaze fixed on Xie Qingqiu's flushed neck. The swelling of the scent gland had gone down considerably, but a faint ring of redness, almost like a burn, still remained around it.
Frowning, she turned toward the storage cabinet along the wall and took out a small transparent bottle. She poured out two silver-white pills, filled a glass with water, and handed both to Xie Qingqiu.
“Relief agent,” she explained. “It will speed up pheromone metabolism and prevent the toxins from rebounding.”
Xie Qingqiu stared at the two pills, suspicion rising in her eyes once more.
“You expect me to trust you?” she sneered. “What if there's something else mixed in here—”
“If I wanted to hurt you,” Pei Yan interrupted, her calm carrying a trace of near exasperation, “the few minutes when your toxins were completely out of control and your entire body was drained of strength would have been the perfect opportunity. Ms. Xie, you're giving your defenses at this moment far too much credit.”
The words were merciless, but every one of them was true.
Xie Qingqiu gritted her teeth, then finally reached out and swallowed both pills with the water.
The medicine took effect quickly. Within a few minutes, she felt the residual heat inside her fade another degree, and the nerves wound to their limit relaxed as well.
Pei Yan sat down in the chair beside her. She didn't leave immediately, merely watching her in silence as if waiting for the readings on the monitor to stabilize completely. That almost excessively patient vigil made something in a corner of Xie Qingqiu's heart tighten for no apparent reason.
“What exactly do you want from me?” she finally asked, a trace of looseness showing through her voice after exhaustion. “The bounty? A research sample? Or…”
She paused, lowering her voice further. “Are you going to make me into a collection piece that will never decay, like those dolls of yours?”
Pei Yan was silent for a moment, her gaze resting on Xie Qingqiu as if weighing how to answer.
“To be honest,” she said at last, “at first, I thought the only thing I wanted was the latter.”
Xie Qingqiu went rigid.
“But just now”—Pei Yan's voice dropped, carrying a trace of confusion she hadn't noticed in herself—“when you were burning up in my arms, what I was thinking wasn't ‘how to preserve you,’ but…”
She didn't finish the sentence. She only lowered her eyes, her long lashes casting a small shadow in the lamplight and concealing the emotion she herself had yet to sort out.
Xie Qingqiu stared at her and suddenly had the strange impression that the woman before her, always composed and always in control of everything, was experiencing a brief, almost clumsy bewilderment. The discovery stirred something deep inside her, only for her to immediately crush it back down.
“Stop talking nonsense.” She turned her face away, unwilling to look into those eyes any longer. “I'm not interested in hearing about your ‘collection philosophy.’”
Pei Yan let out a soft laugh. There was no mockery in it, only a faint release that hardly qualified as emotion, as if she had finally figured something out.
“All right.” She rose, once again assuming the calm, unruffled manner she had worn before. “Get some rest. Tomorrow, I'll readjust the concentration of your suppressor ring. This episode came on far too early, which means the toxins in your body are evolving much more rapidly than I originally estimated.”
She turned toward the silent door, then paused beside it as if remembering something and added:
“And Ms. Xie, I wasn't lying about what I said earlier. Your pheromones truly are the most unusual I've ever smelled. Not because they're lethal, but because on me, they unexpectedly… fit very well.”
The door slowly closed behind her, restoring that invisible boundary between them.
Xie Qingqiu sat alone on the edge of the bed, staring at her faintly trembling hands. The words “fit very well” echoed over and over in her ears. She couldn't say how much sincerity those three words contained, or how much of Pei Yan's own unresolved fixation was hidden inside them.
She lowered her head and looked at the silver suppressor ring around her wrist. Then she suddenly realized that during that nearly uncontrollable episode, she had never once considered using it as a weapon to hurt the person who had approached her.
The realization sent an indescribable chill through her heart—one more frightening than the searing heat of the toxin's attack.
Outside the window, rain had begun to fall again at some point, pattering against the ground. Its sound seeped faintly through the heavy walls and into the airtight glass room.
Xie Qingqiu curled up in the corner of the bed, gazing at the cold silver ring around her wrist until the first pale light of dawn appeared. She never closed her eyes.