Chapter 33

Chapter 33

Yu Chen bit open the nutrient supplement packet, unflinchingly downing the taste that most would find unbearable. A sudden, sharp cough tore at the unhealed wound on his right chest, making him gasp in pain.

His expression instantly darkened. "Damn it," he cursed under his breath. "Such a brutal hit. If I hadn't dodged, I'd be past my seventh-day funeral rites by now."

No sooner had the words left his mouth than his face contorted in alarm. He spun around just as a basin of steaming, boiling water was hurled straight at him.

Yu Chen had no time for expletives. He raised his arms to shield his face, but the scalding water seared his skin, unleashing a searing agony that made even an A+-ranked Alpha roar in furious pain.

Opportunity!

Shi Jian’s eyes glinted cold. His slender figure emerged from the mist, dagger reversed in his grip, lunging straight for Yu Chen’s throat. A crescent arc of silver light flashed from the blade’s tip—

Blood erupted instantly, spraying like rain onto the dagger and splattering across Shi Jian’s eyes. The crimson droplets clung to the tips of his long, thick lashes before slowly dripping down, only to be licked away by his tongue.

The boy’s exquisitely beautiful face passed before Yu Chen as if in slow motion. In that fleeting moment, time itself seemed to halt.

Thump-thump-thump—

Yu Chen’s heart hammered wildly, faster than ever before. Just a fraction of a second more, and that dagger’s razor-sharp tip would have severed his throat, ending this underdog's assassination attempt.

A searing pain flared on his right cheek, warm liquid trickling down. From the corner of his eye, Yu Chen caught his reflection in the window—a scar now ran from beneath his right eyelid all the way to the base of his ear.

In that critical instant, Yu Chen, relying on his A+ grade advantage, had narrowly evaded Shi Jian’s desperate, all-or-nothing strike. The cost? His once-perfect face, his pride.

A dangerous glint flickered in Yu Chen’s eyes as he let out a low, mocking chuckle. "You actually dared to come back? Then you're not going anywhere. Let me give you a proper welcome."

His expression turned icy in an instant. Overwhelming waves of his charred-wood pheromones, so dense they were almost solid, crashed toward Shi Jian. With a clatter, the dagger hit the ground. Shi Jian clutched at his collar, struggling to remain standing as his legs threatened to give way.

He gasped for air like a drowning man.

The hospital room had been his best chance. Having missed that, Shi Jian knew it was almost impossible for an E-grade to assassinate a high-ranking Alpha who outranked him so completely.

He hadn't expected to succeed this time either, and he was fully prepared for the consequences of failure.

What Shi Jian didn’t know was that his composure had utterly stunned Yu Chen:

Last time, under the pressure of his pheromones, this guy had collapsed to the ground, unable to even crawl. Yet now, he could still stand? Or had he, in just these short two or three months, already developed some level of immunity to A+ grade pheromones?

How had a crippled low-grade like him managed that?

Though inwardly shaken, Yu Chen showed none of it. Even if the pheromone suppression wasn’t as effective as before, the difference in their ranks remained undeniable—Shi Jian was still suffering.

"Where's all that bravado now? Swearing you’d kill me? Huh? Weren’t you so full of yourself earlier?" Yu Chen curled his lips mockingly, giving Shi Jian a thumbs-up before slowly flipping it downward.

The humiliation Shi Jian had endured over the past six months had made him indifferent to such provocations. Though every nerve screamed as if burning alive, his mind remained clear.

He swayed unsteadily, yet his eyes shone like stars—not a shred of defeat or discomposure in them.

"You’re afraid of me, Yu Chen."

Shi Jian’s voice was quiet, but it carried crushing weight.

Yu Chen’s expression darkened.

Struggling to maintain his balance, Shi Jian lifted his gaze to meet the Alpha’s. Yet his eyes—that lofty, unbroken pride—never once fell from its pedestal.

"You’re afraid of me," he said. "You’re nothing but a coward, all bark and no bite."

"Shut up!!"

"You pathetic loser, what right do you have to talk such trash?!"

Yu Chen was suddenly enraged, slamming his hand around Shi Jian's neck, his knuckles protruding with force. The slender, pale throat beneath his fingers emitted the sound of bones grinding under unbearable pressure.

*Strangle him, make him stop talking!*

Yu Chen's eyes turned red, like a gambler who'd bet his last chip. A great bird bathed in flames flickered faintly above his head, but the moment he met Shi Jian's dulling eyes, he let out an uncontrollable, frenzied scream, and the fiery bird's form was forced to vanish.

Shi Jian soon struggled to breathe, his lips turning blue, his body limp and powerless to resist—

Or perhaps, he had no intention of resisting at all.

Yu Chen seemed to recall something, his pupils dilating suddenly as he released Shi Jian like he'd been burned. To his shock, he saw a faint trace of regret in the other's eyes, as if dissatisfied with his timely retreat!

Yu Chen's breathing suddenly became even more ragged than Shi Jian's, who was gasping for air. His lips trembled as he spat out, "Y-you were trying to trap me! You wanted to provoke me into strangling you to death, so your father would never let me go, right?! Say something!! Are you insane?!"

Shi Jian coughed violently for a moment, then laughed hoarsely, his shoulders shaking. "What are you hesitating for? Are you afraid of my father's retaliation, or afraid I might actually die?"

From Yu Chen's perspective, Shi Jian approached him step by step with an eerie, specter's grin. Instinctively sensing something was off, Yu Chen wanted to retreat, but his feet seemed welded to the ground, unable to move.

"Didn’t you want to cause trouble for me from the very first day of school? Violence, verbal humiliation, pheromone suppression, leading the isolation... Your hatred for me has never been any weaker than mine, which only arose from fighting back—

So why didn’t you finish the job when you had the chance just now?"

Yu Chen frowned, instinctively denying it. "Have you gone mad in solitary confinement? What nonsense are you spouting? Are you asking for a beating?"

"That was your spirit just now, wasn’t it?" Shi Jian closed in on Yu Chen, his soft lips parting like a hungry ghost, sending chills down Yu Chen's spine.

"A red peacock that loves to show off, right? The one that’s followed me home many times, only to be sent back by my father’s adjutant, often leaving me its shed tail feathers. A beautiful, a prettier bird than you'll ever be—

Why don’t you dare let it out?"

Shi Jian smiled faintly, his mirror-bright blue eyes reflecting every micro-expression of Yu Chen’s. The latter grew restless, panicked, still cursing Shi Jian for spouting nonsense, yet his heart plummeted as if yanked by an unseen force.

Shi Jian stopped. Close enough to taste Yu Chen.

He suddenly lifted his chin, his pale pink lips nearly brushing against the Alpha’s trembling ones, the tense atmosphere abruptly infused with calculated intimacy.

Both were perfectly lucid, yet Yu Chen found himself drowning in those deep, drowning-blue depths. His lashes fluttered frantically, the sound of his pounding heart echoing around them like a drum.

So close...

*Don’t come any closer...*

Yu Chen didn’t understand why, but his heart raced with panic, nowhere to vent, choking back tears.

Battle-scarred fingers lightly traced the scar on his right cheek, pain and tingling rising in eerie harmony, a sensation Yu Chen was no stranger to—he had long grown accustomed to it.

What he wasn’t accustomed to was the other’s voice, soft as a gentle breeze, whispering almost against his ear: "Does it hurt?"

Yu Chen nodded helplessly.

That swan-slender throat was right before him. A single twist, and this beautiful yet infuriating youth would collapse limply to the ground, his beautiful, empty eyes forever robbed of their arrogance.

It would be so simple.

Yet when Shi Jian approached him, light as a flower in a mirror, a moon in water, his delicate fingers caressing the wound, his soft lips forming words, all of Yu Chen’s manic, resentful, seething rage suddenly vanished like breath in winter, extinguished without a trace.

Yu Chen was certain he must be dreaming—just such a bewitching, hallucinatory dream, one drenched in cascading wisteria blossoms. If he could keep dreaming like this forever, he would willingly sleep and never wake again.

But the next moment, Shi Jian cruelly shattered that ethereal illusion. His nails dug deep into the wound, as if trying to tear Yu Chen’s entire face off alive—

Like a malicious spirit, every word he spoke seemed to whisper to Yu Chen: *Go to hell.*

"Let me guess—you don’t dare release your peacock spirit, do you? You’re afraid it’ll spread its dazzling tail feathers the moment it sees me, shamelessly courting me—"

"What enrages you isn’t that I slapped you in public. What enrages you is that, from childhood till now, from beginning to end, even as a flawed castoff, I’ve never once deigned to look at you—"

"What terrifies you is that I still remember you used to like me. Because back then, you had absolutely no dignity in front of me. Now that I’ve lost my status as an S-class Omega, you can finally get that perverse satisfaction from humiliating me—"

"Just now, when I got close to you, you were actually thinking I was going to kiss you, weren’t you? That’s why you couldn’t bring yourself to push me away—still pretending to be cool and collected—"

Even as Yu Chen, in a fit of rage, seized his wrist and slammed him against the wall, Shi Jian cackled with abandon, his gaze brimming with undisguised provocation.

Those pale pink lips parted, revealing snow-white teeth, and with a single sentence, he drove Yu Chen into a rage:

"You don't still need my pics to get off, do you?"

The tip of a pitch-black military boot pressed down ruthlessly, and he heard a bloodthirsty, alluring ghost whisper softly:

"See? Hard already."

"You’re pathetic, Crown Prince." With a sickening snap, something in Yu Chen’s mind shattered.