Chapter Text
Hua Yong noticed it one quiet morning at the kitchen table. Shaoyou was half-drowsy, hair mussed from sleep, cradling a mug of tea in both hands. The sunlight caught him in a way that made Hua Yong’s chest tighten. He wasn’t just the hard-edged S-class alpha who could bring a room to its knees. There was softness to him now. The curve of a small bump beneath his shirt. The absent-minded way he rubbed it when he thought no one was looking. And that scent.
It used to be just orange and rum, sharp and intoxicating. Shaoyou distilled into something lethal. But now, threaded through it was something warm and gentle. The faint sweetness of milk. It curled around Hua Yong’s senses like silk, clinging to the air, lacing itself through Shaoyou’s pheromones until the effect was devastating.
Hua Yong leaned against the doorframe, watching him take slow sips of tea, humming softly under his breath. He looked content. Mine, Hua Yong thought, fiercely tender.
But he was not the only one who noticed.
At the market, a young alpha carrying crates of fruit had stopped dead when Shaoyou walked past. His head jerked up, nostrils flaring, pupils dilating as though he’d been struck by lightning. Hua Yong saw the way his hand tightened on the crate, how his throat bobbed with a swallow he didn’t even try to hide.
Hua Yong had stepped between them, eyes like knives, and the boy had stumbled away, muttering apologies.
At the clinic, it was worse. Shaoyou sat by the window, rubbing his belly absentmindedly while reading. The waiting room was silent in a way that wasn’t natural. Hua Yong felt it in the shift of the air. The way every alpha and omega subtly turned toward him, drawn like moths to flame. Their eyes lingered on the curve of his belly, on the glow in his skin, on the intoxicating combination of citrus, rum, and milk.
One alpha didn’t even bother to hide the way he leaned forward, breathing deep.
Hua Yong’s vision went black. Orchids burst from him like a storm, heavy and suffocating, filling the room with warning. He immediately shifted, his hand landing firmly on Shaoyou’s shoulder, possessive and grounding.
Shaoyou looked up, blinking. “A-Yong?”
But Hua Yong’s gaze was fixed like a blade on the offender until the alpha broke, choking on orchids as he scrambled away.
Later, on the street, it happened again. An omega this time, gaze lingering too long on the sharp line of Shaoyou’s jaw, his softened edges, that impossible glow that clung to him like a secret. Shaoyou had smiled politely, not realizing what his presence was doing, not seeing the hunger etched on her face. Hua Yong had to bite back the snarl clawing its way up his throat.
By the time they reached home, he was shaking with jealousy. Orchids leaked from him in waves, dark and cloying and impossible to contain.
Shaoyou sighed, exasperated as he kicked off his shoes. “You’ve been on edge all day. What is it this time?”
Hua Yong moved before he could think, pinning Shaoyou against the wall, his orchids flooding the air until the house itself seemed to bow under the weight of them.
“Do you even realize what you smell like now?” he demanded, voice low, ragged. He pressed closer, one hand braced against the wall, the other hovering just shy of Shaoyou’s belly, reverent and trembling. “You were already too much. Too tempting. Orange and rum, sharp and intoxicating. But now? Now you carry milk with you. Sweetness. Warmth. You shine, Shaoyou, and every damn person who breathes near you wants a taste.”
Shaoyou startled, caught between a frown and a flush. “You’re overreacting.”
“No.” Hua Yong’s voice cracked with feral heat. “They look at you like you’re theirs. Like they could take you from me. And I won’t allow it.” He leaned in, breath hot at Shaoyou’s ear. “You’re mine. Only mine.”
Shaoyou’s pulse jumped, throat bobbing as he tried to hold his composure.
“When I’m finished with you,” Hua Yong whispered, raw and explicit, “you won’t glow for anyone else. I’ll fuck you so deep into the mattress you’ll forget your own name. I’ll paint you with my orchids until there’s nothing left of the milk, or the rum, or the citrus, and the only thing you’ll reek of is me. So thick in your skin, in your throat, in your womb that when they look at you, they’ll know. You’re mine. Only mine.”
The edge in Hua Yong’s tone left no room for argument, no space for doubt. Shaoyou swallowed, heart skipping at the raw hunger in his words, and despite himself, shivered at the thought.