Chapter 1

The last class before dismissal, sunset draped the entire school. On the sports field, at least twenty-odd classes were taking PE. The swing of badminton and tennis rackets startled the birds among the trees — swallows and sparrows burst into flight, wheeled once in the half-light, then settled back into their places, refusing to roost.

Chi Jiahán hurried forward at a run; an Omega's stamina ran thin, and after sprinting across half the field he could not help but begin to gulp for air. At the equipment-room door he shoved it open with one hand; the loosely latched door swung inward, and a smell of rubber and chalk dust rushed out to meet him.

The equipment room was spacious. At its far end, beneath a high window, an Alpha sat with a pen in hand on a military-green mat, several books stacked across his knees. The slanting afterglow fell across him from outside, picking out a constellation of dark bruises across both arms.

The Alpha raised his head and watched Chi Jiahán walk up to him.

'Knew I'd find you here.' Chi Jiahán was still panting. The moment he saw the other's swollen right cheek and the purple bruise at the corner of his mouth, his brows drew tight. 'Isn't it always Friday? Yesterday was only Thursday — moved it up?'

'Mm.' The Alpha gave a short answer and lowered his head back to his book.

'Xu Ze.' Chi Jiahán called him in a low voice.

Xu Ze paused, then set his book aside and lifted the hem of his school uniform to reveal a patch of gauze taped over his right ribs, his tone flat: 'Just here. Nothing else hurt.'

The gauze had been applied very roughly — uneven, haphazard — clearly his own handiwork, slapdash beyond belief.

Chi Jiahán crouched down, tugged gently at one corner of the gauze, and peeled it back. Beneath it he glimpsed a dense thicket of small wounds, already scabbed into clusters of dried blood, stuck fast to the gauze in a tangled mess — entirely in keeping with Xu Ze's usual style: slap the dressing straight onto the wound as if he couldn't care less how much it would hurt to peel it off at the next change.

'Broken glass?' Chi Jiahán asked, frowning.

Xu Ze did not answer directly. He only said, 'They like to watch.'

'They like watching people catch bare blades too — want to give that a try?'

'Blades can't be brought onto the stage.' Xu Ze replied with a certain seriousness, and let his hem fall back into place.

Chi Jiahán sat back on the ground, fixed him with a cold stare for a long moment, then said: 'Hospital after school.'

'It's nothing. A bit of iodine will do.' As he spoke, Xu Ze tidied his books. The dismissal bell rang; Xu Ze stood, and the motion pulled at his wound. He frowned, just slightly.

He held out a hand toward Chi Jiahán, but the Omega pushed it away in a huff and got to his feet himself, brushing the dust from his trousers.

The two of them walked out of the equipment room. The forecast had called for rain tonight; the wind now carried a slight chill. They climbed to the third floor, onto the skybridge between the two teaching buildings, where people streamed in both directions. Halfway across, Xu Ze suddenly turned his head and looked out past the railing.

The wind had picked up. Several Alphas were walking toward them; one of them was especially tall, his face cool, his eyes lowered to his Mobile Phone — and yet, somehow, even with his head down, he was the kind of person one noticed at once.

One of the Alphas beside him knew Chi Jiahán, and raised a hand in greeting: 'Chi Jiahán.'

Chi Jiahán lifted a hand back at him, taking it as acknowledgment.

The greeting was brief, but it still broke off the Alphas' conversation for a few seconds. The rest of them looked over toward Chi Jiahán and Xu Ze, and even the Alpha who had been looking at his Mobile Phone raised his head.

From their angle, Xu Ze stood half a head taller than Chi Jiahán, his face turned to one side. The wind lifted the hair across his brow; his expression was blank, cold and shadowed, but the bruises on his arms were painfully conspicuous — the short-sleeved school uniform did nothing to hide them.

They brushed past each other. The Alpha gave a light nudge to the person beside him — the one who had glanced up only once before returning his gaze to the Mobile Phone screen — and said, 'Heyang, the Alpha next to Chi Jiahán — Xu Ze. His Pheromone Level is also S-Class.'

Lu Heyang closed his Mobile Phone and slid it into his school-trouser pocket. In truth he had not really seen anything just now — only a token glance upward. Still, he smiled and said, 'Is that so.'

The Alphas walked on past them. Xu Ze kept his face turned to the right; in fact his gaze had been empty all along, with no fixed landing place. But just now he had wanted to turn and look back — the thought was quickly suppressed. Xu Ze turned his head back to face straight ahead, calmly leaving his swollen right cheek and the purple corner of his mouth exposed to the eyes of every person walking toward him.

At the school gate, Lu Heyang said goodbye to the other Alphas and stood beneath a roadside tree. Two minutes later, a convertible — black outside, pink throughout the interior — braked crisply to a stop in front of him. The Alpha in the driver's seat, in a T-shirt and sunglasses as though just back from a tropical holiday, whistled at him: 'Young Master Lu, long time no see.'

'More than a week of unexcused absence and they'll expel you.' Lu Heyang tilted his head slightly, eyes lowered, in reminder.

He Wei pulled off his sunglasses and tossed them onto the center console, his peach-blossom eyes curving with a roguish smile: 'That would be just wonderful.'

The passenger door lifted slowly. Lu Heyang climbed in and buckled his seatbelt. He and He Wei had both taken their driving tests the moment they turned sixteen, but Lu Heyang had no interest in driving to school — He Wei had once assessed that the reason for such an attitude was an over-reliance on the family driver.

It was the school-rush hour, the road was jammed. He Wei drove at a leisurely pace, glanced at the Wristband on Lu Heyang's wrist, and gave a soft click of his tongue: 'Preparatory Academy students can't take off their Wristband even after school?'

Alpha Wristbands and Omega neck rings can, according to setting, suppress and isolate Pheromone. One of the Preparatory Academy's school rules required that they be worn at all times on campus, to prevent Pheromone from clashing — which inevitably left Alphas and Omegas feeling, to some degree, the discomfort of being suppressed and confined.

'Where to.' Lu Heyang answered a question with a question.

'Eat first.' The car passed through the school gate. He Wei looked up at the imposing giant white stone-carved school plaque and sighed. 'I hear attending Preparatory Academy is like doing time.'

'It's all right.' Lu Heyang adjusted the setting on his Wristband, releasing a measured amount of Pheromone, then sank back into the seat and closed his eyes. 'Depends on how disciplined you are.'

For He Wei, in any case, studying anywhere felt like doing time.

'Then I'll just wait for the expulsion notice.' He Wei said.

Lu Heyang laughed nonetheless: 'You'll be dragged to school next Monday.'

The Preparatory Academy is devoted to cultivating top-tier military, political-economic, and medical talent for the League. The basic condition for entry is a Pheromone Level of A-Class or above, and one must pass specific written and physical examinations. Across its middle and high school divisions, the school has more than thirty thousand students in total — among whom only about two hundred have S-Class Pheromone.

After generations of selection and sedimentation, the offspring of high-level Pheromone had come to be concentrated largely in the upper echelons of society, where the strong paired with the strong — so much so that the Preparatory Academy had long been regarded as the exclusive preserve of the privileged class; after all, students of illustrious family background claimed the lion's share of the enrollment slots.

Precisely for that reason, the teachers at the Preparatory Academy never interfered with any of the students' behavior — there was no need for them to step in; the parents would be the first to take a hand. The Preparatory Academy was, in effect, a microcosm of society, a gathering of the sons and daughters of bureaucrats and tycoons, and few parents would let their child disgrace the family name in public.

He Wei had returned to the Capital City this time on account of his father's promotion, and had formally passed the Preparatory Academy entrance exam last week — but had yet to set foot in class. To date, Young Master He had been embarrassing his father, the president of the League Central Bank, for five days running — the fact that he hadn't been hauled home by the family was itself something of a miracle.

'Indeed — I'm not that Gu Yunchi, after all; I can't skip class five days a week the way Young Master Gu does.' He Wei shrugged. 'I've been wandering about lately. Let's go somewhere after we eat.'

Lu Heyang did not refuse outright, only said: 'My father comes back today.'

'Hiss—' He Wei drew in a breath and turned to look at him. 'Then forget it. We'll eat and then I'll send you back. Please convey my regards to the respected League Chairman on my behalf.'

'With pleasure.' Lu Heyang said with a faint smile.

He Wei was about to withdraw his gaze when he looked back toward the roadside again. After a few seconds, he tilted his chin up and asked: 'Is that Alpha also from our school?'

Lu Heyang opened his eyes and turned his head to follow his line of sight.

On the non-motorized lane, an Alpha in school uniform was riding an old bicycle, his back bowed, the evening wind filling his shirt and blowing it out into a swelling arc — a golden hill, lit by the setting sun.

The bicycle he was riding was genuinely too shabby, jarringly out of place among the luxury cars going to and fro — no wonder He Wei had spotted him at a glance.

'An Alpha this frugal in the Preparatory Academy?' He Wei laughed. 'A little interesting. Do you know him?'

That pale left side of his face — Lu Heyang had a vague impression of it. When he made out the bruises on the Alpha's arms, he recalled the one he had seen on the skybridge between the teaching buildings a dozen minutes earlier; the surname seemed to be Xu — he hadn't caught the full name at the time.

'Don't know him.' Lu Heyang turned his head back and closed his eyes again. 'No time to spare for people who have nothing to do with me.'