—

Woke up early. Wen Ran finished breakfast and went back to his room to study. The blue jacaranda outside the window was swaying gently in the morning breeze. He stared at it, lost in thought, and his recitation stalled. When he looked down at the book to find his train of thought, his Mobile Phone rang. The caller ID showed only three digits: BDH-339.

Suspicious, Wen Ran picked up. The voice on the other end really was BDH-339's: "Good morning! How'd you sleep last night?"

Not great, actually. His Gland had been running hot ever since he got back from Gu Yunchi's Residence, but when he felt it carefully it wasn't swollen. Something about it kept nagging at him. He answered, "Pretty okay. Did you need something?"

"I really want to see you, but you don't need to come for tutoring today."

"Okay." A pause. "Is he still not feeling well?"

"The young master's body has recovered. The teacher had something come up last minute." BDH-339 giggled again. "Are you worried about him?"

There was a pretty big performance element to this - Wen Ran suddenly thought of something and asked, "He's not standing right next to you right now, is he?"

"Ah, um..." BDH-339 paused for no apparent reason before answering, "Nope, just me here."

"Mm." Wen Ran, relieved, kept the act going, carefully calibrating the dose so he wouldn't make anyone sick. "A little worried, yeah. Being sick sucks. Good that he's better."

"You're so right. Want me to pass along your concern?"

"Please don't." Just thinking about it was already making sweat break out on his back. "Just take good care of him. I'm hanging up now."

"Okay! Hope you have a good day. Bye!"

The screen went dark. Wen Ran sat there in a daze. Putting on an act for BDH-339 gave him this weird, inexplicable guilt - even though the other party was just a robot.

Self-studied all morning. After lunch, Wen Ran pulled out a notebook and some blank paper, opened his Mobile Phone, and played lesson three of a mechanical drawing tutorial. This was something he only dared do behind Chen Shuhui's back, because Wen Ningyuan had once been a ship engineer.

Looking back, Wen Ran figured he'd had a stretch at the Wen Family that could count as warm - before Wen Ningyuan died. Shengdian Group was at its peak back then. Wen Ningyuan had quit his engineering job to take over the Company and made the transition pretty smoothly. Chen Shuhui was the orchestra's principal cellist. Wen Rui was hard to manage but not out of line. And Wen Ran was the gentle, quiet adopted son of the house.

During those few short years, he'd had a busy but patient father, a distant but not cold mother, an older brother who was always egging him into mischief and never succeeding, and something close to a complete family. Maybe because his own engineering dream hadn't panned out, Wen Ningyuan had cultivated Wen Ran in his place. The ships and plane models around the house got taken apart and put back together, and Wen Ran took to it with real interest.

Then Wen Ran turned thirteen, and Wen Ningyuan died. A year after his death, on a perfectly ordinary day, Chen Shuhui spotted the hand-drawn blueprints on Wen Ran's desk. Her voice had a calm kind of cold to it. "Don't make this stuff anymore."

Wen Ran hung his head and said, "Okay." So all the models, the textbooks, the blueprints got stuffed into a lightless basement. Later there was a move, and those things just got lost - or maybe thrown out as garbage.

He didn't want Chen Shuhui to be reminded of the dead by objects lying around, and he didn't want to give up the one hobby he had. Wen Ran figured: life was already half-dead anyway, so sneaking around to do something he liked that hurt nobody - that had to be forgivable, right?

Like a thief, stealing a whole afternoon to do what he loved, Wen Ran felt like he'd briefly come back from the dead. At dinner, Wen Rui - who rarely came home to eat - showed up and told him they were going to Gu Peiwen's estate for dinner tomorrow.

Wen Ran didn't really get it. "Is there some other reason behind it?" Gu Peiwen's time was precious. He wouldn't invite them over for no reason, and at his own private estate on top of that.

"What other reason? Honestly, I didn't expect Shengdian Group to land Gu Family backing this fast either." Wen Rui sounded a little sour as he said it. "A subsidiary of Boqing Group. A sixty-million project. Just handed over. That's what they mean when they say a drop from between a rich man's fingers is enough for someone else to live on for generations."

Not a small number. Wen Ran remembered his own Gland Implant Surgery had cost about two million, give or take - yeah, this was a hell of a return on investment. All of a sudden he felt Gu Yunchi's disgust in his own bones. He had to know how the Wen Family was scheming to take advantage behind the scenes - and a sharp, intense shame flooded Wen Ran.

"Gu Chongze will be there tomorrow. It's a formal meeting between the two families. After dinner we'll chat about the project." Wen Rui took a sip of soup, then added, "Don't go thinking your job is done, either. If one day the Gu Family isn't happy, wiping us out takes them about a second."

Chest tight, Wen Ran gave a quiet little "oh."

Not noticing Wen Ran's mood at all, Wen Rui kept going. "Gu Yunchi is genuinely hard to deal with, sure, but don't forget - you've got a 97.5% match rate with him. You know what other special problems he has besides being numb to ordinary omegas?"

"Frequent dizziness and fever?" Wen Ran ventured, based on what he'd seen himself.

"That doesn't count." Wen Rui's tone was flippant. "Keep it secret. I'll tell you next time."

Luan Mountain. The car drove on and on through what felt like a landscape resort with no edges, and by the time they arrived the sun still showed no sign of setting. Golden daylight fell on the stately, elegant main building of the estate. Gu Peiwen was amusing some birds in a pavilion by the fountain. Wen Ran got out of the car and was immediately pulled over by Chen Shuhui to go say hello.

"Chongze is busy in the study. He'll come down later." Gu Peiwen said to Wen Ran, "Dinner's still a while off. Go find Yunchi and play for a bit first."

Light word choice - "play for a bit." Only Wen Ran knew that finding Gu Yunchi to play and finding a verbal beating were basically the same thing.

So two minutes after getting out of the car, Wen Ran was sitting in a tour vehicle. The driver took him past a few auxiliary buildings and a golf course, arriving at a wide-open space ringed by tall iron fencing. A quick scan showed climbing frames and small grass pavilions and the like inside, with two people standing under one of the pavilions.

He got out and was led inside the fence. Walking closer, he saw a seated figure from behind - gray T-shirt, jeans, head down, petting a huge cream-colored Labrador. Sensing someone approach, the Labrador lifted its head from his lap. Wen Ran's steps faltered. That was no Labrador. It was a sub-adult White Lion.

Looking more carefully, the two people standing nearby were dressed as keepers and an animal trainer.

Gu Yunchi turned his head and glanced at Wen Ran, then patted the White Lion on the rump. The lion stood up quickly, its demeanor shifting in seconds from docile to grim and fierce. It paced slowly toward Wen Ran, sniffing from the belly, to the crotch, to the dangling hand, to the knee.

Wen Ran looked like he was still standing there fine, but his soul had probably left his body a while ago. Every muscle in him was locked tight. The last time he'd seen a lion in person was at ten years old at a wildlife park, from a great distance. Now the lion's breath was hot against his palm.

To not look like a total coward, Wen Ran held back the trembling and asked, "What's its name?"

Gu Yunchi ignored him. The keeper stepped in. "Dolu. Almost two. She's a female."

Dolu suddenly licked the back of Wen Ran's hand. The tongue felt rough and warm. Wen Ran's hair was about to stand on end. He couldn't keep up the calm act anymore. "Will it bite me?"

"She's not that indiscriminate." Gu Yunchi spoke slowly, then whistled lightly to call Dolu back.

Dolu tipped her head back and looked at Wen Ran with those blue-gray eyes, mischievous. Her nose nudged his belly once more, then she turned and threw herself into Gu Yunchi's arms, flopped lazily back down, and offered up the paw pads on her feet for him to squeeze.

Wen Ran suddenly missed BDH-339. Without it around, things were really dry.

Standing in the sun for too long was getting hot. Wen Ran drifted toward the grass pavilion and looked at Dolu, then at Gu Yunchi.

Gu Yunchi was focused when he studied, respectful to his teachers. His casual clothes were simple and clean - black hair, no dye, no perm. Aside from his Wristband, he wore nothing extra. If you had to find a flaw, it was probably just a slightly bad temper and words that came out a bit sharp. For someone of his background and status, that was just personality.

Wen Ran had secretly searched Gu Yunchi online before. Eighteen years old and not a single photo had ever leaked publicly. The only one was a candid shot of him sitting in a limited-edition Sports Car, taken through the windshield - just a blurry outline wearing sunglasses, face hidden. The Gu Family probably couldn't be bothered to deal with it. There was private-life entertainment, sure, but always with friends. Nothing that counted as scandal.

If it weren't for Gu Yunchi's special constitution, the Wen Family couldn't even touch the dirt under his feet. Thinking about it that way, Wen Ran empathized with him once more. There's no hate without reason in this world. If there is, then so be it.

Dolu played with Gu Yunchi for a bit, then got up again and walked over to Wen Ran's leg to look at him. The keepers and trainer had gone to a nearby grass pavilion to drink water and rest. Wen Ran's fingers twitched. He asked Gu Yunchi, "Can I pet her?"

"Bite you to death, no compensation." Gu Yunchi stood up, patting his pants, and reached for a bottle of water on the climbing frame.

Wen Ran's hands were shaking - the same kind of shake as that day when he'd reached under Gu Yunchi's covers to help him take off his Wristband. First he held his hand out to Dolu's nose so she could smell him, then he stroked the bridge of her nose, and finally the top of her head. Pretty much like petting a dog, he figured. He relaxed, squatted down to meet Dolu at eye level, and Dolu nuzzled her face into his hand. The next second, without warning, she raised a front paw and lunged.

He couldn't even get a sound out. Wen Ran went down flat on his back with Dolu on top of him, the solid weight pinning him in place. For several seconds he couldn't breathe at all. Instinctively he looked to Gu Yunchi for help. In the chaos, all he saw was him standing coldly to the side, unmoved.

Dolu seemed happy, though - a rumbling purr in her throat - and licked his face twice. The keeper came over quickly to shoo her off and pulled Wen Ran up, explaining, "Dolu likes you too much."

Wen Ran brushed the bits of grass off himself. A moment later, it hit him: Gu Yunchi had been letting Dolu embarrass him on purpose, watching from the wall, a condescending kind of humiliation. Still gasping for air, he looked up at Gu Yunchi and, unusually direct, asked, "Isn't this space too small for Dolu?"

When Dolu had pressed down on him, her weight had been shocking. Wen Ran figured she was exactly at the stage where she needed to run free. The activity area looked big, sure, but compared to forests and grasslands, it was still a bit limited.

Gu Yunchi's gaze lingered on Wen Ran's face for an unusual three-plus seconds. "None of your business."

He walked toward the exit. As he brushed past Wen Ran, he added, "The whole mountain behind it is hers."