Chapter 99: Lingering

I hear the car pull up at 10:47 PM.

I’ve been sitting in the living room for the past two hours, phone in my hand, checking it periodically even though I know he’s not going to text back at this point.

He didn’t respond to my message from this morning.

Didn’t call back, didn’t send anything to indicate he’d even seen it.

Just... nothing.

All day.

But he’s home now, and I can tell him in person, which is what I wanted anyway.

I stand up, moving toward the entryway before I fully decide to, and I’m already forming the words in my head...*I placed second, the collaboration starts Monday, they might actually build it*...

The door opens.

Bael steps inside.

And the smell hits me immediately.

Sweet.

Cloying.

Unmistakable.

Xue Lian’s scent, all over him, so strong it makes my stomach turn violently.

I stop walking.

Just stop completely, several feet away from him, and my brain is trying to process what I’m smelling while my body reacts on pure instinct.

Another omega’s pheromones.

On my alpha.

My alpha.

The thought surfaces before I can stop it, and I hate it immediately.

Bael looks at me, expression neutral, like nothing is wrong.

Like he doesn’t smell like he’s been—

"Where were you?" The words come out before I can stop them.

Sharp.

Accusing.

His expression doesn’t change. "Working."

"Working." I repeat it flatly. "You smell like him."

"Like who?"

"Don’t..." I stop. Take a breath that makes my stomach worse. "Xue Lian. You smell like Xue Lian."

For a second, he doesn’t say anything.

Just looks at me with that controlled, measured expression that gives nothing away.

"Did you fuck him?" The question tears out of me, louder than I intended, and I can hear how wrecked my voice sounds but I can’t control it.

His jaw tightens slightly.

That’s the only reaction I get.

"Why are you asking me that?" His voice is flat. Controlled.

"Because you smell like him!" My hands are shaking. "Because it’s all over you and you won’t even—"

I can’t finish the sentence.

Can’t get the words out past the way my throat is closing up.

He takes a step toward me.

I take a step back automatically, and the movement makes something flash across his expression too fast for me to identify.

"Runze—"

"Did you?" I ask again, and my voice breaks on the question. "Just tell me. Did you sleep with him?"

The silence stretches.

He’s looking at me with that blank, distant expression, the one that means he’s shut down completely, the one I’ve seen him use in business meetings when someone asks a question he doesn’t want to answer.

"That’s not your concern," he says finally.

The words hit like a physical blow.

Not my concern.

"Not my..." I can’t breathe properly. "We’re married."

"We are." His tone doesn’t change, stays perfectly level. "And you knew what this was from the beginning."

Something in my chest cracks.

Because he’s right.

I did know.

There were no vows about love or fidelity, no promises beyond the practical.

We got married because I was pregnant, because his father’s will required it, because it solved problems for both of us.

That’s all this ever was.

Marriage born from necessity, not choice.

I knew that.

So why does this feel like betrayal?

Why does the smell of Xue Lian on him make me want to tear my own skin off?

"Get away from me," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. "Just... stay away from me."

I turn and walk.

Not to our bedroom.

Can’t go there, can’t be in that space right now, can’t be surrounded by things that smell like him, like us, like something I apparently made up in my head.

I go to my old room instead.

The one I used when I first moved here, before everything changed, before I got stupid enough to think this meant something it clearly doesn’t.

The door closes behind me.

Locks.

And I stand there in the dark, hand pressed against my stomach where the bump is, where our baby is growing, and try to figure out what the fuck just happened.

He didn’t deny it, didn’t say "no, I didn’t sleep with him." Didn’t explain why he smells like that if nothing happened.

Just... shut down.

Told me it’s not my concern.

Like I don’t have a right to ask.

Like I don’t have a right to care.

My phone is still in my pocket.

The email is still there.

Second Place: Li Runze

I was so excited to tell him.

Spent all day waiting, checking my phone, wanting him to be the first person I shared this with because for some stupid, delusional reason I thought he’d want to know.

Thought he’d care, thought it mattered to him that I accomplished something real.

But he was with Xue Lian.

All day, apparently.

While I was sitting here with good news and nowhere to put it, he was—

I can’t finish that thought.

Can’t picture it.

My stomach lurches again and I make it to the bathroom just in time, retching into the toilet even though there’s nothing in my stomach to come up.

The smell is still in my nose.

Sweet and cloying and wrong.

Another omega’s pheromones all over the alpha I’ve been sharing a bed with for months.

The alpha whose child I’m carrying.

The alpha I was stupid enough to start falling for.

That thought makes me retch again.

Because that’s what this is, isn’t it?

That’s why it hurts so much.

Not because he broke some unspoken rule.

But because somewhere along the way, I started caring.

Started thinking this was more than a practical arrangement.

Started believing that the way he looked at me, the way he adjusted his schedule, the way he told me to sit properly and stop talking but let me stay in his office anyway—

Started believing that meant something.

But it doesn’t.

It never did.

I was a convenient solution.

A way to fulfill his father’s will.

Someone who happened to be pregnant at the right time with the right genetics.

That’s all.

I just forgot.

I got distracted by dinners and cushions for my chair and the way he said my name when he came inside me.

Got stupid enough to think proximity meant connection.

I sit on the bathroom floor with my back against the wall and my hand on my stomach and try to breathe through the way my chest feels like it’s caving in.

The baby moves.

Just a flutter.

Small enough that I’m not entirely sure it’s real.

But it’s there.

A reminder that regardless of what just happened, regardless of whether this marriage means anything, there’s still a person growing inside me who’s going to need me to have my shit together.

I close my eyes.

The smell is fading now.

Or maybe I’m just getting used to it.

Either way, I can breathe slightly easier.

I sit there in the dark bathroom of a room I haven’t slept in for months and try to figure out how I’m supposed to go back to normal after this.

How I’m supposed to smile through dinners and sleep in the same bed and pretend I don’t know what he smells like when he’s been with someone else.

How I’m supposed to stop caring when I apparently can’t control whether I care or not.

The tile is cold beneath me.

The room is quiet.

And somewhere in another part of the house, Bael is probably already asleep.

Unbothered.

Because this doesn’t matter to him.

Never did.

I was just too stupid to realize it.