Chapter 25: Why don’t we sleep in the same bed?

The sweet grapefruit scent of omega pheromones was lightly mixed with the scent of vetiver grass. If Pei Yutu hadn’t been so close, it would have been difficult to notice. However, even if it was light, it was still sweet enough to remind him of that night in the small cubicle of the Wind Chimes Bar, and the embarrassing temporary mark.

Pei Yutu’s heart moved. He raised his voice to tell the student class leaders to direct their own practice, and then dragged Instructor Ping away in large strides. The watching crowd of students was dumbfounded. Teaching Assistant Pei is more anxious than Instructor Ping? How could anyone be in a hurry to be scolded?

It had been four days since the last temporary marking, and according to past experience, the entire bonding heat should last about three days. Even if the recent flare-ups had become more frequent, it wouldn’t be possible to have another flare-up on the fourth day. That was obviously very abnormal.

Unfortunately, Ping Mo didn’t have time to think carefully about his health. The effort of walking a few steps made his tailbone burst into a bout of itchiness.

Pei Yutu was walking fast when he felt Ping Mo suddenly stop. “What’s wrong?”

The boonie cap covered half of Ping Mo’s face, and his expression was not visible, except that his hand was gripping Pei Yutu’s wrist so hard that his knuckles turned white. Ping Mo said, “Pei Yutu, it’s too late to go back to the dorm.” 

Pei Yutu looked around and found that although there were not many people around, there was also no cover in front or behind. If he chewed on his neck in the street, according to Ping Mo’s temper, afterwards, not only would he not thank him, he would probably pick out a good knife from his cabinet of ‘collections’ and stab him through.

“Let’s go!” Pei Yutu grabbed Ping Mo and ran.

It turned out that there was a green forest not far away, and because of the dense trees, the environment was quiet. After nightfall, the woods were often visited by young couples, so the students had a nickname for it, Lovers Forest. At that moment, it was the most suitable cover.

Ping Mo wasn’t feeling well, and his running speed was reduced. As they ran, the sweet grapefruit omega pheromones slowly thickened. Pei Yutu began to fear that Ping Mo’s cat ears would come out, so he simply picked Ping Mo up bridal style.

Ping Mo was startled, and spat out, “fuck.” He looked around hurriedly. He didn’t see anyone else, so he didn’t struggle. Now was not the time to be pretentious. As long as no one noticed them, it was good.

The physical strength of a top alpha was displayed at this time. Pei Yutu was tall, long-legged, with amazing physical ability, and even with a person in his arms, he still walked so fast he almost flew, and in the blink of an eye, they had rushed into the woods.

Lovers Forest was true to its name, with its shady trees and dense foliage that blocked the view even just a few steps away. It was indeed a good place to do naughty things.

At the moment, Ping Mo’s omega pheromones were even stronger and sweeter, so Pei Yutu intentionally released his own pheromones to cover it. The grapefruit fragrance was wrapped in the more intense, spicy, tequila alpha pheromones and caused a deterrent. Even if there were people near the woods, they wouldn’t dare approach.

However, the strong alpha pheromones also led to the bonding heat symptoms becoming more and more obvious. After a few seconds, Instructor Ping’s pair of fluffy cat ears popped up under the hat.

“Ah!” Ping Mo simply ripped off his hat, and practically squeezed out the sentence from between his teeth, “Pei Yutu, mark me!”

Pei Yutu was almost hooked on the sweet grapefruit pheromones. He bit the back of that white neck, but didn’t pierce the skin, only gripped the glands with his teeth. He licked his neck which caused Ping Mo to shudder. His cat ears also shuddered.

“Fuck! What are you doing?” Ping Mo glared at Pei Yutu. His gaze was fierce, almost murderous, but unfortunately his beautiful gray-blue eyes were misted over, and his fair cheeks were flushed scarlet, which greatly reduced his lethality.

Pei Yutu looked at his face, and suddenly his mouth cracked with a smile full of neat white teeth. “I remembered one thing. The best way to inject pheromones for a temporary marking, is to control the number of times.”

Ping Mo, “?”

Pei Yutu, “If I repeatedly inject my pheromones, and repeatedly reinforce the temporary mark, you might not be able to be marked by other alphas later. You-“

Ping Mo interrupted him immediately, “I don’t care. Stop nagging!”

He didn’t care. He wasn’t even thinking about being tagged by others!

Pei Yutu was stunned by his words, and felt that it sounded so good that he almost went along with it and bit him, but when he thought of the man’s previous bad behavior of ‘pulling out and being heartless,’ 1 he held back and continued to speak seriously, “But I do mind! This will also affect my future and marking other omegas!”

This was pure nonsense. If an omega was temporarily marked multiple times, that would have an effect, but an alpha could mark any omega multiple times, and didn’t have to be loyal to a single omega. He could only fool a scum who didn’t take junior high school physiology class properly, and Instructor Ping was scum in a way.

–He was selected to join the “fledgling program” when he was eleven years old and became a reserve for the Raptors, so while other children held pens when he held a gun. He hadn’t received the serious compulsory education, let alone true physiology classes.

Seeing that Instructor Ping was really fooled, Pei Yutu then took advantage to voice his real purpose. “How about trying another method? We can have intimate contact in a different way. We can kiss.”

The kiss in his wet dream was so tasty, that he was really sad when they didn’t kiss at the Wind Chimes Bar. It had become an obsession for Teaching Assistant Pei, who jumped at the chance to say, “To help you, I’ll take a loss, and you can have my first kiss.” 

The one in the dream didn’t count.

However, Ping Mo said flatly, “No.”

Pei Yutu, “Why?!”

“It’s disgusting.” Ping Mo’s cheeks grew redder, and his breathing heavier. “Kissing is disgusting.”

Pei Yutu wanted to continue to take advantage of the situation to force his hand, but saw that Instructor Ping Mo was frequently turning to touch his tailbone, as if he were very worried about his tail suddenly emerging. Teaching Assistant Pei could not help but imagine the situation of his tail emerging and bursting through his pants. The scene was admittedly bloodthirsty, but Instructor Ping Mo must be angry.

Pei Yutu sighed inwardly, and took the initiative to lower his standards. “Then call me brother, and I’ll give you a mark.”

Ping Mo almost thought he was hearing things, “What did you say?”

Pei Yutu repeated it in a loud and proper voice.

Ping Mo felt a surge of anger and blood. He forcibly suppressed the urge to push him down and perish together, and said, “I am two years older than you.”

Pei Yutu said, “Not the same! You’re a Therian. You’re late in developing. You’ve just reached puberty in terms of physical maturity, and you appear to be 18 or 19 years old when you look at your face, so what’s wrong with calling me brother?”

“…” Ping Mo almost let out a curse, but felt a sudden, electric tingling in his tailbone. According to his experience, in a few seconds his tail would burst through his pants to expand. With a black face, Instructor Ping clenched his teeth as he squeezed out, “Brother.”

It was not in a bedside manner, but rather like he wanted to beat someone up.

Pei Yutu didn’t hear that, so with no other mishaps, as promised, he strongly bit the back of Ping Mo’s neck. The process of injecting pheromones was smoother than the first time, and Ping Mo didn’t even feel pain when he pierced the skin, but almost let out a sigh of relief. Pei Yutu was obviously very satisfied. When he let go of his mouth, he was still not done and ground his teeth gently at the edge of the gland.

He sniffed deeply at Ping Mo’s neck like a large dog. “This smell. That vetiver grass alpha pheromone. Is it the spray Strong Alpha Forest? That smell is too pretentious. If a little girl smells it, she’ll follow your ass every day, so don’t–“

Pei Yutu’s words hadn’t finished yet when he was caught off guard by Instructor Ping’s over the shoulder throw, and he fell on a ground full of stones and dirt.

“!”

Teaching Assistant Pei had thick skin and thick flesh, so this heavy fall didn’t feel very painful. He reflexively and immediately bounced up, saw that Instructor Ping had turned away, and quickly ran to catch up, “Hey Ping Mo–“

He just got those three words out, when against his neck was a bright, shiny, and cold tactical knife.

The cat’s ears on top of Ping Mo’s head hadn’t yet retreated, and as he raised the knife his movement shook slightly. The furry glutinous effect was cute, but his words were not related at all to ‘cute.’

“Don’t follow me! Go away!” Ping Mo used the back of the knife to press hard. The cold touch was tight against the neck, and if he were to turn the blade just slightly, he would cut the artery.

Pei Yutu, “…”

Ping Mo was afraid that he would make a mistake and kill his ‘living inhibitor’ on the spot, so he put away the knife with a black face, donned his boonie hat and walked away.

Pei Yutu looked at his back, and touched his nose. “If you didn’t want to call me brother, you didn’t have to.”

“It’s not ditching after the deed, it’s simply unloading a donkey!” 2

Teaching Assistant Pei didn’t realize that he had been compared to a donkey, but he had made his head of prickly hair more messy, and he walked out of the Lover’s Forest a bit annoyed, then ran right into Director Zou of the Academic Affairs Office.

“Oh, Teaching Assistant Pei! What’s wrong with you?”

Pei Yutu then remembered that he had been thrown over the shoulder by Ping Mo and was covered in mud and dust.

Director Zou, a balding middle-aged male teacher, had the privilege of watching Ping Mo give the students a beating when he first took over and was impressed by his tactics. 

Pei Yutu waved his hand, and said that it was just a beating, not a big deal.

Director Zou replied, “By the way. The situation you responded to last time, there is a follow-up.”

Pei Yutu, “Did you find Chen Jianghao?”

Director Zou shook his head. “No, but we talked to the two students, Ji An and Zhou Li, and they both told us later that they had really been to that bar. But the told the initial lie in order to cover up for Chen Jianghao.”

Pei Yutu wondered, “Why did they lie for Chen Jianghao? Wasn’t he the one who sent them there?”

Director Zou, “We found out that Ji An and Chen Jianghao were actually lovers, so it was probably because of that, Ji An wanted to give him a chance, so he forgave him. Zhou Li was a good friend of Ji An’s, and didn’t expose Chen Jianghao because Ji An begged for mercy.”

Ji An was an omega male from the College of Economics and Management. Chen Jianghao was an alpha male from the College of Command and Control, and in this era, it wasn’t strange for university students to fall in love. The only thing strange was to fall in love and almost lose their lives. However to also protect each other…Pei Yutu shook his head. “This Ji An is really stupid.”

“That’s why I don’t approve of students falling in love. Their minds aren’t yet mature!” Director Zou said. “Suppose it’s true that Chen Jianghao wanted to sell them but he later turned back to the teacher, that’s you, to rescue them. We analyzed that he might have backtracked and the traffickers felt tricked. This time his disappearance is likely to be the revenge of those traffickers on him.”

Director Zou sighed, “According to that speculation, if he has been missing for so long, he is probably in grave danger.”

Pei Yutu also felt that the student’s situation was not optimistic, but still said, “It’s always good to have clues. Have the police checked?”

“Checked. The lobby surveillance was also transferred, but the bars up and down have bitten off more than a few students just to play. There’s no human trafficking, and the police didn’t search for evidence, and also can’t do anything to them.”

“I think it’s not that simple,” Pei Yutu said. “If it’s revenge, why take so long to do it?”

“Who knows,” Director Zou sighed again. “You say the students nowadays are the same, but I didn’t dare to go to such a chaotic place as Taiping Street, why should they go there? We still need to hold more safety education meetings to mend the situation!”

The two of them continued to chat for a few minutes before Pei Yutu changed the subject. “Director Zou, I have a question for you.”

When he heard the word “you” and the word “question”, Director Zou became alert and asked, “What?”

Pei Yutu scratched his head, “I heard that your wife is a female omega, and I thought you should have experience with omegas, so I wanted to ask what to do if you accidentally upset an omega.”

“I thought there was something!” Director Zou relaxed. “Teaching Assistant Pei is seeing someone? Omegas are weak and delicate!”

Pei Yutu nodded approvingly. He just gave a gentle bite, and his little ears were red. So delicate!

“So you have to take care of them and protect them,” Director Zou said.

Pei Yutu thought to himself, Instructor Ping’s hands really doesn’t need to be protected, and he doesn’t just use force to suppress others, he could already count on him to speak his mind.

So he asked a little more specifically, “But what if he’s not very good-tempered?”

“Oh, young people! You young people! You have to be aggressive in your relationships. How can a family be right or wrong?” Director Zou shook his head. “Think about it. Omegas are very precious, and make up less than one tenth of the population. How many alphas can marry one? Plus, there are betas competing with us! If an omega is willing to take care of us, that is our good fortune, and we must cherish it! So what if they are a little more arrogant? We should spoil them!”

“How dare you make him angry? Go apologize!” Director Zou poured out his years of experience on how to get along as a couple, then walked away shaking his head.

Pei Yutu also benefited a lot. It is indeed wrong to make him angry, so he had to quickly apologize.

However, brother still has to be called, the mouth still has to be kissed. He came up with a strategy. If he gets angry again, I’ll apologize again!

If Ping Mo hit him in the future, of course, he couldn’t fight back, but he also should avoid his knives!

After Ping Mo got his temporary mark, the bonding heat dissipated all the discomfort, then he pulled himself together to do business. First he called Leng Li, and asked for his Therian special inhibitors. The answer was vague, so he then instructed her to keep an eye on the Wind Chimes Bar. Once she discovered the whereabouts of Ghost Ear, she would immediately notify him.

In this matter, Leng Li promised to be quick, patting her chest to ensure that as long as Ghost Ear appeared in Taiping Street, he wouldn’t escape her sight.

Ping Mo had never doubted Leng Li’s ability, he was only afraid that for Ghost Ear it really was as the second boss said, he simply wouldn’t return to the Wind Chimes. The main star was so big, it was really searching for a needle in a haystack.

After Ping Mo returned to his dormitory, he opened the laptop computer, assigned all the instructors tasks, clicked on the search site and typed in the words, “private hospital.”

Ping Mo felt that he couldn’t delay any longer. His bonding heat had gone from once every two months, to once every two weeks, and now it was almost non-stop all the time in heat. There must be something wrong with his body.

In fact, there were many public hospitals in Star City. The consultation was also considered convenient, and the AMTC had reimbursement benefits. In addition to the scope of general medical insurance, they also gave the faculty and staff money to buy additional supplemental insurance, so seeing a doctor was almost free.

However, if a citizen went to a public hospital, their case would be filed in the network, that was equivalent to disclosing the secret that he was a Therian. Ping Mo circled several hospitals with a good reputation for privacy, and found a pattern. The better the service, the more expensive the price.

“…” Instructor Ping pulled out a blank sheet of paper with the big Alliance Military Technology header printed on it from the lesson plans stacked on the table, and began to calculate the spending in one stroke. Strong Alpha Forest Spray upgrade (vetiver grass scented), Therian special inhibitors, biodegradable material textured civilian clothes and training uniforms, S-grade knife maintenance oil, warrior-class trident military dagger…

In fact, when Ping Mo was transferred to the Alliance Military Technology University, even though the allowances had been adjusted downward, it wasn’t very low. If he took into account the various hidden benefits, if he was an ordinary person, as a middle-class white-collar he would be completely able to live a prosperous life. Unfortunately, Instructor Ping couldn’t use most of the benefits, and the first three items in the list of expenses were the immediate needs, and each item was more expensive than the other.

Instructor Ping stared at the list for a long time, then sent a message to Leng Li. He had to make some quick money. He had been on military pay since he was eleven years old, but he never thought he would have to worry about money after all these years.

Ping Mo had that chaotic dream that night.

The explosion site, the small Ping Mo’s short hands and feet, running and stumbling back about, burned off a layer of skin, hot pain, but he didn’t dare stop. His mother told him to run, to survive. He wanted to survive.

Little Ping Mo escaped from his smoky early childhood and ran into a dappled teenager. He was eleven years old that year.

The twelve or thirteen year old brother stared at the cream puffs he had squeezed into shapes and yelled in disgust, “Haven’t you ever eaten puffs? You treat me like a baby, and comfort me with this?”

Little Ping Mo swallowed his words. “I secretly took it out. If you won’t eat then I will eat it.”

The puff in his hand was snatched away, and the little brother said, “How can you take it back after giving it to someone?”

The face of the little brother in the dream was not very clear, only a vaguely visible profile that was swollen, as if he had been slapped hard.

“The aggravation I suffered today, sooner or later, I will pay it back ten times! Let the whole interstellar know my name! I’m not going back now, I want to get into the Fledgling Program and later into the Raptors! Why aren’t you in the audition?”

Little Ping Mo looked at his dejected puff. “Oh, there’s a buffet here. It’s filling.”

“…Ping Mo, you’re a great top alpha, so you can stay! No one will ever bully you again. I can’t stay because I’m an omega. If you can’t let me go, wait until you grow up to marry me, okay?”

The scene shifted. The interrogation room was dim, with only a white light that stung his sore and swollen eyes. It was impossible to see the face of the interrogator.

“Lieutenant Colonel Ping, you disguised yourself for so many years. In the end, what was the purpose? Who sent you the inhibitors? Is it Ghost Ear? Group E is a military stronghold, even an ant being brought in has to go through security checks! What method did you use to send in the Therian inhibitors unnoticed? Were there any other supplies or messages passed on? Oh, yes, and blatantly sending you roses, its quite a thought. This is a naked provocation!”

 

When Pei Yutu pushed in the door, it was as if he were a thief. He saw that Instructor Ping was restless in his sleep. By the moonlight coming through the window, he could see that his forehead was covered with fine beads of sweat, moistening a few strands of his bangs, and his long, thick eyelashes twitched restlessly. It was a striking, light projection on the bridge of his narrow nose.

“Fuck. He’s really fucking good-looking.” Teaching Assistant Pei stared at him for a long time, and condensed his feelings into those six simple words. However, the man had years of a special forces career so Instructor Pei, even in his sleep, remained alert. Upon hearing the sound, he jerked open his eyes, startled. In the pitch-black doorway, was a tall figure standing there?

When did that person come in? He didn’t feel them until they reached the bedroom?!

Pei Yutu saw Ping Mo, in the darkness, accurately reaching his hand to grab the knife. “Hey, hey, hey! It’s me! You were just marked by me during the day, it’s normal that you don’t feel threatened when I come in, so relax! Come on, put the knife down. What is this? You’re trying to kill me? Am I that strange and scary? Why so much sweat, nightmares?”

“…” Ping Mo was completely awake now, and let out a deep breath.”What did you come here for?”

Pei Yutu put his arm around Ping Mo’s shoulder. “I came to apologize to you. I thought it over, and I was wrong to make you angry during the day, but your secret is a big deal. Frequent injections of pheromones aren’t appropriate for either of us, and you don’t like kissing, so intimate physical contact is the first choice! Why don’t we sleep in the same bed?”

“Fuck off.”

“Hey you, why are you so full of swear words? Hurry up and go to sleep. I’ll take you to the doctor first thing in the morning, I’ve taken leave.”

Ping Mo became alert. “What kind of doctor?”

Pei Yutu yawned. “Your computer is open, the browser record is still there.”

Translator Notes:

拔吊无情 is internet slang, the literal translation is “Pulling out and become heartless.” Like a man after they pull their dick out of the hole, they are done with the person. It means being heartless, ditching after the deed. Classic Ping. 卸磨杀驴 means to kill the donkey after its job(carrying the stuff) is done