Chapter 1

◎Actually, I Can’t Mark with My Pheromones.◎

A thick, cloying sweetness of strawberries saturated the air, mingled with a rich, heady aroma of liqueur that struck Liang Shi’s senses with overwhelming force.

A fire seemed to burn inside her chest.

The heat ignited at her fingertips and blazed straight through to the deepest part of her soul.

Liang Shi’s ribcage felt like it was about to explode, yet the scent only grew more intense with every breath. Each inhale sent the fragrance lancing through her nose, making her want to collapse into a drunken stupor right here.

She tried holding her breath, but the skin behind her ears kept burning. Heat radiated through the cramped space, and she could have sworn she heard a soft, breathy moan at the edge of her hearing.

Tantalizing and painful at once.

Utterly magnetic.

Strange fragments kept flooding her mind, all scenes of decadent indulgence, worlds apart from her own life. But the shattered pieces refused to connect into a coherent thread.

Add to that the unbearable heat raging through her body, every inch of skin feeling as if it had been licked by flames, desperate to touch something, anything.

She longed to drain that cup of sweet, cool liqueur in one gulp to soothe the aching in her body.

So unbearable…

Liang Shi finally forced her eyelids apart. What greeted her was an extravagantly furnished room: a plush white carpet spread across the floor, a gilded chandelier overhead, and she herself lying on the carpet, its soft pile enveloping her body.

She struggled to piece together the scattered fragments in her mind.

She seemed to have… transmigrated into a novel.

Into a book called Sweet Love, to be precise, where she now inhabited the body of a cannon-fodder Scumbag Alpha with the same name. The original host had coveted the peerlessly beautiful Omega Xu Qingzhu, seizing the opportunity when the Xu family enterprise was in crisis to maneuver her way into marrying her. But Xu Qingzhu was introverted by nature, and because she had been kidnapped as a child, she suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, which was why she had never allowed the original host to touch her.

The original Scumbag Alpha had initially been patient enough to coax and deceive her, but when that yielded no results, her true nature surfaced.

Eventually, she went so far as to hide all the suppressants in the house while Xu Qingzhu was in heat, intending to use the overwhelming pheromone suppression of a powerful Alpha’s rut period to force a bond and mark her against her will.

In this world, an Omega’s heat period and an Alpha’s rut period both came once every three months. If an Alpha marked an Omega in heat during their own rut, it would become a permanent mark.

To sever such a permanent mark, the Omega’s gland would have to be gouged out.

Gouging out an Omega’s gland meant their physical constitution would deteriorate and their lifespan would shorten.

And an Omega in heat who took no suppressant and had no bond with an Alpha would burn up and die.

So the Scumbag Alpha Liang Shi had made thorough preparations for this assault. What she hadn’t expected was that the introverted Xu Qingzhu had a fierce streak buried in her bones. She pulled a pair of scissors from under her pillow and fought back, even slashing the back of the Alpha’s hand.

Furious and humiliated, the Scumbag Alpha Liang Shi slapped Xu Qingzhu twice that very night.

Later, on a dark and windy night, she used the cover of alcohol to gouge out Xu Qingzhu’s gland, leaving her unable to bear children for the rest of her life, stripped of her sense of taste, her health ruined.

And now, having just arrived, Liang Shi’s mind was in complete chaos, yet her body was drawn involuntarily to the sweet, intoxicating scent filling the room.

Her body seemed beyond her control, wholly led by the sweet Omega pheromones. She forced herself upright and immediately spotted the Omega on the bed.

That irresistibly alluring scent came from her.

She wanted to lean in close behind her ear and breathe in her pheromones at point-blank range.

It would surely be the sweetest fragrance imaginable.

Just imagining it made Liang Shi’s body hum with pleasure.

The Omega on the bed had flushed cheeks and languid, smoldering eyes. Her skin was snow-white, but now it was suffused with a rosy blush, as if dusted with a layer of gorgeous rouge. She wore a white silk camisole nightgown, and around her exquisite collarbone hung a slender silver necklace.

Her smooth, pale calves were bare, and her pretty toes were painted with a vivid red polish that looked anything but vulgar. Instead, it contrasted beautifully with her cool, ethereal aura. Coupled with those hazy, unfocused eyes, she looked like a veil of red gauze draped over pristine snow.

Dreamlike, bewitching, irresistible.

Even the way her pale foot brushed lightly against her own calf sent shivers straight through Liang Shi with every touch, as if it weren’t a foot at all but a feather.

The Scumbag Alpha Liang Shi had deliberately avoided using suppressants to maximize the power of her rut-period pheromone suppression. Now, continuously lured by that sweet scent, every cell in Liang Shi’s body screamed to embrace the Omega on the bed.

To mark this Omega. To make this Omega hers.

Liang Shi had no time to think. Driven by instinct, she lunged onto the bed.

The motion was too violent and startled Xu Qingzhu, who had been fighting to resist the Alpha’s overwhelming pheromones.

She opened her eyes. They were the eyes of a fawn lost in the forest: dark pupils, innocent and afraid, glistening with terror and despair.

Liang Shi hadn’t fully claimed this body yet. The Scumbag Alpha’s lingering consciousness still thought only one thing: Mark her.

An Omega like this was born to be conquered.

Once I mark her, she’ll love me forever.

…

The original Scumbag Alpha’s thoughts kept surfacing, each one more shameless and vile than the last.

Yet those thoughts made Liang Shi’s body respond with a primal thrill.

She silently despised this body.

But her hand had already made contact with the Omega’s skin.

Raised in the lap of luxury, the Omega was delicate and soft. Her skin felt like expensive silk, smooth and rich to the touch. Leaning close to breathe in her pheromones, the scent was strawberry Baileys liqueur.

It was a liqueur Liang Shi adored, and in this intoxicating atmosphere, the fragrance set every nerve ending ablaze.

The bedroom lights were off. Only moonlight filtered through the sheer curtains, draping the Omega in a hazy, alluring glow.

“Liang Shi.” Xu Qingzhu clenched her fists. “Don’t touch me.”

“Without my mark, you’ll die.” The sentence flashed through Liang Shi’s mind unbidden. Her body even tried to speak it aloud, but she bit down on her own tongue.

Thankfully, the words didn’t come out.

“I won’t touch you,” Liang Shi said, stepping backward until her back hit the wardrobe. But her body was still being pulled toward the Omega’s pheromones. She gripped her own palm hard, nails nearly piercing the skin. The pain clawed back a sliver of her rationality.

She knew she couldn’t stay in this room any longer.

An Alpha in rut and an Omega in heat, both in the same room, both fighting their bodily instincts, was an almost impossible ordeal. Especially since she couldn’t fully control this body yet.

So she tossed out one final line: “I’ll call an ambulance for you.”

Then she stumbled out of the room.

The moment she crossed the threshold, the plotline of the original novel poured into her mind.

After the Scumbag Alpha Liang Shi gouged out Xu Qingzhu’s gland, Xu Qingzhu escaped the Alpha’s control with the help of an admirer, was hospitalized for treatment, and after discharge struggled to rebuild the family enterprise, bringing it back from the brink and becoming the most revered figure in all of Haizhou City.

As for the Scumbag Alpha, Xu Qingzhu’s admirer had the Alpha’s gland gouged out and fed to dogs. It was also revealed that she wasn’t the real eldest daughter of the Liang family at all. Stripped of her status, she became a stray, tortured until death would have been a mercy.

Liang Shi: …

Was staying alive really so hard?

Liang Shi swallowed hard. Before she could finish sorting through the fragmented information, the screen of a phone lying on the floor lit up.

It was the original host’s phone.

She picked it up and unlocked it with facial recognition. Messages kept popping up.

-How did it go? Did it succeed?

-What’s the taste of Haizhou’s Top Omega like? Slutty enough?

-If you get bored of her, remember to call us over. Together. /grin

-Now that you mention it, I want to try her tomorrow.

-Want to do it tomorrow? Together? @Liang Shi

The group chat was flooded with messages, all messy and crude, most of them revolving around Liang Shi and Xu Qingzhu.

Liang Shi frowned as she read them. What kind of garbage was the original host?

Joking about her own wife with strangers.

She typed back impatiently: 【Get lost.】

The chat erupted.

But Liang Shi didn’t bother reading their replies.

She switched out immediately and dialed emergency services, accurately relaying her location and the specific type of suppressant needed.

Then she leaned against the door, gasping for air. The back of her dress was soaked through, clinging to her skin. The Omega’s sweet pheromones kept wafting over, and her rationality teetered on the edge of collapse once more.

She raised her hand and bit down hard on the back of her own hand, using the pain to redirect her focus.

She clawed back a sliver of sanity.

She gently pushed the door open, just wanting to check on Xu Qingzhu. But the instant the door swung open, the Omega on the bed opened her eyes and warned her in a hoarse, strained voice: “Don’t come near me.”

Her expression was wracked with pain; it was clear she was fighting desperately to resist the pull of the pheromones.

Liang Shi didn’t understand.

Why would that Scumbag Alpha want to hurt such a sweet, precious Omega?

But the moment she thought of Xu Qingzhu’s future appearance and the original host’s fate, Liang Shi’s heart slammed against her ribs. She suppressed the searing pain in her body and forced herself to sound calm: “The ambulance will be here soon. Also, let me tell you a secret.”

Xu Qingzhu lifted her head. Those hazy eyes were filled with confusion.

The silk camisole slipped down one shoulder.

Liang Shi looked away and said with an awkward cough: “Actually, I have pheromone marking incompetence.”

Xu Qingzhu: “?”

“So don’t worry,” Liang Shi said. “I can’t.”

Xu Qingzhu: “…?”