Apex Predator - Chap 47

Shen Dai fell into a very long and profound slumber. He was beyond exhausted. At the end of heat, hormone levels would fall back to normal, and the excessive amounts of energy borrowed from the body during that period would then need to be “repaid”. Besides, he had just single-handedly sustained the bottomless desire of an S-class Alpha throughout their entire rut.

He’d awakened to darkness, the blackout curtains of the room drawn shut, not knowing at all if it were day or night.

Turning his body, he reached out his hand to grab beside him out of habit.

“Moyu…”

A fistful of nothing.

He opened his eyes, only to find the place next to him empty. His palm fell upon the mattress to touch a patch of cool warmth; It was clear that the other person had left a long time ago.

Though he knew well that Qu Moyu must have already gotten up, he could not help his disappointment. After all, Qu Moyu had spent every minute and every second of the past one week desperately clinging onto him. Eating, sleeping, bathing – there was not a moment where he didn’t require his company, not a moment where he had taken his eyes off him.

He had an intense feeling of unreality about everything that had just transpired. Reaching out his hand, he felt the back of his neck; The band-aid had already been torn off. The bite wound on his gland had already scabbed over, leaving behind a scar that would not be erased for the rest of his life. He could clearly sense the presence of the ebony wood pheromones

His body and free will no longer solely belonged to him, but despite all evidence to the contrary, it still felt like it had been a dream.

Qu Moyu had marked him.

Qu Moyu had marked him?!

He couldn’t help placing his hand on the flat surface of his stomach. Could their child already be there?

The rate of conception during heat was very high. As long as one did not use preventative measures, it was more that the rate of not getting pregnant was low

His and Qu Moyu’s child…just thinking about it made his heart swell up and filled with endless warmth. He savoured this state of mind for a good long while, and as his mind reawakened, his reason gradually returned as well.

He reasoned that if he had been forced into heat, then Uncle Heng must have helped him request a leave of absence. Even though suddenly going into heat fell under a routine occurrence, labour laws stipulated that it was not considered a valid reason to be absent from work without a proper authorisation.

Had his grandmother tried to reach him over the past few days? What if….- Wait a minute! Suddenly he recalled that his phone had been crushed by Qu Moyu.

Shen Dai sat up on the bed as scene after scene of that night flashed through his mind, but for a short time, he couldn’t connect that strange ringtone with Qu Moyu’s sudden change, at any rate, this already went way beyond his cognitive framework.

With his head in his hands, he wrung his hair, then decided to go have a bath to bring himself back to the present as quickly as possible.

Both his legs and back were unbelievably sore. Even though the room had been cleaned, the scent of desire still lingered everywhere. Thinking about the absurdity of the past few days, his face started to redden.

Sluggishly, he dragged himself into the bathroom and took off his clothes to see his reflection in the mirror. His whole body was covered in love bites; it was simply— simply too unbearable to look at. He quickly averted his eyes and stepped into the shower.

After he was done showering, he dried off his hair while walking out of the bathroom. The room was still dark except for a faint glow spilling out from the bathroom.

Just as he was thinking of walking to the bedside to turn on the lights, he suddenly noticed a pitch-black, towering figure which had appeared on the corner sofa at some indeterminate point in time.

He had a fright. Looking at that pair of long legs that were crossed, he asked, “Moyu? Why didn’t you turn the lights on?”

A hand reached out to the lamp on the coffee table, gently flicking on the switch with its long and slender fingers, unhurried and graceful in its movements, suggestive of a starting position falling onto the keys of a piano. Qu Moyu’s face was flickering under the lamplight’s halo, making difficult to read his state of mind, yet his eyes were dark and profound, with irises like interlocking gears and pupils like the depthless blue holes of the Bahamas – to fall into them was to be swallowed whole.

A chill that cut to the bone crept up his spine all the way to the top of his skull. His body trembled slightly. He could sense Qu Moyu’s emotional fluctuations more keenly than before, which meant also that he was more easily affected by them.

He had a sensation of terror.

Still holding a glimmer of hope, he struggled as he called out a coaxing, “Hubby?” longing for Qu Moyu to respond with the same enthusiasm and affection as he had the past few days.

Qu Moyu’s reply was to wrinkle the space between his eyebrows slightly to show his undisguised contempt. He picked up a clear ziplock bag from the coffee table. Inside was a mobile phone that had been smashed into pieces. “Know the principle of how this thing works?”

Shen Dai was staring blankly at his own phone, unsure if he had understood Qu Moyu’s question.

“A device capable of emitting infrasonic waves has been embedded inside. The special ringtone serves as the triggering mechanism. Although humans can only perceive the sound of the ringtone and not the ultrasound waves, these waves can influence the endocrine system.”

“What? Did Qu Chengchen not explain it to you?” sneered Qu Moyu. “Eh, in fact he didn’t need to. This was developed by the military specifically to deal with top alphas. Interrogation under torture, interference, assault—it’s genuinely impressive. Most ordinary people would not come into contact with something like this in their entire lives.”

Shen Dai’s mind was completely blank. In his lifetime, there had only been a handful of occasions where he found himself completely unable to think. Many times, the more difficult the problem was, the more he saw it as an interesting challenge. Not now though. Now, he was in a state of panic.

Qu Moyu rose to his feet and began to walk towards Shen Dai, taking one step at a time.

A coldness that seeped down to his very marrow caused Shen Dai to retreat backwards by two steps. And then he found himself frozen in place – Qu Moyu was not letting him move.

Stepping in front of Shen Dai, Qu Moyu lowered his head, carefully scrutinising that fair and handsome face. His heart was trembling uncontrollably. After all, they had experienced the most feverish passion on earth over the past seven days, leaving behind countless searing memories. During rut, he would have willingly died in battle to protect his omega, without a moment’s hesitation.

But his rut was over now. He had woken up.

He held the phone inside the ziplock bag up next to Shen Dai’s face, to remind himself to looking at reality instead of this face that was so good at pretending. “Would you care to explain?” he asked, his voice icy.

Shaking his head, Shen Dai replied , “I don’t know.” He had no idea what Qu Moyu was talking about. Why would his phone have given off any kind of infrasonic waves? Suddenly he thought back to the afternoon of the incident. He had been called back home by Shen Qin under the pretext that his grandmother wasn’t feeling well. After that, Shen Qin had taken his phone when he had gone out to buy food. Within the span of up to one hour, Shen Qin…, no wait, there was no way he had this sort of capability. It had to be Qu Chengchen!

His pupils suddenly narrowed. But in Qu Moyu’s eyes, he was only looking for a way to weasel out of things.

He looked up at Qu Moyu, speaking frantically, “It wasn’t me. I don’t know why my phone would…that day when I went home, my Dad took my phone away. I don’t know anything about any infrasonic waves!”

Though he himself knew that this explanation was too shoddy, it was the whole truth. He took hold of Qu Moyu’s arm, releasing pheromones to try and placate his alpha. In a gentle voice, he said, “Moyu, Listen to me. My head’s a mess right now too. Just let me go and…”

There was a cruel glint in Qu Moyu’s eyes. He flung Shen Dai’s arm off, securing his hand around that fair and slender neck, violently pinning him up against the wall. Through clenched teeth, he spat out viciously, one word at a time, “You. Manipulated. Me.”

The bitterness of being betrayed by one’s lover was making him seethe with a murderous fury. He had been so taken in by this omega’s outward appearance of gentleness and calmness, repeatedly disregarding his own rules and showering him with kindness and favour. He had never been so attentive to any one Omega, even going as far as to think he should keep this one by his side for a very long time. But unfortunately, it was also this omega who had colluded with his enemies to set up a trap for him without batting an eyelid.

Images of Shen Dai kept appearing before his eyes: the one who was cool and composed, the one who smiled, the one who was moved to passion.

Those beautiful scenes they had shared together turned into silent films playing over and over in his mind, superimposing with the Shen Dai before him. No, everything in his memory had been a lie. This omega was so greedy, so despicable, so cunning!

His heart felt like it had been wrenched viciously by an invisible hand, He couldn’t begin to comprehend this kind of pain. Never in his life had he felt this kind of humiliation. Truly he wanted to kill someone!

“Ugh…” Shen Dai was straining to stand on his tiptoes. The pain of being unable to catch his breath caused him to let out a feeble whimper.

He opened his eyes wide and stared incredulously at the person facing him, their gaze ferocious, with nothing but hatred in their bloodshot eyes. His alpha – the one who just yesterday held him with utter affection and extreme fondness. This person was his alpha!

As crystalline tears ran down his cheeks, Shen Dai realised the stark contrast of stepping into thin air and falling from heaven straight into hell. And just as he was on the brink of suffocating, Qu Moyu flung him to the ground.

Shen Dai clutched his throat, coughing violently, face turning red and eyes welling up with tears. Raising his head up slowly, he gasped, “I didn’t, I didn’t do anything at all.”

Qu Moyu smoothed out his trousers, then crouched down and caught Shen Dai’s chin. “You didn’t do anything at all? So you didn’t use your heat as a way to climb on top of me? And you didn’t work with my enemies to take advantage of my rut and steal my mark?”

Shen Dai’s heart hurt so much it was about to shatter. He had no words to say in defense.

“You really are very clever. You’re so good at pretending. Looks like all that studying didn’t go to waste.” Qu Moyu maliciously applied more pressure on the fingers he had around Shen Dai’s chin, “Thinking about it now, how could things have been so coincidental? Perhaps the accident in the laboratory four years ago was also a trap devised by you? But since I resisted, you went into heat again at the investor meeting, figuring there was no way I would just leave you like that. Wow, you really must have taken great pains just to get me to fuck you.”

Shen Dai shook his head, trembling.

Even during the early stages of their relationship when Qu Moyu regarded him with suspicion, he had never said such poisonous and unkind things to him.

Qu Moyu, with his lofty and elegant demeanour, would have found it beneath him to utter such malicious and vulgar words. But the person he was looking at now was so unfamiliar – wait, no, maybe, this was the real Qu Moyu.

“Do you know what I’ve lost in the past seven days? I marked an inferior omega who was totally undeserving of my mark, and might have even gotten him pregnant with my child.

He swept a gaze that was as piercing as a knife across Shen Dai’s belly.

“Under the influence of the infrasonic waves, my rut occurred three or four days earlier than anticipated. Before I could even settle all the matters I was handling, Qu Chengchen took advantage of this period to join forces with multiple parties to short the stock and then buy a large amount at a lower price. The situation outside had changed completely, but I was confined to my home like an animal, unable to do anything but copulate. If not for my father’s painstaking efforts to stabilise the situation, Qu Chengchen might have already seized power by now!”

Shen Dai looked at Qu Moyu in a daze, his eyes filled with panic and despair.

A beautiful dream – had turned into a horrible nightmare.

Qu Moyu stood over Shen Dai, who was lying on his stomach, unable to move. Those eyes, which had not so long ago been filled with warmth and affection, were now looking down at him as if he were a piece of filth.

“You must have thought that you got what you wanted, that once you got my mark you could control me. There’s no one who can control me. There’s no one who can make a fool out of me. You are going to pay the price.”