Mistakenly Marked – Chapter 32
by Little PandaStaying the Night
“You Want to Mark Me?”
Wind heavy with cold struck the floor-to-ceiling window, severing the world outside from the world within. Inside, shadow and warmth had blended together, and the sofa had become, in effect, a snug nest.
Pulled down onto it by Bo Suiqing, Xu Jialuo didn’t move for a moment. She remembered — Bo Suiqing had asked to be held once before, too. Apparently it wasn’t only kissing; an embrace could also give an Omega gentle comfort. So she merely bent one leg, knee braced against the sofa, hands planted on either side for what support they could give — not pressed too close, and not crushing the person beneath her.
Bo Suiqing felt the rigidity in Xu Jialuo’s posture. But there was no visible resistance. That was enough. Arms wrapping Xu Jialuo’s waist and back, she buried her face against her neck, breathing in her scent: her own crisp coolness, mingling with the thick, wine-dark richness of pheromones.
And as she breathed — was it her imagination? — the concentration of wine-scent pheromones in the air seemed to be slowly rising, twining with her own, winding closer and closer together.
…It smelled wonderful. It felt so good. Her whole body seemed steeped in pheromones, until breath and heartbeat both quickened, faintly.
Bo Suiqing tilted her head up. Her arms slid from Xu Jialuo’s waist to hook, unhurried, around her shoulders. Instinct drove her: she tightened them, pressing Xu Jialuo’s upper body lower, and soft lips nuzzled into her neck.
Before Xu Jialuo could go on soothing her, Bo Suiqing had moved first.
The skin along the side of her neck was touched. Xu Jialuo’s brow jumped; her hand rose reflexively to stop her. But the moment her bracing hand left the sofa, her body — support gone — sank lower still, which only made it easier for Bo Suiqing to gather her in.
Plush lips descended onto cool, pale skin, exactly as they’d wished. The lovely rounded bead of her lip pressed tight, skimming across in a slow graze.
Xu Jialuo’s spine went taut. A low, unguarded sound slipped from her throat and was crushed down almost instantly — but at this distance, Bo Suiqing caught it anyway.
…She wanted to hear more.
That voice of Xu Jialuo’s, so bewitching when she sang — if it were put to other uses, made to murmur other things…
…would it sound just as lovely?
Just as in the parking garage, Xu Jialuo felt the Omega’s lips tracking slowly along her neck toward her nape. But right now there was no barrier patch over her gland. Her hand flew to cover it.
Marking, by definition, was done by the Alpha: pheromones injected into an Omega’s gland, pheromones exchanged. But Xu Jialuo knew there were Omegas who bit — Omegas who carried the desire to mark. It was simply that Alphas, smug in their seat of control, never permitted such a thing, and an Omega, overpowered in body, could rarely succeed.
She had known long before her senior-year physiology teacher tapped the screen and lectured on the point.
Many years ago. A cramped corner, light gone dim, clutter heaped everywhere. A girl’s fever-hot body, her frantic, tangled movements. And the bright, piercing sting of teeth closing on a shoulder.
She had been bitten once, long ago, by an Omega out of her right mind.
Afterward, Liang Xiao — who had differentiated early, and could smell pheromones — had asked her who that Omega was. Nothing had come of it.
Because Xu Jialuo hadn’t known either.
Bo Suiqing discovered that Xu Jialuo was drifting.
Being held like this, intimately, by an apex Omega — and this Alpha could still lose herself in a daydream. …How dare she…
The sting of wounded pride churned together with the grievance of being ignored. Bo Suiqing seized Xu Jialuo’s wrist in a sudden rough motion, and in the very instant she wrenched that hand aside, arched her head up. Her lips finally reached Xu Jialuo’s gland — and the back of her own skull cracked against the sofa armrest.
It hurt. She paid it no mind.
She opened her mouth, craning up again to seal it over Xu Jialuo’s gland — and Xu Jialuo tore her hand free and clamped her jaw.
Bo Suiqing went still, forced to stop.
Rejected again.
Xu Jialuo frowned. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The tone held no warmth whatsoever — yet her hand had already braced itself against the armrest in the dark, so the Omega’s head wouldn’t strike it a second time.
“Bo Suiqing.” Xu Jialuo’s gaze settled on the flicker of guilt on her face. “You want to mark me?”
The thought was skewered, clean through.
Bo Suiqing swallowed and turned her face away, eyes sliding aside, trying to muddle past it.
Xu Jialuo let out a breath — and used her fingertips to draw Bo Suiqing’s face back.
Their eyes met again. “No.”
Xu Jialuo knew what Bo Suiqing was: an apex Omega. Her own differentiation had come too late; she had not managed to mark Bo Suiqing permanently. But if Bo Suiqing set out to permanently reverse-mark her, it would likely be no great feat. One lapse of vigilance, and she could fall whole into this person’s trap.
So Xu Jialuo said no.
The refusal she received could not have been more explicit. Butterfly-wing lashes trembling, Bo Suiqing fought to steady her breathing, then said quietly, “…Understood.”
Her voice sounded — of all things — a little wounded.
Wounded over what?
Because someone hadn’t bent to the Eldest Miss’s wishes?
Xu Jialuo breathed out once more.
She pushed herself up and sat fully upright.
Bo Suiqing lay where she was on the sofa, staring blankly at Xu Jialuo’s movements.
Over?
Was she about to be thrown out—
But a hand slid beneath her waist, and Xu Jialuo gathered her up against her shoulder in one smooth motion, then eased her gently back against the cushions.
Xu Jialuo turned to the side, one hand braced on the sofa’s backrest, and bent down close.
Bo Suiqing could not mark her.
But she would still finish the soothing she had promised, exactly as she’d said.
And then she would send Bo Suiqing on her way.
The kisses had barely resumed when Xu Jialuo paused. “Still scared?”
The words fell as warm breath on freshly kissed skin, and it shivered.
“…Mm…”
The sound escaped before she could stop it. Bo Suiqing’s eyes flew wide; she caught her lip between her teeth, and only after several seconds did she manage her answer.
“…Not scared.”
Afraid Xu Jialuo still wouldn’t believe her, she added softly, “It feels very nice.”
In the dark, Bo Suiqing’s answering voice was nothing like her usual cool poise — gentle, faintly hoarse, almost docile-sweet.
The bones of Xu Jialuo’s braced hand tightened abruptly.
“Mm… mmh…”
The Omega’s voice beside her ear came small and scattered, her breathing soft and quick.
The wine-scent in the air thickened all at once.
Long fingers cradled Bo Suiqing’s fevered cheek, and Xu Jialuo’s brow creased — half in a trance, she felt that heat crawl from her palm, spreading toward her own nape.
Her braced hand curled shut, then opened. She steadied her breathing, and kissed on.
Until Bo Suiqing reached up, arms winding tight around her waist, arching to burrow into her embrace.
The flawless lines of her figure pressed close through the cloth, impossible to ignore.
Too intimate.
The thought flashed through her mind — and was swiftly diluted, dissolved, by the scent of Snow-Chilled Cherry.
Xu Jialuo’s brow pinched for an instant, then smoothed. Beyond her own control, her mouth opened, and the tips of her teeth grazed once over the tender gland of the Omega beneath her lips.
“Mm!”
The person in her arms went boneless all at once, shuddering, melting back into the sofa.
As the embrace parted, cool air rushed in against skin gone faintly damp.
Xu Jialuo reached out, pressed a hand to Bo Suiqing’s spine, and drew her back into her arms.
The warmth had scarcely returned when a phone began to ring.
Ring after ring. It finally died away — and a few seconds later, started up again.
“…”
Did someone have an emergency?
Reason came back to her, in some small measure. Xu Jialuo lifted her head, drew the hand from Bo Suiqing’s back, and reached for the phone.
The person in her arms was half-gone already, arm hooked loosely about her shoulders, cheek resting at her collarbone, damp lashes lowered, watching Xu Jialuo’s movements in a daze —
Until her gaze skidded across the screen. Across the name displayed on it.
— Lin Qingman.
Bo Suiqing’s soft, pliant body went stiff.
…
Here she was, in the middle of something that looked so very much like intimacy —
And this person could simply pull out of it, in the same breath, to take her fiancée’s call.
The sting in her chest stopped Bo Suiqing’s breath for an instant. She watched Xu Jialuo answer.
“Hello—khh!”
Xu Jialuo froze and looked down: Bo Suiqing’s hand had shot up out of nowhere and fisted in her collar.
The motion was so sudden it wrenched at her neck. The necklace at her throat slipped loose of her collar, the little metal sun swaying.
On the other end of the line, Lin Qingman — just about to speak — paused. “Xu Jialuo? What’s wrong with you?”
Xu Jialuo didn’t stoop to quarreling with a Bo Suiqing who seemed muddle-headed. She raised a hand, tucked the necklace back into her collar, and answered, “Nothing— you—!”
The words never finished. The Omega arched up and bit down on her gland with perfect aim.
“Xu Jialuo? Xu Jialuo? What’s the matter?”
…
As the teeth ground in, it was as if they ground up her spine, against her heart, through every limb and bone of her.
The phone slid from her fingers onto the sofa. Xu Jialuo doubled over into Bo Suiqing’s arms, breath and voice severed in the same instant, and for several seconds she could not respond at all.
Mercifully, the moment her lips met the ridged scar across the gland, Bo Suiqing’s descending bite stopped short.
The teeth never truly pierced the gland.
Whether because she still remembered being told no marking — or because she recoiled from that field of scar tissue — impossible to say.
Breathing back under control by degrees, Xu Jialuo pressed a hand to Bo Suiqing’s shoulder, pushed her back against the sofa, and groped for the phone.
“…I’m fine. Dropped the phone just now. What did you call about?”
“Oh, right… it’s just, my mother told me — tomorrow evening, your family dinner. Grandmother Xu asked that I come too.”
Lin Qingman lowered her voice.
“She said we should go together. So I was wondering — could you come pick me up then?”
Only that way would the act be played out in full.
“Mm. Understood.”
Business concluded, Lin Qingman wanted to ask after her health — whether she was adjusting to the changes differentiation had brought.
But Xu Jialuo simply hung up.
The phone landed on the sofa with a soft, muffled thump.
Xu Jialuo felt the woman she had pinned flinch with it.
As if in fear — as if the person who had nearly bitten through her gland had been someone else entirely.
What consummate acting.
But Bo Suiqing’s fear was real. A moment’s possessiveness had stripped her reason away; she had come within a hair of truly marking Xu Jialuo. It was the touch of Xu Jialuo’s scar that had called her mind back, on a tide of heartache.
She knew Xu Jialuo didn’t want it.
Knew it had been stated to her, with perfect clarity, only moments ago.
So when Xu Jialuo pressed her down into the sofa, Bo Suiqing’s first thought was: retribution.
A gland pierced and marked by an Omega was, for most Alphas to begin with, the reverse scale1 itself.
Unlike an Omega, an Alpha feels no pleasure in being marked.
Still less an Alpha like Xu Jialuo — who had always despised her.
Arms pressed flat to her sides, slender body curling faintly inward, Bo Suiqing lowered her eyes and waited for whatever Xu Jialuo would do next.
Then, as Xu Jialuo’s hand rose to touch the gland that had so nearly been bitten open — as the sharp hiss of indrawn breath escaped her — tears slid silently down the cheek swallowed by the dark.
…
Why was she crying again?
Fingertips resting on the faint new teeth-marks above her nape gland, Xu Jialuo bent her head and watched more wet light spill down Bo Suiqing’s face.
All because she had stopped — to take a call.
Made to wait such a little while.
Was it truly worth this much grievance?
…
So very troublesome.
But even amid the trouble —
Fingertip pressing slightly harder, rolling over the bite mark, Xu Jialuo frowned again.
It hurt.
And the sensation of that instant — self-command snatched clean away — was still vivid.
So when she herself was touched, this was what Bo Suiqing felt?
An Omega would find it more pleasurable, presumably — but that sense of losing all control had to be near enough the same.
…
No wonder she’d been afraid.
Xu Jialuo felt no anger over the transgression Bo Suiqing had just committed. She let out a breath, leaving behind only a thread of tangled feeling at the bottom of her heart — one she never even noticed.
She reached out, and with the pad of a finger wiped away the newest tear sliding down Bo Suiqing’s cheek.
Expecting a touch weighted with fury, Bo Suiqing flinched —
But she didn’t pull away.
Another tear fell.
“…”
Xu Jialuo held her silence a few seconds, then, half in doubt, eased the pressure of her hand.
Still crying — did she still want soothing, then?
For what felt like the hundredth time, Xu Jialuo recited the word “troublesome” in her heart.
Aloud she said only, “Stop crying.”
Brow knotted, voice stiff, she nevertheless let her fingertip rest against Bo Suiqing’s cheek with unmistakable consoling tenderness, summoning more patience than she ever poured into a piano.
“…Then I’ll simply keep giving it to you.”
…Keep giving… what?
Bo Suiqing looked up, bewildered, in time only to catch the side of Xu Jialuo’s face bending down toward her.
The nameless panic lasted a second or two longer —
And then the gentle kisses dissolved it, every last trace.
Dense and soft. Slow and light.
Falling on her together with Xu Jialuo’s pheromones.
Like sinking into a bed of violets steeped in the fragrance of wine.
Held, gradually, tighter.
…
Xu Jialuo noticed that after a few more shivers, the person in her arms had gone still.
When she raised her head at last, she found Bo Suiqing with her eyes closed, slumped softly against the sofa.
She had actually fallen asleep.
…
Asleep for real — or deceiving her again?
Xu Jialuo lowered her eyes and studied, carefully, the Omega’s lovely face: the faint tear-tracks, the shadow of weariness.
It seemed that after tapings ended, or on days without work, this person mostly went bare-faced.
Still beautiful.
Almost no different from her made-up self — only, where the big screen made her too lush, too arresting, there was now an artless softness that disarmed completely.
With nothing held up to hide behind, the fragile exhaustion showed all the more plainly.
…
Think of it plainly: for Bo Suiqing, today had genuinely held too much. After all that upheaval, even a flawless creature would be worn through.
And last night, besides… she had already been put through the wringer at her hands.
Silent for several seconds, Xu Jialuo did not, in the end, wake her.
One exception. Just for tonight.
Her gaze dropped to the hand where the adhesive bandage still clung.
She had reminded her to change it; the woman had not taken it to heart in the least.
…Or perhaps had simply never had a hand free.
Frowning, she crouched and found fresh bandages and antiseptic beneath the table.
An Omega’s gland was built unlike anything else; bites there healed startlingly fast, like snow melting away.
The wound on her hand had yet to close at all.
The main light would be too bright — it might startle her awake.
By the glow of the phone screen, Xu Jialuo slowly peeled the old bandage from Bo Suiqing’s hand and applied the medicine. From the medicine kit she took a more breathable gauze and bound it with grave care, her touch very light.
With the hand seen to, Xu Jialuo dragged over the throw blanket beside the sofa, meaning simply to cover Bo Suiqing where she lay.
Then she stopped.
This was a person who could catch a fever from one soaking in the rain.
A moment later, resigning herself, Xu Jialuo bent down, gathered Bo Suiqing up with steady arms, and walked slowly into the guest room.
Laying her on the bed, she hesitated, briefly.
Xu Jialuo never lay down on a bed in her outdoor clothes.
Was she to undress Bo Suiqing?
Even less possible.
A few seconds on, frowning, she set the woman down on the bedding exactly as she was, pulled off her shoes, and drew the quilt up over her.
As she turned to leave, Bo Suiqing’s fingers hooked, quick as thought, around hers.
Xu Jialuo stopped, and looked down through lowered, drowsy lids.
Pale, slender, softly rounded fingertips curled, grazing her palm.
The movement was feather-light; the plea to stay, unmistakable.
As if, even adrift in sleep, she meant to keep some precious person at her side.
…
She was merely muddled with sleep — had simply mistaken her for someone else.
Xu Jialuo’s brow creased, and she drew her hand straight back.
Yet her other hand came up in time to catch Bo Suiqing’s fingers as they fell, laid them neatly at her side, and tucked them beneath the quilt as well.
Then she turned and left the room.
It had been a long time since Bo Suiqing slept straight through to daybreak.
For once, she opened her eyes only after the alarm on her phone went off.
What met her eyes was a room with the curtains drawn, dim and gray.
…
An unfamiliar room.
Bo Suiqing sat up swiftly, scanning her surroundings —
Until she recognized the gray curtains, the very same as those in Xu Jialuo’s bedroom.
Seconds later, last night returned to her whole.
Xu Jialuo had brought her home. And then, on the sofa, Xu Jialuo had been kissing her.
It had felt so good… she must have drifted off at the end.
And Xu Jialuo… had actually not woken her?
And besides…
Bo Suiqing looked down at her hand — unmistakably tended to again, bound in clean gauze.
She sat frozen on the bed a long moment; then, at last, she reached up and covered her face.
The corners of her mouth curved up, quite beyond her control.
A spray of shattered starlight welled through those lovely glass-clear eyes. She threw back the quilt and put on her shoes, and before going out, found the mirror in the room and carefully smoothed her sleep-tousled hair.
Only then did she push open the door.
But the living room, unexpectedly, was silent. The door of Xu Jialuo’s bedroom stood open, and there was no trace of Xu Jialuo anywhere.
“…Xu Jialuo?”
No one answered.
Only when she reached the table before the sofa did she see the note left on it.
The script was beautiful — running script2 that flowed like drifting clouds and flowing water, edged with a sharpness all its own.
The first line read:
— Leave before eight.
“…”
Almost the moment she finished it, the alarm clock set out on the table went off.
The time: seven.
So Xu Jialuo had planned it all — even if she didn’t wake, the alarm would do the waking for her. Had even left a step ahead, unwilling to spare so much as a parting face-to-face.
The delight of having stayed the night seeped slowly away. Lashes sinking, Bo Suiqing read on.
Past a gap of several blank lines, one more line:
— There’s a disposable bath towel and tooth kit in the bathroom. Porridge in the kitchen.
…Porridge?
She turned and walked quickly into the kitchen, looked about, and opened the rice cooker still on its keep-warm setting.
The clean fragrance of rice porridge billowed out at once.
White as jade, warm through and through — and the small chill at her heart was swept away without a trace.
“What… what’s with hauling me out to run first thing in the morning!”
Zou Wan sat on a stone block, fussing with her head of red hair, panting hard. “The last time I ran morning drills, I was still a student at No. 1 High School… back then!”
Xu Jialuo came jogging back — running backward — and looked down at Zou Wan, who was one breath from expiring. “Liang Xiao had a point. You really do need to train.”
“…Me? Excuse me—” Zou Wan protested. “What sane person finishes a gym session at night and then knocks out ten kilometers at dawn?” For a habitual athlete like Xu Jialuo, sure. For her — categorically no.
“I’m done.” Zou Wan flapped a hand and pointed at a restaurant to one side. “I need food. Recharge.”
A few minutes later, the two of them, in sportswear, were seated in a private room.
Zou Wan busied herself ordering; Xu Jialuo, who had already eaten, sat to one side and swiped her phone screen awake.
She tapped into the living-room camera feed.
The year before last, Zou Wan had come home from abroad for a month and finally gotten the cat she’d always wanted. Then — quite unforeseen — her family arranged to send her back overseas, and the kitten was still far too small for a long journey. Zou Wan could find no one to mind it, and Liang Xiao was allergic to cat hair, so she had come to beg Xu Jialuo: keep it a little while, and she’d take it back once it had grown. Xu Jialuo had no allergies and no quarrel with cats, so she’d taken it in. Researched care guides, bought supplies, and installed a camera in the living room —
so she could keep an eye on the kitten whenever she was out.
Just now, though, she wanted to confirm whether Bo Suiqing had left.
Or whether she was doing anything strange in her home.
This was, after all, the person who had not so long ago spat on her clothes.
On the phone screen, the living room held not a single figure.
Xu Jialuo glanced at the time at the top of the display — already half past seven.
Still not awake? Had she slept through the alarm — or was something wrong with her body?
Xu Jialuo straightened, frowning at the screen.
The next second, the bathroom door in the corner swung open, and out came a figure wrapped in nothing but a towel.
“Luoluo baby—”
Xu Jialuo’s hand jerked; the phone went face-down onto the table in an instant.
Zou Wan looked baffled. “What? Your face has gone red? See — I told you we shouldn’t run that far.”
“…”
Zou Wan: “You’re positive you won’t eat anything?”
“Mm. I ate before I left.”
The ordering finished, the server left the private room.
“So — tonight,” Zou Wan asked, “don’t tell me you’re booking the gym again…”
“Not tonight.”
“Got plans?”
“Dinner at the Old Residence.”
“Why are you suddenly going there? Family meal?”
“Xu Yunxing is back.”
Zou Wan nodded. “Oh — then the gym will just have to wait till next time!”
“No choice,” she said — wearing, unmistakably, the expression of someone who had just dodged a bullet.
She added, “Say hi to Yunxing-jie for me.”
Xu Jialuo answered, “Mm.”
Out in the world, Xu Yunxing was lovely to everyone. Smiling, gentle-voiced.
Her friends included.
Every drop of venom was reserved for Jialuo and Jiang Yi alone.
And Xu Jialuo had never told Zou Wan or Liang Xiao any of it.
Because that venom had not come from nowhere.
By the time Xu Jialuo returned home, Bo Suiqing was already gone.
Somewhat to her surprise, the used bowl and spoon — rice cooker included — had all been washed clean.
Stepping into the bathroom to shower, she found the water marks and stray hairs cleaned away as well.
A wisp of body wash still hung in the air: the very kind Xu Jialuo used, an almost scentless, crisp woody fragrance.
Strange.
A scent that should have been the very definition of familiar had grown — was it laced through with Bo Suiqing’s smell now? — so heavy she could hardly ignore it.
Images flashed, one after another, through her mind. Xu Jialuo closed her eyes briefly, and for the second time ever mid-shower, switched on the exhaust fan.
Footnotes
- 逆鳞 | Ni Lin | Literally 'the inverted scale' — in Chinese lore the one scale beneath a dragon's throat that grows backward; the philosopher Han Feizi wrote that touching it alone can rouse a dragon to lethal fury. Hence an absolute taboo whose violation invites wrath.
- 行书 | Xing Shu | 'Running script,' the semi-cursive hand of Chinese calligraphy in which strokes link and flow for swift, expressive writing; historically the everyday art of the literati, prized for natural rhythm over rigid form.
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