A Taste for You - Chapter 1

An hour earlier, Qin Wei had discovered that he liked sweets.

Loved them, in fact.

He had just dealt with a troublesome target, and a few drops of blood had splashed onto his face. Without thinking, he licked the blood from the corner of his mouth.

That one lick changed everything.

A flavor he had never experienced before shot from his tongue straight into his brain.

Joy. Excitement. Pleasure…

His emotions seemed to malfunction, bursting into dazzling colors like fireworks.

To find out where the taste had come from, Qin Wei cut the man’s throat once more, dipped a finger in the blood, and sampled it again.

Fortunately, the source of his happiness was not the corpse slowly cooling at his feet.

He sniffed the air carefully and found one faint note beneath the heavy stench of blood.

A smashed piece of cream cake lay on the floor.

Your dessert shop stood in the most remote part of the city.

Most of the buildings nearby were care facilities, home to Omegas who had “broken” for one reason or another.

You were not entirely normal either, or you would never have opened a shop here.

You could not smell pheromones.

That was why you had no idea how dangerous the man before you was.

You mistook him for an Omega who had just suffered some terrible accident, and his pale, sickly face stirred your sympathy.

You brought out the last slice of strawberry cake left in the shop, sat beside Qin Wei, and began consoling this poor Omega who, in your imagination, had fallen into the hands of a vicious lover.

Qin Wei put the bright red strawberry from the top of the cake into his mouth. His sharp teeth pierced the skin; juice burst over his tongue, and the fruit’s delicate sweetness flooded every taste bud.

He glanced at the cat figurine on the table, lying on its back with its belly exposed, then at you as you poured out one earnest word of comfort after another.

He swallowed the fruit and its juice. As the sweetness lingered, he thought: *Exactly alike.*

Were you not just another cat, heedless of danger and shame, rolling over to expose your soft belly to him?

Had no one ever told you how dangerous it was to release pheromones in front of an Alpha?

Your scent had already lured him out of his mind.

And you remained completely unaware.

Qin Wei thought he was going insane. In more than twenty years of life, he had never lost control like this.

For reasons he did not understand, two streaks of color gradually appeared on his handsome, almost bloodless face.

His eyes grew hazy as he stared at you, as if admiring a beauty through a veil of mist. The longer he looked, the more wildly his heart raced.

You reached out and tested his forehead. It was warm.

When you withdrew your hand, Qin Wei instinctively lifted his head after it. Like some enormous animal desperate to be petted, he sought another scrap of comfort.

You had seen plenty of Omegas in heat around here, and Qin Wei looked more or less like one of them.

He needed a suppressant.

It was terribly dangerous for an Omega in heat to wander outside alone. After a moment’s hesitation, you asked softly, “I have suppressants at home. It’s close by. Would you like to come?”

It took Qin Wei’s muddled brain half a minute to understand.

Were you truly inviting an Alpha who had lost control into your home?

Did you have any idea what you were doing?

He licked his lips and happily accepted your invitation to bring a wolf through the door, stumbling after you.

You offered him an arm. Qin Wei took advantage at once and leaned his entire weight against you.

His slender-looking body was far heavier than expected. It took all your strength to keep both of you upright.

Scalding breath washed over the crown of your head, like a starving wolf salivating over its meal.

A chill crawled down your spine.

You had no idea why.