Fishing Alone Through a Thousand Rivers of Snow - Chapter 1

The moment I saw the trembling woman kneeling beside my bed, irritation and exhaustion surged through me.

I had said it at least a hundred times: I did not need an Alpha.

Which part of that sentence was so difficult to understand?

I took off my coat and tossed it and my bag onto the sofa.

The room was saturated with her pheromones. I could not immediately identify the scent, but it smelled strangely pleasant.

At the sound of my arrival, she looked up. Only then did I notice the pair of pointed ears atop her head.

So she was beastkin.

No wonder they had been able to abduct her with such utter disregard for her dignity and dump her in my bedroom like a tool.

The instant she saw me, her ruby-red eyes flooded with tears of arousal. She pressed desperately between her legs. Being forced into rut must have been agony.

I glanced at the conspicuous bulge in her trousers but said nothing.

Male or female, Alphas were all the same in rut.

I went straight to the cabinet, opened it, and took out a suppressant. Without ceremony, I jabbed it into my arm and pushed the plunger down. The green liquid emptied into my body.

Then I took out another syringe and walked toward her.

She clutched the bedpost and strained backward, trying to avoid me.

I raised an eyebrow.

“You don’t want it?”

She nodded, then shook her head.

I had no idea what she meant.

“Let… let me go…” she rasped.

They were the only words she could force out. The rest were trapped in her throat by the scorching heat of her rut. Her trembling worsened.

I crouched and reached toward one of her wolf ears.

The ears were extraordinarily sensitive. Before I could touch it, it folded itself flat and turned sideways, dodging my hand.

She truly wanted nothing to do with me.

Then I noticed the shackles around her ankles and the long chain trailing across the floor. It had enough slack to ensure she would not trip when she lunged at me, but not enough for her to escape the room.

…Those people truly had a death wish.

How dare they try such a vile trick on me?

I mentally added another charge to the family troublemakers’ account.

I uncapped the suppressant and waved the green syringe in front of her eyes.

“Want this?”

She struggled to make sense of the object in my hand. Her brain was clearly boiling; rational thought had all but abandoned her.

Her body demanded conquest and plunder, but the last vestiges of her will were still fighting it. That was the only reason she had not thrown herself at me.

It was also the only reason she was still alive.

I admired that strength of will. I had never seen its equal in another Alpha.

She did not answer because she could not, so I stopped asking. I simply drove the needle into her bare arm and injected the green suppressant.

After withdrawing the syringe, I returned to the sofa and opened my computer to continue working.

I controlled the enormous Qian Group, and the hundreds of patents in my name formed the foundation of its operations.

That was why the family could not allow me to die.

That was why they would resort to something this rotten if it meant getting an Alpha to mark me.

Because a mark would keep me alive.

—Even if it cost me my dignity.

I focused on the financial reports. After a while, the panting from beside the bed gradually subsided.

When I looked up, she had regained her composure. Lust no longer flickered in her red eyes.

As soon as she noticed me looking, she asked, “Will you let me go?”

I closed my computer and set it aside.

“You think I had you abducted?”

She froze, then lowered her head.

“I did at first… Now, maybe not.”

I glanced at the shackles. “I can’t smash those open. Stay here tonight. I’ll have someone saw through the chain tomorrow.”

She tugged at it, her expression dark.

“…All right. Thank you.”