In Heat, He Guards Outside My Door - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I am a Beta-at least, that’s what my medical report says.

That is why, three years ago, I was able to transfer into the “Ember Blade” task force from the Imperial Central Military Academy with the highest overall score in my class.

They are the Empire’s sharpest blade, a unit composed entirely of high-level Alphas tasked with border sweeps, starport counter-terrorism, high-value asset recovery, and covert infiltration.

Everyone says that for a Beta to survive in a place like that, they don’t rely on talent; they rely on a death wish.

But only I know the truth. I don’t work myself to the bone to prove that a Beta is just as good as an Alpha. I do it to keep the secret hidden beneath that fake report buried deep.

I am not a Beta.

I’m not even a regular Omega.

I am a type of person written into the Empire’s old archives and then artificially erased: an Invisible Omega.

My physical vitals normally resemble those of a Beta. My gland reactions are suppressed by long-term inhibitors and false indicators. Unless I face extreme stress, severe injury, or specific pheromone resonance, no one can detect it.

I always thought that as long as I was strong enough, steady enough, and acted enough like a soldier, this secret would follow me to my grave.

Until I met Zhou Qi’an.

He is the Captain of Ember Blade, the youngest Colonel in the Military Department’s public records. Rumor has it he once dismantled a rogue mecha with his bare hands and choked an enemy commander in a depressurized cabin to force an entire ship to a halt.

As he stood by the training grounds reviewing the new recruits’ files, his gaze was as cold as winter steel. When he reached my page, he paused for only a second.

“Li Anhe. A Beta?”

I stood perfectly straight. “Yes, Commander.”

He looked up at me. His gaze swept from my brow to my neck like the back of a blade pressing against skin-not painful, but enough to make one tense up.

In that second, I almost thought the camouflage patch on the back of my neck was going to spontaneously combust.

But he didn’t ask anything else. He simply closed the file and said indifferently, “Ember Blade doesn’t keep dead weight. That goes for Betas, too.”

From that day on, he became the person I wanted to beat more than anyone else.

I pushed myself to the front in every category: marksmanship, combat, close-quarters demolition, and long-term zero-gravity survival. I was still doing weighted runs long after the lights in the training room had been turned off. When my knuckles split, I just wrapped them in bandages and kept going.

At first, no one in the squad respected me. A Beta joining an Alpha task force was a joke in itself.

The Vice Captain, Meng Chen, was the first to flip me on the sparring mat. He was also the first to be pinned by me with his arms locked behind his back during our second session.

He spat out a curse while gasping for air, then climbed up and gave me a thumbs-up. “Alright, you’re ruthless enough.”

Only Zhou Qi’an remained noncommittal.

He didn’t offer praise, nor did he go out of his way to make things difficult. However, every time I reached my limit, he would precisely add another layer of pressure. It was as if he were testing my depth.

Or rather, as if he were trying to force something out.

I hated that about him most of all.

And I feared it most of all.

Because every time he drew near, I had to use ten times more restraint than anyone else to suppress an inexplicable sensation in my body.

It wasn’t fear, it wasn’t submission, and it wasn’t the tension an ordinary person felt when facing the strong. It was a more private, more dangerous restlessness-as if blood that had been dormant for years had suddenly been nudged by a specific frequency.

I dismissed it as an instinctive miscalculation.

It wasn’t until the day of the border mission that I realized my instincts had never been wrong.