My Savior, My Second Chance - Chapter 1

The moment I realized I had been reborn, I pulled out my hairpin and drove it hard into my thigh.

The aphrodisiac in my body was called Immortal’s Lust.

Once it took effect, even an immortal free of all desire would become a slave to the most primitive urges.

Only intense pain could keep me lucid for a little while.

Otherwise, I would end up as I had in my previous life, helpless in the alley, unable even to tell whether the things violating me were men or monsters.

My blurred vision finally cleared.

In the night wind, I caught another sound: a man’s stifled, ragged breathing.

In my previous life, I had passed out in the alley after the assault, my body a ruin.

Duan Ming, the Shen family’s gate guard, had found me first.

He carried me home through the crowds, parading my disheveled clothes and ravaged body through the streets.

By the time we reached the Shen residence, the whole capital knew that Shen Qingzhi, the only daughter of the imperial merchant family, had spent the night rutting with a gate guard in an alley.

Before that night, I had been a strong candidate for crown princess.

After it, I was a slut who slept with servants.

For a time, a length of white silk lay on the table in my bedchamber.

I thought constantly of hanging myself to preserve my family’s good name.

It was the darkest time of my life.

Then one day, Crown Prince Pei Yuan arrived unexpectedly with an imperial physician.

He pushed open my door, bringing in a shaft of sunlight I had not seen in so long. It dazzled eyes I had nearly cried blind.

“Miss, did you see me that night?” he asked.

I had been utterly ashamed. Even behind layer upon layer of gauze curtains, I remembered the etiquette owed a royal. Bowing my head, I answered respectfully,

“Your Highness is of the imperial blood. I have never met you. I would not dare claim otherwise.”

Through the curtains, I thought I heard him sigh softly.

“Take care of yourself. A woman’s virtue does not lie beneath her skirts. Do not think yourself worthless.”

He took the white silk from the table and left the physician to tend to me.

At the time, I had thought only that the crown prince was kind.

Later, I learned that he, too, had been drugged that night, and had spent it suffering in the same alley.

When he heard that the Shen family’s daughter had been violated there, he feared he had lost control and committed the deed himself.

He had come to the Shen residence specifically to find an answer.

After hearing accounts of my condition in the streets, he had even brought the Imperial Medical Bureau’s finest specialist in women’s medicine.

Only after checking repeatedly had he established that it had not been him.

Now I stared at the pile of firewood in front of me.

The humiliation of my previous life was still vivid. I could not remember those men’s faces. All I clearly remembered was being held down on a pile of logs and brutalized.

I had to leave before the three beggars and Duan Ming found me.

Immortal’s Lust was vicious. My legs were weak, my body like a block of ice on the verge of melting.

If anything male appeared in front of me now, I feared I would be unable to control myself.

I stabbed my left thigh again. Using the pain to force a last burst of strength from my body, I stumbled toward the sound of breathing.

I had expected a difficult search. Instead, he was just on the other side of a wall.

Beneath the pale, cold moonlight, a man in splendid, costly robes leaned against the wall. A faint flush tinged his handsome face, and his pale throat was tilted back in torment.

My salvation.

If I had to lose something tonight, at least I would choose for myself. This was my only chance to change my fate.

I flung myself into his arms like a starving tiger pouncing on its prey.

With my last shred of awareness, I recognized the imperial dragon embroidered on his collar.

At last, I felt safe.

In the confusion, I fumbled open the door of a woodshed in the alley, hiding us from the beggars.

Everything that followed came naturally.

His long, strong fingers locked my body against him. I, too, let the drug melt me into liquid desire.

We were dry tinder and blazing flame, finding rescue in each other. We clung together and burned in each other’s bodies.