No Way Back - Chapter 1

My heat came on without warning.

My lower abdomen throbbed and tingled. Frowning, I pressed my palm hard against it.

It was difficult to imagine that beneath this thin layer of skin, an organ was quietly developing.

The doctor had warned me that pheromone levels were extremely unstable during the early stages of secondary differentiation and that my heat could begin at any time. I just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon—or at work, of all places.

The scent gland at my nape grew hot and itchy, an irritating sensation like ants crawling over my skin. Before long, even my cheeks were burning.

I pulled a tie from my pocket and held it beneath my nose, breathing in deeply.

The familiar scent of tobacco slipped into my lungs, and a delicious numbness climbed from the back of my neck. It lasted only a moment before giving way to an even deeper emptiness.

Lin Chongzhi had left this tie at my place before we broke up. There hadn’t been much of his pheromones on it to begin with, and now it was next to useless.

“Engineer Shen? Are you all right?”

My team leader patted me on the shoulder. He was a Beta and couldn’t smell pheromones, but even he could tell something was wrong.

“If there’s a problem, deal with it now,” he reminded me tactfully. “The other party’s project lead will be at the meeting. We can’t afford any mistakes.”

“Sorry. I’ll take care of it.”

I grabbed a suppressant and fled to the restroom.

The test report I’d picked up from the hospital yesterday was still in my pocket. Printed on it was a warning: Suppressants are not recommended during secondary differentiation.

Using them could make already unstable pheromone levels even more volatile. They might solve the immediate problem, but the next heat would be far worse.

The doctor’s recommendation was…

To spend my heat with an Enigma.

That Enigma was my ex, Lin Chongzhi.

Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined he might be an Enigma. He probably didn’t even know it himself.

But we had already broken up. There was no way I could let him learn about my secondary differentiation.

Without another thought, I tore open the suppressant package with my teeth.

I hadn’t known an Omega’s heat could be this unbearable. It was a hundred times worse than a rut. In the brief time since it began, my legs had already grown too weak to hold me up. I had the injector in my hand, but my fingers were so limp that I couldn’t use it.

Only then did I understand why inhaled suppressants remained so popular despite being far less effective than injections. Back when I was an Alpha, I’d always chosen the strongest injectable suppressant without hesitation. I had never imagined finding myself in this position.

I was hopelessly unaccustomed to life as an Omega.

My pheromones quickly filled the cramped stall. The scent belonged to me, yet it was unfamiliar—my old hard-liquor fragrance, now laden with a cloying sweetness.

I undid the top two buttons of my shirt, but the heat was still unbearable. Through hazy vision, I struggled to read my watch.

The meeting began in ten minutes.

I had to inject the suppressant, now.

But the more desperate I became, the clumsier I was. My hand jerked, and the injector fell to the floor and shattered.

At that exact moment, steady footsteps sounded beyond the stall.

They drew closer.

Maybe the heat had already addled my mind, because for a moment I thought I smelled a familiar trace of pheromones.

Tobacco, faint but unmistakable. It soothed me in a way nothing else had.

The footsteps stopped.

I could never mistake Lin Chongzhi’s scent.

What was he doing here?

I knew the Lin family was a giant in this industry, but why would Lin Chongzhi come in person?

With the last of my reason, I prayed he would leave. My syrupy pheromones were so thick in the air that surely he wouldn’t recognize me beneath them.

My body betrayed me. The instant it sensed that the thing it craved was only a door away, it went mad, urging me to fling the door open and throw myself at him.

“Mr. Lin, I think there’s an Omega in there.”

An unfamiliar voice. Lin Chongzhi wasn’t alone.

I held my breath and dug my right hand into my inner thigh, terrified that some sound I couldn’t take back might slip out.

“Mm,” Lin Chongzhi answered.

“Kick the door in.”

“What?”

The stranger was plainly shocked.

My heart skipped a beat, then sank.

He knew it was me.

His voice was level, but I knew him well enough to hear the anger beneath it. Otherwise, he never would have done something so reckless.

“I’ll explain and pay for the damage.”

His tone left no room for argument. The other man stopped protesting. Fortunately, he had more sense than Lin Chongzhi. Before resorting to force, he knocked.

“Hello? Could you open the door, please? I have a suppressant.”

“Fuck…” I panted under my breath.

There was no other way out. Head lowered, I unlocked the door.