The airport arrivals hall stank of wilted roses and viral humiliation.
Gu Xun stayed on his knees for forty-seven minutes, not forty-five. He counted every second.
Beiyu's tiny shoeprint was still wet on his crotch. Beiyan's teeth marks bled through the shredded leather of his loafer.
Good. Pain was honest. Pain was the only thing he still deserved.
Thirty-two million live viewers watched him get neutered by two four-year-olds and the Omega he'd murdered a family with.
The comment scroll was a slaughterhouse:
- "CEO to pee target in 0.2 seconds"
- "Bro really said 'I'm not the step-alpha, I'm the alpha that stepped in piss'
- "Ice Lotus just ended the Gu bloodline with toddler pheromones LMAOOOO"
Gu Xun stood up only when security begged.
He looked straight into the nearest phone camera, golden eyes steady for the first time in five years.
"Keep recording," he ordered.
Then he did the one thing no one expected from the former heir of the Lotus Moon Pack.
He detonated his entire life.
"I, Gu Xun, effective immediately, abdicate all rights to the Lotus Moon Pack."
His voice carried over the stunned silence. "Shares, titles, council seat, inheritance. Gone. Burn the paperwork. I don't want a single yuan that isn't earned beside Lu Rin."
Gasps. Screams. Someone dropped a tray of Starbucks.
He ripped off the diamond cufflinks his father gave him for his eighteenth birthday and crushed them under his fist. Blood dripped between his fingers.
"From today forward the only name I answer to is whatever Lu Rin decides to call me. Dog. Slave. Freshman bitch. I'll wear it like it's couture."
He held up his phone: the freshly printed acceptance letter to Imperial University, Department of Scent Chemistry, freshman class of 2029.
"I enrolled yesterday," he said. "I'm twenty-nine. I will sit in the front row. I will carry his books. I will beg for group-project scraps. And I will do it for as many years as it takes for him to stop looking at me like I'm the worst mistake he ever made."
He bowed, deep, to the empty space where Lu Rin's car had disappeared.
"I'm not asking for forgiveness tonight," he said quietly. "I'm asking for the chance to bleed for it."
Then he walked out barefoot, leaving eight-thousand-dollar shoes and an ocean of crushed white roses and his old life in pieces.
Twenty kilometres away, inside the bulletproof Maybach, Lu Rin watched the broadcast on the partition screen.
Beiyan was asleep with chocolate smeared across his cheek like war paint.
Beiyu had drawn a surprisingly accurate dick on the window in washable marker.
Lin Yuan whistled from the driver's seat. "Gu stock is down twenty-two per cent and falling. Board's having a collective stroke."
Lu Rin didn't blink.
He pulled a tiny glass vial from his coat, uncorked it, and inhaled once.
Old scent. The real scent. Pine smoke, molten iron, the night he'd once thought meant forever.
He recoiled like it burned, capped it, and dropped it out the window.
"He thinks trading an empire for a student ID is suffering," Lu Rin murmured.
He traced the silver scar low on his abdomen, hidden beneath silk.
"He's about to learn the difference between losing money and losing dignity, one freshman assignment at a time."
He tapped the intercom. "Lin Yuan. Call Professor Bai. Tell him I require a full-time, unpaid lab assistant this semester. Someone tall, obedient, and very comfortable on his knees. Preferably one who used to own half the city."
Lin Yuan's grin was feral. "And if he mentions the word 'mate'?"
"Automatic failure. Expulsion. Public castration on the university forum if I'm feeling generous."
Lu Rin leaned back, letting the twins curl against his sides like warm, possessive panthers.
"Five years ago Gu Xun chose a pack over a pregnant Omega.
Now he would spend the next five choosing Lu Rin over oxygen.
The car purred toward campus.
Tomorrow, freshman orientation starts.
Gu Xun would be there at 8:00 a.m. sharp, wearing the custom T-shirt Lu Rin had already ordered and overnighted to his new dorm:
Front: PROPERTY OF LU RIN
Back: ASK ME ABOUT MY MISTAKES (2019–2024 EDITION)
The shirt was bright bubblegum pink.
The font was glitter.
Let the real grovel begin.
Next class bell rings in twelve hours.
And Gu Xun will be on his knees before the first syllable of roll call.