The ceiling lights were white and soft.
The kind used in private hospitals abroad—engineered to soothe, to ease the mind, to make suffering look sterile.
It didn't work.
Xue Ning blinked slowly.
Her lashes felt too heavy. Her body was foreign, fragile.
Limbs leaden, throat dry, heart stuttering between beats.
A dream?
Her mind whispered yes.
But her heart...
Her heart said this wasn't just a dream.
This was a memory.
⸻
Sixteen years old.
The year her world changed forever.
Far from home.
A private recovery facility buried in the snowed-in hills of Austria.
A white bed. An IV.
The sting of antiseptic clinging to her skin like punishment.
The taste of copper behind her tongue.
A bitter aftermath of what had been done.
And beside her chair sat Mr. Yuwen.
Still. Silent.
Like a statue carved from duty and restraint.
She wanted to speak.
To ask:
"Why isn't anyone else here?"
"Why did no one wait?"
"Does he know?"
But even then—she already knew the answers.
The old butler had made it clear before the procedure:
"Do not call Xue Zhen. Do not be a burden. Do not cry. You are not an omega. You are a Xue."
"Endure. Or you will not survive this house."
So she didn't call.
She didn't cry.
Not even when the suppressants made her vision blur.
Not even when her body rejected the painkillers, her stomach convulsing dry into the basin.
Not even when her skin burned from fever, glands forcibly extracted and cauterized beneath sterile gloves.
She only whispered—
"Mr. Yuwen... am I dying?"
⸻
He didn't answer.
His posture remained formal. Hands folded across his lap.
But his knuckles were pale. His jaw, locked tight.
And she...
She no longer looked like the thirty-year-old executive who built her own wing of the company from scratch—
No longer the unshakable beta the media admired, the one who rarely raised her voice but never lowered her head.
Instead, she looked like a girl.
A sixteen-year-old girl, dressed in too-thin hospital linen.
Eyes searching. Skin clammy.
Fresh surgical gauze still taped across her nape.
She had signed the waiver herself.
Alone.
She hadn't even told Zhen she was going.
Hadn't even considered the idea of asking him to come.
Because back then, the thought had felt absurd.
Why would the heir care if the adopted beta disappeared?
She hadn't known—
That one day, he would cross the world for her.
Die for her.
But Mr. Yuwen knew.
Even then, he knew.
And for the first time in decades, he felt something foreign clawing at his spine.
Guilt.
Not just for the silence.
Not for the procedure.
But for the conviction with which he had believed that pain was a necessary rite of passage.
That if she didn't endure this—she wasn't fit to be part of the Xue bloodline.
His gaze dropped, and for a moment, it met hers.
No longer cool. No longer unreadable.
Just quiet.
Weighted.
She didn't accuse him.
Didn't weep.
Didn't scream.
She just looked at him.
As if memorizing his face.
As if wondering if she'd wake up again.
And still—he said nothing.
As if even this... was something she had to survive alone.
⸻
The room blurred again.
Edges softening.
Heartbeat fading.
Until much, much later—
When everything would turn white again.
And she'd open her eyes to a different ceiling.
A different country.
A different life.
But the same man...
Still standing beside her.
Older. Still silent. Still watching.
And this time—
He wouldn't leave.