"The world knew him as a dominant alpha. She was someone who should know the truth — but didn't."
⸻
"Come," Mr. Yuwen said.
Xue Zhen didn't look up from his desk.
The stacks of paperwork were a fortress —
and he was the lone soldier guarding its walls.
"She's not doing well," the butler added quietly.
"I thought... maybe she'd feel better if it were you."
Xue Zhen's hand paused over the documents.
His fingers curled into a fist.
He wanted to go.
Desperately.
But he couldn't.
⸻
He couldn't leave the country.
Not while his father, Xue Jingshan, stood alone against the Third Branch.
A crucial merger was at stake — one that could reshape their financial future —
and yet the Third Branch was deliberately stalling.
Nitpicking contracts.
Undermining decisions.
Twisting clauses.
They didn't want the merger to succeed.
Not unless their terms, their bloodline, their heir were favored.
Zhen knew his father would never say it aloud —
but he was tired.
Years of shielding the family.
Divorcing his alpha wife without scandal.
Protecting a son whose dominant status had quietly faded with time.
It was too much.
So Xue Ning took a back seat.
A quiet sacrifice, unspoken.
Zhen thought: "When this is over, I'll go to her. There will be time."
He thought... there would be time.
But there wasn't.
⸻
The boardroom had become a battlefield —
and the alpha cousin Grandpa once paraded around,
Xue Minglan's son,
was drawing blood with every smug remark and dominant flare.
Xue Bo's pheromones were thick.
Heavy.
But Xue Zhen didn't flinch.
Didn't respond.
Because he couldn't.
The truth he told no one was brutal in its simplicity:
He no longer had dominant pheromones.
They were gone.
He was no longer what they celebrated.
Just a shell in a suit.
⸻
But he didn't retreat.
He strategized.
He worked harder than ever before.
He relied on data, not scent.
Walked into meetings armed with reason, not dominance.
And slowly—
the tide began to turn.
⸻
It was Xue Liyan — the cousin they all overlooked —
who handed him a sealed folder, unceremoniously.
Inside:
• Records of money laundering
• Shell corporations
• Ghost payrolls
• Every thread traced to Xue Minglan's son
And traced by Xue Ning.
Even sick and fading—
she had left him a sword.
Xue Zhen used it.
And he didn't just win.
He conquered.
⸻
Xue Liyan wasn't made for boardrooms.
Not in the way Zhen was.
Not with the way Xue Bo prowled those meetings like a wolf in bespoke wool, throwing dominance around like perfume—sickly sweet, heavy, suffocating.
Zhen never responded.
Not even once.
Liyan saw it.
He always saw it.
The way Zhen would enter late, seat himself calmly—like nothing could touch him.
The way he would page through contracts with surgical coldness while Xue Bo leaned in, voice raised, scent flared.
And Zhen?
Not a single ripple.
No reaction.
No pheromone pushback.
Nothing.
The other cousins thought it was arrogance.
Liyan wasn't so sure.
Because if it were him in Zhen's place—he would've snapped.
Bitten back.
Matched pheromone for pheromone until the walls cracked.
But Zhen...
Zhen just endured.
The only time he moved was when someone insulted her.
And even then, it was barely visible.
Just a flick of his pen.
A silence sharper than any retort.
⸻
Liyan clenched the pen in his fingers.
He'd asked her once—when she was still in the hospital, her voice so weak it made his throat tighten—
"Why do you always compete with him?"
Xue Ning had smiled.
Tired. Gentle. Eyes far away.
"Because I want to reach him."
"Because I want to prove I belong in that world, too."
"...And because no one else will watch his back when I'm gone."
That last part shattered him.
She had never said it out loud before.
But in that moment, Liyan knew.
She saw Zhen for exactly what he was:
Alone. Carrying everything. Cracking, but refusing to break.
So when Ning looked at him—her gaze solemn, almost pleading—and said:
"If something happens... help him. Don't let him fall."
He couldn't say no.
Not to her.
And especially not now—when Zhen stood in that boardroom, stiff and pale, sweat clinging to his collar, his shoulders locked as Xue Bo's scent drenched the room—
Yet still...
didn't move.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't fight.
Didn't need to.
Because his power had never been in the pheromones.
Not anymore.