"They said dominant alphas don't beg. But he once begged the stars to give her a longer life."
⸻
Xue Zhen gave it all up.
The office. The titles. The war council seat.
He handed everything to Xue Liyan.
Not out of trust—
but because dying didn't need an audience.
And because in some small, bitter corner of his heart,
he knew this family would go on without him.
⸻
In the Xue Estate Gardens
Grandpa Rui's hands trembled over his tea.
He was a man who had fought battles no one else remembered.
But that morning, staring at the frost gathering along the koi pond,
his grip slipped. The cup cracked against the saucer.
Somewhere deep inside, he knew.
He'd felt it when Ning's plane left.
And now he felt it again.
Another Xue slipping through his fingers.
He shut his eyes, muttering a prayer he hadn't spoken in fifty years.
Not for the family's empire.
Not for its name.
Just for the children he'd failed to keep safe.
⸻
In the Boardroom
Xue Liyan's voice trailed off mid-sentence.
He'd been presenting a risk assessment to the board when it hit him—
a strange hollowness, like someone had knocked the breath from his chest.
No. Not again.
His father, Ling, frowned.
Xue Jingshan turned from the window, brows furrowed, his heartbeat accelerating out of nowhere.
Three men in the same bloodline, all with the same unspoken dread.
Liyan tightened his grip on the folder in his hand.
Two cousins lost in less than a year?
Ning fading overseas.
Zhen fading at home.
He wanted to be angry.
Wanted to blame someone.
But all he could do was whisper under his breath:
"Don't you dare go too."
And the board didn't even hear him.
⸻
In the Ward
Mr. Yuwen sat in a stiff-backed chair, eyes on the man in the bed.
Xue Zhen's breathing had become uneven—
not from sickness exactly, but from something older, deeper.
"You've always known," Zhen rasped, sipping tea too slowly for someone his age.
The butler gave a weary nod.
His hands, so steady in all storms, were trembling around the teapot.
"Her scent..." he said, voice low.
"It didn't just soothe you."
Zhen's gaze flicked up. "What do you mean?"
Mr. Yuwen exhaled. For the first time in decades, he let the theory out:
"There's an old word the scholars never wrote in our ledgers. Soulbond.
A markless tether. Rare. Whispered in legend.
They say it doesn't care for bloodlines, or timing, or ceremony.
Two souls tethered before the skin ever breaks.
Pheromones become background noise. What binds them is... older."
Zhen frowned, weak but still calculating. "Older?"
"The summer house," Mr. Yuwen whispered.
"That dog. That summer. You didn't just save her.
You... imprinted. Both of you."
The cup slipped from Zhen's hands and shattered on the floor.
He didn't even flinch.
"Is that why—" he started.
"Just my theory," the butler said, voice breaking for the first time.
"That's why you're dying now. Not from an illness.
Not from fatigue.
You're dying from absence."
Silence fell.
Even the machines seemed to pause between beeps.
⸻
The Final Requests
"No one can cure you," Mr. Yuwen whispered.
"Not the doctors. Not your grandfather. Not the alphas who once feared you."
Zhen looked at the window instead of the man.
"Then let me live where she once lived.
Let me sleep on the bed she slept in.
Let me die where she smiled."
"It isn't fit for you," the butler said softly.
"It's the only place that's fit for me now."
⸻
Grandfather Xue Refuses
"You'll be brought back to the hospital," he demanded later, furious.
"You are my grandson, not some sick dog waiting in a cage!"
Zhen didn't argue.
He just let the nurses wheel him away.
When Xue Rui came, when Jingshan arrived with a face full of worry,
he refused to let them in.
"He wasn't there when she lived," he whispered to the butler.
"And Dad... I don't want to break his heart."
Only Mr. Yuwen was allowed to stay.
⸻
The Last Night
It wasn't a glorious death.
No battlefield. No noble sacrifice.
Just a hospital bed, a fading heart monitor,
and a name he whispered until his voice cracked.
Ning.
Not even a full name. Just that one syllable.
Over and over again. Like it could turn back time.
But time didn't listen.
No one did.
His family arrived hours too late.
The board had already replaced him.
His grandfather never entered the room.
Only the old butler was there,
wrinkled hands holding his shaking fingers as if that could anchor him.
Zhen didn't scream.
Didn't curse fate.
But inside—he begged.
Not to live longer.
Not for revenge.
Just one thing.
"Please... let me fix it. Let me protect her this time."
No one answered.
No light shone.
No voice promised redemption.
But somewhere, somehow—
the soul of a broken alpha cracked the veil between timelines.
And the world would never be the same again.