A Substitute, but in Love with the White Moonlight

Lu Ling was born in the slums. On the day she presented, she was cornered in an alley and beaten mercilessly, left on the brink of death. The newly presented Alpha was about to stop breathing.

Then an Omega came to save her.

She carried the clean, clear scent of bitter orange blossoms, far too pure to belong to an Omega from the slums.

The thing Lu Ling regretted most was that she had been on the verge of death that day and had not seen her face clearly.

The newly presented Alpha was far too agitated. At the sight of an Omega, she yearned to forcibly mark her.

The Omega did not resist. She merely parted her lips slightly, her ears turning red, and offered the back of her neck. Trembling in submission, she accepted the new Alpha's mark.

Lu Ling only remembered that the Omega was moist and succulent, her glands damp and slick.

Her cries were soft, and she tasted delicious.

She moaned again and again, like water.

When Lu Ling woke, she had regained her senses, but the Omega she had mistakenly marked had already left. She could not find her.

Lu Ling wanted to repay her kindness, to apologize, to tell her that she would take responsibility.

All she could remember was that the person who saved her carried the bittersweet scent of bitter orange blossoms.

The Omega who saved her had bitter-orange-blossom pheromones.

Lu Ling remembered her for three years.

Later, Lu Ling went to school and finally gained access to the upper city, where she could look for the Omega she had mistakenly marked. At a party, she bumped into a radiant woman.

When she collided with Sang Huai, the woman carried that very scent.

Lu Ling thought her dream had come true and willingly became Sang Huai's “collection.”

She thought she had found the person who saved her life.

Sang Huai had stunning features. Looking at Lu Ling's face, she smiled brilliantly. “Baby, will you come with me? I'll treat you well.”

“Only if... you're willing to be her shadow.”

Lu Ling nodded.

She thought that being close to a kind, good person was enough, even if she could only borrow someone else's appearance for warmth.

But Sang Huai did not treat her well.

She signed Lu Ling to a contract, gave her the most generous treatment, and also saddled her with the most humiliating status.

“Your eyes don't look like hers.”

“Grow your hair to this length. Then you'll look like her.”

When they were overcome with desire, Lu Ling kissed her collarbone. Between her soft moans, Sang Huai always called out another name.

A Tang.

Over the three years, Lu Ling learned to play someone else with practiced ease in the dead of night.

When Sang Huai wanted her, she called her “A Tang.”

When Sang Huai was happy, most of the gifts she gave Lu Ling were “styles A Tang likes.”

Even when Lu Ling fell ill and burned with fever, Sang Huai pretended to hold her hand, but in her eyes was the reflection of someone else.

“A Tang, it'll pass.”

The most ridiculous thing was that even the bitter-orange-blossom scent Lu Ling had clung to for comfort was growing fainter on Sang Huai.

Sometimes she wondered whether the fleeting warmth in that back alley years ago had been an illusion, embellished by memory.

Lu Ling was an Alpha, yet an Omega kept biting her glands, continually marking her in reverse until her glands were on the verge of being ruined.

But she was addicted to that trace of bitter-orange-blossom scent. Even knowing she was only an inferior substitute, she still wanted to stay by Sang Huai's side.

It was not until Sang Huai's unforgotten first love, her own older sister Sang Yaotang, returned to the country, at the banquet held in her honor, that Lu Ling, with her glands close to destruction, caught the cold fragrance from her memories, the scent she had yearned for over the past three years: bitter orange blossoms.

The pheromones Lu Ling could still release slipped out quietly.

Butterscotch.

The scent Sang Huai had always disparaged as cloyingly sweet and inexplicable, the pheromones of an Alpha that were more like an Omega's than anything else. Nothing at all like A Tang's cool fragrance.

Sang Yaotang brushed aside Sang Huai's fawning hand and walked over to the shattered, fragile Lu Ling. “Have we met somewhere before?”

On a rainy night in the slums, the Omega's cool, gentle face merged with the Sang Yaotang standing before her.

The Omega from that night had always been Sang Yaotang, not Sang Huai.

Lu Ling had mistaken one person for another.

Sang Huai suddenly realized she no longer liked Sang Yaotang.

She stopped deliberately imitating her, and no longer liked the scent of bitter orange blossoms on her. Sang Huai could not even remember Sang Yaotang's smile anymore.

But Sang Huai could recall every detail of Lu Ling's body when they were together, the sweet scent of butterscotch, and exactly when Lu Ling had been forcing a smile.

She smashed the bottle of perfume that imitated Sang Huai's pheromones, then went to look for her caged canary, eyes red.

With red eyes, she cornered Lu Ling against the wall. “I don't want you to be like her anymore. Just be yourself.”

“Too late.” Lu Ling pushed her away and looked toward Sang Yaotang, who was waiting beside a car.

Sang Yaotang wore a red, deep-V bodycon dress. Twirling her car keys in one hand, she smiled lightly at Lu Ling.

“Little Lu, it's time to go home.”

“This time, don't mistake me for someone else.”

Then she turned to her own younger sister and spoke coldly:

“Huaihuai, thank you for looking after Little Lu all this time.”

“Now, she's back where she belongs.”

Theme: Pursuing a perfect life and being true to yourself