The Shared Beauty of a Colonel

Zhu Shinian, a resident of District 26, was one of the Empire's lowest-ranked citizens. To pay for his family's medical treatment, he climbed into his superior Gu Zhen's bed when he was nineteen. Gu Zhen came from a distinguished family and was cold by nature, the kind of gifted man everyone envied. Zhu Shinian had grown up in the slums, and the two were worlds apart. Zhu Shinian thought Gu Zhen had treated him very well. Unlike other nobles, he never bossed him around, and he had never taken another lover. Except that it hurt a little whenever Gu Zhen bit his gland until it was swollen and red, even though it wasn't supposed to be capable of being marked. Zhu Shinian liked Gu Zhen, but he had always understood how great the gap between them was. When he heard Gu Zhen was getting engaged, he didn't want to humiliate himself, so he took the initiative and asked Gu Zhen to end things. Gu Zhen frowned, looking displeased. "He and I are only getting married for the sake of an agreement. Zhu Shinian, can you be a little more sensible and stop throwing tantrums?" * On the night before Gu Zhen's engagement party, Zhu Shinian locked his door and hid in his room, his gland burning intensely. He had taken biology classes and knew it was a sign of secondary gender differentiation. Secondary differentiation was extremely rare after the age of twenty. But over the years, Gu Zhen had treated Zhu Shinian, an alpha, like an omega. Gu Zhen's alpha pheromones had been injected into his gland again and again, and his long-degenerated reproductive cavity had been reopened time after time. Zhu Shinian was in so much pain he could barely keep from passing out. In his daze, someone opened the door he'd locked and came in. The person's embrace was cool as jade, like the only safe place in the midst of this painful secondary differentiation. "How pitiful." The person looked down at his disheveled state. "Let me help you." Gentle kisses fell on Zhu Shinian's brow, lips, and gland. The pheromones he had longed for slowly flowed from his gland into his bloodstream, coursing through his whole body. It felt so good... It was an entirely different kind of pleasure from when Gu Zhen had bitten open the gland of Zhu Shinian, who was still an alpha at the time. In a daze, Zhu Shinian lifted his head and saw the alpha's face clearly. It was Gu Zhen's fiance, Jiang Huaiyan. * The next time Gu Zhen saw Zhu Shinian was in winter, four years after Zhu Shinian had defected from the Empire and joined the resistance army with Jiang Huaiyan. On a snowy morning, he arrived early at the negotiation site, only to encounter a little boy eating candied hawthorn skewers at the entrance. The child looked so much like Zhu Shinian as he used to. "Dad! You're here! There are five candied hawthorn skewers left. Have one!" "You eat them, Dad doesn't like these." Zhu Shinian smiled, picked him up, and kissed his cheek. Then he unexpectedly spotted a familiar, tall alpha in uniform on the street a block away. Zhu Shinian froze. His omega gland seemed to recognize the other man before he did, beginning to burn faintly. Gu Zhen had no umbrella. Snowflakes landed on his eyelashes, as if they would freeze him solid. He stared fixedly at the child in Zhu Shinian's arms who had called him Dad, and at the alpha holding an umbrella over Zhu Shinian and the child. "General Gu." Jiang Huaiyan seemed to have only just noticed the alpha across the street, and glanced his way with an air of condescension. "Long time no see." The man stood in the snow, his gaze dark with jealousy and hatred. When their eyes met, he looked as if he wanted to burn a hole through Jiang Huaiyan with his stare. *The top is a virgin. There is gender change to omega, childbirth, and miscarriage. It's a fairly cliched, melodramatic story. If you have other content warnings, feel free to share them in the comments, but don't attack me personally and we're good. After the novel goes premium, it'll be updated daily unless something comes up. I'll post a leave notice if needed. Theme: I am not alone on my path.