Chapter 137: Chapter 137: Toward
The drive back from the university is entirely too short.
I spend the first twenty minutes staring at the small, handwritten note from Professor Liang tucked into the side pocket of my bag, and the next twenty staring out the window as the city streets gradually turn into the familiar, quiet roads leading to the estate. My thumb keeps tracing the edge of my notebook, right over the page where I scribbled *Tell him*.
I had a whole scenario worked out by the time the car cleared the main gates. It was safe. It had structure. I would go up to my room, take a bath, wash the lingering smell of university ink and nervous sweat off my skin, and work in the study until the evening.
Around seven o’clock, when Bael comes back, I would wait for him to show up in the study, and deliver the news cleanly, across a piece of dark wood, with plenty of space between us to keep things manageable.
That was the plan.
Liang Feng brings the car to a smooth, silent stop right in front of the main entrance. Qiao Jin is already out of the front seat, opening my door before I can even reach for the handle.
"Thank you," I say, stepping out into the cold afternoon air. My knees are still slightly soft from the three-hour examination, but the solid, quiet achievement inside my chest is still holding strong. I didn’t just survive it, I held my ground.
Liang Feng follows a step behind me, carrying the lighter weather jacket I’d discarded in the back seat. I push the heavy front door open, already thinking about the stairs, already bracing for the quiet emptiness of the foyer.
I stop dead in my tracks.
Bael is standing right there.
He isn’t in the study. He isn’t downtown at the corporate headquarters, and he isn’t dressed in the pristine, three-piece suit he usually wears when he’s managing the world at a distance. He’s wearing a simple charcoal sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his forearms, his hair slightly uncombed, looking like he hasn’t moved from the house all day. Looking like he’s just been waiting.
The moment the door opens, his gray eyes lock onto mine. They are clear, intensely focused, and entirely sober, the exact same gray as always, but there is a sharp, immediate tension in his jaw that wasn’t there before.
For a fraction of a second, I see the old Alpha reflex flare up in the line of his shoulders. He looks like he’s about to march across the marble floor, consume the space between us, and demand to know how it went. His fingers twitch at his sides.
Then, he catches himself.
Right in front of my eyes, Bael stops. He forces his weight back onto his heels, his broad frame going completely still in the center of the hall. He is actively holding his own instincts back, freezing his own body in place out of some stubborn, quiet vow to give me the space I asked for. He looks almost rigid with the effort of it, waiting for me to dictate the boundary.
The sight of him like that, this massive, powerful person deliberately making himself small so he doesn’t frighten me... does something strange to the back of my throat.
The careful, protective armor I’ve been wearing since the morning after his rut simply dissolves. The late-night plan, the study desk, the seven o’clock timeline... it all goes out the window.
Before my brain can form a single reason to stop, my feet are already moving.
I walk toward him. It isn’t a cautious, measured approach. It is an unconsciously eager, quick stride that has me crossing the marble floor before Bael can even register the shift. I don’t stop until I am standing right in his space, so close that the familiar, clean warmth of his scent radiates against my cold skin.
I look straight up into his eyes, my breath coming a little fast.
"I did it," I say. My voice is clean, free of the shaking anger from days ago. "The exam is over. I answered everything."
The words are barely out of my mouth before Bael’s restraint breaks completely.
He doesn’t ask for details, he doesn’t look for a structural explanation, he just stops holding back. His large, heavy arms come around my waist and upper back in a sudden, violent sweep, pulling me hard against his chest.
"Runze," he says, the sound muffled as he buries his face straight into the crook of my neck.
The impact knocks the remaining air right out of my lungs. His grip is desperate, almost bruisingly tight, anchoring me against him with a force that leaves absolutely no room for distance.
It’s the kind of hug that handles you completely—his large palms flat against my shoulder blades, crushing me into his warmth until I can feel the rapid, heavy thud of his heartbeat directly against my ribs. He is breathing in deeply, his nose dragging against my collarbone, filling his lungs with my scent as if he’s been starving for it for weeks.
Behind us, there is a soft, synchronized rustle of fabric.
Liang Feng and Qiao Jin don’t say a single word. They don’t linger, and they don’t stare. With the quiet efficiency of people who know exactly when they are no longer needed, Liang Feng gently sets my jacket on the side table, Qiao Jin steps back across the threshold, and the heavy front door clicks shut, leaving the two of us completely alone in the quiet of the house.
I don’t hug him back immediately... my hands are still caught between our chests, but my forehead slips against his shoulder, my eyes closing as the sheer comfort of his weight washes over my exhaustion.
"Thank you," I murmur into his sweater, my voice slightly muffled. "For the folder, for setting it all up."
Bael lets out a rough, shaking breath against my skin. His arms don’t loosen a fraction of an inch, if anything, he pulls me closer, his fingers curling into the fabric of my clean shirt.
"I knew you’d have it," he says, his voice low and gravelly, vibrating straight through my own chest. "I knew it before you left."
He holds me like that for a long time, just breathing me in, letting the quiet of the room settle around us until my shaking legs finally stop trembling.
The sheer plainness of his relief is something I don’t know what to do with. It doesn’t feel strategic, it doesn’t feel like an Alpha managing an Omega. It feels like Bael, trying to find his way through a language he doesn’t know how to speak.
Slowly, Bael pulls his head back just enough to look down at me. His hands slide down from my shoulders, anchoring firmly on my hip bones, his thumbs resting against the fabric over my stomach.
His eyes are incredibly dark, the gray deep and heavy as he searches my face, tracking the flush on my cheeks and the way my mouth is slightly open as I try to catch my breath.
"Runze," he says quietly.
"Yeah?"
He doesn’t use a directive. He doesn’t tell me where to go, and he doesn’t command me to stay. He just looks at me with that raw, unmanaged honesty that belongs to the person underneath the title.
"I want to kiss you," he says.
My breath catches.
I don’t move away.
He doesn’t wait for a polite response, and he doesn’t give me the time to let the defenses crawl back up my neck. He leans down, his large hand coming up to cup the back of my head to steady me, and catches my lips with his own.
It is a deep, real, and completely unhurried kiss. It doesn’t have the frantic, punishing heat of the rut, and it doesn’t have the careful, distant caution of the past few weeks. It is just heavy and honest, his lips pressing firmly against mine, parting them with a slow, deliberate pressure that tastes entirely like a confession.
My fingers automatically reach up, clutching the rough wool of his sweater at his shoulders to keep my balance as the world blurs down to the simple friction of his mouth against mine. He devours the distance between us, his tongue sliding in with a quiet, possessive certainty that fills my mouth and makes my lower stomach ache with that familiar, heavy warmth.
When he finally pulls back, just an inch, his forehead rests against mine. His breath is hot and ragged against my lips, his thumb brushing slowly over my jawline, keeping me right there.
"Can you not go back to the other room, please?" he whispers, his voice rough, almost pleading. "Stay with me, in our room."
I look into his steady gray eyes, my heart slamming hard against my ribs, and for the first time in a month, the quiet inside me doesn’t feel like armor. It just feels like a beginning.
