Su Heng’s breath caught in his throat at the sound of Jiang Ying calling his name.
He immediately turned back, only to find someone standing in front of her — someone who nearly made him fail to mask his killing intent.
That familiar, repulsive, and aggravating scent.
A Beastman who willingly served as a pawn kept by the Federation.
But if you had to name one person on the battlefield who could truly threaten his army, it would be this Wolf Clan Beastman standing right here.
The former Adjutant of the Federal Beastman Army, now its newly appointed Commander.
The man who, just days ago, had the audacity to boast about leading the White Knights’ Beastman Army to trample the Erga Empire into the ground.
Su Heng’s aura turned steely and cold.
A Lanyin Askarot —
What is he doing here?
Could she really be someone the Federation planted to probe him?
No. If that were the case, A Lanyin wouldn’t have shown himself so directly.
He had always concealed his identity on the battlefield. Even within his own military camp, only a handful knew his true appearance, his pheromone scent, or any of his distinguishing traits.
Clearly, A Lanyin had no idea he was the Commander-in-Chief of the enemy nation.
Was it just a coincidence?
Su Heng didn’t let down his guard.
And it wasn’t just vigilance he felt.
Seeing that man standing beside Jiang Ying stirred a strange, unwelcome feeling — the illusion that something of his was being coveted by another predator.
Even without Su Heng showing any outward hostility, every inch of A Lanyin’s posture radiated an undisguised bid for favor.
Arrogant. Self-assured. As if it were perfectly natural.
As if he was the one who should be standing at her side.
It was an expression Su Heng had never seen on A Lanyin’s face, not even when the Federation held a commanding advantage on the battlefield.
The thought that “she might be snatched away by another Beastman” swept through his mind in a frenzied wave, drowning his reason. The suppressant patch, not yet handed to him, was set aside entirely. The intensifying possessiveness of his rut drove him toward her.
“Jiang Ying?” he said, voicing her name for the first time.
Two short syllables, burning his tongue like a lick of flame, the heat only fueling his excitement.
Those two words. The person who bore that name. She should belong to him.
Su Heng followed that primal instinct, stepping past A Lanyin and firmly grasping her wrist.
But his grip was light. Jiang Ying sensed it was him and offered no resistance.
She shook her head in A Lanyin’s general direction. “But you’re the clinic’s doggy. Sorry, A Lan, I already have my own dog now.”
After speaking, she wrapped her hand around Su Heng’s in return and waved it in front of A Lanyin.
“I’m not — never mind.”
A Lanyin disliked her linking him to that so-called clinic.
But their first meeting had been there. For someone with Beastman Cognitive Disorder, his first impression was permanently fixed as “the clinic’s dog” and “a dog taken in by an acquaintance.”
In a way, though, that made things a little interesting.
Which was why, even now, he still hadn’t told her he was actually a wolf.
The White Wolf narrowed his eyes, sizing up the Canine Beastman in front of him.
That protective posture of his thoroughly irritated A Lanyin, made worse by the overwhelmingly aggressive pheromones rolling off him —
A high-risk breed. Or some genetic crossbreed mongrel.
Plus, the distinct scent of a rut cycle, and the barely concealed beastly desire threading through his voice.
Tch. A hypocrite who puts on a show of restraint.
He was already in full rut right in front of her.
Still, everything came down to first come, first served.
And he was the one who came first.
A Lanyin met Su Heng’s gaze with a challenging look, then turned his complaint toward Jiang Ying. “Your Beastman friend doesn’t seem very welcoming.”
“Not a friend.”
Just as he expected, Jiang Ying corrected him seriously. “A Heng is my guide dog.”
Even knowing about her cognitive disorder, Su Heng’s mood darkened at those words.
She showered him with unreserved hugs and kisses, but only because, in her eyes, he was nothing more than a dog.
And her protectiveness toward him right now stemmed from the exact same premise.
A Lanyin had deliberately led her to say that, wanting to make him uncomfortable.
He had to admit, the beast’s instincts were sharp. Even without recognizing his true identity, A Lanyin had instinctively directed intense hostility toward him.
“Is that so?”
The White Wolf started using other methods to “prove” their “closeness.”
“I haven’t seen you at the clinic in a while. I was starting to think you’d already gotten better.”
A Lanyin released his grip on her blind cane and leaned in toward him, but Su Heng was a step ahead, drawing her back to increase the distance between them.
As expected of a dog.
A scoff escaped A Lanyin’s chest. He wasn’t angered by this predictable, ingrained protectiveness of the dog toward its owner.
Jiang Ying hadn’t noticed A Lanyin’s intention. She only assumed Su Heng had pulled her back because someone needed to pass by, and he was simply performing his guide dog duty.
Unable to see the mockery in the White Wolf’s eyes either, she answered his question in earnest. “Work has been too busy lately. Next week… mm, next weekend I should have time to go.”
Su Heng stood silently to the side, listening to them exchange words back and forth.
A conversation whose content he had no part in.
Matters that had nothing to do with him.
And yet the other Beastman standing before him was a real participant in all of it.
Even as he told himself he had only known Jiang Ying for two days, and that he was not her dog…
This feeling of being excluded truly stung.
“Alright then. See you next week.”
A Lanyin reached out to ruffle her hair.
But the instant his hand came down, Su Heng blocked it.
He stepped in front of her like a warning, cutting off that direct, predatory gaze and the aggressive gesture.
Their eyes met in a flash of cold animosity and murderous intent.
All of it happened beyond Jiang Ying’s perception.
She peeked out from behind Su Heng, searching for A Lanyin’s direction. “Okay! See you next week.”
The moment A Lanyin revealed a triumphant look and turned to leave, Su Heng’s grip on Jiang Ying’s hand unconsciously loosened.
There was a faint trace of dejection in it.
A dejection she didn’t notice at all.
Just as this unfamiliar emotion began spreading through his chest, the second before he let go entirely, she tugged at his sleeve.
Su Heng looked down at her. Her hands were resting on his arm with complete trust, the tip of her blind cane already off the ground, looking as if it were about to be folded away.
Maybe it was his imagination, but the way she “gazed” at him now seemed to hold more affection than it had when facing that White Wolf.
He must look like a domestic dog sulking because its owner had pet a stray.
A single piece of chicken breast could cheer a little dog right up, and with just a few small gestures of closeness, she had completely soothed him in an instant.
So much so that when she asked him to go with her to the clinic next week, an absurd thought actually bubbled up inside him: “As expected, I really am the rightful consort.”
Amidst the secret delight, he finally got the chance to ask, “Going to the clinic… is it for your eyes?”
If she could regain her sight… if she really did recover…
She wouldn’t need him anymore, would she?
“Not for that.”
Jiang Ying’s tone was light. “I have a condition called Beastman Cognitive Disorder.”
It was strange. This hadn’t been a problem for her before.
As a transmigrator, her original world had plenty of literary works about Beastmen. This world’s Beastmen were just derivative lore from that one popular battle series, so she’d had little trouble understanding or accepting it at first.
But at some point, she had suddenly lost the ability to correctly recognize what a Beastman was.
No matter how people around her explained it, she just felt that Beastmen were no different from fluffy little animals.
Even with Sub-Beastmen who didn’t display that many beastly traits — like her dog, Su Heng — she couldn’t see anything wrong with that.
“It’s not a very serious condition, really. It just affects my work a little. I need to relearn the proper way to understand Beastmen, so that’s why I go to the psychology clinic every week.”
Worried her dog might be concerned, she added that explanation.
This was something Su Heng had never expected.
She knew she had a cognitive problem regarding Beastmen.
And yet even so, she still steadfastly insisted on treating him as a little dog.
He didn’t know how to respond to her words. But after saying all that, Jiang Ying suddenly remembered the matter that A Lanyin had interrupted earlier.
“Right. A Heng, just now you were… buying something?”
She clutched his sleeve tightly, giving him no chance to retreat.
Then she deliberately drew closer, tilting her face up directly toward him, weariness written all over her features: “My little dog isn’t so innocent anymore, is he?”
“…”
The abruptly shortened distance made his heartbeat, which had barely managed to calm down, spiral out of control again.
The rut urge he had only just managed to suppress during the standoff with A Lanyin began stirring restlessly once more.
The humiliation of being caught buying heat suppressants right in front of her, and apparently being misunderstood as buying that sort of thing, surged back up the moment she asked the second time.
He unconsciously clenched the mechanical arm hanging empty at his side, only just managing to stop his strength from causing an earsplitting screech of grinding metal.
“…I was thinking of buying some pheromone suppressant patches.”
Su Heng sidestepped the term “rut,” using a less mortifying concept to cloud the issue.
He forced himself to appear calm, suppressing the trembling of the arm she was holding.
“A Beastman’s pheromones draw attention from others of the same kind. To avoid hostile encounters with unfriendly Beastmen seeking a fight, we’ll sometimes use external aids to mask our own scent.”
That part was true enough.
On the battlefield, he hid his identity using the same method.
Jiang Ying was half-convinced, half-skeptical. “Then… what about the ribbed ones? And the ‘beast-of-prey exclusive’?”
Every single word out of her mouth seemed to trample right over his shame.
Yet looking at her cheeks, which had rapidly flushed from embarrassment and which he desperately longed to touch, he suddenly felt… the trampling wasn’t so bad.
Two contradictory emotions crashed wildly through his mind. Su Heng suppressed the dryness in his throat and lowered his voice. “My genes are unique. My pheromones are harder to suppress than usual. A friend said that specific type is the only one that works.”
Unique genes. Ah, right. When she’d bought him, the contract did mention something like that.
Wanting to mask one’s own scent was a cat’s instinct, after all.
Su Heng had Black Panther genes mixed in. Big cats were still cats. That seemed to make sense.
On this point, it seemed he was actually more feline than canine — not like a dog that goes around ostentatiously marking over other dogs’ scents.
Jiang Ying was finally convinced.
And with this little test, she found he had absolutely no inkling that she had actually come here to buy condoms to study.
Relieved, she also lost all interest in probing further into her little dog’s intentions.
Her little dog was too innocent. There was no way he came here to buy condoms.
So she gave an “Oh” and let go of his arm. “Then let me go buy that stuff for you. The pheromone suppressant patches.”
“No need.”
Su Heng tensed up again. “I just realized… I don’t really need them that much after all.”
No matter what, even if she couldn’t see, there was no way he could bring himself to buy heat suppressant products right in front of her, let alone let her buy them for him.
If the cashier exposed him, he would never be able to face her again.
“That’s true. You and A Lan seemed pretty friendly just now anyway.”
Jiang Ying respected her dog’s wishes, and frankly, she was just as eager to escape this place immediately.
She’d find another way to buy that other thing.
She tugged at Su Heng’s sleeve again. “Then, A Heng, let’s go buy something else.”
Su Heng nodded with restrained dignity, then remembered she couldn’t see him and let out a hoarse “Mm” from his throat.
She naturally reached out and took his hand. That state of interlaced fingers was like a leash she had on him, binding him to her side and eating away at his willpower.
This couldn’t keep going on. He needed to get his hands on that product, and soon.
Today was impossible. If he used another excuse to slip away from her, she would definitely get suspicious.
Yet without any means of suppressing his rut, an even more difficult challenge loomed.
How was he supposed to… get through tonight?