Chapter 94: The Things He Never Told Anyone

Chapter 94

Luo Xin, Guo Chen, and Shen Mei had spent the entire day with Jiang Li.

They had arrived early enough to fill the apartment with the kind of noise he had once found exhausting, and stayed long enough for the afternoon light to fade from the windows. Luo Xin had fussed over his meals, Guo Chen had tried to distract him with ridiculous stories, and Shen Mei had quietly kept an eye on him whenever his laughter faltered. For a few hours, the apartment had felt less like a place where he was hiding from the world and more like somewhere he was allowed to live.

By the time they finally left, darkness had settled beyond the windows. Shen Yu was only a few minutes away from returning from work, and Jiang Li had waved his friends off with a smile that lasted until the door closed.

The silence afterward was immediate.

He stood in the entrance for a moment, listening to their footsteps fade down the corridor. Then he returned to the living room and settled onto the couch, drawing his legs up beneath him. He wore a pair of warm, furry pants and a matching sweater, the soft fabric gathered around his wrists as he folded his arms loosely over his knees.

He had always been accustomed to being alone. There had been years when solitude was the only thing he could rely on, and spending an entire day without speaking to anyone had never seemed unusual. Yet lately, even a few quiet hours could leave him feeling strangely unsettled.

He glanced at the clock.

A few minutes.

He could wait a few minutes.

Jiang Li began counting them without meaning to. His gaze stayed fixed on the numbers as they changed, and the longer he watched, the more his thoughts seemed to drift away from him. By the time the front door opened, he had become so absorbed in the passing minutes that he barely noticed the sound.

Shen Yu paused just inside the apartment.

His omega sat curled up on the couch, staring at the clock with swollen eyes and a distant expression. The sight made something in Shen Yu’s chest tighten. He quietly removed his shoes, slipped into his house slippers, and crossed the room without disturbing the silence.

Rather than approach Jiang Li from the front, he stopped behind the couch and leaned down. He rested his head against the curve of Jiang Li’s neck, breathing in the familiar sweetness of his pheromones.

"What’s troubling that pretty head of yours?" he asked softly.

Jiang Li blinked, his dazed expression gradually giving way to recognition. He had already caught Shen Yu’s scent the moment the door opened, but he hadn’t looked up. His eyes were still a little swollen from crying earlier, and he didn’t particularly want the Alpha to notice.

He managed a small smile.

"Nothing. I think I just got a little emotional seeing everyone together today. I couldn’t help crying."

He turned his face enough to look at Shen Yu, his honey-brown eyes still damp around the edges. The explanation sounded harmless, and perhaps it was partly true. Having his friends gathered around him had stirred feelings he hadn’t expected, but it hadn’t been the only reason he had cried.

Shen Yu studied him for a moment before releasing a quiet sigh. He moved around the couch and sat beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched.

"Jiang Li."

The omega hummed in response and leaned his head against Shen Yu’s shoulder. The familiar warmth made it easier to breathe, and for a moment he allowed himself to rest there without thinking about anything else.

Shen Yu’s hand settled gently against his back.

"You know I like it when you open up to me," he began. "When you feel comfortable enough to tell me what’s bothering you, I want you to know you can."

Jiang Li’s brow furrowed slightly.

"But I’m selfish, too," Shen Yu continued.

The omega lifted his head and looked at him.

Shen Yu’s expression had changed. His dark eyes were no longer softened by the quiet affection he had shown moments earlier. There was something restrained in them, a tension he had been carrying for longer than Jiang Li realized.

"You haven’t told me anything about what happened," he said. "And I know that means you haven’t healed from it. I understand that you might not be ready, and I’ve tried to give you time, but..."

He paused, his jaw tightening.

"I can’t keep waiting without knowing who hurt you."

"Shen Yu..."

"Who did this to you?" Shen Yu asked, his voice lowering. "Who took you that night, Lili? Please tell me."

His hand moved from Jiang Li’s back to his neck, touching the bruises that still lingered beneath the skin. The marks had faded, but they had not disappeared completely. Shen Yu’s fingers were careful, almost hesitant, as though he feared that even the gentlest contact might hurt him.

Jiang Li went still.

The change was immediate enough that Shen Yu felt it beneath his hand. Jiang Li’s fingers trembled where they rested on his thighs, and his gaze dropped from the Alpha’s face. The warmth that had settled between them moments earlier seemed to vanish, replaced by a coldness that crept slowly through his chest.

He knew that look.

He knew the feeling of being dragged backward into a memory he had spent years trying to bury. His thoughts began to blur, and the room seemed to lose its familiar shape. The couch beneath him, the quiet apartment, Shen Yu’s hand on his neck—all of it felt distant, as though he were watching himself from somewhere outside his body.

"Ah... Shen Yu, I’m fine," he murmured. "We shouldn’t—"

"If it had been me," Shen Yu interrupted quietly, "if I had been kidnapped and came back with another man’s bruises on my body, how would you feel?"

Jiang Li bit his lower lip.

Shen Yu’s voice remained gentle, but there was a strain beneath it now, something that sounded painfully close to helplessness.

"I know I’m being selfish. I know you don’t owe me every detail, and I’m not asking because I want to force you to relive it. But I can’t keep acting as though everything is all right when it clearly isn’t. The people who did this to you are still walking around freely, and I don’t even know who they are."

His fingers curled slightly against Jiang Li’s shoulder.

"Please, LiLi. Tell me."

Jiang Li’s breathing grew shallow.

The words seemed to open a door inside him, one he had been trying desperately to keep shut. The old voice returned, whispering with cruel certainty that everything had been his fault. It repeated the accusation until the words seemed to fill the room, drowning out the sounds around him.

His chest tightened.

He could no longer draw a full breath, and the edges of his vision began to darken. His fingers curled into the fabric of his pants, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles ached. He wanted to answer Shen Yu, but his mouth felt numb, and the memories were gathering too quickly for him to separate one from another.

Then he looked up.

Shen Yu was still there.

The Alpha’s dark eyes held his gaze, and there was no disgust in them, no suspicion, no fear. Only love, steady and unmistakable, even as his expression betrayed the pain of watching Jiang Li struggle.

Jiang Li stared at him.

Shen Yu loved him.

The thought came slowly at first, fragile against the relentless voice in his head. Then he repeated it to himself, holding on to the words as though they were something solid enough to keep him from falling.

He was loved.

He was not alone.

The accusation inside his mind began to weaken. It did not disappear, but Shen Yu’s presence gradually became louder than it was. Jiang Li’s gaze stopped wandering, and the breath trapped in his chest finally escaped in a trembling exhale.

A tear slipped down his cheek.

He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Shen Yu, burying his face against the Alpha’s neck. His body shook, but he held on, clinging to the familiar scent of whisky and rosewood as though it could anchor him to the present.

"One day..." he began, his voice breaking.

Shen Yu immediately tightened his arms around him.

Jiang Li swallowed, struggling to find the words. "One day, I did something horrible. Shen Yu, I was so scared. I almost killed my own brother."

The Alpha went still.

"I couldn’t control my pheromones," Jiang Li continued against his neck. "I saw him choking. I watched him struggle to breathe, and I just stood there. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even help him."

His voice grew smaller as the memory sharpened.

"My parents rushed in and saw everything. They saw his condition, and they saw me standing there doing nothing. They thought I had done it on purpose. Nobody asked me what happened before I froze. Nobody asked why I couldn’t move."

Jiang Li’s fingers tightened around Shen Yu’s clothes.

"That was the first time I saw my mother’s eyes look at me like that."

Shen Yu’s breath caught, but he did not interrupt.

"It wasn’t disappointment," Jiang Li whispered. "It was fear."

He lifted his face slightly, though he couldn’t bring himself to meet Shen Yu’s eyes.

"She was afraid of me. My own mother was afraid of her son, and I didn’t know how to make her understand that I hadn’t wanted any of it to happen. I was terrified, too. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, and everyone looked at me as though I were a monster."

His voice trembled.

"That was the day I ran away from home."

Shen Yu’s arms tightened around him, but Jiang Li continued before he could speak.

"I know it sounds terrible. I know I should have helped him, but I couldn’t. I was so frightened that my body wouldn’t move. And after that, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had done. I kept seeing his face, hearing him struggle..."

He pressed his forehead against Shen Yu’s shoulder.

"I thought I deserved to be hated."

Shen Yu’s eyes narrowed, not with anger toward Jiang Li, but with the pain of hearing how long his omega had carried that belief alone. He held Jiang Li by the shoulders and drew back just enough to look at him.

"Lili," he whispered.

Jiang Li’s eyes were wet, and his lips trembled as he tried to keep speaking.

"He was drunk," he said. "He tried to touch me."

Shen Yu’s expression changed.

His eyes widened, and for an instant, the tenderness in them was overtaken by something dark and dangerous. His hand tightened around Jiang Li’s shoulder before he consciously forced himself to loosen it.

"But it wasn’t the first time," Jiang Li continued, his voice barely audible. "He had tried before. I was already traumatized, and I didn’t know how to stop him. My father kept saying it was Alpha rut, as though that made it acceptable. My mother couldn’t do anything except cry."

He swallowed painfully.

"My father never wanted me in the first place. I had to listen to my mother crying every day, and I couldn’t bear it anymore. I couldn’t stay there and pretend everything was normal."

Jiang Li’s gaze fell.

"So I ran away."

For a long moment, Shen Yu said nothing.

He could feel Jiang Li trembling in his arms, and every word the omega had spoken seemed to settle somewhere deep inside him, leaving behind a weight that made it difficult to breathe.

The bruises on Jiang Li’s neck were no longer simply marks left by a kidnapping. They were another reminder of how often someone had hurt him while the people who should have protected him had failed to do so.

Shen Yu lowered his forehead against Jiang Li’s.

"You were a child," he whispered.

Jiang Li’s breath hitched.

"You were frightened, and someone hurt you. None of that makes you a monster, Lili. Freezing doesn’t mean you wanted what happened to him, and it doesn’t mean you deserved what happened to you."

His thumb brushed gently beneath Jiang Li’s eye, catching another tear.

"You should never have had to run away to survive."

Jiang Li stared at him, his expression crumpling beneath the gentleness of those words.

For years, he had tried to convince himself that leaving had been the only thing he could do. Yet some part of him had always wondered whether he had abandoned his mother, whether he had been cruel for leaving her behind with a man who made her cry.

Shen Yu seemed to understand the question before Jiang Li could voice it.

"Your mother’s suffering was not your responsibility," he said. "Neither was your brother’s behavior. You were not the one who should have been forced to carry all of that."

Jiang Li’s lips parted, but no words came.

He leaned into Shen Yu again, his tears soaking into the Alpha’s collar.

This time, when the old accusation returned, it did not sound quite as convincing.

And Shen Yu kept holding him, refusing to let him face the memory alone.