Chapter 1
Chapter 1
The tall, cold man stood in the doorway, dressed meticulously. He asked, "Are you Shang Xi?"
"...Yes."
"On your right chest, don't you have a red birthmark?"
Shang Xi's face reddened slightly, with a hint of anger in her eyes. For a man and woman meeting for the first time, his words were rather offensive.
If he was teasing her, his expression was too cold for that. His voice was also devoid of any emotion, more like an interrogator than someone flirting.
How did this man know she had a birthmark on her right chest...
Seeing that she was too embarrassed to answer, the man briefly fell silent, staring at her, and asked again, "Four years ago at the Capital City Hotel, did you accidentally walk into the wrong room?"
Shang Xi was shocked and looked up sharply.
She was deeply shocked. Of course she remembered that night four years ago that changed her life. If it wasn't for that night, she wouldn't have gotten pregnant or had a child.
"How do you know..."
The man pursed his lips. "That night was me."
Shang Xi stared with widened eyes, mouth agape but no words coming out.
Five years ago, when she had just started her sophomore year, after a friend's birthday party she went back to the hotel drunk and walked into the wrong room, laying on the wrong bed.
She was so drunk she thought she was hallucinating. She even thought she saw a huge black dog on the big bed in the room. Shang Xi loved cats and dogs ever since she was little, but living dependent on others she could never raise pets herself.
Back then she was fearless, climbing onto the bed and starting to pet the dog, not worried about being bitten at all.
Later, she didn't know how but the big dog disappeared, and a very handsome man appeared in the bed.
She thought it was because she had been single for too long and was having a wet dream, fully cooperating.
The next morning before dawn she was woken up by endless calls to her phone. Still groggy picking up, she found out Old Granny who had raised her for ten years had passed away. She was so frantic she kneeled on the ground the moment she got off the bed.
Only then did she realize she was naked, and a man was lying in the bed with his back to her.
It wasn't a dream. The wet dream she thought she had was reality.
But there was no time to care about that. She hurriedly got dressed, not even getting a clear look at the man, and left the hotel bearing the discomfort in her body.
Shang Xi's parents died when she was little, and she bounced between relatives' homes until she was 10 years old. That year, a distant relative Granny saw her pitiful state and took her away from her second uncle's home where she was staying then.
Over the years, Granny treated her very well. She had planned to graduate and take care of Granny.
Who would have thought that at 70 years old this year, Granny passed away.
Shang Xi couldn't accept it. She had finally met someone who truly loved her after all these years, but now this person was gone too.
Grief, pain, despair weighed on her like a heavy dark cloud she couldn't shake off. Wherever she went, it followed.
Beautiful scenery and delicious food couldn't disperse that dark cloud over her head. She felt like everything lost meaning. Just then, she got pregnant.
"You have a hard time conceiving. This child may be your only child," the doctor said.
So...
Shang Xi dropped out of school.
From young till now, whenever she arrived at a relative's home, she could never integrate into the warmth of their family. She stood at the edge, looking in.
Father, mother, siblings - she didn't have these blood relatives. But in the future she could have her own child.
No one knew how much she wanted a child of her own.
She had to give birth; she must have this child.
Granny's old house had been taken back by her children. With nowhere to go, carrying a baby and unable to continue schooling, she rented a cheap apartment and worked hard to make ends meet.
She had a reason to live again.
The toughest days, she worked several jobs in one day.
When she tied her child to her back to work, hearing him giggling behind her, she felt very happy.
In this world, few loved her and many disliked her.
The sense of happiness brought by blood relatives, no amount of money could make up for. There would always be a hole there.
She never imagined that mysterious man would show up at her door.
Now, the man glanced at the shabby corridor and rusty railings, barely discernibly frowning.
"All these years, you've lived in this kind of place with the child?"
Shang Xi hmm-ed.
But actually, she was planning to move. The new apartment she bought was ready for people to live in.
"I'm Gu Wen," the man's low voice betrayed no fluctuations in emotion. "I've come to take you mother and child to live somewhere else."
Although he spoke normally, his eyes stared up sharply, the black pupils cold without warmth - not like human eyes at all.
This feeling was very familiar to Shang Xi, because her son's eyes occasionally became like this too, his huge dark eyes empty of anything.
Like cold, pitch black obsidian.
The feeling...was like the eyes of some predatory animal, sending chills down people's spines.
It made her think of wolves.
In her 25 years of life, she had met many people and deliberately looked into many people's eyes, but only with this man and her son did she have this feeling.
It wasn't her illusion.
"How did you find this place?" She stared at Gu Wen. Perhaps from looking too much into her son's eyes, she wasn't afraid of this man's eyes. "That night...did you eat something?"
Back then, though she initially cooperated thinking it was a dream, later she couldn't take it and wanted to escape. She even thought she might be the first person to die in a wet dream.
Gu Wen was silent for two seconds. "You can think of it as me eating something."
In fact, that night was his yearly mating period, which came 3 days early that time.
He found a nearby hotel to wait for rescue.
As a result, a human woman broke in, touching and hugging him, not sparing his ears, tail, or body, almost caressing his entire body...
Because his grandfather was human, Gu Wen had some human genes in him.
He wasn't as sinister as pure demons. In this world, not only pure humans exist.
It's just that arrogant humans believe only the human race exists.
The Wolf Clan had always lived in the remotest, coldest Snow Mountain, until in recent years when humans built cities that attracted his grandmother. She went down the mountain and met his fully human grandfather.
When he regained consciousness afterwards, he had already been brought back to Snow Mountain by his clansmen. The mating period would last 5 days. He just needed to soak in the clan's unique cold springs for two days to resolve it.
Wolves mate for life, not fickle like humans and other races, never casually finding partners to satisfy needs. Before meeting their one partner, they would rather soak in the cold springs year after year alone than find random people.
But he had the most intimate relations with a very proactive pure human woman because of his early mating period.
His clansmen told him when they came to the hotel to get him, the room was empty. That woman had fled long ago.
Entering his room, seducing him like that, then running away after sex - typical of fickle, casual humans. He should have known better.
With so many humans filling every city, it would be easy to disappear among them.
Wolves mate for life.
He had to either go find that human woman to spend his life with, or be alone forever.
Since she ran away, he didn't plan on looking for her.
He had just taken over the company back then, busy running around with no time to rest. After leaving Snow Mountain he threw himself into work, forgetting about the incident. Just a lifetime of solitude, what was so difficult about that?
Company matters gave him an even bigger headache. With too few clansmen and many more humans, business deals and interactions were also with pure humans.
He wasn't good at communicating or getting along with pure human males or females.
Humans always liked spraying pungent perfumes on themselves that he greatly disliked.
He thought he would have no more dealings with the human woman he had relations with. After all, there were so many humans that any city was filled with them.
But last night...
On the night of the full moon, in the deep quiet of night, he heard the cry of a wolf pup.
With a delicate, infantile voice, he was still a cub.
When he chased after, he actually smelled the scent of his own bloodline.
That was...his cub.
He had only been with one pure human female.
He didn't expect that the woman would get pregnant and give birth to the cub.
Every Wolf Clan cub needed to drink the spring water from the Snow Mountain Peak when they turned four and a half, otherwise the pain from bone development would be unbearable. Human medicine was useless.
He spent a whole night
Finding that pure human female, Shang Xi.
He wanted to pick up his cub, but according to the information, this woman worked hard from dawn to dusk over the years raising the cub alone.
The cub didn't just belong to him alone.
The cub was born without his knowledge, and he had done nothing about it over these years, so he didn't have the right to take the cub away.
So he would take both the mother and child.
He frowned, impatiently said: "You don't need to think about useless things like refusing and resisting. I won't allow my child to live in a place like this."
"You just have to nod your head, understand?"
Shang Xi stared at the face that looked so similar to her son's, and lazily mumbled in agreement.
In fact, she hadn't thought about refusing or resisting at all.
As the saying goes, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Since the child's biological father had shown up at her door, she would of course give her blessing for his displaced paternal love!
She turned and walked into the house: "I want to see the paternity test report between you and the child."
Gu Wen said: "Okay."
"So where are we moving to? Tell me and let me see if it's suitable."
Gu Wen didn't expect this woman to be so reasonable and easy to talk to. His expression softened slightly: "Halfway up Qingcheng Mountain, Nanfeng Courtyard."
"Come on in and have a seat."
Gu Wen hesitated for a moment.
Before stepping into the house, he stood at the door, surveying the place. The lighting was too dark, the walls were yellowish, and the sofa was a bit old. The house was very small, just a few dozen square meters.
It was cleaned quite tidy, with things neatly arranged.
Under the wooden table was a green inflatable rocking horse, clearly a child's toy.
On the walls were outdated word recognition stickers, color recognition stickers, and animal recognition stickers.
It exuded a strong sense of life.
Although the mother and son lived in poverty, everything revealed warmth.
He noticed the height chart by the door.
The last mark was almost up to his thigh.
That cub had grown quite tall.
After all, he himself was one meter ninety six.
The smell inside the room wasn't too unpleasant. The cub's milky scent was very strong. His pitch black eyes softened a little.
The cub was in the room.
He put his hands behind his back, looking out the window at the row of clothes hanging from the small balcony.
Some belonged to the cub, some to Shang Xi.
.
Suddenly, there was noise coming from the cub's room. He seemed to smell something. With a low growl―
Gu Wen walked over slowly until he reached the bedroom door.
Standing on the bed was the cub, wearing nothing but a white short sleeve shirt that went down to his knees, revealing his plump little calves. His chubby, doughy face glared fiercely at him with a pair of huge black eyes.
His mouth was open, baring two tiny fangs, growling threateningly at him: "Grr... Grrw!"
A delicate yet fierce little growl.
As he was nearing four and a half years old, bone development had begun. Unable to drink from the Snow Mountain Peak spring, discomfort wracked his body, flushing his little doughy face red.
As a pure human, Shang Xi could only assume her child had a fever.
She wouldn't know that without the spring water to soothe his bone development at night, the pain would be immense for such a small cub.
"Grr!!" The cub kept on growling, trying to drive away this dangerous intruder. His instincts told him that this intruder was very powerful and dangerous.
He had to protect his mother well.
"Grr grrr grrrr!!" He growled more intensely, perhaps threatened by the scent of his kind. The soft black hair on both sides of his head twitched, and suddenly two furry black wolf ears popped out. Still a cub, those ears were tiny and short.
Those were not the ears a pure human should have.
"Grr..." The cub's growl instantly cut off after one brief syllable. He had also sensed something, hurriedly raising his chubby hands to cover his ears.
Afraid of being seen, even more afraid his mother would see.
He thought she hadn't seen before.
He had realized early on that he was different from other people.
Being different from others in this world was wrong.
He seemed to be a little monster.
He covered his small ears with his hands, stuck out his butt, and burrowed into the quilt, but his pure black little tail was still exposed outside.
Not a very clever move.
Shang Xi finished her conversation with the man outside and came into the room. Seeing Gu Wen standing at the doorway, she frowned deeply and strode over.
What Gu Wen saw next was the little guy on the bed growing even more flustered. He thrashed about under the quilt, using all his feeding strength to try pulling his tail and ears back in.
Gu Wen started speaking: "Open your mouth and take three deep breaths."
He was teaching the cub.
The little one froze for a moment, then seemed to follow along, making his little tail behind him vanish in an instant.
Right then Shang Xi arrived at the door. She lowered her voice: "Mr. Gu, the child's sleeping. Don't wake him, he's unwell."
As she spoke, she glanced into the bedroom.
She saw a small lump under the quilt, nothing like a sleeping person's shape.
"Sweetie, you're awake?" Her eyes lit up as she walked in, "Feeling better? Still uncomfortable?"
The little guy's doughy face emerged from the quilt. His face was even redder drenched in sweat, from panicking and holding his breath just now.
The sight pierced Shang Xi's heart. She widened her eyes in alarm and threw herself over, hands shaking as she felt her son's little face, "What's going on? Is it another high fever?" We're going to the hospital. I'm taking you to the hospital."
It had been half a month. Going to the hospital was useless too.
Clearly fever symptoms, yet each doctor said nothing was wrong. They went to over a dozen hospitals to no avail.
Some doctors even doubted her mental state.
Said there was absolutely nothing wrong with her son.
She knew better than anyone that her precious child was sick.
Yet she was helpless, unable to endure the pain for him. Every night the pain from bone development would leave her young son drenched in sweat, clinging onto her hand with his tiny body. It hurt him so much.
Thinking of this, Shang Xi's eyes reddened as unbearable heartache washed over her. Her entire body shook as she prepared to carry her son and leave.
"I know what illness he has," Gu Wen spoke up.
Shang Xi stopped in her tracks.
"I can save him."
"There are some things on him that pure humans don't have. You've seen before, right?"
The cub was still hiding, but having lived together for four years, how could a mother not notice anything.
The cub was far too naive.
Shang Xi stiffened slightly, holding her child tighter.
Gu Wen disliked beating around the bush. He was impatient and kept it short: "I'm his father. Don't be wary of me. He has over half Wolf Clan bloodline in him. Human medicine doesn't work on him."
As soon as Gu Wen's words left his mouth, the cub in Shang Xi's arms seemed to have tired out. The small ears on his head popped out again as he lost the energy to maintain concealment.
Especially with Gu Wen's presence, that innate scent of their kind stimulated him.
But his mother was here, so he hurriedly reached out his chubby hands to cover them up.
He helplessly burrowed into Shang Xi's embrace: "Don't look, Mama, don't look... Grr...don't look..."
Shang Xi had seen everything, and she had seen for a while now - over the past half month.
Gu Wen watched this scene and frowned, his voice dropping an octave: "You've put pressure on him. He's afraid to let you find out."
Shang Xi felt a pang in her heart. She held her son tighter: "It's alright, it's alright. It doesn't matter if I see them. Mama thinks they're very cute. Don't be scared, don't be scared."
She kissed her son's little ears as tears mixed in, "Mama's known for a while. What does it matter? Mama loves you most, right? Don't be afraid."
The cub slowly calmed down under her soothing. He looked up at his mother with wide eyes: "Mama?"
His fuzzy little ears were gently caressed by his mother. She looked at him with a smiling face.
Grr! Mama really wasn't scared!
He was happy and laughed in Shang Xi's arms, baring his two tiny fangs. Then his eyes slowly shut as he fell asleep.
Only after her son was fully asleep did Shang Xi leave the room.
She wiped her tears and looked at Gu Wen: "I don't care if you're some Wolf Clan or wild tribe. I only want my child to regain his health."
That night.
Without even time to pack up her belongings, Shang Xi took her son and left with Gu Wen.
Deep underground the magnificent mountain villa estates in Qingcheng Mountain was an ice chamber Gu Wen spent a fortune on building. With state-of-the-art facilities, temperature could be perfectly maintained at freezing point.
In the center of the ice and snow was a small pool of blue water.
It was spring water Gu Wen had brought back long ago from the Snow Mountain Peak.
Shang Xi sat in an unfamiliar, beautiful large room, too preoccupied to take in her surroundings, her eyes fixed only on her son's rosy red cheeks. Her heart was twisted in knots.
No wonder, no wonder the hospital couldn't find anything wrong with him.
She felt foolish for leaving with a man she had only known for a few hours.
What if Gu Wen had lied to her, just playing a trick on her? Or what if he wanted to harm her son...
No, thinking like that was useless now.
She was out of options.
A desperate mother, she could only place her hopes on this stranger.
After all, her son looked so much like him, and the paternity test she saw confirmed it. She could only believe.
As soon as Gu Wen entered the room,
Shang Xi bolted up from her seat, as if catching sight of a lifeline, and ran over: “Mr. Gu, did you bring the medicine?”
She stood too close.
Gu Wen halted his steps, frowning slightly: “Get away from me.” With that said, he circled around her and headed for the bed.
The Wolf Clan were quite particular about distance between themselves and females. They would only be intimately close with their mates.
Although he and Shang Xi had been in the most intimate relations, Shang Xi was not his mate. She was the pure human who had seduced and slept with him that one night, then fled.
He felt neither dislike nor fondness for her. That was that.
They had no possibility in the past, nor would they in the future.
The child’s existence would not change his attitude.
“You pure humans really just pull and grab.” He mocked lightly.
Right now Shang Xi’s mind was filled only with her child. She paid no heed to his attitude, following behind him and watching from afar as he carried the jade bottle over to the bed.
He opened the lid, and wisps of white mist curled up from the mouth of the bottle.
“Wake the child.”
Brought back to herself, Shang Xi clambered onto the bed and gathered her son gently into her embrace, softly rocking him. “Sweetie, can you stay awake for a bit? Drink your medicine first then you can sleep again. Once you drink it you won’t hurt anymore.”
The little one slowly opened his eyes.
Shang Xi held out her hand. “Give it here, I’ll feed it to him.”
Gu Wen scoffed coldly. “You’ll take it? The chilly spring atop the Ice Mountains. You think you can touch that?”
A pure human’s hands would feel scalded, as if touching red hot iron.
Shang Xi paused, feeling his words were deliberately provocative, and pressed her lips. “If you can do it then bring it here.”
Without a word, Gu Wen lifted the bottle to the child’s lips. Shang Xi watched her son drink deeply, greedily gulping down mouthful after sweet mouthful until the bottle was emptied.
“One bottle a day. Go back to sleep.” Gu Wen reached out to stroke the child’s head.
“He won’t hurt tonight.”
Shang Xi’s brows knitted. “I’m staying with him.”
She couldn’t rest easy.
Gu Wen’s gaze lingered a moment on her dark eye circles and slightly haggard face, before carelessly tugging his lips. “Suit yourself.”
He turned and left the room.
Shang Xi did not sleep that night, keeping watch over her child who finally rested peacefully for the first time in over half a month.
Her son could really be saved.
The corners of her lips quirked up as she smiled. She too had barely rested these weeks, and now with the pressure gone could no longer withstand it. She keeled over right there and fell asleep on the thick white carpet beside the big bed.
She didn’t even have the thoughts or energy to make it up onto the bed.
Seven AM.
Gu Wen stepped into the room and froze at the sight of the woman sprawled on the floor fast asleep. After checking their child and feeling assured, he pivoted and departed without sparing another glance Shang Xi’s way.
The pure human woman asleep on the carpet did not warrant his notice.
He did not wish to touch her.
Yet she was still the child’s mother.
He would call for someone else to carry her.
There were Wolf Clan women in this residence.
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