It's who you are [prologue]

[hypermoyashi]

[ Warnings for ABO verse, if that's not your cup of tea. I'm still sort of shocked I'm writing this, but enjoy the prologue/sneak peak of something that will probably get posted a while later. ]

With the last base slave’s neck snapped, the forest fell silent. Xie Lian waited, straining his ears for any sounds from Fu Yao or Nan Feng—or, perhaps, an enemy—but there was nothing. The silence permeated the air as thickly as the stench of rotten flesh. Xie Lian sighed, and he could only continue to wait.

As if answering a summons, a new scent mixed in with the rot. It would have been a sweet, pleasant scent had it not mixed with the stench of death and evil to create something sticky and nauseating.

The curtain to the sedan parted, and a hand appeared. Just as Xie Lian, it waited.

Taking a deep breath, he took it.

-/-/-

Nan Feng and Fu Yao. Both smelling of beta, but both fighting like two competing alpha.

“There,” the girl, Little Ying, said, and Xie Lian had to rip his gaze away from the mildly distressing show his bickering tagalongs were putting on. “Well, it’s not perfect, but…”

Xie Lian reached upwards to feel his hair, his fingers meeting various knots and braids carefully woven into one another to keep his hair pinned to the top of his head. It didn’t feel as intricate as some of the styles he’d seen at weddings before, but for a girl who’d never done it before, it was impressive.

He smiled and said, “You’ve done very well, thank you.”

“Ah… thank you,” she mumbled back, her face brightening despite her bashfulness.

Her scent was as soft and indistinct as everyone else’s, not a single alpha or omega to be seen. Xie Lian didn’t know whether to laugh or not.

Nan Feng and Fu Yao finally quit their bickering to appraise Xie Lian for a moment. The latter commented, “If I were the ghost groom, I’d toss you back.”

“Ah, well.” Xie Lian only smiled and draped the veil over his head. “I’ll be wearing this, at least. Doesn’t it make me at least a bit more tolerable?”

“...your scent still isn’t right,” Nan Feng remarked.

Fu Yao rolled his eyes. “That’s what the perfume is for, you dolt. Don’t you remember? Or is your head too empty to retain our conversations?”

“You-!” Nan Feng looked about ready to burst forward to end Fu Yao’s life on the spot, but the other beta was entirely unperturbed by the heat of the glare directed his way. He even inspected his nails, just to piss Nan Feng off.

Xie Lian smiled uncomfortably. “Please don’t fight.” Unfortunately, his words carried little to no weight, and the two still fumed at one another. But, at the very least, they hadn’t started brawling, so Xie Lian counted that as a win.

It was a little comforting, in a way. Some things never change.

Still, as he considered Nan Feng’s earlier words, Xie Lian pulled his wrist up to his face, taking in the scent that the fabric of his sleeve wafted his way. Unfortunately, that ‘junior’ official had a point. It had the sweetness of an omega’s scent, but there was a sharp manufactured bite underlying it that wouldn’t belong to any living person. As a beta, Xie Lian wouldn’t have to use scent blockers at least, but replacements would’ve been more convincing than the perfume.

That is, if they actually made scent replacements for beta and alpha to disguise themselves as omega.

Xie Lian was sure they must exist somewhere, but in all his 800 years, he had yet to happen across any. They were a rarity, much more so than the replacements that made one smell of earth and bark, an alpha’s scent. But the perfume would work from a distance, and once the ghost groom drew close, they’d have already fallen into the trap.

Xie Lian stood and brushed himself off. “Well, are we ready for the procession?”

-/-/-

When the hand that helped him caught Xie Lian after he stumbled, he drew in a sharp breath.

The ghost groom, or whatever stranger had deigned to take a bloody stroll in the dead of night through a haunted forest, smelled of maple and rain, cloyingly sweet and impossible to mistake.

An omega.

Well, that was a bit of a surprise.

 [ read it on ao3 ]