Chapter Text
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Shen Yuan was a divorce baby.
To elaborate further, he was a transmigrated divorce baby.
A transmigrated divorce baby to two Lords at odds with each other and were now playing ‘no, he’s my kid’ between their mountain ridges.
Any other child would probably get tons of issues due to the baggage his new parents were carrying and inadvertently, passing over to their child. Thank god Shen Yuan was a somewhat well-adjusted millennial and studied more than one of those psychology books his older brother left whenever he visited Shen Yuan from college.
It gave him a little more insight to the situation he was currently in, and ensured that he only screamed in his head for about thirty minutes before trying to look at the bright side of things.
But even looking at the bright side of things was very very difficult.
Because he just didn’t transmigrate into a xianxia novel.
No, he transmigrated in Proud Demon Immortal Way.
Worse, he transmigrated into a fucked-up A/B/O version of PIDW that only the most obsessive of fangirls could cook up in their heads.
How did he know? Because he could hear words being thrown around, like heats, and suppressants and the best one, ‘—please, Shen-shixiong. You have every right to deny him as of now, but Yue-shixiong should at least be informed of the birth of his omega child—”
Trippy. He was an omega baby.
And to add to the cherry on top of the sundae which was his bizarre new life, Shen Yuan wasn’t just any transmigrated divorce baby, no.
He was Shen Qingqiu’s baby. The scum villain’s baby. Who was currently staring at him with soft eyes, tracing Shen Yuan’s cheek in a ticklish way that made him sneeze.
Fuck. His. Life.
Shen Qingqiu swaddled his quiet son in silk blankets, smiling at the scrunched up bow lips, pursed in displeasure, large silvery purple eyes peering up at him.
Eyes he inherited from him.
Shen Qingqiu never thought he could have a child. He was a faulty omega, crippled from his time as a slave, another cruel thing the Qiu’s had taken away from him.
Omegas were highly prized, adored by society as there were so little of them. They were guaranteed to be beautiful, have good cultivation roots, were often talented in one discipline or the other, and had natural pheromones that drew people in.
When he first presented, he was being beaten by Qiu Jianluo. It was most likely his body trying to protect itself, releasing pheromones to calm the sadistic young master, but Qiu Jianluo panicked at the thought of being punished for torturing an omega that he kicked Shen Jiu in a flight of bamboo stairs.
Something bled inside him that night. Beyond the haze of pain, he remembered seeing a river of blood trickling from between his legs, soaking the pure white snow. Qiu Jianluo had ordered servants to clean him up, lest Qiu Haitang suspected something, and by the time morning came, Shen Jiu’s fiancée did not find anything amiss in him.
Aside from the faint broken keening of his newly awakened instincts, Shen Jiu showed none of his distress.
Because he knew he was ruined. Something inside of him physically shattered at Qiu Jianluo’s push.
He remembered being relieved at that time. Despite his omega’s deep sorrow, which he viciously ignored, Shen Jiu felt relieved.
He was broken goods. A broken omega was useless.
He knew that while good omegas were treated as treasures, the ones that were hidden were treated worse than any slave. And Shen Jiu would rather be lashed a thousand times than be raped by any of these scums.
So he kept his pheromones tamped down. He stole fake beta scents to prevent anyone from knowing. He was tense whenever the months came and ended as he waited for his heats, but nothing happened. No sudden fever. No sudden outbursts. No cravings to be fucked.
No heat.
He was right. He was broken.
Something in him wanted to laugh.
Qiu Jianluo kept his tongue. The beta never revealed that Shen Jiu was an omega. For what reason, Shen Jiu didn’t know.
Maybe because he was afraid Shen Jiu would be freed and reveal his family’s disgusting core. Omega slaves were to be freed, after all. Then sold to the highest bidder.
Or maybe he thought it was a hallucination, a fevered dream. Maybe he thought Shen Jiu presenting as an omega wasn’t real. He certainly didn’t hold back the next time he buried his fists in Shen Jiu’s face and body.
Still, it was the only thing he thanked the scum for. Shen Jiu gave him a painless death, if only for the small mercy that he wasn’t violated in the most heinous ways because the bastard kept his silence.
His appreciation for his broken biology continued as he apprenticed under Wu Yanzi. Masquerading as a beta, Shen Jiu would coldly stare at his ‘master’ as he leered at the omegas they encountered, unaware that he had one as a disciple. Oftentimes the rogue cultivator would loudly tell Shen Jiu what he would do when he found one, gesturing revolting and vulgar things that made Shen Jiu mock the alpha in his head.
It had given him great pleasure to let a sliver of his pheromones drift towards Wu Yanzi’s nose as he drove his sword in his chest, the bastard’s eyes widening in shock before the light left his eyes.
The only person aware of his presentation, before his ill-fated reveal, was his Shizun. The former lord of Qing Jing Peak.
She had a discerning eye and a sharp nose. One whiff of Shen Jiu had her lips curling and her hand gesturing for him to follow her to her abode. She could tell right away. Her family had apparently been the merchants responsible for creating the fake beta scents Shen Jiu used religiously.
She thought it amusing that none of her fellow martial siblings could sense Shen Jiu as an omega, trilling at how Shen Jiu would rather toil hard as a beta disciple rather than reveal himself as an omega and be pampered by the sect.
Broken omegas are still cherished omegas, she said once she wrenched his situation from his lips. Sad little omegas even more so. And they could do something about it perhaps, they had a healing peak, traumas can be soothed—
Shen Jiu refused. Vehemently. The thought of accepting anyone’s sickly sweet adoration made him feel ill. He was going to live the way he had for so long. Holding his fate in his own hands.
“Cunning, vicious, and quick,” she had said, hiding red painted lips behind a delicate fan. “All worth more than any other omega loitering around my peak. From this day on, you are this Master’s disciple.”
It was flattering, yet at the same time a nightmare to be so favored by the Master of the second highest peak of Cang Qiong. Shen Jiu, the newest shidi, was automatically elevated to head disciple, something unheard of since the founding of the Sect.
It earned him the ire and jealousy of many, the scorn of his fellow disciples, some of whom tried to sabotage his cultivation. But Shen Jiu gave as good as he got, hissing and spitting vitriol at whoever tried to harm him. He had spent a good part of his lifetime distrustful, discerning people’s motives. Hiding his secret and striving his way into the position of Peak Lord was worth it, even if he had to keep everyone at arm’s length.
He didn’t care for bonds. He didn’t care for trust. Even as the only person who held his heart was finally in his line of sight, he didn’t look back.
He had been content with his reputation as the unapproachable Peak Lord. He was cold, withdrawn, a block of stone.
Only for everything he worked for to be shattered by the one person who doomed him in the first place.
…
Yue Qingyuan.
Yue Qi.
Qi-ge.
Shen Jiu hated him.
The one person he tried to leave behind in his past only to appear right in front of him. The stupid stupid idiot who, despite coming from the same dregs of society as Shen Jiu, failed to see his scum teacher’s trap, acting as if he were truly a naïve young master from a rich family, unknowing of the duplicity of bastards like Wu Yanzi.
Even as children, Yue Qi had been too soft, too kind. He didn’t see the sadism in Qiu Jianluo’s eyes, the greed in Wu Yanzi’s smile. All of which led to Shen Jiu’s expense.
If it weren’t for Shen Jiu, the fucking idiot would have been killed and a whole Sect would have persecuted him for leading their most precious golden disciple to his demise.
Shen Jiu, now Shen Qingqiu, wanted to cry at the injustice. Even inside the Sect, he couldn’t avoid Yue Qingyuan. He was still Shen Qingqiu’s elder, so kind and beseeching, imploring him with desperate eyes. Shen Jiu raged at him. His omega howled internally, devastated at him for appearing in Shen Qingqiu’s life this way, so well-dressed, clearly high in esteem, reaching out to Shen Qingqiu out of pity, like a dog he only remembered after he had kicked it away once—
He thought he had his omega in control. And he did, only barely.
Because it clearly saw Yue Qingyuan as their Alpha. And it felt betrayed. Time and time again, he was betrayed.
Because Yue Qingyuan was never there when he needed him.
No, it was Shen Qingqiu who always had to bear the brunt of Yue Qingyuan’s foolishness. Even as they rose as Peak Lords, it was Shen Qingqiu who had to keep his agony down whenever his fellow martial siblings accused him of one or another, Yue Qingyuan offering only platitudes and apologies, never asking for Shen Qingqiu’s side of things. Shen Qingqiu who asked, begged, Yue Qingyuan for answers, only for him to be greeted with silence and more useless gifts that had the other Peak Lords turning their noses away at the perceived favoritism.
He was tired of mounting his walls. Tired of all the unspoken accusations, of the sneers and narrowed eyes, that one day he just…
Let it all out.
It wasn’t a Qi deviation, no. He had plenty of those, he thought bitterly, and knew when one was about to happen to him. He was unfamiliar with the sensation prickling at him for days that when it hit him—so very suddenly, as he was having tea with a cajoling Yue Qingyuan no less, he found himself pinned to the floor, a large knot buried inside his slick hole, a mating mark embedded in his neck.
He wanted it. He knew he did. It felt good, letting his omega run wild so suddenly, enticing his mate, flooding the sealed room with his pheromones and seeing Qi-ge’s face stutter in shock, then dawning comprehension, before his eyes bled red in an Alpha’s hungry desire.
“—Xiao Jiu, mine, mine, mine. My mate, my Xiao Jiu. Oh, gods I lo—”
He fled afterwards.
He barred his Peak from everyone else, activating the seals his Shizun had set in place, enough to prevent even the Sect Leader from entering.
'In case A-Jiu needs it,' she had said playfully before she ascended. Hysterically, Shen Qingqiu wondered if she had seer blood in her.
He lifted the seals from his Peak a week later, encircling it only around his bamboo hut. He knew, from the murmurs of the disciples reporting to him, that the whole Sect was in an uproar. Shen Qingqiu knew that even his own students were stunned at the knowledge that their Peak Lord was an omega.
Because of course Yue Qingyuan told everyone. Of course he had to ruin everything Shen Qingqiu built for himself.
It was this bitterness that he hung on to even as his mark began to throb, even as he began to crave his Alpha. His scent and his taste, still vivid on Shen Qingqiu’s nose. He had always secretly loved Yue Qingyuan’s scent, always avoided him for that reason, always had his fan up his nose not as a snub but to prevent him from burrowing in Yue Qigyuan’s warmth for hours. Yue Qingyuan smelled like jasmine tea, rich musk and faint ink, all things Shen Qingqiu loved that it made him whimper in reminder.
And when his Qi began to act oddly, when his stomach began to round gently into the first stirrings of pregnancy, Shen Qingqiu wept for the first time in many years.
Because only truly compatible mates could conceive with just one coupling. Omega or no.
And Shen Qingqiu, broken in body and spirit, knew that it was a miracle he even had this thing growing inside him. All those years of abuse, of blockers that could inevitably harm once overdosed, of the stress and repression of his own nature, it was almost impossible for him to carry.
For him to conceive… Yue Qingyuan’s child…
And as he raised a hand to his stomach, against the life burrowing in his damaged womb (he could lose it, his wrecked body couldn’t carry it to term, he wasn’t fit to be a parent) he found that…
He couldn’t.
He was weak.
It was barely a few weeks old and he couldn’t.
It was his. His child. His baby.
Even if he lost everything in this world, he couldn’t lose this.
This child was his. His and Qi-ge’s. From the first person he had ever loved and trusted, the first person who hardened Shen Qingqiu’s heart.
It had to survive.
He had nothing else he valued. His reputation was in tatters. His nature all for everyone’s viewing.
He didn’t care anymore.
Not his Sect, not Qi-ge…
No.
It had to survive.
Otherwise Shen Qingqiu would rather kill himself.