"Why did you take off your watch yesterday? Emerald said he had no data from your watch for three hours." Theo asked, standing near him in the garden with a shovel. Le An was digging the ground to put a seed he had discovered recently, which was a spring flower. Looking at the stains of soil left on his hands, he didn't wait long to answer. "I must've taken it off while dealing with the pots."

  "You were up too te. Outside guards told me that your lights were on till 3 am."

  When he regained consciousness, it was 3 am already. Right after that, he put his watch back, then turned back to sleep. Dealing with too much questioning now, Le An looked at Theo briefly, smiling at him for his way of worrying. "I am afraid one day you will put a camera in my room."

  Theo was taken aback. "No, I didn't mean to- I'm just worried for you Le An."

  "I know." He was also worried about himself for real this time. Le An was feeling like dealing with monsters, day and night. "I know, of course. Just joking."

  Theo waited, watching him deal with the soil. "You know you can talk with me anytime. About anything Le An."

  "I know that too."

  "You can crave ice cream at night, and everyone here will rush to get it to see you happy. You know that too."

  "I have everything I need already. If less, I know I have people like you around me, kind and caring, always. It's just that I am speechless about all this trouble happening at the same time."

  "Do you have any other problems?" Theo caught his words quickly, and Le An cursed himself inside. "No. But I have hawks circling me, that’s what I meant." He said quickly. And an additional one. The cruelest one.

  "All the team works on it, don't worry. We'll protect you no matter what happens." Theo added, quite seriously. Le An smiled at him. His heart was warm, as he looked at Theo, he wouldn't be able to get out of this without him. Theo was the best thing -and the only thing- GAC gave him.

  "Will we be doing exposure today?" Theo asked.

  "Yes." Le An brushed off the soil from his hand. "Right after I got out of the pheromone room."

  ---

  The room that man saw st night was Le An's pheromone room. To keep his pheromone private, he would only let out his scent inside. That room was like a capsule, never letting any drop of his smell outside. Only him and Theo, and several people they saw only once, knew how Le An smelled. Le An's heart would ache every time he was reminded of those very days he spent his heat cycles in that room.

  It was either painful or shameful for Le An. He had only these two options from the start.

  Because if he cannot cope with his heat for three days, GAC would send him a partner, an alpha. And enduring all the pain by himself all alone, Le An would need someone, eventually. It was a regution GAC brought eight months ago, and counting all those cycles, three times, three different partners were sent to him, when he was at his most desperate.

  For the remaining months, three alphas were faced with Le An's absolute rejection, not even letting them inside the room. He got through these days with great suffering, begging Theo to help him somehow, then shouting at him, then apologizing repeatedly, lost in a cycle.

  Theo would accompany every minute he shares with a partner for his safety. He would watch him having sex with others, without a single facial distortion. But they would both feel that in front of each other, it was like a nightmare for both of them. Theo would only interfere rarely, to warn the partner to be kinder or slower. Or when he feels that the alpha partner will lose control or commit knotting, he would get in the way immediately.

  After he was persuaded to consider the next partner GAC sent, since he rejected three times straight, a big incident happened in that room, right at that bed Le An despised. An unbearable truth for Le An came to the surface.

  The st alpha GAC sent a month before was a dominant alpha. With his neat appearance and smile, he was easy to cooperate with, and his pheromones were very fragrant, the smell of a very strong, refreshing lemon.

  On the second night of his heat, Le An remembered only several scenes. The moment Theo asked him half-heartedly if he would like a partner. And the moment he saw a tall figure before him, lying at his back, rubbing his muscles to soothe him, while emitting tons of scent. He remembered those hands spreading his legs and lying near to him while pleasuring him, and a faint whisper right into his ear.

  "Do you know what happens to your partners after they are apart from you?"

  Le An was remembering that very moment he looked into the eyes of that alpha, confused. That face, filled with pure disgust, was still hunting him sometimes.

  "They got killed, the day they pleasured you."

  The man had started to shout at him, his fingers digging into Le An's neck. "Castell got killed just because he learned you were a fucking omega! He was my friend! He begged them, swore to keep your identity safe! You selfish bitc-"

  Theo, with his telekinesis, took the alpha from on top of him with a flick of his hand, breaking his fingers one by one, and stly, as the alpha's body colpsed to the ground heavily with a thud, he broke his neck with an easy twist.

  That alpha's weirdly twisted fingers were the most vivid thing Le An recalled from that day. And as a big aftereffect, he was now finding every alpha scent disgusting and frightening, except for one. It was Theo's scent.

  Le An was staring at the ground now, right where that man died. It wasn't the first time he witnessed someone dying, but it was the first time he saw a person get killed. There had been countless attacks on him through the years, each was blocked somehow at those times. But this one was different, this one had left Le An in agony with the shocking truth, the debt people paid for being intimate with him... His hands were trembling. Outside the pheromone room now, Theo was waiting for him to call him inside.

  He remembered the very first thing they talked about after that incident. Le An had asked him about the partners. "Did you know?"

  His reply was simple, yet slow, like he never wanted that truth to unfold. "Yes, I did know." Without any further talk, Le An again felt stupid. How could he haven’t guessed that they would be put to death, get killed? How could he not see the truth, how cruel GAC actually could be?

  Theo got a notification from Le An, after the whole room was ventited of his scent, Le An sent him a message. "Let's start."