The calm that had settled over Lan Yue after the Empress's visit was short lived.
It began subtly, a few hours later. A restlessness in her limbs that meditation couldn't soothe. A warmth beneath her skin that had nothing to do with the palace's ambient temperature. She tried to ignore it, attributing it to the strange, rich food or the lingering emotional disquiet from her conversation with Xue Lian.
But as the evening deepened, the feeling grew. The warmth became a distinct, low thrum of heat pooling in her core. It was a familiar sensation, one she had spent years mastering, ruthlessly suppressing through advanced cultivation and sheer force of will.
Her Heat.
As a Omega or what she had believed herself to be her cycles were mild, manageable, little more than a monthly inconvenience easily subdued by her immense spiritual power. It was a background hum she barely acknowledged.
But now, with ninety percent of her cultivation suppressed by the obsidian collar, that control was gone. The biological imperative, no longer held in check by her Cultivation might, was rising with a vengeance.
No, she thought, a spike of genuine alarm cutting through the hazy warmth. Not now. Not here.
She stood up from her chair too quickly, a wave of dizziness washing over her. The room felt suddenly smaller, the air thicker. She walked to the window, pushing it open to let in the cool night air of the Netherworld. It helped, but only a little. The heat was internal, a furnace stoked from within.
She tried to fall back on the discipline of a lifetime. She sat in a lotus position on the floor, back straight, and began the breathing exercises that had always quelled the faint stirrings of her cycle. In. Out. Let the energy flow. Suppress the base instinct.
But it was like trying to hold back a tide with her bare hands. Her spiritual power, that vast ocean she commanded, was reduced to a shallow stream. The techniques that required deep reserves of energy sputtered and failed. The heat pulsed, undiminished. A fine sheen of sweat broke out on her brow.
Memories, unbidden and unwelcome, surfaced. The sterile, clinical teachings of her sect. "The cycles are a weakness of the flesh, a distraction from the purity of the Dao. A true cultivator masters them, transcends them." She had been so proud of her control, her ability to render this part of her existence null.
Now, she felt anything but transcendent. She felt… cornered. Vulnerable in a way the collar alone had never made her feel. This was a vulnerability from within.
A soft, frustrated sound escaped her lips. This was absurd. She was Lan Yue, Head Disciple of the Azure Cloud Sect, a once in a millennium prodigy. She was not some novice to be laid low by her own biology.
She stood again, pacing the length of her room. The movement did little to dispel the restless energy. If anything, it made her more aware of the sensitivity of her own skin, the way the fabric of her robes felt against her. Everything felt too much.
Her thoughts, inevitably, drifted to the source of her other great confusion. Xue Lian. The memory of the Empress's scent sandalwood, night blooms, and that maddening, sweet hint of peach flashed in her mind with startling clarity. The thought of it, of her, sent a fresh, unwelcome jolt of heat straight through her.
Stop it, she commanded herself, gripping the windowsill until her knuckles turned white. This is a biological response. It means nothing.
But the rationalization felt hollow. This was different from the mild, manageable cycles of the past. This was sharper, more insistent, more… focused. Was it the suppression? Or was it… her? Was her body, in its reduced state, reacting to the proximity of the one person who had so thoroughly upended her world?
The idea was terrifying. It felt like a betrayal of everything she was.
A knock at the door made her jump, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"Honored Guest?" It was Gleeb's timid voice. "I've come to turn down your bed. And… Her Majesty asked me to bring you this. She said it might help you sleep."
Lan Yue took a deep, steadying breath, trying to compose her features into something resembling her usual serene mask. "Enter."
Gleeb shuffled in, bowing. He carried a small, ceramic cup filled with a steaming, pale liquid. The scent that wafted from it was familiar chrysanthemum, lavender, and other calming herbs. It was the same tea she'd been given on her first night.
"Her Majesty said you looked… preoccupied earlier," Gleeb mumbled, not meeting her eyes. "She thought you might have trouble resting."
Xue Lian had noticed. Of course she had noticed. She noticed everything. Was this genuine concern? Or another calculated move? A way to soothe her prized possession?
"Thank you," Lan Yue said, her voice tighter than she intended. She took the cup. The warmth was comforting against her strangely sensitive palms. "You may go."
Gleeb bowed again and scurried out, leaving her alone with the tea and her raging hormones.
She looked down at the cup. A simple gesture of kindness. Or a strategic manipulation. She could no longer tell the difference. All she knew was that the heat was still there, a persistent, throbbing reminder of her own trapped biology and the increasingly complicated feelings for her captor.
She drank the tea. It was cool on her tongue, a balm against the internal fire. It wouldn't stop the cycle, but it might take the edge off enough for her to think.
Setting the empty cup down, she extinguished the lights and lay down on the impossibly soft bed. In the darkness, every sensation was amplified. The brush of the sheets against her skin. The frantic beat of her own heart. The low, steady hum of desire that was, for the first time in her life, refusing to be ignored.
She was Lan Yue, a Enigma?, prisoner of a demon Empress. And she was burning up from the inside out. The slow burn of emotions had just been joined by a much more immediate, and infinitely more frustrating, physical one.