Chapter 54

Auston didn’t want to go see Ruan Yang; it made him feel awkward all over, anxious and strange.

Meeting the other party’s parents, no matter how you look at it, seemed like a kind of promise, but he was someone who couldn’t give Ruan Tang a promise.

“Lord, you are so good, so good to me. Why would you think my brother can’t be at ease seeing you?” Ruan Tang hadn’t expected him to say that. He directly asked: “Why do you belittle yourself like this?”

Auston often gave him a strange feeling, contradictory and conflicted… arrogant yet self-deprecating.

This made Ruan Tang unable to help but develop a desire to explore his inner world.

From the time he himself started to develop feelings, he had given Auston countless hints. But Auston’s reaction had always been avoidance. While avoiding, he still treated him extremely well, never shunning him.

They seemed to have fallen into a stalemate.

Such a way of getting along was certainly fine, but Ruan Tang still wanted to break the stalemate.

“Which eye of yours sees me belittling myself?” Auston did not admit to this. The brows under his mask instantly lifted into an impatient arc.

He only felt that this Omega was too much trouble, annoying, and prone to delusions.

But Ruan Tang ignored the avoidance in his words, stared steadily at him, and said deliberately: “No matter what people outside say, in my eyes you are the best, the best person in the world. I like you. I believe my brother and my mother and sister will also like you just as I do…”

In Ruan Tang’s eyes, avoidance was also a manifestation of inferiority and escapism.

Although he was an Omega, he was also a man. Facing an Alpha who had been ambiguous and stringing him along, Ruan Tang felt for the first time a desire to hunt and pursue.

He wanted to have this Alpha, and he also wanted this Alpha to become his.

“Stop blowing smoke up my ass!” Auston pointed directly at the door and snapped: “Get the hell out!”

He didn’t want to hear a single word of Ruan Tang’s flattery and attentiveness.

He was the Bluebeard Duke known throughout the Imperial Star; how could he be swayed by a mere little Omega?

Ruan Tang very acutely caught the awkwardness in his mood, and taking advantage of the fact that Auston was lying in bed unable to get up, simply refused to leave.

After all, this Alpha of fearsome reputation, the most ferocious he could be in front of him was just a “get out”; he rarely even scolded him, and it had no convincing force at all.

As long as he grasped this characteristic of Auston, Ruan Tang felt he could be invincible before him.

“Lord, from the day I met you, apart from scaring me, you basically give me whatever I want. You are so good to me, why is that?” Auston’s indulgence emboldened Ruan Tang, making him stare straight into Auston’s eyes and ask this question.

Auston saw that he refused to leave. Facing this delicate and fragile Omega, he couldn’t hit him, couldn’t break things, couldn’t even use Spirit Power suppression…

“No reason; because I feel like it, it’s that simple.” However fierce Auston was, he couldn’t help but seem outwardly strong but inwardly hollow.

He always did whatever he wanted; where was there a ‘why’?

He wanted to do it, so he did it, that’s all.

Ruan Tang took a deep breath and asked: “Then what kind of person do you like?”

He asked a question he had always very much wanted to know: what kind of person would Auston like, rather than what kind of Omega.

He wanted to know what type Auston liked, and whether it matched himself.

“I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it.” Auston furrowed his brows, only feeling that Ruan Tang’s question was utterly boring: “Why do you keep going on about this rubbish?”

He had never thought of finding a partner to spend his life with, nor had he ever thought about what his ideal type would be like… He felt it was unnecessary, and didn’t want to waste time thinking about it.

Ruan Tang’s hints were too obvious, making him completely unwilling to respond.

Ruan Tang hesitated a moment, looked at the bristling Auston, and once again boldly overstepped: “But you treating me like this, being so good to me, is very easy to give me the illusion that you like me.”

He often felt that Auston liked him; he didn’t feel it was his own delusion, even though Auston was unwilling to admit it.

“Since you know it’s an illusion, that’s fine.” Auston said irritably: “I have told you more than once, I don’t like you. I am good to you only because I want to make myself happy. I hope you don’t get any misunderstanding.”

“But I’ve already misunderstood. What now?”

Auston hadn’t expected him to say that: “Stop spouting nonsense with me. If you misunderstood, that’s you flattering yourself, that’s your own business…”

But before his words could fall, Ruan Tang suddenly stepped forward and grabbed Auston’s wrist.

Auston saw that he not only wasn’t afraid of him at all, but when he was clearly about to lose his temper, he still took the initiative to approach and touch him without permission, and was instantly stunned: “…”

“Even knowing it’s an illusion, I have still come to like you.” Ruan Tang met Auston’s blank eyes and said very deliberately, word by word: “Lord, I have come to like you. Would you want to kill me, flay my skin, gouge out my eyes to punish me?”

Today was a very beautiful day for Ruan Tang. Ruan Yang had woken up; everything in his life was slowly getting better, moving toward a good direction.

This also gave him an unprecedented desire to finally break through that thin barrier and confess to Auston.

There are only two things in the world that cannot be hidden: a cough and love… He didn’t believe Auston didn’t understand his feelings, and he didn’t want to let him keep evading anymore.

Auston was instantly at a loss for words. He hadn’t expected that the thing he was most worried about, the thing he most didn’t want this Omega to say, this Omega still said it.

At this moment, he even felt some resentment toward Ruan Tang—

Clearly they had been getting along so well, so happily before. Why couldn’t Ruan Tang just continue being muddle-headed with him and spend this short stretch of life, which might be only a flash in the pan, happily?

Why did he have to break that thin barrier and put these things out in the open?

He very much wanted to lash out at Ruan Tang, but he looked at Ruan Tang standing straight-backed before him, eyes bright with expectation and looking at him with extraordinary sincerity.

Auston couldn’t help but completely withdraw his desire to speak harshly, and said as gently as possible: “That is probably because you haven’t come across any decent Alpha. I have been fairly good to you, and you’ve had the suspension bridge effect and misunderstood. I am actually nothing great, and I don’t like you that much. I am hardly a good match, nor am I worth placing your expectations on.”

“Take back all your feelings toward me.”

The Omega before him was truly too beautiful in his eyes, so beautiful that he didn’t want to possess or defile him, only wanted him to continue being pure and beautiful.

He didn’t know which eye of Ruan Tang’s was blind that he would take a liking to him—

But—

“From the start of this marriage, I never thought about going the distance with you. Our marriage was merely a strategic compromise to the Empress Faction.” Auston said word by word, looking at Ruan Tang with unusual clarity. He took out the divorce agreement he had prepared long ago from the bedside table: “I am very sorry to have made you misunderstand, and I am also very grateful for your feelings.”

Ruan Tang stared at him, instantly frozen on the spot.

“I signed this divorce agreement long ago. When you want to end this marriage relationship, just sign it and it will take effect immediately… In the future, if you have an Alpha you like and want to remarry, I will also bless you.” He couldn’t give Ruan Tang a promise, so he had prepared this divorce agreement long ago.

But even Auston himself hadn’t expected that he would bring it out so soon.

He had thought that he and Ruan Tang would still have a long stretch of happy time together…

Ruan Tang opened the file and saw at once that Auston had allocated almost all the assets of the Duke’s mansion to him in this agreement. It made Ruan Tang’s heart heavy and unspeakably sad.

“You met me during your most difficult time; it is indeed easy to have illusions.” Auston said with forced ease: “But now, your brother is awake, and you have become the chair of the Omega Protection Association, with some power in your hands. I haven’t marked you. In the future, you will still have what the Ruan family gave you before, plus the property I gave you… After the illusion passes, you will surely find an Alpha a thousand or a hundred times better than me. By that time, you won’t even remember me…”

Auston hadn’t thought he would meet such an Omega that felt so special to him, but they were ultimately fated to meet but not to be together.

And Ruan Tang’s unwillingness to feign ignorance while knowing the truth made their already shallow fate end even sooner.

Ruan Tang looked at Auston with mixed feelings, saying nothing.

“What, do you have any objections to the agreement?” Auston thought he still had something to say, and immediately asked.

“Objections? How could I have any objections? We’ve only been married such a short time, yet you want to give me almost all the property of the Duke’s mansion. With a divorce agreement like this, how could I have any objections?” Ruan Tang’s hand holding the agreement trembled involuntarily. He let out a laugh, and said sardonically: “Lord, you are truly so great, so great that I feel you aren’t even yourself anymore.”

Hearing this, Auston immediately frowned deeply.

But Ruan Tang didn’t care about his emotional change: “You are Duke Auston. Shouldn’t your character be that what is yours is yours, and even if you don’t want it, you destroy it? How can you be so great?”

“Since you are so great, willing to give me even the entire property of the Duke’s mansion, why won’t you mark me and become my real Alpha?” Ruan Tang countered.

Before, Auston had been tsundere or fierce in front of him, but that was all while wearing a mask. Looking at Auston at this moment, Ruan Tang felt that he had already lifted a corner of his mask.

But this made him even more certain: Auston liked him?

Although he didn’t know why Auston was rejecting him, if it weren’t for liking, who would go this far?

“Why do you keep thinking about these what-ifs, dwelling on meaningless things?” Auston finally ran out of patience. Unable to pretend to be normal to Ruan Tang any longer, he roared.

He was willing to give Ruan Tang so much. If Ruan Tang, like other Omegas, would just happily accept and go live his own happy life, wouldn’t that be enough?

Why must he insist on dwelling on this?

Seeing Ruan Tang like this, his own heart, for some reason, also clenched.