I died choking on coffee.

Not heroically, not saving anyone—just me, Li Runze, twenty-eight years old, alone in my cubicle at 11 PM on a Wednesday, working overtime for the fifteenth time this month. My body decided that this particular sip of lukewarm coffee was the hill it wanted to die on.

Literally.

The burn in my throat, the panic, the desperate gasping. My phone was across the desk and no one else was on this floor. I clawed at my neck like that was going to help, vision blurring, lungs screaming—and then…

Nothing.

Just… nothing.

***

Then everything.

The scent hit me first.

Dark. Overwhelming. Alpha.

Cedar and something sharper—expensive cologne mixed with raw pheromones that bypassed every rational thought and sank claws directly into some primal part of my brain I didn’t even know existed. My body went liquid with want before I was even fully conscious, responding to a command I shouldn’t understand but somehow did.

I was face-down in sheets. Silk sheets. Expensive silk sheets that definitely didn’t come from my depressing studio apartment. Someone was behind me—close, solid, moving with deep, powerful rhythm that made this borrowed body arch and keen.

A hand gripped my hip, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. A low voice groaned near my ear, breath hot against my neck.

“Fuck, still so tight.”

My brain short-circuited.

What. The. Fuck.

I tried to move, tried to process, but my body wasn’t listening. It was arching, pressing back, meeting every movement with desperate rolls of my hips. Sounds were coming out of me—high, broken, needy sounds that couldn’t possibly be mine. I was a virgin when I died. Pretty sure I was into women. And also…

Oh god.

Something shifted inside me, stretching this body impossibly. The alpha behind me made a guttural sound that went straight through me and pressed deeper. I felt it lock into place—the unmistakable pressure of a knot.

I knew what this was.

I shouldn’t know what this was. But I did.

Memories that weren’t mine flooded my consciousness like ice water. A different Li Runze, twenty-two years old, omega, youngest son of the failing Li family. Wayward. Reckless. Heartbroken because his longtime crush Wei Jian had just announced his engagement to someone else.

This Runze had gotten blackout drunk last night at Eclipse Bar and decided the best way to handle rejection was to seduce the hottest alpha he could find.

He succeeded spectacularly.

And now I was here, in his body, locked with a complete stranger.

This is fine. Everything is fine.

Nothing is fine.

The knot pulsed. I heard myself keen—a high, desperate omega sound that would have humiliated me if any of my remaining brain cells weren’t drowning in sensation.

The alpha groaned against my neck, teeth scraping over the bonding gland there (oh god, the bonding gland—don’t bite don’t bite don’t…). The sharp edge of danger sent electricity cracking down my spine.

“That’s it,” he murmured, voice like dark honey and broken glass. “Take it like a good omega.”

My body clenched around him in response. He cursed, hips grinding in shallow movements that shouldn’t have been possible with how deep he was, yet somehow made everything worse. Or better. I couldn’t tell anymore.

I was stuck. Literally locked to this person for the next… I searched the borrowed memories desperately… fifteen to twenty minutes.

Cool. Cool cool cool.

I should be panicking. I was panicking. But this body was singing with endorphins and bone-deep satisfaction, and I was pretty sure it had already peaked at least twice—which seemed excessive for a virgin who died choking on coffee approximately ten minutes ago.

Is this hell? Did I go to hell?

Is hell just an ABO world where I’m an omega who makes catastrophic life choices?

The alpha shifted slightly. The pressure dragged against something inside me that made me see stars. My own body twitched against the silk sheets, somehow still interested despite everything.

“Round two?”

The voice was deep, cultured, with an edge of dark amusement that suggested this man knew exactly what kind of situation we were in and found it entertaining.

I froze.

He was still locked inside me, and he wanted round two?

“I…” My voice came out hoarse, wrecked. I didn’t recognize it. “What?”

“Your heat suppressants are clearly failing.” His hand slid from my hip to my belly, possessive and warm. “We have time before the knot goes down. And you were very… insistent last night about wanting more.”

Oh god.

Original Runze, what the fuck did you do?

I didn’t have time to formulate an answer. His other hand slid around and gripped me—still sensitive, still half-hard despite everything—and stroked firmly.

My borrowed body responded instantly and desperately, arching back into the lock, pressing forward into his fist, chasing pleasure I’d never experienced and somehow couldn’t live without.

“Please…” The word ripped out of me before I could stop it.

“Please what?” His thumb circled, smearing the evidence of how far gone this body already was. “Use your words, omega.”

“I can’t… I need…” My hips rocked helplessly, caught between his hand and the knot, grinding against both. Slick heat leaked where we were joined. I could feel it—hot and mortifying—and his answering groan suggested he could feel it too.

“That’s better.” His teeth found my ear, biting down just hard enough to make me gasp. “You’re going to finish on my knot like a good omega, and then we’re doing this again.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a command.

And my body—this traitorous, eager omega body—obeyed.

The climax hit like a freight train. I cried out, muscles clenching rhythmically around the lock. The alpha cursed viciously and ground deeper as he followed, filling me until I was sure I’d burst.

I collapsed forward into the sheets, boneless and shaking.

The alpha followed me down, blanketing my back with his larger body, still locked deep inside me. His hand released me and splayed possessively across my belly.

“Good,” he murmured against my neck, voice satisfied and dark. “Very good.”

Right. Omega body. Heat cycle. This is what omegas do.

I’m going to need so much therapy.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, like he could read my mind.

And just like that, the next round began.

I lose track of time after that.

The heat, the knot, the overwhelming sensation of being taken over and over by someone whose face I still haven’t seen. My borrowed body knows what to do even if my mind is screaming—arching, accepting, and responding in ways that make me want to die all over again.

At some point he flips me onto my back. When the pressure finally eases enough, he pulls away just long enough for me to catch a blurred glimpse of him before he’s back, spreading my legs and pressing in again with one deep thrust.

“Look at you,” he says, voice ragged. “Taking me so well, like you were made for this.”

I can’t respond. I can barely think. All I can do is grip his shoulders and hold on as he moves with deep, measured strokes that hit something inside me and make my vision white out.

There might be a third round. Or a fourth.

Everything blurs together into sensation—his mouth on my neck, his hands on my hips and thighs, the filthy wet sounds of our bodies, his voice in my ear, sometimes praising, sometimes commanding, sometimes just groaning my name like a curse.

At some point I’m sobbing from overstimulation, from pleasure so intense it borders on pain, from the sheer overwhelming wrongness of being in a body that wants this so desperately when my mind is still reeling.

“Shh,” he murmurs, surprisingly gentle. His thumb wipes at my tears. “One more. Give me one more and then you can rest.”

I shake my head frantically. I can’t. I’ll die.

“You can.” His hand wraps around me again—I’m hard again, how is that even possible—and moves in time with his thrusts. “Come for me, omega.”

The command in his voice does something primal and inescapable.

I come with a broken cry, back arching off the bed, clenching so tightly around him that he curses and follows me over the edge. The knot swells one final time, locking us together as he fills me again.

I collapse face-first into the sheets when he finally releases me and pulls out.

I can’t move. Can’t think. My body is trembling, oversensitive, thoroughly used. There’s evidence of everything we just did trailing down my thighs, and I should be horrified, but I’m too exhausted to care.

Footsteps. The sound of water running in what must be a bathroom. Then nothing.

I should run. Get up and get out of here before this gets any worse.

But I can’t make my limbs cooperate. My legs feel like jelly. My entire body feels like it’s been taken apart and put back together wrong.

The bed dips behind me.

A warm, wet cloth touches my thigh and I flinch.

“Easy,” the alpha says, voice softer than before. “Just cleaning you up.”

He’s gentle, surprisingly so. The cloth moves carefully over my thighs and between my legs, wiping away the evidence. When he’s finished, the cloth disappears and I hear him moving around the room.

Then the bed dips again.

“Turn over.”

The voice is closer now, clearer. That same deep, commanding tone that made my body want to obey without question.

I don’t move. I can’t.

“I said turn over, omega.”

Something in the command goes straight through me—some omega instinct I don’t understand but can’t resist. My body rolls onto my back before my brain catches up.

And I finally see him.

Oh.

Oh fuck.

He’s devastatingly handsome in a way that feels dangerous. Sharp features that look carved from marble, black hair falling across his forehead, mussed from everything we just did. High cheekbones, a jaw that could cut glass—the kind of face that belongs on magazine covers, not in a hotel room with some random omega.

There’s a bite mark on his collarbone. Did I do that?

But it’s his eyes that stop my heart.

Gray. Cold gray, like a winter storm, like polished steel. They look down at me with an intensity that makes something in my chest clench tight. Not warm. Not kind. Assessing—like I’m a business acquisition he’s deciding whether to liquidate or keep.

His gaze drags down my body—wrecked, covered in marks, thighs still trembling—and his lips curve into something too sharp to be a smile.

“You’re even prettier when you’re not crying.”

I was crying?

He tilts his head slightly, studying me like I’m a puzzle he’s solving.

“Round three?” he asks, and there’s dark amusement in his voice now, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.

I stare at him.

At this stranger.

This impossibly handsome stranger who just spent the last however-long locking me into oblivion and apparently isn’t done.

My brain finally catches up to my situation.

I’m naked in a stranger’s bed, in a body that isn’t mine, in a world that runs on ABO dynamics where I’m an omega and he’s an alpha and we just…

And he’s asking if I want to go again like we’re discussing another round of drinks.

“I…” My voice is still hoarse and wrecked. “I need to go.”

He raises an eyebrow.

That’s it. No question, no protest—just that single raised eyebrow like my answer is mildly interesting but ultimately irrelevant.

Then he leans back, giving me space.

“Go ahead.”

I scramble off the bed.

Bad idea. Terrible idea. My legs are jelly, and I stumble immediately, barely catching myself on the nightstand. Pain lances through my thighs, my hips, everywhere—the deep, lingering ache of being thoroughly used—and I bite down on a whimper.

He doesn’t help.

He just watches with those cold gray eyes, head tilted, like he’s cataloging exactly how broken I am.

I spot my clothes scattered across the floor and lunge for them. My hands are shaking so badly I can barely pull my pants on. The fabric hurts against my oversensitized skin. My shirt is wrinkled and smells like everything that just happened. I don’t care.

The whole time, he watches.

Assessing.

When I’m finally dressed—barely, my shirt is buttoned wrong but I can’t make my hands work properly—I risk one more glance at him.

He’s still naked, lounging against the headboard like some kind of marble sculpture, completely comfortable in his skin.

My face burns.

I grab my shoes and run.

Out of the room, through what looks like an expensive hotel corridor, past the elevator, down the stairs because I can’t wait, through the lobby where a few people turn to stare.

I must look insane. Wrecked. Freshly used.

I don’t stop running until I’m outside in the cool morning air.

Only then do I stop, bracing against a wall, trying to remember how to breathe.

What the hell just happened?

What the hell did Original Runze get me into?

And why does my body already miss the feeling of being full?

The taxi ride home is a blur of neon lights and existential dread.

I’m sitting in the back seat, thighs aching, shirt buttoned wrong, smelling like sex and expensive cologne that isn’t mine. The driver keeps glancing at me in the rearview mirror like he knows ’exactly’ what I’ve been doing.

He probably does.

I press my forehead against the cool glass and try to process.

I died, I transmigrated, I woke up getting knotted by a stranger, I just spent hours... ’god, how many hours?’... being fucked senseless in a luxury hotel room by an alpha whose name I don’t even know.

And now I’m going... home?

I search the borrowed memories for an address, directions, anything useful. They come in fragments, a house in the Jade Garden district, an old money neighborhood now fading at the edges, a three-story traditional home with a garden that Mother tends obsessively to maintain appearances.

The Li family residence.

My family now, I guess.

The thought makes my stomach twist.

I have a family, parents, a sister, a whole life that isn’t mine but somehow is now.

Original Runze’s memories are patchy, like a movie I’m watching through frosted glass. I can see shapes and colors but the details are fuzzy, his childhood running through the garden, his parents’ disappointed faces at every family dinner.

His sister’s kindness, the family textile business that his grandfather built, that his father has been slowly losing ground to newer, more aggressive competitors. The declining profits, the pressure to modernize, the need for capital and connections that this marriage alliance will provide.

His hopeless crush on Wei Jian, who just got engaged to someone else.

Which is why Original Runze got blackout drunk and seduced a stranger.

Which is why I’m currently sitting in a taxi at seven in the morning, thoroughly wrecked, with cum still drying on my thighs.

Great life choices all around.

The taxi pulls up to a neighborhood that whispers "old money, quieter now." Wide streets lined with mature trees, traditional houses behind walls, most well-maintained, a few showing their age.

The Li house is somewhere in the middle. Still impressive with its curved roof tiles and traditional architecture, but you can see where they’ve had to make choices. The garden is smaller than it used to be, one section clearly sold off years ago, the gate needs a fresh coat of paint. Small things that wouldn’t matter to most people, but in a neighborhood like this, people notice.

I pay the driver with cash I find in my pocket (at least Original Runze had the sense to bring money) and stumble out onto the sidewalk.

My legs nearly give out.

I grab the taxi door for support, breathing hard, and the driver gives me a look that’s half judgment, half pity.

"You okay, kid?"

"Fine," I grit out. "Just... long night."

"I’ll bet." He drives off, leaving me alone on the empty street.

I look up at the house. Three stories of traditional architecture, wooden shutters on the windows, a small balcony on the second floor, beautiful in a dignified way, like an old aristocracy that doesn’t need to prove anything anymore.

Home.

I push through the gate (it creaks slightly, could use some oil) and walk up the stone path through the garden. Dawn light filters through the maple trees, and I can smell jasmine and earth.

My body is ’screaming’. Everything hurts in that deep, thorough way that suggests I’ve been used in ways my previous virgin body never imagined possible.

The knot, God, the ’knot’.

I can still feel the phantom stretch of it locked inside me, that overwhelming fullness, my body clenches reflexively and I have to bite down on a whimper.

No, absolutely not, we are not thinking about that right now.

I make it to the front door and stand there, key in hand, paralyzed.

What if they know? What if one look at me and they can tell? What if omegas in this world have some kind of mark, some sign that says ’freshly knotted’?

I’m being ridiculous.

I unlock the door and step inside.

The house is exactly as the memories suggested. Traditional wooden floors, family portraits lining the walls, antique furniture that’s been passed down for generations. Everything is clean and well-maintained, though I notice the runner on the stairs is getting worn, and there are lighter patches on the walls where paintings used to hang. Not desperate, just... carefully managed.

It’s quiet, maybe everyone’s still asleep...

"RUNZE!"

I nearly jump out of my skin.

A woman appears from the direction of the kitchen, mid-forties but looks older from stress, wearing an expensive silk robe that’s probably five years out of style. Her hair is perfectly done despite the early hour, appearance is everything for Li Meifeng.

My mother.

The memories supply her name along with a lifetime of disappointment and desperately high expectations.

"Where have you ’been’?" She crosses toward me and I instinctively step back. "Do you have any idea what time it is? We’ve been calling you all night!"

"I..." I have to clear my throat twice before words come out. "My phone died."

Her eyes narrow, taking in my appearance. The wrinkled clothes, the wrong buttons, the marks I can feel blooming on my neck.

Oh god, the marks.

I slap a hand over my throat but it’s too late, her expression shifts from fury to horror.

"What did you ’do’?"

"Nothing, I just..."

"Don’t lie to me!" She grabs my arm, yanking me further into the house. "You smell like..." She inhales sharply, face going pale. "Alpha pheromones, you reek of them."

I yank my arm away. "It’s none of your business."

"None of my..." She looks like I’ve slapped her. "Your sister’s engagement party is in three days! ’Three days’! The most important social event this family has had in years, and you’re out doing... ’this’?"

She gestures at me like I’m a crime scene.

"We have guests coming! Important guests! The engagement party is in three days!" Her voice rises to a shrill pitch that probably carries through the whole house. "Three days, Runze! And you choose now to start... whatever this is? What if word gets out? What if you’ve gotten yourself involved with someone who causes problems? What if this ruins everything?"

She’s breathing hard, face flushed with anger and panic.

"Do you understand what this marriage means? The partnership with the Wuchen Group, the connections, the capital infusion our business needs. One scandal, one whisper of impropriety from this family right now, and they could walk away."

She gestures at me, at my wrecked appearance, the marks on my neck.

"You smell like you rolled out of some alpha’s bed, what if someone sees you like this? What if rumors start before the party?" She makes a disgusted sound. "Go shower, now, scrub yourself until you smell normal again, and stay out of trouble until after the engagement party. Can you manage that?"

My hands curl into fists. "I’m not... I didn’t..."

But what can I say? She’s right. I ’do’ smell like sex and alpha pheromones. I ’am’ covered in marks.

"Save it," she snaps. "Just go shower, now."

"What’s going on?" A new voice said.