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At the height of Emperor Taxian-jun’s reign, there was a rumor.
The emperor often dressed in a way that purposefully flaunted the bite scar along the side of his neck, wearing loose collars and arching haughtily at those who came for his audience, as if daring them to ask. His status as a mated man, sealed with a bite mark, was nothing too unusual; his extravagant wedding to the beautiful Empress Song Qiutong was a very public affair. But still a rumor whispered—claiming it was not the empress who had left that mark, but a lowly concubine.
Most people dismissed this as preposterous. A mating mark, after all, was a level of commitment that few married couples were even willing to indulge in. The mark effectively bonded your souls, making you privy to the other’s emotions and some degree of their thoughts. It was invasive, irreversible, and considered an archaic practice. Those who still chose to mark each other were either old-fashioned or hopeless romantics, and often did so quietly and hidden to avoid public commentary. What concubine would agree to such a ridiculous stunt?
Moreover, the empress always conspicuously covered her wrist, keeping it tightly wrapped with bandages even when they clashed with her elaborate outfits or jewelry. What could she be hiding there, if not a matching bite? Song Qiutong was not shameless or mad like Taxian-jun, so of course she would make more effort to have some decency.
Still, the gossipmongers persisted, she could shut them all up if she just showed it one day, the way Taxian-jun did every day. Why hadn’t she?
In truth, Song Qiutong had never shown her wrist because there was indeed nothing under the bandages. It was a little publicity stunt of her own, a desperate attempt to save some face after her husband began to brazenly flaunt a mating mark she had no hand in making.
Song Qiutong herself did not know who left the mark, as her husband had only laughed in a way that frightened her on the day she had tried to meekly broach the subject. She did not ask again. She had a bitter feeling, though, that the rumor mill was right, and that the mark had something to do with the mysterious Consort Chu.
What neither the gossips nor the empress knew was that Consort Chu had not agreed to the mark and felt no sense of satisfaction watching Taxian-jun bare his neck to the world. It was, from the beginning, intended to be a humiliation ritual.
Chu Wanning would be forced to constantly hide his own neck, where a matching deep and violent-looking bite scar marred the side. He would be forced to watch and listen every day as the imperial palace staff whispered about Taxaian-jun’s brazenness, knowing the immense shame that would fall upon him if his identity as the giver of the mark was ever found out.
But more than anything, Taxian-jun had forced Chu Wanning into the mark to tear down the barriers between their emotions. There was no greater satisfaction than knowing that no matter how much of a poker face Chu Wanning managed to keep, he could do nothing about his true feelings leaking through the bond. Every spike of humiliation, fear, or pleasure that rippled through the mark was a new high for the emperor.
Chu Wanning finally, finally had nowhere to run, not even within the confines of his own mind. Taxian-jun would see every last dignity stripped from him.
For years, Taxian-jun wore the dull thrum of Chu Wanning’s emotions like a second skin. When he woke up in the mornings, he could tell if Chu Wanning was awake or asleep based on how muted his feelings were. He knew when Chu Wanning was hungry. He knew when he was tired.
He reveled in the way he could feel Chu Wanning’s heartbeat quicken when Taxian-jun entered his field of vision. When he held Chu Wanning down and told him how much he hated him, pushing his own hatred through the bond, he could feel Chu Wanning’s answering pain. On the feverish nights when heats or aphrodisiacs were involved, the waves of ecstasy that wracked Chu Wanning’s frame mingled with Taxian-jun’s own, and it was as if they had truly blended into one person.
When Chu Wanning was angry or awash with humiliation, the mark burned hot. When Chu Wanning was ignoring or avoiding him, the mark felt cold. When Chu Wanning fought him with Jiuge, ripping his own body apart, the mark stung with blinding pain.
When Chu Wanning died, his body cold and preserved in the pond of the Red Lotus Pavilion, the mark felt fragile and unnaturally paused, like something suspended in a web.
When Taxian-jun died, his body in a makeshift grave he’d dug for himself, his hand had unconsciously drifted up to the side of his own neck, running his fingers across the smooth and familiar scar.
The mark had felt like nothing at all.
When Mo Ran woke, his neck hurt.
The side of it seared as if it had had a hot brand pressed into it or had been gnawed at by an animal. There was a sickly sweet scent in the room and the warbling sound of a woman performing downstairs, but none of it distracted from the sharp sting, which immediately had Mo Ran’s hand flying to feel for a wound while he swung out of bed and stumbled around the room looking for a mirror.
His hand came away clean. There was no blood in his reflection, and nothing marring the side of his neck, not even so much as a bruise or a blemish. Yet even more alarming than his clean neck was the face that greeted him above the neck—distinctively his own face, but much younger. He didn’t look much older than fifteen or sixteen years old.
What the hell?
“Master Mo,” purred a coquette-ish voice behind him. “Is something wrong?”
His subsequent stilted conversation with Rong Jiu brought things back to him in bits and pieces. Mo Ran had almost forgotten about this phase of his, when he was obsessed with pretty and docile omegas who smelled light and syrupy like Shi Mei.
They were nothing like Chu Wanning, who was unnatural in every aspect of his life, including his secondary dynamic. On paper, he was a beta, but Mo Ran had learned much later that Chu Wanning had presented atypically, leading to him having alpha-like features but a pervasive sweet haitang scent and light occasional heats that caused him to spend a few days in seclusion every so often.
So effective was Chu Wanning at hiding these heats that Mo Ran hadn’t even learned of them until their mating bond—before becoming Consort Chu, Chu Wanning had repressed the majority of the heats through spiritual energy alone, and after losing his spiritual powers and being held captive at Wushan Palace, he had repressed them through sheer force of will. It was only through the bond, which revealed everything Chu Wanning had tried to hide, that Mo Ran had realized they were ever even happening at all.
The thought of the bond made Mo Ran’s hand drift back up to his neck unthinkingly as he trudged back toward Sisheng Peak. He hadn’t really thought of it while he was with Rong Jiu, but that burning sensation on his neck when he awoke… it was in the exact spot his bond mark with Chu Wanning had been in his previous life.
So distracted was he with his thoughts that it sent him stumbling right into the devil himself. If Mo Ran was truly reborn right now, he’d hoped to avoid Chu Wanning and the wrath of Tianwen for as long as possible, yet found himself near-immediately wrapped in its unforgiving willow grip, being grilled about his supposed indecency.
Something strange happened: in the moment that Mo Ran failed his lying gambit and admitted he was at the brothel sleeping with Rong Jiu, the side of his neck burned in a quick, hot flash. A spattering of jealousy filled his brain, jealousy that could not possibly be his. After all, why would Mo Ran need to feel jealous about his own escapades?
But it didn’t make sense for the jealousy to have come from Chu Wanning, either. Mo Ran was just a shitty teenager at this point in time, and Chu Wanning hated him. Disappointment? Prudish indignation? Anger? He’d expected all of those. Jealousy? Why?
But Chu Wanning’s were the only emotions he’d ever felt through the bond, so he couldn’t imagine it coming from anyone else. Not to mention that the bond wasn’t even there—Mo Ran’s neck was a smooth expanse, and he wouldn't become Taxian-jun for many more years. There shouldn’t be any reason for anything resembling their bond to exist, much less still be sharing feelings between it.
And yet.
Mo Ran avoided Chu Wanning for the rest of the day, and the phantom feeling on his neck was quiet. He eventually decided that he imagined it. Chu Wanning must be so prudish and alone that even the thought of someone else getting some was enough to get him mad, which Mo Ran mistook for jealousy. Ha! His shizun was such a loser.
Still, as he got ready for bed that night, he found himself staring at his reflection again. He tilted his head to the side, craning his neck. There was nothing there. He scrubbed at it and nothing happened, but a presence lingered that wouldn’t leave him alone.
The flash of jealousy haunted his mind.
In the following months, Mo Ran experienced a variety of emotions that were not his, forcing him to come to the conclusion that something went wrong in his rebirth and created a sort of phantom bond between him and Chu Wanning.
Ideally, he’d like to sever it and wash his hands of all this Chu Wanning business, but little was known about mating bites nowadays, and Mo Ran was not exactly keen on confessing Taxian-jun’s crimes and ruining this second chance of his. So he learned to ignore it.
For the most part, Chu Wanning’s emotions were fairly muted through the phantom bond and not too distracting. But there were a couple of times, especially when they were together, that his negative emotions were loud and unignorable.
At the ghost wedding in Butterfly Town, he was dour and humiliated. When things took a worse turn at Jincheng Lake and Mo Ran almost got turned into a human sacrifice, he felt a surprising spike of panic and desperation that was separate from his own. Something strange and inexplicable happened at Pear Blossom Springs, where the bond got so quiet Mo Ran almost couldn’t feel it at all. It didn’t bother him though, because its absence helped him feel weirdly in-tune with the way his little Xia-shidi was feeling.
When the Heavenly Rift ripped across the sky years earlier than it was supposed to, Mo Ran’s own emotions drowned out anything he could have possibly felt through the bond. Panic, fear, bewilderment, determination, trepidation. And then, after he agreed to take Shi Mei’s place at the barrier—pain, pain, pain, pain, pain.
There was so much pain that he was finally certain Chu Wanning was not also feeling Mo Ran’s emotions, because if Chu Wanning felt even a fraction of the pain Mo Ran was, he couldn’t possibly have been able to keep such cold composure. There was so much pain that Mo Ran was certain he would not survive it.
But Mo Ran did survive. And it was only after he woke and rejoiced in his own impossible survival that he realized a second, harrowing, equally impossible truth—
The mark once again felt like nothing at all.
Mo Ran spent five years growing used to the mark’s absence. If counting his previous life, five years did not eclipse the total time he and Chu Wanning spent bonded, but each day with only himself and his own thoughts felt like an eternity.
It felt like there was a gaping hole torn through him, which he kept trying to fill with other things. Good deeds, traveling, letters to someone who might never read them. At some point he became Mo-zongshi, a title he did not and would never deserve. All of it felt like pouring water into a basket full of holes, the goodness he’d tried to hard so embody leaking out through an invisible rip on the side of his neck.
He knew, before he heard the news, before anyone even attempted to tell him, when Chu Wanning had woken up. He could feel it, a faint itch he’d spent years praying to feel again. He rushed back to Sisheng Peak with his heart in his throat, the hope welling up in him too fragile to be acknowledged.
He wanted to rush, but he got delayed, and then he was too dirty for a reunion, so he stopped by the baths. Someone else came in behind him, and without even turning around, he could feel a hot wash of embarrassment crash over him, embarrassment that was not his. For the first time in five years, the dull thrum of Chu Wanning’s emotions settled into him like a second skin, bringing with it so much relief that it nearly brought tears to his eyes.
It was during their trip to Yuliang Village that the specter of their past mating bite finally reached a breaking point. Ever since Chu Wanning’s revival, something had been hanging between them, something Mo Ran had not dared to examine too closely. It hung in the air and suffocated their conversations, but Mo Ran was absolutely determined to respect and cherish his shizun this time around, so he’d ignored it.
Yuliang Village was different. At Yuliang, Chu Wanning’s heart spent every day skittering about like a rabbit. Hot flashes of jealousy and desire spasmed through the bond, searing at Mo Ran’s neck even in the sweltering heat of the fields.
Mo Ran really was trying to be respectful, but the waves of Chu Wanning’s desire melded with Mo Ran’s own and nearly threatened to consume him. When he gave Chu Wanning a foot massage, it was overwhelming enough to make him feel nauseous, but it was after he’d scrubbed Chu Wanning’s back that he really felt sick.
Sicker still after they’d parted and he recognized the familiar feelings of arousal, tension, and release.
Mo Ran might be stupid, but if there was one thing he knew a lot about, it was want. He’d had a lifetime of experience desperately wanting things he wasn’t allowed to have, and ten years of experience in the ways Chu Wanning felt want, as tainted and drug-addled and bitter as those memories were. So Mo Ran knew, clearer than he’d like to know, that somehow—despite everything—Chu Wanning wanted him.
But he didn’t feel worthy. Chu Wanning knew nothing of the horror, shame, and humiliation of their past life, and Mo Ran was a treacherous wolf in sheep’s clothing pretending to be pure. More importantly, Chu Wanning didn’t know about the bond; Mo Ran shouldn’t be able to feel Chu Wanning’s emotions, and Chu Wanning would almost certainly feel upset if he knew.
Prying into someone’s private emotions and desires without their consent was a violation, no matter how one looked at it. Mo Ran couldn’t keep ignoring it.
That night, despite his trepidation, he knocked on the door of the room the villagers had granted to Chu Wanning. Chu Wanning approached him warily, his hair still wet from bathing earlier, reminding Mo Ran of their current predicament.
Mo Ran smiled and hoped it looked reassuring, not like the grimace it felt. “Shizun, can we talk?”
Chu Wanning deserved the whole truth, but Mo Ran was too much a coward to say it all. They sat across from each other in Chu Wanning’s room and he explained just as much as he had to—that Mo Ran was actually reborn, that in his past life he and Chu Wanning had had a mating bond for complicated reasons, and ever since Mo Ran woke up in this life he had been able to feel Chu Wanning’s emotions through it.
“You deserve to know,” Mo Ran finished, voice quiet. “And I know it’ll be difficult, since I don’t think the mark is really even there, but if you want to remove it, I—I’ll find a way. You deserve that much.”
Chu Wanning did not answer for a long time. Mo Ran was sure he had lots of questions about Mo Ran’s rebirth, and about why the hell they were ever even bonded in this first place, and he was braced for the worst—but the question that came out of Chu Wanning’s mouth was, “Is it necessary to remove it?”
Mo Ran blinked. “What?”
“My… emotions,” Chu Wanning grit out. “Are they so distracting that you need to remove it?”
“Uh, well,” Mo Ran stuttered. “It’s just a—a violation of privacy? Because I can feel all the things you’re feeling, even in, er, private moments…”
Mo Ran wanted to slap himself. He may as well have just looked his shizun in the eyes and said, I know you were jerking off a few minutes ago, teehee!
Chu Wanning’s ears were bright red and his entire body had gone stiff. “I see,” he said, woodenly. “Of course. It would indeed be a… violation for you to be forced to feel those kinds of things.”
All at once Mo Ran felt a massive wave of something overwhelming and negative, bitter and thick like tar. Mo Ran couldn’t really identify it, only that it was dense and definitely coming from Chu Wanning. If he didn’t know any better, he would have said that it was… hatred. Some kind of loathing.
Mo Ran was intimately familiar with such an emotion regarding himself. In his memories of Taxian-jun, it was one of the only things he could remember, its corrupting touch tainting every corner. But it unsettled him to feel it coming from Chu Wanning.
Something is wrong, Mo Ran thought, but he didn’t know what it was.
Reasoning that nothing he could say at this point could possibly make Chu Wanning feel any worse than he already did, Mo Ran decided to be bold and go out on a limb.
“Shizun, is it that you… do you want me to keep it?”
Sharp, indignant anger sliced through him. “Did I say such a thing?” Chu Wanning snapped. “What kind of person do you take me for?”
“Of course, of course, I’m sorry,” Mo Ran stuttered, although he wasn’t entirely sure what he was apologizing for. “Then…”
Chu Wanning’s already thin patience was clearly in no mood to be stretched. “Then what?”
“I was just thinking,” Mo Ran continued, “that, since it’s not fair that I can feel your emotions, then maybe we can make it fair. Like, if you could feel mine.”
Chu Wanning stared, expression unreadable. Then his head jerked in an unsteady nod. “That seems… reasonable.”
“I’d have to…” Mo Ran’s confidence was faltering. Was he insane? He knew that Chu Wanning wanted him for whatever stupid reason, but surely he wasn’t presumptuous enough to think Chu Wanning would agree to this! “I’d have to bite you, for that.”
From Chu Wanning, he felt apprehension, resignation. Still a little bit of loathing, still a little bit of want. Anticipation. Mo Ran didn’t know how to interpret it.
“If it can’t be helped,” Chu Wanning said.
Chu Wanning sat back on his bed, arching his neck to expose the smooth expanse of his scent glands. The faint, sweet scent of haitang drifted across the room, making Mo Ran feel dizzy. It took everything in him to not fly out of his chair and gnaw at Chu Wanning’s neck like an animal.
He approached as if trying not to startle a spooked deer. “If you change your mind, let me know,” Mo Ran said. He ran a hand lightly across Chu Wanning’s jaw, then dropped it to dance along the line of his scent glands. Chu Wanning’s entire body shuddered.
With his other hand, he reached around to grab the backside of Chu Wanning’s head, gripping his hair to hold him firmly in place. Chu Wanning’s hair was still wet, and they were so close that he could feel the puffs of Chu Wanning’s breath against his face.
“I’m serious,” Mo Ran breathed. “Don’t feel obligated. This is a permanent decision—”
“Will you shut up and get on with it?!”
Mo Ran’s jaw clacked shut. “Right.”
Using his hands to tilt Wanning’s head to a favorable angle, he mouthed over Chu Wanning’s neck, found a good spot, presented his fangs, and bit down.
Blood filled his mouth. Chu Wanning’s blood, sticky and sweet and metallic and warm. Hot, even, the way it scalded all the way down his throat. The second Mo Ran’s fangs penetrated his scent glands, Chu Wanning went entirely limp, pliant and malleable in Mo Ran’s hands. Mo Ran moved him around a little, just to see if he could, and Chu Wanning let out a broken, helpless sound that went straight to his dick.
“Shhh,” Mo Ran soothed, his throat still garbled with blood. “I’ve got you.”
Mo Ran smoothed over the initial bite with his tongue, then nibbled at the edges again, spreading the cut wider, pushing deeper. Chu Wanning whimpered as rivulets of blood ran down the side of his neck; Mo Ran chased them and lapped them up like a dog.
All the while, Mo Ran could feel Chu Wanning through the bond—his pain, his heat, his arousal. And he could feel something else too, like a tendril worming its way into his mind. Finally making their bond reciprocal, finally giving Chu Wanning access to Mo Ran’s own emotions.
I hope he can feel how good he feels, Mo Ran thought, somewhat hysterically. I hope he can feel how badly I want him. Fuck.
Mo Ran continued biting and suckling around the mark until the whole side of Chu Wanning’s neck was a mottled bruise, until he knew it would leave a nasty and permanent scar. Even then, he still didn’t want to stop, feeling like a man who’d wandered years of desert finally taking a sip from an oasis.
But Chu Wanning began to grow restless, recovering from his loose-limbed state and starting to squirm. Mo Ran knew—could feel himself, actually— that the bite hurt, and it was a valiant effort from the last cell of his brain that still wanted to respect and cherish his shizun that made him stop.
“There,” Mo Ran sighed, hoping his bloodstained smile didn’t look frightening. “Now we match.”
Chu Wanning sniffled a little indignantly. “Idiot. We don’t.”
Before Mo Ran could even ask him what he meant, Chu Wanning surged forward with impressive speed, latching his fangs into Mo Ran’s jugular.
He’d gone for the exact spot that he’d gone for the last time, the exact spot that Mo Ran had spent years experiencing phantom pains and feelings from. Mo Ran almost wanted to ask how Chu Wanning knew where it was, but he had a feeling he already had the answer.
Chu Wanning had just understood, intrinsically, from his new access into Mo Ran’s mind. They were one person again. They no longer had a need for words.
Although he didn’t create quite the same level of surface carnage as Mo Ran had inflicted on Chu Wanning’s neck, Chu Wanning went in with just as much bloodlust and cut a scar that ran just as deep. Mo Ran tried, probably incoherently, to coo and encourage him as he sucked, limbs feeling heavy and brain fuzzy from the blood loss. In the end they’d made an absolute mess of their clothes and the sheets, and Mo Ran had the passing thought that they would have a lot to explain to the villagers in the morning.
Not that there would be any hiding it. They were both going to have such visible wounds on their necks—for both of them to flaunt, in this life.
They spent the night in Chu Wanning’s room, clung together. When Mo Ran woke, he could feel that Chu Wanning was still asleep, could feel that he was starting to get a little hungry, just from the shape of his emotions.
Now that their bond had been properly renewed, it was all so much stronger and clearer. Mo Ran didn’t know how he had lived without this before. He didn’t know how Taxian-jun had taken it for granted, how he had lived for so many years with access to Chu Wanning’s head without realizing how perfect he was.
But Mo Ran was here now, and he had a whole lifetime ahead of him to make up for it.
On the way to the kitchens to start preparing Wanning some breakfast, Mo Ran caught sight of his reflection in a water basin. He craned his neck to the side. There was a bite mark there, a beautiful, ragged, desperate-looking wound showcasing to the whole world that he was a mated man.
For the first time since Mo Ran awoke in this lifetime, he finally, finally felt like things were right.