"Yes," Liuxian said pleasantly.

Guiying looked at him.

"My morning kiss," Liuxian said.

Guiying looked at him for a moment. Then he leaned forward and kissed him, pulled back, and turned to his laptop.

"Now go to work," he said.

Liuxian smiled, picked up his briefcase, and left.

Liuxian had barely settled into the backseat of the car when his phone buzzed.

He glanced at the screen.

A message from Zhang Wei.

Zhang Wei:Reminder that the charity gala is tonight. Also. Quinn will be there.

Liuxian looked at the message for a moment.

Then he looked out the window.

The morning had started reasonably well. Guiying was out of his heat, had kissed him without being asked twice, and had looked at him with an expression that suggested three days of careful restraint had not gone unnoticed. That was a good morning by any measure.

And then there was this.

Quinn.

Of all the people that existed in the world and attended charity galas, it had to be Quinn. Pesky, persistent, absolutely incapable of understanding that a relationship ending meant it had ended, Quinn.

His mood, which had been perfectly acceptable thirty seconds ago, dropped several degrees.

He typed back.

Liuxian: I won’t be going. We will discuss this in the office.

Zhang Wei’s reply came in eleven seconds.

Zhang Wei:Sir you are the CEO of Liu Corporation. Your attendance at this gala is not optional. Also Quinn specifically asked if you were coming. Also—

Liuxian: In the office Zhang Wei.

Zhang Wei: Yes sir.

Liuxian put the phone down.

The car moved through the quiet streets and he sat with the particular stillness of a man who already knew he had no choice and was taking a moment to be unhappy about it before accepting it.

He was going to have to go.

The office was already in full swing by the time Liuxian arrived.

Zhang Wei was waiting by the elevator with his tablet, two coffees, and the expression of a man who had prepared for this conversation and was ready to defend every point.

Liuxian walked past him without stopping. "My office."

Zhang Wei followed.

The door had barely closed before Zhang Wei pulled up the gala details on his tablet and turned the screen toward Liuxian, who had already sat down and was looking at the morning’s documents with the focused intention of someone who hoped paperwork would make the problem disappear.

It did not disappear.

"Liu Corporation has been a headline sponsor of this gala for six consecutive years," Zhang Wei said. "Your absence would be noticed, commented on, and written about by at least four financial publications by morning." He set the tablet on the desk. "Also the charity this year is the Omega Rights Foundation."

Liuxian looked up from his documents.

Zhang Wei looked back at him with the expression of someone who had saved his strongest point for last and knew it.

Liuxian thought about Guiying, sitting at the desk in his room this morning with his laptop open and that particular focused look he got when something had caught his full attention.

Guiying, who had spent twenty minutes in Liuxian’s office getting quietly furious about the absence of Omegas on the thirty second floor.

Guiying, who was an Omega activist down to his bones even when he was pretending not to care.

If Guiying ever found out that Liuxian had skipped a charity gala for the Omega Rights Foundation because of a pesky ex, he would not hear the end of it.

He closed the document in front of him.

"Fine," he said. "I am going."

Zhang Wei nodded, already typing. "I will confirm your attendance. Dress code is black tie." A pause. "Shall I also prepare a strategy for the Quinn situation or will you be handling that yourself?"

"There is no Quinn situation," Liuxian said.

"Of course," Zhang Wei said, in the tone of someone who had noted several things and chosen to say none of them. "Also." He looked up from the tablet. "Will you be bringing Master Xue?"

Liuxian looked at him.

He had not thought about that.

Guiying had just come out of a three day heat that morning. He was supposed to be going to the hospital this afternoon for a checkup. A black tie charity gala the same evening was, by any reasonable measure, too much.

And yet.

He thought about Quinn.

He thought about Quinn at a charity gala, finding him alone, doing what Quinn always did, which was make a situation out of nothing and then refuse to acknowledge that the situation existed.

He thought about Guiying at that same gala, standing beside him with those brown eyes and that composure and that particular quality of presence that made rooms pay attention without him trying.

"I will ask him," Liuxian said.

Zhang Wei smiled, which he almost never did, and turned back to his tablet.

"I will prepare for two attendees," he said

Liuxian leaned back in his chair.

He thought about it again.

An Omega rights foundation charity gala, headline sponsored by corporations run almost entirely by Alphas, with a handful of well positioned Omegas scattered in for optics. He had attended enough of these events to know how they worked.

The speeches would be generous. The donations would be visible.

And behind the polished surface of it all would be the particular satisfaction of powerful Alphas patting themselves on the back for caring about a problem they had largely created.

He did not have a good feeling about this.

"Zhang Wei," he said.

"Sir."

"Who is the founding head of the Omega Rights Foundation?"

Zhang Wei looked up from his tablet. "I believe it is Bai Feng."

Liuxian raised a brow.

Then he smiled. Small and genuine, the kind that did not appear often.

If Bai Feng was involved, the foundation was in considerably better hands than he had assumed.

Bai Feng was not a name anyone in this country took lightly. The country’s top lawyer. Founder and head of the most powerful law firm in China.

One of the wealthiest Omegas alive, built entirely on merit and the particular brand of relentless, surgical intelligence that had dismantled more misogynistic institutional structures than most people had attempted to challenge in a lifetime.

A die hard Omega rights activist who had never once softened his position to make powerful Alphas more comfortable.