Chapter 30: DON’T DRINK ANYTHING UNLESS I HAND IT TO YOU

"Always, sir," Zhang Wei said, in the tone of someone who had not been looking at the road for the last thirty seconds.

The car slowed as they turned onto a wide boulevard lined with lights, and the hotel came into view at the end of it. Grand and deliberately impressive, the kind of building that had hosted important events for long enough that importance had simply become its default atmosphere.

Cars were lined up at the entrance, guests stepping out in black tie, the blinding white camera flashes from the press section were visible even from a distance.

"Remember," Liuxian said, as the car joined the queue. "Tang XiaoYu."

"Tang XiaoYu," Guiying confirmed. "Lover of art. Met you at an auction. You outbid me and bought me dinner."

"Perfect," Liuxian said.

Zhang Wei pulled up to the entrance and stepped out to open the door.

Guiying looked at the cameras, the guests, the grand entrance of a hotel that for once did not belong to his husband, and took a breath.

Liuxian stepped out first and extended his hand.

Guiying took it, stepped out onto the red carpet, felt the Louboutins solid and certain beneath him, and did not fall.

The cameras found Liuxian first.

They always did. He was the kind of person cameras found instinctively, the kind of presence that registered before the mind had finished deciding where to look. He walked through the press section with the unhurried composure of someone who had done this many times and found it neither interesting nor particularly unpleasant.

Then the cameras found Guiying.

It happened in stages. First one, then two, then several at once, the clicking accelerating in the particular way it did when something unexpected walked into frame.

Guiying felt them before he fully registered what was happening, that particular awareness of being watched by multiple people simultaneously, yet he kept his chin leveled, his pace steady, and his hand firmly clasped in Liuxian’s.

The white satin caught every light on the carpet.

The Louboutins clicked against the ground with each step, unhurried and precise.

He did not look at the cameras. He looked forward, and slightly up, because Liuxian was beside him and Liuxian was tall, and there was something grounding about that specific angle.

"Who is that with Liu Liuxian?"

He heard it from somewhere to his left, low and not quite quiet enough.

"I have no idea. Have you seen him before?"

"Never. Is that a Lianhua ensemble?"

"It has to be. Look at the trousers."

"And those are Louboutins."

Guiying kept walking.

They passed through the entrance and into the hotel’s grand ballroom.

Long tables, soft lighting, and the quiet hum of a room that had not yet reached full noise. Servers moved through the space with trays.

An uplifted platform at the far end suggested a speech for later. The walls carried projections of the foundation’s work alongside images, statistics, and faces that told the story of what Bai Feng had built.

The room was already half full.

Liuxian steered them slightly to the side, away from the immediate flow of guests, and looked at Guiying directly.

"Before we go any further," he said.

Guiying looked at him.

"Do not drink anything unless I hand it to you personally," Liuxian said. His voice was quiet and even, the tone he used when he was not asking. "I have enemies. This kind of event is not exempt from that."

Guiying nodded.

"Do not leave my sight. If you do, stay only around Omegas." He paused. "Do not engage with any Alpha in this room. If they approach you, reject them calmly and clearly."

"And if they do not take the rejection calmly?" Guiying asked.

"Feel free to kick their ass." Liuxian said, without any particular change in expression.

Guiying blinked.

"I mean it.." Liuxian said. "You have my full support. And under no circumstances do I want you smelling of another Alpha when we leave tonight. Not even incidentally. If someone gets too close, move away."

Guiying looked at him for a moment. There was no hint of possession in the way Liuxian had said it. It was layered underneath something that read more like genuine concern than ownership.

"Understood," Guiying said.

Liuxian looked at him for one more moment. Then he held out a glass of champagne.

"I got this from the server before we came in," he said. "This one is safe."

Guiying took it.

"You plan ahead," he said.

"I always plan ahead," Liuxian said, and led him into the room.

Liuxian scanned it once with the practiced efficiency of someone assessing a space for relevant information. Guiying scanned it beside him and noted the ratio immediately.

More Alphas than Omegas, despite the nature of the event, though the Omegas present carried themselves with the particular self possession of people who were not here to be decorative.

They had been in the room for approximately four minutes when Guiying felt it.

A shift in the room’s attention. Not toward him this time but toward the entrance, where a new arrival had just walked in and produced the particular stillness that certain people produced simply by entering a space.

He turned to look.

The man who had walked in was not especially tall. He was slight, well dressed in a white suit that should not have worked in a black tie environment and worked completely, with the easy confidence of someone who made the rules bend around him rather than bending around the rules. His face was sharp and striking, the kind of face that belonged on the cover of something important.

He moved through the room with the unhurried certainty of a man who owned the ground beneath his feet regardless of whose name was on the deed.

He was also, Guiying noted with some interest, an Omega.

He would not have known it from looking.

There was nothing about Bai Feng’s presence that suggested anything other than complete and absolute authority.

"Bai Feng," Liuxian said quietly beside him.

Guiying watched him cross the room and felt something settle in his chest that he did not immediately have a name for.

He was going to talk to that man tonight.

But before he could take a single step in that direction, he heard a voice from somewhere behind him that made Liuxian go very still.

"Liuxian."