After Becoming a Scummy Alpha, I Became a Slave to My Beloved Wife (GL) - Chapter 14

“You have someone else’s pheromone on you,” Jiang Nian murmured, her nose nearly brushing Qiao Wenyu’s shoulder—barely a hand’s width from her earlobe.

Qiao Wenyu’s entire body went rigid. She lifted her hand quickly to cover her ear. Though she tried to appear calm, the flicker of panic in her eyes betrayed her.

“There really is another alpha’s pheromone on you. It’s…”
Jiang Nian reached out and gripped Qiao Wenyu’s neck lightly, tilting her face toward her.

“Let go. There are surveillance cameras and hidden recorders in here.”

“It’s an alpha’s scent. A cheap, inferior alpha,” Jiang Nian said, her voice sharp, tinged with a strange heat. “What exactly did you do last night?”

Backed into a corner, Qiao Wenyu lowered her head, her face awash with shame. She honestly didn’t know what had happened after the suppressant took effect. She didn’t know who left that partial mark behind her ear.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Xiao Nian. You know exactly what kind of relationship we have. Please don’t ask.”
Please… don’t ask.

Jiang Nian slowly let go of her, a bitter smile tugging at her lips. The temporary bond caused by the incomplete mark had made her care too much, feel too much.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t be prying into your private affairs.”

Qiao Wenyu turned away, clutching her own arm so tightly that her knuckles whitened. As an omega, to have a mark left on her by some unknown, low-grade alpha—it was utterly humiliating.

Worse still, she had asked Tong Yunyao about what happened, and there were no leads. Nothing explained the source of the pheromone.

Everything about it felt wrong—suspicious. On top of the shame, she now felt an overwhelming sense of fear.

Jiang Nian couldn’t quite grasp Qiao Wenyu’s turmoil. To her, the pheromone lingering on Qiao Wenyu’s body must have been left with consent.
What kind of alpha would she hide so protectively?

With the two of them clearly not on the same page, their conversation fell apart.

“Let’s just get back to the task,” Qiao Wenyu softened her tone, redirecting the moment.

Jiang Nian composed herself and offered a more neutral expression.
“Sorry, sis. I overreacted earlier. Let’s continue. I still can’t crack this lock.”

Qiao Wenyu forced herself to set aside her thoughts and turned to a poster on the wall.
“This room is based on the life of a master thief in the City of Mist. The poster highlights what he considered his greatest heist. Look here…”

Jiang Nian followed the direction of her finger. The poster detailed the thief’s operation with surprising specificity—time, location, names.

“July 9, 19th century… the thief infiltrated the museum through a secret tunnel,” Qiao Wenyu read aloud.

“Right! That’s four digits—1979. It fits the clue: ‘glory years,’ which likely refers to this heist,” Jiang Nian agreed.

Working together, they keyed in the numbers: 1-9-7-9.

Click—
The iron gate slowly opened.

“You’re amazing, sis,” Jiang Nian praised.

Qiao Wenyu gave a faint smile, her eyes clouded with thoughts.

The earlier tension still lingered. After what had just happened, there was an unspoken awkwardness between them.

But the puzzle room didn’t allow for distractions. It demanded their cooperation and focus.

They breezed through the first stage but got stuck in the third.

An iron box needed to be connected to the correct sequence of wires in order to unlock the museum entrance.

Jiang Nian hunched over the wires, squinting at the clue text while muttering to herself,
“The red one should go here… and this blue one…”

“Nope. All wrong,” Qiao Wenyu said, exasperated as she watched Jiang Nian fumble for ages only to get it completely wrong.

Jiang Nian refused to give in and double-checked everything on the machine.
“Impossible. It literally says this is the correct order!”

Qiao Wenyu couldn’t help but laugh, shaking her head at Jiang Nian’s adorably clueless expression. She lifted her chin and smirked.
“Then why is the door still shut?”

“Hmm…” Jiang Nian stroked her chin in deep thought. Eventually, she broke into a sheepish grin.
“Now that you mention it… I probably messed up.”

Qiao Wenyu unplugged all the wires and carefully reanalyzed the clues word by word. After a few minutes of reconfiguring, the door finally clicked open.

The next room was far larger. Glass display cases lined the walls, filled with priceless artifacts. Famous paintings hung from the surrounding walls.

There were no clues. No visible door leading onward.

Qiao Wenyu began searching the museum-like room for hidden hints, while Jiang Nian trailed closely behind her.

“Xiao Nian, why don’t you check the other side? We can cover more ground that way.”

Jiang Nian shook her head.
“It’s too dark in here. I’m a little scared.”

“You’re scared?” Qiao Wenyu blinked. “Of what? This room isn’t horror-themed.”

“I just have a low tolerance for creepy stuff. Let me stick close, sis,” Jiang Nian replied sheepishly. She was the type to watch horror movies with her eyes half-covered. Despite being a staunch materialist, she still exaggerated her fear of ghosts—just an excuse to stay close to Qiao Wenyu.

As they searched the room for clues, Jiang Nian kept catching faint whiffs of Qiao Wenyu’s rain-scented pheromones. Though the alpha behind that scent was low-quality, their pheromones seemed oddly potent—and growing stronger.

This realization had Jiang Nian studying Qiao Wenyu more closely. Her eyes landed on the back of Qiao Wenyu’s neck, but the gland was covered with a suppression patch, making it impossible to see whether a new mark had formed.

Just as she was about to look away and focus back on the task, her eyes landed—abruptly—on the faint bite mark behind Qiao Wenyu’s ear.

There are two ways an omega can be marked: one is through a direct bite to the gland, injecting glandular fluid; the other is a bite to the earlobe, which delivers the fluid in a more superficial way. A bite to the gland, if unaccompanied by full physical intimacy, is considered a temporary mark. Only through deep, intimate union does it become a complete mark.

In contrast, an earlobe mark represents a situation where the alpha couldn’t—or didn’t—have the opportunity for full intimacy, yet still wanted to leave a visible sign of possession. It’s the shallowest of all markings—so faint it can barely be called a mark.

Even so, it meant that whoever left the mark on Qiao Wenyu was provoking Jiang Nian.

“Look here, there are a few small holes,” Qiao Wenyu said, pointing to a painting. But when she turned around, she saw Jiang Nian staring off, lost in thought.
“Xiao Nian? What are you thinking about?”

“If you’ve found an alpha you like, you have to tell me,” Jiang Nian blurted out unexpectedly.

Qiao Wenyu blinked in confusion.
“Where is this coming from?”

“She smells like rain, right? Even if she’s a low-tier alpha… if you like her, I’ll support you,” Jiang Nian said with a soft voice, one that sounded gracious on the surface but was steeped in hurt.

She wasn’t just hurt that Qiao Wenyu might have someone she liked—she was hurt that Qiao Wenyu hadn’t told her.

Or maybe… there were other things she was upset about.

“We’re filming a show, Xiao Nian. Let’s talk about that kind of thing later,” Qiao Wenyu said, glancing toward a nearby camera.

Jiang Nian nodded, letting the topic—and the faint bite mark behind Qiao Wenyu’s ear—go.

Thanks to Qiao Wenyu’s persistence and analytical mind, they finally completed the escape room. Surprisingly, they placed second among the teams—not a bad showing at all.

“You guys actually came out second,” Jiang Fenyun said smugly, walking up to them.
“Too bad, we were first. Our room was the scariest, but the puzzles were easy. Yunyao and I aren’t afraid of all that spooky nonsense—we cleared it like pros.”

As Jiang Nian stepped past her, she suddenly paused.

For just a moment, she caught a faint scent—that rain-like pheromone.

But it wasn’t Jiang Fenyun’s. Her scent had always been crisp pine.

“Jealous of our luck?” Jiang Fenyun teased. “Yunyao and I make a great team. We got out in twenty minutes.”

Jiang Nian sniffed again, more carefully this time. The scent had vanished—completely, like it had never been there.

Jiang Fenyun still wanted to brag, but Jiang Nian had already walked off—straight to her beloved “sister.”

Watching them chatting intimately again, Jiang Fenyun couldn’t help but feel a sour twist in her chest.

Meanwhile, Jiang Nian, standing beside Qiao Wenyu, casually brought up the scent she had noticed earlier.
“Sis, I think I smelled that rain-scented pheromone again. Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for one of the alphas in the crew?” she joked.

“Xiao Nian, that’s not something to joke about,” Qiao Wenyu said, her tone suddenly serious.

Jiang Nian could tell she didn’t want to talk about it. Though she had a thousand questions burning inside her, she forced herself to stay quiet.

After finishing the day’s tasks, Jiang Nian received an urgent call from her secretary. She needed to return immediately to deal with some work that had piled up over the past few days.

It had taken tremendous effort to get her company back on track—there was no way she’d abandon it now. She requested leave from the director and rushed out that very night.

There was a lot to deal with. Jiang Nian worked nonstop through the night so she could make it back in time for the next afternoon’s shoot. By the time she finished everything just before dawn, she was so exhausted she couldn’t straighten her back.

Yawning, she headed to the airport for her return flight.

On the plane, barely able to keep her eyes open, she picked up her phone to switch to airplane mode. But just as she turned it on, several trending news headlines popped up.

#Accident During “Heartbeat Code” Filming
#Rising Star Qiao Wenyu Marked by Unknown Alpha During Shoot
#Omegas Without Shame in Variety Shows

Every single one of them was about Qiao Wenyu being marked—and that rain-scented pheromone flashed back into Jiang Nian’s mind.

She quickly pieced the situation together.

No one would go so far as to buy a trending tag just for a simple mark—unless they wanted public attention. Unless someone was trying to use that mark to stir controversy.

Which could only mean one thing:

Qiao Wenyu had been set up—framed by an unknown alpha. And they had shattered her reputation in the process.