It was early one morning that Martin suddenly discovered that his sight had returned. Eno was sleeping peacefully on his pillow, the corners of his mouth slightly upturned, not sure what good things he had dreamed of. Martin could not help but reach out and caress his white, pink cheek and squeeze it gently. Eno’s face was the same the one he had seen when he was a teenager. The years had left very few traces on his face, it was still as innocent as a sixteen year old’s face, except for a few faint lines at the corners of his eyes that revealed the passage of time and added a unique touch of maturity to this beautiful face.
Eno was really good-looking when he was quiet, with his willowy eyebrows, his raven-feathered eyelashes trembling lightly in the morning sun, and his whole body covered in a soft golden light. Martin used his nails to fiddle with Eno’s long lashes, and he remembered vividly the slight scratching sensation of them on his cheek whenever Eno had taken the initiative to rub against his face during the days when he could not see. Martin only had time to play with them for a moment before Eno stirred as if he was itching and then opened his eyes.
He was met with a pair of amber, radiant eyes that rushed straight to his heart with boundless delight.
“Are you able to see?”
“En.” Martin smiled and kissed the corner of Ino’s lips, whispering in his ear: “Really is a little beauty.”
Remembering the big words he had said, Eno laughed less than kindly and reached out a limp arm to hook around Martin’s neck. This tug caused the covers to fall back a little, revealing Eno’s bare white shoulders, streaked with deep and shallow red marks that spoke of how intense their encounter had been last night.
Eno saw Martin’s eyes staring straight at his shoulder and the blood in his body surged upwards, staining his cheeks a faint red. He had been so comfortable when Martin couldn’t see him, but now that he could see him, he was a little shy and hid in the Alpha’s arms.
The room was full of love and affection, and Martin laughed as he rubbed Eno’s growing hair, “Where are your fluorescent green pants? Come and put them on for me to see.”
Eno felt the blood in his face not only freeze, but also wanted to back. He shouldn’t have had certain thoughts about Martin, like that Martin would give him a gentle hug and then kiss him or something. He was just thinking too much.
Eno scooted out from under the covers and looked at him with pursed lips and hatred. The redness on his face hadn’t faded, and the angry look on his face was particularly vivid and cute.
But Martin wasn’t moved at all: “Go and put it on, good boy.”
Eno pulled out the pillow behind him and threw it at him, whispering: “Don’t wanna.”
Martin laughed out loud as he hugged the pillow, reached out and dragged Eno down onto the bed and pressed him directly. Their chests were so close together that they could feel the fierce pounding in each other’s chests. Martin’s hot breath sprayed against Eno’s ear, his vocal chords vibrating with a searing heat: “Dare to do it but don’t dare to bare the consequences, en?”
There was silence everywhere, except for the sound of two hearts drumming so clearly and distinctly. Eno’s ears turned red and he raised his arms around Martin, embracing his warm, thick body. The air was dark and ambiguous, and the ambiguity quietly surrounded them, tickling their hearts like feathers. Eno closed his eyes tightly and indulged in the good smell of the Alpha’s pheromones.
They held each other silently for a few moments before Eno blushed and got up to go to the kitchen to make breakfast. When he came out with two plates of small, golden and crispy fried sticky rice dough fritters, he saw the empty wheelchair sitting in front of the lift, and Martin was holding onto the wall, moving step by step in the direction of the kitchen.
Eno hurriedly put the plate down and nervously gathered around Martin, afraid that he would fall over on his feet. Martin said with amusement: “Why are you more nervous than me?”
His somewhat embarrassing but determined figure was reflected in Eno’s clear pupils, and those black and white eyes took on a divine colour that suddenly became dazzling. Eno averted his eyes and stared at the clean white floor tiles and said unnaturally: “If you’re not comfortable then I’ll leave you alone.”
He was about to leave when Martin tugged him by the arm and pulled him to his side, begging for mercy: “Wrong, wrong, wanted you to walk with me for a while.”
Eno still didn’t look up at him, but ran to the table and pulled out a chair, then naturally picked up one of Martin’s arms and slowly helped him towards the table. He carefully helped Martin onto the chair, tied the napkin around his neck, then trotted to the kitchen and placed a bowl of fresh and sweet seafood porridge in front of him. Sitting across from Martin and looking at him in good spirits, a light but pleasant smile on his lips.
Martin was uncomfortable with the loving look in his eyes this time, but he didn’t say anything else, and he and Eno drank their porridge and ate their dough fritters in peace, then went to the hospital for a check-up.
Martin stayed at the hospital until the afternoon this time, taking the two large yoga mats he had just bought on his way out that morning from the upright delivery cabinet by the door, finding a random unused room on the first floor and putting them in. When he got out of the wheelchair, the fastenings came loose and he accidentally tipped it over, presumably waking Eno, who was napping, coming sleepily out of the master bedroom: “What’s wrong?”
Martin knew that Eno liked to be clingy when he was awake, so he raised his hand to greet him and planted a light kiss on his forehead, saying in surprise: “Haircut?”
Eno scratched his head in embarrassment: “A couple of random cuts with scissors.”
He saw the open door of the room and reached out to see that it was covered in a heavy layer of dust. Eno ran off to change into black casual clothes and dragged the vacuum cleaner over to clean the floor, then plucked a rag to wipe down the old, dusty furnishings in the room. As Martin watched him run up and down the stairs, he suddenly felt a little saddened. Since he had arrived at his house, Eno had always taken care of him with the utmost care and kindness, even if it is not the kind of flattery in love.
“I’ll do it.” Martin pressed his hand and snatched up the rag without a word. Eno didn’t stop him either, looking around only to see two yoga mats standing on the wall, and with a twinkle in his pretty eye, pulled them over and carefully laid them out on the empty floor.
It happened that Martin had also finished his work here. The two of them opened the window for ventilation and sat on one mat each — Eno didn’t even ask him why he had bought two, as if they both knew it well. Martin raised an eyebrow and smiled: “Want to work out with me? I’ll take you to lose weight.”
Eno wondered if he could be a little more romantic in his opening remarks, and suddenly realised that he had actually raised his demands on Martin to such a high level, and for a moment, his mind was in turmoil, so he could only nod in a panic. Martin said no more and turned on his back on his yoga mat and started kicking.
The results of his hospital tests were very promising, the nerve links had basically been repaired on their own and he had regained sensation in his leg muscles, so he just had to slowly build back the muscles he had before. After two years of hard work, it can probably return to the 90% of his full strength, which is already an excellent result.
The biggest advantage of Alphas is that they have thick skin and is not as delicate as Omegas. More exercise will not cause any burden to the body, but it can make the muscles shape faster. But Martin was eager to restore his normal mobility, so he was very cruel in training himself. What surprised him was that although Eno’s movements were slower and less intense than his, he really gritted his teeth and kept up.
Martin suddenly remembered the report on Eno’s genetic profile that Nightingale had given him during his morning visit to the hospital. There was a set of gene sequences in Eno’s sex chromosomes that were significantly different from the other Omegas, but clearly not naturally occurring, full of artificial modifications, yet blending naturally with his own genes without being out of place. The institute said that the design process required for such a natural embedding was extremely complex, and that only a handful of leading experts in biology had been able to do it for decades.
Martin instantly thought of Ivan. If it was true that Ivan had colluded with the Inhumans to escape, his skill level would give them an unparalleled boost. After all, the Inhumans, as a variant of the Omega, were not as good at research as the evolved Alpha, and with the lack of resources in the outer planets, their reliance on their powers and dislike of modern technology, they were 50 or even 100 years behind the Federation in terms of technology. This was one of the reasons why the Alpha warriors were able to compete head-on with these mages who could summon wind, lightning and fire at every turn.
Eno was undoubtedly the beneficiary or victim of some kind of genetic research by Ivan, but the report given by the research lab side said that the trait controlled by this gene was not obvious, and it did not seem to cause harm to his body at the moment, and the details needed further research, expressly adding money. Martin thought that this was probably the masterpiece of the giant Ivan, but how much could a small research lab study intensively, he would still have to go to the Federation’s Central Biological Laboratory in the capital. Then the ball was kicked back again. They had been working for years to understand Ivan’s research project, so they couldn’t send back Eno’s genetic samples.
Martin pressed his temples with a headache and glanced worriedly at Eno, who was crouching up. Eno was oblivious to everything and was still sweating hard to eliminate his little tummy.
Martin thought with some relief that at least now they had a clue and weren’t as bewildered and helpless as they had been eight years ago.
They just had to wait a little longer and everything would fall into place.
The two of them trained until late afternoon, when Eno lay on his mat, gasping for breath and aching all over his body, and realised what he had done to try to keep up with Martin’s progress. Martin was also exhausted, but for the sake of saving face, he stood up and held out his hand to Eno.
Eno didn’t take his hand for fear that the force of his rise would bring him down again, but sat up on his yoga mat, and then lay back down again because he was too tired. Martin shook his head helplessly, went downstairs to get two tubes of supplements, sat down on his mat and tossed one to Eno from a distance.
Eno caught the supplements in his hands, held them in front of him and looked at the clear, pale red liquid in the glass walls of the tube, and grimaced in disgust.
Martin took in his demeanour and took the opportunity to criticise him relentlessly: “Squeamish.”
Eno grunted lazily, sat up, unscrewed the cork and poured it into his mouth. Martin hastily called out to him and, as if by magic, fished a fruit-flavoured tablet out of his pocket and threw it to him.
Eno took it and looked at the packaging, his expression instantly becoming subtle as he silently tore open the wrapper and threw the fingernail sized round tablet into the nutrient. The surface of the water instantly rose in dense red bubbles as the tiny effervescent tablet tossed back and forth in the column of tubes, eventually dissolving into nothingness, leaving only a glass of deep red strawberry-fruity liquid.
Martin raised his glass from a distance to him, and Eno briefly locked eyes with him and took a sip full of the sweet strawberry sweetness.
Martin laughed ruefully at the memory of something: “We practised much harder than this at military school, and every night we were so tired we couldn’t get up like dogs, and twenty or so of us lay on the floor and played rock-paper-scissors to choose one unlucky person to receive the whole group’s nutritional supplements from the cafeteria.”
Eno listened attentively to him, as if he could imagine that image too: “So hard ah.”
“It’s okay.” Martin chuckled, “At that time everyone had a bit of an idea in their mind that every, year the top ten graduates of the military academy went out as second lieutenants straight away. They don’t need to start as non-commissioned officers. It’s faster to accumulate merit points, and if you worked hard you could save enough to go back and marry your wife in a year or two.”
Yet how many young Alphas die on the battlefield with the wish of happiness, only the strongest and luckiest Alphas survive and become winners under the law of the jungle, producing genetically superior offspring with Omegas under the law of Omega distribution.
Such is the cruelty of war, and as long as the Inhumans do not cease to exist, everyone will not be able to leave this vortex of sad times.
“So now you have a goal too.” Eno joked, “Hurry up and get better ah.”
He laughed extremely softly: “Still waiting for you to go to the haunted house with me.”
Martin was full of promise: “We’ll go tomorrow.”
“……You can get better by tomorrow?”
“No.” Martin smiled with his eyebrows, “But it would look perfunctory if I said I’d go next week or next month, and I don’t want you to think I’m being perfunctory with you.”
It was the first time he had mustered the courage to say such blunt things to Eno, not even daring to look at Eno’s reaction himself, and without waiting for Eno’s reply he got up and went out the door, obediently getting into his wheelchair and going downstairs to the living room with Eno. Eno was greedy, no matter how tired he was, he couldn’t lose his stomach, so he threw a few skewers of meat into the frying pan and fried them until they were fatty but not greasy, then brought them out and shared them with Martin on the sofa as a snack.
The evening news was on, and after nearly two months of intense campaigning, the dust had finally settled on the new commander of the military, and it was Grey, the commander of the Fourth Army. The Silver Cross, led by Drake, is far from being a full-fledged legion, although it carries the name of a legion, and it is an independent legion attached to the Fourth Army. His status is also far inferior to that of a real army commander.
Drake is a small but dazzling pawn in the huge system of the military department, attracting much attention but actually having very little real power. In the midst of all the shifting sands of the upper echelons of the hierarchy, the one who hides the deepest with the most ruthless means is undoubtedly Grey, a general who is unknown among the people but known to everyone in the military.
Drake never felt alone in his quest to avenge Lea, for Grey and Carl always stood behind him in their son’s obsession. If there was no one left in the world to believe that the only way to really have access to first class classified documents was to climb up, by the time Drake climbed up himself, he would probably be in his fifties and sixties. Why not than the more senior and capable Grey to do it for him, while Drake took advantage of the convenience of acting in the independent legion and was mainly responsible for getting his hands dirty to remove some of the obstacles in his way of promotion.
It had been over eight years since the powerless family had abandoned their bright and shining lives to walk alone in the darkness of power entanglements, finally climbing to the pinnacle of power just to avenge the death of a 19 year-old Omega who had died in vain in his youth to prove that he had not been forgotten.
Eno stopped his hand from reaching for the meat skewer and stared in awe at the 54 year-old Grey on the television screen. From the few times he has seen Grey, Grey is roughly the same as the resolute look on TV, except that when he looks at Carl and Drake where there is always a slight gentleness between his brows, which is far less serious than he looked now.
The television was still showing the scene of Gray standing at the war memorial with grey sideburns, taking the oath of office, and Eno’s fingers trembled slightly as if he too had thought of something, and then Martin took them in a strong grip.
“What’s on your mind?”
Eno murmured: “Is it harder to see the Commander once.”
Then his thoughts were torn back to reality by a slight pain in the side of his head. Martin looked straight at him, and covered the top of his head with his broad and powerful hands, vigorously rubbing the silky and smooth pale blond hair into a mess: “Don’t think about it.”
Eno stared at him in awe, Martin’s gentle gaze suddenly seemed to give him endless courage, making him yearn once more to confide, to lean on.
“Let me tell you about my past.” Eno eventually lowered his head, his long white fingers subconsciously rubbing over the smooth leather cover of the sofa, “I actually knew Drake, he was my younger brother’s Alpha.”
melon: hey guys, if you’re on our discord server, you can now get a role for this novel to receive notifications for new updates! Just go to the roles channel and looked for remarriage 💍
This novel won’t be getting a “new novel” announcement because we are just 7 chapters away to the ending of the main story. 😅
