Wen Qing.
Wei Ying fumbles with the phone and accidentally declines the call.
Could this get any worse? Before he can panic further, it rings again and this time, he picks up.
"Jie..."
It hangs in the air ominously, the word growing barbs in his throat, making him bleed inside.
Lan Zhan knew immediately that something was wrong, his uncanny sixth sense giving him prior warning that Wei Ying's phone was about to ring, but it was the spike of tension in Wei Ying's blood which alerted him to his panic.
His hand goes towards Wei Ying, who is already reaching out for him, and an unnatural, uncharacteristic hatred flares up inside him for this woman who was harbouring so many secrets.
How dare she call Wei Ying now?
After everything they've been through, after everything SHE put Wei Ying and himself through, she had the gall and the nerve to call and want to speak to him?
He was already growling with a need to protect his mate from this new threat.
The squeeze on their joined hands silences him, barely.
Wei Ying focuses on his breath, coming out choppily until he forces himself to relax. The outcome of this phone call was going to set the precedent for his relationship with Wen Qing from now on, even if there was no longer any trust left.
On both sides now, because Wen Qing had kept him in the dark about the vampire world in all its raging glory, and especially her own huge part inside it, and the truth about her job, even if Wei Ying had repaid the duplicitous favour for indirectly robbing her blind.
He remembers his grandmother saying it wasn't theft if they were taking back what already belonged to them. It gives him the strength to say his next word.
"Hi."
"A-Ying-"
"Don't call me that!" Wei Ying dashes away the tears that have become commonplace because of her.
There's silence on the other side.
And then, "Wei WuXian."
Wei Ying can't decide which of his names sounds worse coming from her. And next to him, Lan Zhan is slowly losing it, his calm evaporating like steam from hot chocolate. Wei Ying forces himself to close his eyes and take deeper breaths, steeling himself for this inevitable conversation. When he opens his red-rimmed eyes, they are shining with determination.
"Wen Qing," he counters.
An eye for an eye.
"I guess I deserve everything you're giving me," she tries to laugh but it comes out rather strangled.
"What do you want?" Wei Ying gets straight to the point. Anything else would be a waste.
"Just..."
Wei Ying can hear her crying, nothing obvious but it's there in her choked breathing, and the small sounds she's making. He stamps on the sympathy that begins to grow like a weed in his heart - NO! He tells himself harshly. This is the woman who threw him under the bus, who put his children in the line of fire.
She's dangerous, even by proxy because even if she doesn't have the means to make the Elixir of Life herself, she has an idea about it, and Wei Ying reinforces the need to keep her away from his family from now on.
"I'm glad you took the choice out of my hands," she says finally.
Does she mean by everything taken away from her, she no longer has the means to implement production, or even research into the Elixir of Life?
That's a shock.
"Liar!" The word flies out of his mouth unrestrained, without his consent. "And don't you think you should be telling me that, no matter what, family comes first? Tell me the truth, Wen Qing! Was I even part of your family, to you? Because in my mind, you were always my older sister. I'm finding it really hard to let go, but look at you! You've already done that, haven't you?" The accusations tumble out and Wen Qing is silent, listening to him.
"You aren't even going to listen to me, anymore?"
"You don't get to sound hurt. And why should I have to listen to more lies? More excuses? You just don't get it, do you?" Anger quickly replaces whatever grief had been brewing in his heart. "Wen Qing, you told us that you never had a choice, all of your actions were a direct result of orders from Wen Rouhan. Even if that were true, why didn't you keep us in the loop? You knew about vampires, and you still kept silent. I'm sure you'll try and come up with clever counter arguments, an answer for every one of my points, but at the end of the day, you let me down. The worst part of all of this is, I probably would have let it go if your actions only affected me. But you put Lan Zhan at risk. Worse than that, far, far worse is that you put my children at risk."
"So now what?" She asks, after a while.
Wei Ying stares really hard at a piece of fluff on the carpet in front of him.
"Now, we have to go our separate ways. Don't worry about us and we won't worry about you. Let's cut this thing off, right here, right now." Wei Ying is super glad that his voice sounds stronger with every passing second.
"That's it?" She sounds resigned.
"What? What exactly were you hoping would happen, here? Do you even understand what you've done? You know what? I don't care anymore. So, yes, that's it. When we get off the line, I'm going to block your number, and I suggest you lose mine. End of." Wei Ying pressed the red button to finish the call.
He stares at his phone for a few seconds, hardly believing the conversation that just took place. Then he puts the phone on the table in front of him and curls up into a tight ball next to Lan Zhan.
**************
Wen Qing stared at her phone.
Wei WuXian had never spoken to her like that before.
In a way, she was glad that he was becoming stronger, even if it was aimed at herself and A-Ning, but she couldn't complain.
Like dominoes set up to collapse, events had played out in such a way that this outcome was inevitable, but the least destructive, out of all the other possible alternatives.
Wei WuXian might never understand her choices, and most likely wouldn't ever forgive her, but at the end of this endeavour, Wen Rouhan was dead, Wen Xu and Wen Chao were dead, and the worst one of all, Wen Zhong was also destroyed.
Her four main enemies and the biggest threat to her family.
She remembered that day still, the beginning of her waking nightmare. Being summoned into Wen Rouhan's offices was supposed to be a prestigious event, because he never wasted his time with anyone else. Only his sons got to visit the inner sanctum.
And then in front of his sons, Wen Rouhan threatened her.
Wouldn't it be a shame, he had said in that infuriatingly calm voice, if they could monitor an acceleration in treatment? And only close family would do, because he said he was testing it out for eventual consumption by himself, as though that made it better, what he was suggesting.
Wen Ning. Her baby brother.
Wen Qing had bitten her tongue so she wouldn't put Wen Xu and Wen Chao forward as candidates instead, and Wen Rouhan who always seemed to be watching her, laughed.
Laughed because he always seemed to know what she was thinking.
Laughed because he never would have believed that he was signing his own death warrant by even thinking about hurting her brother.
Perhaps that was the day she began to change.
That was the day Wen Qing learned how to control her features, how to keep her thoughts private and hers alone, not to be exploited by those too ready to hurt her by them. How to make sure her face remained so neutral that she gave nothing away except what she needed to.
It was going to take time.
Wen Qing knew that, just as she knew how much patience it would take on her part, and on Wen Ning's part as well. They would have to keep their mouths shut through all the insults, the pettiness and the threats refreshed every time her Uncle wanted to talk to his niece.
She never told a soul about her plans: it was too risky. Not even confiding in her innocent brother because he wouldn't have hesitated to talk her out of it, or stand in front of her as part of the experiments Wen Rouhan was planning, just to ease her burden.
But Wen Qing had made her own promises to her parents and to herself, on the day they passed away. She was going to protect A-Ning with everything she had, or her name wasn't Wen Qing.
Everything was great and going according to plan.
After extensive research on vampires in a bid to dig herself out of this huge hole Wen Rouhan had flung her and her brother into, she hit paydirt when she found all those papers pertaining to an ancient genius who had discovered a way to kill off vampires, in not so many words. At least, she hoped it was killing them off, because controlling them could be interpreted in lots of ways.
Imagine her surprise when she discovered that Baoshan Sanren, who was featured prominently in Old texts, was alive and kicking, both figuratively and literally, AND was living here, in Denver. Downtown, in fact.
The more Wen Qing dug deeper, squirrelling away one page at a time, the more she realised that she needed help, and the key to saving her brother was right here on her doorstep. All she had to do was lure the bait and hope the fish would bite.
Translating the coded manuscripts was nigh on impossible, but of the few words she was able to decipher, names were easy.
It was her idea to hire interns, and just a fluke to check out Mo XuanYu. It was like the Universe handing her a golden ticket ensuring her success because it hated Wen Rouhan just as much as she did.
All she had to do was make sure that no one's roles overlapped, and that every single participant believed they were acting on their own, that they were doing everything she wanted them to do, independently.
Each morsel of data, every piece of information was carefully fed to those who would ensure it reached the right pair of ears, whilst simultaneously covering up her tracks. It was even easier to leave clues behind where Mo XuanYu was bound to look.
He was such an eager plant, too. Wanting to impress his real boss while pretending to work hard here, and so starved of attention that the slightest bit of care made him give up his loyalties without even knowing it.
Wen Qing was already missing him.
Everything was going so well...until it wasn't.
She was an expert at keeping her home life away from her work, already stretched so thinly that she never saw it coming.
When Wei Ying brought his vampire home, it was all she could do not to scream in frustration. She tried to dissuade him from having too much contact with Lan Zhan, she tried to drive a wedge between them because this was one overlap that would fly out of her control, and Wen Qing could not afford anything to derail her plans now.
But they didn't listen.
Whiplash was too slow an action to describe the speed with which their relationship developed, and it hurt Wen Qing every time she saw them, because she knew that someone was going to get hurt really badly at the end of all this.
Wen Rouhan was slowly but surely turning the screws on her and Wen Ning, and the time to act was getting ever closer.
And then she discovered the miracle of Wei Ying's blood.
He had the specialised ability to cure vampires of their weaknesses, to let them go outside in the daytime, to appear as normal as the humans they fed from.
It was only a matter of time before Wei Ying was discovered by Wen Rouhan, whose spies were all over the place, and she had to protect him, so she did the only thing she could: she fed her uncle lies that it was Lan Zhan who had the amazing blood running through his veins.
Out of the two of them, at least she could count on the vampire to fight back.
What she hadn't banked on was the Wen family kidnapping Lan Zhan as a result, or even that it would be so fast! But in the end, it was only an acceleration in her final plans.
Even Wen Chao finding her calling Wei Ying and Lan Zhan that night had worked out in her favour.
And now that all the threats to both of her brothers had been removed completely, she could finally sit back and relax.
Her only regret was that this whole operation involved Wei Ying at all, and in the end, it destroyed any love and trust he might have had towards her.
She had been shocked when she learned of Wei Ying's connection to Baoshan Sanren.
It was a small world, indeed.
But if she hoped to keep everyone who mattered to her safe, then sacrifices would have to be made, and it was worth it as long as her family, including Wei Ying survived what was going to happen.
Even if she had to be the bad guy, at least those tyrants were dead and the world was a much better place.
It didn't matter to her whether or not Wei Ying believed her promise of not putting A-Yuan and JingYi in danger; despite what her actions said about her, or how low his opinion of her had become, there was no way Wen Qing would have let a single hair on their heads be harmed, not on her watch.
Things had spiralled out of her control in the end, but those that mattered still lived, and so what if she was hated?
At the end of everything, she still got to keep one brother out of the two.
That would have to be enough.