I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)

The North has this peculiar way of swallowing its own history. Give it a blizzard and forty-eight hours, and it’ll bury a blood-soaked battlefield under a pristine, glittering blanket of white as if the violence were merely a fever dream. Apparently, the human heart works much the same way. Or at least, that’s what Cherion kept telling himself as Day 12 dragged into an annoyingly quiet evening.

A week. Seven whole days.

In that time, the subjugation had practically folded in on itself. The Velkyn were thinning out. The Hearth Stones, once terrifying beacons of corruption, had been repurposed with a sort of grim efficiency that would have made whoever messed with them weep. They were bait now. Lures. And the Velkyn were biting. The camp didn’t smell like panic anymore; now it smelled like campfire and ”we might actually survive this.”. Not the hysterical, ”we’re all going to die” kind of laughter, more like the careful, ”let’s not jinx it” kind.

The army was scheduled to break camp and head back to the Duchy the day after tomorrow. They were winning, yeah!

So why did Cherion feel like he was walking on a frozen lake with a very loud crack forming right between his boots?

”Normal,” Cherion muttered, aggressively stirring a pot of what he hoped was stew but looked suspiciously like gray laundry water. ”This is normal. I like normal. Normal doesn’t involve being pinned to a bed by a man who weighs as much as a small mountain.”

Because the ”Normal” in question was a total, absolute void.

Since that night in the tent, the Night of the Great Pillow Protest, as he liked to call it, the world had apparently decided to tilt sideways. Zarius had simply... stopped. No more shared furs. No more hand-holding until sunrise for ”healing purposes,” which was definitely a thing and not weird at all. No more of that grounding, terrifyingly steady presence at his side when the temperature dropped below zero and the Southern-born healer’s bones started to ache.

They only spoke when they had to, quick, professional exchanges about injuries or someone’s poor, unfortunate toes. Everything else? Dead silent. Like the air itself didn’t want to get involved.

And Zarius looked fantastic.

The man was practically glowing with health. The curse, which had previously required Cherion’s constant, hands-on attention just to keep the Duke from collapsing into a pile of shadow-meat, seemed to be taking a very long, very comfortable nap. And Cherion knew exactly why.

The kiss.

He pressed his lips together, and instantly regretted it when the memory hit him like a punch. His brain, despite reading the step-by-step method, was currently a chaotic mess of ”What if” and ”Oh god, why.”

He’d tried to rationalize it. He really had. In his head, it was simple, as it provided an intense burst of warmth. Also, as he’d filed it under Section A: High-Efficiency Healing Energy Transfer Techniques, it was just... a more efficient way to transfer the healing energy. It wasn’t romantic. It was just...

”It was a procedure,” Cherion told the stew. ”A highly inappropriate, deeply unnecessary, five-star-rated medical procedure. I am a professional. I am not thinking about how his mouth felt. At all. Ever.”

No. He was thinking about it. A lot.

In the meantime, Cherion had spent the past week keeping himself busy and, somehow, building a better relationship with Marielle.

What started as a very tense, very careful coexistence in the camp kitchen had slowly turned into... something... well, Cherion wasn’t sure what to call it. It wasn’t exactly friendship, at least not officially, but they’d somehow settled into a routine.

”You’re stirring that like you’re trying to murder the vegetables, Little Healer,” Marielle remarked, appearing at his elbow with a basket of dried herbs. She didn’t look at him, her eyes focused on the pot, but the edge in her voice had lost its serrated quality.

”The vegetables know what they did,” Cherion shot back, not missing a beat. ”And I told you, call me Cherion. ’Little Healer’ sounds like I should be handing out bills after every conversation.”

Marielle snorted. ”I don’t know what a bill is, but you’re far too sensitive for someone who spends his days working around with blood and guts.”

She began to chop the herbs with a speed that was frankly intimidating. Over the last few days, Marielle had become a fountain of information, though mostly it was a fountain of ”Zarius Valtrane is the Greatest Human to Ever Walk the Earth.”

She told him stories. Endless stories. Zarius at age six, refusing to cry after falling off a horse. Zarius at age fourteen, taking down his first Velkyn. Zarius at twenty, taking over as Duke with the entire North basically dumped on his shoulders. It was a classic terminal brother-complex, and as someone who valued his own survival, Cherion knew better than to interrupt a fangirl mid-stream.

”He’s always been like that,” Marielle said, her voice softening just a fraction. ”He takes everything onto himself. He doesn’t know how to let anyone in. But since you arrived...”

Cherion caught the way her expression tightened. Not quite a frown, not quite anger. Just... something sharp. Like she wasn’t thrilled about where that sentence was heading.

So Cherion was just silent at that.

The camp was in its final motions now. The last patrols were coming in, reporting clear skies and empty woods. People were packing crates, sharpening blades for the march home, and talking about real beds and hot baths.

And yet, despite the distance, despite the silence, Cherion felt the weight of the Duke’s presence every second of the day.

It would happen in the middle of a sentence, or while he was checking a soldier’s bandage. He’d feel a prickle at the back of his neck, a sudden shift in the atmospheric pressure of the clearing. He’d look up, and there Zarius would be, across the way, reviewing a report with Elios or checking a horse’s shoe.

For a fraction of a second, their eyes would meet.

It never lasted long. Just a flicker. A quick, accidental meeting of blue and red.

But it lingered. It had this way of staying under Cherion’s skin long after Zarius had looked away. It felt like a sentence that had been cut off in the middle.

That evening, as the sun dipped behind the mountains and the snow turned all dramatic shades of purple, it happened again.

Cherion was laughing at something Marielle had said, some biting comment about Reiner’s inability to cook a potato, when he felt it. That pull. That magnetic tug. He turned his head instinctively, and there was Zarius, standing near the command tent. The Duke wasn’t wearing his armor, just a simple dark tunic and furs, looking less like a god of war and more like a man who was very, very tired.

Their eyes locked.

Zarius didn’t nod. He didn’t smile. He just watched Cherion from across the distance of a week of silence. There was something in his gaze that made Cherion’s breath hitch in his throat.

I won’t do it again. Unless you’re the one who asks for it.

The words replayed in his head like his brain had hit repeat without permission. He felt his heart do a slow, traitorous roll in his chest. He was the one with the power now. The ball was in his court.

What power? What ball? HA

Cherion jerked his gaze away, returning his focus to the stew like it was suddenly the most important thing in his life. He didn’t see the way Zarius’s expression shifted when he looked away. He didn’t see the way the Duke’s hand clenched briefly at his side, or the way he lingered for a moment longer, staring at the silver-haired man who was so determined to act like nothing had changed.