DOUBLE UPDATE!!!!

– 1 chapter of OMEGA

– 1 chapter of Aiasthlyn

I hope you enjoyyyyyyy 😆
p.s – sorry for any and all errors, they’re on me not my editor

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Peter’s POV

His head bobs up ahead, breaking past the sea of vampires, and my heart climbs as I push up onto my toes. It hardly helps, only makes me almost fall, again, but glimpses of him are getting more and more rare, and there are so many bodies between us, and—

The line shifts, and I lose him again.

My heart drops the same way I do, but I can’t stop myself from still looking, from still straining my neck as I search for him, my liferaft in what is undoubtedly the scariest moment of my life.

Joseph whines as I stare after our mate, silently willing him to turn around.

Just look at me. Please. Even once.

He doesn’t.

My chest tightens brutally like a fist is squeezing tight around my heart, and suddenly, I’m fighting my tears all over again.

I messed it all up.

Years. I’ve waited years to meet my mate, so many that I stopped believing I even had one, and then there he was— handsome, and perfect, and he was right there in front of me, so close I could touch, and what did I do?

I flinched away from him.

I ruined it before it even started, and now…

I stare after him, but there’s only the line of bodies standing between him and me, finding a way to make it right.

I squeeze my hands at my sides, bite my lip until it threatens to slip, but none of it matters. Everyone blurs ahead of me, merging in with the surrounding walls until I drop my head and stare at my shuffling feet instead.

Why couldn’t I just not be scared for once? Why couldn’t I have just been better?

No! Peter, you were great — Joseph consoles with a slight nudge. You spoke. You told him you wanted him, and the bond, and you didn’t back down when he tried to make us…

He doesn’t finish, the pain too fresh, and too much. 

You’re here — Joseph murmurs when he finds his voice again. We have a chance because of you. You did everything you could, Peter, and you did amazing.

My chest warms, the pressure that’s been sitting on it, easing for the first time as I let myself lean into the warmth of his words. 

Thank you, Joseph.

No, Peter. Thank you — he replies quickly. I’m… I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.

No! — I dismiss quickly before I push all my love into our bond. I couldn’t do any of that without you. If I were alone— a shudder passes through me. I don’t even want to imagine it.

I really didn’t, because odds were, then I would pass out again, and I didn’t want the one time he did look at me again to be because I was waking up on the floor, again.

Joseph giggles, feeling a little better, and I share in his support as I wipe under my eyes. Maybe he just has to navigate everyone through here, and that’s why he hasn’t checked on us. He has to focus.

My lips quirk, trying to tug into a smile. 

If there was one thing I loved about Joseph and would always be grateful for, it was how optimistic he was. Even when he was scared, even when there was nothing to look forward to, he would find a way to dig up the bright side of a situation and then refuse to let it go until I felt its shine too.

Maybe — I agree, needing something to look forward to. It is confusing.

Blinking the rest of my tears away, I look around the tunnel we’re passing through. It’s tighter than the ones before, and they have been for a little while now, so maybe we’re almost to wherever they all sprouted from.

Unease slithers through me, but I don’t let any part of my mind linger on it. 

I had made my decision to stay. I was in too deep now to run away, even though I may want to, badly, but that would only feel good for a moment. I’d lose him if I did, and we were already far enough apart as it was.

I look up again, daring to search, to hope for another glimpse of my mate, of Luciel.

My heart stutters, and it’s not all fear, not completely. It’s…

Relief.

Everyone spoke about the moment you met your mate— the joy, the warmth of the bond as it rose from its dormant place, the need and want and desire to be at their side, to breathe their air, but no one had ever told me about the relief. 

The comfort of looking at someone and knowing that you aren’t alone in this world, that there is someone else out there who was literally a part of you.

Relief was what I felt when I saw Luciel for the first time, and relief is what my soul chases now, even knowing that it comes attached to fangs.

The bodies shift and my heart leaps when I catch a glimpse of the gold bands coiled around his thick locs while he moves steadily at the front of the line.

I didn’t know anything about how vampires worked, other than that a group of them was usually called a clan, but it seemed that they had a hierarchical system in place, and Luciel sat at the top of it.

They called him pylen. 

Maybe that was like their alpha.

My skin warms, a flush spreading all over my body that blessedly my coat hides.

I had never really been into alphas, except for that one time at that event Damon, Dad, Papa and I went to. I grew up with too many of them to seek out that natural pairing like most omegas did, but thinking of my mate as a leader excited some primal part of me in a way I could’ve never prepared for.

I burrow deeper into my coat only to pop right back out when Luciel suddenly stops.

My heart starts pounding again, and my ears burn when everyone else stops and leaves it as the only sound to be heard, but I can’t care as much as I should. Especially not as hope sends it higher as he finally, finally turns around and looks back at…

My heart quiets, my disappointment made audible as he looks not at me, but at the vampire standing just in front of me. The woman with the sword.

He nods at her once, and when she returns the gesture, he disappears.

I stiffen, true fear surging through me around the hurt as my head swivels anxiously. I try to find him, but he’s gone, and soon, all the bodies between us are disappearing as well in blurs of their own making until there’s no one left but me and—

“We are going this way.”

I peek up, just barely mustering the courage to risk meeting her eyes. Maeve, Luciel called her when he said she was supposed to guard me. She’d been the one who seemed in charge before he showed up, and had kept her sword at my neck, but she had listened to me when I spoke in the beginning, when I don’t think many others would have.

My eyes lift the last inch only to immediately fall back down as cold terror slices through me.

My overworked heart sets off again, battering against my chest as I try to calm down, but I can’t with the ghost of her stare so fresh in my mind.

She hadn’t looked at me like that before. Not even at the start.

She had looked annoyed and distrustful, not like she wanted to kill me.

My eyes slide over to the path ahead she’d pointed to, then to the split to the right where Luciel disappeared.

“We are going this way,” she repeats, sharper this time, and I just barely manage to contain my whimper as I take the path away from my mate.

Burrowing my nose into my borrowed coat, I force myself to keep moving forward without chasing after the growing longing in my chest. Luciel had said I was their guest, so even if I wasn’t with him, I was safe, I think.

I just hoped I’d get to see him again soon.

My eyes trail over his path as we pass it by, only to widen as I catch a glimpse of the fortress waiting beyond.

I think I was imagining some kind of dug-out hovels within the ice, like a large honeycomb made for vampires, or an underground network of igloos. My mind had only just started to wonder where I was being led, but even so, no part of it could have ever conjured up something like this.

A fortress sits upon a pillar of carved rock on a lone isle beneath the ice, and it is a fortress, with wide, dominating watchtowers, factions of stacked columns, and a surrounding wall of thick ice that guards it all. 

The spidering bridges that branch from the walls around to random highpoints of the castle are too thin to walk on, and also made of ice like everything else in this hidden world, and it’s all so gorgeous.

Maeve allows me a single moment to take it all in before she grunts.

I take the hint and keep moving, craning my head back as long as I can to stare at the ice fortress, but eventually we’re diverted to the tunnel that I suddenly hope is heading there somehow.

Putting one foot in front of the other, I focus on doing as I’m told and that alone instead of my churning thoughts. If I started trying to unravel them, then I wouldn’t stop, and I would definitely end up crying or running, and something told me Maeve would drag me on even if I was bawling my eyes out.

I shudder and carry on.

It’s like a never-ending journey, and if I had any hope of trying to memorise our path, then I lose it the longer we go on. There’s nothing but the hollow walls around me and the silence that becomes almost as terrifying as the vampire marching quietly at my back. 

She’s no more than two paces behind me, and yet, I don’t even hear her. It’s like she floats on the ice. If she tried to hurt me, would I even hear her make the move?

Shuddering all over, I shake the thought from my head before I look for something to say. 

I wasn’t the best at conversation or talking to new people, but that was how most people broke the ice and seeing how we were stuck together and literally surrounded by it…

“S-So—”

“No.”

“Oh-O-Okay.”

Slamming my mouth shut, I keep myself and my breaths just as quiet, and don’t dare try to speak again.

We eventually escape the labyrinth of tunnels and spill out onto the first portion of the ice that looks habitable.

It’s a hallway, not a tunnel, and its panels are etched in with intricate designs that match the trimmings along the smooth, ice roof. It leads into another, and I only have a moment to take in that every inch of this place is made of ice before the vampires come into view.

I immediately stop walking.

There were no more than twenty before, when they found me.
I could have counted them, but now…

Vampires walk up and down the large hallway, and there’s a buzz that’s familiar if entirely different by the way that it isn’t accompanied by the pack’s loud voices and constant bustling. 

There’s its own type of buzz here as bodies move to and fro. Some move in blurs, others at a pace I can track, but they’re here and moving and everywhere.

My heart thumps in my ears, louder than their chatter, as my eyes dart all over, trying to spot where the attack would come from.

My nose twitches, and my brain immediately classifies their scent.

It’s what I smelt above the ice, all around Luciel’s sweet and woody scent, but I’d been too focused on him to notice what I do now, but that they all smell like metals. Like blood.

My own runs cold, and as a pair of red eyes shift to me, I go scrambling back.

A hand at my back stops me before I can escape, but the surprise of it makes me scream as I jump away, and then suddenly, everything is very quiet.

I don’t turn.

If I do and see them all looking at me, I’m sure their stares will melt me into a puddle again, so instead, I stare at the one I’m facing. Or more specifically, at her collarbone.

I watch her swallow, watch the way her jaw shifts to the left and then caged before she takes a step forward that forces me to shrink. 

I want to be small, but she makes me crouch even lower as she ducks as if she wants to force my eyes to hers, but mine just fall to the floor.

“You might find, Peter, that in a place where vampires live, there will be one or two vampires,” she says slowly, her spidery voice filling the newfound quiet as she stares at me, her gaze a noose. “If that will be a problem for you, I suggest you speak now, and I will escort you back to the surface.”

Something inside of me yells at me to do just that, to leave and escape this literal nightmare before I make a bigger fool of myself, or worse, make enemies here. 

I could go back to the station, or back home and regroup or get help before I came back to try and win over the only reason I was here at all.

My mind offers up the idea on a silver platter, but it also conjures images of dark brown eyes when they were settled on me, and I suck in a breath and shake my head.

Maeve does not make a sound, but somehow her displeasure deepens in a palpable way that extends the stillness around us.

“Very well,” she grits out before she steps back. “Follow me. If you run, I will leave you to be lost.”

She passes me by and marches on, giving me no other choice but to follow. I scramble after her, keeping my chin to my chest without daring to look up as the movement around us slowly continues, but not without eyes tracking me from every possible angle.

My heart sounds like a chiming bell with each step, loudly proclaiming to every dead vampire that there is a living, breathing meal in their presence just waiting to be eaten. 

No. No. 

I’m okay. I’m safe.

Nobody is going to eat me.

But then I smell it. Not the scent of blood in veins, but blood itself, out and open, and even without looking up, I know.

They’re drinking it.

They’re drinking blood.

I take a deep breath, hold it tight and try to release it slowly.

It trembles out of me, and my heart beats faster.

Joseph squirms, wanting nothing more than to sit and burrow into a corner, but Maeve’s patience seemed to be at its end, and the very last thing Luciel had said to me had been not to step out of line, and I didn’t want to give him or anyone else a single reason to make me leave. 

Or worse, add me to the cafeteria line.

We walk on and on until the scent of blood fades, along with the fortress’ buzz, and my eyes start to grow heavy like my bones. 

Maeve leads us into the first entirely silent section of this stronghold since we left the tunnels where ice bricks line the walls, stacked one over the other with the same etching from before, though these are more plentiful and weave together as they lead the way to two large, steel doors— the first structure not made out of ice. 

I frown up at them, wondering if I could even open them, but then Maeve pushes one open with a finger and steps aside.

Feet planted on the outside, I peek inside, and feel my eyes widen in their sockets as I take in a grand and beautiful room, though I don’t think bedrooms are usually this big.

A large, four-poster bed rests against the far side of the room, covered in layers and layers of fur that have my mouth pooling before I even spot the extra set spilling out of the truck parked at its base. There are more strung over the low-lying couch that sits opposite an ice’d fireplace that has me blinking twice just to believe it.

I sniff for magic and find its traces subtly embedded, a slightly familiar comfort.

“Your room,” Maeve directs when I just stare. “Go inside of it.”

“Oh,” I breathe, glancing between her and the room, suddenly hesitant. There was no doubt she’d close the doors the second I stepped through, but then there was no telling when or if she’d open them again. “U-Um…”

“Food is already being prepared,” she states upon a… It’s not a sigh. A sigh would require more energy than she’s willing to spare where I’m concerned, but it’s something close to it. “I hope you like fish. It is either that or blood.”

I stiffen, instincts turning themselves over in a frenzy until I’m shaking as I glance up at her. I don’t make it past her chin, but it’s high enough to spot the flat line of her lips.

Not mockery, then. Just a fact. A scary one, but still, just a fact.

“T-Th-Thank y-you,” I manage after a few tries, and she nods once before gesturing inside again. “Um—”

This time, she definitely sighs. “What?” She snaps, and I struggle not to step back as Joseph and I cower.

“L-Luciel?” I ask, hoping his name is enough.

It’s the first time I’ve said it, I realise as pleasure spreads through me, a faint echo of the real thing. Goddess, how much better it would be to see him, to smell him, to hear him say my name again.

Peter Heil-Calderon

“Luciel is busy,” Maeve states plainly, putting a swift end to my daydreaming.

I swallow as I shift on my feet. I had to at least try. What was the point of doing any of this if I didn’t? And if Maeve was what was standing between me and seeing my mate, then was she really so scary?

Yes – Joseph mumbles without hesitation. But we have to try.

Squeezing my fists tight, I take a deep breath and then another before I try again. “W-W-When w-w-will I-I-I see h-him?”

Maeve stays quiet, so quiet that I almost risk peeking higher as the seconds tick on without so much as a twitch from her, but then she speaks, and I immediately wish that I never did.

“I will share this with you because perhaps you do not know,” she says in a barely there whisper made from my ears alone. “Luciel is our Pylen— our provider.” There’s a touch of reverence in her voice as she speaks, and it is not feigned. “He leads us. He keeps us safe. He strengthens us, the many of us, you have barely seen, and yet fear so deeply. You are here because he is your priority, but that does not mean that you are his.”

I stare at Maeve’s collar until I can’t see anything at all.

I feel myself nod, hear a sniff escape above my wobbling lips, but I do not force her to watch it all as I finally turn and step through the open doors. They close swiftly behind me, locking me and my tears inside, and I’m quietly grateful for the reprieve as a sob escapes me.

It’s harsher than I expect, scraping its way out of my already aching throat as every inch of me, mind, body and soul, that has strained for so long to be strong and brave since I found the first tunnel, finally gives.

I knew that, didn’t I? That he didn’t care? Had from the moment he’d named me a ‘guest’ and threatened me the way no mate should.
When he said that he had no desire for a love match, and that he was all too happy to break our bond.

…when he took all those twists and turns, and never one sought me out the way I did him.

I sink to my knees, hardly noticing the hard ice that bruises them as my sobs rack out of me, one after the other, and they do not stop.

I found my mate, my second half, and that made him everything to me, but to him, I was barely a footnote.

A whine splits my next sob apart as I curl into myself, trying to protect my heart even though it’s already cracked, the pain worse than any I have ever known. 

It’s already too much to bear, but the world is terrible, and I was not built to withstand it, so as my heart bleeds without my mate, everything else I’ve tried to ignore rises to take its piece of me.

I didn’t even know where I was. I was somewhere between hundreds, if not thousands, of feet of ice in unknown vampire territory and nobody knew where I was.

Not my team, and definitely not my family, and Goddess alone knew when they would.

Dad and Papa had probably left home already to meet me, but what would happen when I didn’t step off that plane? It seemed a good enough risk before, when he was right there, close and looking at me, and I know he said it himself, told me plainly, but I just thought…

My tears flow faster.

Mate bonds were all I knew, and all I had ever wanted.

Love and my other half. Usually, that other half wanted it too, even if they didn’t want the person attached to it; they wanted the match— the love.

Luciel didn’t want either.

Neither me nor our bond, and I had wanted to fight for it anyway— would still fight for it even if I was alone, but it hurt.

It hurt so much.

————————–

Poor Peter…

Thoughts??????

Thoughts on the Maeve?? Thoughts on Peter’s breakdown??? On the situation as a whole??/

I feel bad for Peter but also… character growth???? looool

my bad, yall know he’s not my favourite, but I do love this saga of his life, painful as it.

But please, share all and every thought, I love to hear them! The next update will be much sooner, but thank you all for being patient with me!

remember to vote and comment! 

Until next time,

Byeeeeeeeeeee Humansssssssss