a/n – sorry for the wait! But here’s the newest chapter!!!

ENJOYYYY

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Luciel’s POV

Peter,
          There seems to be a misunderstanding of some sort.

No, that would not do.

Peter,
          I did not mean to scent you. I did not even know what scenting was.

Terrible.

Peter,
          I have tried to do this face to face, but you have been avoiding me.

Was that combative? Transferring blame, even if it were true?

Peter,
          You have been avoiding me, and I understand why, but you do not need to fear it happening again. I am more knowledgeable now on how not to scent a person.

I stare at my words before I smear his name away with a touch of water and do the same to the rest. Useless, useless, and even more useless.

The page is dry, if slightly blackened, by the time I ink my pen and try again.

P e t e r,
T h i s  i s  h a r d.

I toss my quill onto the table and fall back into my chair while the air groans mockingly around me.

Defeat was not a trophy I had ever sought to claim, but Gods be good, Peter Heil was on a mission to make me have it.

Two days now since the initial incident, and I was yet to find a way to speak to him.

Whenever I appeared, he disappeared, and for every corner I rounded, he skuttled behind another. He ducked, parried, bobbed, and weaved to avoid me, and did so with frustrating determination.

All I wanted was a single moment to simply apologise, clear my name, and let it be done. He could keep his distance and continue to flee to his heart’s content, but no, the boy demanded my torture.

Groaning along with the ice, I stare up at my arched ceiling as if the answers were inscribed somewhere there. If they are, they avoid me too.

If I closed my eyes and kept them that way for a decade, surely this would be over. But what catastrophe I would wake to, Gods alone knew, and they were not trustworthy folk.

The alternative would be to just corner him instead.

It would be easy enough when he only escaped me now because I let him, but such selfishness was bound to trigger a worse outcome than this, and I refused to dig myself deeper, especially considering what happened the last time I had seen him.

The ridiculous part was, I had not even been looking for him.

I was only hungry after too long spent without blood, and was on my way to the nearest blood bank when Peter appeared on my path, Maeve close behind. It had been surprising enough to see him in that corner of the castle that I had stalled, but that was all. I had not even considered approaching him, and yet when Peter spotted me, he’d grown wide-eyed before he literally shoved himself into the nearest wall and tried to become one with it.

All had faltered then, curious to know what the strange wolf in our midst was doing, but if Peter suffered the attention, then having his face pressed to the wall saved him from showing it.

When the ceiling unsurprisingly offers no solutions, I leave my gaze to fall to the mocking sheet of paper once more.

I was literate, but literature had never been my strong suit. I worked better with my hands, and my mind too, when I did not have to explain its inner workings, but this was my very sensible last option.

I just had to work out how to write what would normally come from my mouth.

Taking hold of my pen again, I centre my mind and keep it empty until something useless finally comes to me.

Peter,
         Stop running.

A knock sounds against the door, and I welcome the disturbance eagerly. “Enter.”

Four stride inside, the mix of which turns all concerns regarding Peter and letters frivolous as my mind switches to warfare. Two scouts, Qalini and Ifu, stride purposefully inside, shepherded closely by Atieno and Maeve.

I sit up immediately.

It was one thing for Atieno to be present with our scouts, since he was who they reported to if they had signalled a matter important enough to report, but for Maeve to be here as well, instead of with Peter, the matter had to be especially delicate.

I let the door shut. “What is it?”

“Pylen,” Ifu greets, ducking his head as he does. “We spotted swimmers coming from the eastern border. Three.”

“Not aspiratans?” I surmise from their lack of enthusiasm.

We did not get vampires seeking to join our clan very often. They had always been few and far between, but they did still come, rare as it could be.

“When aspirants stop in the water, it is to see how much further they must go,” Qalini replies, lips pressed flat. “When these stopped, they looked for us.”

“Spies then.” The silence is answer enough.

As one of the oldest and strongest clans before the First’s ascendance, it was not uncommon for us to receive unwelcome visitors wanting to keep tabs on the status of our strength as we continued to grow beneath the ice.

More often than not, the curiosity stemmed from clans who wanted to take all we’d built lands for themselves, or sell that information for whatever it was worth amongst the supernatural. Since the war, the visits had dwindled considerably, but not completely. They only sought a new type of information now.

For as little as we congregated in recent times, I still held one of the prized seats on Lincoln’s Council—me, not my clan, though I represented it all the same—and so I became a target.

What disposition did the First favour? What did I have that he saw as strong enough to listen to? What made me special?

Little in reality, but basic math promised that if I were removed, a rare window would open for another to receive the honour of filling it.

A shame it continued to be for many that I was not so easily removed.

“How far?” I ask.

“At least two days until they reach the shores,” Ifu answers. “One if they swim faster.”

“Weapons?”

“Stripped by the sea.” In other words, the magic that surrounded our banks had done its job: stripping the ill-intending of their weapons and masking its work as the tides.

I nod, and with the information delivered, the pair take their leave. I look between my most trusted. “Thoughts?”

“Drown them before they make landfall,” Atieno answers without missing a breath.

“You want to fill their lungs with rocks and sink them to the bottom of the ocean to die forever?” I return, and he shrugs loosely.

“I did not say that, but if you wish, then yes, though it would only send a message to those who join them later. My line of thinking was to just kill them.” He blinks at me, considering. “Drowning was only a sensible method.”

I shift my gaze away from the bloodthirsty warlock I so often listened to, and place it onto Maeve.

“I agree with killing them,” she says, “but we should return the bodies to the ones that sent them, so the message is received. We should also strip them of any available proof of their origins, and report it to the First.”

Suddenly, Atieno’s idea did not sound so bad.

I did not mind ‘tattling’ when it was another’s resources being expended, but such things opened the door to more—more dialogue and more interference, more visits, more requests for my presence—and that was the very last thing I wanted.

If we killed them with the sea and kept it quiet, life continued as it should, but then again, the First could very well receive word somehow and much as Lincoln left us to our own devices, he did not like being uninformed.

“We will tell Lincoln,” I decide upon a sigh. “We’ll send a note and some part of their body if they end up dead. If they are not, a capsule of their blood will do.”

Atieno and Maeve let their surprise show on their faces, along with their automatic displeasure.

“If?” Atieno asks.

“If,” I confirm.

The pair exchange a weighted look.

“And why would we not kill them?” Maeve asks, mindful enough to make it a question of interest rather than an outright accusation of my stupidity. Years help me to hear it anyway.

“Let us call it a teachable moment.” Their frowns deepen, and my lips tug up into a smile. “Tell no one of the spies, and have the scouts do the same. I will see to the rest.”

Hearing the dismissal for what it is, Atieno ducks his head and leaves without another word, while Maeve—always Maeve—lingers a moment longer.

“Forgotten how to depart from a room?”

Anger flares across her face, but she still hesitates, so obviously wanting to stay and ask all sorts of questions, yet she seems to gauge already that I will not answer them. And it was not because I was still bitter about her refusal to tell me any information concerning Peter— though, yes, I was.

This simply had nothing to do with that. It had everything to do with Peter, but not for that reason.

“You put one foot in front of the other,” I say, eager to help. I set two fingers on the table in demonstration. “Left, right. Left and then right. I can start again. Left—”

The ice around the door cracks when Maeve leaves, spidering up in telling webs I can’t help but laugh at.

Upset as she was, Maeve would soon realise why I had kept her in the blue, as I would all others, since none could be privy to any information regarding Peter’s Mission of Valour.

The second Trial was unlike the first, which was the same for everyone. The Mission tapped into the finest details of each person’s greatest fears with the intention of helping them best them and be as brave as this world demanded of us all.

Naturally, that exposed certain vulnerabilities most preferred to keep private, and more often than not, the finer details of the second Trial stayed between the aspirant and the Pylen, unless the aspirant chose to share them.

We all know how Peter feared what we were, but if Peter chose to share the finer details of his Trial, that would be his right, but I would not share a word of it before.

Was this a mere coincidence, the spies coming now, or had the Gods seen my struggles and sent a solution just in time? I could not know, but either way, it dealt with one of the Peter-related weights plaguing my mind, leaving only the other.

If I could depend on them, I would ask for their help there too, but the Gods were as fickle as they were cruel. None would mend the matter of Peter’s constant fleeing but me.

Leaning into the table, I send a loose prayer to them anyway as I drag a fresh sheet of paper close, and try again.

──────────✧──────────

The sun and moon are making their usual exchange by the time I part from my rooms, one folded sheet of paper tucked comfortably against my chest.

My end product was hardly brilliant, and most definitely not worth the ink chalked beneath my nails, but it was my very best work, and it would have to do.

Have to, because I could not continue living like this.

I was the Pylen of this clan, and I had responsibilities that went beyond Peter and one singular misunderstanding. We would find resolve today, and no later.

Where speed would take me quickly, I make the journey arduously, stopping only to send someone ahead to get rid of Maeve. I did not need her judgement or watchful eye, and it would be better if Peter heard my approach.

Long as the journey feels, I reach the halls that lead to him soon enough, the halls that I have visited more times in this last month than I ever have been. Aeons I have spent living in this place, and not once have I come to this particular corner as much as I do now.

A scowl mars my features when I remember why, but I force it away as I grow closer.

If I went with anger, Peter would respond with fear, and I did not need more fear.

Peaceful thoughts, Luciel. Calming, simple, peaceful thoughts.

I march down the halls, loud as can be for his sensitive ears, though I am not sure it makes any difference, as I hear the laughter that bursts from his room.

I stop short.

The sound is free, tumbling out in chortling waves that escape the seams of his door. He speaks around it, pausing to allow a telling gap of silence before he laughs again.

He’s talking to someone.

All attempts at an audible approach are abandoned as I take myself right to his door without making a single sound. Peter laughs again, a gentle, sweet sound that is so unfamiliar that it steers me completely off course for an assailable moment.

Had I heard Peter laugh before?

He laughs again, and I am suddenly sure that I have not. If I had, I would not have to wonder.

“No! T-That ti-time, there w-was o-only the popcorn,” he says, and muffled static follows before he laughs again. “You st-stole it! N-Not me!”

It takes longer than it should for me to realise that he is speaking on his phone.

Maeve had said that she returned it, and it was the only logical explanation, for as friendly as he had grown with Atieno and Zawnte, I knew it was not close enough for him to speak with such confidence.

I also hoped it was not close enough for him to allow them into his rooms when he was alone.

Whoever he speaks to now, it is someone he is comfortable with— very comfortable. He stutters still, but it doesn’t stop him from speaking with volume, with surety, and for all the states I had seen Peter in, he had never spoken so to me or anyone else.

A rather strange feeling engulfs my chest.

It is not painful, barely troublesome, but…it is there. Impossible to ignore or deny, and present when there should be nothing at all.

I feel myself frown, but then Peter keeps talking.

“I-I ju-just wanted to reread 1984…o-of course it-it’s a book p-people reread. I-It’s not w-weird!”

A book named after a year? I search my mind, but quickly come up empty.

It had to be fictional and quite modern, because we did not have it in the clan. We had very little fictional literature in the clan, but perhaps that was the genre Peter preferred.

I try to recall the books he’d had in his trunks when I first examined them, but they come blurrily to me. I could remember a green cover to something and nothing else. Certainly nothing with a year for a title.

1984, I ponder it for a moment. What had I been doing then?

It takes barely a thought.

I had been doing all I had after her, and before… him.

My frown deepens.

Stepping back from the door I had somehow grown inappropriately close to, I tug the letter from the opening of my shirt and crouch down.

I had wanted to try giving it to him in hand, but it would make no difference, and I had wasted enough time entertaining Peter Heil in my mind.

I slide the letter beneath the door.

“Well, I-I don’t care, Shilao! I—”

Peter freezes, and I do the same.

He’s noticed the letter, while I’ve heard the name.

Shilao.

There is no more laughter or conversation, just the elevated beat of his heart. It grows louder as the seconds tick by without sound or movement, and he in turn grows more fearful.

Whatever he fears, it is for the wrong reason.

I rise slowly, my body moving of its own accord while my mind empties to let some silent mad thing take its place. Perhaps it is not mad, but something close to it.

Something wild and erratic that removes sense and makes me stay when I know I should leave, when I know I should not care, and that it should not—does not —matter, because it does not.

It is unimportant, irrelevant, inconsequential, but…

Before the madness of the scenting, I had heard of his men.

Their names had haunted me then, popping in my mind at random like some absurd virus that forced me to think of them, and now, here he was speaking so merrily to one of his men. Laughing with abandon while I had spent the better of the last twenty-four hours painting my hands in ink just to get a letter right because he could not bear to speak to me.

The air that blows past my lips is colder than the air that surrounds me.

Peter’s heart beats faster.

I do not move. My mind decides I will not, and I do not fight it, even as I hear his feet touch the ground as he makes a careful approach.

“N-N-No. I-I’m ok-okay,” he stammers as he draws closer, but I can hear his blood rushing now. He’s terrified. “Just st-stay on t-t-t-the l-line.”

Stay on the line, as if he could protect him from afar.

The audacity of it. The mere confidence to have in such a thing. It boils the edges of my fraying mind until I have a fist to the door.

Peter half-screams, the sound dying in his throat just as quickly as it rises.

Perhaps that is because I banged my fist rather than simply knocking.

Peter’s heart flies now, and his fear is potent now, so bitter it reeks, and I know that I should leave if only to lessen that, but this close, I can hear the man on the other line saying his name over and over again, and that just makes it all so much worse.

“Open the door, Peter.”

I’m not supposed to make commands.

I’m not supposed to be overly domineering with him.

I’m supposed to be conscious of his space, respect it. I had read as much, tried with all my might to practice it, but those lessons suddenly seem fickle and foolish when the fear drenching Peter’s scent disappears immediately.

Something else comes, slightly bitter, but only that.

“I-I have t-to g-go,” he stammers after a moment, and it is not right, the pleasure that brings to me, but that is what comes and knowing the foulness of it is not nearly enough to assuage my pleasure.

The muffled responses stop, the call is cut, and only the steel between us remains.

Peter’s heart begins to climb again, and I listen to its soaring without moving a muscle.

By the time Peter opens the door, I am not the man who first made their way here.

“Who is that man to you?”

Greetings, formalities, apologies, I can not be bothered with a single one.

I have my question, and I need its answer.

Half-hiding behind his barely opened door, Peter stares pointedly at my chest. Even as shock passes through him, enough to make him catch his breath, his gaze stays far away from mine.

Omegas submit naturally to stronger presences by avoiding eye contact.

I shift my gaze to his fingers. They do not shake. No part of him does.

“Sh-Shilao?” He eventually whispers, as though he barely knows the name.

I force myself to speak without gritting my teeth. “Yes, him.”

Peter looks at me then, a mere peek that passes as quickly as it comes, but it is enough to expose his uncertainty. “W-What does Sh-Shilao ha-have to do w-with…” He gazes at the letter still sitting on the floor between us.

I don’t bother with a glance. There were more important matters at hand.

“Peter.” He stiffens, attentive as always, and for once, I am glad. “Who is that man to you?”

Peter hesitates, confusion wafting from him in spades, but not fear. There is no fear here.

There is something sweeter, something familiar.

He shifts as though he senses it too, fingers tightening around the steel. “H-He’s my b-best f-friend,” he whispers carefully, the door opening slightly more as he does. “O-One of my o-only friends.”

The frenzied madness bleeds out of me in an instant.

It slips free, returning sense to my hexed mind as relief I refuse to acknowledge crashes into me.

His best friend. One of his only friends.

Not anything more, nor less— not anything near as incriminating as Maeve had made it seem, and Gods be good, she really was a bitch born for Cerberus.

John was likely the same, another friend, one of the few, but nothing more, and here I’d let him and Shilao plague my mind for absolutely no reason.

“Why?”

Peter looks at me now, not my chin or my chest, but straight into my eyes, and even though his face is blood red and his heart is still racing, he does not look away.

It’s not the first time he’s been so bold, only the first that I recognise the strength of it, for a creature like him.

Those books had taught me much, but by the Realms, how little they knew about omegas like this one.

“Why?” I ask, only just remembering the question.

Swallowing, he bobs his head before he tries again. “W-Why do y-you want t-to know?”

I stare back at him, admiration sprouting where it shouldn’t, along with a terrible thread of amusement.

Bolder still, this strange omega.

I almost want to reward him with the truth, but I have not grown that mad yet.

“Why have you been avoiding me?”

Peter loses his bravado almost immediately, the blood rushing into his chest and neck, making him feverish as he casts his gaze back down to the ground. “I-I-I… I h-h-haven’t… you— I-I-I.”

“You have not?” I challenge. “I only hallucinated you trying to phase through the walls yesterday?”

Peter squeaks before his hands fly up to cover his face. He groans into them and tries to back away as if he means to hide now, but I do not let him.

I follow him inside, stalking each step he takes backwards with one of my own.

“I thought it was because of what happened in the tunnels, with my blood,” I say as I follow him inside. “I thought my actions made you think of me as some sort of predator.”

Peter’s hands fall immediately, his face reddened to a worrying degree, but horror still finds space to show itself.

“No! Never!” He exclaims, anxiously shaking his head from left to right. “I never did! You could never be… that!”

I stare unblinkingly at him. “You ca not say the word predator, but you can say all the rest without stuttering once.”

Peter falters, a small frown forming as he tries to replay his last sentence for himself, but I needed no recount.

I knew when he stammered and when he did not, and just now, he had not stammered even once.

“I misunderstood what happened,” I admit as I scoop the letter from the floor, moving slowly so that my movements remain visible to him. I dust it off before I hold it out. “Even so, my apology remains true.”

“Y-Your apology?” He asks, head tilting slightly even as he stares at it, fingers twitching at his side.

I hum, offering nothing else. He would find it once he read it.

Brave again, he lifts his hand for the paper, but as he tries to tug it free, I hold fast. He sucks in a breath, but remains still as I look into his eyes. “But if I was mistaken… why were you avoiding me, Peter?”

Peter’s blush rejuvenates itself, and I almost smile. Almost.

He shakes his head.

“No?”

“N-No.”

I bite into my cheek. “No, you will not tell me why you startled each time you saw me?”

He swallows, throat bobbing, and my eyes drop.

Rare it was to be so close to a creature so filled with life that it thrummed through them this violently. Rarer, the last time I drank from a vein.

Peter’s scent blooms, a sweet tinge slowly seeping past its edges once more. “W-Will you t-tell me why d-don’t y-you li-like S-Shilao?”

I tug my gaze from his throat. “I never said that.”

“S-So, you do?”

I hold my tongue, and he sees it.

His lips twitch as his scent sweetens even more.

I pretend that I do not know what that means, that no part of me likes what that means, just as I pretend that I do not have to rein in my smile as I find my voice.

“A stalemate then,” I say, conclusively. “It will have to do.”

Peter’s eyes dance between mine in all the ways an omega’s shouldn’t, and it is an honest effort not to see all the ways he differs from his kind, before he nods in agreement.

I stare at him, ears primed to the thrum of his heart until the silence lingers for long enough for me to remember that there is nothing left to discuss.

I step back, slowly retreating from the space I have entered without permission until I am once again standing just behind his threshold. Peter follows me out, almost stepping out from his door before I turn back to him.

Warm air puffs from his lips, and I feel the caress of each one.

“Will you keep trying to phase into the walls?” I ask, and I do not mean to tease, or perhaps I do, because when Peter bites his lip to stifle his groan of agony, a foreign pleasure surges through me.

He shakes his head, blonde hair falling into his face before he tucks it away. “I-I won’t.”

“Good.”

Peter’s head snaps up, and it only takes a glimpse of the hope in them for me to take my leave without a passing word.

I had done what I had come to do, and despite the unforeseen events that had led to it, I had done it.

Peter was no longer afraid of me— he never was, never saw me as a predator— and so the case was put to bed. Better yet, I now knew that his ‘men’ were nothing more than close friends.

Everything was as it should be.

Everything was returned to normal.

…so why was his laugh already back in my mind?

———————————–

AHHHHHHH!!!! LUCIELLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I NEED YOU IN A WAY THAT IS CONCERNING TO FEMINISM!!!!

Thoughts??????

Thoughts on our Luciel POV again??? On the madness in his mind?? The Letter attempts??? Him finally asking about Shilao?!??

AHHHH, that last scene was crack to me cause why the fuck is Peter such a good flirt, even when he’s nervous?!?! And Luciel teasing him ef.bq34oitn3wrmw43tm34

And, yes, if you’re wondering, that John assumption will be back to bite him in his ass lmfaoooooo

Anyway, that’s all for now! Thanks for being patient while waiting for this update!!!!

Remember to like and comment and you can get sneak peeks ahead of time on Patreon and my website! Links in my bio!

Until next time,
Byeeeeeeeeee Humanssssssssssss