I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)

Chapter 179: A Bite Worth Remembering

The voice was dry, amused, and way too calm for someone who had just pulled off a full-on high-stakes kidnapping. Cherion didn’t answer. Honestly? He couldn’t. He was too busy staring at the woman across from him with a face that basically screamed "Are you serious right now?" in at least three different languages.

Cherion’s jaw was still a bit sore from the effort of clamping down on her hand earlier. He looked down and saw it, an angry half-circle of teeth marks imprinted deep into the back of Marielle’s pale hand. It looked painful. It looked like it should be gushing blood, and yet somehow, the skin was holding together

"Don’t you dare," Marielle snapped, though she was grinning. She snatched her hand away, tucking it behind her head as she leaned back against a vanity. "This is a battle scar, Cherion. My first one earned from a ’harmless’ healer. I’m going to keep it. It’s a point of pride, really."

He paced a small circle on the plush rug. This was the second time he’d been hauled off against his will since arriving in this place, and frankly, the novelty had fully expired. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t some quirky northern tradition. It was just terrifying.

"You don’t know that," Cherion huffed, feeling a bit of his dignity return now that he knew he wasn’t about to be gutted. "Youngsters these days have heart attacks all the time. Stress is a silent killer! I could have just dropped dead and then who would fix your brother’s curse?"

Actually... Now that his brain was back online, he realized it had been a while since anyone tried to do anything to him. Ever since that night, when he saw Zarius in full terrifying wolf mode for the very first time, standing in the middle of a literal carpet of corpses, the assassination attempts had kind of... stopped, according to Flio, anyway. Maybe those people gave up. Or maybe they decided Zarius’s "condition" would take care of things for them. Or more likely, they just couldn’t get past the walking fortress known as Elios.

Cherion glanced at the teapot Marielle had completely ignored. He grabbed it instead, pouring himself something floral and calming while she took a big swallow of alcohol.

Marielle paused, her glass halfway to her lips. She let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. She gestured with her glass toward him in a little toast. "I see you’ve been doing your homework. You know about the date."

Marielle took a seat opposite him. The playful sisterly mask kinda disintegrated. Her eyes, usually that pretty violet, went... weird. Darker. Not even the nice kind of dark, more like someone dumped mud into the color and stirred.

Cherion paused, his cup hovering inches from his face. "What do you mean? If it’s not missing them, then what is it?"

Ooohhh...okay?

Or, option two. The parents were just... terrible. Like, not even in a fun, complex way. Just straight-up awful people.

"They weren’t... good parents, were they?" Cherion asked, a little awkward. But still, he needed to hear it out loud. Needed to know just how bad it actually was, where the line was, if there even was a line.

"What happened, Marielle?" Cherion asked, leaning forward. His voice was soft, devoid of its earlier snark. "I mean... If you don’t mind me asking. If it’s too much, you don’t have to."

"They tried to kill him, Cherion," she said quietly. "Our parents tried to kill their own son."