I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)

Chapter 344: The Forgotten Encounter

Zarius jerked awake with a sharp gasp.

He didn’t move. He just lay there, staring at the ceiling, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

The dream hadn’t let go of him yet. It lingered stubbornly in the corners of his mind, so vivid he could almost believe he was still standing in that silent chapel. He could still see the dim chapel lit by dying candles, smell the faint scent of melting wax lingering in the air, and hear the sound of a silver-haired boy weeping before the statue.

The chapel.

Zarius rubbed a hand over his face. He had casually, completely forgotten about that night because, at the time, it had served absolutely no purpose to him. Back then, his entire existence had been consumed by a desperate, tearing panic.

He had been a man running out of time, sneaking into the capital’s holiest sanctuary strictly to hunt for the High Priest, hunting for any scrap of a solution to the aggressive physical decline that was eating him alive. A sickness that, as he later found out, wasn’t a sickness at all, but a brutal, suffocating curse.

With his mind entirely focused on his own survival, the crying noble kid in the pews had been nothing more than a minor irritation. Nothing more than a passing distraction.

After that night, Zarius had stayed in the capital just long enough to finish attending his scheduled meetings at the palace, his thoughts completely consumed by the agonizing, creeping progression of his condition. Once those tedious diplomatic duties were out of the way, he had returned to the North, letting the memory sink deep beneath the weight of his own failing health. He had been far too preoccupied with the silent, desperate search for a cure to waste any mental energy on the Crown Prince’s fiancé.

He had never thought about that boy again. Not until the day he finally returned to the capital to claim his forced prize, walking into the grand halls to pick up Cherion.

When they had officially "met" as betrothed, Cherion had acted entirely nonchalant. There had been no flicker of recognition in those sharp blue eyes, no hesitation, and certainly no mention of a late-night encounter with an insolent "guard".

There had been something somewhat different about the way Cherion carried himself. Seeing Cherion’s total lack of awareness, Zarius had simply let the memory bury itself even deeper. It wasn’t a happy time for him anyway. Remembering that chapel only brought back the bitter taste of his early curse, a reminder of when he was weak and hunting for miracles.

Zarius shifted his weight slightly, the heavy mattress creaking beneath him. He looked down beside him, his gaze softening in the dim room.

Cherion was fast asleep. The two of them had collapsed into bed after an exhausting day, drained from everything that had happened. They hadn’t even bothered to change out of their clothes.

He had only intended to lie down for a brief moment, to close his eyes just long enough to let the lingering fatigue drain from his bones before he got up to properly change. But his body had betrayed him, dragging him straight into a deep, heavy slumber the second his head hit the pillow.

Zarius braced his weight on his elbow and slowly sat up, resting his back against the headboard. He pulled his knees up, looking down at the quiet, peaceful face of his mate.

As the dream finally slipped away, an unpleasant thought crept into Zarius’s mind.

Cherion was so in love with Yerel.

In that chapel, he had listened to Cherion break down, heard the devotion in the boy’s voice as he begged the heavens just to make Yerel look at him.

Thinking about it now, knowing the absolute depth of the love Cherion had once blindly offered to another man, made Zarius’s jaw lock so tightly his teeth ached. Something possessive stirred deep within him. His alpha instincts bristled at the thought, filling him with an anger he couldn’t quite put into words.

It burned him. It unsettled him more than he cared to admit that Cherion’s heart had once belonged entirely to Yerel.

The mattress shifted as Zarius’s large frame tensed, the subtle movement echoing through the quiet room.

Cherion stirred. A soft, disgruntled murmur escaped his lips, his long silver eyelashes fluttering before his blue eyes cracked open, heavy with sleep. He blinked against the darkness, squinting up at the broad silhouette sitting beside him.

"Oh..." Cherion mumbled, his voice drowsy. He lazily rubbed the back of his hand against his eye, turning his head toward the window. "You’re awake already? What..." He paused, noticing that no light filtered through the curtains. "Gosh, it’s still dark. What time is it?"

Zarius eased the tension from his shoulders and looked down at Cherion, who was still fighting off sleep. "Yeah," he said softly. "It seems like it’s just midnight or something. Go back to sleep."

Instead of moving away, Zarius leaned down, wrapping his massive arms around Cherion’s smaller frame. He pulled his mate firmly against his chest, tucking him securely into his side. Cherion let out a weak, compliant huff, his body still completely dead-weight from sleep as he buried his face into the crook of Zarius’s neck, naturally seeking the alpha’s warmth.

Cherion stayed still for a moment. But even in his hazy state, he could tell that Zarius was unusually tense.

He shifted his head back just an inch, his sleepy blue eyes trying to read Zarius’s face in the gloom. "Are you feeling okay?" Cherion murmured, his hand weakly gripping the fabric of Zarius’s untied tunic. "The curse... it’s not acting up again, is it?"

"I’m fine," Zarius whispered, his hand gently sliding up Cherion’s back to cup the back of his neck, pressing him gently back down against his shoulder. "Everything is fine. Just a passing thought."

Zarius stared over the crown of Cherion’s silver hair, his eyes dark and fiercely alive in the shadows. He tightened his grip, his fingers curling into the fine fabric of Cherion’s clothes.

He was never going to tell him. There was absolutely no need to ever bring up that dream, or to remind Cherion of how he used to be. He refused to be the one to drag up old memories of how utterly, miserably devoted Cherion had been to the Crown Prince. That past was dead, buried under years of neglect and betrayal, and Zarius intended to keep it that way.

Cherion was his now. His mate, his companion, his and his alone.

But as he listened to Cherion’s breathing slow back down into a steady, rhythmic sleep, the lingering shadow of the dream refused to leave. The mere thought of Cherion and Yerel existing in the same sentence, of their names ever being linked together by everyone or by the past, irritated him to the point of distraction.

It rubbed against his instincts, a persistent, grating friction that made him want to tear the capital apart just to ensure nobody ever looked at his mate the wrong way again. It irritated him more than usual, a quiet, dangerous spark lingering in the dead of the night.