I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)-Chapter 51: A Duke’s Unwelcome Discovery

The morning air in Cherion’s bedroom didn’t just feel cold, it felt like a pointed insult. Cherion stood shivering in front of his wardrobe. He’d lived through some rough Monday mornings in his previous life, the kind where you wake up five minutes before your shift and miss subways, but this was a whole new level of "not today."

"You have got to be kidding me," he muttered, yanking a charcoal-grey tunic from its peg.

He didn’t even need to put it on to see the disaster. The left sleeve looked like it had been through a medieval woodchipper. A jagged, three-inch tear stared back at him, right at the shoulder seam. He tossed it onto the bed and grabbed another. This one, a fine Northern wool he’d actually liked, had shrunk so severely it wouldn’t have fit a well-fed toddler, let alone a grown man.

"What is the laundry staff doing? Scrubbing these with volcanic rocks?"

He dug deeper, his frustration mounting. A silk undershirt was missing every single button, and a pair of trousers had a hole in the knee so perfectly circular it felt... intentional. He finally settled on a navy robe that was only slightly frayed at the collar and had a tear near the hem. It was the best of a bad lot. He pulled it on, feeling the thin, compromised fabric do absolutely nothing to stop the draft. "Ugh, whatever." 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

He walked down to the dining hall, his stomach let out a mournful growl. He was alone, as usual.

He sat down at the table. Soren had already lay out his breakfast there.

Cherion stared at it. It was... depressing. A bowl of thin, greyish gruel that looked more like wallpaper paste than breakfast, and a slice of bread so hard he was pretty sure he could use it to hammer a nail into the wall.

I guess I’m on the ’unwanted guest’ diet again, he thought, picking up a spoon. It was boring. It was bland. But he was a guest and his 21st-century "don’t make a scene" instincts were still stuck in his brain. He took a bite. It tasted like cardboard soaked in lukewarm water.

For a brief, shining second, he considered getting up. Just casually. No drama. Wander back to the kitchen, roll up his sleeves, and make something edible. Eggs weren’t complicated. The toast wasn’t complicated. Fire plus bread, humanity had mastered that ages ago.

But then Soren’s voice echoed in his head from two nights ago.

"The kitchen staff... don’t quite know how to feel about it, my lord. They believe it suggests their service is... insufficient. They would not dare say so directly, of course. But it makes them uncomfortable."

He sighed and slumped slightly in his chair, scooping up another spoonful of the grey, tasteless sludge.

"Oh, that Soren," Cherion muttered. "What else does he want to do? Hide my shoes? Throw away my sheets?"

He knew the man didn’t like him, but Cherion just couldn’t bring himself to care enough to make a scene.

Not yet.

"I don’t recall authorizing a famine in the West Wing."

The voice was low, resonant, and carried the weight of a falling glacier. Cherion jumped, his spoon clattering against the bowl and splashing a drop of grey mush onto his already ruined sleeve.

Zarius was standing in the archway.

He wasn’t the "corpse-like" man from a week ago. He looked pretty healthy. Dressed in leather riding gear and smelling of cold pine and iron, the Duke looked like he’d just come from a five-mile sprint through the snow. His crimson eyes weren’t clouded with fever, they were sharp, focused, and currently burning a hole through Cherion’s breakfast.

"Your Grace! Good morning," Cherion greeted.

Zarius didn’t answer. He walked into the room. He didn’t look at Cherion’s face. He looked at the bowl. Then he looked at the bread.

He reached out, his gloved fingers picking up the rock-hard slice. He didn’t even try to break it, he just felt the weight of it before dropping it back onto the plate.

"Is this your breakfast?" Zarius asked.

Cherion nodded. Zarius finally looked at him, and his gaze snagged on Cherion’s shoulder. He reached out, his hand hovering for a second before his fingers caught the frayed, torn edge of the robe.

"And this?" Zarius asked, his voice dropping an octave. "Did you decide to fight a mountain lion this morning?"

Cherion laughed nervously, trying to pull away, but Zarius’s grip was firm. "Oh, that? Actually, it just came back from the laundry like that. I think the soap up here is just really aggressive. It’s fine, really. It’s just fabric."

"It is not ’just fabric,’ Cherion," Zarius growled.

"Your Grace! I... I didn’t think you would be here!"

Soren appeared in the doorway, his serious mask practically peeling off his face in panic. He looked at Zarius, then at the breakfast, then back at Zarius. He looked like a man who had just realized he was standing on a very thin piece of ice.

"I was just coming to fetch Lord Cherion for a... a better meal!" Soren stammered, his eyes darting toward the grey porridge. "The kitchens were so backed up with the subjugation prep, I simply grabbed what was available! A terrible mistake, I’ll fix it at once..."

"You’ll fix it?" Zarius turned, and for a second, the room felt like it had lost all its oxygen. "You’ve been ’fixing’ things for days, Soren. The wood. His clothes. And now this filth."

Soren’s face went from pale to a translucent white. He didn’t wait for the Duke to say another word. "I’ll go! The kitchens! I’ll bring the finest roast... at once!"

He bolted. He didn’t just walk out, he practically sprinted down the hallway, the sound of his frantic footsteps echoing in the silence.

Zarius turned back to Cherion, his eyes were still tracking the hole in the boy’s sleeve. He looked frustrated, not with Cherion, but with the fact that he had been so blind to what was happening under his own roof.

Zarius sat down in the chair opposite him, his presence filling the tiny dining nook. "You are dangerously unaware, aren’t you?"

Cherion blinked, the spoon still halfway to his mouth. "Excuse me? I’m aware of plenty of things."

Zarius stared at him for a long, heavy beat. He looked at the navy robe, then at the sad breakfast, and finally back at Cherion’s defiant, tired face.

A long, slow sigh escaped the Duke’s lips, the sound of a man realizing that his little healer was as stubborn as he was oblivious. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Once you’ve eaten, come to my study," Zarius said again. "We need to discuss our arrangement properly this time."