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“Should I count down from ten, then?”
For all his life as a mostly law-abiding citizen, Neuvillette knew this was the first time he had broken this many traffic rules in one ride. He couldn’t even be bothered to feel the very least guilty. With how things were going to be, he doubted this would be the last time.
“Ten.”
Rain pouring down heavy, striking the road with the intensity of a fresh storm, strikes of lightning appearing in the sky before a loud thunder boom in the area. It briefly messed with his earpiece, sound going staticky on the other side of the line as Neuvillette ramped up the speed of his car higher than allowed.
Any other time, the lack of others’ supervision would unsettle him. This time, though, he didn’t even have time to think.
“Nine.”
Neuvillette’s car skidded to the left, the abrupt movement creating a big splash on the side of the street and he winced. Just thinking of how deep in trouble he would be if he just drowned out an innocent passerby… hopefully not. For now —
“Eight.”
Neuvillette slammed the steer to the right.
“Seven.”
The tracker on his car beeped, turning green as he got closer and closer to his destination.
“Six.”
“Oh, Sovereigns above…” Neuvillette hissed when his map showed an alleyway too tight for a car to pass by.
Seriously? Now?
He considered the rain outside. His grip on his steer tightened.
“Five.”
The rain stung.
Cold needles stabbed him through his suit as he ran, his bad leg screaming in protest, but Neuvillette paid it no mind.
Forgoing his cane might not be a wise decision, but it was a fast decision. Time was an ungraspable thing when it came to him, and Neuvillette didn’t think he could afford to stop now.
“Four.”
His earpiece came back to life, another line opening up with a soft crackle. “Monsieur? Can you hear me?” It chirped. “You’re suddenly gone from your post, where are you—”
“Three.”
He was almost there. Neuvillette gritted his teeth. Adrenaline pumping his heart made every step feel lighter, almost like he was flying as he rushed with an invisible clock to get there on time. He had to. He had to be there —
“Two.”
Almost —!
“One.”
Oh no.
Neuvillette pushed himself to take that one last step forward and he nearly missed it, the exact left turn where the tracker on his wrist glowed bright red, cutting through the wet alley.
The echo of a faraway thunder in the dank alleyway was loud.
Neuvillette panted as he stared, chest heaving. His refined look was completely ruined by the water soaking him through, and his heart was pounding. Rain was pouring hard around him, creating a hazy mist as it hit the ground below.
Ah. Neuvillette thought shamefully. Maybe this is unwise of him, after all.
The air surrounding him was heavy. Sweet. Wrong.
Something in the cloudy storm eyed him back. Smiled.
“You’re late,” the voice greeted him with a purr. Sneering. “Sir Iudex.”
Neuvillette looked up, and there, he finally saw him.
Crouched on the rooftop, silhouetted in the storm light — an omega. Looking daunting. Blood on one sleeve. A blade in hand.
Not Fontaine’s enforcers. Not the Maison’s hounds.
Someone else.
Neuvillette cleared his throat.
“You asked to meet me,” he said, voice calm but carrying. “May I know why?”
The figure didn’t move.
Lightning illuminated the cut of his jaw, the soaked curls sticking to his forehead, the shape of muscle taut from movement. A ghost of power curled around him like steam off a forge.
“Why?” the omega echoed, silky smooth. “First time meeting me and that's all you have to say?”
“I have many questions,” Neuvillette said coolly, “but you and I both know this isn't the place for that.”
The omega’s lip curled — not in disagreement. Amusement.
“How lame. Not one for the romantic setting, aren't you? Sir Iudex?”
Neuvillette’s eyes widened, just slightly. Not in anger. In interest.
Few people dared to speak to him like that.
Even fewer got away with it.
He limped forward, newly polished Oxford shoes slicing through the shallow flood. “Let me ask you one thing: why do you keep doing this?”
The omega tilted his head. “The same reason as yours.”
Those eyes briefly turned gold.
“To make do for the system that has failed us.”
No hesitation. No shame. Just a statement delivered like a challenge.
“Failed you?” Neuvillette pushed himself to ask. There was bile in his throat. “Was that why you kept doing all of this? To serve justice on your own?”
A beat.
“Well. Wouldn't you want to know.”
Then the omega sheathed the blade in one smooth motion and vaulted down from the rooftop.
He landed without falter — cat-quiet, water splashing up around his boots. Rain slid down his face in rivulets. Through his dark and greying locks. Through the silver scar under his right eye.
He stood before Neuvillette now. Bare inches away.
Looking up. But never looking lesser.
“You know very well it isn’t justice, Sir Iudex,” he said, a hint of fangs beneath his smile. “It’s only fair. Because one has to pay for all the things they did, don’t you think?”
Neuvillette didn’t step back. Not even as he shivered.
Instead, he said — not a warning, but a statement:
“You’ll come with me.”
The omega raised a brow. “And if I don’t? You know I don’t really appreciate someone trying to leash me.”
Neuvillette studied him.
The rise and fall of his chest. The tension in his shoulders. The little shudders. The scent that hovered between fight and flight.
Then:
“Then maybe take it while I’m still asking, because I can assure you that you will appreciate it less if I’m not asking anymore.”
A pause.
The omega blinked, just once — as if surprised.
Then a slow smirk ghosted across his face. Something bitter. Curious.
“Right,” a chuckle. “And what do you think you will get from threatening me like this, huh? Riling me up won’t make this any easier.”
“I'm not threatening you,” Neuvillette said. “You’re injured — I’m offering you a chance for a civil discussion on our base. This doesn’t have to end that way.”
The omega's eyes narrowed at him. “What way do you mean?”
“The way in which you will be posing a bigger risk of an ambush here. I know you’re supposed to be off here an hour ago,” he said slowly as the omega just stared at him. “Are you sure you want to play the long game now?”
A scent of blood and sugar mingled with the smell of the rain.
“What… will be your guarantee?”
“Your safety,” Neuvillette said within a breath. And because he felt the need to, he added, “I don’t break my promises.”
The omega didn’t say anything.
The torrential downpour sang to them; an endless tune of rhythmical drips drops.
The omega didn’t say anything. But Neuvillette saw the little ticks of his jaw, and knew a decision had been made.
No one thought it would be this easy.
Neuvillette, especially, didn’t think it would be this easy.
As far as Palais of Mermonia’s operations went, it was mainly their job to deliver the verdict to those most vile of humankind. The cruelest of them all. The ones who kept slithering away from the law with their money and connections.
The ones who had been avoiding judgment.
A murderer of any kind was almost always at the top of their list. And there, with red blocky letters, was the alias of their top target: The Sugar Killer.
An omega. Unregistered and unmated. Assumed to be in his late twenties to mid-thirties. Worked alone. Modus operandi: a deep cut to the throat from a blade, with the crime scene wafting a sticky smell of sugar afterward —hence the nickname.
And perhaps what was more curious, was the fact that all of his victims could be described by one simple word: criminal. Be it another murderer, sexual predator, corrupt officials, human trafficker, down to the other wicked human beings living on the streets of Fontaine.
It was weird. Unusual. Perplexing enough that the Palais was torn between wanting to support his endeavors, or to drag him to the court as all the people who act against the law. Because as noble as it was, one head didn’t get to deliver their own version of justice by themselves. The system was there to do just that.
(And that was no matter how broken the system is. Truthfully, Neuvillette sometimes felt like laughing.)
They had tried to track him down. To reach out. To talk, negotiate, make a contract; anything to get him to stop killing bad people left and right with his own hands. They had long past strategically recruiting him to the team by threatening the man — the omega had more than once proved that he was more than capable of threatening them back, all regardless of being a one-man show. It was frustrating as it was admirable.
Until tonight.
When, for the first time, Neuvillette could hear his voice from the communication line.
Just simple, what he said.
"If you really want to stop me... You, Sir Iudex, should be the one who comes and greets me."
Neuvillette recalled moving by instinct. Pulling up his car down the slippery Fontaine’s road before getting soaked, as he was left with no option but to run on his feet to the location. Never mind his left leg practically dying with each harsh step.
At the end, he caught him.
A long series of complicated cat and mouse, wrapped up in just a single night. The chase for the infamous omega who slit the throat of every criminal in Fontaine was over.
Was meeting him… really his only intention?
Or was it just a ploy? To infiltrate the Palais and manipulate the system from the root?
The omega walked behind him calmly as they moved throughout the base. Agents whispering around them and he paid it no mind, focusing solely on the Iudex’s back.
“Is that him?” he heard one of the agents say as they walked by, voice loud enough not to be discreet — and still the omega didn’t bristle. “It’s him, right? The Sugar Killer?”
Neuvillette cringed. The man of the conversation didn’t even look like he listened.
An elevator greeted them at the end of the hall. Neuvillette pressed the button to reach the bottom level, and the elevator gave a soft whirr of machinery as it went down.
The omega hummed. “Where are we going?”
“Our underground bunker,” Neuvillette replied. “It’s the safest place here.”
The omega hummed again. His movements were minimal — no sign of distress, no sign of curiosity even. Neuvillette didn’t know what was in his mind.
“How is your injury?” he decided to ask.
“Could’ve been worse,” was his reply. Hand moved to brush across bandaged arm, and a grin broke his face. “Had been worse.”
“I see…” Neuvillette filed that information away.
The elevator opened.
There, a straight path to the bunker’s gate stood tall. Neuvillette tapped his cane on the floor outside of the elevator, and the gate immediately slid open, rows and rows of mechanical traps vanishing off their view until a single door was left.
Neuvillette nodded to the omega. “This way.”
The omega took a tentative step, pale eyes watching the smooth walls, his slightly sweet scent permeating the air. It was the first time he looked awfully aware of the new environment since going inside the base.
Before — when Sigewinne took care of his stitches, and later when Neuvillette met him again for the long-awaited talk — he looked like he couldn’t care less.
Perhaps it only dawned on him now, that he was deep beneath an enemy’s territory. Alone. Surrounded.
They made their way to the room, the door automatically closing behind them. Once inside, the lamp above flickered on to show off a particularly wide space, with shelves lining the walls and soft carpet covering the floor.
It was clean. Sanitized. New. All in the wrong way.
Neuvillette turned around to see the omega dragging a finger over the furniture. He coughed, and the man cocked his chin, questioning. “I believe it’s only right to start this off with a proper introduction,” Neuvillette said, offering a hand. “I’m Neuvillette. The Head of Palais Mermonia — or the Iudex, as you know.”
The omega looked down at the proffered hand.
Then, he slowly took it. His grip was firm. Sure.
“Wriothesley,” he said, eyes twinkling with what might be a whisper of a smile. “Pleasure to finally put a name to you, Monsieur Neuvillette.”
“So do I, Monsieur Wriothesley,” Neuvillette nodded, before glancing back at the couch behind them. “Shall we sit—?”
“So, what are you going to do to me now?”
Neuvillette’s brain came to a halt. “Pardon me?”
Wriothesley’s smile rose up a little higher. He chuckled, striding across the room in a move similar to a hunter — a seasoned predator.
“You brought me here for a reason, is it not?” he asked. “What is it?”
It was simple, the burden of the question.
It still sounded like he was demanding more.
“We will talk,” Neuvillette worked his suddenly dry throat, “and we will discuss. We saw what you did, and we want to hear your perspective. Find a middle ground for us to meet.”
The omega smiled. “You want to take me to the team.”
“We want to offer you an option to,” Neuvillette corrected. “Should you find it to be unworthy of your time after, that’s a different thing entirely. For now, we just want to talk.”
“You’re saying…” Wriothesley looked at him, murky eyes suddenly bright with something unreadable. “… you will just let me go if I say no?”
Neuvillette’s grip on his cane minutely tightened. “If that’s how it is, then yes,” he answered.
A short, eerie silence stretched between them.
Neuvillette never considered himself one to get nervous, but he was. It was a novel feeling, to be blatantly judged instead of the opposite. The omega just had that kind of gaze on him, he has to admit, where it looked like he knew him better than Neuvillette himself.
He looked like he had known Neuvillette for years, instead of a day.
Wriothesley’s eyes left him, sweeping the room with clinical disinterest — left, right, ceiling, floor — as if evaluating it not as a shelter, but as a cage. Then he turned his gaze back, sharp as a blade.
“Ah. I see what’s happening here,” he said softly, but with disbelief threading the words. “So, even you are uncertain of whether this will work out or not.”
The accusation landed too close to a betrayal.
“We’re merely making use of our chances,” Neuvillette answered, measured, trusting his voice not to shake.
Wriothesley laughed. And it wasn’t cruel. For it rang hollow upon the space.
“A gambling man. An alpha of my own heart,” he said with a chuckle, almost to himself, before stepping in closer. Too close.
Neuvillette, surprised, drew back a half-step on instinct.
“Is that why everyone in Fontaine trusts you to keep them safe?” Wriothesley asked, tilting his head. “Because you don’t know how to give up on anyone until someone is bleeding for it?”
Neuvillette swallowed. “If you aren’t feeling amenable to talk now, we should—”
“No.” The omega cut him off with a barking laugh, and if Neuvillette had the slightest doubt that he wasn’t mocking him before, he was certainly sure of it now. “Why do you think we should talk? Because then it will be fairer to judge me? Because then it will be justice?”
Neuvillette tensed. And Wriothesley, upon hearing no valuable retort from him, scoffed. His friendly mask quickly disappeared from view.
“Justice,” he said, tone drooping low, “is not yours to decide, Sir Iudex. Not from above.”
Not as you do.
“Perhaps it will be better for us to continue this on a later date.” Neuvillette cleared his throat. Knocking his cane once on the floor out of habit. “You… may stay here until your injury heals.”
Wriothesley gave him one last smile. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. Neuvillette’s mind was already processing the silence for more than what was true.
The omega spoke again when he reached the door.
“A piece of advice, Sir Iudex,” he said, voice almost kind.
“You should really lock the door.”
Neuvillette didn’t.
Neuvillette didn’t lock the door, but he did heighten the supervision on the area, turning on every single sensor and alarm so they would be quickly notified once Wriothesley tried to escape the room.
His mouth felt bitter all the while. Wasn’t this exactly the same as locking the door on him? What was he doing, really?
Clorinde appeared in front of him as he sighed for what times Neuvillette didn’t know. Her face pulled into a frown.
“So,” she began, closing Neuvillette’s office door behind her. “I take it that the conversation didn’t go well?”
Neuvillette took off his glasses to rub at his eyes. “It is postponed. For now.”
“Postponed, huh,” The alpha circled his desk and took her place behind Neuvillette, looking at the computer screen. Which is currently showing the live recording from the camera planted in Wriothesley’s room. “So, we’re locking him up here now?”
Neuvillette frowned. From the way Wriothesley looked extremely content just reading a random book in his room, or from Clorinde’s conscious choice of words, he didn’t know. “He will be staying here for a while, yes. We will be continuing our discussion once his injury heals. Hopefully.”
At that, the omega seemed to hear what he just said because he pulled down his book, before staring straight at the hidden camera. Smiling.
Neuvillette shivered.
“That’s the goal, I guess.” Clorinde behind him shrugged, blissfully unaware of her own chief’s mental dilemma. “But then, what are we doing in the meantime? Just wait?”
“We wait,” Neuvillette repeated with a nod. The omega was already back to his book. “We have done everything we could do to stop him. All that’s left is to wait.”
Clorinde was quiet for a moment. When Neuvillette eventually let his attention stray from the screen, the agent was looking closely at him.
“Something in your mind, Mademoiselle Clorinde?” he asked, trying not to show how much that calculating look unnerved him.
Clorinde’s eyes narrowed at him.
Typical her when she had caught on to something.
“What did he say to you?”
See?
Neuvillette exhaled. “He said I wasn’t doing my job properly.”
“That’s not what he said.” Clorinde retorted. Quick and sharp and very much true. She held his gaze. “What did he say to you, sir? Verbatim.”
Neuvillette tried holding her gaze back before finally breaking in the next minute. Clicking the mouse to close the camera’s tab, he pressed on his temple. “He said I’m gambling, and that I don’t know how to give up until someone gets hurt. He said he didn’t know why we should talk, when I’m not deserving to judge whether a certain thing is just or not. He basically said no to further discussion, but,” Neuvillette gave a hard look at the screen. “I am gambling on this. We’ll see to it that there’s always a chance for a compromise.”
“Wow,” Clorinde commented. Her usually blank expression now filled with curiosity. “Always knew that Sugar Killer is such a talker. Did you get a name, at least?”
“It’s Wriothesley,” Neuvillette replied, and Clorinde snorted.
“So, it really is a waiting game now.”
“It seems so,”
Clorinde groaned, but it’s all in good nature. “And I’m not used to not doing anything,” she said, before she, too, went quiet.
“This is still nothing, isn’t it?” Neuvillette tensed.
Eventually, he softly sighed. “It is. Nothing is set in stone so long as he hasn’t said anything on his part. And even then, it is still nothing.”
Because having the Sugar Killer talk is one thing. Having him actually say the truth and agreeing to a compromise, on the other hand? That was another thing.
For now, though, it gave them the chance to plan. To guess how far the omega was willing to compromise. To see what they could do if their proposition to discuss was flat-out rejected. And in order to do that, every single move had to strike the right chord. If anything, Neuvillette should be glad for the pause. It gave him more time to think.
More time to clear his head.
“Sounds like we both agree on the same thing, then, sir,” Clorinde mused, putting both of her hands inside her pockets. “This won’t be easy at all.”
The next day, Neuvillette broke yet another basic driving rule because the escape alarm rang as he was just preparing breakfast.
As soon as he got there, one of the agents hurriedly brought him upstairs. More specifically, to the base’s cafeteria. Where he saw the omega comfortably sipping what he assumed to be tea in a cup, the Head Nurse glaring at him from his side.
Clorinde was right.
This wouldn’t be easy at all.
“Ah, Sir Iudex,” Wriothesley greeted with an easy smile, waving his cup in the air as if making a toast. It didn’t miss Neuvillette’s attention that he was dressed in a different outfit from before — a crisp black button-up and grey trousers, courtesy of the Palais’ money. “Thought you to be an early riser. Have you had your breakfast yet?”
Neuvillette inspected him and the environment around the omega carefully. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except for the reluctant agents crowding the exit gate, there was.
He had warned Neuvillette to lock the door. But — really? This was the farthest thing he did when Neuvillette actually kept the door unlocked?
He frowned. “Why… are you here?”
“To have breakfast, of course,” Wriothesley said, as if that was the most natural thing to do first day you were inside your enemy’s base. “A man gotta have his morning tea, you see.”
“We already sent tea to your room! There’s no need for you to be here!” Sigewinne protested. The small-sized woman jabbed the vigilante with her finger on the stomach, fearless as ever.
“C’mon, you didn’t really think one pot was enough, did you, Sigewinne?”
“Wriothesley!”
Since when did they get so close like that? Neuvillette had too many questions to ask, but he decided to save them for another time. He could ask Sigewinne personally later. For now: “I see. If you’re finished, shall I escort you back to your room, Monsieur Wriothesley?”
The omega cracked a smile.
“Aren’t you quite the gentleman?”
Neuvillette gave Sigewinne a nod, and she, as per usual, immediately made her way out without much persuasion — he knew she would be pestering him after this. “I would like to be,” Neuvillette said, taking two steps forward until he was a step away from cornering the omega against the kitchen island. “You didn’t run away.”
Wriothesley shrugged. Grinned. “I didn’t.”
Neuvillette moved his cane to his side. “Why?” It wasn’t like you were interested in talking.
The omega swirled the rest of his tepid tea in the cup. “You have promised me,” he said. Slow. Like he was testing the water around him. “You have promised me my safety.”
That… was why he chose to stay?
Neuvillette just stared as Wriothesley chugged the rest of his tea in one go. “I’m done with this,” he said. Referring to his breakfast tea, Neuvillette supposed. Though he couldn’t help but think that he was referring to something else. “Shall we now?”
It was, unfortunately, wasn’t the last time Wriothesley tried to escape.
Well, ‘tried’ might be a strong word, because the omega didn’t even try. At most, he would be out of his room and mysteriously appear in another part of the base, acting like a man out for a stroll, not one who had technically tripped several silent alarms before ending up in whichever spot he pleased. It was like he purposefully mocked Neuvillette’s decision to keep his freedom.
He did never go out of the base, though.
This new condition wasn’t dangerous, but it was distracting. And being constantly distracted by a highly skilled vigilante roaming around your own base wasn’t exactly ideal. Clorinde, especially, wasn’t amused.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said as she stood beside him that day, watching as Wriothesley lounged in the main wing like he’d belonged there from the first place, arms crossed. “But this is not a playground.”
Neuvillette grimaced. “… you’re correct, Mademoiselle Clorinde,”
“Nor is this a hotel.”
“… that is also correct.”
“Then why is he still here?” Clorinde asked. Not close to yelling, no. But her even tone brought the same weight, nonetheless. “We have waited. And he has expressed countless times that he has no intention to talk and cooperate with us,” she said. “Even waiting has its limit, I would say.”
Neuvillette cast his glance away from the omega on the sofa. “He chose to stay because of our promise.”
Clorinde scoffed. Sharp. “The safety thing?” she turned to him, violet eyes burned. “Think about it, sir. Does he really need protection from us? We couldn’t even catch up with his kills before, why does he suddenly need to be guarded up here inside our base of all times?”
She didn’t say it, but the implication was clear: don’t trust him.
Neuvillette sighed. Shifting his cane from side to side before moving toward the elevator door. Clorinde following a step behind. “I understand your concern, Mademoiselle Clorinde, and I’ve thought about it too. Yet a promise is a promise.”
“You can’t seriously be thinking that this is a good time to be idealistic.”
That made him pause for a single second in front of the elevator panel.
“I know. But when is it ever a good time to be idealistic?” Neuvillette smiled at her, and Clorinde gave back a disbelieving look. He tapped the floor to his office, and the elevator opened with a soft ping. “He hasn’t done anything yet. At best, we should be grateful that we get to monitor him here, right when he’s in our reach. Not out there lurking in Fontaine’s underbelly.”
“But it isn’t like you chain him here.” Clorinde countered, blocking him from entering the elevator with her arm. “He can be out there anytime from now. You know that.”
“Mademoiselle Clorinde…”
“I understand that you are gambling here, sir. But you’re not the only one being put on the line.” Clorinde pushed, and she didn’t sound mad. Didn’t sound annoyed.
She sounded worried.
“Either you let him go for real, or you lock the door to his room. Just one of two. The decision is yours.”
It was close to night when Neuvillette decided he would try talking to Wriothesley for the last time.
Clorinde was right. He had to make it clear to everyone what Wriothesley’s status was here. A prisoner? A potential ally? And that started with deciding whether it was better to let him go or to trap him here.
That being said, Neuvillette found it curious how calm the omega had reacted to this whole semi-imprisonment thing. For someone who was always looking for a new head to target, it was odd that he didn’t even bother to do so now.
Not that the Palais was in an urgency to hunt someone at the moment. But the Sugar Killer was always one step ahead before, so him staying in like a housecat was unsettling. Unusual. Who knew who his next target was after this.
The underground halls were dead silent, save for the clicking sound of his shoes as he passed by the long corridor. There, Wriothesley’s door was shut, but it wasn’t locked. Still, Neuvillette thought he should at least ask for permission to enter.
“Monsieur Wriothesley?” he called through the screen beside the door. “I apologize in advance, but may I come in and talk with you right now? It is quite urgent.”
No answer.
Neuvillette tried again. “Monsieur Wriothesley?”
Still no answer.
Heart slowly sinking to his stomach, Neuvillette opened the door panel to see that all the alarms had been hijacked. Thermal sensor was off. And when he opened the door, the room was empty.
There was a subtle, sweet scent in the air.
He was only a moment late.
“Sir?” His earpiece crackled to life. “He’s at the entrance gate. We have him surrounded now, but—”
Neuvillette found himself already moving even before the sentence was finished. Long strides eating the floor beneath him, each click of his cane sharper than the last. The dull twinge of pain from his bad leg was placed somewhere far in his mind.
“But what?” he snapped into the comms.
A pause. Then, hesitantly, “He wasn’t trying to escape. Wasn’t attacking us as well. Just standing there. Like he’s… waiting for something.”
Neuvillette’s jaw clenched. “Copy that.”
Wriothesley wasn’t just walking out. He was testing him.
He reached the elevator, slammed the override, and ascended toward the base’s main hall.
When the doors slid open, the scene that greeted him was… almost peaceful.
Wriothesley stood at the middle of the entrance bridge, arms relaxed at his sides, head tilted back as if savoring the breeze. True to the agent’s words: he wasn’t trying to escape. Didn’t even look like he was in a rush to run. Even with the promise of the outside world staring right back at him from the wide-open gate.
He wasn’t alone. Several agents stood at a tense distance, fingers hovering above triggers, eyes flicking between their commander and the omega who had turned himself into the eye of the storm.
“Stand down,” Neuvillette said as he stepped past them, voice low but unyielding. “Don’t touch him.”
They obeyed, albeit hesitantly.
Neuvillette stopped five feet away from him — the omega. Looking like he was close to slithering away, but being held down to this place for some unknown reason. He was waiting, they said. Waiting for what?
“As always, you’re late even in your own territory,” Wriothesley said without glancing back, his cheerful tone weirdly familiar, “Sir Iudex.”
“Let’s talk,” Neuvillette exclaimed.
The omega turned to him. Blinked once. Before dissolving into a bout of laughter.
“You’re still trying that trick?” Wriothesley spat out, amusement painting his complexion bright. “You couldn’t even answer when I asked you why we should.”
“It will make sense of things.” On why you killed. On why you chose to stay. “It will give me a chance to understand you.”
That seemed to catch the omega off guard. Something unreadable spiked his scent, turning the sweet edge slightly bitter. “Why?”
“Because everyone deserves a second chance—”
Neuvillette didn’t even remember blinking.
One second he was standing in the middle of the room, the next second he was pinned to a nearby wall. A blade to his throat.
“Second chance, huh.” Wriothesley smiled, and he looked strangely small as he crowded Neuvillette to the wall. Something about the way he said it felt sour. Nostalgic. “Is this what you mean by second chance? Missed once, so you let them bite you again?”
“Drop your weapon!” Neuvillette heard Clorinde shout amidst his frantic heart. “Now! Or we will have to shoot you.”
There was a laugh. The rising smell of an omega. Dangerous and sweet.
“Aha, isn’t that fun and all,” Wriothesley purred above him, blue eyes leaking with the glow of a setting sun. “What do you think, Sir Iudex? Will they?”
“No.” Neuvillette gasped out a breath, pain slicing down his skin, ice cold. He could see Clorinde glaring at them behind the omega’s back, firearms ready, and Neuvillette nearly growled. “Everyone stands back,” he gritted out.
“Don’t. Touch. Him.”
The room fell unbearably quiet once he stated his command.
Wriothesley looked stunned. His grip on Neuvillette’s shoulder loosened a little.
“Aren’t you naive?” The omega scrutinized him, eyes flickering between blue and gold. “Why would you backstab your team like that?”
“I told you,” Neuvillette looked back at him through teary eyes. Stubborn. “I don’t break my promises.”
Wriothesley’s fingers on the handle of his blade twitched.
“Then why…” he breathed out, body trembling with suppressed emotions Neuvillette couldn’t name yet, “… wouldn’t you decide what you want to do with me? Why all that bullshit about wanting to talk—”
“I did decide what I want to do with you,” Neuvillette hissed out, still calm, “I want to give you a choice—”
“I didn’t want a choice!”
The silence afterward hit like a gunshot.
The omega stared at him, chest heaving with rage, his eyes completely golden now.
“I… didn’t want a choice,” he repeated, quieter this time, while Neuvillette stared at him wide-eyed. A low growl building in his throat. “Aren’t you the fucking Iudex? Or was I mistaken? I came with you because I thought you would know what to do and—!”
Wriothesley slammed him harder to the wall and Neuvillette braced the impact, stifling a pained sound. It felt wrong not to. Not when the omega looked like he was hurting more.
“Do you know what you should’ve done the moment you saw me that rainy night, Sir Iudex?” Wriothesley then asked between ragged breath, desperation — acidic — bleeding to his heavy scent, painting it all bitter and blue.
And for that one moment, Neuvillette could see how the omega looked painfully young, like he hadn’t had the chance to outgrow the pain that shaped him to who he was now.
Wriothesley smiled. But it didn’t reach his sunlit eyes.
“You should’ve stopped me.”
Neuvillette felt his breath catch.
The sound of metal hitting the ground was deafening.
Wriothesley’s whole body suddenly slumped over him, and Neuvillette held him from falling, grabbing his cane tightly for balance. His heart stuttered as air was freely pumped back in and out of his lungs. What happened—
When he looked over the omega’s back, the figure of a small woman holding a tranquilizer gun met his eyes.
“Sigewinne…” Neuvillette whispered, and the Head Nurse threw his head away, guilty.
All the agents also looked as pained, most of them slowly dispersing away from the spectacle, with only a handful of them staying — Clorinde included. The alpha hosted the same neutral expression as usual, but Neuvillette could see the way her eyes wavered toward the now-unconscious omega.
Sigewinne stepped closer to him. “I’m sorry, I just…” She made a move to check Neuvillette’s injury, but he waved her away gently. Instead, kneeling down to look at Wriothesley better.
The omega looked strangely serene, as if he’d simply collapsed into sleep, not out of pain or sedative haze. Neuvillette could feel it, though — the heat coming off him, the feverish tension under his skin.
“He’s…”
“In preheat. Yes.” Sigewinne sounded nervous. She carefully checked the omega’s temperature, his scent gland, and her expression turned worried. “I… will prepare the suppressants.”
As Sigewinne walked away in a hurry — the medic team following her — Clorinde appeared hesitantly beside him.
“… I’m sorry, sir.”
Neuvillette sighed, suddenly exhausted. “No. You did what you thought was right. I—” he clenched his fist that was lying on the side of Wriothesley’s still face. His mind was a mess. His heart, too, more than anything. The echo of Wriothesley’s last word rang in the hollow upon them.
“You should’ve stopped me.”
Stopping him? And what would that have looked like?
What did Wriothesley really want from him?
Blood dripping down the column of his neck, Neuvillette pressed his head on Wriothesley’s chest, listening to the sound of his steady heartbeat in order to breathe.
After having a thick gauze forcefully slapped over the cut on his neck by Sigewinne, Neuvillette made his way to the underground floor. The base had gone to sleep, with only a few of the agents having nightshift posted on several points all over the area.
Neuvillette himself didn’t go to sleep. Couldn’t.
The incident had long been over since a couple of hours ago, but the tension was still there in the air — rising, palpable.
He stopped in front of Wriothesley’s door, just shy of knocking.
“There’s no need to talk when you’re already keeping me here.” The omega’s voice suddenly came through his earpiece, and Neuvillette flinched. He didn’t dare ask how exactly Wriothesley knew that he was right out there.
“You’re still free to go.” Neuvillette decided to say.
Only the silence answered him. It made him shift on his feet, suddenly unsure.
“What… do you want from me?”
“My safety.”
Neuvillette softly sighed. “I already promised you that.”
“And yet you still didn’t lock the door.”
That again. The paradox that kept Neuvillette from reaching a clear conclusion.
How badly Neuvillette wanted to ask, wanted to beg, for the answer to why putting the shackles on him would mean safety to Wriothesley.
Was he scared of something out there? Was that why he couldn’t plainly ask for safety?
Neuvillette rested his hands stiffly on his cane. “I’m not keeping you prisoner here. You don’t deserve that. It won’t be just.”
Wriothesley gave him a tired laugh.
“Justice,” he said, and Neuville could picture a crooked grin decorated the omega’s weary face. “Since when do you get to be the judge of that?”
Not from above, Wriothesley said to him that night. But even then — how?
It made Neuvillette wonder: how much being a neutral third-party disconnected you from seeing an actual case? How often was being objective labeled as being fair? How much judgment he delivered came down to him having no relevance — no rights — on it?
“Tell me, Sir Iudex,” Wriothesley demanded of him as he sat above the court, Neuvillette looking up at him as the guilty. “Is a feral beast worth being reckless for? If it kills again—”
“— is it worth being given a choice?”
When Wriothesley woke up for the first time after being knocked unconscious, it was with a bone-deep exhaustion washing over his body. He felt out of his head, out of his skin, his whole being floating just right on the surface without a way to drag it down.
He felt awful.
His room was quiet and empty as always, and Wriothesley dropped his head between his knees. Laughing. His throat hurt, but that was better. This better hurt.
Later, Sigewinne came to check on him before leaving a bottle of suppressants on the table. He drank some just out of order, but he knew it was of no use.
For something bigger than just instinct was taking control of his body.
It was only time until he couldn’t chain himself down here and had wind slapped his cheeks harshly as he hunted out there. All because some pretentious fool refused to lock the door on him.
The smell of the sea seeped through the unlocked door.
Wriothesley wanted to laugh. Instead, he called out: “There’s no need to talk when you’re already keeping me here.”
Neuvillette didn’t answer for a while. Wriothesley didn’t expect him to. His trust had long been shattered since the man decided that he wanted them to have a talk. As if this were some kind of business and not a murderer throwing himself to a trial.
He had heard stories — of the impartial Iudex, of the ruthless way he placed judgment, of the coldly delivered verdict of guilt. He had heard, and he had hoped. That maybe, maybe this would be the time he would be stopped. For once and forever.
Wriothesley wasn’t prepared if the very man himself had gone soft.
“You’re still free to go.”
It slid down like a mockery — sweet but unkind.
He questioned oftentimes: why did no one ever tell him to stop? That he was acting out of line? That what he did that one time was enough? Why did everyone treat him as if what he did was normal?
What are you doing here, Wriothesley?
The voices inside his head had spoken again. Soft and chiding in character. They were always there, as far as Wriothesley knew. As a reminder. As a memory. As a deeply sewn guilt.
Don’t you have to pay the price for surviving?
Why did everyone treat this as if it were a normal way to live?
He wanted to stop.
There wasn’t much written about Wriothesley’s identity or origin.
At most, it was a list of his kills, along with the same repetitive pattern on how he had left all his victims — a deep cut through the throat, with a faint smell of sugar coating the area.
Neuvillette pulled up more and more archives related to him, finding more information about the rapist that he killed, or that one drug boss he finished, than the man of the action himself.
Wriothesley was this close to them for days, yet also so far with the number of things the Palais had managed to dig out about him. Which, embarrassingly enough, was close to none.
Neuvillette massaged his temple, frustrated.
A file popped up to view — Wriothesley’s first identified kill.
Right-clicking it, Neuvillette waited for it to load. He didn’t have to look at the full document to know the content of it word-for-word.
A man in his fifties. Fontaine born and raised. Was the head of the biggest child-trafficking ring in the city back then.
A total scum, Neuvillette remembered the man. The Palais was still hot on his trail when the news of his death spread like a wave of spring wind on them. It was a murder, they heard. Executed by one whose plan is hidden just behind view, to be dealt with cleanly, with a brutal yet sweet result.
Someone dear to hell died that day. But the Sugar Killer was born.
For a long time now, the Palais had cracked their minds in search of a motive. Was it simply an act of vigilante? Of taking judgment into his own hands? Or was it an act of revenge?
The latter, they struggled to find the string connecting the omega with all of the criminals he hunted. What with the lack of information they had about him.
Neuvillette was just scrolling down the detailed documents on the fake orphanages acting as a guise for the man’s trafficking ring when one case in particular caught his attention.
A homicide case.
It was a really old one. Closed, at that. The perpetrator purposefully let out of a trial in the name of self-defense. In the name of delivering justice.
Neuvillette’s heart twinged uncomfortably in his chest as he read the detail of the killer being a little like fifteen; barely a teenager in his own right as he drove the blade to the neck of his foster parents. Merely a child as he took the responsibility to keep the others alive — to keep himself alive.
Even more devastating: the boy had bloomed right after he was brought to the hospital, bloodied and barely conscious. Evident by the word omega freshly stamped beside the boy’s dynamic. In heat was his status, and Neuvillette couldn’t imagine a worse moment to have such a vulnerable phase for the very first time.
He must be scared. Terribly so.
Drops of rain started to hit his window panel. Slow, at first. Before it burst into waterfalls, rolling down thick glass in waves. Heart heavy, he continued scrolling to the next part of the document before he went pale.
Those pale eyes. Those messy dark locks. That scar under one eye.
Wriothesley. Neuvillette stood up abruptly from his chair, the world spinning before him. Wriothesley was—?
He looked back at the picture of the child staring straight at him.
It could be a coincidence. It could also be true. And if it were true — it would explain everything.
A realization, along with a sense of dread, dawned on him terribly fast: Wriothesley was never running away from anything; he was running away from himself.
Explained why he willingly followed Neuvillette since the very beginning. Explained why he had warned him to lock the door. Explained why he refused to talk. Explained why he had asked Neuvillette to stop him.
“To make do for the system that has failed us.”
Wasn't that what he said to Neuvillette before? Since the first time they met that night?
Neuvillette thought, then. About how calm he actually was all this time in the base, with him not even once causing harm to the agents. He thought back on the way Wriothesley brewed his tea every morning, gentle and steady, like he wasn't that brutal killer from the street; like he was born as something more. For the world had turned him into something so unlike him, that he had to pick up a knife in order to be loved.
(In order to be safe.)
Was he scared? Of soaking his hands in yet another sea of blood? Was he mad? At how everyone took little caution in releasing a beast—someone like his parents, like the many men he had killed, like him — back to the wild with no consequences ahead?
And he was in heat.
Another escape alarm rang.
Neuvillette ran.
But he was late.
When he got there, what was left was a broken door with apparent claw marks, deep dent, and a stinging smell of sugar.
It felt like deja vu.
The rain was harsh on them, interfering with the signals and making the tension crackle even higher. Neuvillette, for one, was locked in total focus. His car slipped through the fairly empty road, maneuvering its way inside tight turns and broken-down paths.
His communication line was busy with agents reporting to one another, sending a point of sightings and making a surrounding movement on their target. Neuvillette saw the fixed location marked on his tracker and pressed harder on the gas pedal, teeth clenched.
When he was late before, Wriothesley still chose to follow him back.
This time, though? Neuvillette wasn’t so sure anymore.
The run-down warehouse stood proudly in the middle of the storm. The view might look strangely tranquil to some, but Neuvillette bit his tongue, knowing what was beneath the mask of normalcy.
Yet another alleyway.
Neuvillette was already grabbing his cane and kicking open the car door before his mind caught up on what he was about to do.
The scent of blood and sugar.
Neuvillette wondered whether he could have the chance to learn how the omega actually smelled without thinking of those two things.
Wriothesley was standing with his back to him, several bodies of unconscious henchmen scattered around him. In the omega’s grip is one of the unlucky ones, being held up from the ground by his collar as he choked out for breath.
Neuvillette didn’t even have to say anything for the omega to notice his presence, dropping down the man with a bone-crushing thud on the wet soil. The man himself gasped before scrambling to stand up and quickly escaping from there.
“Finally.” Wriothesley turned toward him, and he looked delightedly feral. “You gonna lock me up now?”
Neuvillette didn’t speak.
“Don’t be shy now,” Wriothesley wiped the blood sticking to his jaw—not his blood—with the back of his hand, smiling. “I’ve broken containment. Left bodies in the path. Threatened you with a blade once.”
His eyes gleamed. Completely golden and bright now.
“I was about to kill that man if you hadn’t been here. And you know I will kill again the moment you let me go from here,” he said easily, voice smooth as if he had been practicing for this for years.
Years — maybe a lifetime — of internalized punishment so complete, so consuming, that anything less than self-destruction felt like indulgence.
“So, will you do it, Sir Iudex?”
Neuvillette dragged his feet forward. “If cage is what you want…” he said softly, facing the storm right on the eye. “Then no. I won’t give that to you. Never.”
Wriothesley looked up sharply.
And then he laughed. Loud but hollow.
“Seriously?” The omega asked, incredulous, tickled with desperation raining down the color of his expression. “Couldn’t you see what I just did? I nearly killed someone! Just how many people should bleed until you can make a decision to me? Because if that’s what you mean by justice—!”
“Then tell me, Wriothesley, what do you think justice is for you?”
Wriothesley flinched.
“Was it shackles? Chains?” Neuvillette asked. “A collar, perhaps, to match the punishment you’ve built for yourself in your head?”
He stepped closer, and the omega backed down. Suddenly looking lost and terribly small.
“Is that what you want, Wriothesley?” Neuvillette continued, softly, “For me to punish you for surviving?”
Wriothesley’s breath hitched. His previously sweet scent, now a mess of concealed emotions and barely buried memories. “Shut up—” he trembled.
“You don’t want justice,” Neuvillette said. “You want absolution. And you think you have to suffer to earn it.”
“I said shut up—”
Neuvillette stepped forward, slow, deliberate, and Wriothesley didn’t move. Not even when they were close enough to breathe in each other’s space.
“I agree that justice isn’t mine to serve,” Neuvillette softly said as he looked at those burning eyes. “But neither is it yours.”
Something inside the omega’s eyes flickered. And deeper inside, Neuvillette knew something else also broke.
“You’ve done enough, Wriothesley,” Neuvillette told him then, firmly. “You can stop now.”
It was like seeing the waves finally crashing down the shore.
Wriothesley staggered forward like he’d been shot. Not a cry, not a scream — just motion. A collapsing, unraveling motion as he stumbled into Neuvillette’s arms and finally let himself fall.
Hands fisted in his coat. Forehead pressed to his shoulder. Body trembling, the kind of tremble that came not from fear but from finally being allowed to stop fighting.
And for once, Neuvillette could smell the sweet scent for what it was — brewed tea and crushed petals. Comfort, and being home knowing that you’re safe.
A loud series of crashes and gunshots rang behind them, but Neuvillette didn’t say anything. Just held him tighter.
Tired souls. Those who fought, those who survived — they all could rest now.
Wriothesley stirred from his sleep some time near morning.
It was obvious. The way his body tautened beneath the heavy blanket, the way the rhythm of his breathing was too steady to be natural, the way his soft scent rose on alert.
The omega didn’t announce that he was awake, though, and Neuvillette didn’t point it out for him. He just, very slowly, shifted his cane from where it leaned against his chair, the tip scraping the carpet ever so softly.
It was too small for anyone to hear, but not for the two of them —for they basically trained themselves to catch little movements like this.
“You’re here,” Wriothesley spoke then. His voice was hoarse.
“I am,” Neuvillette confirmed. “How do you feel? Better?”
That made Wriothesley snort for some reason. “Worse. But that’s just how heat is,” he replied. Before, softly, he added, “This isn’t the underground room.”
Neuvillette shook his head. “It isn’t. It is one of the many spare rooms for our agents.”
“Should I take that as a sign for something?”
“No,” Neuvillette quickly assured him. Before he frowned, “Unless that’s what you want. Then we can schedule a proper talk—” Wriothesley laughed. And this time it wasn’t so humorless.
“Quit it with the talking, will you?” he drawled. And Neuvillette, unusually flustered, rigidly nodded. “I’m pretty tired right now.”
“Then you may rest,” Neuvillette gently agreed. “You can go back to sleep, Wriothesley. You’re safe here.”
Silence.
For a while, what could be heard was the constant hum of the heater and the soft rustle of sheets.
Then Wriothesley spoke.
Voice low, like he was afraid the words might wake something that should stay buried.
“Do you know what the worst part of surviving is?”
Neuvillette looked up, but Wriothesley didn’t wait for an answer.
“It’s knowing you walked out when someone else didn’t. That you got to start over. That you breathe air they never got to taste.”
He was curled under the blanket now. Small, like the way he once was.
“My siblings and I came from an orphanage. Well, until I knew what it really was — a child trafficking ring. I ran away, and thought to myself that I would come back, if only to end it all.”
A pause. A twitch at the corner of his mouth — like he wanted to scream but couldn’t.
“When I killed my foster parent back then, I wasn’t planning to survive. No. It would feel too much like a betrayal. Like guilt. Because if I were just the same as them, why should I be spared? That would only be wrong.”
He shook his head. His laughter sounded broken.
“And so, when they forgave me, called me a hero of the story… I realized they didn’t care how many I put down as long as I came out of it alive. As long as I survived, everyone could rest assured without feeling guilty because — hey, at least the kid was all fine, right?”
Neuvillette didn’t move. Not a blink. Not a breath out of place. But his eyes softened.
Wriothesley himself wasn’t looking at him — just out the window. His tone was strangely steady. Like he’d practiced saying this a hundred times, but never out loud.
“No one told me to stop, so I did it again. And again. And again. Heat became a flood of guilt that forced me to move, like it wanted to rip me out of my skin. Like it wanted me to remember that I survived, and that wasn’t something I could get without paying a fair price.”
Wriothesley’s voice trembled a little.
“I wanted to stop. But I keep doing it, because if I don’t, if I just sit with it—” he sucked in a shaky breath, “then I have to live with the fact that no one would. That no one expected me to stop, and so the cycle continued.”
And here, finally, his voice cracked.
“I just… wanted to feel safe. For once. For someone to finally tell me that I can stop, that it’s over. That I can breathe easy knowing that maybe I deserve this, that being alive can mean something other than guilt and betrayal—”
Neuvillette rose slowly and crossed the space between them.
He didn’t speak right away. Just kneeled beside Wriothesley’s bed, gaze heavy with something old and quiet—not pity, but gravity. Like he was witnessing something sacred yet fragile.
Then, voice low:
“You lived, Wriothesley. That wasn’t your crime.”
Wriothesley didn’t answer. But his jaw visibly tightened. His shoulders shook — just once.
Neuvillette carefully took his hands in his, prying the claws away from sinking into rough skin.
“No one might be around to tell you that it’s over back then, but I’ll tell you one thing: you don’t need a punishment to make your survival meaningful. You’re forgiven — not because they decided your wrongdoing was too small to value, but because there was nothing to forgive in the very first place.”
Neuvillette pressed his forehead into the hands he held.
“You’re safe, Wriothesley. I promised you.”
And you know firsthand that I don’t break my promises.
Slowly, hesitantly, Wriothesley finally surrendered to a sob. Just small and quiet still, like he didn't quite believe that he was allowed to feel. All the while, Neuvillette heard him, listened to him, kept by his side until what was left was a glimmering track of drying tears.
The sky had cleared out by then, and Neuvillette saw the moon reflected in those pale eyes.
“What… is going to happen now?” Wriothesley asked.
“That, you decide.” Neuvillette rubbed the omega’s warm palm with his thumb. Smile soft. Raw in the way it bloomed. “But if I could ask, I would like you to stay.”
Wriothesley’s eyes turned into twin crescents again. A short, huffed laugh. “That would be hard.”
“I know,” Neuvillette said. “We can learn together.”
Wriothesley was quiet for a second. But then, he held Neuvillette’s hand back. A soft grip. A gentle question: can I?
“I want to stay.”
“Then stay.” Neuvillette believed him. Knew he didn’t have to lock the door too this time. “I will stay too.”