[BL]Hunted by the God of Destruction

Elias's jaw twitched.

"Should I run to you and embrace you?" he muttered, the sarcasm faint but not entirely hollow. He sighed, then added, quieter and more reluctant, "But you're right."

He hesitated. His gaze flicked toward the man seated by the window, trying not to flinch again at the sight of him.

"You saved me," Elias said, his voice low. "Thank you."

The words felt brittle in his mouth, like they didn't belong to him. Maybe because they were true. Maybe because they were aimed at him, the man who had entered while he slept and made no effort to hide it. The one sitting in the dark like the room had always been his.

Victor didn't respond to the thanks. He was dressed in a robe of near-black silk, the fabric catching the soft light in low, fluid waves. The collar was loose, his posture relaxed but perfectly aligned, as though the chair beneath him wasn't necessary. The wheelchair itself was sleek and custom-built, all matte finish and subtle gold trim, with nothing mechanical showing. 

Victor's legs were crossed at the ankle, one hand resting lightly on the armrest, the other on the edge of the tablet now set aside. He hadn't made a single anxious motion since Elias woke. 

Elias, meanwhile, had curled the blanket tighter around himself, as if the fabric could buffer the dissonance in his chest. A part of him still carried the pulse of last night, Victor's voice in his ear, sharp and steady, guiding him toward survival. That part trusted him. Instinctively.

But the rest of him, the part sitting in this strange bed, staring at a stranger with red eyes and godlike poise, knew better.

They had met twice.

Two real times.

Everything else had been distance and implication.

"What happens now?" Elias asked, voice taut.

Victor didn't look away.

"Well," he said, tone even, "the voicemail was real. It was from Ruo."

Elias's breath hitched. "What? How is she?"

Victor leaned back slightly in the chair, his profile catching the last slant of dusky light from the window.

"She sent it for me," he said. "To keep you safe."

Elias blinked, the knot in his throat pulling tighter. "For you?"

"Yes."

He could feel his own pulse in his hands and in the base of his throat. Something cold pressed behind his ribs.

"She trusted you?" Elias asked, softer now, unsure whether it was disbelief or jealousy cutting through the question.

Victor didn't flinch. "She did."

"How? She specifically left the main manor and Numen family because of you." Elias's suspicions grew frighteningly fast. Because he knew, he knew how much Ruo had hated her older brother and how she was trying her best to ignore his existence. 

Victor said nothing, sighed, and pulled out his phone, tapping twice. Ruo's voice echoed in the silent room seconds later. 

'If you're hearing this, they've found me. Do not trust Matteo. He's not who you think; he never was. And they're not working alone. They need Elias alive, but only long enough to make him a vessel. You have to choose: tell him, or keep him safe. You can't do both.'

The message ended with a sharp silence, the kind that didn't echo, didn't fade, just stopped, like a door slammed shut without warning.

Elias stared ahead, unblinking. His breathing had gone shallow, barely registering above the quiet hum of the house. The recording left a hollow space in his chest where something warm should've been, something like understanding or grief, but all he felt was the slow, familiar spread of dread.

Victor set the phone down on the small table beside him with the same grace he did everything else, controlled, unfazed by the desperation of Ruo and Elias's pain. His red eyes stayed on Elias, watchful, measuring every move of him. 

"Do I want to know why they need me as a vessel?" Elias asked while thinking about the first part of the message. 'Don't trust Matteo.'

"That depends only on you." Victor said maddeningly calm. Elias wanted to rage, yell, do something, but the alpha's calm stopped him. 

"I'm a recessive omega, Victor. I'm not reacting to divine power and for sure I don't want to serve another god." His desperation increased with every word. 

Victor's words were quiet, but they hit with weight, sharp in their restraint.

"Calm down. You are safe now."

Elias stared at him, chest rising unevenly, the blanket clutched in his fists like a rope in deep water. Safe. That word again. As if saying it often enough would make it true. As if Victor, wrapped in silk and shadows, could declare safety like a sovereign decree and make the rest of the world bend to it.

"I don't feel safe," Elias said, his voice tight. "I'm in a house I don't know, in clothes that aren't mine, being told I'm a vessel for something I don't understand, and you're sitting there like you've planned this from the beginning."

Victor didn't look away.

"Because I have."

Elias recoiled slightly. Not because of the words, but because of how easily they came. No hesitation. No apology.

"I've planned for every variation of this moment," Victor continued, voice low and unwavering. "For years. And the only thing I couldn't calculate was you."

Elias froze.

Victor leaned back again, the golden trim of the wheelchair glinting softly under the evening light. He didn't appear smug. He wasn't proud of the admission. He was simply telling the truth, the kind of truth that sounded too smooth to be comforting.

"I didn't want you to be dragged into this," Victor said. "But once you were, once they chose you, there was no clean way out. And no one is better suited to protect you than me."

"Why would I trust you? If you planned for years for this… Ruo is one of your variables? Matteo? What if I decide to go rogue without your help?" 

Victor didn't blink. Didn't bristle. He simply tilted his head slightly, as if Elias's question had been expected, predicted even, and perhaps asked before in a different tone, by a different person, in a different war.

"You wouldn't be the first to try," he said, voice smooth. "And I wouldn't stop you."

Elias frowned. "That's not an answer."

"It's the only one that matters right now." Victor's fingers drummed once against the armrest, thoughtful. "You don't trust me. Good. You shouldn't. Not yet. But trust doesn't build itself in a vacuum. It grows from consequence."

He paused, letting the words breathe.

"If you walk away," Victor continued, "the wrong people will find you again. And next time, I won't be able to pull you out in time. They'll use you. And once they do, there won't be anything left of you."

Elias's throat tightened. His body was already coiled, the sting in his hands and the weight in his ankle anchoring him to the present, but Victor's words still hit somewhere deeper, below the skin, in the hollow where instinct lived.

"You're talking like I'm a relic," he said bitterly. "Like I'm a trigger someone buried."

Victor exhaled slowly.

"You're not a relic," he said. "You're a stabilizer."