Neville straightened his tie, the knot a familiar, grounding pressure against his throat. Around him, the office was already a low hum of machines and muted calls.
He turned the corner toward the supply room when a low, tense hiss of a conversation snagged his attention.
It was Ethan and—a man Neville vaguely recognized.
Wasn't he from Logistics?
He was one of the first to look him up and down during his first week. There was a sneer twisting his lips as he made a comment about "charity cases."
Neville instinctively slowed down his pace. He kept his eyes fixed on the supply room door as he pretended to find some items, but his hearing—a gift from his mermaid lineage and omega gender—sharpened his senses.
He picked up fragments of their discussion despite the distance.
"—told you, be more careful—" That was Ethan's voice, stripped of its usual warmth, flat and cold as steel.
"—not my fault that omega is always—"
Omega. Neville's focus narrowed to a fine point.
"—stick to the plan, or—."
The threat hung in the air, sharp and ugly, just as Ethan's head snapped up.
His eyes—piercing and alert—locked onto Neville's across the ten feet of hallway.
For a second, Neville saw him.
The real him.
Not the easygoing office charmer, but a man full of irritation and a dangerous vibe.
The shift was so fast it was dizzying. The hard lines of his jaw softened, the tension melted away. A smile bloomed on his face as if it had been there all along.
"Neville! Morning," Ethan greeted cheerfully, loud enough to feel like a performance. He raised a hand. "Just catching up with an old friend. You know how it is."
He didn't wait for Neville to respond. With a pat on the logistics employee's shoulder—a gesture that was half-friendly, half-dismissive—Ethan turned and walked away with confidence, leaving the other man.
The logistics guy shot Neville a venomous glare, a mix of raw resentment and something that felt disturbingly like a warning, before he practically fled in the opposite direction.
Neville stood there for a moment, the cheerful echo of Ethan's greeting still ringing in his ears. It did nothing to drown out the memory of his other voice, or the chill that snaked down his spine from a single, carelessly spoken word.
That omega.
The question was, who?
The words from the hallway tried to follow him back to his desk, but Neville pushed them away. He had a job to do.
He methodically sorted the morning's documentation, the familiar rustle of paper a shield against the memory of Ethan's flat, threatening tone. But the words kept surfacing like oil on water.
A shadow fell over his desk, pulling him from his thoughts.
"Neville! Perfect timing!" Sarah Gringer's voice was, as always, aggressively cheerful.
She put a stack of files onto the corner of his desk with a sigh of relief. "I am so sorry about this, but Legal is breathing down my neck. Could you give these assessment reports a once-over? You always catch the things the rest of us miss."
"Of course," Neville said, his voice smooth and practiced. He accepted the added weight to his workload without complaint, already reshuffling his priorities. "When do they need them?"
"End of day would be amazing, but honestly, if you can get them to me by tomorrow morning, you'd be saving my life."
"Oh." Sarah's smile faltered for a fraction of a second as her gaze flicked to the empty desk beside Neville's. "Ethan's not in yet?"
Neville chose his words as he would use on a legal document.
"He was here," he replied, his tone perfectly neutral. "I saw him down the hall a little while ago."
Something shifted in Sarah's expression. She glanced left, then right, her eyes confirming that their corner of the secretarial department was, for the moment, deserted. The usual morning buzz had scattered their colleagues, leaving them on an island of quiet.
She leaned in, her cloud of floral pheromones spread closely. The bubbly tone evaporated, leaving behind anxiety.
"Listen," she whispered, her voice so low that a normal human might have missed it entirely. "I know we don't talk much, but... be careful with Ethan."
Neville's fingers, which had been subconsciously straightening the edge of a file, went still. "What do you mean?"
"I can't say it, I just—" Her eyes, wide with a genuine fear that didn't match her bright pink lipstick, darted toward the corridor.
A sharp, rhythmic tap-tap-tap of expensive leather on the flooring sounded from the main hallway, approaching their section.
The change was breathtaking. Sarah shot upright, a brilliant, high-wattage smile snapping back onto her face.
It was the same kind of mask Ethan wore.
"Anyway!" Her voice was now loud, performative. "Thanks a million for handling those reports, Neville! You're an absolute lifesaver!"
She gave him one last, meaningful look—a silent, desperate plea beneath the layers of professional cheer—before grabbing her remaining folders and clicking away on her heels. Her retreat was so swift it was almost a flight, her path conveniently avoiding the person who had just rounded the corner.
It was Ethan, of course. His timing wasn't just unfortunate.
It was perfect.
Neville watched Sarah's retreating form, a language he understood all too well. It was the language of the prey, a dialect he had been forced to master in that black hellhole.
Her vague warning wasn't just a piece of gossip; it was concrete evidence to instincts he suppressed beneath his professional demeanor.
"Busy already?" A wave of cool fake cheer washed over him.
Ethan slid into the adjacent chair, his movements radiating a practiced enthusiasm that now sounded predatory. "They really don't give you a break, do they?"
"Just the usual," Neville replied, his voice meticulously light. He focused on arranging the new files, his hands steady and precise. "Sarah needed some reports double-checked."
"Sarah, huh?" Ethan's chair swiveled towards him, a quiet squeak of protest from the mechanism. Neville didn't have to look up to feel the weight of his gaze. "It looked pretty intense for a chat about paperwork. What secrets was our darling Sarah whispering your way?"
There it was—the probe disguised as casual interest.
Neville had studied similar tactics before.
He looked up from his files, meeting Ethan's gaze with a calm, slightly bored expression.
"Oh, you know Sarah." He gave a small shrug. "The usual office drama. It's impossible to keep up."
Ethan let out a chuckle that was all teeth and no warmth. The sound made the fine hairs on Neville's arms prickle.
"Right. Well, this place has ears, Neville. Best not to get too caught up in rumors. You never know what kind of trouble they can stir up."
It was a clear threat, delivered with a smile.
Neville held his ground, letting a small, concerned frown touch his brow.
He tilted his head, a perfect picture of innocent confusion. "Why? Is there something I should be worried about?"
For a moment, Ethan just stared at him. Neville could almost see the gears turning behind his eyes, re-evaluating, calculating. Then, the switch flipped. He snapped back into place, so perfectly that a normal person would have doubted he'd ever seen it.
"No—of course, no! Just curious." He laughed, a hollow sound this time, and swiveled back to his desk. "Better get to it before the management notices we're slacking!"
As Ethan logged into his computer, he began to whistle a carefree tune, bringing their conversation to a close.
Neville turned to his screen.
[Host! Shelly has detected elevated levels of stress! Is everything okay? (´･_･`)]
'Everything's fine, ' Neville responded mentally, careful to keep his expression neutral. 'Keep running those monitoring protocols. I have a feeling we're going to need all the information we can get.'
His stomach let out a low, traitorous growl.
His jaw tightened, a flicker of raw determination.
For the sake of proper food.