To You, Who Shines

AN: Welp, I'd planned to put this out on Friday but then life happened I guess. What can you do lol?

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Eris blinked blankly, her mind refusing to cooperate with her. She had no idea what to do next, nor could she properly understand what had just happened. All she could do was replay the look on Siffia’s face over and over again in her mind. Those wet eyes, that despairing face, and those trembling lips…

She roughly tussled her hair and closed her eyes, but the image refused to go away.

Her heart couldn’t make up its mind whether to clench or pound, leaving her feeling breathless either way.

“Ha…”

Feeling listless, she moved as if zombified towards the couch. And when that failed to help calm her, she stood up once again, thinking that perhaps returning to training might help to distract herself.

-But just as she had picked up her sword and readied herself, yet another interrupter entered.

“Hello dear daughter~! The hour for an early dinner is fast approaching, so I thought that I might drop in and invite Lady Heston to-”

Her jovial, beaming father burst in, loudly flouncing his way through the door. However, when he noticed a distinct lack of anyone else but Eris in the room, whose face could only be seen as lost and befuddled in yet another rare display, the wind quickly flew from his sails. Stopping in place a safe distance away, he cautiously put on a soft and disarming smile, asking what he knew might just turn into a landmine.

“Er… Lady Heston has... already left?”

He braced himself, ready for the fierceness that his daughter usually assaulted him with. But when she only pursed her mouth as if she didn’t know what to say and vaguely nodded, opportunistic alarm bells immediately began to ring inside of his mind. He could sense that something juicy enough to shake his daughter’s usually firm mind must have occurred.

Fueled by his curiosity and instinct, he casually strode closer, a caring smile with a hint of a predatory edge spreading itself onto his face.

“...Say, how are things going with Lady Heston?”

Unsurprisingly, his daughter only frowned and turned her face away from him, obviously displeased by the question. But when she heard his next words, Eris immediately froze up.

“I was curious, you know. After all, I doubt things wouldn’t have changed between you now that you’ve realized that she’s actually an omega.”

As if hit by lightning, Eris’s entire body stiffened, her face contorting in shock and distress. Her mouth opened mechanically to refute his words, but when only random incoherent sounds were able to come out, her father jumped on the opportunity, sliding yet a step closer and opening his mouth once again.

“What was it exactly that made you realize the truth, dear daughter? …Did something perhaps… happen?”

When his usually prim and proper daughter suddenly hunched in on herself as if subconsciously trying to hide, the smile on his face couldn’t help but animatedly perk up, like an animal who’d just spotted its fleeing prey. With one last easy stride, he was finally less than a step away, leaning towards Eris as a stream of gossipy guesses flowed down onto her.

“Was it perhaps the common way? Did you get too close and accidentally notice her pheromones? You two are quite the close friends, so it’s only to be expected that it would happen eventually. Or perhaps it was simpler than that, and she directly told you? Yes, it could indeed be that easy…”

Seeing how his daughter seemed to jump slightly at the first speculation but failed to react to the second, his eyes lit up with an unlikely inkling. Though he felt a good bit of doubt, he opened his mouth, lightly chancing the guess.

“...Or perhaps it happened like in the dramas, and you happened upon her during her heat.”

Though no reply was given, watching the way that the sinner-like gloom and guilt immediately descended upon her face told him all that he needed to know.

-Obviously this unlikely guess seemed to be the one that had actually happened.

Her father stared at her with pursed lips for a long time trying to come to terms with the situation. And when he finally opened his mouth again, he seemed as stunned as someone who’d just had a major revelation.

“...Oh my... This… This is incredible! So then what happened? Did you… Ah no, what am even I saying? I know how greatly you must feel for her; Of course you couldn’t possibly have resisted… I know if it were your mother and I in such a situation, there’s no way that we wouldn’t have-”

“Father.”

“Ah, ahem. Yes. So then, as your father and the head of this noble house, I must of course ask you how far the two of you went. It didn’t feel that way when I dropped in on the two of you earlier, but did you perhaps possibly already mark her-?”

“W-What?!”

Eris jumped up like a cat who’d fallen into water, her face the picture of someone who’d just heard something absurdly mad. Searching her expression for embarrassment and finding that that wasn’t the answer, her father was made to reluctantly concede.

“...I see. Yes, it’s possible that you managed to hold yourself back, strong willed as you are. I shouldn’t be so surprised; It certainly didn’t feel as if you two were a bonded pair when I dropped in earlier… So then, you stopped yourself before marking her? Are the two of you perhaps planning to do it the romantic sort of way, waiting until you have a proper wedding to-”

But as the look on his daughter’s face grew more and more bewildered and aggrieved as he talked, he was forced to realize that something was somehow wrong. Once again he could only purse his lips and stare at his daughter, trying to understand. And the conclusion that he came to was far from his liking.

With a sigh and a deep frown, her father’s previously excited voice lowered into a reprimanding tone.

“Eris... I can’t believe you. It’s impossible, a child of mine… You can’t possibly be playing around with this omega like some sort of filth-”

Before he’d even finished his last few words, Eris’s face had already contorted into a fiercely murderous scowl. Her hand that had been loosely holding onto her greatsword seemed to quickly gain strength once again.

“You will retract that statement this instant. How dare you say such a slanderous thing about me? Me, who has never laid a single indecent hand on anyone, let alone on Lady Siffia! I was certainly raised better than that!”

“Oh…”

With a mixture of relief and confusion flooding his face, her father took a quick step back, feeling a bit apologetic.

“Hmm, that’s… for the best. But then, did nothing truly happen...? You say you’ve never laid a hand on her, but isn’t it true that you stumbled upon her during her heat?”

The more he thought about it, the more confused he became. And the fact that Eris’s still scowling face was beginning to blush and that she could no longer look him in the face only seemed to make him question everything all the more.

“...She had already taken medication for it the previous day. Thankfully that made the scent… less overwhelming. I was able to fight back the urges, hold my breath, and run away… although it was far from easy.”

Eris sighed, looking as if a large weight had descended upon her. Feeling a great amount of understanding, her father stepped closer once again, placing a comforting hand onto her shoulder.

“I see… My poor daughter. I commend you for having such strength. I know many that still would have succumbed.”

Though an omega’s heat pheromones might be nigh irresistible to an alpha without medication, it wasn’t so unheard of for an alpha to be able to pull themselves away in the same situation as Eris had been in, with the omega having been treated and a day having passed. Yes, the omega might still have been emitting some amount of pheromones, but their allure would have been greatly diminished, like a fading scent satchel. If no attachment was held, perhaps any alpha would have been able to force themselves away.

But he knew for certain that this wouldn’t have been the case for his dear daughter, who had already become so attached to Siffia. After all, smelling the pheromones of the one you liked was a much more damning experience, whether they were in heat or not; And the heat would have only exacerbated things.

Truly very few alphas would have been able to pull themselves away in such a situation.

“Yes, indeed it is quite commendable. …But daughter?”

“...Yes?”

“It’s also quite worrying, in a way.”