The Lycan King's Outcast Omega (by Cara Anderson) novel Chapter 181

Sage

We reach the connecting doorway just as Daphne's composure shatters completely, her elegant hand sweeping equipment from a nearby table with surprising strength. "You promised me partnership in creating a new order, not a position of convenience while you pursue your sick personal obsession with breeding your former mate!"

Alaric moves with lethal silence, shifting into the perfect strike position without detection. His hands find Daphne's neck almost without looking, twisting with minimal effort until her head goes slack.

The sickening crack echoes through the room with dreadful finality. Her body crumples with a graceful elegance belying her violent end, her life extinguished between one heartbeat and next without any warning. She likely died before her impending death even registered, not the agony she deserved.

Cassius's usual flat affect quickly betrays his shock– eyes widening, pulse visibly pounding at his throat, his gaze flitting between us as he struggles to understand the threat standing before him. Before he can react, Alaric positions himself between us with a protective stance that makes his priority perfectly clear.

"You can't harm me," Cassius manages, his tone shaking despite the certainty he's trying to project. "The bond remains unstable. Any damage transfers directly to her through our connection—"

"The bond is perfectly stable," I counter, letting my disgust at even speaking the word fill every syllable. "Your precious calculations failed to account for the Goddess-given strength a true mate provides, even without wearing his mark."

Doubt flickers across his expression previously marked by absolute confidence. "T-, True mates?” He sputters as he assimilates this new information before quickly recovering his confidence, or at least the pretense of it. “The medical assessments indicate a minimum of thirty-six additional hours before—" He mumbles, as if he can’t believe his precious science would fail him.

"Your assessments are wrong," Alaric interrupts, his predatory intent clear in every line of powerful form. "Your calculations failed to account for a connection science can’t measure."

Uncertainty replaces his feigned confidence as Cassius processes this new variable – the possibility that some mystical force he discounted blessed us with a bond he could never completely destroy. Through our flickering connection, I try to send Alaric my absolute conviction – the risk to me remains, but this opportunity outweighs any potential consequences when our freedom is so tantalizingly close.

Not just freedom, but ridding the world of Cassius forever.

"This isn't emotional vengeance," Alaric corrects with deadly calm, taunting him with his own overused words. "This is purely clinical, the necessary elimination of a threat to my mate and child. There is no other way this ends for you."

The execution itself carries efficient precision – swift, decisive, final, though we’d both have preferred to see him suffer. Cassius's life ends between one heartbeat and the next, his body joining Daphne's on the cold laboratory floor. But any satisfaction in watching him die is quickly doused by the searing agony of his blackened soul being ripped from my body.

My screams echo off the concrete walls as fire licks at my veins and the mark on my neck blisters and sloughs. My legs buckle underneath me as my heartbeat slows to a dull thud in my chest. This is what I feared, but couldn’t risk telling my mate.

Alaric’s strong arms are the last thing I feel, sweeping me up and holding tight to his chest as darkness tugs at the edge of my consciousness.

“Save the baby.” I manage to whisper before my mind goes slack, unable to form words.