To ruin an Omega novel Chapter 290

Chapter 290: By ommission

FIA

"Valentine?"

The name came from both of them at once, their voices overlapping in a way that made the hair on my arms stand up.

I looked between Morrigan and Maren, confusion pulling my brows together.

"Who is Valentine?"

They shared a glance. The kind that passed information without words, the kind that made my stomach tighten because I knew whatever came next would change something.

Morrigan reached for the paper and held it carefully, like it might burn her fingers.

"He is Madeline’s father."

The words landed wrong. They did not make sense at first. My brain tried to arrange them into something logical, something that fit with what I already knew, but they kept slipping through my understanding like water through a sieve.

Then they clicked.

My gut twisted so hard I thought I might be sick.

"What?"

The girl on the bed watched me with those clear, impossible eyes.

"He is the one who tried to kill me?" I said, hearing my voice go thin and strange.

"I do not know that," she said quickly. "I am not sure about that. But he was in the girl who tried to kill you’s past. So maybe he is." She paused, her expression careful. "But Alpha Cian wanted to know this. And I have fulfilled that. Now his people do."

My mind started moving too fast. Pieces of information I had been holding separately suddenly crashed together. The man from my dream. The one who had stood over Athena while she screamed. The one whose face had stayed with me even after I woke up, leaving that oily residue of horror on my skin.

He was Madeline’s father...

He was connected to the strange girl who had tried to kill me...

My skin started to itch. The feeling crawled up my arms and across my shoulders, and I took a few steps back without meaning to. The wall stopped me, solid against my spine.

How could people be this evil? How could someone do those things and then go home and have a daughter and live a normal life?

"I do not believe this."

Morrigan’s voice cut through the spiral my thoughts had been falling into. I blinked and focused on her face. She was staring at the drawing, her jaw tight.

"You really do not know people until they reveal themselves," she said.

Then she folded the paper in half, and then again, her movements quick and decisive.

"Cian cannot know about this."

"What?"

The word came out sharper than I meant it to. I pushed off the wall and moved toward her.

"Why? Why can’t he know?"

She looked at me, and her expression held something I had only seen a few times before. Fear, maybe. Or the kind of certainty that came from knowing exactly how bad things could get.

"If anything, he needs to know immediately," I said, my voice rising. "Because this is the same man I saw in my dreams."

The volume felt wrong in the small room, too loud, too exposed. I dropped my voice to a whisper, leaning closer.

"This man is pure evil. You needed to see what he did to an Omega who was..." I stopped and swallowed. "Who was pregnant."

"I know he is. I know you are right."

Morrigan’s voice stayed steady, but her hands gripped the folded paper hard enough that her knuckles went white.

"But Cian tends to be rash. If he knows about this now, he’ll probably start a war with the Primrose coven that Valentine happens to be supreme of at the moment."

My breath caught. Supreme? That meant power. That meant resources and people and magic I could not even begin to understand.

"We are a strong pack," Luna Morrigan continued. "But going head first with a powerful cult of witches is not smart. And even if Cian holds back, his daughter is within our walls. Who knows if she is a spy at this point. She was brought here by Aldric, was she not?"

The question hung there, rhetorical but pointed.

"With what I know now, I wouldn’t put it past them to be working together." She looked at me directly. "This has to be a secret for now."

I wanted to argue. Every instinct I had screamed that keeping this from Cian was wrong, that he deserved to know, that we should not be making decisions like this without him.

"Cian already knows about Ronan," I said. "He is highly suspicious about Aldric too. He can take this."

"You know him too."

Morrigan’s voice went softer, but somehow that made it worse.

"He is probably about to explode with all he knows now. We add something new to it and he’ll surely explode. His sworn brother and two father figures..." She stopped. Her throat worked. "I can barely take it. Cian will not."

I hated that she was right. The truth of it settled over me like a weight I could not shake off. My shoulders slumped, and I felt something give way inside my chest.

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