To ruin an Omega novel Chapter 309

Chapter 309: Bo$$

PAULINE

My hand shot up to my mouth before the sound could get out.

I pressed my palm hard against my lips and held it there. My back was against the wall. My knees had gone soft but I would not let them buckle. I would not. I stood in that dark hallway and I stared at the space where she was and I said it out loud, quiet and steady, past my own fingers.

"You are not real."

The smile came back first. Before the rest of her. Just the smile, hanging there in the dark the way a dream lingers at the edges of your memory. Then the rest of Athena filled itself in around it, and she tilted her head at me with that same mocking expression.

Then she faded.

Just like that. Like smoke when a window opened. She was there and then she simply wasn’t, and the hallway was just a hallway again, dark and quiet and smelling faintly of the lemon oil the cleaning staff used on the floors.

I stood very still. I breathed in through my nose. Out through my mouth. In again. I looked left. I looked right. I blinked and looked again. There was nothing. There was no one. There was only me and the quiet and the distant sound of Marcus turning a page on the other side of his closed bedroom door.

I looked down at my phone.

Valentine had sent more.

I read it.

"That would also make her Dimitri’s granddaughter."

My jaw tightened.

"I know every bone in you wants to murder me right now. But you should know this. Aldric is interested in the girl. For reasons I am fully sure he does not know yet. But I know. I experimented on Athena’s child, and that child’s child inherited the powers of my creation."

I stopped breathing.

I read it again.

Then a third time, because surely he hadn’t written what I thought he’d written. Surely he had not sat somewhere comfortable and warm and typed that out like it was a minor inconvenience, like it was a footnote, like he was dropping it into conversation rather than dropping it onto my chest like a stone from a great height.

Inherited the powers of his creation....

I knew what Valentine’s creation was. I had known it for years, had sat across from him while he explained it with that particular brand of scholarly detachment he used when he was most proud of himself and most terrified of himself in equal measure. Fleshcraft. The extinct healer blood he had pulled back from whatever age they’d slept in. The things he had built from Athena’s body and her blood and whatever else he’d used that I hadn’t asked about because not asking had seemed wiser.

If Fia had inherited that...

If Aldric ever understood what he was standing next to...

My heart did something uneven. Several somethings, all in a row. I kept reading.

"We have to take the girl out before he has more things against our neck. Call me when you see this."

I deleted the thread. Every message. I watched them disappear one by one and then I opened my call log and pressed his name.

He picked up before the second ring.

"Before it comes out," he said, pleasant as anything, "I should remind you, Pauline. There is no use fighting. We are in this together."

The breath I let out was long and very slow.

"Are you insane?" I started walking. Away from the hallway, away from the spot on the floor where I had seen her legs and her smile. I pushed open the guest room door and kicked it closed behind me and I didn’t bother to soften the sound of it. "Are you fucking insane? All these years. All of them. You said nothing. Absolutely nothing."

"Pauline—"

"We met her, Valentine. I visited Silver Creek after another one of that bastard Aldric’s lovely little blackmail attempts. And I saw her. My husband saw her. It was like the past crashed straight into him, right there in front of me, and I watched it happen. I told myself it was a coincidence only for you to kill that subtle peace. Athena was pregnant?" The word landed somewhere ugly in my chest. "She was pregnant and you didn’t think to pick up a phone and call me? Not even once."

"Are you done?"

"No. But go on."

He paused. I could hear him deciding something.

"Aldric has proof that we were involved in fleshcraft. That is the only hold he has over us. It is a strong hold, I grant you that. But imagine what happens when he discovers the fleshcraft was not only real but successful. Imagine what happens when he realizes I didn’t just dabble. That I actually brought back healers from the age of legend and put them into flesh that breathes and walks and that one of my little success is currently living within his reach." He let that sit for a moment. "He would not just own us, Pauline. He would own everything we have, everything we’ve built, every secret we’ve ever tried to bury. A specimen of mine is standing next to him and he doesn’t even know it yet. When he does—"

"We will never be free."

"So the girl has to disappear."

He said it the way you said anything practical. The way you said "we need milk" or "the roof wants fixing." I had always hated that about him.

Something clicked in my head then. Quietly and completely. The way a key turns when you’ve finally found the right lock.

"I don’t trust you the way I used to, Valentine. I’m not sure I trust you at all." 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

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