To ruin an Omega novel Chapter 311

Chapter 311: Slim Pickings

FIA

The ceiling held my eyes for a long time after I woke.

Cian’s heartbeat was steady under my ear. Slow and deep. Still here. Still alive. I pressed my palm flat against his chest and felt it move and tried to let that be enough.

It was not enough though.

Moira’s note lived somewhere behind my eyes now, the way certain things do when you have read them too many times to pretend they are not there. Sometimes poison is mercy for the doomed. I had turned that sentence over and over until the words lost their shape and became something else entirely. A door. A direction. A thing I could no longer look away from.

Aldric had told me himself. Told me with that awful patience he had, the kind that came from a man who had never once had to hurry because the world had always bent toward him eventually. He had told me what the game was. He had told me the rules. He had practically laid out the board and waited for me to make my move, certain I would stay inside whatever lines he had drawn because that was what people like me did. We survived. We endured. We waited and hoped and tried to do things cleanly.

Hazel had changed that. What I had done with Hazel had been ugly and necessary and it had worked. Evil men lived fine in the world. They breathed easy and slept well and outlasted everything decent sent against them because decent was slow and decent made rules for itself that evil never followed. If I wanted to win this, I had to go lower than he ever could. I had to go to the place he would not expect from me.

I understood that now. Just like I understood what needed to be done with Hazel.

I turned my head and looked at Cian.

He was asleep with his mouth slightly parted and one arm now thrown over my waist like even in sleep some part of him was checking that I had not gone anywhere. There was a small crease along his jaw from the pillow. His lashes were darker against his skin in the low light.

I raised my hand and pressed it to his cheek.

I’m sorry, I thought, because I could not say it aloud without waking him and I was not ready for him to be awake yet. I’m sorry for keeping this from you. I do hope you forgive me.

The apology sat in my chest, real and aching, but it did not change anything. He would be angry. He would be frightened. He would want to be the one to do it, or at least to stand beside me while I did, and I could not give him that. Not this time. Some protection worked precisely because the other person did not know they were being protected.

I didn’t even realize when the words started to come out.

"I never got to protect my first family. I had been too young and too ignorant and by the time I understood what was happening it was already done. I had lived with the shape of that failure ever since, the particular grief of not knowing what you were losing until it was gone. I am not going to do it again. I am not going to stand at another grave and catalogue everything I could have done differently. Cian, you have to be fine."

I waved a hand over his face but he seemed deep in sleep. I couldn’t peep through the bond because I was again actively shielding.

It didn’t matter though. He didn’t hear a thing.

What mattered was that I would protect him with everything I had. Every crooked, quiet, ugly thing available to me. Every resource and every risk and every part of myself willing to go somewhere dark he could not follow.

I pressed my lips to his forehead. He stirred slightly, not waking, just sighing and settling deeper. I held still until his breathing smoothed back out. Then I slipped out from under his arm, slow and careful, and sat on the edge of the bed for a moment with the cold air of the room settling onto my skin.

I pulled open his drawer and found a loose shirt, a pair of drawstring trousers. I pulled them on. They smelled like him. I stood in the middle of the room and breathed that in for one moment and then I left.

***

The infirmary was quiet at this hour. Most of the beds were empty. The lights had been turned low, casting everything in a warm amber that made the room feel smaller and older than it was. Thorne was at the far end of the room, making notes on something with the unhurried focus of a man who had learned to find peace in night shifts.

He looked up when he heard me come in.

"You look well," he said. "How was the tonic?"

"It helped."

He studied my face for a moment in the careful way he and Maren did, looking for the thing behind the thing. "Maren told me some of what happened. So you’re a... miracle worker, then."

"I wish."

"I don’t think you understand the gravity of what you are." His voice dropped, and he leaned in slightly like he was sharing something classified. "A healer from legend, Luna Fia. Those are extinct. You are proof that the age of legends has returned. I wonder what that means for werewolf society."

The memory came unbidden. My mother sitting against the wall. My grandmother standing up. The way she lifted her chin and walked out like she had finally been given permission. Suffering and endless pain. That was what it meant.

"I don’t know about that," I said. "But I’m here to ask you for something."

He set his pen down. "Oh. What is that?"

"Can I get a Hazmat suit? And a ziplock bag."

The silence that followed had a particular texture to it. Thorne’s eyebrows climbed his forehead slowly, like they were making the journey reluctantly.

"A Hazmat suit," he repeated. "For what?"

"I told you what I need the suit for," I said. "That’s all you’re getting. Don’t tell Cian." 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

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