To ruin an Omega novel Chapter 318

Chapter 318: How beastly

FIA

Thorne came back with his arms full.

Two Hazmat suits, folded with the practiced efficiency of someone who kept things orderly out of genuine conviction rather than habit. A pair of heavy-grade gloves, thick enough that I could see the bulk of them from across the room. A pair of pincers. A blade, small and precise. And then he produced a ziplock bag from somewhere and set it on the counter beside everything else like it was the most ordinary collection of items a person had ever assembled at two in the morning.

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

"We’re not wearing these inside the estate," I said.

"Agreed." He was already picking the things up, distributing them between us. He handed me a set of the gloves and the ziplock bag without ceremony. "We’d have about thirty questions before we made it to the door."

"We put them on once we’re clear of the main building. Far enough that no one wandering to the bathroom can look out a window and get curious."

"Sensible." He tucked the pincers under his arm and looked at me with an expression that was not quite approval and not quite reluctance but something balanced precisely in between. "Lead the way, then, Luna Fia."

We went out through a side entrance I had grown familiar to. The air outside hit immediately, cold and clean and smelling like earth and the particular sharpness that came before dawn. The grounds were still. The lights from the estate fell behind us in long yellow rectangles on the grass and then we were past them, moving toward the tree line, and the dark swallowed the yellow and replaced it with silver.

We didn’t speak until the estate was fully at our backs and the trees had closed around us enough that I felt the shift, that particular quiet that forests had at night. Like everything in them was listening.

"Here," I said.

We stopped and shook out the suits. Getting into a Hazmat suit in the dark with only ambient moonlight filtering through tree cover was not a graceful process. Thorne managed it with more dignity than I did. He had the practiced movements of someone who had done this before, or at least had thought about it enough that the doing of it wasn’t awkward. I got my left arm in wrong twice and heard him politely not comment on it.

When we were both sealed in and the gloves were on and the visors were down, we kept walking. The suits made a soft sound with each step, a whisper of material against material. The forest floor was uneven beneath my feet and I picked my way through it carefully while also keeping my eyes moving. Left, right. Back the way we came. Up into the branches where things sometimes watched from.

Thorne walked beside me for a while without speaking. He was a man who understood the value of silence, which I had decided I appreciated about him. But I also felt him thinking. It had a weight to it.

"I can only think of one use for Mourning Moon," he said finally.

I glanced sideways at him through the visor. "Oh yeah? What’s that?"

He turned his head and looked at me directly. "Luna Fia."

If he wanted something, I was going to give it to him.

"Even poison has its positive uses," I said.

"And you plan to use it for something positive."

"Of course."

He didn’t respond immediately. A branch cracked somewhere to our left and we both turned toward it, but it was nothing. I did notice something small moving through the undergrowth. A bush rat most likely. I exhaled and faced forward again.

"Sometimes bloodshed is necessary," I said. "That’s just a fact."

Thorne was quiet for a moment. Then, he continued. "Maren did tell me a few things. About Beta Ronan." He said it carefully, the way you said something when you wanted the other person to know you knew without making them feel cornered. "I imagine that must be terrifying. Having enemies that close. Alpha Cian must be distraught even given how close he is to Beta Ronan."

"Get to it."

He took a breath. "But this isn’t the way. Even if I understand the impulse. Even if every part of me understands exactly why you are standing in this forest in the middle of the night collecting something that could kill a man. This is not the way." He paused. "If even Alpha Cian hasn’t blown hot over this. You cannot. No matter how frightened you are of what is happening." 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

I moved a low branch out of my path and let it swing back slowly. "The only reason Cian hasn’t exploded yet is because of me."

Thorne said nothing, so I kept going.

"I didn’t mind playing it right. I was all for it, actually. Moving carefully. Being patient. Letting the process work the way it was supposed to." My voice came out flat. I wasn’t angry. I was just being honest with how exhausted I was. "I’d been completely committed to that approach right up until this evening." I stopped walking for a moment and looked up through the tree canopy at the sky, which was starting to lose its deepest black at the very edges. "There is so much I’m keeping from Cian right now. More than he knows. More than I want there to be. But I cannot wait for justice to take its course. Not when..."

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