To ruin an Omega novel Chapter 368

Chapter 368: Bellerophon and the fly 1

ALDRIC

They walked us in chains.

There was no dignity in it at all. It felt like we were already branded as criminals already.

This shit went meant for an Alpha. This was the way dissenting Omegas and power life forms were treated.

The great hall had been rearranged for this. The long tables pushed back. The floor cleared. Six chairs arranged in a curved line at the far end, each one occupied by a face I had known for years. The elder’s circle. Old blood and older law, sitting there with their hands folded and their expressions carefully neutral in the way that people practiced for years before they could make it convincing.

They were not neutral. None of them ever were. Everyone has a side.

But they were very good at pretending.

The crowd that lined the walls was less disciplined. People pressed against each other with their necks craning and their voices low and urgent. I could feel the energy in the room before I heard any individual word. It was charged and uneven and cut in too many directions at once to belong to any single opinion.

Good.

Divided rooms were workable rooms.

A woman near the left wall leaned toward the man beside her and said something I caught only the end of.

"...a witch and a warlock who have wanted this pack to fall for years. She didn’t get the Alpha and now she’s burning everything down over spite."

The man nodded slowly.

Across the hall, a younger sentinel shook his head and muttered something to the woman beside him. She pressed her lips together. Neither of them looked convinced of anything.

Ronan walked just behind me. I could hear his breathing. Measured, as it was controlled. He was holding himself together better than I expected, which was either a good sign or a sign that the fracture his mother had made and that I had seen in his eyes earlier had gone somewhere deeper and quieter where I could not see it anymore.

I preferred not to think about that.

The head elder raised one hand.

The room went quiet in stages. First the people nearest the front, then the sound rolled backward like something draining out through the floor.

"This hearing will come to order."

His voice was deep and practiced and landed in the room without effort. Elder Callum. Sixty nine years old and built like someone who had never once been asked to doubt himself. He had sat in that chair for twenty two years. I had watched him do it. I knew how he moved, how he weighted his silences, and more importantly, I knew what he owed me.

He owed me a great deal.

Cian entered from the side door.

His Omega whore, Fia was beside him.

They took their seats along the observing wall and the room reacted to that too. A fresh ripple of murmuring. Some of it respectful and some of it something else.

Elder Callum looked at me.

"The charges against the accused are as follows."

He began to read.

Conspiracy. Treason. Unlawful use of the Skollrend’s pack resources. Corruption of sentinel ranks. Attempted murder. Kidnap. Attempted kin slaughter. The list went on and his voice stayed flat through all of it. Like he was reading a supply inventory. Like the words meant nothing to him personally.

I listened to all of it.

I watched Callum’s face while he read and I watched the faces of the other elders while he did, and by the time he reached the end I had already mapped who was where. Who was uneasy. Who was working hard to appear impartial. Who had already made up their mind.

Two of them, not counting Callum, were mine.

Elder Pryce on the far left, who had a shipping arrangement with three of my allied packs that would collapse overnight if I went down. Elder Saoirse beside him, who I had kept a very specific secret for twelve years and who had been paying that debt quietly and without complaint ever since.

They were mine.

But even mine had limits and right now both of them, including Callum were sitting stiffly in their seats and not looking at me directly.

There was also was the poison.

The poison was the problem.

My hands were steadier than they had been in the cell but the pale had not left my nails and the heat in my chest had not fully receded. It had dulled to something manageable, which meant whatever Morrigan had used was still working its way through me. Not fast enough to drop me before the trial began, apparently. But present enough that anyone looking closely could see something was wrong.

Which meant I needed them to look.

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