To ruin an Omega novel Chapter 412

Chapter 412: Unethical 1

ALDRIC

The next morning had brought with it a sharp clarity that had been absent during the messier hours of the night. I had taken care of what needed doing, and now I sat at the edge of consciousness inside this borrowed body, waiting to see if anyone would be foolish enough to stumble across what I had hidden.

The files were out there now. What needed to be out there anyway. They were now distributed... delivered. Each one was placed exactly where it would do the most damage.

I had gone to the witch first. Found her in that filthy hovel she called a sanctuary, surrounded by candles and bones and the kind of desperate mysticism that only the weak clung to. She had tried. I would give her that much. She had reached into the great beyond with trembling hands and pulled Ronan’s spirit back just long enough for me to get what I needed.

He had fought me.

Even dead, even stripped of his body and his power, Ronan had tried to resist because he had clarity now, and he hated me. But the dead had no leverage. The dead had no strength. And when the witch tightened her grip and forced him to speak, he gave me what I wanted.

The cabin.

He had hidden his version of the files at the cabin.

The witch had been less useful when it came to the rune. I had asked her about it. About what Fia had done when she healed Gabriel’s body. About whether it could be fixed or reversed, or at least stabilized enough to keep me in control permanently.

She had examined it. Poked at it with her limited talents. Muttered under her breath in that way hedge witches did when they were trying to seem more competent than they actually were.

In the end, she told me what I already suspected.

She was not talented enough to undo what Fia had done. The healing had interfered with the rune in ways even she could not unravel. The magic was tangled now. Unstable. And fixing it would require someone with far more skill than she possessed.

The Original witch who had made the rune for me in the first place could have done it. But going to her would require money. A lot of money. The kind of money I did not have access to without drawing the wrong kind of attention.

My accounts were probably frozen. My assets were probably seized. Everything I had built over decades was now in the hands of people who thought I was dead, dead, dead.

I could not go back to any of it without revealing myself. And revealing myself before I was ready would mean losing everything.

So I had settled for doing what was achievable. Getting the files. Distributing them. Setting the dominoes in motion, even if I could not control how they would fall.

It was not perfect.

But it was enough.

I had hitched a ride with some fool who thought he was doing a good deed for a weary traveler, and I had torn that place apart until I found them. Buried beneath the floorboards in a metal box that had rusted at the edges. Inside were copies. Backups. Everything Ronan had kept as insurance against the day someone might try and succeed to silence me because they finally had enough.

I had read through them again on the way back. Scanned every page. Every name. Every detail. And that was when I found it.

The name Athena. The face too.

One of the experiments had been named Athena, and I had missed it the first time because I had been too focused on the bigger picture. Too focused on having leverage against Pauline and Valentine. But now, with time to think, with space to plan, the pieces fell into place with a clarity that was almost beautiful.

Pauline’s husband had acted like a madman when he lost his toy at the time. Everyone had heard and seen it. Everyone had whispered about it. The way he tore through the estate looking for her. The way he raged when she could not be found. It had been dismissed as grief. As the irrational behavior of a man who had lost something he had obsessed over.

It had been years since it happened. But I finally understood it all. I would have. If I had taken a deep look at the files. I would have... the second I laid my eyes on Fia because of how strikingly similar she looked to this Athena.

Athena had not just been a lost pet. Athena had been one of them. One of the fleshcraft abominations. Pauline had sold the girl out of her own jealousy and insecurity.

The third letter had gone to the Lily of the Valley Alpha. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

Safer. More predictable. Easier to control.

I looked back at Cian

He looked as white as a ghost. Still panicked as he was since the moment the sentinel confirmed Elara had not left through the gates. His Alpha instincts kicked in exactly as I had expected them to.

I allowed myself to think about her then.

About Elara. About the way her hands had flown to her throat when I tore it open. About how her eyes had still held something soft and pleading right up until the very end.

She had made it easy, really.

When I returned at dawn with everything in place: the files distributed and the letters sent, I had considered my options with the kind of detachment that came from knowing the outcome no longer mattered.

Taking her body back to her room to stage a hanging would have been poetic. Tragic even. The kind of thing people would whisper about for weeks. But her head had been too damaged. The skull was caved in, and the face was unrecognizable. Even if I managed to get her back to the estate without being seen, the sheer wrongness of it would raise questions I could not afford to answer.

I had thought about throwing her from her window instead. A beautiful, heartbroken girl who could not bear the weight of her father’s sins. It would have fit the narrative perfectly. People loved a tragedy like that. They would have mourned her. Pitied her. Never questioned it.

But the risk remained.

Carrying her body across the grounds, even in the dark, even with Gabriel’s face, was exposure I did not need. A single person awake at the wrong time could end me. A single guard patrolling where he should not have been would kill me. It would unravel everything.

So I settled for the next best thing.