To ruin an Omega novel Chapter 481

Chapter 481: Family Line 1

LYSANDER

I stood outside the infirmary with wolfsbane powder hidden in my pocket and my resolve crumbling like wet paper.

The decision that had been made days ago. Nights added, if I counted the sleepless nights spent cataloging my father’s crimes against my mother. Against every decent person who’d crossed his path. Against the stability of our entire pack. I’d rehearsed the justifications until they felt like truth. He was a monster. He needed to be stopped. Someone had to do it.

But knowing something and acting on it still lived in different worlds entirely.

My hand closed around the vial through the fabric. The glass felt too small, too fragile to contain something capable of hurting and ending a life. Especially his life. The man who’d taught me to shift. Who’d sat with me through my first rut and explained how to anchor myself when the animal tried to take over. Who’d looked at me with something almost like pride when I’d passed his trials.

Weak. That’s what I was. Standing here and still somehow debating whether to murder my own father despite convincing myself that I had crossed that water.

He was chained and vulnerable. Exactly where I needed him to be. This was the ideal situation.

It only made it clearer to me that I was still the kind of pathetic creature he’d have despised.

The healers’ wing was empty. They’d all sequestered themselves for the heat, driven into their own rooms and outside in the field where the orgy was occurring, by biology they couldn’t control. The scent of arousal hung thick in the air, a cloying sweetness that did nothing to stir my own instincts. The suppressants I’d taken saw to that. I’d needed my head clear for this. Needed to be the one person in the entire compound who wasn’t ruled by base urges.

I left the infirmary and walked toward my mother’s chambers. Each step felt measured. Final. Like walking toward an execution I’d both scheduled and dreaded in equal measure.

The smell hit me before I reached the hallway.

Blood. It was fresh and copper-bright.

Whay the fuck was that the case? Without slight hesitation, I broke into a run. The door to my mother’s chambers rattled in its frame, shaking with impacts from inside. Metal shrieked and I could swear that I heard someone scream. Then silence dropped like a blade.

I pressed myself against the wall beside the door and waited. My heart hammered against my ribs. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to be the one in control. The one who chose the moment.

The rattling then stopped.

I pulled the wolfsbane from my pocket and shoved it deep into my coat before my hands found the door handle. It was locked.

I twisted harder, putting my weight into it. Still, the mechanism held fast.

Fine.

I stepped back and drove my shoulder into the wood. The frame splintered on the second impact. The third sent the door flying inward, torn half off its hinges.

The scene inside made no sense at first.

My father stood in the center of the room with one platinum chain still attached to the ceiling and the other dangling free from his wrist. His chest heaved with labored breathing. Blood covered his face in red streams that dripped from his nose and mouth. His eyes burned gold. Pure rut gold without a trace of humanity left in them.

And Hazel.

Hazel stood three feet away, covered in white powder and blood. Her nightdress clung to her body. Her lip was torn nearly in half. Her face was split open from what I could only deduce was a chain strike and that had left her cheek hanging in a flap of ruined flesh.

What was she doing here?

The question formed and died in the same instant as understanding crashed down. The nightdress. The powder covering them both. The blood on my father’s mouth. The absolute terror in her eyes as she spotted me in the doorway.

Despite everything she’d said. Despite the political betrothal and the careful dance we’d been performing. She’d been plotting. The very thing I had warned her not to do.

She’d tried to seduce my father during his heat and now... and now she was collateral damage. A risk that I did not want present.

She bolted toward me and tried to slip past while I was still processing. Her broken wrist cradled against her chest. Blood was pouring from wounds that would scar even with healing.

No... I really couldn’t leave witnesses.

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