Chapter 403: Overflowing, It Spills From Your Palm

[FROLO]

The image of a scared Katya Romanov haunted Sergei even as they sat in the lobby. He couldn’t get it out of his head.

The love of his life.

The omega he had sworn to protect with all that he had.

The man he wanted to see happier with each passing day.

He had seen raw fear, the kind that Sergei shouldn’t have seen back when there were trolls aimed at Katya thanks to his unhinged son’s girlfriend at the time.

This was different.

And Sergei knew one thing.

He would tear Daniil Aleksandrovich Petrovsky from the inside out. He would ruin him in ways that hadn’t been invented yet. And when he was done with him, no one would know what Sergei did or didn’t do. No one would know how to put it into words.

Sergei would make sure of it.

Because he knew what fear looked like.

Felt like.

How suffocating the fear of losing a life could get.

He understood it so well, and Aleksandr had decided to play sonatas with the life of his beloved. Sergei would never forgive him for that.

Never.

"Clean the place up. I’m going for a walk," Sergei said to his team and the mercs who had been resting.

"I’m coming with. You can try arguing, but I promise you, you will lose, little Sergio," Rastenkin said, handing his guns and weapons to Yaroslav, who had seen the rage in his father’s face.

Yaroslav understood it so well. He had seen it. The way Katya had been targeted one too many times. The way the government had tried to mess things up. How Katya had been framed one too many times.

He had seen it too.

But he knew his father was feeling far worse than they all were.

Sergei had felt the fear through the true mate bond. He had felt the raw version of what everyone saw. The untouched, unmasked raw fear.

Yaroslav knew that, which was why he didn’t even ask his father where he was headed. Because he knew his father needed to think.

The bloodbath was visible even from the seventieth floor, like an aerial view of the kind of chaos no one would willingly walk into.

They had done that.

The slaughter.

The shameless massacre, all in the name of Katya Romanov.

Now there was no going back.

But Sergei couldn’t think straight. Maybe that was why he didn’t even try to argue with Rastenkin about what they needed to do and what they didn’t. Because he was too angry. Too unhinged to face it all himself.

"He is alive, Sergio," Rastenkin said as he walked beside Sergei.

He didn’t know where they were headed, but the fact that they had made it out of the company while covered in blood was all that Rastenkin needed to know that wherever the alpha was headed, he didn’t have to know.

He would follow his kid to the ends of the earth as always, and right now it felt like one of those moments that Sergei himself didn’t understand what he was supposed to do, let alone how he was supposed to deal with it all.

"He thought he was going to die, Rastenkin. I was right there, and even I couldn’t give him the confidence of being alive. I felt his heart breaking at the realization. I should have been better. Instead, he was scared. Thought his life was over.

"H... He was ready for it," Sergei said, ignoring the way people were now staring at him as he walked beside a bloodied Rastenkin.

The police who had been deployed didn’t even bother trying to arrest them. Because these two looked like they weren’t opposed to adding any more bodies to the current body count they had already left behind. It was a disturbing sight, but fuck if Sergei didn’t feel worse than he looked.

"Sergio..."

"I shouldn’t have allowed him to be put in that position. I shouldn’t have let him be hurt like that. I wouldn’t even blame him if he never trusts me again. I wouldn’t trust me after the pathetic showdown we just had," Sergei grumbled, kicking a stone as he kept walking.

Slowly, Rastenkin was mapping out where they were headed.

The one place Sergei always went whenever things were hard.

The cemetery.

"He wanted diplomacy. And you respected him and trusted him enough to give him that," Rastenkin said, reminding Sergei why Katya’s approach was bound to work and not work at the same time.

They lived in a world where life was so fickle. A society that cared more for what everyone would think than what really mattered. Yet news was still trending the hashtag KatSerg while Sergei himself was trying to understand how the hell he had let them get to Katya that fast.

It was cruel.

It was insane.

Yet even then, there was a clear discourse in the city about him. He felt the cameras on both of them. Heard the flashes even before the phones could be kept away. He didn’t bother turning, because what was he even to turn for?

To show them that he was the monster who had failed to protect his mate’s safety?

That he was the one man who couldn’t even understand the basic dynamics of relationships and had clearly nearly fucked up the one thing that had been working right for him?

Sergei was torn.

And there wasn’t a way for him to even make it any better.

Because at the end of the day, all he had...

... Was always going to be threatened.

Whether he was a good person, a bad person, or even the devil himself. That was a reality he was not ready to make peace with.

"I should have protected him better, even with the diplomacy. Should have known Aleksandr wasn’t going to just stop and wait for things to go the wrong way. I failed him, Rastenkin," Sergei sighed, running his bloodied hand through his hair.

He was sick of everything that had happened. Still unable to understand where the loophole had been.

The only problem was that he had anticipated everything, save for the fact that Aleksandr would have tried to take Katya out with a sniper rifle.

That was the one thing that haunted him even more.

Sure, he had used his pheromones for the first time since he was a boy, but still, it didn’t make him feel any better. He was late, and nothing about what had happened gave him any comfort.

"Anya says he thinks it’s his fault too," Rastenkin said quietly, putting the phone back into his pocket.

And Sergei paused.

"What?"

"He thinks he shouldn’t have argued for diplomacy and trusted the due process that you had in place. Maybe things would have ended up like that, and we wouldn’t have massacred all those soldiers who came to take him out," Rastenkin added passively.

It was as if this was something he knew was bound to happen eventually. There was no way to fix the mess they had found himself in, but even the universe knew better than to try and gauge the kind of shit that was happening right now.

"So, he even got my Solnyshka doubting himself. I will make him wish for death, Rastenkin. I will not forgive him even if the moon goddess herself pleads for his life," Sergei swore, and Rastenkin just smiled at him.

"Alright, I think I’m at my stop now that I know you’ll be safer here," Rastenkin said, and Sergei stared before he realized where they had both stopped.

Vitya’s headstone.

And Rastenkin...

He left.