To ruin an Omega - Chapter 364: Ugly Heart 1

Chapter 364: Ugly Heart 1

MADELINE

I sat across from my father in the lounge, watching steam curl up from the rim of my coffee cup. The liquid inside had gone lukewarm five minutes ago but I kept my hands wrapped around the porcelain anyway. It gave me something to hold onto while we made small talk about nothing that mattered. The weather. The nice roses he noticed from the window in the garden. Whether the elders of the circle were being fashionably late because they were all in cohorts with Alpha Aldric.

My father looked relaxed. Since Aldric’s arrest, He seemed like a different person, especially since the trial was going to commence and end today. There was a lightness in his posture that I had not seen in years, like someone had finally cut the strings that had been holding him down. He leaned back in his chair with his own cup balanced on the armrest and talked about mundane things.

I guess anything would be mundane at this point since we didn’t have the weight of our family’s secrets weighing down on us anynore. Overnight, it looked like it had simply evaporated.

I wanted to believe it. I wanted to think that maybe this time things would be different. That maybe we could actually move forward without looking over our shoulders.

But until that trial began and ended with words that needed to be heard, I just couldn’t bring myself to be at peace.

Then father’s phone rang.

He glanced at the screen and his expression shifted. Not drastically. Just enough that I noticed the subtle tightening around his eyes, the way his mouth pressed into a thin line before he forced it back into something neutral.

“Excuse me,” he said, standing up smoothly. “Coven dealings.”

He walked out of the Skollrend main estate lounge without waiting for a response, the door clicking shut behind him with a soft finality that made my stomach twist.

Coven dealings… I wasn’t sure why. But I didn’t trust it.

Maybe because it was the same excuse he always used when he did not want to explain himself. The same words he had thrown at me a hundred times over the years whenever I asked too many questions or lingered too long in doorways I was not supposed to be near.

I stared at the closed door for a long moment.

Then I set my coffee cup down and pressed my palms flat against my thighs.

Something was wrong. I could feel it crawling up the back of my neck like a cold breeze that had no business being there. My father had been acting strange. Too happy. Too confident. Like he had finally gotten exactly what he wanted and was just waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

I thought about Cian. About the last real words he told me before we had to leave his study.

For some unknown reason, those words stuck with me.

“This is exactly who your father is. I hope after this, you stop protecting him. He’s just as bad as Aldric.”

I had felt the need to mentally defend my father in my heart when he said those words. But as I sat there and thought more about how I had mentally told myself that Cian was painfully wrong, that he did not understand what my father had been through or what he had sacrificed to keep our family safe despite his mistakes.

Something kept telling me what if and as much as I wanted to discredit that vile thought. I wondered why.

Was it because I didn’t want there to be a reality where I was wrong. Where I would see again and again that I made the wrong choice to begin with?

No… I told myself. That couldn’t be it.

“So why not look?” A voice in the back of my mind pushed.

I did not discredit it this time around. Instead, I closed my eyes and took a slow breath.

Then I whispered the incantation under my breath, letting the magic slip out quiet and small, barely more than a whisper of intent woven into the air around me. It was a minor spell. Nothing that would leave a stench strong enough for anyone like father to notice unless they were specifically looking for it. Just enough to carry sound from one room to another. Just enough to let me hear what I was not supposed to hear.

My father’s voice filtered through the connection a moment later, muffled at first and then clear.

“Relax,” he was saying. His tone carried that particular lightness he got when he was pleased with himself about something. “His true colors have finally been shown to the Alpha of Skollrend.”

There was a pause. I could hear the faint murmur of a woman’s voice on the other end of the line but the words were too indistinct to make out clearly.

“I know,” my father continued, sounding almost giddy. “I had the exact same reaction.”

Another pause. Longer this time.

“The trial is approaching faster than expected,” he said. I could hear the faint clink of ceramic on wood, followed by the sound of him taking a sip of coffee. “Everything is lining up now. It is practically a sealed deal.”

The woman said something else. My father made a low sound of agreement.

“It is,” he replied. “We might actually be free of him.”

Free of Aldric. He was talking about Aldric.

I felt a small flicker of relief. Maybe this really was just about the trial. Maybe I had been wrong to worry.

Then his voice shifted.

“Long story,” he said. “But the pack’s own Beta was the deadman switch. The only one probably.”

There was another pause. The woman on the other end said something sharp and quick that I could not quite catch.

“And?” my father asked lightly.

More words from the woman. Her tone had gone tense now, cautious in a way that made my stomach tighten.

“Not the way you think,” my father said. “If the information appears now, it will only strengthen my testimony. People will assume Aldric somehow fabricated it to discredit me before the trial.”

He paused for a moment before continuing.

“They will believe it is false evidence planted by a desperate man.”

My chest went cold.

Information. Evidence. Things that could discredit him.

He was talking about the fleshcraft. He had to be.

“We win this time around,” he said quietly.

The woman said something else. I caught fragments this time. Words that sounded like “experiments” and “healer” and something about a pack I did not recognize.

“I don’t know,” my father replied. “I just got out of this mess. To delve into it again, and so soon, will not be smart.”

My breath caught.

Delve into it again.

He was considering it. He was actually considering going back to the experiments.

The woman’s voice rose slightly. I could not make out the words but the tone was insistent. Pushing.

“Number Three is very volatile. Not fit for a pack like **** of *** ****** that will push it.” my father said. Then he corrected himself quickly. “Oh. Him… I meant him.”

Him.

Was that a test subject? Was he was talking about a test subject.

“Well,” the woman said, her voice coming through clearer now. “I promised—”

The connection wavered and her next words were lost in static.

“I thought you didn’t have a good relationship with them,” my father said carefully. “It was Aldric that forced your hand in the first place. You have no shackles binding you to that anymore.”

There came another pause.

“I guess you are right,” the woman replied. Her voice had gone quieter now, harder to hear. “But I do want to keep a good relationship with—”

The rest dissolved into muffled fragments.

“In that case, it is best I do a very good job,” my father said. That particular energy had crept back into his voice. The one he got when he was thinking about his work. “There is a test subject I am missing, though.”

My hands clenched into fists.

Test subject.

He said it so casually. Like he was talking about a piece of equipment he needed to order. Like it was not a person.

“Are you insane?” the woman’s voice came through sharp and clear this time.

“Pauline—”

So it was Pauline. Pauline who? Strati?

“No,” Pauline said firmly. The rest of her words were lost again but her tone was unmistakable. She was arguing with him. Trying to talk him out of whatever he was planning.

“She has been living without any pills,” my father said. His voice had lost the lightness entirely. He was serious now. Focused in that way that made him dangerous. “And with the way her blood reacted when I tried to touch its matter, she is definitely awakened. She is different. I can feel it.”

Blood… Pills… Awakened…

He was talking about one of his experiments. Someone he had already worked on. Someone who was still alive.

He had told me they were all dead. He had looked me in the eye and told me he had ended it, that none of them had survived, that it was all behind us.

He had lied.