To ruin an Omega - Chapter 366: Hell is your exes 1

Chapter 366: Hell is your exes 1

ALDRIC

The cell smelled even worse as the minutes trickled by.

I had been sitting on the stone bench long enough that the cold had worked its way through my trousers and into my bones. My shirt was damp at the back. My hands, when I looked at them, had a faint tremor I could not fully suppress, no matter how many times I pressed them flat against my thighs.

Something was very wrong with me.

The heat had not stopped. It had deepened. It moved through my chest in waves now, pulling at the edges of my concentration, making it harder to hold a single thought without it slipping sideways. My heartbeat was uneven in a way I could not ignore. Too fast and then too slow, like it could not decide which rhythm to settle into.

I kept my face still.

Ronan was pacing again. He had been pacing for the better part of the last hour, boots scraping the same short path between the bars and the wall while he turned everything over in his head. He was still processing. Still trying to organize the chaos of the day into something he could work with.

I let him pace.

Thinking was fine. Thinking was useful. What I needed was for the panic to stay out of him. Panic made people unpredictable, and I could not afford unpredictable right now. Not with everything balanced the way it was.

I pressed my hand flat against my chest and took a measured breath.

The heat pulsed.

I exhaled slowly.

Then I heard them.

Boots in the corridor. Heavy and uneven, like someone was being dragged rather than walking. A voice followed. Low and strained at first, then rising sharp enough to cut through the stone walls.

Ronan stopped pacing.

We both turned toward the bars.

The guards appeared first. Two of them. Then the figure between them stumbled into view as they hauled the door open and shoved her inside.

I knew her before she found her footing.

Teagan.

She looked terrible. Her hair had come loose and her dress was dusty and she had clearly been crying for hours. She caught herself against the far wall and turned around.

Her eyes landed on Ronan first.

Then they found me.

Whatever composure she had left evaporated on the spot.

She crossed the cell in four steps and swung at me.

Her fist connected with the side of my jaw hard enough that my head jerked sideways. White light spidered across my vision for a second. I tasted iron at the corner of my mouth.

“You monster.”

She was on me before I could straighten. Her hands clawed at my collar, my chest, grabbing and pulling and shaking.

“You fucking beast. I hate the day I ever lay with you.”

Part of me wanted to smile.

Not because the words amused me. Not because I enjoyed any of this. But because even now, even in a cell with my body failing me and the walls closing in from every direction, Teagan was still exactly who she had always been. Passionate. Reckless. Loud in a way that she believed passed for strength.

I kept my face neutral and let her enjoy her little tantrum.

That was when Ronan moved.

He crossed the cell and caught his mother by the arms, pulling her back with enough force that she stumbled. He put himself between us.

“He did nothing,” Ronan said. His voice was flat and controlled. “Stop.”

Teagan turned on him immediately. “Ronan—”

“What are you even doing here?”

She blinked. The question seemed to stall something in her.

“I came to save you.”

He stared at her. “You’re in a cell.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It clearly does.”

“No.” She pulled herself upright and smoothed the front of her dress with hands that were still shaking. “I tried to speak reason to your Alpha. That is how I ended up here. His rage consumed everything else.”

Ronan’s jaw tightened. He glanced back at me for just a fraction of a second.

“It won’t matter soon.”

Teagan’s face changed. The anger shifted to something sharper.

“What does that mean?”

He didn’t answer.

She moved toward him. He stepped back. She stopped, and the hurt that crossed her face was immediate and obvious. She collected herself quickly but not before it showed.

“You cannot let him get inside your head even more,” she said. Her voice was quieter now. Careful. “When the trial starts, you have to throw it all onto him. Tell them you were manipulated. Tell them everything. Our history. All of it. The sordid details. My cheating. Anything to prove that you were in a bad place and give you leniency.”

Ronan said nothing at first. He hated his mother. A posion I had soaked in quite well.

“Anything? Incliuding how you killed your husband?”

“Including how I killed your father,” she said. Then she corrected herself quickly, catching the word before it fully landed. “Sorry. My husband.”

She pressed forward before the silence could take over.

“I already confessed. That is part of why I am standing in this cell. And it was not only me.” She looked at me over Ronan’s shoulder, and the thing in her eyes was not grief. It was something colder. “The bastard behind you was the mastermind. He planned it. Every single step of it.”

Ronan turned to look at me.

I met his eyes and held them.

“He told me,” Ronan said finally. His voice was careful. “He told me what he believed your husband was going to do. That he was going to do more than expose everything. That he was going to destroy us both. Me the most.”

He turned back toward his mother.

“He thought he was protecting me. After all, you told him that the man was going to have me killed for the shame of it.”

The silence that followed was very satisfying.

I watched it happen. Watched the realization move across Teagan’s face like a wave breaking. Her mouth opened. Her eyes widened.

“You—” Her voice broke, thin and sharp with horror. “You told him that?”

Then she moved.

She rushed forward, fury flashing across her face, but Ronan caught her before she reached me. His arms locked around her waist, pulling her back against him as she struggled.