To ruin an Omega - Chapter 421: Over my limp body

Chapter 421: Over my limp body

FIA

Then he moved.

His leg swept out in a wide arc, fast enough that I barely registered it before it connected. It took both of us out from under ourselves. I went down hard on my hip, the impact shooting up my side in a sharp, jarring pain, and Morrigan hit the floor beside me with a heavy thud that rattled the loose debris around us.

By the time I forced my body to respond, he was already on his feet.

Not as steady as before, though. I saw it this time. The slight hitch when he shifted his weight, the uneven pull of his breath as his chest rose and fell. He was tiring. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and in a fight like this, something was enough to keep going.

We were wearing him down.

I pushed myself up, ignoring the way my hip protested, and charged before he could recover properly. If we gave him space, even a second, he would take it and turn it against us.

He tried to sidestep me, but Morrigan was faster.

Her hand shot out and caught his ankle, claws digging just enough to hold. It threw him off balance, his body pitching forward, and I hit him at full force before he could correct it. The impact drove him back into the wall, and the plaster shuddered under the force of it, dust shaking loose around us.

For a second, I thought I had him pinned.

Then his hand found my throat.

His grip closed tight, fingers digging in with bruising force, and everything narrowed instantly. My air was cut off and the pressure started to build. I found black spots flickering at the edges of my vision like something alive, something waiting to swallow me whole if I let it.

I didn’t let it.

I brought both fists down on his forearms as hard as I could manage, ignoring the way my muscles screamed in protest. The first rattled him. But the scecond… The second hit landed right, and his grip faltered just enough to give me an out.

I twisted away, dragging in a breath that burned all the way down, my lungs protesting the sudden rush of air.

Morrigan was there again.

She didn’t hesitate. She never did.

Her hands locked onto his shoulders, and she used his imbalance against him, throwing him toward the center of the room. He stumbled over the broken pieces scattered across the floor, his foot catching on something I didn’t see, and for a moment he almost went down again.

I didn’t give him the chance.

I came in from behind, grabbing onto what was left of his shirt and yanking hard. The fabric was already torn where Morrigan’s claws had ripped through it earlier, and it gave easily under my grip, splitting apart into ragged strips that came away in my hands.

I threw them aside without thinking.

And then I saw his back.

It stopped me for half a second, just long enough for the realization to settle in.

They looked like… Runes.

They covered him from shoulder to waist, etched into his skin in patterns that didn’t make sense no matter how long I looked at them. Lines twisted into shapes that refused to settle into anything familiar, overlapping and weaving in a way that made my eyes ache if I tried to follow them too closely.

But that wasn’t what mattered.

What mattered were the ones that glowed.

Bright. Hot. Red.

They pulsed against his skin like something alive, like embers buried too deep to go out. And I knew them. Not the shapes, not the meaning, but the feeling.

Those were the places I had touched.

Every time I had tried to heal him. Every time I had pushed that energy into him, hoping to reach Gabriel through whatever this was. It hadn’t just done nothing.

It had been burning through it.

The realization hit me all at once, sharp and clear.

I looked at Morrigan.

She was breathing hard, blood still running from her nose, streaking down over her mouth and chin, but her eyes were clear and tunnel focused. When she met my gaze, I didn’t need to explain.

There was an unspoken synergy and she understood exactly what I wanted .

She moved before I even shifted, circling around him, her steps deliberate despite the strain in her body.

Aldric realized it too late.

By the time he turned, Morrigan was already there. Her arms wrapped around his chest, locking his arms to his sides, her claws digging in deep enough to hold him in place. He fought immediately, his body bucking violently, muscles straining as he tried to break free, but she held on, bracing herself against him with everything she had left.

“Do it,” she ground out, her voice tight with effort.

I didn’t hesitate.

I stepped in and pressed both palms flat against his back.

This time, the power came without resistance.

It surged out of me in a flood, bright and immediate, that blue light spilling over my hands and into him like it had been waiting for this. The moment it touched those glowing runes, everything changed.

Aldric screamed in both terror and agony.

It tore out of him in a way that didn’t sound human. It was raw, jagged, full of something ancient and furious, and it vibrated through him into me, into the floor, into the air itself. His body convulsed under my hands, muscles seizing as the energy pushed deeper.

Heat built beneath my palms, intense enough that I could feel it even through the light, and the runes reacted.

They flared brighter at first, like they were fighting back, like whatever magic held them in place was trying to resist. Then, slowly, they started to darken.

To burn out.

I watched it happen.

Watched as the patterns began to fade, piece by piece, like they were being erased by something unseen. The red dimmed, flickering unevenly before going dark entirely, leaving nothing but bare skin in its place.

For a moment, I thought that was it.

That we were actually doing it. But then…

“Fia!”

Morrigan’s voice cut through everything.

It wasn’t anger or urgency that made me look up. It was something else. Something sharp enough to break my focus.

She wasn’t looking at me.

Her eyes were fixed past me, wide in a way I had never seen before, something like shock flickering across her face, mixed with something I couldn’t place.

Then she let go.

Just like that.

Her arms dropped away from him, her body stepping back as if she had been pulled.

“What are you—”

I didn’t get to finish.

His hand closed around my throat again, harder this time, fingers digging in with a force that made my vision spark. He yanked me around, forcing me to face him, his eyes blazing with something close to hatred, and his mouth pulling back into a snarl that didn’t belong to Gabriel.

But I wasn’t looking at him.

I was looking past him now.

At Morrigan and what had caught her attention so badly.

She had already moved, crossing the room with a kind of focus that sent a chill down my spine. Blood still streaked her face, and wth the way her claws were still out, it was clear that her whole body coiled with a violence that had shifted direction.

Not toward Aldric.

Toward someone else.

My gaze followed hers.

There was… There was someone. There was a girl.

Recognition hit me in a way that made my chest tighten. I knew that face. Not from here, not from now, but from a night that still sat wrong in my memory, like it had never settled properly into place.

The night of the accident.

The night everything changed.

She stood in the doorway like she had always been there, like she hadn’t just appeared out of nowhere. She stayed calm and still despite the fact that the Grand Luna was chraging toward her. There was something unsettling about it, the way her expression didn’t change or react to the chaos around her.

I didn’t think about it.

There wasn’t time.

I reacted.

My fist came up and slammed into Aldric’s face with everything I had left. I felt the impact travel through my knuckles, felt the give of cartilage as Gabriel’s nose broke under the force. Blood spilled immediately, hot against my skin, and his grip loosened.

I didn’t stop.

I hit him again.

I couldn’t feel sorry about it. There was no time for guilt about using Gabriel’s face as a punching bag when Morrigan was closing in on that girl with murder in her eyes.

“Morrigan, no!”

She didn’t hear me. Or she didn’t care.

The girl didn’t even move. She just raised one hand, almost lazy in the gesture.

And I felt the charge in the air, even from where I was.

Morrigan flew backward.

Like an invisible hand had grabbed her and thrown her with enough force to send her crashing through the window behind her. Glass shattered. The sound of it breaking was almost delicate compared to the heavy thud of Morrigan’s body hitting something outside.

“No!!!!”

The scream tore from my throat, raw and desperate.

I started toward the window, but the girl’s voice stopped me.

“She’ll be fine.”

I turned to look at her. Really look at her.

She was young. Younger than me, maybe. Her features were delicate, almost fragile, but there was nothing fragile about the way she held herself. She stood in the wreckage of the room like she owned it.

“I did not intend to harm her,” she said. Her voice was soft. Conversational. Like we were discussing the weather instead of the fact that she’d just thrown a woman through a window. “I’m just here for you… To take you.”

“Over my dead body.”

I charged.

Every muscle in my legs screamed as I pushed off the floor, closing the distance between us in three long strides.