To ruin an Omega - Chapter 432: Meet your maker 2

Chapter 432: Meet your maker 2

FIA

Valentine approached my left arm. He adjusted the restraint there, exposing more of my inner elbow. The vein that ran along the crook of my arm.

Perfect for a blood draw.

I looked past him to where Number Four stood shaking, her hand continuing its transformation into something that didn’t belong on a mortal body.

“If you want to live, help me get free, and I will have mercy.”

My voice stayed level and calm. I made it an offer, not a plea.

The girl stared at me for a long moment.

Then she scoffed and looked away.

I turned my attention back to Valentine as he brought the needle closer to my arm.

Something inside me shifted.

It started small. A warmth in my palms that spread through my fingers, up my wrists. But this was not the familiar blue glow of healing. This was different. Cooler and precise.

It reminded me a lot of the olive branch and the garnet stone.

This was Athena’s gifts settling into place like they’d been waiting for exactly this moment.

Valentine paused. He looked at my face, and whatever he saw there made him tilt his head slightly.

“Wow, the look of death.”

His tone held curiosity rather than concern. Like he was cataloging my expressions for later analysis.

“What are you going to do? Heal me to death?”

I felt the power take root inside me. Felt it spread through my body like water finding every crack and crevice. The sensation I got from both the garnet stone and the olive branch pulsed once against my palm, even though I couldn’t see them in the physical world. Still, it felt as though it had sunk into my skin and become part of me.

“No.”

I held his gaze.

“This.”

I flicked my finger.

The movement was small. It should have been nothing, just a careless twitch of skin and bone.

But the air bent with it.

Something unseen snapped tight between us, like a wire pulled too far. The pressure hit him a heartbeat later, sudden and violent, as if the space around his body had decided to reject him.

Valentine didn’t just move. He was taken.

His feet left the ground first, balance stolen before he could fight it. Then the force followed through.

His body slammed into the cobblestone wall with enough force to crack the stone. The impact echoed through the space, sharp and final. He crumpled to the floor, the breath driven from his lungs, the syringe still clutched in his hand, and he didn’t move.

I turned my attention to the restraints, to the metal that had pinned me down only moments ago, built with the kind of confidence that assumed anything caught in it would stay caught. They weren’t meant for someone like me; they were meant for worse, stronger things, and that alone should have been enough to keep me still.

I reached for them anyway, not with my hands.

The power came fast, almost impatient, slipping around the metal like it had been waiting for this. I felt along the edges without touching them, sensing where the strength held and where it thinned out, where the structure gave just a little if you pushed the right way.

So I did.

The metal didn’t give easily at first. It held, stubbornly, then started to strain under the pressure. The sound came next, sharp and ugly, like something being forced past its limit, and then it broke. Not all at once, but enough. Enough for the rest to follow.

The restraints shattered apart, tearing loose from my wrists, my ankles, my torso. Pieces hit the ground in uneven bursts, loud in the quiet, then quieter as the last fragments fell still.

And just like that, it was over.

I pulled in a breath and sat up.

Every muscle in my body protested the moment I moved. Pain shot through my ribs, settled deep in my hip, and throbbed behind my skull like something trying to split it open. It didn’t matter. I could move, and that was enough.

I was free.

“What the fuck!”

Number Four’s voice cut through the ringing in my ears, sharp enough to pull my focus. I turned toward her just as she threw her hands up, panic already written across her face.

I felt it before I saw it.

The air around me thickened, pressing in the same way it had when she used it on Morrigan. That invisible force came at me again, harder this time, like she was trying to crush me outright instead of testing it.

It never reached me.

Whatever she sent unraveled halfway there, breaking apart before it could touch me, like it had nothing to hold on to. It scattered, thinned, then vanished completely.

She stumbled back, eyes wide, something like fear finally cutting through her confidence.

I didn’t give her time to recover.

I moved.

My hand closed around her wrist, the one marred by those bark-like lesions, rough under my grip. I squeezed, hard enough to feel the bones shift beneath the ruined skin, to feel the exact moment resistance started to give.

Her first finger bent back too far.

The crack was sharp and clean, the kind of sound that didn’t leave room for doubt.

She screamed.

I didn’t stop.

The second finger went next, then the third, each one breaking with the same ugly snap, each one folding at an angle that looked wrong even as I forced it there. She fought me, twisting, trying to yank free, her other hand clawing at mine, but it didn’t matter.

I was stronger now.

Faster.

And I remembered.

I remembered her standing over me, her fists slamming into my face while I begged her to stop, remembered the taste of blood, the way she didn’t hesitate, not even once.

The fourth finger broke.

Then the fifth.

By the time I was done, her hand hung useless between us, fingers twisted out of shape, nothing left in it but pain.

I shifted my grip and moved up her arm, feeling along the bones until I found what I was looking for. The radius and ulna. I pressed into both at once, cruelly steady and deliberate.

The break came louder this time.

Her scream tore out of her, high and ragged, the kind of sound that should have brought someone running. It didn’t. There was no one else here, just her, just me, and Valentine slumped against the wall like he’d been discarded.

She dropped to her knees.

I stayed standing, looking down at her as she clutched her arm to her chest, trying to hold it together like that could undo what I’d done. Tears ran down her face, mixing with snot, her breath coming in broken pulls. Up close, she looked younger than I remembered. Too young for this. Too young for whatever he’d turned her into.

“I did offer you my hand.”

My voice sounded flat, stripped of anything soft. It reminded me of the monster I had just sent flying, of the way he’d said her name, or what passed for it.

Number Four.

She looked up at me with wet and unfocused eyes.

“What is happening?”

The words stumbled out of her, raw and desperate, like she needed something to make sense more than she needed the pain to stop.

“How can you attack him? How do you have the gift of small miracles?”

She searched my face like there was an answer there, something she’d recognize.

“I watched you. I watched you a lot. All you had was healing.”

I smiled.

It didn’t feel right. It sat wrong on my face, too sharp at the edges, but I didn’t drop it.

“Things change.”

I flicked my hand again.

She went flying back, her body lifted and thrown like she weighed nothing. She hit the wall hard enough to matter, her head snapping against the stone with a dull crack that echoed in the room.

Her eyes rolled, her body going slack before she even slid down.

By the time she hit the floor, she wasn’t moving anymore.

I turned back toward Valentine.

He was starting to come around, slow and unsteadily. His hand lifted to his head, fingers pressing into the spot where he’d hit the wall. When he pulled them away, there was blood on them, bright against his skin.

I stepped toward him, and that was when something shifted.

It wasn’t gradual. There was no warning, no sense of power building, just a clean break from one moment to the next. One second, the air felt normal; the next, it didn’t.

Then it hit.

Lightning dropped straight into my chest, white and blinding, like something had split the sealed space open just to find me. The pain wasn’t sharp or dull; it was everything at once, too much to hold onto, too much to even understand.

My body locked up.

Every nerve lit at the same time, every muscle tightening until I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think past the sheer force of it. My heart stuttered in my chest, my lungs seized like they’d forgotten how to work, and my mind couldn’t keep up with what was happening inside me.

I went down.

I barely felt the ground when I hit it. There should have been an impact, something solid, something separate from the rest, but there wasn’t. There was only the current still running through me, crawling under my skin, tearing through me like I wasn’t built to hold it.

My vision washed out.

White, then nothing, then white again, flickering like it couldn’t decide which one to stay on.

And somewhere through it, distant and warped, I heard Valentine laugh.