To ruin an Omega - Chapter 440: Ever After?

Chapter 440: Ever After?

CIAN

The terms settled over me like chains.

He was not just asking for protection. He was asking for immunity. Complete and total, extending to everyone I had ever known or would ever know. If I agreed to this, I would be powerless to stop him. He could walk away, disappear, do whatever he wanted, and I would have to let him because the alternative was losing Fia.

My wolf howled in rage, throwing itself against the inside of my skull.

“Sure.” I took a step forward, forcing my voice to stay level. “Let us mark it in blood.”

“No, no.” Valentine jerked back, the blade pressing harder against Fia’s throat. Another thin line of red appeared. “Stay back. Her blood is enough.”

He leaned in close, his lips nearly touching her hair, and whispered something I could not hear.

Then louder, “You consent, since you want to live, right?”

Fia’s voice came out weak and hoarse. “No.”

The blade bit deeper. Blood ran faster now, soaking into her ruined shirt, dripping onto the floor. Valentine’s eyes found mine across the room.

“Cian… Convince your mate.”

The words felt like glass in my throat. “Please, Fia. Just say it.”

She did not respond. Her head hung forward, hair covering her face, and I could not tell if she was still conscious.

“I do not want to lose you.” My voice cracked. “I do not want to lose our baby.”

Her shoulders shook. A sob, maybe, or just the effort of staying upright. But then she nodded, just once, barely visible.

Valentine exhaled. “Good.”

He shifted his grip on her, angling her neck toward him, and that was when I saw it.

Fia’s hand.

The burns that had covered it moments ago were gone. New skin had grown over the damage, pink and fresh, healing before my eyes.

Valentine reached for the blood dripping from her throat. His fingers came away red, and he mixed it with his own blood from a cut on his palm. The moment the two touched, his whole body went rigid.

His eyes widened. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Fia laughed.

The sound was weak and raspy, but genuine. She lifted her head just enough to meet his gaze. “Did it fail?”

Valentine’s face twisted with fury. “What did you do?”

“I am not sure why.” She smiled through the blood coating her lips. “But you must have noticed too. I am resistant to magic.”

Her voice grew stronger with every word, and I realized what was happening.

She had been healing the whole time. Slowly, quietly, while Valentine thought he had her beaten.

“This ends now.”

Fia lifted one hand and pointed at the floor.

Something invisible and massive slammed into the ground beneath us. The stone cracked with a sound like thunder, spiderwebbing outward from where she pointed. Then the entire floor gave way.

We dropped.

The world turned into chaos. Falling debris, smoke, the screaming crack of stone breaking apart. I initiated the full shift mid-fall, my body completing the transformation in seconds. Bones reformed. Muscles rewired. My wolf burst free, massive and built for destruction.

I hit a chunk of falling wall and used it as a springboard, launching myself through the air toward Valentine.

He had let go of Fia when the floor collapsed, his arms pinwheeling as he tried to catch himself on something solid. His face was a mask of shock and terror, all his careful planning shattered in an instant.

I reached him in midair.

My jaws closed around his throat.

Bone crunched between my teeth. Hot blood flooded my mouth, thick and coppery, exactly the way I had imagined it a thousand times. I bit down harder, shaking my head like I was trying to rip prey apart, and felt his windpipe collapse beneath the pressure.

We hit the ground together, rolling through broken stone and splintered wood. I did not let go. My claws dug into his chest, tearing through fabric and skin and muscle, searching for his heart.

He tried to fight back. His hands came up, pushing weakly at my muzzle, but there was no magic left in him. No strength. Nothing that could save him from what I was about to do.

I ripped his throat out.

The flesh came away in chunks, wet and ragged, and blood sprayed across my face and chest. Valentine made a sound, something between a gurgle and a scream, and then his body went limp beneath me.

His eyes stayed open. Fixed on something I could not see. Already empty.

I stepped back, my wolf form heaving with exertion, and looked around for Fia.

She had landed near the far wall, crumpled but moving. Her hands pressed against the ground as she tried to push herself up. Burns still covered parts of her body, but they were fading fast; the glow was gone, but her gift still seemed to be working overtime to repair the damage.

Garrett appeared through the dust and smoke, still partially shifted, his eyes scanning for threats. When he saw Valentine’s body, he relaxed slightly.

“Is he dead?”

I shifted back, the transformation leaving me naked and covered in blood that was not mine. My voice came out rough and raw. “Very.”

Fia got to her feet. She swayed once, then steadied herself, one hand pressed against her stomach. Our bond thrummed between us, stronger than it had been in days, singing with relief and exhaustion and something that might have been triumph.

She looked at Valentine’s corpse, at the mess I had made of him, and her expression did not change.

“Good,” she said simply.

Then she took a step toward me and collapsed.

I caught her before she hit the ground, pulling her against my chest, feeling her heartbeat against mine. Her skin was too hot, fevered from all the healing, but she was alive.

She was alive, and the bastard who hurt her was dead.

That was enough.

For now, that was enough.

I tightened my hold on her, as if easing up even a little would let her slip somewhere I couldn’t follow. Her head rested against my chest, light in a way that didn’t feel right, and I found myself counting her breaths without meaning to. They came shallow and uneven, each inhale brushing my skin just enough to remind me she was still here. My hand moved to the back of her neck, fingers curling there, steadying her, though really I was trying to steady myself. I needed something solid under my hands, something real I could hold on to.

Someone alive.

Those words sat heavily in my chest. It was not exactly relief. No. Not yet. It was just something I kept repeating to stop everything else from creeping in.

Around us, the world was coming back together in pieces. The dust had started to settle, drifting down in slow, lazy spirals, and the noise that had been tearing through the place moments ago had faded into something distant, like it belonged to another scene entirely. Even the bond between us felt different. It wasn’t pulling or straining anymore, nor was it that sharp thread threatening to snap if I moved the wrong way. It just sat there, quiet and steady, like it had finally decided to hold.

Behind me, Garrett let out a breath that sounded like it had been trapped in his lungs for too long. “We need to move. The collapse must have unsettled—”

“Give me a second,” I said.

My voice came out lower than I expected, rough around the edges, like I hadn’t used it in hours.

I looked down at her again, taking in the way her lashes rested against her cheeks, the faint crease between her brows that hadn’t smoothed out even in unconsciousness.

“Fia,” I murmured, softer this time.

Her lashes fluttered, just once, enough to make my chest tighten, but she didn’t wake. Her weight stayed slack against me, and even her breathing stayed uneven.

Then Garrett shouted.

“Alpha Cian, watch out—”

I didn’t even have time to turn.

Something tore through my chest.

There wasn’t any warning, no build-up, just a sudden, violent rupture that stole the air from my lungs in an instant. It wasn’t like being cut, it wasn’t like impact either. It was deeper than that, sharper, like something had reached inside me and decided to rip its way out.

My breath vanished. My body locked up before I could react, every muscle seizing as something cold forced its way through me. I staggered, my balance giving out as one knee buckled, but my arms tightened around Fia on instinct. I couldn’t let go. Not of her.

For a second, my mind refused to catch up with what my body already knew. There was just the pain, bright and overwhelming, and the strange, hollow feeling spreading through my chest.

Then I looked down and saw a blade.

Except it wasn’t a blade, not really. There was no metal, no edge I could recognize, nothing I could make sense of. It looked like air had been twisted into shape, compressed into something thin and lethal, something that shouldn’t have been able to exist at all. It protruded from my chest, wrong in every way, slick with blood that pulsed slowly down its length.

My blood.

The sight of it hit harder than the pain. A sharp, grounding jolt that made everything snap into focus all at once.

My grip faltered.

Fia slipped in my arms, her weight shifting dangerously, and my hands moved before I could think, tightening around her again, pulling her back against me even as my vision started to flicker at the edges. Dark spots crept in, closing in slow and steady, but I forced them back, clinging to what little control I had left.

No.

No, that wasn’t possible.

He was—

A voice brushed against my ear, close enough that I felt it more than heard it.

Soft and quite amused too.

“You really thought it would be that easy?”

Cold spread through me, cutting straight through the heat of the pain, settling somewhere deeper.

I knew that voice.

Valentine.

My teeth ground together as I forced my head up, the movement slow, heavy, like my body was already starting to give up on me. The pain flared with it, sharp enough to make my vision blur again, but I held on, locking onto that sound, that presence.

“You’re dead,” I managed, the words scraping their way out of my throat.

For a moment, there was nothing.

Then a chuckle, low and all too pleased, slipped through the air around me.

“No. You killed a puppet.”