To ruin an Omega - Chapter 450: Blood is thinner 4

Chapter 450: Blood is thinner 4

CIAN

But the word felt thin now. Useless even.

Fia stared at Dimitri with an expression I could not fully read. There was recognition there. Old and buried, something she had maybe hoped to never face again. And beneath that, something that looked dangerously close to fear.

“Answer me,” Dimitri said quietly.

His eyes never left her face.

Fia’s lips parted, closed, and parted again, like she was testing words she did not want to speak.

The silence stretched.

I stood there between them, my mind racing, trying to piece together what the fuck was happening. Dimitri claimed Fia was his granddaughter, and while I had connected that to her stepmother, Isabel, it had become increasingly clear that was not the case. Fia clearly recognized him from somewhere, and the way he sounded made it seem like it had been a short and one-time thing. Recently enough, too, if his presence here meant something specific, something that made her afraid.

And I had no idea what any of it meant.

“Fia,” I said her name more softly this time. A question more than a command.

She finally looked at me. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to see the storm behind her eyes, the way she was holding herself together through sheer force of will.

Then she looked back at Dimitri.

“I know exactly who she was,” Fia said.

Her voice came out steady. Cold. Nothing like the warmth I was used to hearing from her.

“Good,” Dimitri said. He straightened his shirt where I had wrinkled it, smoothed down the fabric with deliberate movements. “Then you understand why I am here.”

“No,” Fia said. “I do not.”

Dimitri’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “No?”

“You had nothing good to do with her.” Each word came out sharp and precise, like she was carving them into the air between them. “You were simply a rapey Alpha who played a hand in fucking up her life. So I am curious as to why I should understand why you are here?”

The use of that insulting title sent a visible ripple through him. His shoulders tensed. His jaw worked.

“I did not know what Pauline was doing. What she had done. I swear to you, I did not know.”

Fia laughed. The sound came out broken and bitter, nothing resembling humor in it.

“You did not know,” she repeated flatly. “Your wife sold my grandmother and your daughter to a warlock for the most vile experimentation to get rid of them, and you had no idea. Is that what you are telling me?”

“Yes.”

“Convenient.”

Dimitri flinched. Actually flinched as though she had struck him.

“I am not asking you to forgive me,” he said. His voice had gone quieter now, rougher around the edges. “I am not asking you to understand. I know what I am. I know my sins. The things I did. The things I allowed to happen under my roof, under my watch.”

He took a breath.

“But I want to make it right. Please. Let me try to make this right.”

He moved forward. Just a step. His hand lifted like he meant to reach for her, to touch her shoulder or pull her into an embrace.

“Stay back.”

Fia’s voice cracked on the command. I watched tears form at the corners of her eyes, watched them gather and cling to her lashes without falling.

“Please,” she whispered. “Just stay back.”

Dimitri froze. His hand hung suspended in the air between them, useless and unwanted.

“You are just as bad as your wife,” Fia continued. Her voice shook now, trembling with the effort of keeping herself together. “You let her do those things. You were the reason she did those things, even. You practically turned a blind eye while pretending your hands were clean.”

“I know,” Dimitri said.

The admission came out raw and painful.

“I know,” he said again. “You are right. I am complicit in everything she did. I know my sins. But I took care of her. The monster is dead. I made sure of it. To protect you.”

The words landed wrong. I saw it in the way Fia’s entire body went rigid, in the way her breathing changed, became shallow and quick.

“To protect me?” she asked.

Her voice had gone dangerously soft.

“You think killing your wife protects me? You think that makes any of this better?”

Dimitri opened his mouth and then closed it as he seemed to realize there was no good answer to that question.

“Athena is dead,” Fia said.

Each word fell like a stone into still water.

“And so is my mother. Those were the people that might have needed your protection… Those were the people you were supposed to protect, considering you were the reason they ended up in that fate in the first place, yet those were the people you failed; they are all gone. There is nothing left to make right. Nothing left to fix.”

She took a shaky breath.

“I want nothing to do with a rapist who believes fixing the mess he made entitles him to my life. You mean nothing to me, and you will mean nothing to me in the future. Nothing will change that.”

Dimitri’s face crumpled. For just a moment, he looked like a man who had lost everything, who had walked all this way hoping for something he would never receive.

“Please,” he said. “I just want to help you. To be there for you. To give you what I should have given them.”

“Staying away from me will be what protects me.”

Fia’s voice came out stronger now. Certain.

“You want to help? You want to make amends? Then get back in your car, drive back to Northern Ridge, and pretend you never found me. Pretend this conversation never happened. That is the only thing you can do for me now.”

Dimitri stood there for a long moment. Silent. Staring at her like he was trying to memorize her face, trying to hold onto something he knew he was about to lose.

Then he nodded slowly.

“If that is what you want.”

“It is.”

“Then I will respect it.”

He took a step back. Then another. Creating distance between them that felt both necessary and devastating.

“But if you ever need anything,” he said quietly. “If you ever change your mind. You know where to find me.”

“I will not.”

“If…”

Fia said nothing in response.

Dimitri looked at me then. Really looked at me for the first time since this whole conversation had derailed into something I still barely understood.

“Take care of her,” he said.

It was not a request. It was something closer to a plea.

I did not respond. I simply refused to give him the satisfaction of acknowledgment. I just stood there, watching him, waiting for him to leave.

He turned slowly. Walked back toward the gates with his shoulders straight and his head up, but I could see the weight of it pressing down on him. Could see the way each step looked like it cost him something.

His wolves fell into formation around him. They did not speak, nor did not ask questions. They just moved with him toward the exit, leaving the same way they had come.

The gates groaned open. Metal scraping against metal in the growing darkness.

I watched until they were through. I watched until the gates closed behind them. Watched until the sound of their vehicles faded into nothing.

Then I turned to Fia.

She stood exactly where she had been. Frozen in place. The tears that had gathered in her eyes were falling now, trailing down her cheeks in silent streams.

“Fia.”

I moved toward her carefully. Slowly. Like she was something fragile that might break if I approached too fast.

She did not look at me. Instead, she kept staring at the gates, at the empty space where Dimitri had been.

“I guess he killed Pauline,” she said.

Her voice came out hollow and distant.

“He killed her to protect me. To make amends for what she did.”

I reached for her and pulled her against my chest. She came without resistance, letting me wrap my arms around her and hold her there while she shook.

“And I sent him away,” she whispered into my shirt. “I sent him away because I could not stand to look at him. Because every time I see his face, I remember what happened. What they did. What they allowed.”

Her fingers curled into the fabric at my sides. Gripping tight like she was afraid I might disappear too.

“Did I do the right thing?”

The question broke my heart.

I pressed my face into her hair, breathed in her scent, tried to ground myself in the reality of her here, alive, safe in my arms despite everything.

“I do not know,” I said honestly. “But it was your choice to make. Not his. Not mine. Yours.”

She nodded against my chest. Small movements that I felt more than saw.

“Can we go inside?” she asked quietly. “I do not want to be out here anymore.”

“Yeah.”