To ruin an Omega-Chapter 368: Bellerophon and the fly 1

ALDRIC

They walked us in chains.

There was no dignity in it at all. It felt like we were already branded as criminals already.

This shit went meant for an Alpha. This was the way dissenting Omegas and power life forms were treated.

The great hall had been rearranged for this. The long tables pushed back. The floor cleared. Six chairs arranged in a curved line at the far end, each one occupied by a face I had known for years. The elder’s circle. Old blood and older law, sitting there with their hands folded and their expressions carefully neutral in the way that people practiced for years before they could make it convincing.

They were not neutral. None of them ever were. Everyone has a side.

But they were very good at pretending.

The crowd that lined the walls was less disciplined. People pressed against each other with their necks craning and their voices low and urgent. I could feel the energy in the room before I heard any individual word. It was charged and uneven and cut in too many directions at once to belong to any single opinion.

Good.

Divided rooms were workable rooms.

A woman near the left wall leaned toward the man beside her and said something I caught only the end of.

"...a witch and a warlock who have wanted this pack to fall for years. She didn’t get the Alpha and now she’s burning everything down over spite."

The man nodded slowly.

Across the hall, a younger sentinel shook his head and muttered something to the woman beside him. She pressed her lips together. Neither of them looked convinced of anything.

Ronan walked just behind me. I could hear his breathing. Measured, as it was controlled. He was holding himself together better than I expected, which was either a good sign or a sign that the fracture his mother had made and that I had seen in his eyes earlier had gone somewhere deeper and quieter where I could not see it anymore.

I preferred not to think about that.

The head elder raised one hand.

The room went quiet in stages. First the people nearest the front, then the sound rolled backward like something draining out through the floor.

"This hearing will come to order."

His voice was deep and practiced and landed in the room without effort. Elder Callum. Sixty nine years old and built like someone who had never once been asked to doubt himself. He had sat in that chair for twenty two years. I had watched him do it. I knew how he moved, how he weighted his silences, and more importantly, I knew what he owed me.

He owed me a great deal.

Cian entered from the side door.

His Omega whore, Fia was beside him.

They took their seats along the observing wall and the room reacted to that too. A fresh ripple of murmuring. Some of it respectful and some of it something else.

Elder Callum looked at me.

"The charges against the accused are as follows."

He began to read.

Conspiracy. Treason. Unlawful use of the Skollrend’s pack resources. Corruption of sentinel ranks. Attempted murder. Kidnap. Attempted kin slaughter. The list went on and his voice stayed flat through all of it. Like he was reading a supply inventory. Like the words meant nothing to him personally.

I listened to all of it.

I watched Callum’s face while he read and I watched the faces of the other elders while he did, and by the time he reached the end I had already mapped who was where. Who was uneasy. Who was working hard to appear impartial. Who had already made up their mind.

Two of them, not counting Callum, were mine.

Elder Pryce on the far left, who had a shipping arrangement with three of my allied packs that would collapse overnight if I went down. Elder Saoirse beside him, who I had kept a very specific secret for twelve years and who had been paying that debt quietly and without complaint ever since.

They were mine.

But even mine had limits and right now both of them, including Callum were sitting stiffly in their seats and not looking at me directly.

There was also was the poison.

The poison was the problem.

My hands were steadier than they had been in the cell but the pale had not left my nails and the heat in my chest had not fully receded. It had dulled to something manageable, which meant whatever Morrigan had used was still working its way through me. Not fast enough to drop me before the trial began, apparently. But present enough that anyone looking closely could see something was wrong.

Which meant I needed them to look.

Elder Callum finished the charges and set down the paper.

Before he could continue, I spoke.

"First."

The word came out clear. I had practiced it inside my head on the walk down here. The weight of it. The timing.

Callum looked at me.

"I need medical attention."

The room broke open.

It was not one sound. It was several sounds happening at once. Laughter from one corner. Sharp disbelief from another. Someone near the back said something too quick for me to catch and the woman beside them responded loudly enough that I heard the word liar before the general noise swallowed it.

"He planned this."

"Why are we even here? We arrested him on the word of people who want us destroyed."

"Look at him though. He does look wrong."

"Of course he looks wrong, he is standing trial."

Elder Callum raised his hand again.

The noise subsided slower this time.

I waited until the room had settled before I continued. Quiet drew more attention than volume. I had learned that before most people in this room were born.

"I was poisoned," I said. "I became aware of it in the cell. I don’t know yet whether this was meant to be a mercy or a message but I know what I feel in my own body and I know what these hands look like."

I held them up.

The pale was visible. The faint tremor less so, but I let one hand drop slightly and let the tremor show just enough before I pulled it back.

Several faces in the crowd shifted. Concern replacing certainty. Not in everyone. But in enough.

"This feels political," I said. "Everything about today has felt political. I was dragged before this circle on the testimony of a witch and a warlock. People who have every reason to want this pack destabilized. People who have been circling this family for years." I paused. "I am not asking to be excused from this process. I want a fair trial. The last thing I want is to die in front of this circle and be remembered as a traitor who poisoned himself to avoid the truth and chose the coward’s way out."

I turned my eyes toward the elder’s circle.

"Bring a healer down here and let them confirm what I am telling you. That is all I ask."

Elder Pryce leaned toward Saoirse and said something under his breath. She nodded once.

Elder Callum looked at Cian.

Cian stood.

"Uncle," he said. His voice was careful. Measured. The voice of a man who had spent a long time thinking about what he wanted to say. "I understand that this feels frightening. But no one in this room is attempting to destroy you without cause. If the testimony brought against you is false, then those who gave it will answer for it. All I am asking is that we determine the truth. Some of what was said is serious enough that I cannot look away from it. I don’t know about any poison. But nobody would have done that to you."

He sat back down.

I looked at him.

He met my eyes steadily and I found, not for the first time, that I genuinely respected the man my nephew had become. Not enough to surrender to him. But enough to acknowledge it privately in my head.

If he wanted a game, I could play a game.

I turned back to the circle.

"Where is your mother, Cian?"

The question landed exactly the way I needed it to. Several heads turned. Cian’s expression did not change but something moved behind his eyes.

I looked at the elders directly.

"She shared wine with me this morning right before I got arrested and started to feel sick. She is currently receiving treatment, I would assume. She ingested some of whatever she put in my mouth." I let that sit for a second. "I am not accusing her of anything today. I am simply noting that the Grand Luna of this pack is absent from a trial she should want to witness if the charges against me are true. I wonder... If the warlock and the witch’s poison convinced her of sins I am not guilty of and she chose to take me out herself."

Callum’s brow furrowed slightly.

The elder beside him, a woman named Vera who I had never fully gotten a grip on, leaned forward in her chair.

"The accused may be telling the truth about his condition," she said to the circle, her voice low enough that I only caught it because I had positioned myself to hear. "We should at least confirm."