Chapter 141: Disgust Of A Brother

Oracle Pov

The heavy white silk of Lorali’s veil felt like thorns in my hands.

I sat on the very edge of the unmade mattress in my bedroom, my shoulders hunched so low my chest felt crushed under the weight of my own lungs. It had been so long since I had been back inside my own room. My hands were covered in raw, healing scars from my days in the cell, the physical price of my time behind bars and they trembled as I held the delicate fabric.

It was the same veil she had worn on the day our lives collided. Would our lives be different if we had never met at the gala? If she had graduated a year later? Would things have played out differently, or were we always doomed to end up here?

I stared at it blindly, my bruised face illuminated only by the dim morning sunlight filtering through the heavy curtains.

"Have you completely lost your mind, Oracle?!"

Oril’s voice slammed through the quiet room. He was pacing furiously back and forth across the hardwood floor in front of me, his jaw swollen and purple from his fistfight with Torin yesterday, his dark eyes burning with a dangerous mixture of rage and utter disbelief.

"Look at you!" Oril shouted, pointing a shaking finger directly at my face. "Look at what you’ve let yourself become! You’re sitting on the edge of a bed holding a piece of cloth like a pathetic, grieving ghost while she treats you like literal dirt under her shoes! You’re a member of the Spade Pack! You’re an Alpha, Oracle! Where in the hell is your backbone?!"

I didn’t answer. I didn’t even lift my eyes from the veil. I just traced the edge of the fine embroidery with my thumb, feeling every jagged stitch.

"She has you on an actual leash!" Oril continued, his voice rising until it echoed off the high ceiling. "She walked into our living room yesterday, commanded you like a dog, and you just followed her around like a brainless servant! She is manipulating you! She’s evil, Oracle! Can’t you see that?! She’s pulling you straight into a psychological trap, playing on your guilt, turning you against your own blood, and you’re just bowing your head and begging for more!"

Oril stopped right in front of me, grabbing my shoulder and shaking me violently. "Stand up to her! Grow a damn spine! You cannot keep falling under her spell like this! You’re letting a broken, bitter Omega run your entire life, making a mockery of the Spade name in front of everyone!"

He kept going, a relentless, furious stream of words washing over me. He lectured me on pack pride, on honor, on how a real Alpha handles a crisis, screaming at me to pull myself together and put Lorali back in her place.

Finally, the silence in my chest snapped.

"You don’t get it," I whispered. Oril stopped mid-sentence, dropping his hand from my shoulder and blinking at me in sudden frustration. "What did you say?"

I slowly raised my head, my dark, hollow eyes meeting his. "You don’t get it, Oril. You don’t understand a single thing about what’s happening here."

"I understand that my brother is acting like a broken doll—"

"I deserve everything," I cut him off, my voice dropping into a raspy, steady tone that carried no heat, no defiance, only absolute, crushing truth. "I deserve every single insult. I deserve every ounce of humiliation. In fact, in my eyes, she isn’t doing enough. She should be dragging me through the streets in chains. I shouldn’t even be alive right now, Oril. The fact that I am breathing air while she carries the scars I gave her is an insult to the universe."

Oril let out a harsh, disbelieving laugh, throwing his hands up in the air. "Are you listening to yourself?! You sound insane! All of this suffering, all of this misery in the pack right now, is because of her! It’s her fault! She’s the one who chose not to leave! She chose to stay in this territory! She had dozens of eligible, high-ranking packs begging to take her in after her family fell, but she chose us! She chose to stay here and poison our lives!"

"She chose this pack," I barked out, my voice finally rising as a sudden flash of agonized conviction cut through my numbness, "because Torin and I are fated mates! She was tied to us by blood and destiny before she even set foot in this city!"

"Then she should have fought harder to leave!" Oril snarled back. "When things got toxic, she could have walked away! But she stayed!"

"She couldn’t leave!" I yelled, standing up from the bed, the white veil clutched tightly in my right hand as I confronted my brother face-to-face. "At some point, I know she had enough! I know she wanted to run as far away from the Spades as humanly possible! But she couldn’t leave because of what I did to her! Because I placed a venomous bond on her!"

Oril froze. The furious expression on his face flickered, his dark eyebrows pulling together in a sharp, bewildered furrow. He stepped back, looking at me as if I had spoken a foreign language.

"A... a what?" Oril asked, his voice suddenly dropping its aggressive edge. "What the hell is a venomous bond? I heard Walter say something about it back when I was at the trailer park.."

I let out a heavy, ragged sigh, the breath escaping my lungs. I looked down at the white veil in my palm, the utter horror of my own actions crushing down on my ribs all over again.

"A venomous bond," I said quietly, every word tasting like ash in my mouth, "is what happens when an Alpha rejects an omega right after putting his mark on her. It infects their nervous system. It turns their own blood into a crawling fire. Black veins crawl up their skin, their organs begin to fail, and every second they are physically away from the Alpha who rejected them, their body tortures them from the inside out."

Oril stared at me, his mouth opening slightly, the color slowly draining from his face.

"I rejected her," I whispered, tears burning the back of my throat, though I forced them back. "I rejected her after placing that exact mark upon her neck. She didn’t stay here to ruin our lives, Oril. She stayed because if she walked more than ten miles away from me, her heart would have stopped beating. I trapped her here. I turned her life into a living hell. This is all my fault. Every drop of blood, every tear, every ounce of hatred she has for us... I created it."

Oril stood entirely speechless in the center of the room, his jaw slack, his furious posture completely collapsing under the weight of what I had just revealed.

Before he could find his voice to speak—

SLAM

The bedroom door snapped open, banging hard against the drywall.

Lorali stood in the doorway. She was dressed impeccably in high-waisted black tights with a black shirt to pair and sneakers. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, and her dark eyes swept over the two of us with complete, icy indifference. She didn’t look at the mess in the room. She didn’t care about the violent argument she had just interrupted.

"You," Lorali said, her eyes locking onto mine, her voice carrying a sharp, non-negotiable command. "Let’s go. I have somewhere to be, which means you have somewhere to be." As if struck by an invisible spell, my entire body reacted before my brain could even process the thought.

I shot up from the edge of the bed immediately. I dropped the white veil onto the nightstand, smoothed down the front of my dark shirt, and stepped forward, my posture instantly shifting straight.

Oril snapped his head toward me, looking at me with a mixture of sheer horror and profound pity as I practically scrambled to reach her side. I avoided his eyes completely, turning my head away, unable to bear the look of disgust on my brother’s face. I didn’t care what Oril thought. I didn’t care if the entire pack thought I was pathetic. If Lorali called, I moved. That was the law of my existence now.

"Two paces," Lorali reminded me softly without looking back as she turned on her heel and glided down the hallway.

"Yes," I murmured, instantly slowing my stride, falling into position precisely two paces behind her.

We rode the elevator down to the underground parking garage in total silence. The crisp morning air in the subterranean structure was freezing, but Lorali didn’t even shiver, holding herself with rigid, aristocratic grace. She walked straight past Torin’s fleet of heavy black SUVs and stopped beside my own personal vehicle, a sleek, low-slung dark grey luxury sedan with tinted windows.

She turned her head slightly, looking at me over her shoulder. "Can you drive?" I bowed my head immediately. "Yes. My ribs are mended enough. I can drive."

"Great," Lorali exclaimed, a small, patronizing smirk touching her lips as she pulled open the passenger side door. "Now I finally have a personal chauffeur. Which means I won’t have to nag Scarlet to drive me back and forth." She slid effortlessly into the plush leather passenger seat.

I walked around to the driver’s side, opened the door, and climbed into the seat beside her. The cabin instantly filled with her scent. The moment I turned the key in the ignition, the powerful V12 engine purred to life, illuminating the dashboard in soft blue light.

"Where are we going?" I asked softly, keeping my hands resting lightly on the leather steering wheel, my eyes fixed straight ahead.

Lorali didn’t even look up from her phone screen. Her manicured thumbs were flying across the glass, her face illuminated by the bright blue glare. "Drive to the Falcons ice rink," she commanded flatly.

Before I could stop myself, before my brain could filter the lingering, protective Alpha instinct that still buried itself deep beneath my guilt, the question slipped out of my mouth. "Why?"

Lorali’s thumbs instantly stopped typing.

The silence inside the luxury sedan turned razor-sharp, heavy enough to crush steel. She slowly turned her head, her brown eyes locking onto the side of my face with a look so cold, so lethal, that my blood physically ran cold in my veins. "I don’t have to tell you anything," she said, her voice dropping into a low, terrifying whisper that echoed in the enclosed space. "You don’t ask questions. You drive."

A wave of pure shame washed over me. I swallowed hard, my knuckles turning white against the steering wheel as I pressed my lips into a tight line. "I’m sorry," I rasped out. "I’m sorry." I shifted the car into reverse, backed out of the parking bay, and accelerated smoothly up the concrete ramp, breaking out into the chaotic, rain-slicked street.

As I navigated through the heavy morning traffic, keeping my eyes strictly on the road, a quiet, bitter realization settled deep into my chest. I glanced briefly at her reflection in the side mirror—watching her casually scroll through her phone, completely unbothered by my existence.

This is going to be one heck of a long life, I thought to myself, letting out a silent, invisible sigh.

Lorali POV

I reclined my leather seat slightly, crossing my legs at the ankle, completely ignoring the giant, battered Alpha sitting in the driver’s seat. He was driving with absolute, hyper-vigilant precision, keeping both hands at ten and two, checking his mirrors every three seconds, keeping the cabin temperature at precisely seventy degrees because he had noticed me tucking my hands into my jacket sleeves earlier.

It was pathetic. It was humiliating for him. And it was deeply, intoxicatingly satisfying for me.

Yet, despite the quiet victory of having Oracle thoroughly broken at my feet, a bitter residue lingered in the back of my mind from earlier this morning. My thoughts drifted back to the kitchen, back to Walter’s insufferable, gentle face.

He wasn’t upset. He had stood there, looking so calm, so infuriatingly at peace after coming out of his heat. Even after I told him that his reputation was destroyed, even after I tried to rub their ruin in his face, Walter had just smiled at me and told me to let go of my anger.

My jaws clenched as I stared out the rain-streaked passenger window. Who did he think he was to pity me? Who gave him the right to act like he was spiritually enlightened while I was the one trapped in darkness? He thought he could act like a saint now, offering to help me and wishing me happiness as if his past actions hadn’t helped tear my life apart.

No. I refused to let Walter’s pathetic, condescending peacefulness depress me. I refused to let his sanctimonious speech ruin my mood or strip away the high of my victory. He was just coping. He was weak. They were all weak, and if Walter wanted to play the saint while his pack burned down around him, I would gladly watch him burn alongside them.

My phone buzzed in my hand, glowing with a new incoming message from Astrid, snapping me out of my thoughts.

Astrid:

LORALI! Tell me you are alive! I just woke up and my head feels like a construction crew is renovating my skull!

I let out a soft, amused hum, my thumbs flying across the screen as we stopped at a red light near the commercial strip.

Me:

I’m alive and perfectly sober. You, on the other hand, tried to fight a fire hydrant at 2:00 AM because you thought it was looking at you funny.

Astrid:

IT WAS AGGRESSIVE, LORALI! IT HAD AN AURA! Anyway... more importantly! Are we going to the VIP lounge party at Club Eclipse tonight?! Say yes or I will cry into my green smoothie!

I paused, looking up from the screen for a brief second to catch Oracle watching me in the rearview mirror. The moment his dark eyes caught mine in the reflection, he flinched, violently snapping his gaze back to the road as the traffic light turned green.

A slow, dark smile spread across my face.

Me:

Count me in. But I’m bringing my new accessory with me tonight. He needs to get used to standing in loud, crowded rooms while I enjoy myself.

Astrid:

Ooooh! You must tell me who he is!

Me:

It’s a surprise.

I locked my phone screen, slipping it into my designer handbag, and looked out the passenger window as the grey concrete buildings of the city center gave way to the sprawling glass dome of the Falcons Ice Rink.