To ruin an Omega

Chapter 147: The contingency

CIAN

It was supposed to be over.

I had promised myself that much. I was married Fia. I had tried to move forward. I had built walls around the parts of me that still ached when I thought about what Madeline and I used to be.

Fia dominated those places now.

But seeing her standing there tore those walls down like they were made of paper.

It told me a part of me still held on to her.

My chest hurt. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. And I knew, I absolutely knew, that being here right now was going to hurt Fia. But I couldn’t make myself walk away. I couldn’t make myself turn around and go back to the ballroom where mate was and reassure her it was all in the gutters now.

Maybe this was about closure. Maybe it wasn’t. I didn’t know anymore.

“Why would you come then?” I asked. My voice came out harsher than I meant it to. “You know how rocky my relationship with that bastard is. You know he hates me. And you chose to come anyway?”

Madeline’s smile was small. Sad. “My father has a relationship with him. Business ties. It would’ve looked strange if we ignored the invitation completely.”

“Right.”

“And we aren’t dating anymore.” She lifted her chin slightly. “I don’t owe you anything, you know.”

The words hit harder than they should have. “Right.”

“You do know Julius only invited you for one reason, don’t you?” I said.

“To mess with you?” Madeline’s laugh was bitter. “I doubt I’d have that effect considering how quickly you left me in the cold.”

“You wanted me to abandon my father’s legacy.”

“I wanted you to choose me!”

Her voice cracked on the last word. The sound echoed in the empty hallway. For a second neither of us said anything. We just stood there staring at each other while years of hurt sat between us like something that existed physically.

Her sentence made me scoff. “We were on a middle ground.”

The sound she gave was sharp and dismissive. “There was no middle ground with you, Cian. What you wanted me to accept was insane.”

“What I wanted?” The anger came fast. Hot. “You were the one who gave me ultimatums. You were the one who demanded I choose between you and everything my father built. Everything he died for.”

“He didn’t die for it. Neither did he die because of it. Life just happened. It is sad. Very sad. But you didn’t have to uproot your own life to keep his legacy. A legacy that would have still stayed in your family. With your own blood.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Nothing I said would matter. We’d had this argument a hundred times before and it always ended the same way. With both of us hurt and neither of us willing to bend.

Madeline took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. “You haven’t changed.”

“Neither have you.”

“Not that my fears were wrong.” Her eyes dropped to my ring finger. Then back up to my face. There was no ring on my finger. But I got the message. “I see the new werewolf in your arms.”

My jaw clenched. “I married her to please my mother.”

“Do you love her?”

The question felt like a trap. Like no matter what I said, it would be the wrong answer. I didn’t want to hurt Madeline. I had done that a thousand times already and all the signs did point to the idea that al her fears has been valid. “I don’t owe you an answer.”

“Right.” Madeline cleared her throat. Her expression shifted into something more neutral. More controlled. “I heard about your mother. The rot. That’s horrible. Is she better now?”

I stared at her. Studied her face for any sign that she actually cared. That this wasn’t just polite conversation meant to fill the silence.

“What do you care?”

“Cian—”

“It’s not the rot.” The words came out flat. Final. “It’s alchemized poison.”

I turned to leave. Started walking back toward the ballroom. Back toward Fia and the life I was supposed to be building. The life that didn’t include Madeline and all the ways we’d broken each other.

“I know.”

I stopped.

“My father got your voicemail,” Madeline continued. Her voice was softer now. Gentler. “It was distressing.”

I turned around slowly. “What?”

“That’s partly why I came. When my father decided he wasn’t going to honor Alpha Julius’s invitation.” She took a step toward me. Then another. “He doesn’t want me to see you at all. He worries about what will happen. What state I’ll be in again. But I couldn’t help myself. Especially when I got Alpha Aldric’s call.”

My stomach dropped. “Aldric called you?”

“He was begging for my help.” Madeline’s eyes searched my face. “Our talk led me to believe you would be here. So I came.”

The contingency. This was what my uncle had been talking about. The backup plan he’d made when the witch fell through. He’d called Madeline. He’d practically made sure she would be here.

“Why would you do me any good deed?” The question came out quieter than I meant it to.

“Because regardless of what happened to us, I still care about you, Cian.” Her voice broke slightly. “I do. I don’t want you to be hurt. So be sincere with me. How is your mother?”

My pride screamed at me to lie. To tell her everything was fine. To say we had it handled and we didn’t need help from her or anyone else. But the words wouldn’t come. Because they weren’t true. Because my mother was dying and every lead had turned into a dead end and I was running out of time.

“You haven’t changed one bit,” I said instead.

Madeline smiled. It was sad. Small. “Have any of us?”

I swallowed hard. My throat felt tight. “It’s not good.”

“How not good?”

“She’s dying.” The words tasted like ash in my mouth. “The poison is killing her slowly. My healer and my doctor are doing their best but it is alchemy. Only magic can fix it.”

“And you need a witch.”

“Yes.” I rubbed at my face. My eyes still felt hot. Still felt wet. “But apparently I killed one. Or that’s what the rumor says. So now they’ve formed some kind of coalition. They won’t help me. Any of them.”

“You didn’t kill anyone.”

“I know that. You know that. But they don’t care about the truth. They care about the story that Gabriel has set. And the story says I’m dangerous. That helping me means putting themselves at risk.”

Madeline was quiet for a long moment. She just stood there watching me. Reading my face the way she always used to. Like she could see straight through every defense I tried to put up.

“What if I could help?” she said finally.

“No.” The word came out sharper than I intended. “I can’t ask that of you.”

Madeline didn’t flinch. She didn’t smile either. She just watched me, steady and infuriatingly calm. “You didn’t ask. I offered.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“It does,” she said softly. “Because this isn’t about old obligations. Or guilt. Or trying to fix what we broke.” She paused. “This is about your mother.”

My jaw tightened. “You don’t understand what you’d be stepping into.”

“I understand alchemy,” she replied. “I understand poisons that rot from the inside out and magic that’s been twisted to look like nature. I grew up around it, Cian. You know that.”

I dragged a hand through my hair. The corridor suddenly felt too narrow, the air too thick. Somewhere beyond the walls, music drifted from the ballroom, laughter and glasses clinking, life moving on without any regard for the fact that mine felt like it was splitting down the middle.

“And you also understand the politics,” I said. “The covens won’t like this. They’ve already decided I’m the villain in their story. If you help me, you’ll be choosing a side. Implicating your father, yourself and your coven.”

“I already have,” she said.