To ruin an Omega

Chapter 298: For every monster 1

HAZEL

“What do the orbs mean?”

The sentinel turned back to the painting. His expression remained pleasant and professional. Like we were discussing the weather instead of something that felt strangely important.

“The blue signifies the natural gift the goddess blessed them with. To create. To fix the broken and restore what was damaged.” He gestured toward the glowing sphere in the woman’s left hand. “It was said that a healer’s touch could mend wounds that would kill an ordinary wolf. They could cure sickness, ease pain, even bring someone back from the brink of death.”

I looked at the red orb. The way it seemed to pulse with heat even in the static painting. The way the colors bled together where blue met red, creating something violent and beautiful at the same time.

“So I assume the red is to destroy and unfix then.”

The sentinel’s smile faltered. Just for a second. Then it returned, but dimmer. More uncertain.

“I really do not know.” He shrugged. “It has been so long. Records from that time are fragmentary at best. But healers would have probably carried a different name if they had a nature like that. Destroyer doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.”

“Right.”

He moved along the wall, his footsteps echoing in the gallery. I followed. The paintings blurred together for a moment until he stopped in front of another one.

“There are more. This actually tells a story even you must know very well.”

I looked at the image. It wasn’t a painting in the traditional sense. More like a mosaic. Thousands of tiny colored tiles forming a scene that made my stomach turn.

A woman. She was bound and her body was bent in a way that suggested pain and more importantly submission. In her bound arms, she managed to hold a child made of gold. Literal gold. The baby glowed like it had been dipped in precious metal. Its umbilical cord was still connected to its belly, then stretched back to connect to her. Above them stood a fat bellied man, his hand outstretched toward the child. Behind him, several other men. All with the same greedy expression. All reaching for her.

I knew this story. Everyone did.

“When Alphas started to covet the powers of healers and wanted that power in their direct lineage.”

The sentinel nodded. “Every werewolf today probably has healer blood burning through them, although that age of power is now dead as it can be. Aside from the Goddess stripping away her given gifts, the blood has been diluted beyond recognition after generations of breeding programs that ultimately failed to produce what those Alphas wanted.”

I stared at the bound woman. At the way the artist had captured her face. She did not hold resignation. Neither did she carry acceptance. The only thing you could really make out was the blank, empty exhaustion. Like she’d stopped fighting a long time ago.

“The goddess ending a class of shifters sounds cruel to me. Does it not?”

The sentinel was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice carried something I couldn’t quite identify. Sadness, maybe. Or just weariness.

“Her children cried to her and she listened in the best way she could.”

“As someone who lost what made her unique, I don’t think it was the best way.” The words came out harder than I intended. I didn’t care. Selene could go fuck herself. “They did nothing wrong and everything that made them special was taken away. The Alphas and Lunas who did that to them didn’t even get to pay.”

“They didn’t win though. Everybody lost.”

The voice came from behind us. Deep and authoritative. The kind of voice that expected to be listened to.

I turned.

A man stood in the gallery entrance. He had salt and pepper hair cut short and neat. He was also clean shaven, though I could see the shadow of stubble starting to show on his chin. He was fit too. Handsome in a way that suggested he’d been stunning when he was younger. He looked a bit like Lysander. The same sharp cheekbones. The same cold assessment in his eyes that were as deep as the forest but more intense somehow. Like whatever made Lysander work had been refined and perfected in this man.

This had to be his father.

The sentinel confirmed it by bowing low. “Welcome, Alpha Wenzel.”

Wenzel waved at him like he was shooing away a fly. His eyes stayed on me.

“You must be Pauline’s granddaughter.”

I bowed. The motion felt awkward and forced. I hated this. But I did it anyway because that’s what you did when you met your future father-in-law.

“It’s lovely to meet you, future father-in-law.”

He smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes.

“That does make me feel old.” He walked toward me. His movements were fluid. Predatory in a way that set my teeth on edge. “Wenzel will be fine.”

He stopped next to me and looked at the mosaic painting. His expression didn’t change. Looking at the depiction of a bound woman and stolen children seemed to him as casual as admiring a landscape.

“Sometimes what seems cruel is necessary.”

I waited and didn’t respond. Something told me he wasn’t done.

“What used to make a pack, aside from number and the wits and most of the time brawn of the Alpha in charge, was its healer.” He tilted his head, studying the golden child in the mosaic. “But not everyone was cut from the same cloth. Some healers were more blessed than others. No one really knew why. Perhaps it was just the goddess having her favorites or perhaps it had more to do with genetics.”

He paused. The silence stretched.

“Eventually conflict would have been born from that. Healers would become commodity. They’d leave and renounce packs like new shoes the second better offers hit. So it was smart for the Alphas and Lunas of that generation to do what they did. If everyone was special, if you didn’t need to rely on another whose heart you really didn’t know, then you wouldn’t need to uselessly fight for what belonged to you in the beginning.”

I turned to him and stared at him directly.

“You make it sound like their bodies belonged to the Alphas.”