To ruin an Omega

Chapter 329: Sis, manifest 2

HAZEL

Wenzel took his seat at the head of the table.

He looked at me.

I kept my eyes down. I was still working out whether that was the right call. The conversation at the gallery had been almost normal. He had spoken to me like a person speaking to another person, no theater to it. So maybe eye contact was permitted here. Maybe it was expected. But after the Sofiane situation, I needed to be safe.

I stayed down and waited.

“How was your night, Hazel?” he asked.

His voice was the same as it had been before. Pleasant and measured and giving nothing.

But I knew better.

“It was fine,” I said.

“Laslo says he has to punish you.”

I let a beat pass before I answered. “I wasn’t privy to how firm the rules were. I’m getting better now.”

“Well,” he said. “That is good to hear.” There was a pause, and then he continued right where he stopped: “You and Lysander can talk to your heart’s full today. I allow it.”

I allow it? Allow it?

The two words sitting inside that sentence like a fist inside a glove. He allowed it. He allowed a conversation. He allowed the air I breathed and the chair I sat in and probably the particular shade of blue I had chosen this morning without realizing I had chosen it for a reason.

I thought of the dress. I thought of Delta’s face when I’d told her to find me something with innocence in it. I thought about how deliberate that had been.

All of it seemed suddenly useless in this stifling environment.

“Father—” Lysander tried to say, only to be cut off by his father with the raise of his hand.

The man didn’t want to hear it.

Wenzel turned away to look down the table.

“The food isn’t here,” he said.

His voice hadn’t changed. That was the thing. The temperature of it was identical to how he had asked me about my night.

“This streak hasn’t broken in ten years,” he went on. “The fact that we have a guest of honor here. And they choose to disappoint at this particular moment.” He let that word sit. “Unforgivable.”

The side door opened then and two Omegas came through with the speed of people who already knew they were too late. They stopped when they saw him. One of them went to her knees. The tray in her hands rattled but she held it.

“The dish was complex,” she said. Her voice shook. “We wanted the guest to feel at home. We did not mean disrespect. We didn’t mean—”

Wenzel snapped his fingers once.

Her mouth closed. Her whole body was shaking. But she still kept her lips sealed tight. The girl still standing behind her had gone the color of dry clay.

Wenzel stood.

He moved the way I had noticed he always seemed to move. Without urgency. Like the room rearranged itself to accommodate him rather than him navigating around it.

“There is a reason for these rules,” he said. He picked up one of the small cutlery knives from the table as he passed. “They are there to guide this pack. To keep it from falling into despair. When a rule is broken, it shows the weak links.” He looked at the knife for a moment, turning it slightly. “And the best thing to do is cut your losses.”

He turned to look at me and that look me off guard. Underneath the table, I fondled with my hands.

Why was he looking at me, I wondered. What the fuck did he want?

“What do you think?” he asked. “What punishment would you say is deserving of them?”

I looked at him.

Not quickly this time. Not the practiced avoidance I had been running all morning. I let my eyes meet his and I stayed there.

He was watching me with something close to amusement.

That was when the rules again registered in my mind and I quickly averted my gaze.

This, of course, only earned a chuckle from him.

“It is okay,” he said softly. “You can look.”

I considered the question. I considered it the way I would consider anything that could go wrong if I rushed it.

He had told me himself, that night at the gallery. He did not believe in waste.

“They are still integral to this pack,” I said. “This mistake has not happened in ten years. That matters. Punishment should be tendered in equal measure to that.” I paused. “They should carry a reminder. Something that stays with them for days… maybe weeks.”

He was still watching me. Like he was actually going to follow through with what I was going to say and not make this a lesson.

This was meant to mock me. That had to be it. It was what I would do with power like that. It was what anyone would do with power like that.

“Omegas have pathetic healing factors. Wounds and cuts are slow to heal. Bone restoration is even slower.” I kept my voice level. “I believe both of them should lose their left thumb. They can still work. But they won’t forget.”

Wenzel smiled.

It was a full thing. Not the careful version I had seen before. He looked genuinely pleased.

I wondered if that was a red herring of sort. You never knew with these people.

“I like that idea,” he said.

He turned back to the kneeling girl. He took her hand. She did not pull it away. She laid it against the push tray surface herself, fingers spread, like she had already decided this was the end of the argument and the only thing left was to let it happen.

Then he brought the knife down hard.

The sound was immediate. So was the screaming.

Around the table, people flinched. Lysander went very still beside me. Sofiane looked at the ceiling. The girls turned away or stared at their empty plates or pressed their hands flat to the tablecloth.

I watched.

And something in my chest settled. Quiet and warm and entirely certain of itself.

He had taken my advice. Mine. He had looked at me across the dining table and asked me what I thought and then he had done it.

The useless former ideas in my head immediately died. Sofiane and his beautiful rebellion. Sofiane, his slouching resistance and his useful resentment. All of it could wait. All of it was just noise.

There was one person in this building whose attention was worth having. One person whose regard could mean anything in a place like this. One person who sat at the head of the table and decided what was cut and what was kept.

I needed his eyes on me.

I was going to make sure they stayed there.

That was the smart thing to do.