To ruin an Omega

Chapter 330: Salt Stream

ALDRIC

The spoon slipped.

I did not drop things. I was not the kind of man who dropped things. And yet there it was, catching the edge of my plate with a sharp little ring that cut right through the room and brought every pair of eyes to me at once. I felt them. Every single one.

I picked it up. I adjusted it in my hand. I let the silence close back over it like water over a stone.

What the fuck was going on. I looked back at Cian and he was talking again. Like everything was fucking fine.

“Oh,” I said breaking his small talk. I still needed a second. So I used the word to buy it. “Really. It is surprising to hear. I’ll be honest.”

Cian looked at me with the same unhurried ease he had worn all through breakfast. Nothing tight in his jaw. Nothing guarded behind his eyes. Just a man eating his eggs and delivering information the way you might read out a weather report.

“Like I said, Uncle. It was this morning. Very early.” He reached for his juice, turned the glass slowly before lifting it. “I was surprised myself. But I think it was time.”

I made a sound that I hoped passed for agreement and looked back down at my plate.

It didn’t make sense. That was the thing sitting in the center of my chest, taking up too much space. Madeline could not disappear quietly. She was not built for quiet exits. I had made and unmade that girl long enough to know the shape of her, the way she clung to things she wanted and pushed at the edges of situations she found herself. She would not have packed a bag before breakfast and slipped out without a word. She didn’t have that kind of fucking freedom.

Unless something had changed.

But I had my girl in a cage so sealed, it would be impossible to get out. Why the heck would that have changed? How?

I realized I was eating faster and made myself slow down. I set the spoon against the bowl with deliberate care and reached for my brioche instead, tearing a small piece along the seam. The bread was warm still. I did not taste it.

Something had happened. Something had moved her out of this house before the rest of us had finished sleeping, and no one at this table seemed particularly troubled by it except for me. I looked around once, casually, the way a man might scan a room out of mild interest. Elara had her eyes on her plate. Morrigan was refilling her cup. Fia was staring at the empty chair across from her like she was working something out.

And Cian.

Cian was eating.

I kept my eyes trained at him and said, measured, “You seem to be the only one to have known.”

He glanced up. “Hmm?”

“That she was leaving. You seem to be the only one who knew.”

“Because she told me,” he said, simply. “And I saw her leave.”

There was nothing wrong with the answer. The answer was perfectly reasonable. And yet something in the way he said it, the absence of any friction in it, made the back of my neck feel warm.

“Uncle… You seem…” He stopped and he paused, as if trying to find the question he actually wanted to ask. “Is something wrong?”

I blinked. “No!”

But then I heard how I sounded. I adjusted in my seat slightly and let my expression reset into something more neutral, more composed, more like the version of me that sat at the head of this table and was supposed to be without concern.

“Nothing,” I reassured. “I just.” I set the brioche down and folded my hands around my glass. “I’m a bit close to the girl. You know how it is. I’m surprised she didn’t bid me farewell.”

That did it.

Cian’s eyes came up properly this time. Not the casual glance he had been offering the rest of the table all morning. A real look. And at the same time, from my left, my daughter Elara turned to look at me too. The timing was almost funny. Almost.

“Really?” they both said.

Elara’s voice had a soft note in it. Cian’s had something else. I could not name it immediately and that bothered me.

I looked at my daughter first. I held the look a beat longer than I intended and whatever she saw in it made her drop her eyes back to her plate without pressing further. Good.

“Of course,” I said, keeping my voice mild. “After everything it took to get her here. After all the arrangements. We spent time together. I thought we understood each other well enough that she might at least say goodbye. It would have been the proper thing to do.”

I turned to Elara then, deliberate, because the question needed to look like nothing more than passing curiosity. “Did she tell you goodbye?”

Elara shook her head lightly. “No. But I don’t blame her.” She reached for her water. “She’s clearly going through something. I’d like to think our friendship runs deep enough that she knows I’ll reach out. I’m not worried.”

I nodded. I kept nodding for a second longer than necessary and stopped.

Then Morrigan spoke.

“I might have had something to do with it.”

The table went quiet in a different way. Not the polite, careful quiet from before. Something more attentive than that. I turned toward her.

Cian looked the most surprised I had seen him all morning. “What?”

Morrigan set her cup down. She had the look of a woman about to say something she had already made peace with. “Yesterday. I talked to her. I said some things.” She paused, glanced at Fia with something apologetic in her eyes. “Everyone knows the history. Her history with Cian. I didn’t want her presence here to keep unravelling things that are only just beginning. New starts don’t do well when the past keeps walking through the front door. It breeds resentment. For both people involved.”

She folded her hands on the table.

“What happened to her was real, depressing and sad. I told her I was grateful for what she had given up. I offered her compensation. Significant compensation. She refused it. She has always been stubborn, that one.” There was a small pause then. “I didn’t think I’d gotten through to her at all, honestly. But maybe I did.”

I sat very still.

She was saying that she had spoken to Madeline and Madeline had left. She was saying it cleanly and without hesitation, the way people say things they believe completely. And every person at this table was nodding along in quiet agreement, as if this explained everything, as if this tied the whole thing up into something that made sense.

But my piece did not move without permission. That was not how this worked. That had never been how this worked.

I reached for my phone before I knew I was doing it. I had it off the table and in my hand, already unlocking it.

From across the table, Ronan made a sound. A short, sharp half-cough, the kind that meant nothing and everything at the same time. I felt his eyes. I did not look at him. But I felt them.

That told me enough and I proceeded to I put the phone down.

I picked up my spoon again.

Something was very wrong. I could feel it the way you felt a change in pressure before a storm, not in any one thing, but in the accumulation of small things. The timing. The ease. The way no one seemed to find any of this strange. The way Cian had eaten his way through the whole announcement as if he had rehearsed being calm about it.

“Well,” I said.

Everyone looked at me.

“If that’s the case.” I reached for my glass. “I wish her the best.”

“Right,” said Cian. And he went back to eating.

I did not look at him again. I focused on my plate and finished what was on it, chewing slowly and carefully, because the last thing I was going to do was give anyone at this table the impression that I was anything other than entirely fine. I talked when it was required of me. I laughed once, briefly, at something Morrigan said. I refilled my own water.

But I was counting the minutes.

Cian set his napkin down first. He stood, picked up his phone from beside his plate, and glanced once in Ronan’s direction. Something passed between them that I couldn’t read. Then he looked around the table with that easy, morning warmth he wore so well.

“If you’ll excuse me. I have some business to see to.”

He left through the main doors. I listened to his footsteps until they disappeared.

Then I stood. Unhurried. I placed my napkin on the table with the same deliberate calm I always did. I offered Elara a small nod and touched Morrigan briefly on the shoulder as I passed.

I walked out of the dining room.

I turned the corner.

Only then did I dial Madeline.

It rang four times. Then five.

After that, the flat disinterested recording of her voicemail came through. Telling me she wasn’t available and to please leave a message.

I pulled the phone from my ear. Looked at it and put it back.

“Pick up the phone,” I said. My voice came out very quiet. That was intentional. Quiet was more honest than loud, in moments like this, I could not appear desperate and weak. “Pick it up right now. Or I swear to you. I will ruin you. I will ruin everything attached to you. You know I mean that.”

I ended the call.

I stood in the corridor with my phone at my side and the morning light coming in at the wrong angle through the window at the end of the hall, and I made myself breathe evenly.

Something had gone wrong. Something had been moved that I had not moved myself.

And whoever had done it had done it well enough that I was standing alone in a hallway with a dead call and no clean way to ask the question that mattered most without showing exactly how much I needed the answer.

I put the phone in my pocket.

I walked back toward my room.

I need a safe space to reach out to Valentine and give him a fucking piece of my mind.