To ruin an Omega

Chapter 334: SOS 1

CIAN

I opened the door to my study and shut it behind me with enough force that the lock caught on its own. The click was quiet but just as final. I stood there for a second, my hand still on the brass handle, letting the silence of the room settle over me like a second skin.

Then I moved.

The desk was where it always was. Heavy oak, dark enough to swallow light, positioned at an angle that gave me a view of both the door and the window. I had sat behind it a thousand times. I had signed documents there. Made decisions that changed lives. But today I wasn’t interested in paperwork.

I pulled the drawer open. The middle one, second from the left. The wood slid smooth and silent on its tracks. Inside were the usual things. Pens. A letter opener I never used. A few folded documents I hadn’t gotten around to filing. And beneath all of that, tucked into the corner where no one would think to look twice, was a small panel built flush into the bottom of the drawer.

I pressed my thumb against it.

It warmed under my touch. Then it clicked. A soft mechanical sound, barely audible, and the panel lifted. Beneath it was a compartment. Narrow but deep and just wide enough for what I had put there.

Madeline’s phone was there.

I picked it up. The screen was dark and cold in my hand. I slipped it into my pocket without looking at it. Then I reached for the pin I kept on the inside lip of the drawer. Small thing. Silver. Sharp enough to do what I needed it to do.

I pressed the tip into my palm and dragged it across the skin just hard enough to break through. The pain was bright and immediate but I didn’t flinch. Blood welled up in the cut, a thin line of red that pooled in the center of my hand before it started to drip.

I closed the drawer. The glass panel sealed itself again with another soft click.

I walked toward the bookshelf on the far wall. It was tall. Floor to ceiling. Filled with books I had read and books I never would. The spines were leather and cloth and some were so old the titles had faded into illegibility. But I wasn’t looking for a book.

I stopped in front of the third shelf from the bottom. Right where the corner met the wall. There was a spot there. No mark. No indication. Just a place where the wood was slightly smoother than the rest. I pressed my bleeding palm flat against it.

The blood soaked into the wall.

It practically drank it. The red spread from where my hand touched, crawling outward in thin tendrils that began to spin. They moved with purpose, curling and intersecting, forming shapes that looked almost like letters but weren’t. Runes. Old ones. The kind that didn’t belong to any written language I had ever studied but that I understood all the same because they were part of this estate.

The patterns glowed faint and red. Then they pulsed once. Then twice.

The wall shimmered.

It didn’t open. It didn’t slide or swing or fold. It just changed. It was solid one moment. Translucent the next. I could see through it now. I could see the darkness on the other side, the beginning of a staircase that led down into the earth beneath Skollrend.

I stepped forward.

The wall resisted for half a second, like pushing through a membrane, and then I was through. I felt the shift behind me. The wall solidified again. Anyone looking at it now would see nothing but books and stone. No door. No seam. Just a wall.

The stairs were old.

Older than the estate. Older than my father’s rule. Older than his father’s. They were carved from stone that had never seen sunlight, worn smooth in places by generations of feet that had walked this path before mine. The air smelled different down here. It was cold and damp. Like the inside of a grave that had been sealed for too long.

I descended.

There were passages under Skollrend. Plenty of them. Most of them had been built for practical reasons. Quick escapes if the estate was ever under siege. Hidden routes for moving supplies or people back then without being seen. My father had shown me some of them when I was young. He had told me their locations. Their uses. Their limits.

It was later on in life that he showed me this one.

Because this passage wasn’t like the others. This one had been built with magic. Not just stone and mortar. Blood magic. Dark magic. The kind that bound itself to the ruling bloodline and recognized no one else.

The walls were warded. I could feel them even now, the hum of protective spells layered so thick they made the air vibrate. They were designed to repel most forms of attack. Most forms of intrusion. Fire wouldn’t burn here. Blades wouldn’t cut. Spells would shatter before they reached their target.

And there was a cloaking spell woven into the foundation itself. Anyone who stepped into this passage without Alpha blood would find themselves turned around. Confused. They would walk in circles until they gave up or until the passage decided to spit them out somewhere else entirely.

But I was ruling Alpha blood. The only ruling Alpha left in this house that knew this part of the secret passages existed.

My father had kept it secret. His father before him had done the same. It was tradition. A failsafe. A place to hide if everything else fell apart. A place to plan. To wait. To strike from when the time was right.

And right now, it was the perfect place to keep her.

The stairs ended in a long corridor. Narrow. Low-ceilinged. The stone here was darker, almost black, and the wards were so concentrated I could see them if I looked closely enough. Faint lines of light that pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat.

I walked until I reached the threshold.

It looked like nothing. Just more corridor. But I could feel the cloaking spell humming in front of me. A barrier that separated the passage from the room beyond. I took a breath and stepped through.

The spell parted around me. It recognized my blood. It let me pass.

And there she was.

Madeline.

She was sitting in a chair in the center of the room. Her wrists were bound behind her, ropes wrapped tight enough that I could see the red marks on her skin even from where I stood with my better eyesight. Her ankles were tied to the legs of the chair. Her hair was a mess. Her face was pale. Tear-streaked. Her eyes were wide and red-rimmed and when she saw me, something in her expression broke.