Page 104 of Run Little Omega

"Wait," Blaim says, something like fear finally entering his voice. "The courts would value?—"

I don't let him finish. With every ounce of will I possess, I direct the suspended ice toward him in a single, devastating surge. Thousands of crystalline needles drive into his flesh simultaneously, each carrying the cold of ancient winters.

He releases me with a howl of pain, staggering back as ice penetrates his skin from every direction. Unlike the single blade I drove into Prynn's heart, this attack comes from everywhere at once—less precise but impossible to defend against.

I collapse into the stream, coughing as air returns to my lungs. Through watering eyes, I watch Blaim's desperate attempts to remove the ice needles, each effort only driving them deeper.

"What are you?" he gasps, amber eyes fixed on me with a mixture of terror and awe as frost spreads through his veins, visible beneath his skin in branching patterns.

"I don't know anymore," I answer truthfully, watching as the Wild Magic works through him, ice reaching for his heart with merciless intent.

Blaim falls to his knees in the stream beside me, blood and ice mixing in the water between us. The beautiful patterns that once shifted across his skin grow rigid, fossilized by spreading frost. His eyes—still fixed on mine—glaze over as the cold reaches his heart, freezing it mid-beat.

"Neither human nor fae," he whispers, his final words carried away by the current as he topples forward into the reddening water.

I remain kneeling in the stream long after he stops moving, my body trembling with shock, pain, and the aftermath of whatever power just surged through me. The forest has gone utterly silent, as if holding its breath in the wake of what it witnessed.

When I finally find the strength to rise, I look down at my hands with new understanding. Frost still clings to my fingertips, but now tiny silver threads run beneath my skin like metallic veins, pulsing with power that doesn't belong to Cadeyrn's claiming but to something older, something that was always mine.

The wound across my back burns with each movement as I drag myself to the stream bank. Blood soaks the remnants of my clothing, each step leaving crimson footprints on white stones. I need shelter, need to treat these injuries before infection sets in, but exhaustion pulls at me with gravity's insistence.

I manage three more steps before collapsing against a nearby tree, its silver bark cool against my feverish skin. Through our stretched bond, I sense Cadeyrn's growing alarm—he feels my injury, my depletion, though distance mutes the specifics. Part of me wishes he would come, would find me here broken and bleeding. The rest fiercely guards this moment of terrible, necessary transformation.

Because that's what happened today. Not just the killing of the Raveling Brothers—though that alone would mark me forever—but the awakening of something the courts have spent centuries trying to suppress. Wild Magic flowing through human veins, responding not to fae protocol but to primal need.

I press my palm against the tree bark, feeling its living energy respond to my touch. The forest knows what I am becoming. Perhaps it always has.

"Help me," I whisper, not sure if I'm speaking to the trees, the magic, or some forgotten deity who might still walk these woods.

To my amazement, the forest answers. Roots shift beneath me, creating a natural hollow against the tree's massive trunk. Branches bend downward, their silver leaves forming a canopy that shields me from view. Even the wound on my back seems to burn less fiercely, as if the very air around me works to soothe rather than irritate.

The Wild Magic flows differently now, not in controlled bursts for attack or defense, but in gentle waves that sync with my breathing, my heartbeat. It feels less like wielding power and more like becoming part of a greater whole—a living system that recognizes me as kin rather than master.

I curl into the hollow the roots have formed, no longer fighting the exhaustion that pulls me toward darkness. The cillae across my skin pulse faintly, but beneath them, those new silver threads grow more pronounced, spreading in formations that follow no court design but some older, forgotten pattern.

As consciousness fades, one certainty remains: whatever emerges from this hollow when I wake will be neither fully human nor fae, but something the courts never intended to create when they established the Hunt's brutal protocols.

A vessel for Wild Magic answering to no alpha and no court.

Just to itself—and to me.

CHAPTER37

POV: Cadeyrn

I feelher pain like a blade between my ribs.

The claiming bond stretches between us, thin but unbroken, vibrating with her fear and rage as she faces the Raveling Brothers without me. My muscles coil with the instinct to run to her, to tear apart anything that threatens what's mine. The ancient magic beneath my skin pulses in response, lines of power that spent centuries dormant now awakening to emotions I was taught to suppress.

Yet I remain where I am, beneath the ancient oak at the edge of the central haven. She needs this distance. Needs to process the truth about the cullings, about my role in her mother's death, about the court protocols I authorized for centuries without question.

The bond between us shudders with sudden, violent intensity—Briar's magic erupting in self-defense. The Wild Magic answers her call, flowing between us despite the distance, despite her rejection of me. I taste copper in the air, feel the Raveling Brothers' synchronized hunting patterns disrupted by her unexpected power.

Pride surges through me, fierce and primal. She doesn't need my protection. She never did.

And yet...

The memory rises unbidden—my first Hunt as a young prince, barely a century old. Standing beside my father at the Gathering Circle, watching as court physicians examined claimed omegas. Their clinical efficiency as they sorted the "suitable" from those deemed "incompatible." The omegas' expressions as they realized what "culling" truly meant.

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