Page 114 of Run Little Omega

The admission breaks something in me—not forgiveness, not yet, but something close to understanding. My legs wrap around his waist, pulling him deeper as my inner walls clench around him. His knot begins to swell, catching at my entrance with each thrust, the pressure both pain and exquisite relief.

"I went there," he continues, movements growing more erratic as his control slips. "To the Vale. After you left. Saw it all. The graves. The flowers feeding on dying magic." His voice cracks completely. "The water flowing toward your village. Your mother."

His words shouldn't turn the key to my release, but they do—not because of what he did but because he finally saw, finally understood. My body convulses around him as pleasure crashes through me, so intense it borders on pain. The Wild Magic erupts between us, energy spiraling from where our bodies join, patterns matching perfectly as the transformation accelerates.

His knot locks inside me as his release follows, hot jets of cum that should burn but somehow cool the fire raging through my veins. Magic explodes around us, every flower in the Sacred Grove blooming simultaneously despite the season. Through our bond, I feel his completion not just physically but emotionally—centuries of calculated distance crumbling as he experiences pleasure without control, connection without walls.

As his seed fills me in pulsing waves, the claiming magic changes, shifts, becomes something neither Winter Court ice nor human resilience but a third thing altogether—Wild Magic responding to balance rather than dominance. The crimson moonlight bathes us in blood-red illumination, sealing whatever transformation has begun.

And then, still locked together by his knot, I shatter completely.

Sobs rip from my chest, ugly and raw and uncontrolled. I pound against his chest with closed fists, each impact drawing blood that freezes instantly against his skin. The horror of everything crashes through me—the unmarked graves, the dying infants, my mother's poisoned death—with renewed force now that the heat no longer consumes all thought.

"How could you?" I scream, even as his knot pulses inside me, his seed still filling my womb in steady waves. "All those omegas! All those babies! My fucking mother!"

He doesn't try to restrain me, doesn't defend himself. Just holds me through the storm, accepting each blow as his due. Through our bond, I feel his self-loathing, his genuine horror at centuries of complicity.

"I have no defense," he says when my sobs finally quiet to hiccupping gasps, his voice raw with emotion. "I never questioned. Never looked. Never connected the elegant signatures to real people dying in agony." His fingers brush tears from my cheeks with surprising tenderness. "Until you."

His knot keeps us joined, alpha biology ensuring his seed remains inside me while our bodies recover. In the crimson light, I truly see the extent of his transformation—not just the obvious physical changes but something in his eyes. The cold, calculating Winter Prince is gone, replaced by someone I don't fully recognize. Someone still becoming.

"I stood there," he continues, the words clearly costing him. "At the Vale. Saw where they buried pregnant omegas alive. Watched those fucking flowers feeding on dying children's magic." His voice breaks. "Followed the stream to where it joined the river flowing to Thornwick. To where your mother died because of what I authorized."

I want to hate him. Part of me still does. But through our bond, I feel the genuine devastation of his realization, centuries of comfortable certainty shattered by unavoidable truth.

"It's not enough," I tell him, the words coming out flat and tired. "Understanding doesn't fix anything."

"No," he agrees, making no attempt to minimize or defend. "Nothing does. I can only promise it ends. All of it. Whatever it costs me."

Around us, the hunting parties continue to gather, more alphas arriving to surround the Sacred Grove. Their magic tests the ancient boundaries—Summer flames, Autumn decay, Spring growth, Winter ice—seeking weaknesses in protection older than court divisions.

"You need to move," The Hound calls from the grove's edge, his urgent tone breaking through our private aftermath. "The blood moon's zenith is passing. When its light fades, the grove's protection weakens."

Cadeyrn's knot finally recedes, our bodies separating with a slick sound that makes me wince. As we dress in what's left of our tattered clothing, I assess him with new eyes. Not the Winter Prince who terrified me at the Gathering Circle. Not the rutting alpha who claimed me beneath the blackthorn. Something different—a being in transformation, caught between what he was and what he's becoming.

"I can't forgive you," I say, the words coming out matter-of-fact rather than heated. "Not yet. Maybe not ever."

"I don't expect it," he replies, his focus already shifting to the threat gathering outside as the tiny spring flowers continue their cycle of birth and death along his hairline. "Just let me help end what I helped create."

It's not friendship. It's not reconciliation. It's barely even an alliance. But as another wave of court alphas arrives at the grove's edge, I recognize the practical truth.

"We fight together," I decide, magic gathering around my fingertips as I move to stand beside him. "Whatever comes after... we'll figure it out if we survive."

The Hound approaches carefully, eyes flicking between us. "There's a way beneath the Sacred Grove," he explains, nodding toward the stone dais where we claimed each other. "Ancient tunnels that connect to places the courts have forgotten. If you can hold them off long enough for me to open the passage..."

Cadeyrn and I exchange a glance, something like understanding passing between us despite everything still unresolved. Without discussion, we move into position—back to back at the grove's center, magic forming around our hands in identical patterns.

"Ready?" he asks.

"No," I answer honestly, "but do we have a choice?"

Our magic responds in perfect synchronization despite my words, energy spreading from our feet in spiraling patterns across the grove floor. Wild Magic answers our combined call, responding not to dominance or submission but to something new forged in crimson moonlight and shared pain.

Together, we face the gathering storm.

CHAPTER41

POV: Briar

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