THE REJECTED OMEGA QUEEN

Chapter 19: The Convincing

"Get behind me." Kael's voice was low, lethal, already shifting his weight between Aria and the man advancing across the crumbling tower floor.

Reyes merely smiled, unhurried, as the stones beneath his palm pulsed brighter, threading dark light up through the walls like veins waking beneath skin. "There's no need for violence tonight, Alpha King. I only wish to speak with her. Perhaps you should ask yourself why you're so desperate to prevent that."

"Because everything you say is a lie wrapped around whatever a person needs to hear," Aria said, forcing steel into her voice despite the tremor she couldn't quite banish. "You told Lyra you'd give her a throne. You told Corvin you'd give him his daughter back. What exactly am I supposed to believe you're offering me?"

"The truth," Reyes said simply. "Which is more than anyone else in your life has ever bothered to give you."

Something in his calm certainty needled at her more than outright cruelty would have. "Then say it," Aria challenged. "If you're so certain I'll listen, say the truth plainly, instead of luring me into towers and burning down everything around me to get my attention."

Reyes tilted his head, something almost admiring flickering across his gaunt features. "Very well." He lowered his glowing hand slightly, though the dark light continued pulsing through the stones beneath their feet. "Your ancestor did not simply bind her brother out of mercy, little queen. She bound him because she was afraid — afraid of what uniting twelve packs under one crown would eventually cost her, afraid of a power so vast it frightened even her. So she buried half of what she was, chained her own blood, and called it wisdom." His eyes gleamed. "I am offering you the chance to finish what she was too afraid to complete. Not chains. Not sacrifice. A true binding, willingly given, that would let you claim the Sleeper's full strength as your own instead of forever fearing it."

"And what happens to him?" Aria asked. "To the Sleeper? Does he simply vanish so you can have what's left?"

Reyes's expression didn't so much as flicker. "He was never meant to exist independently in the first place. He is simply the overflow of power your bloodline was too weak to hold whole. Reabsorb him properly, and there is no separate creature left to threaten anyone at all."

"That's not what he told me on the ridge," Aria said slowly. "He grieved for her. He remembered being her brother, not simply overflow. You're not describing a binding, Reyes. You're describing erasing what's left of him entirely, and calling it a gift."

For the first time, something sharp and impatient cracked through Reyes's composure. "Does it matter what fragments of memory still cling to him? He is a weapon wearing grief as camouflage, Nightshade. I am offering you power beyond anything your ancestors dared claim, and you're going to let sentiment for a monster cost you the chance."

"I'm not," Aria said quietly, "because I don't actually believe you want to give me anything at all." She lifted her chin, some fragile new steadiness settling into her spine. "I think you want my blood spilled during a ritual you control, so that whatever wakes belongs to you instead of me. You've spent this entire conversation trying to convince me it's a gift, because you already know I'd never agree if I understood it was theft."

Reyes's mask finally slipped entirely, patience curdling into something colder and far more dangerous. "Clever," he said softly. "Your mother was clever too, in the end. It didn't save her either."

The confession hung in the air like a blade.

"You," Kael snarled, understanding crashing across his features. "You're the one who killed her fever wasn't natural, was it—"

"She ran before I could finish what I started," Reyes said, almost bored, as though discussing old, unremarkable history. "Twenty-three years is a long time to wait for a mistake to correct itself. I find I'm no longer willing to be patient a moment longer."

He slammed his glowing palm flat against the tower stones, and the entire structure lurched violently beneath their feet, ancient mortar crumbling loose in great, shuddering cracks.

"Get out!" Kael shouted, already grabbing Aria's arm, Lyra hauling a stunned Corvin toward the narrow stairwell as the tower groaned and split around them.

Aria stumbled toward the stairs, the floor tilting sharply beneath her, and in the chaos of collapsing stone and Reyes's furious silhouette advancing through the dust, she felt the pendant at her throat blaze suddenly, violently hot — hot enough to make her gasp, hot enough that some instinct screamed the danger wasn't only the crumbling tower around them.

The last thing she saw before the floor gave way entirely beneath her feet was Reyes's calm, patient smile, and his voice cutting through the roar of falling stone with terrible finality.

"Run if you like, little queen," he called after her. "But you will come to me eventually. Everyone you love always does."