[BL]Reborn as the Empire's Most Desired Omega Chapter 339: Ashes

The villa at Rohan should have been a refuge. Instead, beneath its glass walls and minimalist furniture, it felt like a cage. Afternoon light poured in hard and bright, cutting across polished stone floors and the glitter of a still, chlorinated pool. Every surface looked cold and lifeless, like a showroom stripped after the buyers had left.

Benedict stood at the edge of the terrace, fists braced on the railing, knuckles white. At thirty-three he still had the build of the rising star he’d once been in Palatine, but the set of his jaw and the feverish gleam in his eyes told another story. His phone lay face-down behind him on the table, the last ssage still glowing: Odin arrested, the entire ring purged. In Saha, priests cut down in a single night. Nas he had grood for years, gone in a line of text.

He laughed once, a harsh, cracked sound. "Ashes," he muttered. "They turned everything to ashes."

The air around him prickled faintly, a shimr that betrayed the power he carried and how poorly it was leashed. Without a bonded oga to steady his cycle, the energy that had always made him formidable was now a hot, wild current under his skin, circling like a predator. He had told himself for years he didn’t need anyone, that he was stronger, freer, and purer without the anchor of a mate. But the lie was fraying, and with each loss it frayed faster.

He slamd his palm down on the rail; the tal rang, a hairline crack appearing in the stone ledge beneath. His breath ca fast, chest rising and falling, pupils blown wide.

"Trevor in Palatine, Dax in Saha," he hissed. "Two boys playing at kings, thinking they can shut out." His nails dug crescents into his palms. "Let them. I’ll burn my way back in."

The brandy glass on the table exploded, shards scattering across the polished floor as the flicker of his power lashed out uncontrolled. Benedict stared at the ss, then at his trembling hands, and for a heartbeat sothing close to fear flickered in his expression, not of Trevor or Dax the mad king, but of himself.

Then he straightened, dragging a hand through his hair, eyes still wild but focused now on so distant point. In the bright, silent villa, the hum of his unchecked power pulsed like a second heartbeat. He had lost his network, his cover, and his priests, but not his ambition. The only person who could help or stop him was Lucas Fitzgeralt. The man who had slipped through his fingers once, the man he had broken the second ti, the man who now, impossibly, was back.

Benedict’s teeth ground together. It shouldn’t be possible. In the first life, Lucas had refused him and walked away. In the second, he had been used until there was nothing left, until his breath went silent and Benedict thought the ga ended. Yet here he was, standing in the sun like so untouched heir, wearing Trevor’s crest on his hand as if none of it had ever happened.

The pulse of power under Benedict’s skin quickened, a hot, restless tide that made the glass walls tremble in their fras. "You don’t get three chances," he whispered, though there was no one to hear. "You don’t get to crawl out of my design."

But even as the words left his mouth, a thin thread of doubt word through the anger. He didn’t know how they’d reached this third life. He didn’t understand what had pulled Lucas out of the grave of the second. All he knew was that sohow the boy he’d thought finished now held the one position and the one mate that could ruin him again.

Benedict pressed both palms to the cool glass, breathing hard. "If he’s back," he muttered, eyes narrowing, "then so is my chance to end it properly." The power inside him swirled like a stormfront, untad without an oga to anchor it, his reflection in the glass a distorted, fever-bright shadow of the man he used to be.

He turned sharply and crossed the wide living room, bare feet silent on the stone. With a flick of his fingers the security shutters rolled down and the villa’s network lit up on the wall-sized display. A coded ssage pulsed at the edge of the screen from his remaining servers, those few who had survived the purge and gone to ground. The only tools he had left.

Benedict opened a secure channel, his thumbprint unlocking layers of encryption. Faces appeared one by one, grainy on the encrypted feed. They looked drawn and pale, eyes dilated just enough to show how tightly his presence held them even across a screen. He didn’t have to shout; his voice, low and clipped, carried the sa weight as his pheromones bleeding invisibly through the connection.

"You will go back in," he said, each word precise. "Not as zealots, nor as priests this ti. Fitzgeralt Estate will be your new assignnt. This ti make sure nobody knows that you are there."

No one spoke. A ripple moved through the faces on the screen, the slackness of people whose instincts had been bent to his will for too long. Benedict’s mouth curved into sothing distorted, his madness already stronger than his mind.

"He is the reason your brothers are gone," he continued, voice soft, almost intimate. "He is the reason the purge happened in Saha. Rember that. Every step you take on that estate, rember it’s his fault. Not yours."

A faint hum built in the room, the pheromonal undertone of his power pressing through the connection. The servers nodded in unison, eyes unfocused, and began taking notes.

"Good," Benedict whispered. "You’ll move like water. By the ti Fitzgeralt realises, he’ll already be at my rcy."

He cut the feed and let the screen go dark. The villa fell silent again, only his breathing and the faint vibration of his own power filling the space. Without an anchor, it road restlessly under his skin, a living thing urging him forward. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, then looked back up at his reflection, the young man he still was, and the storm closing in around him.