I Was The Only Omega In The Beast World

Alex stopped at the edge of the depression and looked down. The shadow didn’t surge toward him the way it had in the dreams—didn’t reach, didn’t press. It simply waited, the way it always had. Patient as erosion. Patient as stone becoming sand.

His mates held their positions without him asking. He felt the cords of their bonds taut and steady at his back, four anchors keeping him tethered to the living world while he walked toward something that had existed long before any of them were born.

"Come out. I came to ask you something before I open the threshold." He pressed his palms flat against the stones.

Then it came out of the darkness. Not as possessing someone’s body as he did before but as his true form. A wisp of darkness.

Silence.

" But there’s a condition. " Alex added.

" Once you’re free, you won’t exact revenge on anyone."

" Once you’re free, you’re allowed to do anything including going around massacring everyone who harmed you. And that will bring attention of headquarters to us. The one who release you. So if you want to be liberated, you either agree to the condition or remain here for eternity. "

And finally it spoke.

The shadow’s voice had no mouth behind it—just that hollow resonance, like sound remembered rather than made.

"I want to be clear about what agreeing means," Alex said. "Not revenge. Not subtle revenge either. No finding loopholes where you slowly make someone’s life miserable and call it something else. The people who imprisoned you here—you leave them alone. The Shadow Lord included."

"Is he?"

[ Taika ]

It was a tiger.

It moved with the liquid grace of a predator who had long ago mastered stillness as a weapon. His dark orange fur, striped in deep, almost black-brown, caught the midday light in shifting patterns that made him look half-dissolved into the caldera’s healing landscape. Pale yellow eyes, that looked hollow and empty , fixed first on the wisp of darkness, then on Alex.

[ This is Taika. He’s also what you all called shadow lord. ] Shadow said. [ When I first met him, he was just a cub, separated from his tribe and taken away by a group of vultures for food. His life barely hanging by a thread by the time those vultures saw my presence and fled.

The shadow’s wisp hovered, its formless edges curling like smoke that refused to dissipate. Taika stood motionless beside it, those pale yellow eyes steady on Alex, neither defiant nor apologetic—just waiting, the way a predator waits when it has already decided the outcome might matter.

Alex let the silence sit. The seven stones in his lap pulsed once, warm and steady, as if reminding him they were still listening. Behind him, at the rim of the depression, he felt the weight of his mates’ attention—Leo’s low, protective rumble vibrating through the bond, Naga’s coiled tension, Zale’s quiet readiness, Lucas’s steady presence, and Drakar’s immense, ancient patience pressing down like a living shield.

"So you sent the rogue beasts," Alex said quietly, not an accusation, just a fact. "You attacked the wolf territory because you thought it would force my hand."

Alex exhaled slowly. "And now?"

The shadow made a sound that might have been amusement or resignation—hollow, echoing. [He learns. Slowly.]

He looked back at the shadow.

The shadow was silent for a long beat. Then:

The words carried weight, like a seal pressing into wax. The air in the caldera shifted—subtly, but enough that the grass at the edges of the depression seemed to lean toward them.