Chapter 2
Morning Rituals And Murder
~SERAPHINE~
The quiet parts of Ruthless Academy have a specific quality of silence that most people don't understand.
It's not peaceful.
It's waiting.
The kind of stillness that comes before violence, before screaming, before the wet sound of steel meeting flesh. The kind of quiet that makes prey animals freeze and predators salivate.
I fucking love it.
My ballet shoes make almost no sound against the cracked pavement as I navigate the winding path from the secluded residential section toward the main campus arteries.
The townhomes behind me—each one a testament to survival, to earning the right to exist outside the communal hell of the dormitories—cast long shadows in the pre-dawn darkness.
Mine sits at the end of the row.
Number 13.
Am I surprised it's 13?
The universe has a sense of humor, and I'm apparently the punchline.
Thirteen. The unlucky number.
Except I made it lucky through sheer spite and a body count that would make most people vomit.
The thought makes me giggle—soft, breathy, just this side of unhinged. I clap my hand over my mouth immediately, eyes darting to the shadows between buildings.
Shh. Quiet, quiet, quiet. The hunters are always listening.
My fingers tap against my lips in rapid succession: one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four.
Even numbers.
Safe.
"Seraphine," Ro's voice whispers through the speaker resting against my sternum, "your heart rate is elevated. Are you experiencing anxiety?"
"No," I breathe, barely audible. "Excitement."
"Biologically identical responses."
"Shut up, Ro."
But she's right.
My heart hammers against my ribs like it's trying to escape, and my skin feels too tight, too hot, too aware of every sensation. The cool morning air kissing my exposed midriff. The bite of ribbon against my calves. The weight of my blades pressing against my spine.
I'm alive.
Goodness, I'm so fucking alive it hurts.
The residential section of Ruthless Academy is unlike anything in the other sectors—Hard Knot, Dead Knot, Savage Knot.
Those places have their own flavors of nightmare: communal suffering in Hard Knot's overcrowded dorms, the isolated cabins scattered through Dead Knot's forest where students hunt each other for sport, the brutal pack hierarchies in Savage Knot's compound living.
But Ruthless?
Ruthless gives you the illusion of independence.
Of safety.
Of home…
That's what makes it so much worse.
Because you earn these townhomes. You earn the right to have four walls that are yours, a door that locks, and a space where you can pretend you're human instead of a weapon being honed by violence.
And the cost?
The cost is everything.
Packless Omegas like me—the ones who've survived long enough without bonding, without submitting, without breaking into pretty little pieces for Alpha consumption—we get special consideration.
It's the academy's way of acknowledging that we're either too dangerous or too insane to house with the general population.
I qualify on both counts.
Plus, there's the body count.
Fourteen confirmed kills in three years. Maybe fifteen, but that last one gets fuzzy because I was having an episode, and sometimes my brain blacks out the messy parts.
The academy's official policy is "survive or be killed."
Self-defense is not only legal—it's encouraged. Students who can't protect themselves don't make it past the first semester.
I made it past twelve semesters and counting.
That earns you a townhome.
That earns you respect in the fucked-up currency of Ruthless Academy.
That earns you a reputation that makes people either avoid you completely or stupid enough to try their luck.
The giggle bubbles up again, and this time I let it out—quiet, controlled, just a little hiccup of sound that disappears into the darkness.
Fourteen. Maybe fifteen. How many more before I lose count entirely? Before the numbers stop mattering and it's just… routine?
My mother's voice echoes in my memory, soft and sweet and so fucking painful I almost stumble:
"My beautiful girl. My Seraphine. You're going to do such extraordinary things. The world won't know what hit it."
She'd cupped my face in her hands—small hands, delicate, the hands of a woman who arranged flowers and played piano and never expected to die choking on her own blood while her daughter watched from the wings.
"Mama always knew you were special, baby. So, so special."
Special.
What a word.
What a beautiful, poisonous word.
I was special when I landed my first grand jeté at age six. Special when I got accepted to pre-professional ballet training. Special when scouts from Juilliard started sniffing around, talking about full scholarships and futures so bright they'd burn.
I'm special now, too.
Just in a different way.
The kind of special that comes with a body count and a reputation for creative violence.
My toe taps against the pavement—tap tap tap tap—four times before I force myself to keep walking. The OCD whispers its endless litany of rules and rituals, the ADHD makes my thoughts bounce like pinballs, and the PTSD ensures that every shadow could be the night my parents died playing on repeat.
It's a party in my head.
Population: too fucking many.
"Do you think—" I start, then stop. Clear my throat. Try again, quieter. "Do you think there's a point where you move on? Like, actually move on, not just pretend you're fine while slowly rotting from the inside out?"
Ro is silent for exactly three seconds. I count them.
One. Two. Three.
Uneven. Wrong. Bad.
"I lack sufficient data on human grief processing," she finally responds. "However, research suggests that trauma integration rather than erasure is the more realistic goal."
"So that's a no."
"That's a 'maybe never, but you learn to carry it differently.'"
"Depressing."
"Honest."
I huff a laugh that sounds more like a wheeze.
"Yeah. Okay. Cool. Love that for me."
My mother died years ago. Ten years, four months, and sixteen days, if we're counting. Which I am, because my brain won't let me not count.
Her face—the way it looked in death, slack and wrong and so far from the woman who braided my hair and taught me port de bras—still visits me in dreams.
Sometimes I wake up tasting copper.
Sometimes I wake up screaming.
Sometimes I wake up and don't remember falling asleep, just the terror of watching it happen again and again and again on the backs of my eyelids.
Does it get better?
Fuck if I know.
I'm still waiting to find out.
The path curves, taking me past the last of the residential buildings and into the transitional zone—that grey area between "home" and "war zone" where the rules get fuzzy, and the danger gets real.
The sky is just beginning to lighten at the edges, that pre-dawn grey that makes everything look washed out and ghostly. Sunrise is maybe twenty minutes away. Maybe less.
I like going to the post office this early.
Before the chaos. Before the crowds.
Before the violence reaches its daily crescendo.
Just me and the postal staff who've learned to expect me every Wednesday morning at exactly 5:47 AM, because my OCD demands consistency and my ADHD needs structure or I'll spiral into a three-day cleaning binge that ends with me reorganizing my entire townhome by color, size, and perceived threat level.
The postal workers know me by name now.
"Morning, Sera. Got another letter for your mystery pen pal?"
"Sera, you're here early. Even for you."
"Blood on the seal again? Jesus, kid."
They think I'm insane.
They're not wrong.
But they're kind about it, which is more than most people in this hellhole manage.
So I bring them stolen pastries sometimes, swipe decent coffee from the administrative offices, smile my sharpest smile, and pretend we're all just normal people doing normal things.
Instead of a packless Omega with a body count delivering blood-sealed letters to someone whose name she doesn't even know.
Totally normal.
Completely fine.
Not at all a sign of psychological deterioration.
My hands flex at my sides—open, close, open, close—four times each before I shove them into the pockets of my shredded shorts.
The scent of Ruthless Academy at this hour is distinct: ozone from faulty electrical systems, petrichor from yesterday's rain, concrete dust, and underneath it all—always, always underneath—the sharp metallic tang of old blood.
It never quite washes away.
No matter how much they hose down the plazas, scrub the walls, replace the stained concrete.
Blood has a way of lingering.
Like trauma.
Like memory.
Like the ghost of who I used to be before I became this.
"Ro," I whisper, my breath misting slightly in the cool air. "Status report."
"Current time: 5:39 AM. Temperature: 54 degrees Fahrenheit. Humidity: 73%. Path ahead clear for approximately forty-seven meters. Multiple heat signatures detected in peripheral zones but not in direct—"
She stops abruptly.
My body goes still—that absolute, predatory stillness that comes from years of training, from understanding that sometimes survival means not breathing.
"Ro?"
"Movement detected. Three heat signatures converging on your position from—"
The grin spreads across my face before I can stop it.
Wide. Manic. Hungry.
Oh.
Oh, this is delicious.
I come to a complete stop in the middle of the path, right where the streetlights create a pool of sickly yellow illumination. Making myself a target. Making myself visible.
Come on.
Come on.
Come on.
How long has it been since my last fight? A week? Two? My fingers itch for the weight of my blades, my body practically vibrating with the need to move, to dance, to paint the concrete in arterial spray.
Unlike Dead Knot—where students are encouraged to use any weapon they can get their hands on, including long-distance snipers and homemade explosives that turn the forest into a war zone—Ruthless Academy has specific rules about combat.
Close quarters only.