Chapter 3 #2
Hate that after everything—after ten years of survival, of violence, of becoming the kind of monster that makes other monsters nervous—I can still be brought to my knees by the loss of letters.
But those letters were my lifeline.
My proof that the world outside existed.
My reminder that somewhere, somehow, someone chose to know me.
And now—
Now I'm back at square one.
Alone.
Unfavored.
Surviving in a space that only wants me to become more insane than saved.
Maria's hand finally completes its journey, reaching across the counter to grip my wrist. Her touch is warm, gentle—the kind of human contact I've trained myself to flinch away from.
I don't flinch now.
I'm too tired.
"Give me the letter," she says softly.
I look up at her, blinking through the tears that won't stop falling.
"You already made the effort to write it." Her voice is firm now, decisive. "I'll send it. Consider it... a final courtesy. But this will be the last time, sweetheart. After today, I won't be able to help you anymore."
The envelope shakes in my grip.
I don't want to let go.
Letting go feels like giving up. Like admitting that this fragile thread connecting me to someone outside these walls is about to snap forever.
But what choice do I have?
Slowly—so tediously, it hurts—I release the letter into her waiting palm.
"Thank you," I whisper. The words feel inadequate.
Thank you for this crumb of kindness in a world designed to starve me.
Maria tucks the envelope carefully into her apron pocket, treating it with a reverence that makes my chest ache.
"There's something else you should know," she says, and the heaviness in her tone makes my stomach drop all over again. "The new rules... they're not just about postal services."
Should I possibly be surprised?
"What else?" My voice comes out flat. Dead. The voice of someone who's already bracing for the next blow.
"The art sector. Performance spaces." Maria's eyes flick to my ballet shoes—the mismatched red and pink stained with dried blood—and something like understanding passes across her face. "I know you dance, yes?"
I nod slowly.
Dance. The only thing besides letters that keeps me sane. The only way I can purge the darkness without spilling blood. The only...
"New requirements are being implemented.
I don't know all the details, but..." She hesitates.
"I think it's some sort of punishment. Restrictions on who can access the performance spaces and what activities are allowed.
It's unfair…but if you could maybe figure out a way around it? A temporary pack arrangement, or—"
"A pack." I laugh again, but there's no humor in it. Just the hollow sound of someone watching their last refuges burn. "Right. Because Alphas are just lining up to bond with the crazy Omega who's killed sixteen people and writes letters in blood."
Maria winces.
"I'm just saying...there might be options. Loopholes. This place is brutal, but it has rules, and rules can be manipulated."
Rules can be manipulated.
The words sink in slowly, finding purchase in the strategic part of my brain that's kept me alive this long.
She's right.
Ruthless Academy runs on rules—twisted, sadistic rules that favor the strong and crush the weak, but rules nonetheless. And rules, by their very nature, have gaps. Weaknesses. Ways around them if you're clever enough to find them.
Am I clever enough?
I guess I'm about to find out.
"I'll look into it," I say, and my voice sounds almost normal. Almost stable. "Thank you for... for being kind."
Maria shakes her head, a sad smile crossing her weathered face. "It's not necessarily kindness, sweetheart."
I pause, halfway to turning away.
"Your loyalty to this man…your pen pal…it's impressive." She pulls the letter from her pocket, looking at it like it's something precious. "Five years of writing to someone you've never met. Blood on every seal. Commitment like that...it's rare. It's beautiful."
The tears threaten again.
I blink them back savagely.
"I hope maybe one day," Maria continues, her voice soft, "he'll find where you are.
Rescue you from this cycle. Because that's what it's like, isn't it?
Being stuck in the heart of Ruthless Academy.
It's a cycle. Violence and survival and more violence, spinning round and round until you can't remember what it was like to be anything else. "
The words hit me like a physical blow.
A cycle.
Violence and survival, and more violence.
Round and round and round...
I say nothing.
What is there to say?
She's right. She's absolutely, devastatingly right. And hearing it spoken aloud—hearing someone else acknowledge the hamster wheel of horror I've been running on for a decade—makes something inside me want to curl up and never move again.
But I can't afford that.
Can't afford weakness.
Can't afford anything except the mask I've spent years perfecting.
So I plaster on my brightest, falsest smile—the one that makes people think I'm fine, I'm great, I'm absolutely not falling apart at the seams—and spin on my heel to face her one last time.
"Hey," I say, and my voice is sugar-sweet with an edge of broken glass. "Maybe he'll come rescue me like Prince Charming. Sweep me off my feet and steal me away from all this madness."
Maria's eyes are too knowing. Too sad. Too full of the understanding that we both know that's never going to happen.
Fairy tales don't exist in Ruthless Academy.
Only nightmares.
I turn away before she can respond, before I can see the pity in her expression, before I can feel anything else.
The aisle stretches before me—that narrow corridor between counter and wall, throat-like and suffocating—and I walk through it with my head held high and my heart slowly bleeding out inside my chest.
My footsteps echo in the empty space.
One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four.
Even numbers.
Safe.
Except nothing feels safe anymore.
The outlet I've clung to for five years—those letters, that connection, that fragile thread of hope—has just been severed. And in its absence, I can feel the darkness creeping in. The despair I've held at bay through sheer force of will, through counting and tapping and dancing until my feet bleed.
What do I do now?
What do I hold onto?
What keeps me from finally, completely, falling apart?
My toe catches on something.
I look down, distracted, and realize one of my shoe ribbons has come untied. The pink one—the ghost shoe, the soft one, the reminder of who I used to be.
Of course, I think bitterly. Yet again, something else is falling apart.
I crouch to retie it, my fingers moving through the familiar pattern: loop, wrap, pull, tuck. Eight motions. Even number. Safe.
The door opens.
I don't see it happen—my eyes are fixed on my shoe, on the ribbon, on the small task I can actually control—but I hear it. The creak of hinges, the rush of outside air, the soft sound of footsteps approaching.
Then I stand.
And collide directly with someone's chest.
The impact sends me stumbling backward, my balance—usually impeccable, honed through years of ballet—failing me completely. My arms pinwheel. My feet scramble for purchase. The world tilts dangerously—
A hand catches me.
Strong fingers wrap around my wrist, grip firm but not bruising, steadying me with an ease that speaks of someone who's used to catching things. Used to being fast. Used to moving before others even realize something's wrong.
Then the scent hits me.
And oh.
Oh.
Vanilla sugar, soft smoke, ozone after a lightning strike.
It crashes into my senses like a tidal wave, enveloping me, surrounding me, sinking into my pores until I can't tell where it ends and I begin. My head spins—actually spins, the room tilting and swirling like I've had too much to drink—and for a moment I forget how to breathe.
This isn't normal.
This isn't the way scents usually affect me.
Usually, I can catalogue them. Analyze them. File them away in the part of my brain that tracks threats and allies and everything in between.
But this—
This scent blossoms into a sensation of tranquility I’ve never yearned to experience before.
I look up.
And the world stops…
He's beautiful.
That's the first coherent thought that surfaces through the haze of vanilla and smoke: he's beautiful in a way that hurts to look at.
Taller than me by half a foot, maybe more. Slim and pretty in a way that defies traditional Alpha aesthetics—all sharp cheekbones and soft mouth and a jawline that could cut glass. His build is lean, flexible, the kind of body that's been trained for movement and escape rather than brute force.
And his hair—
Bubblegum pink.
The exact same shade as mine.
It falls in soft waves around his face, slightly longer on top, catching the fluorescent light and glowing like cotton candy spun from dreams. Like we're matching. Like the universe decided to dress us in the same impossible color just to fuck with my already-fractured sanity.
His eyes find mine, and I feel the impact like a physical blow.
Pastel green with flecks of pink-gold that shimmer when he blinks. Wide, almost innocent-looking, framed by lashes so long they're practically indecent.
But there's nothing innocent in the way he's looking at me.
Nothing soft in the calculation behind that pretty gaze.
He's assessing me.
Cataloguing me.
The same way I catalogue threats in combat, he's reading my body language, my expression, the rapid rise and fall of my chest as I struggle to breathe through the overwhelming wall of his scent.
"Sorry," I squeak.
The sound that comes out of my mouth is barely human. High-pitched, breathless, nothing like the controlled voice I've spent years perfecting. I sound like a startled mouse. I sound like prey.
I hate it.
His head tilts.
It's such a small movement—barely a few degrees—but something about it makes my heart stutter. Like he's a predator who's just spotted something interesting.
Like I've become a puzzle, he's deciding whether to solve or devour.