Chapter 12
The Name That Burns
~KAI~
Iuncross my legs.
Then cross them again—the opposite configuration this time, left over right instead of right over left—because apparently my body can't decide what to do while my brain is busy processing the absolute clusterfuck that just occurred.
"Did that really happen?"
The question comes out flat. Controlled. The voice I've spent years perfecting—the one that says I'm in charge, I'm unbothered, nothing can touch me—even when everything inside me is screaming.
That Omega.
That pink-haired, dual-wielding, clearly unhinged Omega who just cut down six armed men like they were training dummies, pressed a blade to my throat, and then sauntered away like she hadn't just committed multiple homicides in under sixty seconds.
She was magnificent.
And that pisses me off more than anything else.
"And why—" I pinch the bridge of my nose, pressing hard enough to hurt, using the pain to ground myself in something other than the scent still clinging to my clothes, "—does she smell like the sweetest aroma of cotton candy that makes me sick?"
It's not a lie.
The scent is making me sick.
Sick with something I refuse to name, acknowledge, or let take root in the cold, dead thing that used to be my heart.
Because I've spent twenty-seven years building walls around that organ, reinforcing them with violence and duty and the understanding that attachments are weaknesses that get people killed.
I don't get to want things.
Don't get to feel things.
Don't get to stand in a forest clearing with the lingering scent of cotton candy and cherry blossoms and imagine what it would be like to have that pressed against my skin.
That's not who you are, the voice of my father echoes in my memory. You're the heir. You're the weapon. You're the one who does what needs to be done, regardless of what it costs.
Blaze can't fight his smirk.
The bastard has never been able to hide his emotions—every thought he has plays across his face like a goddamn theater production, all dramatic expressions and barely contained enthusiasm for whatever chaos is unfolding around him.
He lowers his blades, sliding them back into the concealed sheaths along his forearms with practiced ease.
"First time I've smelled an Omega and actually enjoyed their aroma," he says, and the appreciation in his voice makes something hot and violent coil in my chest. "Not to mention she's a dual wielder.
" His golden-brown eyes glitter with something that looks disturbingly like admiration.
"Never met a woman who can out-swordplay me. "
"She didn't out-swordplay you," I snap. "You were late."
"Thirty-seven seconds late," Blaze agrees cheerfully. "And in those thirty-seven seconds, she took down six armed men without breaking a sweat. That's not out swordplaying me—that's fucking art."
The admiration is getting worse.
I can hear it building in his voice, see it sparking in his eyes, feel it radiating off him in waves that make me want to punch something.
"Get your hardened cock out of my face," I growl, "and don't fall in love with a cynical Omega who decided to show off."
Blaze laughs.
The sound is bright, genuine, and completely inappropriate for the situation.
"You weren't in the slightest bit turned on by that?"
I don't answer.
Can't answer.
Because the truth is—and I will take this to my grave, will burn it out of my brain with sheer force of will if I have to—I was turned on.
Impossibly.
Devastatingly.
The moment she moved, the moment that first blade caught the light and started cutting through flesh like butter, something ancient and primal woke up in my chest and started wanting.
She fought like a dancer.
Like violence was choreography.
Like every step, every spin, every devastating strike was part of a performance designed specifically to destroy me.
And when she pressed that blade against my throat—when her mismatched eyes locked with mine, blue and green and absolutely fucking feral—I felt something I haven't felt in years.
Alive.
I force the memory down.
Bury it deep.
Lock it in the vault where I keep all the other things I'm not allowed to feel.
"Where the fuck are Sage and Jett?"
The question comes out harsher than I intend, but I need the distraction. Need something else to focus on before I do something stupid like track down that Omega and—
And what?
Ask her how she learned to kill like that?
Demand she explain why her scent makes my carefully constructed walls feel like they're made of paper?
Pin her against a tree and find out if she tastes as sweet as she smells?
Stop.
Stop it.
You're the heir. You're the weapon. You don't get to want.
Footsteps approach through the trees—two sets, familiar, moving with the specific cadence I've learned to recognize over years of fighting alongside them.
Sage emerges first, Jett a half-step behind.
They're both slightly disheveled. Sage's pink hair is messier than usual, his clothes rumpled in a way that suggests hasty dressing. Jett looks composed as always—that eerie, detached calm that comes from years of assassin training—but there's something in his storm-grey eyes that I don't like.
Something that looks like knowledge.
"Sorry we're late," Sage says, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender that's too casual to be genuine. "I was handcuffed."
Blaze and I both turn to stare at him.
Handcuffed?
Sage—the escape artist, the man who's never met a lock he couldn't pick, who's built his entire reputation on being impossible to contain—was handcuffed?
He sighs at our expressions, running a hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration I've rarely seen from him.
"The Omega got me with some special mechanical lock shit." His voice is a mixture of annoyance and... something else. Something that sounds almost like respect. "Bite me."
The Omega.
The words land wrong.
Too casual.
Too familiar.
Like he's talking about someone specific instead of someone hypothetical.
I huff out a breath, forcing myself to ignore the implications for now.
"So is ANYONE going to explain what this emotional bullshit we're all feeling is about?
" My voice rises despite my best efforts to keep it controlled.
"Because I'm trying not to lose my shit at the idea that someone in our loyal pack just accepted an Omega as our pack's, because that's the only logical reasoning for this emotional rollercoaster. "
The silence that follows is damning.
Sage doesn't deny it.
Jett doesn't correct me.
Even Blaze has stopped smirking.
I feel my blood pressure spike.
"Did we forget the purpose of being here?" The words come out sharp, dangerous, each one a weapon I'm throwing at them. "Find and kill Eastman! Not to enjoy pussy and go along with this academy's foolish rules of pack life!"
The mission.
The whole fucking reason we're at this nightmare academy, suffering through violence and politics and the constant threat of death.
We're here to eliminate the last Eastman heir.
To protect the empire.
To make sure the legacy my family destroyed a decade ago stays destroyed.
Not to bond with random Omegas.
Not to get attached.
All eyes land on Sage.
He has the decency to look slightly sheepish.
Then he shrugs.
"My bad. The pussy won."
Blaze snickers—a sharp, surprised sound that he immediately tries to muffle behind his hand.
Jett sighs with the resignation of someone who's been dealing with this specific brand of chaos for too long.
And I—
I feel something snap.
"You fucking bonded—"
"Before you lose your shit," Jett interrupts, his voice that carefully modulated tone he uses when he's about to deliver information I won't like, "the Omega seems to be the one that Sage has been writing to these last couple of years."
I stop.
The rage building in my chest pauses, caught off-guard by this new information.
The pen pal.
I know about Sage's pen pal. We all do. It's been an open secret in the pack for years—the mysterious S.E.
who sends letters sealed with blood, who writes with a vulnerability that doesn't match the violence of her seal, who's somehow managed to keep our most guarded member tethered to something resembling hope.
I've always thought it was pathetic.
A fantasy.
Something Sage clung to because the reality of our lives was too bleak to face without some kind of escape.
But if the pen pal is real—
If she's here—
"So they technically know each other," Jett continues, his storm-grey eyes watching me with that careful assessment that means he's calculating how likely I am to explode. "And I guess this afternoon they decided to make that rather physical in a sense, and..."
He trails off.
The implication hangs in the air, heavy and undeniable.
I turn to Sage with narrowed eyes.
He meets my gaze without flinching—that stubborn defiance I've seen in him since the day I pulled him out of the underground circus and gave him a reason to live that didn't involve being someone else's property.
For a long moment, neither of us speaks.
Then Sage reaches into his jacket and pulls out an envelope.
Pink paper.
Familiar to all of us.
We've seen these letters before—watched Sage open them with something that looked disturbingly like reverence, pretended not to notice the way his shoulders relaxed every time one arrived. The seals are always the same: pink wax marked with four droplets of dried blood.
Four.
Always four.
Even number. Safe.
The dedication is... something. I've always found it disgusting—the blood, the ritual, the obsessive commitment to a stranger. But watching Sage handle the envelope now, with that mixture of tenderness and apprehension, I can almost understand the appeal.
Almost.
"I met her at the post office," Sage explains, his thumb tracing the seal like he's memorizing its texture. "Though they're no longer letting her send letters. Or anything, really."
Jett and Blaze frown.
I keep my expression neutral, but something in my chest tightens.