Chapter 3 #3
His nostrils flare.
I watch it happen in slow motion: the subtle expansion of his chest as he draws in a deeper breath, the slight parting of his lips, the way his eyes darken almost imperceptibly as my scent hits him.
What does he smell?
Frosted sugar and cherry blossom, probably. That's my primary. Clean linen underneath, maybe that metallic edge that appears when I'm stressed.
And right now—right now I'm very stressed.
But he shows no reaction.
His expression remains perfectly, maddeningly calm. Like my existence hasn't bothered him in the slightest. Like catching panicking Omegas in post offices is just a regular Tuesday for him.
He leans in.
Close.
Too close.
His face hovers inches from mine, and I can feel the warmth radiating off his skin, can see the individual strands of pink hair falling across his forehead, can count the golden flecks in his green, green eyes—
He inhales again.
Deeper this time.
Deliberate.
And when he speaks, his voice is like honey poured over gravel: smooth and rough and absolutely devastating.
"You smell like cotton candy."
I feel my face flush.
Heat spreads from my cheeks down my neck, across my chest, probably turning my pale skin an absolutely mortifying shade of pink that matches both our hair.
I never react this way.
Never.
I've killed people without flinching. I've danced in the blood of my enemies. I've looked death in the eye and laughed, because what's death compared to the nightmare I've already survived?
But this stranger—this pink-haired, vanilla-scented stranger with eyes like spring leaves—has reduced me to a blushing, squeaking mess in approximately three seconds flat.
It's embarrassing.
It's infuriating.
It's... confusing.
My lower lip juts out in a pout before I can stop it—an automatic response, a defense mechanism dressed up as petulance.
"You—" I start, then stop. Clear my throat. Try again. "You're still holding my wrist."
He is.
His fingers are still wrapped around my arm, skin against skin, and I can feel my pulse hammering against his palm like a trapped bird.
He looks down at where we're connected.
Looks back up at me.
And slowly—so slowly it feels deliberate—he smiles.
It's not a friendly smile.
It's the kind of smile that promises mischief, chaos, trouble of the most delicious kind. The kind of smile that makes you want to follow someone into the dark even when you know—you know—it's a terrible idea.
"Sweet," he murmurs.
And I don't know if he's talking about my scent or my reaction or something else entirely.
He releases my wrist.
The absence of contact feels like a loss.
I stumble back a step, putting distance between us that does absolutely nothing to diminish the overwhelming presence of his scent. It's everywhere now—vanilla sugar and soft smoke infiltrating my lungs, my bloodstream, probably my actual brain cells.
My eye catches something on the floor.
An envelope.
Cream-colored paper, slightly crumpled, with familiar handwriting on the front that makes my heart stop.
Not my handwriting.
But handwriting I've memorized over five years of correspondence.
The letter must have fallen when we collided. His letter. The one he was presumably here to send.
I crouch before I can think better of it, my fingers closing around the envelope with the same reverence I'd give my own. It feels heavier than it should—or maybe that's just my imagination, my desperate hope reading meaning into coincidence.
"You dropped this," I say, straightening. Offering it back to him.
Our eyes meet again.
Blue-and-green against green-and-gold.
Mismatched gazing at mismatched.
"The post office isn't taking letters anymore," I continue, the words spilling out before I can stop them. "Packless Omegas can't use the postal services, so if you were planning to—"
I stop.
My brain catches up to my mouth.
He's not a packless Omega, the logical part of me points out. He's an Alpha. Look at him. Listen to his voice. Feel the authority radiating off him like heat.
"Oh." The syllable falls flat between us. "Nevermind. That doesn't apply to you."
His eyebrow raises.
Just one.
It's such a small expression, but somehow it conveys an entire conversation's worth of questions.
"But it applies to you," he says.
Statement, not question.
His voice rolls over me like warm water, and I have to physically resist the urge to lean into it.
"Yeah." I shrug, aiming for nonchalance and probably landing somewhere around "barely held together with spite and delusion." "Omegas aren't worthy of communicating with the outside world, I guess."
The words taste bitter on my tongue.
True things often do.
"Not surprised, though." I gesture vaguely at myself—at the blood on my shoes, the wildness in my eyes, the general aura of instability I can never quite hide. "That's what I get for being packless."
His expression doesn't change.
Still calm.
Still assessing.
Still looking at me like I'm something he's never seen before.
I press the envelope into his hand, making sure he has a firm grip before I let go. The paper crinkles slightly, and I wonder—briefly, insanely—what's written inside. Who he's writing to. Whether his letters are also sealed in blood.
"There you go," I chirp, stepping back. Creating distance. "Wouldn't want you to lose that. Letters are important, you know?"
They're all I had, I don't say.
They were keeping me sane, I don't say.
Now I have nothing, I don't say.
Instead, I smile my brightest, most broken smile and turn toward the door.
"Wait."
His voice stops me mid-step.
I don't turn around.
Can't turn around.
If I look at him again—at his pink hair and green eyes and soft mouth—I might do something stupid. Like cry. Or scream. Or ask him to hold me until the world stops feeling like it's collapsing.
"You smell like vanilla," I say instead, talking to the door. "And smoke."
A pause.
Then: "Observant."
"Smoking is bad for you."
The words come out before I can filter them—random, awkward, the kind of thing that makes people look at me like I've grown a second head.
But I can't help it. The OCD is screaming about patterns and connections, the ADHD is latching onto irrelevant details, and my trauma-soaked brain is desperately trying to distract itself from the fact that I'm one bad decision away from a complete breakdown.
He huffs.
The sound is almost amused.
"Is that supposed to stop me from smoking?"
I spin on my heel.
The movement is pure ballet—cha?né turn, perfectly controlled, ending with my mismatched eyes locked on his mismatched eyes—and I let my lips curve into something that's half smile, half warning.
"No," I say. "You're supposed to do it together with others."
His head tilts again.
That predatory curiosity.
"More fun that way." I back toward the door, refusing to look away even as my hand finds the handle behind me. "Smoking alone is lonely as fuck, don't you think?"
I don't wait for him to answer.
The door swings open behind me, and I slip through it like water through fingers—there one moment, gone the next.
The morning light hits me like a slap.
Bright.
Harsh.
Real.
I stand on the concrete steps of the post office, blinking against the sun that's now fully risen, trying to remember how to breathe through lungs that feel too tight for air.
The door closes behind me with a soft click.
Final.
Definitive.
The end of... something.
The letter is gone now.
Sent off into the void by Maria's kind hands, the last message I'll ever be allowed to send to S.W.—assuming he's even still alive to receive it.
Forty-seven days of silence.
Maybe he's dead.
Maybe he forgot about me.
Maybe he never really cared at all, and I've been pouring my heart into a void that was never going to answer back.
The thoughts spiral, dark and suffocating, and I feel the familiar tickle of panic starting to build in my chest.
One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four.
I count my breaths.
Count my heartbeats.
Count the cracks in the concrete beneath my bloodstained ballet shoes.
The counting helps.
It always helps.
It's the only thing that helps when the world feels like it's crashing down and I'm standing in the wreckage trying to figure out which pieces are worth salvaging.
The vanilla smoke scent lingers on my skin.
I breathe it in—once, twice, three times—before catching myself and stopping at four.
Even numbers. Safe.
Who was he?
Where did he come from?
Why did his scent feel like something I'd been searching for my whole life without knowing it?
Questions I'll probably never get answers to.
Just another mystery in a place full of them.
My feet start moving on autopilot, carrying me down the steps, away from the post office, into the uncertain morning light. My brain is full of static—thoughts bouncing off each other like pinballs, refusing to coalesce into anything coherent.
Packless Omegas can't use postal services.
The art sector has new restrictions.
Pink hair and green eyes, and vanilla smoke.
Maybe he's dead…maybe he forgot…maybe I'm finally completely alone—
I stumble.
Catch myself.
Keep walking.
The Ruthless Academy campus spreads out before me, all brutal architecture and hidden dangers and the constant, underlying promise of violence. Somewhere in the distance, I can hear screaming—someone's morning combat practice, probably, or maybe just someone dying. Hard to tell the difference here.
I have dance.
The thought surfaces like a lifeline in a storm.
I still have dance.
The one thing they haven't taken from me yet. The one outlet I have left for all the darkness that builds up inside me, all the rage and grief and guilt that would consume me entirely if I didn't have a way to purge it.
Ballet.
Performance.
The stage where I can bleed without actually bleeding, where I can scream without making a sound, where I can be someone other than the broken girl who watched her parents die and became a monster to survive.
But Maria's words echo in my memory:
"The art sector. Performance spaces. New requirements are being implemented."
My stomach drops.
No.
Please, no.
Not that too.
They've already taken my letters.
My connection to S.W.
My proof that the world outside exists.
If they take dance—if they take the only thing I have left—
What then?
What do I become when there's nothing left to hold onto?
The question terrifies me more than any Alpha, any blade, any violence this nightmare academy can throw at me.
Because I know the answer.
I become nothing.
A shell filled with darkness.
A monster with no reason to pretend at humanity.
The thought makes me want to laugh.
Or cry.
Or both.
My feet keep moving—one step, two steps, three steps, four—carrying me toward the art sector, toward the answers I'm terrified to find, toward a future that feels more uncertain than ever.
The morning sun beats down on my pink hair.
The vanilla smoke scent still clings to my skin.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, a single thought crystallizes through the chaos:
Will my love for dancing be pulled from under me as well?