Chapter 4
The Scent Of Secrets
~SAGE~
Arriving at this academy was clearly a mistake.
I've known it from the moment our transport crossed through the reinforced gates—past the barbed wire and armed guards and warning signs that promised death to anyone stupid enough to try escaping.
Knew it when I saw the concrete buildings rising like tombstones against the grey sky.
Knew it when the first body swung from the welcome fountain, strung up like a macabre decoration for our arrival.
Just another day in the secluded paradise.
This place is a fucking nightmare dressed up as education.
And we walked right into it.
The morning air bites at my exposed skin as I make my way toward the post office, my pink hair—the shade of bubble-gum, of cotton candy, of everything soft and deceptive—catching the early light.
It's barely past six AM, that grey hour between darkness and dawn when the world feels thin and dangerous.
In the Ruthless sector of Hard Knot Academy, that feeling never quite goes away.
My boots are silent on the cracked pavement—a skill honed through years of learning to move without detection, to exist in spaces without leaving traces. The escape artist's first rule: never let them hear you coming.
Or going.
The campus sprawls around me, all brutal architecture and hidden threats. Buildings loom like predators waiting to strike. Shadows pool in corners that shouldn't have corners. The scent of old violence—blood and concrete and fear—hangs in the air like a permanent fog.
Somewhere in the distance, I hear screaming.
I don't flinch.
Screaming is just background noise here. As common as birdsong in normal places. As meaningless as the wind.
Welcome to Ruthless Academy, I think bitterly. Where nightmares come to breed, and sanity goes to die.
The thought makes me want to laugh.
Or maybe cry.
Hard to tell the difference these days.
We're here by force—that's the truth of it. Not force in the physical sense, though the Lawson family certainly has the capability. No, this is the more insidious kind. The kind that comes wrapped in obligation and debt and the understanding that refusing isn't really an option.
Kai's family—the empire that spans continents and leaves rivers of blood in its wake—decided we needed to be here. Something about "protection" from the vendettas on our heads.
Or their secret way of finding an Omega to complete our pack.
The true reason revolves around hunting down the surviving heirs of a legacy we thought was buried a decade ago.
The Eastmans.
Even the name sends a chill down my spine.
Ten years ago, the Lawson cartel orchestrated the execution of the Eastman bloodline—a rival family whose power in botanical poisons and political manipulation had become too threatening to ignore. Father. Mother. Associates. Anyone connected to the legacy.
Clean sweep.
Total annihilation.
Or so everyone thought.
Turns out, the Eastman children survived. A boy and a girl, somehow slipping through the cracks of the massacre, disappearing into the vast machinery of their lineage system, where lost souls go to be forgotten.
The boy—Knox, according to our intel—isn't the concern. Too visible. Too obvious. The kind of threat you can see coming from a mile away.
But the girl...
The girl is something else entirely.
Lethal in nature.
Dangerous in the intelligence department.
The kind of enemy who waits in silence, gathering information, planning her strike with the patience of a viper coiled in the grass.
She could be anywhere.
Could be anyone.
Could be waiting for the perfect moment to destroy everything the Lawson empire has built.
And we're here to find her before she finds us.
Kill her.
Eliminate the threat.
Move on with our lives like we didn't just snuff out the last remnants of a family our pack helped destroy.
The guilt sits heavy in my chest—a weight I've learned to carry without letting it show. Because what choice do I have? Kai saved my life. Gave me the way out of the underground performance troupe that treated me like property, like a thing to be displayed and discarded.
Without him, I'd still be there—chained to stages and water tanks and the endless cycle of escape acts that were slowly drowning me in ways that had nothing to do with water.
I owe him.
We all do.
Jett, with his silent kills and blood-soaked hands.
Blaze, with his knives and charm and the trauma he hides behind showmanship.
Me, with my locks, chains, and the scars on my wrists that mark me as someone who's spent too long being restrained.
We're bound to Kai by debt and loyalty and something that might be love if we were the kind of people capable of admitting it.
So when he says we go to Ruthless Academy—
We go.
Even if it means walking into a viper's nest.
No matter if it means hunting down a girl whose only crime was surviving something we helped orchestrate.
The post office looms ahead, its ugly concrete facade somehow unwelcoming even by Ruthless standards. The building squats at the edge of the administrative district, all institutional grey walls and flickering lights that make everything look like it's dying.
I pause at the bottom of the steps.
Not because I'm hesitating—I can't afford to—but because something has caught my attention.
A scent.
It hits me before I can process it, slipping through the morning air like a whisper, like a secret, like something meant only for me.
Sweet.
God, it's sweet.
Frosted sugar and cherry blossom, layered over clean linen with something metallic underneath. But the dominant note—the one that makes my lungs seize and my heart stutter—is unmistakable.
Cotton candy.
Pure, concentrated sweetness that reminds me of circus tents and stolen moments and the only happy memories I have from a childhood that tried to kill me.
I know immediately it's an Omega.
No other designation carries scent like this—that volatile, intoxicating quality that bypasses the brain entirely and goes straight to somewhere more primal. But this isn't like any Omega scent I've encountered before. This is... different.
Dangerous.
The word surfaces unbidden, and I don't push it away.
Because that's what this scent feels like. Not just sweet, but sharp underneath. Not just soft, but with an edge that promises violence if you push too hard.
Cotton candy with a razor blade hidden inside.
My nostrils flare, drawing in more of it. Cataloguing. Analyzing. Trying to understand why this particular combination of notes is making my hands shake slightly and my pulse race in a way that has nothing to do with fear.
No scent has ever been sweet enough to distract me.
Not in twenty-four years of survival.
Not through all the performance troupes and underground circuits and blood-soaked deals that brought me here.
But this one...
This one makes me pause.
Makes me second-guess my path.
Makes me want in a way I've trained myself never to want.
I frown, standing frozen at the bottom of the steps like an idiot. The morning light is growing stronger, burning off the grey pre-dawn haze, and I know I should move. Should complete my task—sending the letter I've been carrying for days—and return to the pack before anyone notices my absence.
But my feet won't cooperate.
The scent is too compelling.
Too familiar, somehow, in a way I can't quite place.
It shouldn't be here.
That's the logical part of my brain trying to reassert control. Ruthless Academy has rules—twisted, sadistic rules that make this place the nightmare it is—and one of those rules involves the hours between nightfall and seven AM.
Open season.
Anyone can attack and kill you on sight during those hours. No consequences. No questions. Just violence and survival and the understanding that if you're stupid enough to be outside your designated safe zone, you deserve whatever happens.
It's barely past six.
What Omega would be foolish enough to wander around during open season?
Have the audacity to leave a scent trail this potent for anyone to follow?
Either she's suicidal—
Or she's a threat of her own...
Interesting, I think, and the word tastes like anticipation on my tongue.
I take one more breath—one more hit of cotton candy sweetness—before forcing myself to move. Up the steps. Toward the door. Away from the distraction that's already burrowed under my skin.
I doubt anyone has the balls to try me in close combat—that's one of Ruthless's other rules, the ban on long-distance weapons—but I'd almost welcome the attempt. Anything to burn off this unexpected energy, this restlessness that the scent has awakened.
I'd put them in cuffs before they knew what happened.
Restrain them with the same skills that kept me alive in the performance troupe, when escape was both my job and my salvation.
Better than what Blaze would do, anyway. He'd whip the shit out of anyone who tried and call it entertaining. Set them on fire with that manic grin of his and claim it was self-defense.
The thought almost makes me smile.
Almost.
I reach for the door handle—
And it swings open before I can touch it.
Someone crashes into me.
The impact is soft, unexpected, barely enough to move me from my position. But my reflexes kick in before my brain can catch up—hands reaching out, my hand wrapping around her waist, catching the falling body before it can hit the ground.
Then the scent hits me full force.
Cotton candy.
Her.
It's her—the source of that impossible sweetness, the owner of the scent that made me pause on the steps like a lovestruck teenager instead of the hardened survivor I'm supposed to be.
And she's—
Fuck.
She's beautiful.
Not in the conventional way—not the polished, pristine beauty that the academy's elite Omegas cultivate. This is something rawer. More dangerous. The kind of beauty that comes from surviving things that should have killed you and coming out the other side with teeth.