The line went dead before I could respond.
I pocketed the phone and looked at myself again in the warped metal surface. My hair fell just past my shoulders now, the ends uneven where I'd hacked through with dull scissors,lighter than it had been in years. But it was mine. The first thing in years that belonged only to me.
The bus to Thornhaven left in twenty minutes.
Seventeen hours on a bus gave you time to think. Too much time, honestly. The kind of time that let memories crawl out of the locked boxes where you'd shoved them and parade themselves across your mind with all the subtlety of a brass band.
I pressed my forehead against the window and watched the landscape blur past. Farmland giving way to forest, forest surrendering to mountains. The seat next to me stayed empty. Nobody wanted to sit beside an omega who smelled like exhaustion and barely-contained panic. My scent had been off for months now, the warm notes of bergamot and cedar smoke that I'd been born with buried under layers of cortisol and sleepless nights.
The rules of The Chase cycled through my head on repeat. I'd read them so many times the words had lost all meaning, become just sounds, just shapes.
Omegas would be released into the preserve at dawn. Given a six-hour head start before the alphas were set loose. The hunt would last seventy-two hours. Any omega not claimed by the end would be released from their contract, free to return to their lives. Any omega caught and claimed would belong to their alpha pending the seventy-two-hour trial period, after which the alpha could accept or reject the bond.
Simple rules for a brutal tradition. But traditions survived because they worked, and The Chase had been working for centuries. It was the only legal way to break a bond without the original alpha's consent. The only loophole in a system designed to keep omegas exactly where their alphas wanted them.
Vernon would never consent to releasing me. He'd made that clear the night I ran, when I'd heard him on the phone with his lawyer even as I climbed out the window with nothing but cash and a desperate hope that Rosa had gotten Eli out in time. A clawing, breathless hope that the one good thing in my life would survive my mistakes.
The bus lurched over a pothole and my head knocked against the glass. Pain flared bright and sharp, a brief distraction from the constant thrum of anxiety beneath my skin.
I closed my eyes. Made the mistake of letting my mind wander.
Hazel eyes flashed behind my eyelids. The color of autumn leaves caught in amber, warm and steady and focused entirely on me. Hands that had been elegant once, before they'd learned to shape metal, with long fingers that had brushed against mine in the library after lights-out. A scent that had wrapped around me in the darkness of a dormitory hallway, cedar and juniper, sharp and green and alive.
My eyes snapped open.
No. I wasn't doing this. Wasn't letting myself spiral into memories of Min-ho Irvin, the boy who had been my step-brother for two years and my obsession for the years that followed. That path led nowhere good. Min-ho was part of a life that had been stolen from me, sold off by parents who saw their omega son as currency rather than family.
The almost-kiss lived in a locked room in my mind, and that door was staying shut.
The bus ground to a halt. A crackling announcement informed us we'd arrived in Thornhaven.
I grabbed my bag and joined the trickle of passengers filing off into the cool mountain air. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees from the flatlands, and I shivered in my thin jacket as the wind cut through layers that had been morethan enough in Memphis. The sun was setting behind the peaks, painting the sky in shades of coral and gold that would have made my artist's hands itch for a brush. But I hadn't painted in years. Vernon had considered art a waste of time, and I'd learned quickly which battles weren't worth fighting.
The Thornhaven Intake Facility rose from the mountainside ahead, all sweeping glass and weathered stone that somehow managed to look both ancient and impossibly modern. Massive timber beams framed windows that caught the dying light and threw it back in fragments of fire. The architecture spoke of money and tradition and power held with an easy, casual grip. Even the air smelled different here. Pine and snow-melt and something older, wilder, the scent of mountains that had existed long before humans decided to turn them into hunting grounds.
I shouldered my bag and started walking.
The entrance hall swallowed me whole. Vaulted ceilings soared overhead, carved with scenes from old hunts, alphas and omegas frozen in eternal pursuit across the dark wood. Crystal chandeliers cast everything in a warm glow that felt obscene given what this place represented. A marketplace dressed up as a cathedral.
A beta woman in a crisp uniform approached me with a tablet. "Name?"
"Dalvin Grace."
She typed something, frowned at the screen, typed something else. "Registration closes in thirty-six hours. You're cutting it close."
"I'm aware."
"Any questions about the process?"
"No."
Her eyes flicked up to meet mine. Professional curiosity, nothing more. She'd seen a hundred omegas walk through thesedoors with that same hollow look in their eyes. I was just another body moving through the system.
"Follow the green line to medical. After your exam, you'll be assigned a dormitory and given your participant number. The welcome orientation is at nine tomorrow morning." She handed me a lanyard with a barcode on it. "Don't lose this. It's your identity for the next week."
I took the lanyard. The plastic was warm from her hand.
Medical was everything I expected. Blood draws, scent samples, a heat cycle assessment that confirmed what I already knew. My body had been holding off the worst of it through sheer survival instinct, but three days in close proximity to unmated alphas would push me over the edge. That was part of the design. Omegas in heat were easier to catch, easier to claim, easier to sell to the highest bidder.
