My presence in this auditorium at twenty-seven is a mockery of the system’s intended timeline. A glitch in the matrix. The institutional equivalent of a software error that nobody has bothered to debug because the cost of addressing it exceeds the inconvenience of ignoring it. I’m the oldest Omega in Savage Knot’s dance program by a margin of five years, which in Knot Academy terms might as well be five decades.
Another form of punishment, I suppose.
Added to the collection.
Right next to “surviving” and “existing” and “waking up on birthdays to discover you’re still inconveniently alive.”
The clock is ticking. I know this with the same certainty I know the auditorium’s acoustic profile and the precise angle of light through the eastern windows at 2 p.m. The administration will reach a threshold—some arbitrary bureaucratic trigger tied to budget cycles or enrollment quotas or the particular mood ofwhoever reviews the roster each semester—and I’ll be expelled. Dismissed. Pushed out of the only protected environment available to an unclaimed Omega and into the world outside these walls, where mateless women of my designation are commodities to be traded, placed, or disposed of according to the preferences of people who view us as assets rather than humans.
Alternative placement.
Laboratory services.
The nighttime auctions.
Pretty words for ugly fates.
Or maybe they’ll just get tired of me.
Tired of the Omega who refuses to play the game the way it’s meant to be played, who won’t kneel for the matchmaking advisors or perform gratitude for the privilege of being included in the selection pool. Tired of the woman who has somehow avoided fulfilling the hidden mandate woven into Knot Academy’s foundation—that matchmaking service for the most cunning, unhinged Omegas and the most dangerous, devoted Alphas that masquerades as an educational institution.
A smirk pulls at the corner of my mouth—a tiny, private expression that the girls across the stage can’t see from their vantage point.
Matchmaking service.
What a polite way to describe a system that pairs psychopaths with their soulmates and calls it curriculum.
I transition out of the split with controlled precision, my core engaging to lift my torso from the floor while my legs maintain their extended position. The motion requires coordination between muscle groups that are currently operating at maybe seventy percent capacity—the stab wound siphoning energy from movements that should be effortless—but I execute itcleanly, without visible strain, because visible strain is weakness and weakness in Savage Knot is an invitation.
I look around the auditorium.
Not with obvious surveillance—with the casual, half-lidded assessment that I’ve perfected over five years of existing in spaces where every glance carries potential consequences. My chin tilts slightly, my storm-gray eyes scanning the tiered seating, the rigging overhead, the entrances and exits, cataloguing changes since my last visit three days ago.
Stage door: closed, unguarded.
Emergency exits: two, both on the western wall, push-bar mechanisms.
Windows: eastern wall, high, non-operational, sealed for climate control.
Seating: empty.
Almost.
My eyes catch him in the top corner of the auditorium.
Mezzanine level, last row, far left—the seat with the worst sightline to the stage but the best sightline to every entrance in the building. He’s sitting with one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, his posture deceptively relaxed, a worn paperback held open in one hand with the casual grip of someone who appears to be reading but is actually monitoring every movement within a two-hundred-foot radius through peripheral vision alone.
Hawk.
Sitting there like he has absolutely nothing else to do with his afternoon but occupy a seat in a dance auditorium and pretend to read.
Supporting me.
Without being asked.
Without making a production of it.
Just… present.
