“Violet Martinez,” I continue, my voice taking on the measured cadence of someone delivering a dossier. “She’s the one who created the Forgotten Omegas initiative within this Academy. Built the entire underground network that connects Omegas who’ve been overlooked or abandoned or actively targeted by the system.”
I slide my thumbnail under the edge of the seal, feeling the wax resist before beginning to separate from the paper with a soft, fibrous tearing.
“Some would say she’s an idol. The surface-level version of her—the chairmanship, the dance connections, the Juilliard placements—is inspirational enough to paper over everything underneath. But she’s a cunning mastermind. Like so many in the higher-ups of this place. The kind who builds empires in the spaces between what’s visible and what’s permitted.”
Hawk takes a drag from the blunt, his exhale curling toward the window, and says nothing. He’s giving me the space to process out loud, which is a luxury I don’t often accept and a generosity I don’t often acknowledge.
“She enjoyed my performance.” I pause. The words feel strange in my mouth—the idea that someone of Violet’s caliber observed my movement on that stage and found it worthy ofattention beyond polite acknowledgment. “Said it captivated her because it reminded her of herself.”
I stop working on the seal.
The memory of her words surfaces with a clarity that the weed should be blurring but isn’t, as if some things are too important for the THC to reach.
“Grace,” I say quietly, repeating the qualities she listed. “Beauty.”
A pause.
“And fear.”
The last word lands in the smoke-hazed air between us with a weight that surprises me. I look at Hawk. Turn my head on his shoulder so my storm-gray eyes can find his amber ones in the dim, intimate geography of the space between our faces.
“Do I look fearful?”
The question comes out stripped of the irony I intended to armor it with. Genuine. Raw. The kind of question that costs something to ask and costs more to answer honestly.
He stares at me.
Long and hard. Those amber-gold eyes conducting an assessment that goes deeper than the surface I present to the world—deeper than the blank expression and the empty gaze and the stoic, impenetrable front that everyone else reads as evidence of emotional absence. He looks at me the way he’s been looking at me for three years—as though the answers to questions he hasn’t asked yet are written on the inside of my skin and he’s learning to read them without requiring me to turn myself inside out.
“No,” he whispers.
The word is quiet. Definitive. Carrying the particular weight of a verdict delivered after careful deliberation.
He takes another drag from the blunt, the ember brightening in the dimness, illuminating the sharp planes of his jaw and theshadows of his stubble. He holds the smoke for a long moment before releasing it in a slow, thoughtful stream that rises toward the ceiling.
“You look like a diamond that twinkles in the gleaming spotlight.”
The words emerge with the unhurried certainty of someone who has been thinking about what to say for longer than the question has been in the air. His voice is low, textured by the weed and the hour and the particular honesty that these walls extract from both of us.
“And that is both a blessing and a curse.” His gaze holds mine. “A blessing to be seen. But a curse to be wanted by those who may not have your best interest.”
He considers something, his jaw working slightly the way it does when he’s selecting words with the precision of a man choosing ammunition—specific caliber for specific purpose.
“And I think the fear,” he whispers, leaning close enough that the words land on my hair like things with physical weight, “stems from you knowing just how lethal you can be. With the right weaponry.”
A pause. His amber eyes darken by a fraction.
“Or in this case… the right opportunity.”
I nod.
Slowly. The motion is deliberate—a measured acknowledgment that his assessment has landed in the place it was aimed and that the impact was accurate. He sees it. The thing that Violet sees and the younger Omegas don’t and the administration has never bothered to look for. Not emptiness. Not the blank, mannequin surface they all interpret as absence.
Potential.
The lethal kind.
The kind that waits.
