But some stains don't come clean.
And some ghosts refuse to stay buried.
I take another drag, letting the ember burn close to my fingers as the rain intensifies. Somewhere behind me, the ocean continues its assault on the rocks below, grinding bone and metal and chair into nothing with the same patience it uses to erode everything else.
There is only one path left.
Savage Knot. The heart of Knot Academy. The richest sector, the cruelest hierarchy, where Omegas are currency and packs are forged from violence, wealth, and absolute control.
If I survive until the Masquerade Ball, I'll be chosen by the most elite pack in existence and walk out of Knot Academy forever.
Freedom.
Or death.
At this point, I'm not sure which one I'm hoping for.
I flick the cigarette over the cliff—a final companion sent to join the wreckage below—and turn my back on the ocean, the rocks, the rain, and the ghost of the sister I just murdered.
My name is Victoria Sinclair.
Twin. Survivor. Monster.
And this story isn't over.
It's just beginning.
CHAPTER 1
The Luxury Of Surviving
~VICTORIA~
The door doesn’t open so much as it surrenders.
I shove my shoulder into the reinforced steel—painted to look like rotting wood on the outside, because camouflage is the first language Savage Knot teaches you—and the lock gives with a reluctant click that reverberates through my teeth. The motion sends a fresh wave of agony ripping through my left side, somewhere between my fourth and fifth rib where the blade caught me during tonight’s particular brand of entertainment.
Entertainment.
That’s what they call it here.
When two people are thrown into a ring with sharpened instruments and told that only one walks out with their ration card intact for the week.
I stumble across the threshold and kick the door shut behind me with my boot, the deadbolt engaging automatically—one of the few modifications I invested in when I first claimed this unit three years ago. The security system hums to life in the walls: motion sensors, pressure plates, a perimeter alarm connected to the electrified fencing that surrounds the property in a twelve-foot embrace of rusted metal and razor wire.
From the outside, this place looks abandoned.
That’s the point.
A two-bedroom single townhome buried in the throat of the forest that borders Savage Knot’s eastern perimeter. The exterior walls are deliberately weathered—peeling paint the color of gangrene, windows boarded with plywood that’s actually reinforced composite, a front path so overgrown with dead vegetation that you’d have to know exactly where to step to avoid the pressure-triggered alerts buried beneath the soil.
By Savage Knot standards, I’m living in the gutter.
The elite students occupy penthouse suites in the Academy’s central tower—floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking manicured grounds, personal chefs, silk sheets that cost more than most families earn in a year. The mid-tier residents have townhomes within the Academy’s walled compound, protected by communal security forces and proximity to the administration buildings.
And then there’s me.
Out here in the forest, a quarter mile from the nearest occupied structure, surrounded by nothing but trees that have learned to grow crooked and a silence so thick it has texture.
