"This is a dangerous challenge neither of us can win," I whisper. "You know that, right? If we—if your knot?—"
"I know." His thumbs stroke small circles on my hip bones, a gesture so tender it makes my chest ache. "I know exactly what happens. But what if I want to try anyway?"
"Try?" I let out a breathless laugh that's more hysteria than humor. "Try bonding with the crazy Omega who everyone avoids? Try tying yourself permanently to someone who might actually be too broken to fix?"
"What if I don't want to fix you?" His eyes search mine. "What if I like you broken? What if broken is exactly what I'm looking for?"
The words shouldn't land the way they do.
Shouldn't burrow into my chest and make a home there.
But they do.
I can feel his knot—swelling larger, pressing harder against my entrance.My body is betraying me, producing more slick in response, trying to ease the way for something my brain knows is reckless. Every instinct I have is screaming at me to take it, to let him lock inside me, to accept the bond my body is begging for.
But instinct has never been my friend.
"Even if the odds aren't in favor of our madness?" I ask, trying to inject some levity into my voice and failing spectacularly.
He smirks—that devastating expression that makes my heart stutter.
"Especially then."
I'm shaking.
Full-body tremors that I can't control, can't count away, can't ritual into submission.
"Your pack will hate me," I say, and it's not a question. "They'll despise me. I'm packless, I'm unstable, I'm—I'm everything they don't want attached to their Alpha."
"Then we run away."
The words are so simple.
So impossible.
Exactly what I've been dreaming about since I was fourteen years old and realized that Ruthless Academy was a cage I'd never escape.
I pause.
Freeze completely, my hips still hovering just above his, his knot still pressing insistently, waiting for a decision that will change everything.
Our eyes lock again.
And this time, the look we share isn't just electric or raw—it's a question.
A dare.
A leap into the void with no guarantee of landing.
"I vow to run away with you," he says, voice low and fervent. "Just you and me out in this ruthless fucking world, escaping all the odds. No pack politics, no academy rules, no one telling us what we're supposed to be. Just us."
The vow strikes the depths of my soul.
Because I want it.
God, I want it so badly I can taste it—freedom, companionship, the possibility of building something that's ours instead of something handed down by people who never wanted us in the first place.
But wanting things has never been enough.
