POV: Rian
The air in the penthouse didn't just smell expensive; it smelled like violence wrapped in silk.
I pressed my back against the cold marble wall of the hallway, counting the beats of my own erratic heart. One. Two. Three. My hands, usually as steady as a surgeon's, were trembling. A fine sheen of cold sweat coated the back of my neck, making the collar of my tactical vest itch.
It wasn't just the fear of getting caught. It was the pills.
I swallowed dryly, fighting back the wave of nausea that roiled in my gut. The suppressants I bought from the back-alley clinics in Sector 4 were harsh. They scraped my insides raw, chemically neutering my scent and dulling my senses until I felt like a ghost in my own body. But they were necessary.
In a city ruled by instincts, being an unbonded Omega was a liability. Being an unbonded Omega breaking into the home of the city's most dangerous Alpha was a death sentence.
Focus, Rian, I told myself, biting the inside of my cheek until the metallic tang of blood grounded me. Get the drive. Get out. Save Maya.
I checked my watch. 2:00 AM. The security shift change was exactly sixty seconds long. I had wasted ten of them breathing.
I pushed off the wall and moved.
My boots made no sound on the plush runner rug as I slipped into the main study. The room was massive, illuminated only by the moonlight slicing through the floor-to-ceiling windows. It overlooked the sprawling, glittering nervous system of the city below—a city that Varrick, the man who owned this fortress, held in the palm of his hand.
I didn't let myself look at the view. I locked my eyes on the target.
In the center of the room, resting inside a glass display case like a holy relic, was the drive. It was a simple, matte black USB stick. It looked worthless. But I knew it contained the encrypted ledger that would clear my sister's debt to the syndicate.
Fifty thousand dollars for a kidney transplant. That was the price of her life. And this little piece of plastic was the currency.
I approached the case, pulling the glass cutter from my belt. My movements were efficient, practiced. I secured the suction cup to the glass and began to cut a perfect circle.
Scritch.
The sound was deafening in the silence. I froze, my muscles locking up, waiting for a laser grid to activate or a guard to burst in.
Nothing. Just the hum of the air conditioning.
I exhaled, finishing the cut. I popped the glass circle out, reached in with gloved fingers, and snatched the drive. The moment the cool plastic touched my palm, a wave of relief nearly knocked me to my knees. I had it. It was over.
"Too easy," I whispered to myself, shoving the drive deep into my pocket.
That was my first mistake.
The hairs on my arms stood up. It wasn't a sound that alerted me. It was a shift in the air pressure. The atmosphere in the room suddenly grew heavy, thick, and suffocating.
My instincts, usually dulled by the chemical cocktail in my blood, screamed a single, primal word: Run.
I turned toward the balcony, ready to hook my line to the railing and rappel down the fifty stories to the alley below.
Then I heard it.
The sharp, crisp click of a lighter.
The sound tore through the silence like a gunshot. I froze, one foot already near the balcony door.
From the deepest shadow in the far corner of the room, a small flame flared to life. It hovered there for a second, illuminating a hand—large, scarred, and wearing a heavy obsidian ring—before it touched the tip of a cigar.
The smoke curled into the air, carrying a scent that hit me harder than a physical blow.
Burnt cedar. Aged whiskey. And absolute, crushing dominance.
It was an Alpha's scent, but not like the low-level thugs I dealt with in Sector 4. This scent was ancient. It was the smell of a forest fire that consumed everything in its path. It cut right through my suppressants, making my knees weak and my breath hitch in my throat.
"You have nimble fingers," a voice said.
It was low, rough, and terrifyingly calm. There was no surprise in it. No anger. Just a dark amusement that made my skin crawl.
"I wonder what else they can do."
I didn't think. I didn't look at his face. I didn't wait to hear the rest of the threat.
I bolted.
I threw myself at the balcony doors, expecting them to be locked. They weren't. I burst out into the cold night air, the wind whipping against my face. I didn't bother with the rappel line. I vaulted over the railing, aiming for the terrace of the floor below.
It was a reckless, stupid jump. A twenty-foot drop onto concrete.
I hit the landing hard, rolling to disperse the impact. Pain shot up my shin, but the adrenaline numbed it instantly. I scrambled up, running across the terrace, jumping to the next fire escape ladder.
I slid down three stories, the metal burning my gloves, before I dared to look up.
High above me, on the edge of the penthouse balcony, a silhouette stood against the moon. He wasn't chasing me. He wasn't shouting into a radio. He was just standing there, the cherry of his cigar glowing like a red eye in the dark.
Watching.
I didn't stop running until my lungs burned and I was buried deep in the labyrinth of the lower city's alleys.
I collapsed against a dumpster, gasping for air, clutching the pocket where the drive sat. I checked my body. I was shaking violently.
Why didn't the alarms go off?
Why didn't he shoot?
Varrick was known as the 'Butcher of Veridia.' He didn't let people steal from him. He didn't let people leave.
I pulled the drive out, staring at it in the dim light of a streetlamp. It was real. I had succeeded. I could save Maya.
But as I sat there, trying to calm the tremors in my hands, I couldn't shake the phantom weight of that burnt cedar scent. It clung to my clothes. It clung to my skin. It felt like a mark.
I wasn't the one who had just committed a crime.
I was the rabbit who had just sprinted out of the wolf's den, thinking I was free.
POV: Varrick
I watched the dark figure disappear into the concrete jungle below, a smudge of desperate motion against the gray city.
He was fast. I'd give him that.
Most men froze when they saw me. They stuttered, they begged, or they tried to pull a gun—which was usually the last mistake they ever made. But this one? He had looked at the shadow I cast, realized he was outmatched by a god, and vaulted off a fifty-story balcony without hesitation.
"Sir."
My head of security, Kael, burst into the room behind me. He had his gun drawn, two other guards flanking him. They scanned the empty space, their eyes landing on the hole in the glass display case.
"We detected a breach on the perimeter sensors," Kael said, his jaw tight. "The drive is gone. We'll lock down the sector. He can't have gone f—"
"Stand down," I said.
My voice was quiet, but it stopped them instantly. I didn't turn around. I kept my eyes on the spot where the thief had vanished into the night.
Kael lowered his weapon, confused. "Sir? That drive contains the eastern shipping routes. If the Syndicate gets hold of it—"
"That drive contains a localized GPS tracker and a corrupted file that will crash the server of anyone stupid enough to plug it in," I corrected, taking a slow drag of my cigar.
I turned to face my men. The smoke curled around me, mixing with the faint, lingering scent the thief had left behind.
It was a strange scent. Sterile. Synthetic. Like rain that had been scrubbed with bleach. He was hiding something.
"I let him take it," I continued. "He's not the enemy, Kael. He's the courier. He's going to run straight to whoever hired him, and he's going to deliver my location directly to their doorstep."
I walked over to the display case. The thief had been clean, professional. But panic makes people sloppy.
I saw it on the velvet cushion. A single, long black hair.
I picked it up, wrapping it around my finger. I brought it to my nose, inhaling deeply, searching for the truth beneath the chemicals.
And there it was. Faint. Almost invisible. But undeniable to an Alpha of my lineage.
Vanilla.
My eyes narrowed.
"A Beta doesn't smell like that," I murmured.
"Sir?" Kael asked.
"Track the signal," I ordered, my voice hardening. "Wait until he hands off the package. Then kill the buyer."
"And the thief?" Kael asked. "Do we eliminate him too?"
I paused. I looked at the hair wrapped around my finger—a golden thread that connected me to the boy who had jumped off my balcony.
I thought of the terror in his wide eyes. The way his chest had heaved. The sheer, desperate audacity of breaking into my home.
He was a pawn, yes. But pawns could be promoted.
"No," I said, a dark smile touching my lips for the first time in months. "Bring the thief to me."
I crushed the end of my cigar into the crystal ashtray.
"I want to know why an Omega is risking his life playing dress-up as a criminal. Bring him back unharmed... but thoroughly educated on who he belongs to now."