Page 40 of Ruthless Knot

Almost.

I reach for the door handle?—

And it swings open before I can touch it.

Someone crashes into me.

The impact is soft, unexpected, barely enough to move me from my position. But my reflexes kick in before my brain can catch up—hands reaching out, my hand wrapping around her waist, catching the falling body before it can hit the ground.

Then the scent hits me full force.

Cotton candy.

Her.

It's her—the source of that impossible sweetness, the owner of the scent that made me pause on the steps like a lovestruck teenager instead of the hardened survivor I'm supposed to be.

And she's?—

Fuck.

She's beautiful.

Not in the conventional way—not the polished, pristine beauty that the academy's elite Omegas cultivate. This is something rawer. More dangerous. The kind of beauty that comes from surviving things that should have killed you and coming out the other side with teeth.

She's small—barely reaching my shoulder, even in the bloodstained ballet shoes that lace up her calves. Her body is a contradiction: delicate ballerina lines wrapped around steel-trap muscle, porcelain skin decorated with bruises that tell stories I don't know how to read yet.

But it's her face that stops my breath.

Heart-shaped.

Pale.

Framed by hair the exact same shade of pink as mine.

We match, some distant part of my brain observes.Like the universe is fucking with us.

And her eyes?—

God, hereyes.

Heterochromatic.

One blue like summer sky, one green like toxic poison. They're wide right now, staring up at me with something that looks like shock, confusion, and the beginning of panic.

There's a teardrop tattoo near the corner of the green one.

A killer's mark.

A promise written in ink.

She's trembling slightly in my grip—fine tremors that race through her body like aftershocks. Her pulse hammers against my fingers where they're wrapped around her wrist, rapid and uneven, a trapped bird's heartbeat.

She smells like cotton candy and violence.

Like sweetness with a razor edge.

Like something I never knew I was looking for until this exact moment.