Knot The One They Want

Lorali Pov

Muffled voices surround me as something cold presses against my skin. I am still breathing. She didn’t listen. She didn’t let me die. Aughhhhhh! Why can’t she just let go? I, the owner of this body, have already let go, but she can’t. They can’t. I know every single one of them is involved in the fact that I’m still alive.

I want to scream, to yell at them for saving me yet again, ignoring everything I said, but I don’t have the energy for that right now. I don’t have the strength to fight or waste my breath on people who refuse to listen.

So I’ll just keep sleeping. If I never wake, I’ll die eventually. Yes, it will be slow, but I don’t care. It’s better than being saved again.

Time passes, I have no idea how long. I fade in and out of consciousness, and I hate each moment I’m dragged back from the cold, dark void. Arabella is with me most of the time, and the room smells entirely of her. Most of the time she talks to me, or she talks to the others on the phone. When she isn’t speaking, we sit in absolute silence. Her mates come once in a while, for reasons I don’t care enough to remember. All I know is that I’m dying. The woman who I think is a doctor confirmed it some time ago. My plan of not waking up is going well.

It shouldn’t be much longer now.

"Lori, remember that time during the sports festival when Susie fully believed she was in love with one of the Valma omega boys?" Arabella’s voice rings out, light and accompanied by laughter.

I do remember. The sports festival happened over the course of two weeks every year between the all‑girl omega and all‑boy omega school. Everyone looked forward to it because we’d finally meet people from outside, even though they were just as sheltered as we were. It was during our third festival that Susie fell head over heels for an omega boy who won the track event. She had us sneaking out at night to help her meet him. The funny thing about that whole situation was that she risked everything by sneaking around to see him, dragging us along as chaperones, yet he never once came to meet her at our section of the academy. Since the academies were divided, it was always us going to his side, never the other way around.

"Remember how much trouble we got into when Susie got caught sneaking around, with us there?" Arabella continues, her laughter softening. "Headmistress was the maddest I’d ever seen her that day."

We had to clean the entire academy from top to bottom, scrubbing every corner, and our names were removed from the festival. I have no idea what happened to the Valma boy for sure, but I heard rumors, though they might not be true, that he was expelled and sent to the Omega institution for breaking the rules. We were supposed to be expelled too, since we broke the rules alongside Susie, but Arabella was involved, and there was no way Headmistress Cleovera was going to lose her golden goose. If she expelled us, she’d have to expel Arabella too because she couldn’t risk looking unfair. So she let us off, sparing us from expulsion.

You would think after such a fright Susie would learn her lesson. Nope. The girl fell in love again the next year. That time, we shut it down immediately and didn’t entertain her.

Anyway, why is Arabella reminding me of this? It happened so many years ago.

"I’m sure you’re probably wondering why I am telling you this information."

Oh, wow, you read my mind.

"It’s because I’ve been doing research on Torin and his pack, and who would have thought Torin’s mother was none other than a sister. She went to Alma."

The mention of that witch sends ripples through my body. That witch went to Alma? How is that possible? Never would anyone that evil be a product of Alma. But the kitchen...

My memory replays my first day in the Spade penthouse. The kitchen was arranged exactly the way an omega from Alma would have done it, down to the spoons. Was it arranged by the witch?

"Yurena, I believe her name was. She was in Alma from the moment she presented and stayed there for years, though she never graduated there." Arabella tsks before sucking in the air. "This is where the sports festival comes in. When we were nearing expulsion, I asked Headmistress why the whole situation with the Valma boy was being taken so seriously, and she told me the tale of what happened when she was a student of Alma, before she became Headmistress."

She pauses for a moment, and I roll my eyes internally, impatient to hear how the witch is involved in any of this, especially the sports festival. Maybe it will explain why she hated me so much, why her hatred felt personal, like it was carved into her bones.

"Yurena and Cleovera had been best friends since they joined the academy together. At that time, everyone still thought Cleovera was an omega, and she and Yurena were tied in top place. Both were aiming to become the next Headmistress of Alma, each determined to outshine the other during the sports festival because the omega with the most points would be prepped to become the next headmistress. Yurena was set to win. In the first week of the festival she had the most points, until she began fraternizing with two of the Valma boys. One thing led to another, and they committed one of Alma’s and Valma’s greatest sins, they gave their virginity away to each other, and they were intertwined more than once.

In doing that, Yurena caused Alma’s biggest scandal, one that thankfully never reached the surface. She ended up winning the festival by a mile and was set to become Alma’s next Headmistress. Things were golden for her until months later, when she discovered she was pregnant. Instead of telling anyone, she hid it, until she couldn’t anymore. One night she went into labor, exactly three years before she was set to graduate, and she had no choice but to wake Cleovera and confess. She begged Cleovera to help her keep the secret and deliver the child, and that’s exactly what Cleovera did.

The pair successfully brought a baby into the world, and this baby lived secretly in the dorm for more than a year. Cleovera and Yurena basically raised the child together without telling anyone. But during another sports festival, the baby ran a fever. Yurena wasn’t there, she was trying to find the fathers of the child. She left the baby with Cleovera and things became dire. The baby wasn’t eating, slipping into unconsciousness, and Cleovera had no choice but to take the child to the academy doctor. The matter was immediately taken to the Headmistress at the time, and Cleovera confessed everything. By the time Yurena returned to her dorm with the baby’s fathers, the damage was done.

Yurena was expelled and transferred to the omega institution. The baby was separated from her and placed in an orphanage. No one knows where that child is now. Cleovera was rewarded for being the whistleblower and given Yurena’s position. That is how she became Headmistress, and why she took Susie’s matter so seriously."

No way. There is no way. This is insane. Yurena was actually at Alma, and not only that, she had a baby there.

"Yurena’s entire incident was buried by the academy, and only a few people know what happened. I guess that’s how she managed to get a pack as rich and influential as Spade, even with her messy history. From that point, Cleovera said Yurena hated her. So I think the whole reason Spade pack got you was Yurena’s work. She wanted revenge on one of Cleovera’s girls—you—because it was Cleovera’s fault she lost her child, which she is still desperately searching for to this day."

So she abused me for a fight I didn’t even witness? Instead of using her energy against Headmistress Cleovera, she chose me. Who does that? What satisfaction can you get from destroying someone who had nothing to do with your downfall? I’m not Headmistress Cleovera’s favorite. Even if I suffer, it wouldn’t hurt her that much. If Yurena truly wanted to make the Headmistress suffer, it should have been Arabella. Not that I want it to be her, but that would have hurt Cleovera and gotten her attention.

But me? I was literally the worst choice. Wait—Yurena didn’t choose me, though. My mind flashes back to the time long ago when I was summoned to Headmistress Cleovera’s office, where she proceeded to tell me about the arrangement with Spade pack.

Wait a damn minute. I was a scapegoat. A lamb offered up to the wolves when Spade made that offer to Cleovera. Yurena had to be involved. She expected Cleovera to put forward her favorite, thinking whoever she gave the opportunity to would be her favourite. That was the opportunity she wanted. But Cleovera was smarter than that. She either knew what Yurena was planning or she truly believed Arabella could do better. So I got the offer instead.

And thus Yurena thought I was the favorite. She made my life a living hell, and the pack, whether they knew it or not, helped her.

I feel rage burning through me. This is the first emotion other than hollowness I have felt in a long time, and it hits me with such force it nearly consumes me.

"Oh, I also did research on your pack," Arabella continues. "When you die, they are going to have it great. Their omega Walter is set to win best model this year. Torin’s Spade Industries recently signed a deal with my pack, and he will finally achieve his dream of raising his company to unreachable heights. Oracle Spade is about to win his biggest case, and the other three also have things looking up in their lives. You just need to die, and they will get their happily ever after. And you won’t even get a page in a history book."

She takes a long sigh before I feel her warm hand on my cheek. "You need to get up. You can’t let all your suffering in that pack be for nothing. You have the power to rain down hell on earth for that pack. And if you kill the person who placed the bond on your shoulder, you’ll be free. We have bought you time, Lorali. Don’t waste it waiting to die when you could be figuring out how to make Spade suffer the way you did."

She’s right. Am I really going to die and let the likes of Torin get away with it all? If I die, they will all win. Yurena would win, she whipped me countless times and got away without a scratch. Oracle, who ruined my life, will get to grow old, happy, becoming the best in his field, while I couldn’t even pass twenty‑five.

What the heck was I thinking? Yes, I still want to die, but not at the cost of giving Pack Spade a happy ending. No. I’m not letting that happen. If I’m going to die, I might as well bring them all with me.

"How did you know I was awake?" I ask, my voice coming out so croaked, like I inhaled a ton of smoke.

"I’ve known you for more than ten years. I know when you’re faking it."