The Wolf, the Demon, and Their Omega

Chapter Two

SASHA

She's in my head like shrapnel.

I can't shake her scent—not quite human, not quite anything else. It follows me from the library to the north tower, up stairs that know my secrets. The Volkov pack suite spreads empty before me. Too early for the others to witness me coming apart over a girl who doesn't even have a real name.

Mina Padilla. Even thinking it feels like swallowing glass.

The piano waits in the corner like an old friend who knows all my worst habits. A Steinway my mother had shipped from Saint Petersburg before she decided being dead was easier than being married to my father. I sit, let my fingers find Rachmaninoff without thinking. The notes spill out like all the things I can't say out loud.

She's omega. I knew it the second she walked past us in the hallway—gravity bending around her like light around a black hole. Made my wolf sit up and pay attention in ways that should terrify me.

But there's something else.

Something underneath that omega pull that makes my gums ache. Four years at Blood Moon Academy, I've memorized every species that crawls through these halls. Learned their scents like other kids learn algebra. It's how you survive when your last name is Bolkonsky but your blood runs Volkov—aristocrat title, pack animal soul, forever caught between what you're called and what you are.

Mina doesn't fit any category I know. And that's going to be a problem.

My phone buzzes. Mikhail, our pack enforcer. The man who taught me seventeen ways to break a windpipe before I turned ten.

Your father wants updates on the new students.

I keep playing one-handed while texting back. Nothing worth reporting.

The transfer?

Of course someone already told him. In the Volkov pack, information flows up like blood from an open vein. Someone probably called it in before Mina even found her locker. That's how we work—paranoid and profitable.

Human. Scholarship kid. Nobody.

Your cousin Natasha disagrees.

Of course she does. Natasha collects secrets like trophies, displays them when they'll do the most damage. She probably smelled Mina's wrongness immediately, filed it under "future ammunition."

Natasha says lots of things.

Your father expects a full report by Friday.

He'll get one.

I delete the conversation, knowing it's already backed up in three different servers. Privacy is just another fairy tale, like believing your father won't eventually eat his own young if they show weakness.

The music shifts darker. My hands want Prokofiev now, something that sounds like Moscow in winter. I think about Mina in the library, surrounded by death records and determination. The way she held herself—careful, controlled, like someone who learned early that taking up too much space gets you killed.

Viktor used to stand like that around Father. Like existing too loudly might remind the universe to erase him.

And the universe did.

"Bit early for music that makes people want to kill themselves."

Adrian appears in the doorway, looking perfect despite being up all night doing whatever vampires do instead of sleeping. His presence changes the room's temperature—old death versus new violence.

"It's Rachmaninoff."

"Like I said."

He folds himself into the leather chair across from the piano, all lazy elegance and hidden teeth. Four years of friendship, and I still can't read him. Vampire faces show you exactly what they want you to see, nothing more.

"Our transfer's interesting."

"Kenji mentioned."

"Kenji wants to see what she looks like without clothes. I mean something different."

My hands freeze on the keys. The silence rings louder than the music.

"I ran deep background. Used all those databases we pretend we don't have access to."

"And?"

"Mina Padilla didn't exist until six months ago. Before that? Nothing. Parents too—Elena Padilla and Marcus Chen were ghosts until seventeen years ago. They popped into existence, procreated, then died sixteen years later."

I process this, add it to the growing list of things that make me want to tear her apart just to understand. In our world, people vanish all the time. But appearing from nowhere? That takes help. The expensive kind that leaves bodies in its wake.

"Witness protection?"

"Too clean for government work. This is art, Sasha. Someone crafted her identity like they were building a weapon."

"Or hiding one."

Adrian's smile shows fang. "Now you're thinking like a predator."

I've been thinking like a predator since I was seven and Father made me fight my first challenger. But Mina makes me think like something worse. Something hungrier.

"Lysander tried to read her dreams last night."

This stops me cold. Our fae prince doesn't usually invade minds without invitation.

"Why?"

"Curiosity. But here's the fun part—he couldn't get in. Something blocked him. Not magic, he'd recognize that. Something else."

My wolf rises, interested despite everything. "Natural shields?"

"He said it was like trying to grab smoke. Or—"

"Water."

Adrian's eyes sharpen. "Interesting. Why water?"

Because something about her makes me think of drowning. Of things moving beneath surfaces you can't see until they're already wrapped around your throat. But saying that out loud would mean admitting how deep she's already gotten under my skin.

"Just thinking out loud."

My phone lights up with a photo from Father. Him and his brigadiers at some warehouse, bodies arranged like modern art at their feet. The family business continues whether I'm paying attention or not. The Volkov pack doesn't care that their prince carries the Bolkonsky name—blood is blood, and blood always tells.

Adrian pretends not to notice, but vampires catalog everything. Future leverage, current intelligence. We're all collecting on each other, even when we pretend we're not.

"You invited her to Lysander's party."

"I did."

"Think she'll show?"

I replay our library conversation. The way she threw words like knives. The way her pulse jumped when I mentioned hunting ghosts.

"Yes."

"Sure about that?"

"She's looking for something. Everyone who matters will be at that party. Her prey will be there."

"Or whatever's hunting her."

The thought sits in my chest like ice. I've seen what happens to unclaimed omegas. The auction houses in Vladivostok. The breeding programs that everyone pretends don't exist. The farms where they—

"Play something else." Adrian's voice cuts through the spiral. "Something that doesn't sound like dead Russians."

I switch to Chopin, but my mind stays on Mina. On what could make a teenage girl need to disappear so completely. On what would drive her to Blood Moon, where secrets come to die bloody.

"The Calabrese are moving product tonight. During the party."

This gets my attention. "Since when do Italian vampires have permission to breathe in our territory?"

"They don't. Someone's promising them safe passage through school grounds. Someone with weight."

Blood Moon stays neutral through careful violence. Nobody sells access without all the houses agreeing. Which means—

"We have a traitor."

"Or an opportunist. Either way, needs handling."

The piano lid closes like I'm sealing a coffin. I stand, straighten my uniform that's seen enough blood to stock a small hospital.

"I need to check something."

"The omega?"

"The investment."

Because that's what she is now. An investment in questions I need answered. Adrian knows better than to push.

I leave him there, knowing he'll search my room the second I'm gone. It's what I'd do. Friendship is just mutually assured destruction with better music.

The stairs spiral down through architecture that lies about its dimensions. Blood Moon keeps its real shape secret, hides its teeth behind ivy and tradition. I pass the Pit—three floors of soundproofed violence where I put Blake Harrison in the hospital for thinking my name made me soft.

Where Viktor taught me that love is just another word for liability.

I find Natasha holding court in the pack common room, three younger wolves hanging on every poisonous word. She dismisses them when she sees me coming. We circle each other like what we are—family that might eat each other given the right seasoning.

"Cousin." She makes the word sound like a threat.

"Natasha."

"Interesting new pet you've acquired."

"If you mean the transfer—"

"I mean the omega making you stupid. What did you tell Mikhail about her... unique situation?"

"That she's human. Harmless. Forgettable."

"Lying to the Pakhan?" She uses the old title, the one that means boss in languages soaked with blood. "That's new for you."

"What do you want?"

"To help, of course. Family protects family."

"Since when?"

"Since unclaimed omegas started walking into our territory like buffets. Do you know what she's worth? The auction houses in Minsk would pay—"

"Stop."

The command comes out with alpha weight that makes her throat bare automatically. She recovers fast, but we both felt it. The moment where biology trumped whatever game she's playing.

"Protective already? She must be special."

"She's a student. That makes her off-limits."

"To everyone? Or just everyone who isn't Alexander Bolkonsky, prince of the Volkov pack?"

Hearing my full name, my full contradiction, makes something violent wake up in my chest.

Aristocrat name, pack blood, forever torn between the boy my mother wanted and the wolf my father made.

"Watch her if it entertains you. But if you touch her—"

"Yes?"

"I'll show you why they call me the Winter Prince. And unlike the stories, there won't be a spring."

Her laugh follows me out, bright as breaking bones. "Already lost, cousin. And you don't even know what game she's playing."

Maybe not. But I know this: Mina Padilla walked into my territory wearing someone else's name and secrets that smell like blood.

Whatever she's hunting, it all comes together tonight at Lysander's party.

And I'll be there when the masks fall off.

I head for the chemistry lab, needing somewhere quiet to think. The hallways empty around me—lunch hour, when predators feed and prey huddle together for safety. My footsteps echo wrong, like the building's swallowing sound.

That's when I catch it. Her scent, fresh and wrong and perfect.

She's been here. Recent enough that my wolf wants to follow the trail like breadcrumbs. I track it through corridors that shouldn't connect, past classrooms where things that aren't quite human pretend to learn calculus.

The trail ends at a supply closet. The door's closed but not locked. Sloppy. Or invitation.

I open it expecting ambush. Find something worse.

Photographs taped to the inside of the door. Crime scene photos from the look of them—clinical, cold, documenting death like it's just another data point. But it's the faces circled in red that stop my heart.

All students at Blood Moon. All missing or transferred in the last two years. All omega.

And at the center, written in handwriting I'm already starting to recognize:

Who's hunting who?

My phone buzzes. Unknown number.

Stop looking for me, Bolkonsky. You won't like what you find.

I text back: Try me.

Three dots appear, disappear, appear again. Then:

Your brother wasn't the only Bolkonsky to disappear. Just the only one you noticed.

The words hit like silver bullets. I stare at them until they blur, until my wolf threatens to surface right here in a supply closet that smells like her.

What do you know about Viktor?

But she's already gone. The typing indicators vanish like she never existed. Like Viktor never existed. Like all the omegas in these photos never existed.

I close the door carefully, memorize every face on her makeshift murder board. She's hunting something. Or someone. And she's using herself as bait.

The thought makes me want to tear the school apart brick by brick until I find her. Makes me want to lock her somewhere safe where only I can touch her. The intensity of it should scare me.

Instead, it just makes me hungry.

I text Kenji: Find her. Now.

His response comes fast: Already on it. She's heading for the east wing.

The old biology lab?

Yeah. Where they used to do the experiments.

Before Blood Moon went legitimate. Before the board of directors decided torture should at least look like education. The east wing's been sealed for three years, ever since a freshman witch found something that used to be human in the walls.

Perfect place for an omega with a death wish to go hunting.

I'm already running.

Because Mina Padilla might be playing a game I don't understand yet. But she's playing it in my territory, with my wolf's attention, wearing my obsession like perfume.

And nobody hunts in Volkov territory without permission.

Nobody except me.