TEN YEARS AGO...

ADRIEN’S POV

The air in the valley tasted like creepy trees, gunpowder, and the suffocating scent of expensive perfume.

Even at fourteen, the heirs of the city’s richest families already knew how to put on a show. It was only our first year at the academy, but the hierarchy had been set long before any of us ever stepped onto its perfectly kept grounds.

Names, family connections, and old money had decided who mattered years ago.

I stood near the edge of the staging pavilion, the stiff collar of my tailored hunting jacket chafing against my neck. I adjusted the weight of the silver-plated, school-issued rifle slung over my shoulder, my chest tight with a familiar, simmering resentment.

Everyone else was practically vibrating with excitement. I, on the other hand, just wanted to go back to my dorm and sleep. I felt a deep, biting contempt for the entire display, a visceral disgust for the way these little elites postured, pretending they were anything more than parasitic extension cords attached to their parents’ bank accounts.

I might be rich too, but the money isn’t mine. It belongs to a resentful, old man who hates me.

A few yards away, at the absolute center of the gravel clearing, stood Orion.

He hadn’t moved a muscle in ten minutes. He didn’t need to. He merely leaned against a cedar post, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his dark woolen coat, looking entirely bored by the universe. Yet, the entire freshman class orbited around him like helpless satellites caught in a massive gravitational pull.

The fucker thinks he’s a god, doesn’t he?

It was sickening. Orion didn’t just ignore them— he looked down on them with a palpable, quiet disdain that made my blood boil. Smug prick.

To Orion, the heirs of the country’s most powerful families weren’t peers, they weren’t even rivals, they were insects.

Flies buzzing around his head, annoying but ultimately too insignificant to bother swatting away. He treated their very existence as an inconvenience, a minor stain on his day.

I wish a bird would shit on his head.

I watched as Julian, a boy whose family owned half the shipping ports on the coast, practically tripped over his own expensive leather boots just to hand Orion a silver flask.

"We’ve mapped out the eastern part of the forest, Orion," Julian said, his voice a sickening mix of eagerness and desperation, his posture slightly stooped as if he were begging for a scrap from a king’s table. If I ever look that fucking pathetic, may I die.

"The deer gather near the creek this time of morning. If you join our vanguard, you can have the first shot. We’ll drive them right to you."

Orion didn’t even blink. He didn’t look at the flask, and he certainly didn’t look at Julian. He stared right through him, his eyes dead and unbothered, treating the boy as if he were made of glass.

"No. Scram," Orion said.

His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried perfectly through the crisp morning air, cold and dismissive enough to freeze the blood in Julian’s veins. Julian’s face flushed a humiliating shade of red.

He stepped back, offering a tight-lipped smile before slinking away to join his family’s sycophants. Orion didn’t even register his departure, his gaze simply shifted to the grey sky, completely vacant. His soul should just ascend, so he can be one with the clouds.

Next came Louise. My lovely vulture.

Even back then, as his girlfriend, she expected to follow a different set of rules. She possessed that sharp, venomous poise that made people instinctively step out of her path, and she strode up to Orion with the confidence of someone who believed she belonged by his side.

Her long black hair was tied back in a flawless ponytail, a sleek, custom-made rifle resting over her forearm. She looked at him with an expression that would look soft if her eyes were calculated and cold.

Like a damn vulture.

"Don’t waste your time with the eastern part, Orion," Louise murmured, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness as she stepped into his space, treating him like a prize she had already won. "My family’s hounds are already stationed at the northern part. We’ll have a stag cornered within twenty minutes, so come with me, it’ll be far more entertaining than watching these idiots shoot at birds."

Orion finally turned his head. His dark eyes flicked down to Louise, and for a terrifying second, the utter blankness in his expression turned into pure, unadulterated confusion.

He didn’t look at her like a girlfriend. He looked at her exactly the way one would look at a stranger—like he’s about to ask ’who the hell are you?’.

"You’re loud, Louise," he said softly, his tone completely flat, devoid of a single shred of affection or warmth. "Go away."

A sharp intake of breath rippled through the surrounding students. Louise’s jaw tightened, a humiliated glint flashing in her eyes as her face turned pale.

This is fucking hilarious.

For all her power and status, she was just another fly to him. Without another word, she spun on her heel and marched toward her designated hunting party, her boots kicking up gravel to hide her shame.

I let out a quiet, mocking snort from my position by the pavilion, my arms crossed tightly over my chest. The utter hypocrisy of it all made me sick to my stomach.

Naturally, my amusement caught the attention of the universe’s worst idiots. Two boys from the lower-tier elite families, idiots who thought that associating with me might somehow grant them a backdoor channel to the realm of the true elites, stepped into my perimeter.

They don’t know that the only difference between us is they have actual money, and I don’t. I starve on a daily.

"Hey, Adrien," the taller one, Pierce, said, flashing a grin that was entirely too bright for this hour of the morning. White-toothed bastard. "We’ve got an extra spot in our group. We’re heading toward the old western trails. You should come with us, it’s better than standing around here like a statue."

I looked at Pierce, then looked at his friend, letting my gaze linger on the poorly fastened straps of their ammunition vests. My chest burned with a sudden, vicious spike of hatred for their fake pity.

I wonder what sort of bullshit Louise has been spreading around the schoo for idiots like these to look at me like ’that’.

"I’d rather swallow a handful of rusted nails," I said evenly.

Pierce’s grin faltered. "Come on, don’t be like that. It’s a team event, if you stay by yourself, you’re just going to fail."

"Then I’ll fail in peace," I replied, turning my back on them. "Don’t forget to lose my number, Pierce."

They muttered something under their breaths, probably calling me an arrogant bastard, but they walked away.

Whatever. I don’t care.

I didn’t want their pity, their strategy, or their company. I just wanted to be left alone in my misery.

A loud, echoing horn blast shattered the morning quiet, signaling the official start of the competition.

With a flurry of excited chatter and the heavy thudding of boots, the crowd of students began to disperse. They flooded into the woods in organized packs, their brightly colored armbands disappearing beneath the shadow of the massive oak and pine trees.

Within minutes, the clearing fell completely silent. The instructors had already retreated to the observation lodge up the hill, leaving the grounds empty.

Well, almost empty.

I let out a long breath, standing there near the edge of the pavilion, glaring fiercely across the gravel at Orion. My eyes were narrowed, my mouth set in a hard, bitter line as I watched him. I hate him.

I hated the way he could dismiss people with a word, hated the effortless power he wielded, and hated that I was stuck in the same suffocating world as him. I stood my ground, channeling every ounce of my fourteen-year-old rage and disgust into a venomous stare.

And then, the most infuriating thing happened.

The exact millisecond the last student disappeared into the brush, Orion’s entire posture changed. The heavy, suffocating apathy that had blanketed him for the last hour vanished in an instant. The dead, cold look he had used to crush Julian and Louise was completely wiped away.

This bastard has a split personality, doesn’t he?

He turned his head toward me, and the moment his dark eyes landed on me—standing there, practically radiating hatred and glaring a hole through his skull—his face completely lit up.

Jesus fucking Christ.

*****

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—TheLovePoet.