Lena didn’t answer. She took a slow, stabilizing breath, forcing her lungs to expand against the lingering ache in her bruised ribs.
But as she inhaled, her heart did a panicked stunt against her chest.
The air around the booth was warm from the cafeteria vents, and beneath the heavy, dominant scents of the Prime floor, she noticed something terrifying. The distinct scent of the cheap Beta spray she had applied that morning was fading fast. It was supposed to cover her for at least another five hours.
It must be that the adrenaline spike from her confrontation with Draven was causing her body heat to spike, burning through her temporary scent in real-time.
"Let’s eat faster," Lena muttered, her voice dropping into an urgent frequency as she grabbed her pastry. She needed to apply her Beta spray again before the field training.
Before Lena could even swallow her first bite, a loud siren sound violently blared through the speakers in the cafeteria ceiling.
[ATTENTION ALL ASCENDANTS. REPORT TO FIELD SECTOR FOUR IMMEDIATELY FOR SATURDAY COMBAT TRAINING.]
"We need to go right now," Khloe said, immediately taking a massive, frantic bite from her food.
"But I haven’t even eaten," Lena muttered, already forced to stand up from the booth.
[ATTENTION ALL ASCENDANTS. REPORT TO FIELD SECTOR FOUR IMMEDIATELY FOR SATURDAY COMBAT TRAINING.]
"If we’re late, Alpha Christopher will literally make us run until our spleens burst!" Khloe panicked, scrambling into the aisle.
"My spleen is already bursting from the second-hand embarrassment of standing near Lena," Julian groaned, following right behind them. "My brand identity is ruined just by association."
[ATTENTION ALL ASCENDANTS. REPORT TO FIELD SECTOR FOUR IMMEDIATELY FOR SATURDAY COMBAT TRAINING.]
As they left the cafeteria and walked down the stone corridors, Khloe kept huddling close to Lena, her face tense with worry. "Don’t panic, Lena. You won’t encounter that lunatic Draven again. We’ll make sure you stay completely out of his line of sight."
"Yeah," Julian agreed, nodding firmly. "We’re putting you at the absolute back of the formation. He wouldn’t even see you."
Lena let out a dry, incredulous scoff, not even looking at them. She found it hard to believe these were the exact same wolves who had stood completely frozen and paralyzed in his presence just minutes ago.
"Wait–but what are we going to do about her scent?" Khloe suddenly stopped, her eyes widening.
"What scent?" Lena asked, defensively.
"Your scent?" Khloe pressed, leaning in. "He might find you through your scent. Wolves like him don’t use their eyes, Lena."
The warning made Lena silently wonder what the Beta spray actually smelled like to other wolves. To her it was scentless. In her rush at the black-market shop, she hadn’t even thought to ask the salesperson what the standard Beta spray smelled like to an actual predator.
"Why are you so defensive about your scent?" Julian asked, eyebrows raised.
"I’m just... conscious about it," Lena muttered flatly, trying to keep her posture neutral. "I don’t know what I smell like."
"You smell great," Khloe insisted. Then, she paused, her nostrils flaring slightly. "Wait... I’m picking up a different scent..."
Khloe aggressively leaned in closer to sniff her jacket, but Lena flinched, shifting her shoulder violently away from her roommate’s nose. "Boundaries, Khloe."
Khloe actually stopped, but the movement only made Julian bring his nose closer from the other side. "Hey!" Lena snapped.
"You know I don’t have boundaries," Julian countered with a dramatic sigh, sniffing the air near her collar. "I want to have whatever scent makes other wolves crazy. Mark me, Lena! Mark me right now!"
The two of them started crowding her, trying to catch a whiff of her fading camouflage, but Lena broke into a jog and ran ahead down the corridor.
"You can’t run away from us," Khloe called after, laughing and following her pace.
Lena was seriously frightened for her life–knowing her wolfless reality was a single second away from slipping out–but to her oblivious roommates, it was just a fun game.
They chased her all the way down the stone administrative wing, their lighthearted footsteps and breathless laughter echoing off the walls until the corridor finally spilled out into the open air.
As they crossed the threshold, their frantic pace naturally slowed, their steps stopped as the heavy gravity of the training field instantly hit them. The scale of the grounds made Lena stop and look around.
The area was wide; a black-gravel colosseum surrounded by high chain-link barriers and stone walls.
The expanse was explicitly divided into four sweeping sections, one for each house of the Quad, but the open center was large enough to hold every single Ascendant on campus. Hundreds of students were already gathering, talking and forming into rows.
"Back row. Right against the wall," Julian whispered, nudging Lena toward the very edge of the formation.
"Perfect," Lena said flatly.
She gladly took her place at the absolute end, turning her back completely toward the cold stone wall to block herself from view.
It was the perfect spot to apply the Beta spray now. While Khloe and Julian continued to talk and argue in front of her, acting as a human shield, Lena smoothly reached into her waistband and pulled out her Beta spray canister.
Keeping her movements hidden, she lifted her arm and quickly applied the cool mist straight onto her wrist.
The chemical scent immediately masked her skin, resetting her scent just in time.
She quickly slipped the metal canister back into her pocket and looked up, right as the sound of heavy boots crunched against the black gravel.
"Listen up, Ascendants!"
A stern, professional instructor in a dark navy uniform marched directly toward the front of their section.
The sound of his heavy boots crunching loudly against the black gravel slowly hushed the conversations on the field as they waited for his instruction.
His eyes swept over the crowd. "Each House form up into rows of five. Your House Leaders are arriving."