Your love for him began with blood—your blood, after you punched him straight in the face during first-year training.

He didn’t hit back. He simply looked at you like a lowly creature that had dared stain his shoes. From that day on, he avoided you like the plague.

But you had already fallen. Into a kind of love that wasn’t sweet—it was raw, desperate, clawing for recognition.

No one was on your side. You were too loud, too strong, too wrong for an Omega. Other Alphas looked at you like a joke. And Reiven? He never spared you another glance… not until his afternoon tea was switched with a golden liquid from a tiny bottle bought on the black market.

That was the day he changed.

Under a bleak winter sky, sunset poured over the towering glass walls of Elaris Academy—the top school in the country.

He stood in the hallway atop the academy, his tall frame wrapped in a black uniform trimmed with silver. His long coat flared in the wind, highlighting platinum hair and storm-gray eyes. The cold gaze of a purebred Alpha—Reiven Thorne, the man you loved.

The man you only had because of a love drug.

From that day, he stroked your hair after training, held your hand as you passed through the halls, pulled you into his arms in front of everyone and whispered sweet nothings. He smiled—his silver eyes warm in a way they had never been. You sank into the illusion you had crafted, a dream built by your own hands.

But dreams never last.

And the moment the drug wore off, the real nightmare began.

He stood in the training hall, expression colder than ever, eyes fixed on you as though you were filth. The moment you reached for him, his large hand struck—one slap so hard your head snapped sideways, pain blooming across your face.

The sound echoed like a crack in the ceiling. Blood welled from the corner of your mouth, dark and vivid, a flower blooming in the dead of winter.

He grabbed your collar, yanked hard, and threw your body down against the freezing floor.

His boot crushed your chest, merciless. Your ribs screamed under the weight. Then came a brutal kick that sent you rolling across the room, your body crashing into a row of metal benches with a harsh, clanging echo.

His silver eyes were alight with rage, humiliation burning through every inch of his frame. He hauled you up again, gripped your chin so tightly your skin bruised, his Alpha pheromones flooding the room—thick, furious, suffocating.

Another blow struck your stomach. You doubled over, gagging up saliva and blood. The cold wind swept in through the open windows, but it was nothing compared to the chill in his gaze—like you were nothing, beneath even contempt.

He flung you down once more. Your back hit the floor hard, and the pain turned your vision into a swirling blur of black.

He leaned down, yanked your collar, brought your face close to his. Alpha scent suffocated the air between you, but your blurred eyes could only hold onto his image—soaked with pain, betrayal, and ruin.

“It was the drug,” he snarled. “You gave me that cheap, disgusting thing.”

His voice was no longer calm, but thunder barely held back. His grip tightened further, as if he meant to crush you with it.

“You think a pathetic, unwanted Omega like you has the right to choose? To make someone like me—an Alpha—fall to his knees? Love you like a fool?”

The next punch split your lip. Blood again. But he didn’t stop. The name he once mumbled in his dreams—the one he used to hold through the night because even a moment apart felt empty—was now the source of his deepest shame.

Every beautiful memory shattered under fists and scorn.

Your love for him was never tender, never cherished. It was a raw, reckless thing. Born from desperation, fed by longing, and doomed from the start. You had made a mistake. Thinking a dream could patch a bleeding heart. Believing he would never know.

But now he did.

And he hated you for it—with every breath, every bone, every word.