Page 116 of Knot Your Fated M.U.S.E.

Of freedom…

But a scent hits me with such force I stumble to a stop, my heart racing with recognition.

The aroma floods my senses, triggering memories I'd thought lost to their careful programming. That impossible blend of scents - identical to something I caught years ago, moments before entering the white van that delivered me back to this hell.

The same scent that accompanied those striking blue eyes I glimpsed from afar, watching me disappear into captivity.

Smelling it again makes me realize I hadn’t imagined such a unique scent.

That it wasn’t a figment of my inventiveness.

"Nyx?" Atlas calls, sensing my sudden stillness.

His tone carries concern, but I can't find words to explain the way this scent pulls at something deep inside me, awakening memories I'd convinced myself were merely dreams.

Before I can try to articulate the storm of emotions coursing through me, the intercom crackles with urgency.

"Atlas! Problem. Vale's missing." Kieran's voice carries barely contained panic.

The tension in the corridor spikes instantly as that familiar scent grows stronger —a foundation of fresh pine sap and sun-warmed granite, layered with crushed alpine herbs and wild mint. Underneath runs a current of sterile iodine and surgical steel, creating an unusual contrast between wilderness and medical precision.

The combination is rounded out with hints of leather worn smooth by mountain winds and traces of eucalyptus.

It wraps around me like a physical force, drawing me toward its source with an inexorable pull.

Atlas presses the intercom, his jaw tight with concern.

"Is the injector there?"

"Empty."

"Motherfucker never listens to me," Atlas growls in frustration.

The words carry layers of history, of shared battles and stubborn defiance.

But I'm already running back the way we came, drawn by instinct and that magnetic scent. Atlas calls after me, his voice torn between command and concern, but I can't stop — not when everything in me says the source is close. One turn away. Maybe two. Three at most.

The facility's alarms increase in pitch, warning of escalating danger. The sound should frighten and remind me of all the times similar alarms preceded new torments.

However, they fade to background noise as I follow that compelling scent through Ravenscroft's maze-like corridors.

My enhanced senses — another "gift" from their endless experiments - track the aroma with predatory focus. Each turn makes it stronger, clearer, and more impossible to resist. It calls to something primal in me, something their tests and trials never quite managed to destroy.

My feet carry me swiftly around corners until I skid to a stop at the entrance to a dead-end hallway. The sight before me freezes the breath in my lungs and makes time seem to crystallize around this moment of recognition.

A masked figure leans against the wall, chest heaving with labored breaths. The mask sits pushed up on his head as if hastily moved aside for air.

Blue X's glow eerily from its surface, casting strange patterns on the sterile walls, but it's his exposed face that steals my breath completely.

He lifts his head, perhaps sensing my presence, and our eyes meet across the distance. Recognition explodes between us like lightning striking twice — because I know those blue eyes.

They've haunted my dreams, my memories, my fragments of a life before Ravenscroft.

This is him.

The alpha from that autumn day.

The one who watched me disappear into captivity.

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