Chapter 76: Why Am I Smelling My Mate’s Scent?

Malric

They had been sitting in the suffocating silence of Team Fang’s cabin for far too long.

Outside, the late afternoon light had completely drained into a pitch-black, frigid mountain night, but not a single one of them had moved to light the fireplace. They had deliberately skipped the mandatory opening meeting at the central campfire, the one where the camp organizers had gathered everyone around an unlit stone pit, strictly because they were convinced Travis would be forced to go there. They couldn’t afford to miss him when he came back. Not again. They had already missed the little brat the first time he arrived at the campsite, arriving only to find his stupid canvas bag sitting right near their door.

So, they had waited. And waited. They sat in the dark cabin like predators lying in wait, watching the hours tick by until the distant noise of the crowd died down, signaling that the fireplace meeting was long over.

Yet, Travis was still nowhere to be seen.

Malric leaned against the heavy oak table, his dark eyes fixed on the empty doorway, his patience wearing dangerously thin. He couldn’t take the waiting anymore.

"Do you think he changed teams or something?" Malric said out loud, his voice cutting through the heavy quiet. "I mean, that boy could be capable of that."

Vance let out a sharp, mocking scoff from the dark corner where he was aggressively pacing back and forth like a caged beast. "Of course he didn’t do such a thing! His things are still here! Think, big brother, think."

Malric’s head snapped toward Vance, a cold, dangerous fury instantly igniting in his chest. His posture straightened, his eyes narrowing into deadly slits as he glared down his younger brother.

"Vance, I understand you’re pissy lately," Malric warned, his tone dropping into a deadly, low vibration that made the wooden floorboards seem to tremble, "but if I don’t get my respect, I will show you flames."

Vance didn’t even flinch. He just rolled his eyes dramatically, crossing his arms and turning his back to Malric, continuing his unbearable, moody behavior without a single word of apology.

Malric held back a bitter, frustrated growl, turning his face away. This guy has been so moody, Malric thought to himself, his mind racing with deep, unsettling concern. Out of all of them, Vance was supposed to be the detached one. To think Vance was the one who originally didn’t care about having a mate so much, who treated the entire concept as a complete joke, and now here he was, more driven, more desperate, and more unhinged than all of them combined.

I mean, we are driven, but the way Vance is driven... I feel like it’s taking a toll on him. He’s going to lose his mind sooner than all of us.

If they didn’t find their answers soon, Vance was going to completely snap, and he would take the rest of them down with him.

Deciding he couldn’t breathe the same stale air in this tiny cabin for another second, Malric pushed himself away from the table. "I’m going out for a stroll," he announced flatly, grabbing his heavy dark coat from the chair. "Tell me if Travis comes back, and don’t engage with him until I’m back."

He paused right at the threshold, turning his head to lock his eyes specifically on Vance, staring him down with absolute authority.

"Do you hear me?" Malric demanded, his voice leaves no room for debate. "Don’t engage with the boy. Now with Roiner back, we need to handle this wisely or we will all be without heads."

Without waiting for a response, Malric pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped out into the biting night air, letting the cabin door slam shut behind him.

Truthfully, he wasn’t going for a stroll at all. He had lied to his brothers simply so he could go alone. Because if he had actually told them the truth, that he was going out to hunt down Keali, who for some unfathomable reason still hadn’t shown up at the campsite he knew both Theo and Vance would have insisted on tagging along.

And at this exact moment, Malric genuinely believed the best thing that could happen for their sanity was him and his brothers having some much-needed distance from each other before they tore each other apart.

Pulling his phone out from his jacket pocket, Malric rapidly typed out a message, shooting Keali a text.

Malric:

[ dude, where are you?]

He stared down at the glowing screen for a long, agonizing minute. Just as he expected, his useless brother didn’t answer, for some reason the idiot has a phone he never uses.

"Fucking Idiot." Malric cursed under his breath, shoving his phone violently back into his pocket. Fine. If technology and his brother was failing him, he would just have to rely on his own raw, wolf senses to track down his miserable sibling. He just desperately prayed to whatever gods were listening that Keali hadn’t gotten high enough on his shit that he stumble off a cliff or fall straight into Lake Tosh.

Standing at the edge of the dirt path, Malric took a deep, deliberate breath, wildly inflating his nostrils to expand his acute sense of smell.

Instantly, he was violently attacked by a chaotic, overwhelming wall of a thousand different scents lingering in the cold air, expensive perfume from foreign female students, damp pine leaves, burning woodsmoke, wet earth, and sweaty rival academy fighters. It was a suffocating sensory overload, and Malric gritted his teeth, forcibly filtering through the noise, pushing past the repulsive smells to focus entirely on isolating Keali’s distinct scent.

Cedarwood and storm clouds.

Malric froze.

His lungs locked mid-inhale. His pulse did a violent, terrifying leap right against his throat.

Tucked deep beneath the heavy layers of the forest scents, there was something else. It was minuscule. It was a tiny, microscopic trace of a scent drifting weakly on the shifting mountain wind, so faint that anyone else would have completely missed it. But to Malric, it hit him like a physical blow to the heart.

Jasmine. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Sweet, intoxicating, delicate jasmine.

Every single drop of blood in Malric’s body went completely cold, only to instantly boil with a sudden, overwhelming surge of primal instinct. Even though it was microscopically faint, he knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt. He knew it in his soul, in his bones, in the deep, violent depths of his inner beast.

It was his fated mate.

The thought of Keali instantly vanished from his mind. Throwing his original plan completely to the side, Malric mentally declared, I’ll find you later, Keali, as his body acted entirely on pure, predatory adrenaline.

He moved instantly, his long legs eating up the distance as he practically charged down the gravel path toward the edge of the camp. Foreign students from rival academies were lounging near the trees, but the second they saw the terrifying, bloodthirsty look on Malric’s face and felt the suffocating pressure radiating off his towering frame, they practically threw themselves out of his way, dodging frantically to clear a path for him.

Malric didn’t even register their existence. He was completely blind to the world, his nose locked entirely onto that faint, impossible thread of jasmine.

Following the scent like a possessed man, he veered sharply off the main trail, diving straight into the dark, dense woods far from the shore of Lake Tosh.

The forest canopy swallowed him whole, plunging him into near-total darkness. He pushed past heavy pine branches, his heavy boots crunching over the damp leaves as he pushed deeper and deeper into the trees where the scent was growing thicker, richer, and impossibly overwhelming.

He broke through a thick cluster of bushes into a small, shadowed clearing.

"Where are you?" Malric whispered, his breath coming out in ragged, frantic clouds of white mist.

He spun around in a full circle, his dark eyes desperately scanning the shadowy tree trunks, searching every corner of the dim clearing.

Nothing.

There was no one there. The clearing was completely empty.

Yet, the scent of jasmine was exploding around him, hanging thick and heavy in the frigid air. And it wasn’t just jasmine anymore. As Malric took a deep, shuddering breath, his acute senses picked up the dominant, terrifyingly powerful scent intertwined directly with the sweet flower.

crisp mountain air, roasted espresso, and old parchment

Headmaster Roiner.

Malric’s head spun as his brain desperately tried to process the suffocating atmosphere. The jasmine scent wasn’t just existing, it was drenched in high, intense pheromones, a thick, intoxicating haze of pure ecstasy dancing, tangled, and completely wrapped up in Roiner’s heavy, dominating scent. The sheer intimacy radiating off the combined smell was so intense it felt like a physical weight pressing against Malric’s chest.

I have to be going crazy, Malric thought frantically, his hands clenching into tight, trembling fists as a cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck. I am literally losing my mind. Why on earth am I smelling a jasmine scent mixed with Roiner’s pheromones?! Why is my mate’s scent here?!

It made zero sense. It was impossible. His eyes frantically swept over the empty forest, but he saw nothing. He heard nothing. Just the silent, looming trees and the dark shadows of the night.

Desperate, his heart hammering a frantic, wild rhythm against his ribs, Malric slowly lowered his gaze, scanning the dark forest floor beneath his feet for any sign, any clue, any proof that he wasn’t completely losing his mind.

And then, right there in the damp dirt near the base of a massive pine tree, his eyes locked onto something lying silently on the ground.