“I’m dead!” I exclaimed.

My legs were nothing but pathetic, trembling twigs! Fuck, they hurt so much. Oren had dragged me from one place to another to show me every useful spot, every good door, and all the bad ones too. He’d shown me where to go and what to avoid! And I was fucking done! I wanted to rip his legs off. He had barely shown the slightest sign of exhaustion. In fact, he hadn’t felt anything at all! It was a scam—an imbalance of nature!

“You’re back late.”

Malik’s gentle voice tore a groan from me. Yeah, no shit we were back late! We’d left early that morning, and it was already nighttime! The star was already visible through the window. And that asshole was still prancing around the hideout, as lively as… as… Bastard. Malik suddenly placed a plate piled with food in front of me, and I stared at him as though he were the Messiah—my Messiah. I just wanted to eat and melt into my bed!

“You did a lot today, huh? Oren always makes sure we know how to survive without him.”

Bite after bite, I devoured my meal, but his words made me slow down. Why… why did Malik always use that tone whenever he spoke about Oren? A voice filled with love and admiration, yes, but inevitably tragic. I frowned and reluctantly put my food down. Caring this much about someone else’s feelings wasn’t like me, but Malik stirred something inside me.

“Are you involved with him? Or do you spend your heats together? I don’t really understand. You always sound half tender, half gloomy whenever you talk about everything Oren does for you.”

Malik opened his mouth. The shock of my question visibly hit him like a bomb had dropped right in front of him.

“Dante!” he protested. “And what’s this about heats?”

It was my turn to stare at him questioningly. There was nothing shocking about it to me. I mean, they were intimate enough for Malik to let Oren soothe and reassure him. If those two wanted to enjoy themselves during a heat, it wasn’t a crime. Break and Ivan probably would have done the same for me if we’d been capable of experiencing our respective ruts and heats in prison. It was only sex, for comfort and pleasure. It was different from knotting or marking. It didn’t imply anything.

“Ah… they didn’t tell you, did they? I should’ve guessed.”

My next bite stopped halfway to my mouth. Tell me what?

“We can’t have heats or ruts. Or at least… we prevent ourselves from having them. You know, there’s a reason I told you our generation was a failure. Our pheromones are unstable. The channelers you take are only temporary. We have to live on them.”

“Explain.”

Malik settled more comfortably in his seat and leaned toward me. I slowly resumed eating.

“We can control our pheromones thanks to the channelers. Without them, we’d inevitably lose control. It’s stronger in us than it is in the rest of you. Strong enough that if one of us went into heat or rut, it would affect the entire burrow—the whole mantle.”

“Affect it how?”

“Everyone would enter their reproductive phase, and who knows how many days it would last. Our pheromones are too strong and too uncontrollable for us to let our nature run free.”

Now I understood the “full-blown orgy” Oren had mentioned, but then…

“You still take inhibitors?”

“Yes. We inevitably feel the pheromones rising, so we take one when it begins, but it isn’t enough. It smothers and channels them, but we still need release. It’s mostly just a frustrating experience.”

They all had to suffocate their nature. That had to be frustrating—painful too. Feeling pleasure and having to force it back down… It was different from what I’d experienced in prison. I had never had the chance to experience heats the way others did. I’d been taking suppressants ever since I was declared an omega.

“But Oren and Ravenne can control their pheromones,” I pointed out.

“That’s the illusion they give. They may be better at it, but I promise you, they undergo the same treatment as the rest of us.”

That… was inconvenient. Wasn’t it a massive weakness? Or maybe a massive advantage. If it was something that extraordinary, the audience had to be waiting for the opportunity to see it happen, right? Everyone loved the forbidden. It was inevitably appealing. Maybe it could be a good opportunity to attract attention and climb a few ranks.

“If it ever happened… do you think you’d be in pain?”

Malik seriously considered it.

“No. Our bodies need it. But everyone else… they might not be able to withstand it. Pheromones as powerful as ours could cause damage. And not everyone outside is a criminal who deserves to die.”

I nodded. So the Greys thought about other people too. Was I supposed to find that admirable or annoying?

I finished my meal in silence. Malik waited patiently and cleared everything away before I could say a word. But before he left, there was something I wanted to ask him.

“I haven’t seen Ravenne all day. Has he spoken today?”

I meant it mockingly because the thought of his impassive face amused me, but Malik gave me a serious answer. “He’s on the roof if you want to speak with him. There’s an outside ladder near the entrance that will take you up to him.” And I had no idea what possessed my legs, but before I could even think twice, I was already there, climbing the outside of that enormous building at night—scaling a ladder with exhausted legs. Madness.

I looked down. If I fell, I would definitely end up as tomato purée. So, to avoid being scraped off the ground with a vacuum, I hurried toward the top. And fear of falling made me climb pretty damn fast! There, I found Ravenne sitting on the edge of the roof, his rabbit mask covering his face. Who the hell was he hiding it from at this hour? I approached without trying to be quiet and sat down beside him.

My heart hammered as my legs dangled over the void.

“I’d never been afraid of heights when there were barriers separating me from the drop,” I said. “Are you suicidal?”

No answer. I wasn’t surprised, but… this was different. His silence was different. I frowned slightly and leaned over to look at his face. His eyes no longer held anything cold. All the life of this titanic, rectangular city was reflected in his pale irises. I couldn’t see any colors, but in his gaze… I discovered a little more beauty in this monochrome place. I understood then that I shouldn’t take this moment lightly.

“You said… you didn’t know colors.”

Just as Malik had, I opened my mouth. He… Ravenne had spoken! To me!

“There are neon lights in every color,” he described. “Yellow is as warm as the sun—a burning, luminous, blinding star.”

I didn’t interrupt him. Not once. Even though I knew yellow to some extent, I could now understand what the sun looked like, and for that… I was grateful to him.

“Pink is as gentle as morning dew. Delicate and inviting, with a quiet beauty.”

He was speaking more now than he had in every moment we’d spent together combined.

“Green carries the elegance of grass and its blades bending beneath our footsteps.”

And yet, we had only known each other for three days, but his silence had felt like an eternity.

“Blue feels like an expanse as vast as the sky, whose color shows us that sometimes, we shouldn’t be afraid of infinity.”

I no longer understood Break and Ivan, who had once told me in passing that colors couldn’t be described.

“Purple is like a storm: striking, sudden, and impossible not to admire.”

Even though I didn’t know the sun, morning dew, grass, the sky and its vastness, or storms… Ravenne had also used words to describe them. I couldn’t see colors, but for a few seconds, as I looked out across the city again, I felt as though I could. I felt certain they were there before me, indelible.

For that, I thanked Ravenne.

So when the colors faded, I turned toward him. I had understood something about him: his mask mattered. Unlike Oren or the others, he had never removed it—except in front of me, the day before yesterday. Oh, he had probably taken it off countless times around the others, but doing it for me yesterday had clearly meant something to him.

I had no idea what my actions might lead to, but I dared. I removed his mask slowly, giving him every opportunity to push me away if the idea was unthinkable to him. Ravenne allowed it without flinching. His pheromones crackled—or at least, that was how it felt—but he didn’t reject me. So I let the mask fall into my hands. He finally tore his gaze away from the city and looked at me. I couldn’t help smiling at him, proud of our interaction, of this moment.

But no words came to break the silence. Then suddenly, something struck me. To describe colors to me that way, he must have known them—the sun, morning dew, grass, the sky, and storms. He had known all of those things once, and not down here. My gaze travelled down his body before returning to his face. He was covered in scars, like all the other Greys, crudely sealed with metal staples.

Maybe that was why Malik always sounded so tragic whenever he spoke about Oren, or even Ravenne. All the Greys were covered in scars, but those two bore even more. I didn’t know what they had endured, what had left so many marks across their bodies, but they had to suffer from it. No one could endure that much pain without carrying lasting damage, could they? Not even alphas. Still, I asked no questions.

We didn’t know each other. There was no intimacy between us. I had no right to ask.

"Thank you for the colors, Rabbit Mask. Even if it only lasted a few seconds, I’m certain I was able to see them."

He gave a restrained nod. Once again, he sank into silence, and I joined him there, his mask resting beneath my fingers.