Dante’s POV ~ Flashback
When Cyrus and I first met, we weren’t exactly on good terms.
He was the Beta’s son, a spoiled brat who thought the world revolved around him. I, on the other hand, was just a low-ranked trainee of a secret special force trying to survive.
At thirteen, I had already learned that survival wasn’t a right—it was something you had to fight for.
The training camp was brutal. We weren’t just taught to fight. We were taught to kill.
I had my first kill at seven. I was just a child, barely strong enough to hold a weapon, but that didn’t matter.
Kill or be killed. That was the only rule.
By thirteen, I had already lost count of how many lives I had taken.
One of our final tests was a hunt. We were sent into the forest with no weapons, forced to track and eliminate each other. Fifty of us went in. Only thirteen made it out, and I had a body count of seven.
Some were strangers. Others had been my friends.
But that didn’t matter.
By then, I had learned
