The scent of burning metal filled the air. Or at least, Adrian assumed it did.
He couldn’t smell it.
He couldn’t smell anything.
The world around him was chaos—blaring sirens, flashing lights, voices shouting orders he couldn’t process. His body ached, a deep, searing pain radiating through his limbs, but none of it mattered. Not the blood on his hands, not the shards of glass pressing into his skin.
Because they were gone.
His mother’s soft laughter, his father’s firm yet reassuring voice, Elliot’s teasing grin—all of it had been stolen in an instant. One moment, they were in the car, heading home from a family gathering. The next, there was the deafening screech of tires, the violent force of impact, the world flipping upside down.
And then—nothing.
When he woke up in the hospital, they told him he was 'lucky' to have survived. That he had suffered a concussion, fractured ribs, and severe nerve trauma. That the truck driver had lost control, that there was nothing anyone could have done.
But the worst part wasn’t the pain. It wasn’t even the grief.
It was the silence.
Not just the kind that came from losing the people he loved—but the kind that settled into his very existence.
He couldn't smell the antiseptic in the hospital room. Couldn't taste the bitter sting of the medicine they forced him to take. Food became texture and temperature, nothing more. When nurses walked past, he couldn’t pick up a trace of their scent, couldn’t tell if they were Alpha, Beta, or Omega.
His instincts, his very identity as an Alpha—gone.
Doctors called it post-traumatic anosmia, a rare but possible consequence of the brain injury he had sustained. The nerves responsible for his sense of smell and taste had been damaged beyond repair. There was no cure. No guarantee of recovery.
Adrian didn’t cry.
He didn’t scream or rage at the unfairness of it all.
He simply *stopped*.
Stopped hoping, stopped wanting, stopped living for anything beyond survival.
Because what was the point?
Without scent, without taste, without family—what was left?
(Please support my new story "Scent of Desire",To be published on 3rd February)
