Chapter 1 A Dark Valentine #2
Gammas were the forgotten middle children of designation biology.
Not dominant enough to be Alphas, not submissive enough to be Omegas, not neutral enough to be Betas.
They existed in the genetic in-between—stronger than Betas, prone to aggression, but without the pheromone production or bonding instincts that made Alphas valuable.
Society didn't know what to do with them, so it mostly pretended they didn't exist.
Sigmas were even rarer. Lone wolves by biology, not choice. Their systems rejected pack bonds entirely. They couldn't scent-match, couldn't pair-bond, couldn't feel the pull that drove the rest of us toward connection. Some called them evolutionary dead ends. Others called them free.
Most of them ended up in places like this.
This Gamma had traced hearts all over his walls, hundreds of them, layered so thick the concrete had disappeared.
When he saw me, he slammed his fists against the glass so hard the impact echoed through the corridor.
I jumped.
"The Queen!!" He beat at the glass again. "The Queen! The promised one! Bless me! Please!”
I shivered. “What are they talking about?”
One of the guards shifted uncomfortably. Harker's jaw tightened. "Don't engage with any of them. Just keep moving."
But they weren't done.
A Sigma three cells down had started singing—if you could call it that. She was swaying against the glass, her voice a discordant warble that climbed and fell with no recognizable melody. "She walks through the castle, the bride in the tower, the king waits for his flower, his flower, his flower—"
A Beta across the hall took up the words, harmonizing in a broken minor key.
Then another.
And another.
The song spread through the cell block like a virus, dozens of voices joining in a cacophony that made my skin crawl.
I'd read about folie à deux. Shared delusions between two people. But this was folie à fifty. A whole ward of broken minds tuned to the same frequency, singing the same impossible song.
About me.
“What are they talking about?” I looked at the warden.
Harker grabbed my arm too tight. "Keep. Moving."
But I couldn't stop staring. A Gamma two cells ahead was jumping up and down, slamming his body against the walls, screaming the lyrics at the top of his lungs.
On the left, I spotted a Sigma, a woman with surgical scars where her scent glands should be, was weeping openly and trying to reach toward me through the glass like I was salvation itself.
Then I saw the blood further down.
A thin Beta in the cell to my right had produced something sharp—a piece of broken plastic, maybe, smuggled from God knows where. He was dragging it across his own palm. Blood welled up in a bright red line, and he was using it to paint on the glass.
What is he drawing? Oh my God. He’s painting a crown with his own blood.
"For the queen!" He smeared another line. "A crown for Queen Willow!"
I blinked at hearing my name.
I should have looked away. That's what training taught you—don't reinforce the behavior, don't give them the attention they're seeking.
But I couldn't stop staring at the crown taking shape on the glass.
At the reverence in his eyes. At the way his blood dripped down the barrier between us like tears.
He wasn't performing for attention. He believed this. Whatever Rook had told them about me, they believed it.
Harker made a sharp gesture to one of the guards. "Cell 47. Restraint and medical. Now."
The guard broke away and spoke rapidly into his radio.
Within seconds, a team in white swarmed toward the cell, but the Beta didn't seem to notice. He just kept painting with his blood as his gaze never left mine.
My voice came out wrong. Too high. Edged with fear I couldn't hide. "How do they even know who I am?"
"Rook told them you were coming."
I stopped walking. "He what?"
Harker didn't answer. He was already at the final checkpoint, punching in a code that made the heavy steel door groan open.
Beyond it, the lights were different—warmer, golden.
Classical music drifted from the space I couldn't yet see.
With each step, the classical music grew louder.
I recognized it as Debussy’s.
Not a standalone piece, but one movement from Suite bergamasque—a piano suite he’d written in his youth and revised years later, polishing it into something deceptively simple.
Clair de Lune was the quiet heart of the suite. A nocturne disguised as calm, written to feel like moonlight reflecting off something already broken.
Soft.
Distant.
Never fully present.
It wasn’t triumphant or romantic in the way people assumed.
It was restraint turned into sound.
Longing held just shy of release.
I’d loved it for that reason. It was the piece you played when you wanted elegance to feel like control, when you needed beauty to smooth over darker thoughts instead of confronting them.
Hearing it here, inside an asylum dressed up for Valentine’s Day, made my skin prickle.
And with one of my favorite classical songs came a luring, euphoric scent.
I'd never truly smelled an Alpha before. My suppressants had dulled that part of me so completely I'd walked through the world nose-blind. But whatever was coming through that door. . .it hit me like a wave.
Dark and green like a pine forest burning.
The scent crawled into my sinuses and stayed there.
My knees went soft.
Twelve years of suppressants.
Twelve years of walking through the world with my Omega biology locked in a box. I'd convinced myself that box was permanent. That I'd successfully amputated the part of me that could be triggered by an Alpha.
One inhale proved me wrong.
The scent didn't just enter my nose—it colonized my body. Moved into spaces I didn't know I had. Made itself at home in the empty places I'd spent my whole adult life pretending didn't exist.
How is this happening?
Harker turned to the remaining guard. "Stay here. Don't let anyone through that door."
The guard nodded.
Then, the warden looked at me. “You may enter on your own, and remember, you only get twenty minutes.”
“You’re not coming inside with me?”
“I do not have time for the Trickster’s mind games this morning.” He frowned. “But you will be safe. This is the most secure space in the entire asylum and there are cameras everywhere that are being monitored by security. I will be right here with the guards if you need me.”
“Okay.” I swallowed.
I'd spent these last months preparing for this interview. Re-reading Rook’s case files. Studying his patterns. Building psychological models of his behavior.
I considered the way his Broken Court was acting.
Rook has been preparing too.
The difference was, I'd been preparing to understand him.
And he was preparing to what? Crown me?
Shivering, I crossed the threshold, feeling more like a lamb entering a lion’s den.
The door swung shut behind me.
The sound it made wasn't a click.
It was a swallow.
Fuck. What did I get myself into?