Chapter 4 #3
The face that stared back at me from the mirror looked marginally better than last night.
The dark circles were still there, purpling the delicate skin beneath my grey eyes, but the wild, haunted look had faded somewhat.
My hair was a disaster, I'd gone to bed with it wet from the shower, and now the black and teal strands were sticking up in approximately fifty different directions.
I spent twenty minutes wrestling it into something presentable, blow-drying the worst of the tangles and flat-ironing the teal pieces until they lay smooth and shiny against my cheekbones.
The color had faded to more of a seafoam than the vibrant teal I preferred, the black roots showing more than I liked, but there was no time to fix it now.
A little concealer hid the worst of the dark circles. A little lip balm made me look less like a corpse. I looked almost normal. I looked almost like the Keira who had existed before yesterday, before the collision, before the bond, before everything had changed.
Almost, my omega agreed, her voice soft and knowing. But not quite. Never again quite.
I ignored her and went to get dressed. I chose my outfit carefully, professional but unremarkable, the kind of thing that would help me fade into the background. Dark jeans. A loose grey sweater that covered my mark completely. Flat boots that I could run in if I needed to.
I tried not to think about why that last consideration felt so important.
The walk was quiet. Though I couldn't shake the sensation that people were looking at me. Alphas on the train turned their heads slightly as I passed. Betas giving me curious glances. An omega woman in a business suit meeting my eyes and smiling like we shared a secret.
They can smell you, my omega whispered, equal parts nervous and thrilled. The blockers aren't strong enough anymore. Everyone knows what you are.
That couldn't be right. I'd applied enough blocker to mask an elephant. It was just paranoia, just my omega making me hyperaware of every alpha in a three-mile radius.
But I couldn't stop checking over my shoulder. Couldn't stop watching the alphas who got too close. Couldn't stop wondering if one of them might have that sunshine-citrus scent, if one of them might look at me and know what I was running from.
Narvi Entertainment headquarters loomed ahead of me, all glass and steel and corporate intimidation. I hesitated on the sidewalk outside, my heart doing something complicated in my chest.
Somewhere in that building, Hwan was probably going about his day, practicing choreography, recording vocals, being impossibly beautiful and bright while I fell apart in his wake.
The thought of seeing him again made my stomach flip in a way that wasn't entirely unpleasant, and I hated myself for it.
He's in there, my omega whispered, pressing against my consciousness like a dog straining at a leash. I can feel him. The bond can feel him. We should find him. We should—
"We should go to our meeting," I said firmly, earning a strange look from a woman passing by, "and do our job, and not think about him at all."
I squared my shoulders and walked inside.
The elevator ride up to Conference Room 3A felt like ascending to my own execution. With every floor that passed, my heart beat a little faster, my palms grew a little sweatier, and my omega became a little more alert.
What if he's there? she asked, her voice pitched high with hope. What if we see him again? What if—
"He won't be," I said under my breath. "Jin-ho is the lyricist. They probably don't even work in the same part of the building."
But what if—
"Shut up." The beta man standing next to me edged away slightly.
I didn't blame him. The elevator doors opened, and I stepped out into the hallway before I could lose my nerve.
Conference Room 3A was at the end of a long corridor lined with framed gold records and promotional posters.
I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead, refusing to look at the images of SIREN that seemed to watch me from every wall.
Five faces.
Five potential bonds.
My mother's voice echoed in my memory: "The bond wanted me. It almost consumed me."
I pushed open the conference room door. The room was empty.
The breath I'd been holding rushed out of me in a whoosh of relief.
I was early, of course I was, I was always early, it was one of the few things I could control and Jin-ho wasn't here yet.
I had a time to compose myself. To remind myself that I was a professional. That I could do this.
That I could sit in a room with a member of SIREN and convince him I was good enough to write their comeback, and not fall apart in the process.
I sat down at the conference table and pulled out my notebook, a new one, since I'd dropped the last one when I'd collided with Hwan.
The thought sent a pang through my chest. My old notebook was gone.
All those lyrics, all those half-formed ideas, lost.
Unless he'd kept it.
I shook my head sharply, dispelling the thought, and flipped to the pages of lyrics I'd been working on.
"Eclipse" was coming together, slowly but surely.
The words were dark and desperate, full of drowning metaphors and surrender imagery, and I wasn't sure anymore if I was writing about the song's concept or my own life.
Drowning in the eclipse of your voice Losing myself in the darkness you bring I never asked to be chosen But here I am, surrendering everything—
The door opened behind me. My head snapped up, my heart lurching into my throat, and I spun around in my chair expecting to see…
But it wasn't Hwan.
Relief and something else—disappointment? no, that couldn't be right—flooded through me as I took in the man standing in the doorway.
He was striking in a way that was completely different from Hwan's golden warmth.
Tall and lean, with the kind of elegant bone structure that photographers must dream about.
His hair was silver-grey with hints of lavender, falling across his forehead in artfully tousled waves that probably took longer to style than my entire morning routine.
His skin was pale, porcelain pale, the kind of pale that looked ethereal rather than unhealthy and his face had the sharp, refined features of someone who could have been carved from marble.
It was his eyes that made me catch my breath.
They were amber. Not brown, not hazel—amber, like honey held up to sunlight, like aged whiskey in a crystal glass.
In the fluorescent light of the conference room, they seemed almost golden, and they were fixed on me with an intensity that made me want to squirm.
He was dressed in all black, jeans, turtleneck, blazer—and silver earrings glinted at his ears, multiple piercings catching the light. A beauty mark sat just below his left eye, and his long, elegant fingers were wrapped around a leather notebook that looked worn with use.
Jin-ho.
Lead vocalist.
And, if my mark was any indication, one of my other potential soulmates.
Alpha, my omega whispered, suddenly very awake. Another alpha. Look at those eyes. I've never seen eyes like that. He's—
No. Please, no.
I could already smell him. The scent blockers should have prevented it—should have muted any pheromones to a level below my perception, Something had changed since yesterday, something in the bond I'd triggered with Hwan had heightened my senses, because I could smell Jin-ho as clearly as if he'd bathed in cologne.
Woodsmoke and rain.
The scent was completely different from Hwan's bright warmth, this was deeper, darker, like a midnight forest after a storm. It made me think of leather-bound books and whispered confessions and secrets shared in candlelight. It made me want to lean closer and breathe deep.
It made my omega practically melt.
This one, that inner voice crooned. Oh, this one is different. This one—
"You must be Keira." His voice matched his aesthetic, deep, measured, every word chosen with care like he was composing sentences the way other people composed music.
There was a slight rasp to it, like he'd spent too many hours singing or too few hours sleeping, and it did something complicated to my insides.
I realized I'd been staring.
"Yes." I stood up too fast, nearly knocking my chair over in my haste. "Sorry. Yes. I'm Keira. The lyricist. For the comeback track. Nice to meet you." Heat flooded my cheeks. I sounded like an idiot.
Jin-ho's lips twitched, not quite a smile, but close. The expression softened the sharp planes of his face, made him look almost approachable instead of intimidatingly beautiful.
"I know who you are," he said, stepping into the room and letting the door close behind him. He moved with a fluid grace that reminded me of water—smooth and unhurried, like he had all the time in the world. "I've read and listened to your work. All of it, actually."
Something warm flickered in my chest at that—professional pride, I told myself. Nothing more.
"Oh." I clasped my hands in front of me, not knowing what else to do with them. "Thank you. I've don the same with yours too. Obviously. You're brilliant."
The almost-smile deepened by a fraction. "So are you. We got the small snippet you emailed to us. We don't usually work with outside writers, but your style…" He paused, those amber eyes studying me with an intensity that made my skin prickle. "It feels like it could have come from one of us."
I forced myself to sit back down, to focus on the professional conversation instead of the way his scent was wrapping around me like a velvet blanket.
He took the chair across from me, setting his notebook on the table between us, and I caught a glimpse of handwritten lyrics on the open page—messy and cramped, like he'd been writing too fast to keep up with his thoughts.
"Thank you," I managed. "I wasn't sure if it was too dark."
"That's what makes it good." His amber eyes met mine, and I felt the weight of his attention like a physical thing. "Most lyricists try to soften the edges. You sharpened them."
He understands, my omega whispered. He sees us. He—
I shut that voice down and made myself engage with the actual topic at hand.
We talked about the song. It should have been safe, purely professional, just two artists discussing their craft. And in some ways, it was. Jin-ho was clearly passionate about lyrics, about the intersection of music and meaning, and I found myself drawn into the conversation despite myself.
We debated word choices, whether "surrender" was too strong, whether "consumed" was too obvious.
We discussed meter and rhythm, how certain syllables would sit against the melody, where the emphasis should fall.
We analyzed the emotional arc of the song, the descent into darkness, the desperate reaching for something solid to hold onto.
For a few minutes, I almost forgot. Almost forgot about the bonds.
Almost forgot about my mother. Almost forgot about the omega instincts that were screaming at me to lean closer, breathe deeper, let him in.
Then our eyes met properly. Not the glancing contact of professional conversation—the kind of eye contact that felt like falling.
The world stopped.
I felt it happen.
The bond snapped into place with an almost audible click, like a puzzle piece finding its home.
Warmth flooded through me, different from the golden sunshine of Hwan's bond, this was deeper, darker, like sinking into a hot spring on a winter night.
It filled spaces I didn't know were empty and created new aches I hadn't known I could feel.
On my neck, beneath my sweater, I knew without looking that another flower was blooming. I didn’t know the color yet, but I could feel it.
Yes, my omega keened, her voice rising in triumph. Yes, yes, another one, ours, OURS—
Jin-ho's amber eyes widened. I watched his pupils blow wide, the honey-gold swallowed by black, and for a split second I saw something flash in his gaze—
Gold.
Alpha gold.
The color of instinct and claiming and mine.
"You're—" he started, his deep voice rougher than before, his elegant composure cracking for the first time since he'd walked in.
I was already moving. I grabbed my notebook and shoved back from the table, the chair screeching against the floor.
The door was right there—I just had to get through it, get away, get out…
"Wait—" Jin-ho was on his feet, reaching for me with those long, elegant fingers.
"Please—" But I was already gone. Through the door, down the hallway, past the gold records and the promotional posters, into the elevator and down and out into the street.
I didn't stop until I was six blocks away, gasping for breath in an alley that smelled like garbage and rain.
Two bonds burned beneath my skin. Two members of the same group. The realization hit me like ice water. Hwan and Jin-ho. Both from SIREN. Both alphas whose bonds had triggered with me. If two of them were my soulmates, what were the chances the others weren't?
Five flowers on my mark. Five members in SIREN.
No. The thought was too horrifying to contemplate. It's a coincidence. It has to be a coincidence.
My omega didn't believe in coincidences. She was already purring at the possibility, already imagining five alpha scents surrounding us, five sets of hands holding us safe.
Pack, she whispered, the word reverent. They're a pack. And we're theirs.
"Shut up," I gasped, pressing my back against the grimy alley wall. "Shut up, shut up, shut up."
My omega whimpered, confused and hurt by the constant flight from what she craved.
Why do we keep running? that inner voice asked, small and sad. Why won't you let them catch us?
I didn't have an answer.
I just stood there, shaking, two incomplete bonds aching in my chest, and wondered how long I could keep running before it killed me.