Chapter 6 #2
"She looked sick," I admitted, the memory making my alpha growl with protective fury. "Even before the bond triggered. Pale, dark circles under her eyes, trembling slightly. And after, when she realized what had happened…she looked like she was going to collapse."
"Two incomplete pack bonds in less than a day," Min-jun said, and the concern in his voice had sharpened into something closer to alarm.
"For an omega, that's incredibly dangerous.
Soul sickness sets in fast with incomplete bonds, and with pack bonds the effect is compounded.
Her body is probably already struggling to handle the strain. "
"And she'll have three more to trigger," Hwan added. "If she keeps running from us..."
"She could die." Jae-won's voice was flat. Final. The voice of a pack alpha stating facts he couldn't change no matter how much he wanted to. "We all could. Incomplete pack bonds don't just affect the omega, they affect the entire pack."
"Then we have to find her!" Tae-min's words tumbled out in a desperate rush. "We have to help her understand. We have to explain that we're not going to hurt her, that the bond isn't—"
"We can't force her." Jae-won's pack alpha authority rang through the words, silencing Tae-min mid-sentence. "If she's running this hard, there's a reason. We need to know what it is before we do anything else."
"I can research," I offered. "It's what I do.
" My eyes fell on the conference table, on the spot where she'd been sitting when I walked in.
She'd had a notebook with her, had been writing in it when I arrived.
She'd left it behind when she left in such a hurry..but it was mostly with today’s notes and nothing else.
I had something else.
"She left her notebook behind when she collided with Hwan yesterday," I said slowly, the memory surfacing. "He picked it up, didn't he?"
"It's in my room," Hwan confirmed, his voice brightening slightly with hope. "I didn't know what to do with it. Didn't know if I'd ever see her again to give it back."
"Bring it to me." I was already moving toward the door, my alpha finally having something to focus on besides the ache of an incomplete bond. "I'll find out everything I can about her."
I set up in my studio, laptop open, Hwan's retrieved notebook sitting on the desk beside me like a talisman.
The pack stayed connected through the call, their presence a comforting weight in the background as I worked.
I could hear Tae-min pacing in his room, hear Min-jun's soft breathing as he waited, hear Jae-won's occasional murmured instructions to Hwan about something unrelated, normal pack sounds, grounding sounds, reminders that I wasn't alone in this even though my omega was out there somewhere, running scared and getting sicker by the hour.
Her scent was fading from my clothes, from my skin, but I could still catch traces of it when I turned my head the right way. Sweet and soft, but with that undertone of wrongness that made my alpha want to howl.
She was hurting. Our omega was hurting. And we didn't know how to help her.
Her name: Keira Park.
The company files gave me that much, standard background information for any freelancer they brought in for high-profile projects.
She was a lyricist, had been working in the industry for years, had contributed to dozens of tracks without ever meeting the artists who sang her words.
No public photos. No social media presence.
She preferred anonymity, the files noted. Preferred to stay invisible.
An omega who wanted to disappear.
My alpha didn't like that at all.
I dug deeper.
Family records were harder to access, requiring some creative navigation of databases that weren't exactly meant for my eyes.
I'd learned a lot of useful skills over the years, research was my particular strength, the thing that made me good at writing lyrics that resonated with people.
I knew how to find information. Knew how to follow threads until they led somewhere meaningful.
Her father: Dae-jung Park. An entertainment industry executive — which explained how she'd gotten into the business so young, how she'd built a career working behind the scenes at Narvi when most lyricists had to fight for years just to get noticed.
Her mother: Soo-min Park, née Kim.
Deceased.
I felt the pack's attention sharpen through the bond as I kept searching. They could feel my growing unease, could sense through the connection between us that I was finding something significant.
Soo-min Park had died when Keira was twelve years old. Cause of death listed as "complications" — vague enough to hide almost anything, specific enough to suggest something unusual.
I kept digging. Found an old article buried in archives that most people never bothered to search. A news story from years ago, small and easily overlooked, about an omega woman who had done something almost unheard of.
"I found something," I said quietly, and the background noise of the pack went silent. "Her mother." I read them the article.
"'Omega Woman Dies From Broken Bond Complications.
'" My voice was steady, but something cold was spreading through my chest, something that felt like understanding and dread combined.
"'Soo-min Park, age 34, passed away this week from complications related to a broken soulmate bond.
Mrs. Park famously severed her bond with her alpha soulmate twelve years prior in order to pursue a relationship with Alpha businessman Dae-jung Park.
Despite surviving the initial severance — a procedure with a seventy percent mortality rate — Mrs. Park never fully recovered.
She is survived by her husband and twelve-year-old daughter. '"
Silence.
Heavy, awful silence that stretched across five phone connections and settled into all of our chests like lead.
"She broke a bond," Min-jun whispered. "And died from it."
"Her daughter watched her fade for twelve years," Jae-won said, his voice grim with understanding. "Watched her mother slowly die because of a soulmate bond."
"And now that daughter has five bonds of her own," Hwan finished. Understanding crashed over me like a wave breaking against rocks.
"She's not running from us," I realized aloud. "She's running from bonds. From what she thinks they'll do to her."
"She thinks we're going to destroy her." Tae-min's voice was small, hurt in a way that made me want to reach through the phone and comfort him. "Like her mom was destroyed."
"Her mom broke her bond," Min-jun argued, always the logical one, always trying to find the path that made sense. "That's the opposite of completing one. Breaking is what kills people. Completing is supposed to heal, to strengthen—"
"She watched her mother die because of a soulmate.
" Jae-won's voice cut through the argument, quiet but firm with pack alpha authority.
"Logic doesn't apply to that kind of trauma.
She was twelve years old when it happened.
Twelve years old and watching her mother fade away because of something she couldn't understand and couldn't stop.
Of course she's terrified of bonds. Of course she runs. "
More silence. I looked down at Keira's notebook, still sitting on my desk where Hwan had left it. Picked it up. Ran my fingers over the worn cover, feeling the indentations where her pen had pressed too hard through the pages.
"So what do we do?" Hwan asked finally.
Jae-won took a breath. I could feel him through the pack bond — his alpha wrestling with the same desperate urge to hunt and find and fix that all of ours were. But he was pack alpha. He had to think beyond instinct.
"We wait," he said. "We watch. We don't push."
"But she's getting sicker—" Tae-min protested.
"I know. But if we chase her, we'll only make it worse. She's already terrified. Hunting her down like prey will only confirm every fear she has about alphas and bonds."
"Two bonds in less than a day," Min-jun said quietly. "The other three will trigger soon. They have to — that's how pack bonds work. The closer she gets to completing the set, the stronger the pull becomes."
"Which means she'll encounter us again," Jae-won said. "Whether she wants to or not. The bonds will draw her to us."
"And when they do?" Hwan asked.
"We don't push. We don't crowd. We show her that we're not what she's afraid of." Jae-Won spoke, voice filled with steel.
"We need to show her we're different," Min-jun added. "That completing bonds isn't the same as breaking them. That we're not going to consume her or control her or destroy her."
"How do we do that if she won't let us near her?" Hwan asked.
No one had an answer.
I opened Keira's notebook.
Her handwriting was small and neat in some places, cramped and rushed in others, like she'd been writing too fast to keep up with her thoughts.
Lyrics filled page after page — some polished and careful, some raw and bleeding with emotion, all of them achingly beautiful in ways that made my chest tight.
My eyes caught on a passage near the front:
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
"She writes like someone who's been hurt," I murmured.
"What?" Jae-won's voice sharpened.
"Her lyrics. They're about fear. About being consumed.
About losing yourself to something you can't control.
" I flipped another page, found more words that made my heart ache with recognition.
“They're not just fear. There's longing in them too.
Like she wants to surrender but she's too scared to let herself. "
"She wants to give in," Hwan said, and I could hear hope creeping into his voice for the first time since the call started. "Part of her wants to."
"She's too scared," Tae-min finished sadly. I kept reading, turning pages until I found something that made my breath catch.