Chapter 6 #3
Five threads pulling me under Five voices calling me home Pack-claimed before I had a choice Drowning in destiny's voice
"She wrote about us," I said quietly. "About the pack bond. She already knows, or suspects, that it's all five of us."
"Of course she does," Min-jun said. "Everyone knows about our pack mark. It's public knowledge. If she triggered with Hwan she's smart enough to put together what that means."
"Five bonds," Hwan said heavily. "And she watched her mother die from breaking one."
"She probably thinks she's already doomed," Tae-min added, his voice small and sad. The weight of it settled over all of us through the pack bond, a shared grief for an omega we'd only just found and might lose before we ever really had her.
Our omega, the one we'd been waiting for, was out there somewhere, terrified and sick and convinced that we were going to destroy her. And we couldn't do anything about it except wait and hope she'd give us a chance to prove her wrong.
"Jin-ho keeps researching," Jae-won said finally, his pack alpha authority settling over us like a steadying hand. "Find out everything you can about her — her history, her work, anything that might help us understand her better."
"And the rest of us?" Tae-min asked.
"Stay aware. If any of us encounter her, and we probably will, given how pack bonds work, we don't push. We don't crowd. We let her see that we're not threats." Jea-won said voice steady with athority and he knew we would follow what he said.
"What if she keeps running?" Tae-min's voice was small.
"Then we figure out another way." Jae-won's voice hardened with determination. "But we don't give up. She's ours. She's been ours since before we knew her name."
"We've waited our whole lives," Min-jun added softly. "We can be patient a little longer."
"I just hope she has that long," Hwan said, quiet and worried. "Two incomplete bonds in less than a day. Soul sickness already setting in. And three more bonds waiting to trigger..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.
The call ended, but I stayed in my studio.
Her scent was completely gone now, I'd been away from the conference room too long, and the traces that had clung to my clothes had finally faded to nothing. I could still remember it. Could still conjure the ghost of fresh lilies and rain if I closed my eyes and focused.
Her notebook sat open in my lap.
I read through every page. Every lyric. Every crossed-out word and hastily scribbled revision. I learned about her through her writing, the way she thought, the way she felt, the fears she couldn't speak aloud but could pour onto paper like they were bleeding out of her.
She was brilliant. I'd known that before the bond triggered, had felt it during our conversation about meter and rhythm and the emotional arc of the song we were supposed to be creating together. But seeing her raw, unpolished work made it even clearer.
She understood music on a level that few people did. Understood the way words and melody could intertwine to create something greater than either alone. Understood emotion in a way that made my own lyrics feel shallow by comparison.
She was terrified of everything her gift was telling her about us.
I never asked to be chosen.
Neither had we, really. You didn't ask for soulmates. They happened to you, like storms, like seasons changing, like the sun rising whether you wanted it to or not. You could run from them — Keira was proving that — but you couldn't outrun them forever.
But here I am, surrendering everything.
She hadn't surrendered yet. But part of her wanted to. I could see it in every line she'd written.
Who hurt you, little omega? my alpha wondered, aching with the need to fix what was broken. Who taught you that bonds meant destruction instead of completion?
Her mother. That was the obvious answer. Twelve years of watching someone fade away because of a severed bond would teach anyone that soulmates were dangerous.
That wasn't the whole truth. The world had hurt her too.
Society's expectations of omegas — soft, submissive, dependent, less than, had hurt her.
The fear of losing herself to biology she'd never asked for had hurt her.
Years of suppressants and denial had hurt her, even as they'd protected her from the very thing she feared.
Now she had five alphas to contend with. I closed the notebook carefully. Pressed my palm against the cover like I could somehow reach her through the pages, through the words she'd written, through the bond that connected us whether she wanted it to or not.
She writes like someone who's been hurt. But also like someone who wants to heal.
The longing was there, buried beneath the fear. The desire to surrender, to trust, to let someone in. She fought it — god, she fought it so hard — but it was there.
"We'll find a way," I said to the empty studio. To the ghost of her scent that I could almost imagine still lingered in my memory. To the violet bond burning quietly in my chest, reaching for an omega who kept running away. "We have to."
Because she was ours.
Because she was hurting.
Because somewhere in this city, our omega was running scared and getting sicker by the hour, and every instinct I had was screaming at me to find her and fix her and show her that bonds didn't have to be chains.
They could be lifelines. If only she'd let us prove it.
I gathered her notebook and stood, tucking it carefully into the drawer of my desk where it would be safe until I could return it to her. Evidence of who she was. A roadmap to understanding her fears.
Maybe — just maybe — a guide to earning her trust. The pack bond hummed with shared determination as I finally left the studio, the afternoon sun already dipping toward evening.
Five alphas united in a single purpose, connected by threads that had bound us together since we were teenagers and would hold us together until we died.
We would wait. We would watch. We would show her what we really were.
When she was ready — if she was ever ready — we would catch her when she finally stopped running.