I pulled my sweater collar aside with trembling fingers, revealing the intricate design that curved from just below my left ear down my neck and across my collarbone. The branch was beautiful, it had always been beautiful, even when I hated what it represented, each line precise and purposeful, like the most elegant piece of art ever rendered in ink and destiny.
Five flowers bloomed along its length.
Three of them remained grey and dormant, a soft silver. The fourth flower — Hwan's flower, positioned right over the pulse point in my neck, was still that deep golden amber, warm and bright even in the harsh bathroom lighting.
The fifth flower had changed.
Violet.
The color was rich and deep, like twilight settling over the city, like the precise shade of Jin-ho's amber eyes when they'd caught the fluorescent light and turned to something darker, more intense. It seemed to glow against my pale skin, sitting alongside the golden amber like they belonged together, like they'd always been meant to bloom side by side.
Two flowers alive now among the grey.
Two bonds triggered.
Two members of SIREN.
The realization that had been building in the back of my mind since I'd fled that conference room finally crashed over me like a wave, and I had to grip the sink to keep from falling. I didn't need to guess anymore. Didn't need to wonder or speculate or hope that maybe, somehow, this was all a terrible coincidence that would resolve itself if I just kept running fast enough.
Everyone knew about SIREN's pack soulmark.
It was part of their story, their brand, the mythology that had built up around them since their debut six years ago. Five alphas who had presented within months of each other during their trainee years, each one revealing the same mark, a branch with a single teal flower, positioned identically on each of their necks. The entertainment media had gone insane when it happened. "The Pack-Bonded Idols," the headlines had screamed. "Five Alphas, One Destiny." I'd seen those articles a hundred times. Everyone had.
They'd talked about it in interviews, too. I remembered watching one years ago, before I knew any of this would ever matter to me, back when SIREN was just another group whose music I admired from a safe distance. The interviewer had asked about their matching marks, about what it meant to share a pack bond with four other people.
And Jae-won, the pack alpha, the one with the jet-black hair and the commanding presence that made everyone around him seem smaller by comparison, had smiled slightly and said, "We're waiting. Somewhere out there is the omega who'll complete us. When we find them, the bond will know."
When we find them.
The omega who'll complete us.
Me.
I was their omega.
If Hwan was my soulmate, and the golden amber bond singing in my chest left absolutely no room for doubt, then the others were too. If Jin-ho was my soulmate, and the violet thread winding through my soul confirmed it with devastating certainty, then the remaining three were inevitable.
All five members of SIREN.
All five flowers on my mark.
There was no escaping this. No running far enough, no hiding well enough, no hoping it was "just two" or "maybe only three." The pack shared a soulmark. That's what pack bonds meant — they were a unit, biologically bound to each other and to the single omega who would complete their circle.
It was all of them.
It had always been all of them.
Pack, my omega breathed, and the word resonated through every cell of my body like a bell being struck.Our pack. Five alphas, all ours. Do you understand now? Do you see why we couldn't run fast enough? We were never supposed to escape them. We were supposed to find them.
"No," I whispered, gripping the sink so hard my knuckles ached. "No, no, no..."
Denial couldn't change the truth burning on my skin. I was destined for a pack bond, the rarest, most consuming kind of soulmate connection that existed. Not one alpha to answer to,to be bound to, to potentially be destroyed by. Five. Five alphas who were already bound to each other, who moved as a unit, who shared everything including the omega who completed them.
The implications spiraled through my mind faster than I could process them.
I could never just avoid "some" of them. They were a pack, where one went, the others followed. If I ran into Tae-min at a shop or Min-jun at a crosswalk or Jae-won in a conference room, the bond would trigger regardless of my feelings about it. The pack mark ensured that.
Breaking one bond would affect all five, the pack connection meant they were intertwined, their souls woven together in ways that single-mate bonds could never replicate. If I tried to sever my connection to Hwan, the trauma would ripple through to Jin-ho, and from there to the three I hadn't even met yet.
