My eyes caught on a passage near the front:
Drowning in the eclipse of your voiceLosing myself in the darkness you bringI never asked to be chosenBut 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.
Five threads pulling me underFive voices calling me homePack-claimed before I had a choiceDrowning 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.
