As I gather my things, Jihoon adds, almost offhandedly, "Oh, and you might be meeting them down the road. Just a heads-up."
My fingers tighten around my pen. Meeting them.
Five members. Five flowers. Five potential bonds waiting to drag me under.
I nod, feigning indifference. "Looking forward to it." The lie tastes bitter on my tongue. I walk out of the room on steady legs, but inside, I'm screaming. The mark pulses against my neck, five gray flowers aching for something I don't yet understand.
My mother broke one bond and it killed her. If I'm right—if SIREN are my soulmates—I won't have that option. I'll have to choose: complete the bonds and risk being consumed, or run until soul sickness takes me anyway.
Either way, love wins.
Either way, I lose.
That's tomorrow's problem. Today, I just have to survive.
I pull my scarf higher, covering the mark that feels like a death sentence, and step back out into the Seoul morning. Somewhere in this city, five alphas are living their lives, unawarethat their missing soulmate is doing everything she can to never be found.
I intend to keep it that way.
Chapter Two
KEIRA
The city swirls with life as I step out of Narvi Entertainment's headquarters, my thoughts a tangled mess of possibility and panic that refuses to settle into anything coherent. The massive glass doors whisper shut behind me, cutting off the artificial chill of the air-conditioned lobby and releasing me into the warmth of the late morning sun. Seoul stretches before me in all its chaotic glory—a tapestry of sound and motion that usually grounds me, reminds me of my place in this vast machine of dreams and ambition. But today, nothing feels grounding. Today, everything feels like it's tilting slightly off-axis, the world I thought I knew rearranging itself into something unfamiliar and threatening.
The meeting with Mina and Jihoon should've been just another workday. Another high-pressure project added to my already overflowing plate, another song to craft from the raw materials of emotion and experience. I've done this countless times before—sat in conference rooms lined with platinum records, listened to executives explain what they want, nodded along while my mind was already spinning possibilities intolyrics. It's routine. Familiar. The kind of professional challenge I've built my entire career around conquering.
Instead, something about this particular meeting lingers in my mind, pressing against my ribs like a heartbeat out of sync with my own.
SIREN.
The name echoes through my thoughts with every step I take, every breath I draw into lungs that suddenly feel too tight. One of the most elusive and influential groups in the industry. Five alphas bound together by fate and talent, their shared soulmark a constant topic of speculation among fans and media alike. They've been waiting for years for their sixth—the omega or beta who will complete their pack, the missing piece of their cosmic puzzle.
I've been tasked with writing their next title track. The song that will define their comeback, their return to an industry that's been waiting for them with bated breath.
Five members. Five flowers on my mark.
The coincidence is too perfect. Too precise. Too cruel to be anything but fate's twisted sense of humor.
My fingers tighten around the strap of my bag as I navigate through the crowd of people flowing in and out of the headquarters building. Trainees in matching workout clothes hurry past me, their young faces tight with determination and exhaustion. A group of stylists huddle near the entrance, cigarettes in hand, stealing a few minutes of break time before they're called back to transform ordinary people into extraordinary visions. Managers bark into phones while juggling tablets and coffee cups, their multitasking skills honed by years of practice in an industry that never sleeps.
I weave between them all, invisible in the way I've always preferred to be, just another face in the crowd of people who make this machine run. But my mind isn't here, in the familiarchaos of Narvi's campus. It's back in that conference room, watching SIREN's performance on the screen, feeling something shift inside me that I can't explain and don't want to examine too closely.
That pull. That inexplicable, terrifying pull.
My mother described something similar once, in one of those late-night conversations we had near the end, when she was too tired to filter her words and I was too desperate for connection to stop her from speaking.
"When I first saw him—my soulmate, the one the universe chose for me—it was like being caught in a riptide,"she'd said, her voice barely above a whisper."I felt the bond reach for him before I even understood what was happening. It wanted him. It wanted to pull me under and never let me surface."
"But you didn't love him,"I'd said, confused."You loved Dad."
"Love had nothing to do with it, baby. Not at first."Her eyes had been distant, focused on something I couldn't see."The bond doesn't care about love. It cares about completion. It wants what it wants, and it will tear you apart trying to get it."
I'd asked her, then, how she'd resisted. How she'd found the strength to break the bond instead of surrendering to it.
Her answer haunts me still.
"I didn't resist, Keira. Not really. I just wanted your father more than I wanted to survive intact. And by the time I realized what that choice would cost me..."She'd smiled, sad and tired and so very far away."It was already too late."
