With each step, the classical music grew louder.
I recognized it as Debussy’s.
Not a standalone piece, but one movement fromSuite bergamasque—a piano suite he’d written in his youth and revised years later, polishing it into something deceptively simple.
Clair de Lunewas the quiet heart of the suite. A nocturne disguised as calm, written to feel like moonlight reflecting off something already broken.
Soft.
Distant.
Never fully present.
It wasn’t triumphant or romantic in the way people assumed.
It was restraint turned into sound.
Longing held just shy of release.
I’d loved it for that reason. It was the piece you played when you wanted elegance to feel like control, when you needed beauty to smooth over darker thoughts instead of confronting them.
Hearing it here, inside an asylum dressed up for Valentine’s Day, made my skin prickle.
And with one of my favorite classical songs came a luring, euphoric scent.
I'd never truly smelled an Alpha before. My suppressants had dulled that part of me so completely I'd walked through the world nose-blind. But whatever was coming through that door. . .it hit me like a wave.
Dark and green like a pine forest burning.
The scent crawled into my sinuses andstayedthere.
My knees went soft.
Twelve years of suppressants.
Twelve years of walking through the world with my Omega biology locked in a box. I'd convinced myself that box was permanent. That I'd successfully amputated the part of me that could be triggered by an Alpha.
One inhale proved me wrong.
The scent didn't just enter my nose—it colonized my body. Moved into spaces I didn't know I had. Made itself at home in the empty places I'd spent my whole adult life pretending didn't exist.
How is this happening?
Harker turned to the remaining guard. "Stay here. Don't let anyone through that door."
The guard nodded.
Then, the warden looked at me. “You may enter on your own, and remember, you only get twenty minutes.”
“You’re not coming inside with me?”
“I do not have time for the Trickster’s mind games this morning.” He frowned. “But you will be safe. This is the most secure space in the entire asylum and there are cameras everywhere that are being monitored by security. I will be right here with the guards if you need me.”
“Okay.” I swallowed.
I'd spent these last months preparing for this interview. Re-reading Rook’s case files. Studying his patterns. Building psychological models of his behavior.
I considered the way his Broken Court was acting.
