Bound to Four Alphas

A Ghost Wearing My Name

The scent hits me before the memory does.

Jasmine and something bitter underneath, like burnt sugar. My mother used to keep a bottle of it on her vanity, the only luxury she ever let herself have. I haven't smelled it since the night I left home with one bag and a lie sewn into my skin.

"April." Jodan's voice is low, careful. "Talk to me."

"That perfume," I whisper. "It's my mother's. She made it herself. No one else has ever had it. No one else could have it."

"Are you certain?" Eryx asks, and I hear how gently he's asking, like he already suspects the answer will hurt me either way.

"I'm certain."

Riven's hand finds the hilt of his blade again, knuckles white. "Then either your mother is down there, or someone wants you to think she is."

"My mother is dead." The words come out flatter than I mean them to, worn smooth from years of saying them to strangers who ask too many questions. "She died before I ever set foot in Mooncrest."

The tunnel breathes cold air up the stairwell again, and this time I swear I hear something underneath it. Not words. Not quite. A hum, low and familiar, the same melody my mother used to sing when she thought I was asleep.

My knees nearly buckle.

Eryx catches my elbow before I fall, steady as always, but his eyes have gone sharp with something I haven't seen on him before. Fear, maybe. Or recognition.

"Someone is using grief as a weapon," he says quietly. "Manufactured scent, a familiar tune, planted exactly where they knew you'd walk. It's cruel. But it's also a message."

"What message?" Lucien asks, though his tone has lost every trace of its usual playfulness.

"That whoever's down there knows more about April than the Council does," Eryx says. "More than we do."

That thought sits in my chest like a stone.

Jodan steps closer to the opening, jaw set. "We keep moving. Whatever it is, hiding from it in a stairwell won't make it disappear."

I nod, though my legs feel unsteady beneath me, and we descend together, torchlight from above finally swallowed whole by the dark. The stairs spiral longer than they have any right to, stone worn smooth by feet that walked here long before any of us were born. The hum grows louder the deeper we go, threading itself into the bond's constant hum until I can't tell which pulse belongs to which heartbeat anymore.

The staircase ends at a round chamber lit by a single shaft of moonlight falling through a crack far above, impossibly far for how deep we've walked. The walls are carved floor to ceiling with the same split-crescent symbol from the note, repeated hundreds of times, like a chant carved in stone.

In the center of the chamber, chained to an iron post, is Jax.

"Jax!" I rush forward before anyone can stop me, and this time none of them try. His head lifts slowly at the sound of my voice, one eye swollen shut, blood dried dark along his jaw, but he's breathing. Alive.

"April," he rasps. "You shouldn't be here."

"Where's Selene?"

His throat works like he's trying to force words past something that doesn't want to let them out. "They separated us. Said they only needed one of us to get you here."

Riven is already at the chains, testing the iron, his jaw tight with fury. "Cheap work. I can break this."

"Wait." Jodan's voice cuts through, sharp. He's staring past Jax, into the shadows at the far edge of the chamber, where the moonlight doesn't reach. "We're not alone."

A figure steps forward from the dark, and the humming stops all at once, like it was never anything but bait.

She's tall, cloaked in gray that matches an omega band exactly, hood low enough to hide her face, but her voice, when it comes, is unmistakable. Warm. Familiar. Wrong, in the way something can only be wrong when it sounds exactly right.

"Hello, little moon," she says, and it's my mother's voice coming out of a stranger's mouth. "You've grown so much since I've been gone."

The chamber goes utterly silent.

Riven's growl dies in his throat. Lucien's hand drops away from Jax's chains entirely. Eryx's grip on my arm tightens, not to hold me back, but like he's bracing for me to shatter.

"That's not possible," I whisper. "You're dead. I watched you die."

The figure tilts her head, and beneath the hood, I catch the faintest glint of gray eyes.

My eyes.

"Did you," she says softly. "Or did you only watch what they wanted you to see?"