Mei
The West Wing was a labyrinth of grief, and tonight, Mei had lost her way.
The air grew thinner and colder as she ascended a narrow, spiral staircase she hadn't noticed before. She had been searching for the linen closet to find heavier blankets for the coming frost, but the stone steps beneath her feet felt ancient, unused. At the very top, she found a door of pale rowan wood, left slightly ajar as if the house itself were exhaling a secret.
When she pushed it open, the silence that greeted her wasn't empty; it was heavy, like the air inside a cathedral after the candles have been blown out.
It was an attic room, but not one meant for storage. It was a time capsule.
Moonlight filtered through a circular window, illuminating millions of dust motes that danced in the air like microscopic spirits. White sheets draped over every piece of furniture, creating a gathering of shapeless, fabric ghosts. Mei stepped into the room, her boots clicking softly on the floorboards, and immediately, the scent hit her.
It wasn't the lavender she had brought, nor the musky pine of the pack. It was the faint, lingering ghost of crushed lilies and expensive French soap—a scent so delicate it felt like a bruise.
Mei's hand went to her wrist. The violet mark beneath her sleeve began to hum with a frantic, uneven pulse. It wasn't the steady, protective thrum she felt when Alaric was nearby; this was a warning. The bond was reacting to the concentrated essence of the man who had spent hours, perhaps days, mourning in this very spot.
She moved deeper into the room, her fingers trailing over a vanity set made of silver and pearl. A hairbrush still held a few strands of gold. A jewelry box sat open, its velvet lining empty, as if the treasures it once held had been snatched away in a hurry.
Then, she saw it. In the center of the room, positioned so that it caught the direct light of the Broken Moon, sat a large, gilded frame. It was covered by a heavy silk veil, the fabric gray with age.
Mei hesitated. Every instinct told her to turn back, to leave this sanctuary of the dead. But the bond on her wrist gave a sharp, insistent tug, pulling her toward the frame. With a trembling hand, she grasped the edge of the silk and pulled it away.
The woman in the portrait was breathtaking.
She had hair like spun gold, caught in an elaborate braid that cascaded over one shoulder, and eyes of a piercing, electric blue—the kind of blue that looked as if it could see into the future. She was holding a single white rose against a backdrop of the Mooncrest forest, smiling with a secret radiance. This was Sia. This was the woman who had defined the "soul" of the pack.
Looking at her, Mei felt a sudden, sharp pang of inadequacy. How could a girl who sold ice cream on street corners, whose skin was tanned by the sun and hands calloused by work, ever compete with a goddess of winter and grace?
"She was the soul of this pack," a voice rasped.
Mei jumped, the silk veil slipping from her fingers to the floor. She spun around to find Alaric in the doorway. He was half-submerged in the shadows of the hallway, the moonlight catching only the white of his knuckles as he gripped the wheels of his chair and the haunted, hollowed-out depths of his eyes.
Alaric
He had followed the scent.
He had been in his study when the bond suddenly flared—a jagged, panicked heat that told him Mei was somewhere she shouldn't be. He had wheeled himself through the corridors, his heart hammering against his ribs, only to find the one door he had spent three years trying to forget wide open.
Seeing Mei stand before Sia's portrait was like watching two worlds collide—the living and the dead, the human and the Luna. The contrast was a physical blow to his chest.
He rolled into the room, the mechanical "clunk-whine" of his chair sounding like a scream in the oppressive quiet. The scent of lilies surged up to meet him, choking him.
"I'm sorry," Mei whispered, her eyes wide. "I took a wrong turn... I didn't mean to—"
"She was the only one who could hear the music in the wind," Alaric said, his voice flat, his gaze fixed on the gold-framed ghost. He didn't hear Mei's apology; he was back in the rain, back in the metal and the blood. "The night of the crash, she was laughing. She said the moon looked like a broken pearl. She reached out to touch the glass, and she was smiling, Mei. She was so happy."
He stopped his chair inches from the portrait. His hand reached out, trembling violently, his fingers hovering just short of the painted canvas, as if he feared his touch would burn her.
"Ten minutes later, I watched the light go out of her eyes," he whispered, his voice cracking like dry timber. "I was pinned under the steering column, my legs crushed, my wolf screaming in my head. I could reach her hand, but I couldn't pull her back. I watched her fade, and I couldn't even shift to save her. A King who couldn't even growl at the Reaper."
He finally looked at Mei, and the agony in his expression was so raw it made the violet mark on her wrist flare into a brilliant, painful light. The bond was drinking in his grief, forced to share the weight of a tragedy it hadn't been built for.
"Everyone says I should move on," Alaric continued, his gold eyes shimmering with unshed tears. "My mother, Kael, even the Council. They talk about 'succession' and 'new beginnings.' But how do you move on when you are the one who broke the world? How do you look at the sun when you know you're the reason the moon is in pieces?"
Mei
Mei felt the weight of his words pressing down on her, more suffocating than the dust of the attic. She looked from the vibrant, golden woman in the painting to the shattered, gray man in the chair.
She realized then that her rival wasn't Lucian, and it wasn't the pack. It was a ghost. Sia wasn't just a dead wife; she was Alaric's anchor to the abyss. As long as he kept her on a pedestal, he could stay in the dark. He could use her memory as a shield against the terrifying possibility of being happy again.
"She wouldn't want this for you, Alaric," Mei said. Her voice was steady, cutting through the stagnant air of the room like a blade.
Alaric's jaw tightened, a low growl vibrating in his throat. "You know nothing of what she wanted. You are a stranger in this house, a human playing at being a caregiver."
"I know she's smiling in this picture because she loved a King," Mei countered, stepping closer to him, ignoring the warning flash of gold in his eyes. "She loved a man of action, a man of heart. She didn't fall in love with a statue. She didn't die so you could turn her memory into a prison cell. Look at her, Alaric! Does she look like a woman who wants her husband to rot in the dark?"
"Enough!" Alaric roared. The Mark on his neck flared a brilliant, angry violet, the light reflecting off the white sheets like a bruise.
The bond between them snapped taut. Mei felt a wave of Alaric's internal storm—his self-loathing, his terror, and a sudden, sharp spike of something that felt like... desire. It was his wolf, reaching out through the grief, recognizing the living warmth of the woman standing before him.
Alaric felt it too. He recoiled as if he had been burned, his hands gripping the wheels of his chair. He looked at Mei, really looked at her, and for a second, the ghost of Sia seemed to vanish, leaving only the two of them in the moonlight.
The scent of lavender on Mei's skin clashed with the lilies in the room. Life was fighting death, and for a heartbeat, life was winning.
Panic crossed Alaric's face. He couldn't let it win. If he let go of the grief, he had nothing left to define him.
"Lock the door when you leave," he said, his voice cold and brittle as ice. He turned his chair violently, the wheels skidding on the dusty floorboards as he retreated back into the darkness of the hallway. "Some things are meant to stay buried, Mei. Do not come here again."
He disappeared into the shadows, the mechanical whine of his chair fading away, leaving Mei alone with the gilded portrait.
She looked back at Sia. The woman in the painting was still smiling, still holding her white rose. But in the fractured light of the Broken Moon, Mei noticed something she hadn't seen before. Sia wasn't just looking at the painter; she was looking slightly past them, toward the door—as if she had been waiting for someone to come and finally turn out the lights.
Mei reached down and picked up the silk veil. She didn't cover the painting. Instead, she laid the silk neatly on the vanity.
She wasn't going to let him stay buried.