Sera's POV
The flashbulbs were tiny suns, each one a detonation against her retinas. The photographer's voice was a distant buzz, a fly trapped in the opulent studio. "Chin down, Seraphina, give me mystery! Now look over your shoulder, think of something you desire!"
Desire. The word curdled in her stomach. Her smile, a weapon she had sharpened to a razor's edge, felt like a crack in a porcelain mask, threatening to shatter entirely. Her mind wasn't in the studio, surrounded by racks of designer clothing and the sycophantic hum of stylists. It was trapped in the silent, sterile penthouse, replaying the morning on a shattered loop.
Kaelen. Moving through the kitchen like a specter, her skin the color of old parchment, a fine, constant tremor in the hands that had so precisely explained fractions just days before. The way she'd placed the bowl of perfectly cut fruit in front of Iris, her movements stiff, robotic, as if every action required a Herculean effort. The smile she'd forced for Iris a grimace of pure agony that never touched her eyes, which were dark pools of some unnameable dread. The way she'd flinched, a full body recoil, when Iris's cheerful chatter had risen above a certain pitch, as if the sound were physically lacerating her.
It was a portrait of wrongness. A masterpiece of subtle, terrifying decay.
For months, the evidence had been accumulating, a slow drip of impossibility that had fissured the bedrock of her reality. She had clung to her hatred, her fear, using them as a shield against the cognitive dissonance. But the shield was breaking. The cracks were too many, too deep.
Flashback: Waking up on the white leather sofa, her body a raw, screaming nerve from the artificial heat. The first thing she saw wasn't the gloating triumph of her captor. It was a face bleached of all color, grey eyes wide not with malice, but with a panic so profound it looked… real. The original Kaelen would have left her there to drown in her own torment, a satisfied smirk on her lips. This one had stumbled forward, her voice a hoarse, broken thing. "Wait, stop… I'm not please just let me help" The words were cut off by a wave of pain that seemed to hit them both. She had fumbled for suppressants, her touch clumsy, frantic, but devoid of any intention to harm. It was an act of desperation, not domination.
Flashback: The small, wooden picture frame of Iris, tucked behind the cold, brutalist sculpture. Her heart had stopped dead in her chest. It was her deepest secret, her most profound vulnerability, left out in the open like a bomb waiting to detonate. She had braced for the explosion, for the cruel leverage, for the soul crushing blackmail. It never came. The frame remained. The original Kaelen would have used it to shatter her. This one had hidden it away, a silent, inexplicable act of protection. She never used Iris as a pawn, never once threatened her, never even hinted at her as a means of control. The most powerful weapon Sera possessed had been left, untouched, in the hands of her enemy, and had been treated not as a weapon, but as a treasure.
Flashback: The school park. The sight of the tall, imposing Alpha, a woman who commanded boardrooms with a look, playing a ridiculous, clumsy game of tag. The utter lack of self consciousness, the complete focus on the sound of a child's laughter. It was an image that defied physics, that broke the fundamental laws of her universe. Kaelen Blackwood didn't do childish. She didn't nurture. She consumed. The arcade. The sight of the tall, elegant Alpha, heir to the Blackwood empire, standing stiffly on a dancing game platform, making a complete fool of herself to hear a little girl laugh. The utter lack of embarrassment, the focus solely on Iris's joy. It was an image that defied every law of Sera's universe.
Flashback: The Gala. The dizzying, nauseating spin of the bidding war. The twenty million dollars. Not a display of power, but a act of reclamation. For you. The defense against Alban, not as a claim of property, but a shield. And later, on the terrace, the tears. Silent, hopeless tracks through the fading bruise on her cheekbone. The grief in those grey eyes was ancient, a homesick longing for a place Sera couldn't see or comprehend. The mumbled words, a secret spilled to the night: "...half American Chinese in my past life… they said we Chinese are good with our maths…" Not a boast. A confession.
Flashback: Last night. The solid, unwavering strength of the body that half carried, half dragged her from the glittering chaos. The lack of judgment in the quiet efficiency. The trust that had allowed her to pass out, utterly vulnerable, in the presence of her greatest enemy. The whispered, drunken truth against a warm neck: "You're warm. Comfy."
The pieces were a kaleidoscope of madness, a jumbled mosaic that formed a picture both terrifying and beautiful. The Kaelen Blackwood she knew was a monolith of predictable cruelty. This woman was a walking contradiction: a warrior with the soul of a scholar, a dominant Alpha who flinched at loud noises, a vessel of immense power radiating a helpless, aching vulnerability.
The worry had metastasized throughout the shoot, a cancer of dread in her gut. She'd finally pleaded a migraine, her professional mask holding just long enough for a graceful escape. She had to know. She had to see.
The car ride home was a tense, silent void. Iris, sensing the tectonic plates shifting in her mother's soul, was quiet. The moment the penthouse door slid open, Sera's world narrowed to a single, overwhelming sense.
The smell.
It was an Alpha's Rut, but it was… all wrong. The Kaelen she knew before the change has a scent artificially amplified by that vile, metallic of Rotten Beer, had been like cheap cologne and aggression a weapon meant to intimidate and repulse. But this Kaelen right now on the floor her scent was a symphony of dissonance. The base was something rich, complex, and unnervingly attractive like overripe peaches and aged, oaky brandy, a deeply intoxicating and fundamentally different core scent. But layered over it, smothering it, was something sharp, acrid, and painful. It was the smell of ozone after a lightning strike, of burning wires, of a system in catastrophic meltdown. It was the scent of pure, undiluted agony.
The brandy and peaches were still there, a ghost of something nice beneath the violence, but it was being strangled by the pain.
Her breath hitched. This was beyond illness. This was an exorcism.
"Go to your room, sweetheart," Sera commanded Iris, her voice thin and strained. "Start your homework. I need to… I need to check on Auntie Kaelen."
The cold hand of fear was no longer around her heart; it was squeezing her lungs, her throat. She followed the potent, distressing scent down the hallway, her steps quickening from a walk to a run, her heels clicking a frantic tattoo against the floor.
Kaelen's door was ajar. Sera pushed it open.
The scene was one of apocalyptic ruin. It was a war zone. The bedsheets were ripped away, tangled in a grotesque sculpture on the floor. The bedside drawer hung from its rails, its contents the vials of silver suppressant shattered and scattered like fallen stars, their contents seeping into the concrete. The air was a solid, suffocating wall of scent cloying brandy peach warring with the stench of scorched ozone and the primal, metallic tang of fear sweat.
And in the epicenter of the devastation, curled into a fetal ball of pure anguish, was Kaelen.
Her body was convulsing, wracked by sobs so deep and ragged they seemed to be tearing her apart from the inside. They were not cries of mere physical pain; they were the raw, unfiltered sounds of a soul being flayed alive. Of a profound, existential horror. A revulsion so complete it was a force of nature.
"DON'T LOOK AT ME!" The shriek was inhuman, stripped of everything but raw, animal terror. "IT'S DISGUSTING! PLEASE! I DON'T WANT THIS! I DON'T WANT THIS BODY! PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE! I'M SO DISGUSTING! I'M SO DISGUSTING! I'M SO DISGUSTING!"
Each word was a hammer blow, shattering the last vestiges of Sera's old world. The proud, vicious heiress would never show such vulnerability. She would never articulate such bottomless self loathing. She reveled in her power, in her biology. This was the voice of a stranger. A prisoner screaming in the tongue of absolute despair from inside a flesh and bone prison.
I don't want this body.
The final, impossible piece of the puzzle didn't click into place. It detonated. The whispered suspicions, the lingering doubts, the countless tiny miracles of contradiction they all coalesced into a single, staggering, universe altering truth. The quiet question in the back of her mind became a deafening, undeniable roar.
The math wizard. The changed scent. The tears for a world lost. The muttered confession of a different life. The impossible kindness. The primal fear. The profound, fundamental schism in the very soul of the person weeping on the floor.
It was impossible. It was heresy.
It was the only thing that made any sense.
The woman on the floor in front of her wracked with a pain that was metaphysical, weeping in an agony of cosmic horror was not Kaelen Blackwood.
Sera stood frozen in the doorway, her world tilting off its axis, the foundations of everything she knew her hatred, her fear, her very understanding of reality crumbling into dust. The emotion that rushed in to fill the void wasn't pity. It wasn't confusion.
It was a vast, terrifying, awe inspiring revelation that stole the air from her lungs and the strength from her legs.
She took a step into the room, then another, her movements slow and reverent, as if she were walking on hallowed ground. The overwhelming scent, the evidence of the violent struggle, the heart shattering sobs it all faded into a distant, meaningless hum.
She knelt on the cold, hard floor, the concrete biting into her knees. She ignored the mess, the shattered glass, the sheer, overwhelming evidence of a battle lost. Her entire being was focused, with laser intensity, on the broken, weeping figure before her.
Her voice, when it finally came, was barely a whisper, a breath of sound hushed with a reverence and a horror that mirrored the agony before her.
"Who are you?"