Chapter 12

Chapter 12
Later that night…

I stood alone in the vault room. The very one where he kept relics from his kills. A clawed gauntlet from a rogue Alpha. A bullet pendant that once held wolfsbane. A diamond chain from the auction, my original collar.

And beside it, now: the velvet choker.

But something else sat there too.

New.

A throne.

It hadn’t been there earlier.

Carved from bone and obsidian, wrapped in cloth that shimmered like spilled moonlight. Like it had grown there in the dark.

I stepped toward it slowly, unable to breathe.

Then a voice, mine, but not mine, echoed softly behind me.

“Every empire bows eventually, little siren.” I didn’t touch the throne. But gods, I wanted to.

It didn’t belong in the vault. It didn’t belong anywhere near this world, yet there it was. Like it had bloomed out of my voice. Like it had heard me long before I ever sang.

It pulsed.
Not like a heart.
Like a memory.

Mine.

Suddenly I was a little girl again, sitting on the roof with my brother under a blood-orange sky. He’d asked me to sing him to sleep after Dad died. I’d sung until a pack of wild strays curled around our porch and didn’t move until morning.

I thought it was love.

Now I knew it was power.

A door creaked open behind me.

Vexx’s scent hit first. Gunpowder, pine, heat. Alpha.

“I felt it from two floors up,” he said quietly, stepping into the vault. “You sang again.”

“No,” I whispered. “This time, it sang back.”

He walked slowly toward the throne, his eyes wary, like it might bite. “It’s not just an object, is it?”

I shook my head. “It’s waiting.”

“For what?”

I looked at him. “For me to sit.”

Vexx tensed. “Don’t.”

My voice was steady. “Why?”

“Because once you do, you don’t come back from it.”

He turned to me, eyes sharp, chest rising and falling too fast. “This thing, whatever it is, it isn’t just responding to you. It’s claiming you.”

“Like you did?” I asked, not bitter, just honest.

He flinched.

Silence.

Then he sighed and ran a hand down his face. “I didn’t want this for you.”

“I didn’t want to be sold,” I said softly.

That shut him up.

I stepped away from the throne, but not far.

“I won’t sit,” I said, “not yet. But you need to understand something.”

His eyes met mine.

“My voice doesn’t belong to your world anymore. I’m not just a siren or a songbird. I’m something older. And whatever’s coming... it doesn’t care about our rules.”

Vexx’s jaw ticked. “Then we rewrite the rules.”

Elsewhere…

Grell stood on the rooftop of a decaying church. The city lights stretched below him like veins.

“They heard it,” said the man beside him. Pale skin. Red eyes. A warlock. Name unknown. Face untrusted.

“She’s calling the old ones,” Grell murmured. “And they’re listening.”

“Then it’s time,” the warlock said.

“Send the hounds?”

“No,” Grell said, smiling like rot. “Send the choir.”

Back in the penthouse…

I couldn’t sleep. Again.

The throne whispered every time I closed my eyes.

So I went to the rooftop.

I needed air. Sky. Distance.

But when I opened the door, something was already there.

A woman. Pale. Naked except for a black lace veil over her face.

She stood at the edge of the roof like gravity didn’t apply to her.

I stepped closer. “Who...”

Her voice cut across the air, high and cold.
She sang.

Just one note.

But it hurt.

My knees buckled. Ears rang. Vision blurred. It felt like my skull was splitting in two.

I clutched my head. “Stop. stop...”

She stopped.

Tilted her head.

“You are untrained,” she said in a voice that didn’t move her lips. “Uncrowned.”

I gasped for air. “Who are you?”

“I am the first,” she said. “The first siren. The first scream. I was cast into shadow so you could be born.”

I staggered up. “What do you want?”

Her veil fluttered in a wind that wasn’t there. “To prepare you.”

“For what?”

She smiled.

“The choir is coming.”

Then she vanished into dust.

I was still on the ground when Vexx burst through the door, gun in hand, eyes wild.

He dropped to his knees. “Kessia, what happened? What the hell happened?”

I looked up at him, trembling. “They’re not just listening anymore.”

His brow furrowed.

“They’re singing back.” The next morning didn’t come with sunlight. Just gray. Heavy, damp, suffocating gray.

The kind of sky that warns you, something is coming.

I sat by the penthouse window, arms wrapped tight around my knees, watching the city move like nothing had changed. Like it didn’t feel what I felt.

But I knew better.

The pressure in the air wasn’t just weather. It was something deeper. Like the very bones of the city were waiting for a scream.

Behind me, Vexx was on the phone, barking orders in that clipped, deadly tone he used when blood was about to spill.

“We double patrols at every entrance, no one goes in or out without ID and a clean scent trace. If you see anything, anything, unnatural, you report before you shoot.”

He hung up and turned to me. “They’ve moved. Grell’s forces left their safehouse at dawn. Three vehicles, armed, cloaked in scent masks. They’re not sending soldiers this time.”

I looked up. “Then who?”

He walked over, crouched in front of me, his hand warm against my shin. “Something called the Choir.”

I swallowed. “I met one of them.”

His jaw locked. “Describe her.”

“Pale. Veiled. Her voice, it made my head bleed without touching me.”

His nostrils flared. “Sirens.”

“She said she was the first,” I whispered. “Said she’d been cast into shadow to make way for me.”

Vexx stood up and ran a hand down his face. “This is bigger than pack war. Bigger than Grell.”

I nodded slowly. “And it’s not going away.”

Just then, the lights in the penthouse flickered.

We both stilled.

Then a siren, a real one, not magical, just human, wailed somewhere outside.

But it was already too late.

The city was quiet.

Too quiet.

I stood and looked out the window.

Then I saw them.

Walking down the middle of the street. Dressed in black robes. Barefoot. Twelve of them, in two rows, like a funeral procession made of shadows.

All veiled.

All sirens.

I couldn’t hear them. But I felt them.

Singing without sound.

And with every step they took, streetlamps shattered. Windows cracked. People dropped to their knees, sobbing, covering their ears though nothing could be heard.

Vexx was already moving.

“Get to the vault. Lock yourself inside.”

“No.”

His eyes snapped to me. “Kessia...”

“I’m not hiding.”

“They’ll kill you.”

I walked toward the door. “Then let them try.”