The drive to the restaurant was a study in surreal normalcy. After the spectral horror of the greenhouse and the brutal calculus of the warehouse, this felt like stepping onto a movie set where I was playing a role I hadn't auditioned for: the doting wife on a date. I held the car door open for her, my hand a steady, gentlemanly cradle as she slid into the passenger seat. The simple act of closing her door felt weighted, like sealing a vault containing my most precious, stolen treasure. As I walked around the car, I caught my reflection in the dark window a woman in a sharp, black blazer, her hair impeccably styled, her expression a carefully constructed mask of calm anticipation. Inside, the monster was pacing, confused by the civility, the quiet hum of the engine a jarring contrast to the remembered screams and the gurgle of water in a warehouse tank.
I settled into the driver's seat, the scent of her Vanilla Strawberry and a new, delicate floral perfume filling the space. It was a deliberate assault on my senses, a beautiful weapon designed to keep me disarmed. I wanted to drown in it, to let it erase the phantom scent of blood and terror that still clung to the back of my throat. Instead, I gripped the wheel, my knuckles white for a moment before I forced them to relax. Performance. It was all a performance.
"You know," Althea began, her voice bubbling with a suppressed excitement that was both endearing and, to my fractured mind, dangerously naive. "I have a surprise for you today. So be prepared." She patted the laptop bag at her feet, the one containing the machine that had, just days ago, displayed clinical diagrams of my alleged inadequacies.
I forced a smile, hoping it reached my eyes. "Oh, I'm excited." The words felt like ash in my mouth. Excited. What a paltry, human word for the maelstrom of emotions she provoked in me. Dread, desire, a possessive fury so intense it could power cities, and a fear so profound it felt like a constant, low-grade hum in my bones. My surprise for her was a confession of conspiracy and a plan for corporate annihilation. Hers was likely a song. The disparity was both beautiful and grotesque.
"Ha! As you should!" she retorted with a playful huff, crossing her arms, a queen bestowing a favor.
My thoughts: Cute. I'm excited, though, really. The internal monologue was a lie I told myself. The truth was a cacophony: What surprise? A new song? A public declaration? Or have you remembered something? Is this the prelude to the Tyrant's return, a final, beautiful performance before you tear my world apart?
We arrived at L'Astre, the most exclusive restaurant in the city, a place where the tables were spaced for privacy and the waiters were paid a king's ransom for their discretion. I had reserved the entire terrace, a fact I would not tell her. Let her believe we were just lucky. The performers a string quartet were playing something soft and classical. The waiters greeted us with a deference that bordered on reverence, a language I understood far better than the one of love and surprises.
Once we were seated, the city glittering below us like a spilled jewel box, she fell silent for a moment, just staring at me. Her gaze was intense, analytical, and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Was she seeing me? Or the ghost of the woman she used to be married to? The one who had failed her?
"Well," she started, a faint blush coloring her cheeks. "I was just thinking that a dress would look good on you. I'm sorry, it's like I'm trying to… ugh… undermine your Alpha masculinity or something."
The statement was so unexpected it bypassed my defenses and struck a chord that had been rusted shut for years. My body dysmorphia. A ghost from my own past, one I'd buried under layers of tailored suits and corporate dominance. Before my Alpha designation had fully manifested during puberty, I'd been… softer. I'd worn dresses, enjoyed things society deemed 'girly.' The transition had been brutal, not just physically, but socially. Alphas don't wear that. Alphas are strong. Alphas lead. The message was clear: masculinity was power, and femininity was its opposite. I had locked that part of myself away, viewing any desire for it as a weakness, a betrayal of the power I needed to wield in a world that would gladly chew me up and spit me out. That girl was a liability. So I killed her, bricked her up behind a wall of pinstripes and polished leather.
And here was this amnesiac Omega, my beautiful, chaotic wife, not only seeing that hidden corpse but… wanting to dress it up. To bring it back to life.
"Oh no, you're not," I said, my voice softer than I intended, the gravel in it smoothing out. "Those thoughts… slip my mind too. I wanna wear a dress, or, you know… women stuff. But since I'm an Alpha, it's so limited for me." The confession felt like pulling a shard of glass from an old wound, painful and sharp, but followed by a strange, dizzying relief. "I appreciate you thinking that way. If I wanna buy one, will you choose with me?"
The look on her face was worth the vulnerability. Her eyes widened, the amber pools shimmering with genuine delight. "Woah, really? Oh, I feel bad for assuming, uhm…" She reached across the table, her hand covering mine, a warm brand on my suddenly cold skin. "I get to choose? Omg, that would be great! Yay! Dress-up with you would be fun!"
Her touch was an electric current, grounding me and setting me on fire simultaneously. A dress. She wanted to see me in a dress. The thought was terrifying. It would be a costume of the person I could never afford to be. But for her, I would wear it. I would wear anything, be anything. "I look forward to it," I murmured, the promise feeling like a tiny, fragile light in the vast darkness of my being. A light I would protect with fangs and claws.
"Wait! My surprise!" she said, suddenly remembering, her energy shifting from tender to effervescent. "Stay here. I'm gonna go on the stage and sing for you. You see, I saw my music here some are unfinished, but I edited some of them. It's not as good, but yes." She finished shyly, standing up before I could form a protest.
She glided towards the stage, a vision in emerald, and whispered to the host. A moment of panic seized me. A public performance. Exposure. Every cell in my body, the Alpha, the CEO, the predator, screamed that this was a security risk, a variable I couldn't control. Emara or one of her snakes could be here. Emman Sinclair's spies. Anyone could take a photo, a video, use it to trace her, to unsettle her. But the part of me that was just Haven, the part that belonged to her, was captivated. This was her element. This was the Althea the world loved. And she was offering it to me.
The host took the microphone. "Hello, everyone! We have a very special guest with us tonight. We should consider ourselves lucky! The one and only Althea Vale, singing again after her accident! Once again, she's doing it at her own resort, and now our humble establishment is blessed to have her, too!" A wave of excited murmurs swept through the terrace. "And she says she's singing this to her wife, right over there."
The spotlight, cruel and exposing, swung directly onto me.
Damn you, Althea. There you go again, making my heart flutter. The thought was a desperate, internal plea. My cheeks burned. I was Haven Hartwell, a woman who commanded boardrooms without breaking a sweat, and here I was, blushing like a schoolgirl under a spotlight. I wanted to shrink, to command the light to turn off, to drag her back to the safety of our table, of our home, of the cage I had built for her. But I sat still, a statue of forced composure, my Grape Old Wine scent spiking with a blend of anxiety and fierce, aching pride.
The crowd's whispers were a distant roar.
"That's Haven Hartwell! The CEO!"
"Oh my god, Althea Vale is back! And she's singing to her wife? This is so romantic!"
"Are you recording this? This is going viral for sure."
Phones were raised, a constellation of tiny screens capturing the moment, capturing my vulnerability. My scent soured further. This was a breach. A massive, glittering breach in the walls I'd built.
She set up her laptop, the soft, opening notes of an instrumental filling the air. And then she began to sing.
Her voice. God, her voice. It was the same instrument that had once crafted ballads of such searing pain they could flay a person alive. But now, it was imbued with a different kind of raw emotion. It was hopeful, tender, full of a love that felt both new and eternal.
"Let me tell you now,
All that's on my mind.
For a love like yours,
Is oh, so very hard to find..."
Every word was a hook sinking into my soul. She was singing about me. The monster. The stalker. The woman who kept her sedated and under surveillance. She was looking directly at me, her eyes shining with unshed tears, and in that moment, the lie felt more real than any truth I had ever known.
"You, turned me inside out and you showed me,
What life was about.
Only you, the only one that stole my heart away..."
The hypocrisy of it was a physical pain. I hadn't shown her life. I had hidden it from her. I had curated a safe, sanitized, amnesiac version of it. The real Althea, the Tyrant, knew what life was about—it was about grief, betrayal, and a desperate search for a truth I was actively obscuring. You have no idea, I thought, a bitter taste in my mouth. I didn't just steal your heart. I stole your past. I am holding your memories hostage, and you're singing me love songs.
As the song built, her voice gaining power and conviction, my own thoughts spiraled into a familiar, dark abyss of self-loathing. She really does belong to the spotlight. The thought was a blade. She was a star, a supernova of talent and charisma. The crowd was enraptured, their phones held aloft like offerings to a goddess. They saw the legend, the phoenix rising from the ashes. And what did they see when the spotlight swung to me? The stoic Alpha in a suit. The corporate shadow. The warden. But do I belong to the crowd or beside her? The doubt was a venomous whisper. I didn't belong in this romantic narrative. I belonged in the wings, pulling the strings, ensuring the stage was safe. My love wasn't a serenade; it was a siege. It wasn't a declaration; it was a possession.
She held the final, soaring note, her voice a clear, perfect bell, and I felt something crack inside my chest. This was the Althea the world adored. The one who could make strangers feel seen. And she was pouring all of it, every ounce of that power, onto me. The unworthy recipient.
The last note dissolved into thunderous applause. Althea, breathless and glowing, took a small bow. "It's for my wife," she said into the microphone, her gaze finding mine again, "who has been with me through ups and accidents, haha! And I'm announcing that I will be back on stage soon and release a new album! I just need to patch things up!"
The crowd went wild. The narrative was perfect. The triumphant return. The supportive, powerful wife. It was a fairytale. And I was the wolf wearing grandmother's clothes, my jaws aching from the smile I had to maintain.
I was so lost in the vortex of my own darkness that I didn't notice her approaching until she was right in front of me. Her smile had faded, replaced by a look of concern.
"Are you okay, Haven?" she asked softly, her voice a lifeline thrown into my churning sea of self-hatred.
She reached out, her warm hand covering mine on the table. Then, to my utter shock, she knelt beside my chair, right there in the middle of the restaurant, ignoring the lingering stares and cameras. Her eyes searched mine, seeing too much, as they always did.
"Hey," she whispered, her voice for me alone. "I'm here. It's just us."
It will never be just us, the monster in my head screamed. It's us, and your past, and my sins, and the people I have to hurt to keep this moment safe. It's Emman Sinclair in a warehouse and Marcus Riggs sobbing for his children.
But I said nothing. I just looked at her, drowning in the amber of her eyes, wishing I could believe her.
She stood then, leveling her head with my sitting form, and leaned in. The world narrowed to the space between our lips. She kissed me. It wasn't a chaste peck. It was a slow, deliberate, soul-searing kiss that tasted of strawberries and promise and a future I was terrified I would corrupt. The crowd gasped, and I heard the frantic clicking of cameras, but it was all white noise. The only thing real was her mouth on mine, a temporary baptism that almost, almost, made me feel clean. When she pulled away, my blush was back, a furious, hot flush that had nothing to do with the spotlight and everything to do with her. She just smiled, a little smugly, and returned to her seat as if she hadn't just rearranged the entire molecular structure of my being.
The fragile bubble of our intimacy was punctured not long after. We were picking at a shared dessert, a delicate chocolate construction that felt absurd after the emotional earthquake of her song, when a figure approached. It was a woman, tall and willowy with a cascade of auburn hair and the confident, languid scent of a mid-tier Alpha—jasmine and vetiver. She had the look of old money and casual entitlement, and my instincts flared before my mind even registered her face.
"Althea Vale," the woman purred, her smile not quite reaching her cool grey eyes. "As I live and breathe. I heard a rumor you were performing again, but I had to see it to believe it."
Althea looked up, her expression politely blank. The friendly confusion in her eyes was a knife in my gut. She didn't recognize her.
The woman's smile turned wistful, predatory. "That song… 'Only you, the only one that stole my heart away'…" She let the lyric hang, her gaze flicking to me for a fraction of a second, dismissive. "I must admit, I felt a pang. I always wished you'd serenaded me like that in public when we were together. You were always so… privately passionate."
The air left my lungs. Together. The word echoed in the silent, screaming chamber of my mind. This was one of them. One of the ghosts from Althea's past, from her playgirl days before the weight of the Vale legacy and her family's death turned her into the Tyrant. A woman who had known Althea's touch, her laughter, her passion, without the burden of my failures and manipulations. A woman who represented a part of Althea's life that was forever closed to me, a life of freedom and choice I had systematically erased.
I felt a sharp, sudden kick under the table. Althea's foot connecting with my shin. Her eyes, when I met them, were wide with a silent, panicked plea. 'Who is this? Help.'
The monster in me wanted to rise, to bare its teeth, to make this woman understand that every memory she had of Althea was now my property, and she was trespassing. I wanted to lean across the table and in a voice soft as a razor, say, 'Do you know what happens to people who try to take what's mine? They drown. Slowly.'
But the CEO, the wife, the performer, took over. I offered the woman a smile that was all chilly politeness. "I'm sorry, you have the advantage before. I'm Haven Hartwell, Althea's wife." I put a subtle, possessive emphasis on the last word, my Grape Old Wine scent thickening, not with aggression, but with an immovable, territorial certainty.
The woman finally deigned to look at me properly. "Ah, yes. The CEO. I've heard… things." Her tone suggested the things she'd heard were about corporate raiding, not bedtime stories. "I'm Janea Vance. Althea and I… well, we shared some memorable times before she settled down." She turned her attention back to Althea, who was now studying her dessert with intense focus. "You look well, Thea. Truly. The accident… it seems to have agreed with you. You've lost that… sharp edge. It's softer. Nice."
Every word was a calculated barb. 'Settled down'—as if with me, Althea had given up. 'Sharper edge'—the Tyrant. The woman was mourning the loss of the version of Althea I was desperately trying to keep buried, and praising the amnesiac shell I had created. The irony was so thick I could taste it, metallic and bitter.
Althea finally looked up, her smile brittle. "It's… nice to see you? I'm sorry, my memory is still… spotty. But thank you." She kicked me again, harder.
I placed my hand over Althea's on the table, a solid, calming weight. "My wife is under strict orders to avoid stress during her recovery," I said to Janea, my voice smooth as polished marble. "Nostalgia, while often sweet, can be unexpectedly taxing. We wouldn't want a setback." The threat was veiled in concern. Back off, or you will be the cause of her pain.
Janea's smile didn't falter, but her eyes cooled further. "Of course. How protective. Well, I won't keep you from your… celebration." Her gaze swept over our table, our linked hands. "Do take care of her, Haven. She's a rare one. Always was." With a final, lingering look at Althea that made my hackles rise, she melted back into the restaurant.
The moment she was gone, Althea let out a shaky breath. "Who the hell was that? She was intense. And she called me 'Thea.' Only my mom called me that."
"Nobody important," I said, my voice tight. "A relic from a past life." A past life I am incinerating piece by piece. Inside, the obsession churned. Janea Vance. I would remember that name. I would have Chen dig up every detail. What had they done together? How long had it lasted? The thought of this woman's hands on Althea, her mouth on Althea's skin, her scent mingling with Vanilla Strawberry… it ignited a jealousy so pure and murderous it was a wonder the table between us didn't combust. I wanted to find Janea Vance and erase her from Althea's history as thoroughly as I had erased the Tyrant. I wanted to buy and burn every photograph, silence every mutual acquaintance. She was a loose end, and I hated loose ends.
Althea peered at me. "You okay? You got all… quiet and CEO-y again."
"I'm perfect," I lied, forcing another smile. "Just making sure you're comfortable."
The rest of the dinner passed in a haze of forced normalcy. She fed me a bite of her dessert, her eyes twinkling. "See? Not everything has to be a power move, Hartwell. Sometimes it's just… sweet."
I laughed, a real, unforced sound that startled me. "I'm learning."
Finally, the dinner was over. As we drove away, the city lights blurring past, she suddenly gasped, pointing. "Haven, look! A carnival!"
It was a temporary setup in a park, a riot of neon and noise, the absolute antithesis of L'Astre. The old me would have dismissed it as chaotic, common, a security nightmare.
But the new me, the one who was learning to be sweet, the one who had just been publicly serenaded and had her jealousy ignited by a ghost, looked at her face, alight with a childlike wonder, and knew I would follow her into the mouth of hell if she asked. Perhaps this was my hell—this exquisite torture of loving her in the light while my soul festered in the dark. A carnival seemed fitting.
"We have to go!" she pleaded. "But we have to change! We can't go in like this!"
So we did. We drove to a nearby boutique, a place that was still open, and bought the most anonymous clothes we could find. For her, a simple grey hoodie and a pair of jeans. For me, a plain black t-shirt and a baseball cap. She found a pair of non-prescription glasses for herself, giggling as she put them on.
In the car, we changed, laughing at the absurdity of it, shimmying out of couture and into cotton. I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. Haven Hartwell, in a simple t-shirt and a cap, her hair tucked away, the marks on her neck hidden. I looked… ordinary. Young, even. For a fleeting second, I didn't see the CEO or the monster. I just saw a woman about to go to a carnival with the love of her life, her heart still racing from a surprise serenade and a jealous fright.
It was the most terrifying disguise I had ever worn. Because for a moment, staring at that ordinary woman in the glass, I almost wanted to be her.
As we walked hand-in-hand towards the blinking lights and the cacophony of the carnival, the scent of fried food and cheap perfume replacing the rarefied air of the restaurant, I felt the Tyrant's shadow recede. Janea Vance's face faded. The water tanks in Warehouse 7 seemed like a nightmare from another lifetime. For now, there was only the smell of sugar, the tinny music, and the warm, trusting grip of Althea's hand in mine.
But I knew the shadows were still there, waiting in the darkness just beyond the neon glow, a permanent audience to the beautiful, fragile play I was performing for her amnesiac stand-in. And I would do anything, burn anyone, become any monster required, to keep the curtain from falling. Even if it meant the ordinary woman in the reflection had to die every single night.