Claimed by the scarred Alpha

MARGAUX

I did not wake into the waking world.

I woke instead into a darkness that had no edges, no floor beneath me that felt like anything at all, no texture underfoot when I finally forced myself to stand. Just black, stretching in every direction, swallowing whatever light might have existed to define a shape or a wall or a horizon.

I understood immediately this had to be Séverine’s doing. Some kind of spell, some working I didn’t have the vocabulary to name yet, and understanding that didn’t make it any less terrifying.

"Hello?" I called out, my voice swallowed the second it left my mouth because there was no echo... no sound at all beyond the initial word. "Can anyone hear me?"

Nothing answered.

I thought of spirit light. It seemed like the only tool I had, the only thing that had ever worked when everything else failed, so I reached for it the way Ophelia had taught me, feeling for that hum under my ribs instead of chasing something external.

It flickered.

A weak, sputtering gold that barely illuminated my own palm before it died out entirely, and the effort of calling it left me swaying on legs that suddenly didn’t feel steady enough to hold me. Whatever this place was, it was eating something out of me just by existing here, and I understood with a cold, sinking certainty that I could not simply light my way out of it.

I looked down.

The floor, if it could even be called that, wasn’t made of anything. No stone, no wood, no dirt. Just an absence pretending to hold my weight, and something about staring directly at it sent panic clawing up my throat fast enough that I had to look away before I lost whatever composure I had left.

Then an orange light bled into the darkness in front of me.

It arrived slowly at first, a glow at the edges of my vision that spread until it swallowed the black entirely, and with it came rain. I felt it before I understood what I was looking at, cold drops striking my bare shoulders, then my face, before running down my back in thin rivulets that made no sense given a moment ago I’d been standing in nothing at all.

I looked up.

The Archambault estate burned in front of me.

I recognized it instantly, though I’d never actually seen it whole, never seen it standing before whatever happened to it happened. Flames tore through the roofline, black smoke curling up into a sky the rain wasn’t managing to clear, and figures moved somewhere inside that inferno, screaming in ways I felt in my chest more than heard with my ears.

A shape detached itself from the burning structure and moved toward me.

It took me a horrible, drawn out second to understand what I was looking at. A woman, or what had been a woman, her body a burning effigy of herself, flesh and fire indistinguishable from one another as she dragged herself across the darkness that was now the ground toward where I stood frozen.

It was Étienne’s mother.

I didn’t need anyone to tell me. Something in the shape of her face, blackened and ruined as it was, still carried enough of him in it that recognition arrived before logic could argue against it.

She reached me and wrapped burning arms around my shoulders.

I braced for pain that never came. The heat licked at my skin, close enough that I should have blistered instantly, and yet nothing touched me at all beyond the impression of warmth, like standing near a fire rather than inside one.

"Did I deserve this?" Her voice came out cracked, hollow, barely holding together as words. "Did any of us deserve this?"

I didn’t have an answer that felt adequate to the question.

"I’m sorry," I whispered instead, because it was the only true thing I had to offer her, and I closed my eyes against the sight of her burning face so close to mine.

When I opened them again, the fire was gone.

The rain was gone. The estate, his mother, all of it had vanished entirely, replaced by a white room that held no walls I could identify. It also had no source for the light that filled it evenly from every direction at once.

But I could hear voices.

Séverine’s voice arrived first, clear and close, like she stood in the room with me rather than wherever she actually was.

"I will become her, and you will see it happen. I want you to see it. Every second of it. And then I will wipe it from your mind."

I shot upright, though I hadn’t realized I’d been kneeling.

"What the hell," I breathed.

Then Étienne’s voice, sharp with shock followed. "What?"

"Étienne!" I screamed his name into the white nothing surrounding me, my throat already raw with the force of it. "Étienne! Can you hear me? Étienne!!!"

Nothing answered. Nothing ever answered.

Séverine’s voice came again, and every word landed like a blow.

"I haven’t even reached the best part yet. When I take her body, when I take everything she will ever be, I will wipe your memory clean afterward. You will retain just enough information to see my discarded body as the enemy. A body she will then inhabit. And you, Étienne, will be the one to end her life with your own hands."

I felt the horror of it settle into my bones like something physical. Was she talking about me? About stealing my body?

Goddess...

I reached for spirit light again in desperation as some animal part of me convinced that if I just tried hard enough, and pushed past whatever limit I’d hit before, I could burn my way out of this place and back to him. It flickered worse than the first attempt, barely letting out a spark before it guttered out completely, and the effort of it dropped me straight to my knees, the strength draining out of my legs so fast I didn’t even feel myself falling until I was already down.

I knelt there, breathing hard, my whole body shaking with an exhaustion that felt bottomless.

Then as of things couldn’t get worse, a cold hand touched my face.

I flinched, twisting away before a voice reached me, low and almost gentle, entirely wrong given everything about the moment.

"Spirit light cannot save you here," it said. "This is strong magic. More creepy and insidious than what you’re working with."

I turned toward the voice.

Alpha Amine stood there, exactly as I remembered him from the library, high collar and embroidered waistcoat, the same pleasant, patient expression he’d worn the day I first offered him a favor in exchange for information.

Except I knew better now.

I knew what he actually was, and something in my stomach curled tight with revulsion at the sight of that familiar, friendly face.

"Leave me, fucking demon," I said, forcing steel into my voice I didn’t fully feel. "You will get nothing from me."

"I disagree." He tilted his head, unbothered by the venom in my tone. "I believe I will get exactly what I want. I manufactured all of this, you understand. The witch girl was remarkably easy to trick. She genuinely believes she can best a great demon at his own game."

I was so afraid but I was not going to show it. Not to this creature.

"I will never hold your hand."

He laughed, a light, delighted sound that made my skin crawl.

"In that case," he said, "she will win. At this particular juncture, only an even more powerful witch can take down a powerful witch. And you, my dear, cannot refuse the one opportunity to become one. It is the only way you can save yourself."

"No." I pushed myself unsteadily to my feet, refusing to stay kneeling in front of him. "Get out of my head."

He only smiled wider.

"Instead of wasting your remaining strength on me," he said, "I would urge you to think about Étienne. I am doing you a kindness, sharing the details of what’s about to happen. She will successfully steal your body. It will happen because I gave her the spell myself."

"What the fuck do you want from me?"

"Out." The single word carried more weight than anything else he’d said. There was something ancient and hungry bleeding through the pleasant mask he wore. "I have wanted out for a very long time. If you must know, I was the one who engineered your birth, Margaux. Every part of it. So that I could be your familiar."

"It is never going to happen. Not in a million years."

"Oh, I can wait." He clasped his hands behind his back, drifting closer with the same unhurried pace he’d used in the library, back when I still believed he was harmless. "And I do not need a million years. I do not even need a full day. Because either way, this arrangement works. I get what I want regardless of which path you choose. But I would prefer it happen with you specifically." His eyes, orange white and entirely inhuman up close, held mine without blinking. "I want to be yours."

"You’ll never be anything of mine."

"If she steals your body," he continued, ignoring me entirely, "there is a fair chance I still end up her familiar in the end, given I suspect she’ll want to remain a witch regardless of whose face she’s wearing. But you, Margaux, have considerably more to lose in that scenario." He paused, letting the silence stretch just long enough to hurt. "Your body. Your soul. Your man." His voice softened into something almost gentle, almost kind, which somehow made it worse. "His sanity, as he ends your life with his own hands, believing you to be the enemy the entire time."

I felt something crack open in my chest at that image.

"Should the spell she’s about to force onto him split," he said, "do you truly believe Étienne survives it? He has already endured so much in his short, brutal life. Why do you keep insisting on putting him through more?"

For one terrible, unforgivable second, I actually thought about it.

I didn’t know why. I understood exactly what this creature was, exactly what it wanted, exactly how many loaded half-truths and agendas had already been threaded through every word it had spoken to me since the moment I first spoke to it

in the Valcourt library. But something about the image it had planted, Étienne’s hands closing around a throat he believed belonged to his enemy, his mind wiped clean of the truth that might have stopped him, made the offer sitting underneath its words feel almost reasonable.

I hated myself for that half second more than I had ever hated anything.