Claimed by the scarred Alpha

PRIM

"That is complete nonsense," I said. "You are not a ghost. You do not feel like one."

Something shifted across its face.

It might have been amusement.

The expression was difficult to read beneath the borrowed features it wore, as though every smile and blink had been studied rather than lived.

"Damn," it said, sounding almost impressed. "You can tell? I took great care to let as little of my true self bleed through as possible." It smiled, slow and crooked. "Your obsession must have been extraordinary for you to return with instincts this sharp."

The words barely registered.

A memory had surfaced.

Not a clear one, only fragments stitched together by instinct. The damn infirmary. The smell of blood. The Alpha’s body lying unnaturally still. Something vast brushing against the edge of my awareness before disappearing the instant I tried to grasp it.

My eyes narrowed.

"I felt you before."

Its smile widened.

"When the... Alpha..." I stopped, correcting myself as the memory sharpened. "When Alpha Theodore collapsed from blood loss. That was you. You did something to him."

"He is a Beta," it corrected with immediate precision, as though the distinction mattered more than the accusation. "His name is Étienne too."

The name lingered on its tongue with an unpleasant familiarity.

"And yes," it continued, "I did something."

It folded its hands behind its back and began pacing with leisurely steps, looking more like a professor explaining an experiment than something that should not exist.

"Nothing especially dramatic, at least not by my standards. It is not as though I can simply kill him."

Its lips curved.

"Though the devil knows I have wanted to."

It stopped and looked at me.

"I was trying to help him let go."

Its voice carried no shame.

No hesitation.

Only mild irritation that reality had failed to cooperate.

"I was close. Genuinely close." It exhaled through its nose. "Mortals are remarkably frustrating creatures. You cannot bend their minds beyond a certain point without splintering them entirely, and once they break, they become useless."

Its gaze drifted somewhere beyond me, replaying the memory.

"I misjudged the balance."

Its fingers flexed once.

"Instead of encouraging death..." It clicked its tongue. "...I apparently handed him another chance at life. You are probably here and not at the girl you made the pact with because they are probably fucking now, aren’t they?"

I did not say a word back.

For the first time since the conversation had begun, something resembling disappointment crossed its borrowed face.

"Well, that is an outcome I find profoundly irritating."

Silence settled between us.

It wasn’t the silence of uncertainty.

It was the silence that followed hearing something impossible spoken with absolute sincerity.

"What are you?" I asked again.

The question felt heavier now.

"What do you actually want with him?"

"I don’t think that’s your concern."

Its tone remained pleasant, almost conversational.

"We all have our obsessions."

It looked directly into my eyes.

"Yours happens to involve spilling the blood of a cruel witch."

The air seemed colder around us.

"Mine happens to be freedom."

A small shrug followed.

"Different currencies." Then its smile returned. "The same transaction."

It watched me for several long seconds before speaking again.

"Go your way," Its shoulders rose and fell. "I’ll go mine."

Then it stopped.

The pause lingered just long enough to feel deliberate.

"...Or perhaps not."

Its gaze drifted over me with unsettling patience.

Not looking at me. Assessing me. Weighing me. The way someone might examine an unfamiliar tool before deciding whether it belonged in their hand.

"You can affect the natural world." It sounded almost curious. "You demonstrated that rather convincingly today."

Its head tipped slightly.

"The rules governing my existence in this realm are... restrictive."

The word carried obvious disdain.

"I am permitted very little." Its fingers traced invisible patterns through the air. "You, however..."

Its eyes narrowed.

"...operate outside those restrictions."

The corners of its mouth lifted. "You are untethered from them."

Something tightened inside me.

"I have limits."

"So do I." Its answer came immediately.

"But yours are different." It said as it took one slow step closer. "If you helped me with this Beta..." Its voice lowered. "...I would help you with your witch."

Every instinct I possessed recoiled. "I don’t know what you are."

"You don’t, and you do not need to."

"I don’t know what you want."

"You don’t."

"I am not agreeing to anything."

The smile remained.

Only now it no longer resembled kindness.

"I am already being unusually generous." There was a faint edge beneath the words. "I’ve told you considerably more than I tell most beings."

Its gaze settled on me with unsettling calm. "I was also, for the most part..."

A tiny pause followed.

"...simply being nice."

Its smile widened just enough to expose too many teeth.

"So I wouldn’t have to bite."

I stared at it.

The sentence hung between us, absurd enough to almost invite laughter.

Instead, my skin prickled. There had been no joke in its voice. Only fact.

"What exactly is that supposed to mean?"

It sighed as though disappointed by the question.

"I acknowledged your presence," Its fingers spread. "I allowed you to sense me while I was working inside the Beta’s mind."

The words rolled from its mouth as casually as someone discussing the weather.

"I didn’t have to." Another small smile shone through. "I considered it polite."

Something inside me recoiled harder than before.

"I extended a courtesy." It looked around the room. "And yet here you are."

Its eyes settled back on me.

"You were never part of my calculations."

The pleasantness in its voice thinned. Barely.

"And now..." It tilted its head. "...you’re interfering."

A beat passed.

"...with my plans for Margaux."

The name struck me harder than everything else it had said.

Pieces that had floated separately in my mind suddenly slammed together.

The infirmary. Étienne. The strange pressure I had sensed. Its presence. Its interest.

None of it had been about him.

Not really.

He had only been the path.

Margaux had always been the destination.

The realization tore through me with enough force that I felt something inside myself split open.

Cold spilled out before I consciously released it.

It rushed through me like floodwater breaking a dam, pouring from every place grief had hollowed out, every place rage had settled after the night my family died.

The temperature in the room plummeted.

The windows groaned.

A thin web of frost raced across the nearest pane with audible cracks, branching outward faster than vines climbing stone.

The creature watched it happen.

Then it laughed.

Almost fondly too. There was just something about it that existed to make my undead skin crawl.

Its borrowed body began to burn. The flames did not come from outside. They rose from beneath the illusion itself.

Fire licked through translucent skin, climbed beneath false flesh, and consumed it from within. The disguise blackened, curled, and disintegrated as paper dropped into a furnace.

What stood beneath it unfolded slowly.

It grew larger and taller.

Its shadow climbed the walls before the rest of it emerged.

Its skin was the color of fresh blood stretched across powerful limbs.

Two horns swept upward from its skull before curving outward with frightening symmetry, shaped less like weapons than declarations of what it was: a crown.

Its eyes burned. Orange at their edges. White at their centers. Like metal left too long inside a forge.

When it spoke again, the room answered.

Its voice no longer crossed the distance between us.

It settled into the walls.

Into the floor.

Into my bones.

"You are not the first lesser spirit I’ve consumed."

The words vibrated through the air.

"And you won’t be the last."

I didn’t move.

I didn’t retreat.

Whatever this thing was, whatever ancient hunger stood behind those burning eyes, it expected fear.

I had buried too many people, lost too much, and died carrying more regret than any soul should have been asked to bear.

There was precious little left in me that still knew how to fear.

So I held my ground.

And I stared right back at the creature as I took a fighting stance.