Claimed by the scarred Alpha

MARGAUX

When the demon kissed me, memory tore through my skull like something forcibly implanted, and I understood almost instantly that none of it belonged to me.

It belonged to him.

I saw my uncle Lucian first, sitting in his study, and something about him looked wrong in a way I couldn’t immediately place until I realized he looked younger. Noticeably younger. The demon stood behind him, one hand resting on his shoulder, its fingers moving in a slow, deliberate massage while he spoke low and steady into Lucian’s ear.

I found myself walking toward them without understanding how, the scene folding around me like I’d actually been transported into it.

"The Archambaults have those files now," the demon murmured. "The only reason they haven’t said anything about what they found is because they want you to suffer first. To break your mind slowly before they finish you." He squeezed Lucian’s shoulder. "You committed the worst of crimes. Fraud. The true Luna of this pack is dead, and you put her Omega twin in her place instead. Bold of you. But you are finished if you don’t move first."

Lucian sat rigid, his jaw working.

"You know how this world moves," the demon continued. "It’s a dog eat dog world, Lucian. You either bite like the ugly thing you are, or you get preyed upon. I know you can do this. You might be the underdog here, but when you set your mind to something, you protect what’s yours." A pause, gentle, and almost affectionate followed. "Do what needs doing. For yourself. For your family. Isabelle doesn’t deserve any of what’s coming if you fail to act now. She’s only taking her dead sister’s place." His voice dropped lower, final. "It’s your family or the Archambaults, and I say the Archambaults have to go. You have to kill them."

I froze in place.

I knew this already about my uncle. That my uncle had orchestrated the destruction of Étienne’s entire family, but now to learn that it was... That it was because of— my mind stumbled over the shape of the thought, refusing to complete it.

—This demon?

There was also the things that were said. They didn’t make sense. Vivianne was my mother. She had always been my mother. Isabelle was her twin, the aunt who died when I was a child, the one everyone spoke of only rarely and only with careful sadness.

Why would this memory imply—

I stopped myself before I could finish that sentence, a sick, crawling feeling spreading through whatever remained of me in this space. I thought of the moment Étienne had mentioned my mother being like me. A whisperer. And I thought of how quickly, how completely, she’d denied it when I had called her to question her.

Goddess.

That was because the woman standing at Valcourt right now, the woman I’d called my mother for more than half my entire life, wasn’t actually Vivianne at all.

She was Isabelle.

The scene vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, snapping back into the white room, and I looked the demon directly in the eye as he finally broke the kiss.

"It was you," I said. My voice barely sounded like mine anymore. "You are the reason the Archambaults suffered."

"Oh, that," he said.

He sounded bored.

Something inside me went cold.

"I am not holding your hand anymore." I tried to pull away. "The deal is off."

He smiled.

"I refuse."

The words were quiet, almost gentle.

Then his expression changed.

"And it won’t matter soon regardless. Once I take your shade, all that flimsy empathy will burn away. You’ll stop caring about them. You’ll stop caring about anyone." His eyes settled on mine, almost tenderly. "You’ll finally want what you’ve actually wanted all along."

"No."

I yanked backward.

His fingers closed around my wrist.

The world lurched.

He dragged me toward him with such violent force that my feet left the ground. I barely had time to scream before his other hand plunged into my chest.

There was no blood.

That was somehow worse.

His hand passed straight through bone and flesh as though my body had become nothing more than smoke. I felt his fingers curl around something deep inside me.

Then he pulled and the notion of it made me scream.

Something tore loose.

It was not flesh. It was not even my heart.

But something certainly gave.

Something that had always been inside me without my ever knowing it was there.

A red light burst between my ribs.

It came out of me in a long, viscous thread, stretching impossibly between his hand and my chest before finally snapping free. It was small enough to fit in his palm, but it pulsed violently, glowing crimson through his fingers.

Every pulse sent a fresh wave of agony through me.

I could feel it beating. Like it was my own heartbeat. But it also had some fond memories curled around it. My fear too. In fact, everything I was.

All of it seemed to be contained inside that horrible little thing.

He lifted it toward his face.

"No," I choked.

He looked almost pleased as he opened his mouth and swallowed it.

I felt the moment it disappeared.

Because the pain that had been searing through me immediately stopped.

Completely. And that frightened me more than the pain had.

I looked down at my chest. There was no wound. No blood either.

Yet I could no longer feel myself properly.

My thoughts were becoming distant, muffled, as though I were sinking beneath black water.

He leaned closer.

"You have to wake up now," he whispered.

His voice followed me into the darkness.

"Before you forget how."

***

I gasped awake.

My body convulsed violently and for several seconds, I couldn’t breathe.

I clawed at my chest, expecting to find blood, torn flesh, an open cavity where he had reached inside me.

But there was nothing.

My skin was whole. My heart was pounding.

Too hard.

Far too hard.

I pressed my palm against my sternum and felt it hammering beneath my hand.

After that, I was staring up at the fluorescent lights of the gas station, Séverine’s voice cutting through the ringing in my ears.

"I don’t understand," she was saying. "Why didn’t it work?"

Then in that moment, she looked at me, and her eyes went wide with shock.

"How are you awake?"

I didn’t answer with words.

I raised my hand toward her instead, some new, cold certainty guiding the motion, and an invisible force slapped her clean across the room. She hit a shelf of snacks hard enough to send bags scattering across the floor, and the same force lifted me upright, my bare feet settling gently against the tile.