Claimed by the scarred Alpha

SÉVERINE

The car finished tumbling with a final, grinding crunch of metal against asphalt, and I sat in my own borrowed vehicle for a moment, watching the wreckage settle, hoping Grigori hadn’t overdone it.

He had a habit of that. Enthusiasm outpacing precision.

"Stop here," I told the driver.

He was human, or at least he had been before I’d emptied his will and replaced it with something far more obedient ten minutes ago. He brought the car to a smooth stop without a flicker of hesitation, which was precisely why I’d bothered.

I opened the door and stepped out.

He remained behind the wheel, staring blankly ahead.

There was no reason to keep him alive now.

Unseen hands closed around his head before he could even turn toward me. His skull gave with a wet, ugly crack beneath the pressure, collapsing as easily as an overripe fruit. Blood and brain matter sprayed across the dashboard, the steering wheel, the seat, and, unfortunately, the sleeve of my stolen shirt.

I looked down at the mess.

I wiped it away with two fingers, my irritation entirely disproportionate to the inconvenience.

Then I stepped away from the car, leaving the ruined driver slumped behind the wheel.

Margaux was already running.

I caught a flash of pale skin between the trees before the darkness swallowed her, and right behind her came Grigori, closing the distance with the single-minded hunger of something that had just finished dealing with a nosy human who’d made the mistake of calling the police instead of running.

I’d felt it through our bond, brief and satisfying. A clean spike of violence, followed by the unmistakable sense that the witness problem had been handled.

I was about to follow them into the trees when someone shouted my name.

"Séverine!"

I stopped and turned.

Laurent stood beside the overturned wreck, blood sheeting down one side of his face from a deep gash that would have needed stitches on any ordinary man. Fortunately for him, he was a werewolf, which meant the wound would close long before anyone could finish cleaning it.

He should have been calculating his odds by now. Any rational person in his position would have been.

Instead, he looked at me like he still intended to fight.

It was almost sweet.

Stupid, obviously. But sweet.

I had to be careful with him regardless of how the odds actually sat between us, because I could see at least one more body still trapped in that overturned car, and I had no idea who among them might be carrying a gun, pretending to be more injured than they actually were, waiting for the right moment.

So I made the terms clear before I got any closer.

"If you’re thinking about killing me," I said, "you should know that plenty of Omegas back at your home Valcourt will suffer badly for it. And I’ll still be fine."

"I don’t give a shit about any of that," he said.

I raised an eyebrow.

"If you want to kill Margaux," he continued, blood dripping steadily off his chin now, "with some fucked up idea that it’ll bring Étienne running back to you, you’re going to have to go through me first."

I smiled at that, because it was almost charming, the loyalty of it.

"I don’t want to kill Margaux," I lied. It was a white lie, so it was fine. "I just want us to talk. Like girls. She stole him from me, after all. I’d like to hear from her why she deserves to keep him."

"You’re sick," he spat, and then he charged.

I summoned unseen hands without hesitation.

Under almost any other circumstance, an attack from a Beta of Laurent’s caliber would have torn an ordinary opponent apart. But I was a witch, and I knew how to hold my ground. So I did.

Invisible force slammed into him from every direction, pinning his arms and legs against the earth. Laurent fought against it immediately, muscles straining as he tried to break free of a pressure he couldn’t see, couldn’t grab, and couldn’t overpower.

I walked toward him.

"I don’t want to kill you nearly as much as I dislike you," I said, studying his furious, bloodied face. "Mostly because I know Étienne genuinely cares about you like a brother. That’s the only reason you’re still breathing."

His expression twisted.

"So... Consider it a favor."

Then I started twisting.

The invisible pressure tightened around his body. A low groan escaped him, quickly climbing into something raw and animal as his bones began to give beneath the force.

One crack followed.

Then another.

His body jerked with every break. Some bones merely popped under the pressure; others shattered with sharp, ugly snaps that seemed to vibrate through my own teeth.

He held out for longer than I’d expected.

Eventually, he screamed.

I let myself enjoy it for a moment. There was something satisfying about watching a man who had arrived expecting to overpower me discover, piece by piece, that he couldn’t.

Then I released him.

Laurent collapsed into the dirt, breathing hard, his body broken but still alive.

Exactly as I’d promised.

I turned toward the wrecked car and summoned unseen hands beneath its twisted frame. With a sharp upward pull, I flipped the entire vehicle onto its wheels, the metal groaning as it rolled over.

I wanted to see who else had been inside.

But... There was only one sentinel.

He was half-impaled on a jagged spear of metal and shattered glass, his body twisted at an impossible angle. He looked beyond saving, although something about the scene made me hesitate.

It was too convenient.

I frowned.

I distinctly remembered there being more than three of them.

That was when Laurent laughed.

I turned back toward him, genuinely confused that a man with blood running down his face and half his bones broken could find anything amusing.

His eyes met mine.

And then I understood.

Not what he had done.

What he’d been waiting for.

The realization came half a second too late.

Two shots rang out.

One tore through my throat.

The impact was hot and brutally sudden, so violent that pain barely had time to register before something stranger did. My voice simply stopped working. I tried to breathe, to speak, to scream, and nothing came out except a wet, broken rasp.

The second bullet was already coming for my heart.

I moved at the last possible instant, some instinct older than conscious thought wrenching my body sideways. The bullet tore past instead of through me.

I threw up unseen hands.

The next shot struck the invisible barrier I’d formed and stopped dead in midair, suspended inches from me. For one suspended second, I could see the bullet clearly enough to follow the line of its trajectory back through the trees.

I found him.

My fury did the rest.

An invisible force ripped through the forest, tearing bark from trunks and snapping branches as it carved a violent path toward the shooter. Leaves and splinters exploded into the air.

But the sentinel was already moving.

He somersaulted clear of the attack and fired again before his feet even touched the ground.

I was ready this time.

I twisted aside, letting the bullet pass, while unseen hands lashed through the trees after him. He was fast, trained, and irritatingly precise, but there was something else I understood almost immediately.

Étienne didn’t care about this one.

Which meant I had no reason to show mercy.

For the first time since the shooting began, I smiled.

I was going to enjoy killing him.

But there was no reason to waste my witch marks on this.

Draining Omegas to fuel a fight against some anonymous sentinel felt like overkill, an unnecessary cruelty even by my generous standards. I was already deciding how much power I could drain to stitch myself up without killing or harming too many of them when I felt something burning through my veins.

Wolfsbane.

My gaze dropped briefly to the blood seeping from my throat.

The bullets had been laced with it.

That changed everything.

As a hybrid without an awakened wolf, my healing factor didn’t function the way a werewolf’s should. I also couldn’t simply rely on my body to purge the poison and close the wounds.

Because I was still part werewolf, even if that part of me remained unawakened.

Which meant the wolfsbane wasn’t merely poison. It was a poison my body had no natural way of fighting.

Magic was my only salvation.

I was already reaching through the invisible connection to those distant, innocent Omegas, preparing to draw on their strength, already calculating how many would become violently ill and how many might not survive the transfer, when something brushed against my mind through my bond with Grigori.

I stopped.

This was pain.

Sharp and sudden and entirely his.

It disoriented me for exactly long enough.

Another bullet tore through my hand, punching cleanly through flesh and bone. The sentinel seemed to take that small success as permission to grow bolder.

Three more shots followed in rapid succession, each aimed at a different point around me, as though he hoped sheer volume would overwhelm whatever invisible force kept disrupting his aim.