Claimed by the scarred Alpha

PRIM

The spell’s hold on me weakened as I stumbled past the third corridor, but not enough to let the truth rise clear and sharp. What clung to me was a certainty, dense and suffocating in my chest. I was the witch. I had hurt Séverine. I had become something monstrous, and Valcourt would hunt me down, and Valcourt would finish what I had started.

I ran.

Blood streaked my hands and forearms, some of it dried and flaking, some still sticky and fresh. I had no story ready for any sentinel who might appear before I found a way out. My mind, splintered and drowning in guilt, could offer only one answer: run.

Teleport, something in me insisted. You can teleport. You have done it before.

I tried.

Nothing. The air stayed still, the world unchanged, my feet rooted to the cold stone. The failure sent panic scraping through my mind, wild and sharp. I clawed at the wall, breath ragged and shallow, the corridor’s edges blurring and spinning.

A window sat at the end of the hallway.

I moved to the window before the thought could finish forming, not bothering to measure the height or weigh the risk. The part of me that calculated had already given up to the part that believed anything was better than being caught. I flung the window open and stared down at the drop, far enough that even through the panic, I knew a wrong landing would shatter something vital.

I jumped anyway.

I braced for pain.

Instead, cool air whipped past my face, then a sudden wetness, and the ground rose up to meet me with a gentleness that defied all logic. I lay stunned, confusion swirling, flexing each limb in disbelief until I was sure nothing was broken.

I stood.

The world around me was wrong.

No manicured paths, no sign of the Valcourt estate. Only dense, nearly unfamiliar trees and the deep hush of wild forest instead of tended grounds. I spun slowly, searching for sense in a place that made none, my mind scrambling for answers in a night that had already shattered every rule I thought I knew.

"You poor girl."

I spun toward the voice.

He stood among the trees, naked and utterly unconcerned, his eyes catching the faintest scraps of light and trapping them in a way no human eyes ever could. Blue, softly glowing even in the darkness, they fixed on me with a focus that made my skin prickle, though I could not say why.

"Who are you?" I said, backing away.

He was behind me before I finished the sentence.

His hand wrapped around my throat, not squeezing, just certain, the grip of something that knew exactly how strong it was.

"Those false memories are not needed anymore," he said, close to my ear.

He spun me to face him as if I weighed nothing, and terror surged through me for reasons my body grasped long before my mind could name them.

His finger pressed against my forehead.

The certainty that I was the witch ripped away from me, sudden and brutal, like a bandage torn from raw skin. Beneath it, memory flooded in: Séverine’s room, the mirror, the way my body had danced to someone else’s tune, my limbs obeying a will that was never mine. My head throbbed with the violence of remembering the truth after so much falsehood, and I collapsed, clutching my skull, a sound escaping me that was nothing like words.

I recognized him now.

"You are with her," I said.

"I am truly sorry for what has to happen to you, child."

"What are you going to do to me?" My voice came out raw. "Kill me? Because I am a threat now? Because I could expose her?"

"It is not my wish," he said, and something in his voice carried what almost sounded like genuine regret. "Your life thread shows a great deal of struggle already. Doing this brings me no joy whatsoever. But my mistress’s wishes come first, and you now stand against her, whether you intended to or not."

"Please—"

"You will be fine," he continued, as though offering comfort rather than a sentence. "Rejoice, if you can manage it. As long as you carry no true resentment when it happens, you will come again. Perhaps life will treat you more kindly the next time."

"I do not want to die." The words tumbled out of me, desperate, shapeless. "I will keep a secret. I can keep a secret, I swear it, I will never say a word to anyone—"

"If we wanted you silenced and alive," he said, "we could arrange that easily enough."

He snapped his fingers.

In a blink, the blood disappeared from my skin and clothes, every sign of the night’s horror wiped away as if it had never happened. With a cold, distant dread, I realized my body was whole again.

"But that is not what you are needed for," he said. "You need to die."

"I have a family." My voice cracked entirely. "I have people who love me—"

"I know." His tone remained gentle, infuriatingly gentle. "I was in your head, remember. They are necessary for what comes next."

I stared at him in horror. "Please. Spare them. They know nothing. Whatever suspicions I had, I kept entirely to myself."

"I know that too." He tilted his head slightly. "I was in your head. But once Valcourt paints you as the witch responsible for tonight, your family cannot soften whatever sentence gets handed down to everything you ever were or will be remembered as. It is why I brought you so close to home just now. The story that you are with the alliance against rogues and part witch even has to be sold and sold well."

"Please." I was crying freely now, my voice breaking apart entirely. "Please, please, please—"

He opened his mouth.

His tongue extended, serpentine, longer than any human tongue should ever be, and symbols I did not recognize seemed to form briefly along its length before retracting.

"You will walk in there smiling," he whispered, the words sliding into my mind with a seductive, inescapable pull. "Pretend everything is fine. And then you will kill them all. Burn the place down around you, and you will remain inside until the fire finishes what you started."

I felt my own will slip away from me like water through open fingers.

"As you wish," I said, my voice no longer entirely my own.

He vanished.

I stood, smoothed my clothing, and began walking.

The path to my border village took less time than I remembered it taking as a child, and soon enough the familiar shapes of home rose ahead of me in the dark, small and modest and exactly as I had left them years ago.

My mother stood outside with a phone in one hand, and she started when she saw me approaching.

"Prim?" She rushed forward, her face a mixture of confusion and relief. "What are you doing here? It is the middle of the night."

I smiled at her.

"I missed home," I said. "Is that such a terrible thing?"