Chapter 13: The Crook
ÉTIENNE
They burned.
They burned, and I could still hear their screams.
The memory struck without warning, hurling me back years to the night everything fell apart. Rain assaulted cobblestones. Smoke billowed, dense and black, against the night sky. My parents knelt in the square, chains shackling their wrists. My brother stood beside them, his head held high despite knowing his fate.
The flames started small. Then they grew.
My mother’s screams pierced the rain. High and agonized, they barely sounded human. My father tried to reach for her, but the chains held him. My brother’s mouth opened, but I couldn’t hear his words over the fire and my own shrieking.
I pulled against the restraints until my wrists bled. The Sentinels forced me to watch every second as my family was erased from existence.
The smell was worse than the sounds. Sweet, thick, and wrong, it made me gag even now—seven years later, standing in a wedding hall among people who had no idea what I’d survived.
The Sentinels dragged me away once it was over and my own judgment had been passed. My legs wouldn’t work properly. I kept stumbling, kept trying to look back at the square where ash mixed with rain and nothing remained of the people I’d loved most in the world.
"Stop looking back," one of them growled. "They’re gone. Move forward, or we’ll drag you."
I moved forward because I had no other choice.
They shoved me into a car somewhere and drove until they reached the edge of the Beaumont border. I pressed my tear-streaked face against the window and watched the territory I’d grown up in disappear behind us, replaced by empty roads and darkness.
The car slowed without warning.
Gravel crunched beneath the tires as we pulled off the road, the engine idling with a metallic thrum that made my chest tighten. No one spoke, and I wondered what would happen next. Suddenly, the door beside me was yanked open.
"Out."
When I didn’t move fast enough, a hand fisted in the back of my shirt and dragged me across the seat.
My shoulder hit the door’s edge, pain shooting down my arm. I was shoved forward, my feet barely catching the ground before they gave out.
I hit the dirt hard.
The impact knocked the breath from me. My palms scraped across gravel, skin tearing. My knee slammed down, splitting open on contact.
For a second, I couldn’t breathe.
I stayed hunched, the taste of iron in my mouth as pain settled in layers, slow and steady.
A boot struck my side.
"Stay down," one of them said.
I curled instinctively, arms pulling in close because my body didn’t know what else to do.
"Consider this mercy," another voice said. "You’re alive. That’s more than your family received."
"Wait," The other said, "Should we not try to get him to an orphanage? The rain just stopped. Who knows what could happen to him out there?"
The bigger one scoffed. "Are you getting soft for the blood of a traitor?"
"His parents were traitors. Not him."
"Same difference."
A voice sliced through their argument. "Kindness costs nothing."
Both Sentinels went rigid. They turned and then scrambled to bow low to whoever had spoken.
"Gamma Lucian," they said in unison.
I knew that name. Margaux’s uncle. The one who smiled at the pack functions and told jokes that made everyone laugh. The one who always had candy in his pockets for the younger wolves.
"Get back to the pack," Lucian said. "I’ll handle this."
The Sentinels nodded and started walking back toward the car. Lucian called after them before they’d made it more than a few steps.
"Leave your car and take mine. I’ll need it to take him somewhere."
They handed over the keys without question. Their footsteps faded, leaving me alone with Margaux’s uncle.
Lucian walked around to my side. He crouched down to my level, putting himself at eye height instead of towering over me. The gesture should have felt comforting. It didn’t.
"Do you know me?" he asked.
I nodded, my throat clamped shut. Every part of me screamed that something was wrong, but I couldn’t identify what. Shock, probably. Grief. The persistent stench of burned flesh I couldn’t purge from my senses.
Lucian smiled. It looked warm, genuine, and entirely trustworthy. "My little niece asked me to help you out."
That broke through the fog. "Margaux?"
"Yes."
My chest tightened. "But she rejected me."
The words came out broken. Two days before the executions, I’d begged Margaux in that cell to speak to her father for my family. She’d looked at me with cold determination and said the words that severed us.
I did not know why. I did not care now. Even so, I hated her. Why was she protecting me now?
Lucian’s expression softened, as if with sympathy. "I’m sorry about that. But it’s not safe here. We should go."
I stared at his hand, trying to make sense of why Margaux rejected me publicly but sent her uncle to help me. Maybe she had no choice. Maybe she protected herself while trying to keep me alive.
I took his hand, and he led me into the car.
The car started with a smooth purr. Lucian pulled onto the empty road, headlights cutting through darkness that pressed in from all sides. I watched the trees blur past, trying not to think about where I was going or what would happen now that I had no family, no pack, and no home.
"Where are you taking me?" The question came out quieter than I’d intended.
"Somewhere safe."
"I’m a rogue now." The word tasted bitter. "No place would want me."
Lucian glanced at me in the rearview mirror. "That’s far from the truth. Rogues sometimes make their own packs. Found families out of necessity instead of blood."
Hope flickered in my chest. "Do you know any?"
"Not personally. But I’m taking you where you’ll have a roof over your head."
"Because Margaux asked you to help."
"Yes." His smile widened. "I’d do anything for my niece."
Something in his tone made my skin prickle, but I shoved the feeling down. Paranoia probably. Everything felt wrong right now because everything was wrong. My family had just been murdered in front of me. Of course, my instincts were haywire.
Lucian’s phone rang. He answered it with one hand, keeping the other on the wheel. "Yes. I have it."