Claimed by the scarred Alpha

PRIM

The shield was seconds from breaking when the shot rang out.

A bullet punched through Ophelia’s back, and she went down before I could even register the sound as danger rather than simple noise, and her body crumpled to the pavement with a suddenness that stole the air out of whatever passed for my lungs.

It happened fast. Fast enough that Arania abandoned the barrier entirely, whipping around to reach Ophelia, her small hands already glowing as she pressed them against the wound, weaving something bright and desperate to hold the bleeding close.

I turned toward the shooter.

Two more shots cracked through the sky, and Arania, even mid healing, flung out enough magic to stop both bullets dead in the air, freezing them just long enough that I could trace their path backward to the muzzle flash still lingering against the dark.

Rage swallowed me whole.

I felt myself slipping back into the shape I’d worn before Margaux ever pulled me out of it, that wraith form built entirely out of fury and grief with nothing gentle left in it, and I crossed the distance between us faster than thought.

I had him by the throat before he could fire again, lifting him clean off the ground, ready to slam him down hard enough to end this permanently.

Then I saw his face.

He was a Valcourt wolf. One of Étienne’s own sentinels, sent out here in the dark to stake the place out probably and with no way of knowing that the thing rushing toward him wasn’t another enemy but an ally he’d mistaken for a threat.

I understood immediately what had happened. He’d seen shapes moving fast and strange in the dark near a gas station that reeked of blood, and his instincts had done the only thing instincts were built to do.

There wasn’t time to explain any of that to him.

I snapped his head to the side instead, hard enough to render him unconscious without finishing the job entirely, because a sentinel’s healing factor, slow as it currently was compared to what it should have been, would still bring him back eventually. He’d live. He just wouldn’t be a problem for the next several minutes, which was all I actually needed from him.

I dropped him and rushed back toward Ophelia and Arania, letting my form settle back into something calmer along the way.

"How is she?" I asked.

"I’ve fixed her," Arania said, though her voice carried a tightness that told me the fear hadn’t fully left her yet.

Ophelia pushed herself upright slowly, one hand braced against the ground, and looked at Arania with something raw in her expression.

"Thank you," she said.

"I am your companion," Arania said simply, like that explained everything, like it was reason enough on its own. Then her tone sharpened. "Let’s finish this now. But first, let me cover you properly. Just in case. That was too close."

She wove something that looked like a web of light around Ophelia’s shoulders, threading it carefully across her back where the wound had been.

"That should protect you from physical attacks," Arania said. She let out a long breath. "I cannot believe I assumed the only threats we would face today would be magical ones."

Then she turned back toward the barrier and reached for it again, this time with a ferocity I hadn’t seen in her before, as her small hands pressed flat against something none of the rest of us could see.

Ten seconds later, it shattered.

I didn’t wait to see the pieces of it fall.

I rushed through the broken doorway, tearing past the entrance with everything I had left, some distant part of me registering Étienne’s face as I passed him, terrified in a way that should have given me pause. I didn’t stop to consider it. I had one goal, one singular point of focus, and it wore Séverine’s face.

I set my sights on tearing her head from her shoulders.

In hindsight, I should have wondered why Étienne, standing so close to her, hadn’t already done exactly that himself. The thought brushed against the edge of my rage without ever fully landing, too faint to slow me down.

I hit something invisible instead.

A shield, cold and immovable, exactly like the one that had kept Margaux from Ophelia’s front door hours earlier, and it flung me backward with enough force that I felt myself tear apart at the edges before reforming a few feet away, stunned and furious and finally, belatedly, understanding that this fight had layers I hadn’t accounted for.

***

MARGAUX

The sound of the sacrifice being made still echoed somewhere behind my ribs, even though I hadn’t seen it, only felt the shape of it in Séverine’s voice through whatever strange conduit connected me in this white room to the outside world.

"It’s only a matter of time now," the demon said, watching me with that same patient, unbearable calm, "before she gets everything she wants from you."

My thoughts spiraled faster than I could hold onto any single one of them.

I reached for spirit light anyway, some desperate, stubborn part of me refusing to accept that I had nothing left to fight with, and it answered wrong. It tore through me instead of out of me, a violent, searing pull that made my whole body flicker at the edges like a signal losing its connection. My own hands blurred in and out of focus in front of my face.

I gasped and let it go.

Étienne’s face rose up in my mind unbidden, sharp and clear despite everything else falling apart around me. I thought about what Séverine had promised him. What she intended to make him do with his own hands after his memory had been wiped clean of the truth, and he was forced believe the worst possible lie about the woman I would become after the forced transfer.

Could he survive losing me?

No... He would not survive being made into the one who ended me.

Tears spilled hot down my face.

"Please," I whispered. "Get me out of here. I’ll owe you a favor. I’ll find some way out for you that doesn’t require me."

"But I can already have what I want," the demon said, gentle in that horrible, patient way of his. "All you need to do is tell me you accept me."

I shook my head, hard, even as my own body kept flickering unsteadily around me.

"Ten," he said.

My stomach dropped straight through whatever passed for a floor in this place.

"Nine."

I could feel it now. The spell. Something happening to my body somewhere far outside this white room, a pressure building against my spine that had nothing to do with anything I was doing here.

"Eight."

"No," I said. "No, no, no."

"Seven."

"Why does everything have to suck?" I said, my voice cracking apart entirely. "Why does everything have to be this hard?"

"Six," he said, unbothered, counting down like he was timing an egg rather than the end of everything I had left to bargain with. "Five."

"Someone will save me," I said, more to myself than to him, grasping for anything that felt like hope. "Life cannot possibly be this bleak. It cannot."

He laughed softly at that.

"Three," he said. "Two—"

Fear swallowed every rational thought I had left.

"I accept you!" I screamed.

The counting stopped instantly.

He appeared directly in front of me, closer than he’d ever stood before, and something in his expression shifted into an awful, satisfied warmth.

"I accept you too," he said. "And we will be each other’s companion until the very end of time."

He reached for me, and I didn’t have the strength left to pull away.

He held me with a tenderness that made my skin crawl, gentle in a way that felt worse than violence, and leaned in to press his mouth against mine.