Claimed by the scarred Alpha

MARGAUX

Something crawled up out of my own shadow.

Tall and broad-shouldered, he looked as though he had been carved from shifting dark grime, his skin a deep, warm bronze that suggested something ancient, something that might have walked these lands centuries before any of the packs that claimed them now existed. A long tail curled lazily behind him, while his eyes burned with a curious crimson light.

"Let us finish this," he said.

"Margaux!"

I turned toward the sound of my name and found Étienne, staring at me with a horror that should have meant something to me but it didn’t quite land the way it was supposed to. He slammed his fist against something I could see clearly enough, a shield stretched thin and shimmering between us, and behind him I caught sight of Ophelia, Prim and Arania closing the distance at a dead run.

I turned back to my demon.

"Shatter the shield," I said. "I made a promise to a ghost this witch would be their prey."

Then I looked at Séverine, who was already pushing herself unsteadily up off the floor.

"I sacrificed him," she said, her voice cracking apart. "I gave up Grigori for this. Why am I not inside you right now?"

"I guess I made a better deal," I said.

I pushed her again with my mind, and again, and again, each wave slamming her back against the shelving until snack bags and bottles rained down around her, her body absorbing damage that should have already ended a lesser person.

She fought back, and I saw nearly translucent hands lashing out toward me in a blur.

I blocked every single one without effort, stepping forward through her attacks like they were nothing more than wind, and when I finally closed the distance between us, I leaned down close enough that she could see exactly what I intended.

"This is payback," I said, "for all your games."

I reached beneath her skin with my mind.

"What are you doing?" she asked, and for the first time, the composure she had been clinging to broke. "What are you doing?"

I pulled.

Her body jerked as if an invisible hand had seized hold of her from the inside. She looked down at herself, then back at me, her face twisting with confusion before the pain finally reached her.

I peeled her skin away.

There was something uniquely horrifying about doing it without touching her. My mind could feel every layer as I separated it, the resistance beneath the surface, the sickening sensation of something that was never meant to be pulled apart being forced open anyway.

She screamed.

The sound ripped across the gas station, raw enough that people inside the building gasped. I kept going. Her skin came away in sections, exposing the wet, trembling tissue beneath, and I watched her body convulse beneath the force of my power.

She begged me to stop.

I heard every word.

I simply didn’t care.

The worst part was not what I was doing to her. It was the satisfaction I felt while doing it. Somewhere inside me, something had become fascinated by the process, by how easily a human body could be reduced to its most vulnerable parts when I stopped treating it like something that deserved to remain whole.

Her screaming should have horrified me.

Instead, I found myself wanting to hear how much louder she could scream.

That was when the demon shattered the shield.

Prim came through the broken barrier like something unleashed, rushing straight at Séverine and ripping her head clean from her shoulders in one brutal motion. I watched the head hit the floor. I watched the rest of her, flayed and ruined, collapse in a heap beside it.

I felt nothing but satisfaction.

"I kept my promise," I told Prim. "You can rest now."

"You shouldn’t have made a deal with that demon," Prim said, her voice shaking. "We were coming. We were going to save you."

"It would have been too late," I said. "I made this choice. I’m fine with lying in the bed I made."

"That demon is the reason the Archambaults suffered and died," Prim said.

"I know," I said. "Are you done?"

Something in my tone seemed to shock her into silence.

"What?" Étienne said, his voice breaking through. "What does that mean?"

I turned toward him.

My demon stood between us, blocking the path forward for Étienne, Ophelia, and Arania alike, and I looked past him directly at the man I supposedly loved.

"My new familiar here is the reason your family died," I said. "He pushed my uncle to want them destroyed, because they discovered a secret my family had been hiding. My aunt Isabelle wasn’t the one who died all those years ago." I watched the horror bloom across his face in real time. "It was my mother. Vivianne. The woman raising me my whole life has been Isabelle probably, wearing her sister’s name."

Étienne looked like I’d struck him.

"I imagine that’s growing a fresh new hatred in your soul right about now," I said and I relished it.

Ophelia and Arania both stared at me with a horror I found mildly interesting, the way you’d find a stranger’s reaction interesting from a comfortable distance.

"You look pale, Ophelia," I said. "You made a deal with something powerful too, didn’t you? It’s not so bad. I feel powerful right now. Genuinely powerful, for the first time in my entire life."

"You sound—" Ophelia started, faltering. "You don’t sound like yourself at all."

"That’s fine," I said.

"It’s taken your shade," Arania said, hovering closer, her tiny face tight with alarm. "You’re an apathetic beast now."

"That must be why I feel this good," I said, and I meant it. "Emotions are a fucking shackle. I’ve never once in my life felt this free." I looked between the three of them. "You three used to mean something to me. I don’t particularly want to hurt any of you. So let’s end this well. Séverine is dead. Our problem is solved. We can all go our separate ways with smiles on our faces."

"What is going on with you?" Étienne said, his voice raw. "Why can’t I feel you anymore?"

My demon answered before I could.

"Little wolf," he said, almost pitying, "the mate bond is one of the greatest weaknesses your kind carries. When I tore out her shade, I severed the emotional synchronization that bond depends on. You are still mates, technically. But without that synchronization, you’ll quickly discover staying mated is largely a waste of time. She cares for very little now beyond herself."

Fury rippled visibly across Étienne’s face.

"You bastard," he snarled, and charged.

My demon raised a single hand, and the force of it sent Étienne flying backward, straight through the glass wall of the gas station, the shattering crash loud enough to make even Prim flinch slightly. He climbed back up almost immediately, blood running down one arm, but yet entirely undeterred.

"I am leaving here with my mate," he said, "and you are dying tonight."

Prim shifted back into her wraith form, drifting slowly toward Ophelia and Arania, forming up beside them with a grim, deliberate purpose.

"I want to go be with my family," Prim said. "But I cannot leave this world knowing you’ll be left like this. We have to help you."

Étienne turned to the two women and the wraith gathering beside him, an unlikely collection of misfits closing ranks against me.

"I assume you’re all with me," he said.

They nodded, one after another.

I studied the four of them, unbothered.

"If you charge at me," I said, "I will treat you as enemies. And I will kill every single one of you."

"I would love to watch you try," Arania said, wings flaring wide.

Étienne began to shift, fur and bone rippling across his frame, and all four of them surged forward at once.

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