Claimed by the scarred Alpha

ISABELLE

"I am merely reading what I see," the creature replied, seemingly unaffected by my reaction. "But because of that thread, that particular tangle of gold, black, and blue, I believe you may be better equipped to save your daughter than Étienne is."

My entire body went still.

"What do you mean?" I demanded. "How can she even be saved from this?"

"I am a fae," she explained, "and a superior spirit in my own right. For your daughter to be freed, another superior spirit needs to bind itself to her in place of the demon currently holding her. Given the state she is in, she cannot consent to a new bond herself, and she will not willingly release her hold on the demon now that they are linked and her shade is gone."

She paused, watching me absorb her words.

"But superior spirits can also be made."

"Made how?"

"Étienne was meant to be the one to do it." Her gaze shifted briefly toward the door we’d just left behind. "As her mate, he carries enough obsession to return as a spirit powerful enough to make saving her his sole purpose in whatever comes after. But he and Margaux only share a single thread between them."

She looked back at me.

"The thread of red."

I stared at her.

"You, on the other hand," she continued, "do not share just one. You carry three. And you have more than enough obsession behind them to match. You have spent your entire life feeling powerless, Isabelle. I can see that clearly, straight down into your soul, and I believe your karmic destiny allows for exactly this. Your life threads tell me more than enough too. You should be the one."

I stepped closer without meaning to, some desperate hope catching fire in my chest.

"I don’t mind it," I said. "Whatever it takes. Anything to save my daughter."

The creature nodded slowly.

"You should know something first, though," she said. "Only death can create a superior spirit. You would have to end your own life. With a specific weapon and on a specific ground."

I went still.

"Étienne was willing to do this?" I asked.

She nodded again.

"He clearly loves her," she said simply. "Of course he was willing."

Tears rose in my eyes again, different this time, heavier.

"If it will save my daughter," I said, "and spare her from losing someone she truly loves a second time, then I don’t mind dying for it. I have already lost so much of myself pretending to be someone else. Losing the rest of it for her sake feels almost fitting." I took a breath. "But there are things in my life I need to settle first."

"Of course," the creature said. "No problem at all."

***

I took up a room, asked a passing Omega for a pen, paper and a few envelopes and started to write what I could only imagine would be called a last letter.

I wrote one to Bastien.

I wrote another time my brother Lucian

The third was of course to the man I had decided the most. My sister’s husband and the Alpha of Beaumont.

But the fourth... I had to sit down to really put my words together because it was the one who mattered the most to me.

My darling Margo,

I have started this letter more times than I can count, and every version so far has felt like a lie by omission, so let me begin instead with the truth, plain and unadorned, the way I should have given it to you years ago.

I don’t know what waits for me after tonight. I don’t know if there is a version of me that continues on somewhere, watching over you, or if there’s only quiet. But I know who I want to be in whatever comes next, and I know I can at least be that person on this page, right now, while I still have the chance. So let me try.

I think my troubles started long before you were ever born. I was an Omega in a family and society that measured worth by rank, and from the moment I understood what that meant, I understood exactly how much space I was allowed to take up in the world. Despite being born a twin, my sister got the better lot in life and I got the bad one. I was born an Omega so I realized the space I was allowed to have was very little. I learned to make myself smaller before anyone ever had to ask me to. I learned that survival, for someone like me, meant loyalty above all else, obedience above curiosity, silence above truth.

I want to tell you that was the thing that broke me.

It wasn’t, though. Not entirely.

What truly crippled me was what grew out of that smallness. A loyalty to the wrong people, given for the wrong reasons. A fear so constant I mistook it for wisdom. A kind of tunnel vision that let me convince myself, for a very long time, that protecting a secret was the same thing as protecting you.

It never was.

You deserve to hear this plainly, so here it is. I am your mother. I have been since the day you were born, in every way that matters beyond blood, though the blood is true too. But my name is not Vivianne. It never was. My name is Isabelle, and I have worn my sister’s name, my sister’s grief and my sister’s unbearable guilt for so long that some days I genuinely forget where she ended and I began.

I am so sorry, Margo.

I am sorry for every lie you swallowed because I was too afraid to hand you the truth instead. I am sorry for every question you asked about the Archambaults where all I could do was feed you lies. I am sorry about pushing away the fears you had about your gifts, a knowledge my sister would have known and helped you out in. I am especially sorry that I built your entire childhood on a foundation I knew was cracked, and I told myself it was love holding the walls up.

Maybe it was, in its own broken way. I don’t know anymore. I have stopped trusting my own reasoning where you’re concerned, because everywhere I look now, I see all the places fear and loyalty made my decisions for me instead of courage.

If you are reading this, then that must already mean you have already learned that I am gone. So I need you to hear this next part clearly, because I know you, and I know exactly the direction your mind will run if I don’t say it outright.

Do not blame yourself.

Whatever happens tonight and after, whatever choice I make, it will not be because of anything you did or failed to do. It will be because I finally found something worth doing with the life I spent so long making small, careful and quiet. If this is the price the universe asks of me for everything I let happen, for every silence I kept when I should have spoken, then I will pay it without complaint. I have owed a debt for a very long time, Margo, and I would rather settle it myself than leave you carrying it for me the way I have carried Vivianne’s for so long.

I also intend to make things right before I go. Whatever pieces of this mess I can still untangle, I will untangle. Your uncle will answer for what he did to Étienne’s family, one way or another, whether I am here to see it or not. I have already written to him. To Bastien too, and to your father, because there are debts owed on every side of this and I don’t intend to leave this world with any of them unpaid.

But this letter, out of all of them, is the one that actually matters to me.

I don’t have much wisdom to offer you, Margo. I spent most of my life too frightened to gather any worth passing down. But I’ll give you the one thing I never managed to give myself.

Live the life you actually want.

Not the one your rank or society assigns you. Not the one our family expects, your pack demands, or fear convinces you is the only safe option available. I spent my entire existence believing an Omega wasn’t owed the right to want things loudly, to take up room, to reach for a life bigger than the one handed to her at birth. I believed it so completely that when I was built a second woman, I swallowed that belief and lived inside her skin for years rather than simply admit I wanted more for myself, and more for you.

Don’t do what I did.

You have Étienne, who loves you enough to consider doing exactly what I am about to do, and I hope with everything left in me that it never comes to that for him. You have a family now, one built by choice rather than fear. You have gifts my sister spent your entire childhood trying to bury out of a terror she shared in life with me instead of helping you understand them. So please, let them be a gift instead of a burden. Let yourself be loud, if that’s what you want. Let yourself be soft, if that’s what you want instead. Want things. Loudly. Without apologizing for the space you take up.

I never got to do that.

I want it so badly for you that it’s the last thing I can think clearly about, sitting here with this pen in my hand.

I love you, Margo. I loved you as Vivianne, and I love you now, at the very end, simply as myself. I hope somewhere in all of this mess, you can find it in yourself to remember the woman who raised you a little more kindly than you remember the lies she told.

Be free, my darling girl. Be loud. Be exactly who you were always meant to be, without anyone’s permission but your own.

All my love, always,

Mom. But then it seemed like such a strong word. So I struck it out and in place of it wrote Isabelle.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!