Claimed by the scarred Alpha

ISABELLE

I gathered the four letters once the ink had finally dried and carried them down to the infirmary, my hands steady in a way that surprised me, given everything beneath that steadiness.

The human-sized one whose name I got to know was Ophelia; she was the one who took them from me, her fingers brushing mine as she accepted the small stack.

"What is this about?" she asked, glancing down at the names written across each envelope.

I turned to her directly.

"When my daughter wakes up," I said, "I want her to have hers. The rest need to reach whoever they’re addressed to."

"Is there a reason for that?" she asked, and something in her tone told me she already suspected the answer and wanted to hear me say it anyway.

I was surprised she’d even needed to ask.

"Well," I said, "I won’t be here anymore. Will I?"

Ophelia’s head snapped toward Arania so fast I heard her neck crack slightly with the motion.

"What the fuck, Arania?" she said. "What did you do?"

"I told her."

And why would you tell her?" Ophelia retorted.

"Because it is her fate," Arania said, entirely unbothered by the venom in Ophelia’s voice. "You’ve seen her threads yourself. It is different for Étienne. Red is undying love. Gold is love that will always be cut short. And isn’t it convenient that she carries multiple threads binding her to her daughter? That kind of connection is rare. Her death, done this way, will produce a strong, superior spirit. Stronger than Étienne for sure. Strong enough to actually save the girl without risk of the small chance of failure."

"She will lose her mother," Ophelia was horrified.

"There is also a thread of black," Arania replied, unmoved. "As long as her mother lives, she would never truly be happy. This is a good thing. Why are you so angry about it?"

"Because you know exactly what you did was wrong," Ophelia snapped. "That is why you did not run it by me. Étienne had already made his choice. You could have let it stay his."

Arania’s expression sharpened.

"You know precisely why Margaux made that choice," she said. "The spirit who ascended told us everything. She made it because of her mate. In the hierarchy of her obsession, a mate matters more than a mother. That’s simply how her weighting probably works."

"That is not how we work," Ophelia said, her voice rising. "Every death hurts someone, Arania. You cannot just rank grief and call the smaller number acceptable."

"I am right here," I said, loud enough to cut through both of them. "And I am entirely capable of making my own decisions. I have already made mine. So one of you needs to tell me what happens next."

Arania turned toward me immediately, some of the tension draining out of her posture.

"It is her choice to make," she said to Ophelia, final and immovable. "A moral argument between the two of us does not change that fact."

She reached forward, and light gathered between her fingers, bright enough to make me squint. It twisted in on itself, condensing slowly until the glow hardened into the unmistakable shape of a blade.

It looked like metal at first glance, but something about it was wrong. Part of the weapon gleamed with a cold, polished sheen, while the rest was translucent, almost glasslike. Its edges were so sharp they seemed to distort the light around them, and staring at them for too long made my eyes sting.

"This is the blade," Arania said.

She released it.

Instead of falling, the weapon floated toward me, crossing the space between us with deliberate ease before settling into my waiting palm. It was far lighter than it had any right to be, almost weightless despite the solidity of its hilt and blade.

I closed my fingers around it.

Arania stepped closer, her gaze fixed on me.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

I nodded.

"I still don’t know about this," Ophelia said quietly, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

The head healer, who had remained silent throughout the entire exchange, finally broke his silence.

"I feel the same way."

"It is her choice," Arania reminded them. "Not ours."

"I’m ready," I cut in before either of them could argue further.

Arania snapped her fingers.

The infirmary vanished.

Darkness swallowed everything around me for a heartbeat before giving way to something impossibly beautiful. I stood in the middle of a grove crowded with ancient trees, their enormous branches twisting overhead as silver moonlight filtered through leaves that shimmered whenever the breeze touched them.

There was no visible source for the light. It simply existed, filling the grove with a pale, otherworldly glow.

Beneath my feet, faint blue light pulsed along the roots, flowing through them in slow, steady waves. It reminded me of veins beneath skin, as though the entire grove had a heartbeat of its own.

I turned slowly, taking it all in.

"This is the grove." Arania’s voice carried strangely through the open air. "When you have made peace with what must happen, drive the blade into your heart."

Her gaze settled on me.

"And when you are reborn, keep your obsessions close. You will need it for what you become."

She vanished before I could ask anything further, leaving me alone in that quiet, glowing dark.

I looked around slowly, taking in the strange, aching beauty of the place I’d chosen to end things in, and let out a long breath.

I found a smooth rock nearby and sat down on it, the blade resting across my lap, and I stared at my own reflection caught faintly in its glassy surface.

I thought about Margaux.

Only Margaux. Her face as a child, small and trusting, before any of this began. Her face tonight, unconscious in that infirmary bed, stolen from herself by something none of us had seen coming in time to stop it. I held that image close, let it fill every corner of my mind, and slowly raised the blade toward my own chest.

I raised the blade and aimed its point at my heart.

I stopped at the final second.

My hand shook violently, the blade trembling an inch from my skin. No matter how hard I fought against the instinct screaming at me to stop, my arm refused to complete the motion.

Fury surged through me, hot and humiliating.

"Why are you so damn weak?" I hissed at myself, my voice cracking in the emptiness of the grove. "This is the first real thing you can do for her. The one thing. And you cannot even manage that."

My grip tightened around the hilt.

I raised the blade again, forcing my arm steady through sheer will. Every muscle in my body trembled with the effort.

I pushed.

"Stop!"

The voice tore through the grove like a thunderclap.

I froze mid-motion, the blade hovering a breath from my chest.

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