Claimed by the scarred Alpha

ÉTIENNE

I showered again once Laurent and I got back to Valcourt, scrubbing at skin that had already come clean the first time, needing the ritual more than the actual result. I dressed in silence, pulling on whatever clothes my hands found without really looking at them, my mind already three rooms ahead of my body.

When I returned to the infirmary, I found Ophelia, Arania, and the head healer clustered around Margaux’s cot.

"I’m ready."

Something passed between the three of them immediately, quick and loaded, the kind of look people shared when they were deciding who would have to be the one to deliver bad news.

No one moved. No one spoke.

So of course that made my eyes narrow. "What?"

Ophelia glanced at the floor. The head healer suddenly seemed fascinated by the supply cabinet behind him.

"Someone needs to answer me."

My voice sharpened enough to finally break the silence.

Arania exhaled slowly, her wings drooping at her sides. Whatever hesitation had kept her quiet seemed to give way to exhaustion. "It’s already happening."

I stared at her. "What is already happening?"

"Isabelle went ahead of you."

For a moment, I couldn’t make sense of the words.

"What do you mean, she went ahead of me?"

"She went to the grove." Arania’s expression tightened. "She’s doing what you were going to do."

The room seemed to tilt beneath my feet. "What?"

Laurent, standing a step behind me, went rigid.

"You let her do that?" His disbelief cracked through every word. "You were going to let her mother walk into that grove and kill herself, and none of you thought that was worth mentioning to either of us?"

"Why," I cut in before Arania could respond, "would you let her do this instead of me?"

My gaze moved between them, anger rising now that the shock had begun to wear off.

"This was my choice." I swallowed hard, forcing the words through the tightness in my throat. "My burden to carry."

"As opposed to what?" Arania met my eyes without flinching. "You dying instead?"

Her wings shifted behind her, the feathers rustling softly.

"Margaux loves you more than she loves her mother, Étienne. Your death would break her far more deeply than losing a mother."

"There are questions she will have for her mother. Truths she just learned about."

"My point still remains, werewolf. She only learned whatever truth this is. And, she can heal from that. It will hurt, perhaps more than any of us can understand, but she will heal."

Her expression hardened.

"The other option leaves her with nothing to heal from."

"That is not your decision to make," I snapped. "Or hers."

"Do you even know why Margaux made the deal with that demon in the first place?" Arania asked.

I didn’t answer.

"For you." Her voice softened, but only slightly. "To make certain that witch, the one who is dead now, could never steal her body and force your own hands to end her life while your mind was wiped clean. Prim told us this. Information she had gotten while she was still trapped in the demon’s belly. Margaux gave herself up entirely so that specific horror would never happen to you."

Every word struck like a fist.

Guilt settled into my chest with a weight I hadn’t fully allowed myself to feel until now, adding itself to everything else already crushing me beneath the weight of this night.

"But that is not why I decided her mother should be the one to go," Arania continued, seemingly unmoved by whatever was showing on my face. "I told you about the threads you share with Margaux already. Her mother has also those thread binding her to Margaux. Three of them actually, tangled into one, binding Isabelle to her daughter. A death of that weight, in that place, will produce a spirit strong enough to actually save Margaux. Stronger than what you would have managed."

"Fuck that." I shook my head. "There’s been no change. Margaux is still unconscious. That means it hasn’t happened yet."

Ophelia finally spoke, her voice quiet.

"She only left a short while ago."

"Take me there."

"Étienne..."

"Take me there." I raised my voice. "Now. Margaux is going to need her mother. There is so much that came out tonight, so much they need to sit down and actually work through together. None of that happens if Isabelle dies in some grove before Margaux even wakes up and gets the chance to hear any of it properly."

"I don’t believe that changes anything," Arania countered. "She will come back in a different state. The talk will be had. So I do not see why you want to hold the moral highground and be the one to die for her. No matter who dies tonight, someone hurts. And while Ophelia here believes there is no hierarchy to grief, I believe there is one, and I believe yours would hurt Margaux more. What made the decision easier too wa sthe fact that her mother was destined to stand against her happiness for as long as she lived. This is not a bad outcome."

"I don’t care what you believe," I stepped toward her. "Take me there."

Arania studied me for a long moment, something unreadable passing behind her tiny features.

"Fine. It’s her choice to make in the end regardless. Not mine or yours."

She floated toward me and extended one tiny hand.

"I’m coming too," Laurent announced, already stepping forward.

He was too late.

The room glitched around me before he could reach us, reality folding in on itself and dissolving into the same disorienting rush I’d experienced earlier that night.

Then everything snapped back into place.

I stood in the middle of a grove unlike anything I’d ever seen.

Ancient trees stretched toward a sky filled with stars I didn’t recognize, their branches twisting together high above me. Soft blue light pulsed beneath my feet, faint and rhythmic, as though the ground itself were breathing.

I found Isabelle almost immediately.

She sat perched on a smooth rock a few feet away, both hands wrapped around a blade unlike anything I’d seen before. Half of it was metal. The other half looked almost like glass.

Her arm was already raised.

The point hovered directly over her heart.

"Stop!" I shrieked at her.

Her head snapped toward me in shock.

"Isabelle, don’t!"

I lunged forward.

"Put the fucking blade down!"

The word tore out of me before I’d even fully processed it, and my legs carried me forward faster than thought, closing the distance between us in a handful of strides.

Isabelle froze, the blade still hovering a breath from her chest, and her eyes snapped up to find mine, wide with shock.

"Étienne?" she said. "What are you doing here?"

"Stopping you," I said, "from doing something that isn’t yours to do."

"This is exactly mine to do," she said, her voice cracking but her grip on the blade not loosening in the slightest. "I have spent my entire life being useless to the people who mattered most to me. I have one chance right now to actually give my daughter something real. Let me have that."

"This was supposed to be me," I said.

"I know," she said. "The fae told me. That’s exactly why I came first. I could not let you throw your life away for something that is, at its core, my mess to clean up. My sister’s mess. My brother’s mess. My family’s mess."

"And you think handing Margaux her mother’s corpse instead of her mate’s fixes any of that?"

The words came out harsher than I meant them, but I didn’t take them back.

Isabelle flinched anyway.

"I think," she said, "that a mother who has already failed her daughter in every way that matters can at least give her one thing that actually costs something. One real sacrifice, instead of more decades of careful lies."

"She needs you alive," I said. "Not as a spirit bound to her forever. Alive. Sitting across a table from her. Explaining everything you just explained to me, except doing it face to face, where she can actually yell at you, or cry, or forgive you, or refuse to forgive you. She deserves the chance to have all of that with you. A real conversation and nothing less."

Something in Isabelle’s expression cracked.

"You read my letter?"

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