Claimed by the scarred Alpha

MARGAUX

The black thing shattered in her fist, collapsing into fragments of darkness. Something else took its place, a small pulse of warm red light that she pressed directly into the hollow its ugliness had left behind.

It hit me like a wave breaking over my head.

Tears sprang into my eyes before I understood why. My whole body flooded with something I hadn’t felt in what seemed like days, a warmth that reached places inside me I hadn’t even realized had gone numb.

I remembered wanting Étienne dead. I remembered the spear hovering over his heart, my own hand steady and cold, completely willing to drive it through him. I remembered the idea of Isabelle being here and the truth of what I was seeing now, because if she was here standing in front of me, glowing and impossible to miss, it meant that somewhere in the waking world, she was already dead.

"Why... why would you kill yourself?" My voice cracked around the question.

"I am your mother," Isabelle whispered. "It was the only right sacrifice I could make to save you. By becoming this. By binding myself to you. And I do not regret it."

"Do you think I don’t know the truth?" I snapped, shrugging her hands from me as I stepped backward. "I know you’re my aunt. I know my actual mother died years ago. So stop calling yourself that."

The demon hauled himself upright in front of us, smoke still curling faintly from the places where Isabelle’s earlier attack had struck him.

"How did you do that?" he demanded. For the first time, something close to panic flickered across his face. "Why am I no longer connected to her?"

Isabelle didn’t answer.

Rainbow light erupted from her hands instead.

The blast struck him squarely, hurling him backward. He stumbled several steps, his skin blistering wherever the light touched.

"There are workarounds for everything in this universe," she declared. "Your forced connection is nothing compared to the maternal bond I share with my daughter."

Something about those words lodged strangely beneath my ribs.

"But..." I began. "I’m not—"

Isabelle turned toward me, cutting me off with a look I couldn’t decipher.

"When you wake up, read my letter," she urged, her voice softening for only a moment. Then her gaze hardened as it returned to the demon. "Right now, it’s time I send this monster to hell where he belongs."

She charged.

I didn’t think. I simply moved with her.

The instant our connection sparked, strength surged through me. Spirit light gathered in my palms faster and brighter than it ever had when I wielded it alone. Whatever well Isabelle was drawing from ran impossibly deep, and through our new bond, I could suddenly feel a fraction of it flowing into me.

I unleashed a burst of gold light beside her rainbow fire.

Then another.

The two forces tore through the darkness together, gold and rainbow intertwining as we moved with a rhythm that felt instinctive, almost practiced, despite the fact that we had never fought side by side in our lives.

"The goal is to weaken him!" Isabelle called over the thunder of our attacks. "Keep pressing him until he has no choice but to retreat to wherever he came from and recover! Then we get out of here!"

The demon lunged for her.

He moved faster than I expected, far faster than the patient, calculating creature who had toyed with her earlier had ever revealed himself capable of moving. He crossed the distance in a blur, black claws flashing from his hands, long and curved and dripping with something darker than blood.

Isabelle twisted aside and in doing so, his claws sliced through empty air.

Before he could recover, she caught his wrist.

Her fingers flared white-hot around him and the demon screamed.

I saw the opening and took it.

A lance of golden light tore from my palm and slammed into his exposed side.

The impact sent him staggering.

Isabelle gave him no time to regain his footing.

She spun with the movement, her free hand sweeping across his chest. Rainbow light streamed from her fingertips in brilliant ribbons, carving through the darkness as her strike opened a long, smoking gash across his torso.

The demon recoiled with a roar, clutching at the wound as black smoke poured from between his fingers.

And for the first time since this nightmare had begun, I saw something I hadn’t thought possible.

He was afraid.

So he retaliated with a wave of pure force, something invisible and heavy that slammed into both of us at once, and I felt myself thrown backward, hitting a floor that shouldn’t have existed hard enough to knock the air from lungs I technically didn’t have anymore. Isabelle absorbed most of it, standing firm where I went sprawling, her light flaring brighter in response to the assault rather than dimming.

She surged forward again.

I scrambled back to my feet and joined her, weaving my own attacks between hers, and together we drove him backward step by step, his human looking mask cracking further with every hit he took. Blood, black and thick, ran freely from a dozen wounds now, and his breathing had gone ragged, desperate.

He tried one final assault, gathering shadow into both fists and hurling it at us in a single massive wave.

Isabelle threw herself in front of me.

The wave hit her dead center, and I braced for her to fall, but she absorbed it instead, light flaring so bright it lit the entire white room like a small sun, and when it faded, she was still standing, unhurt, while the demon collapsed to one knee in front of us, utterly spent.

"You cannot win this," he snarled, though the words came out weaker now, less certain than they had been over the chessboard.

That was when the mask started to come off.

Not literally, but something in his human shape began to peel back regardless, revealing curved horns pushing up through what used to be hair, dark fur sprouting along his jaw and down his neck, his fingers lengthening into something closer to claws than hands. The pleasant, patient face I’d spent hours playing chess against dissolved into something ancient and wrong, eyes burning orange in a way that made my stomach turn.

"If I go to hell," he rasped, his voice dropping into something deeper, layered with tones that seemed to come from more than one throat, "you still lose."

"Ignore him," Isabelle urged.

"You two are the reason those innocent werewolves had to die," he continued, his gaze fixed on me. "And let me tell you something, little whisperer. They are not at peace. I will take them to Gehenna with me."

His mouth curled upward, forming something that might have passed for a smile on a human face.

"After all, I can wait. I have nothing but time."

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