Claimed by the scarred Alpha

MARGAUX

"I’m so glad you’re all right," Étienne whispered against my hair, his voice cracking on the last word, his arms still locked tightly around me as though he was afraid that if he let go, I would disappear all over again.

I let myself stay there for one more second, breathing him in, letting the warmth of him remind me that I was here, that I had made it back, before Arania’s voice cut through the quiet.

"Where is Isabelle?"

I pulled away from Étienne’s chest.

"Why isn’t she here?" She continued.

The question hit me like a second impact.

My eyes swept across the room until they landed on the head healer standing near the far wall.

He was holding something.

Someone.

Her.

Isabelle’s body lay cradled in his arms, limp and pale, utterly still.

Too still.

I didn’t remember deciding to move.

One moment I was standing beside Étienne, and the next my knees struck the tile as I reached for her before I had even fully processed what I was seeing. I grabbed her shoulder, shaking it gently at first, then harder when she didn’t respond.

"Isabelle... Isabelle, wake up."

Her head lolled slightly with the movement.

She had no breath. There was not even a flicker in her eyes. Nothing.

I looked at Arania, panic clawing its way up my throat.

"Please." My voice broke. "You have to bring her back. You have to bring my mother back."

Arania flew closer, hovering at eye level. Her small face held an expression I hated, something soft and sorrowful and entirely too final.

"Dead things are meant to stay dead, child," she murmured. "But you still have her. Every part of what she gave you is still yours, and her spirit..."

She faltered, her brow furrowing as though she were searching for something I couldn’t see.

"Hmm." Her gaze shifted around the room. "Child... where is she?"

"She..." My throat closed.

I swallowed hard, but the words refused to come.

"She isn’t here."

I looked down at Isabelle again.

At the face I had spent nearly a decade believing belonged to my mother.

At the woman who had lied to me, protected me, hurt me, loved me, and sacrificed herself before I could decide what I wanted to do with any of it.

She was my mother in many ways.

Something ugly and raw twisted inside my chest.

"She senselessly killed herself," I managed, the words coming out harsher than I intended. "To make sure that demon perished completely."

My fingers curled into the fabric of her clothing.

"She’s always been so selfish."

The accusation sounded cruel the moment it left me, but I couldn’t stop.

"Every choice she’s ever made has been about protecting herself first. Hiding who she really was. Burying the truth for a fucking decade. Deciding what I deserved to know and what I didn’t."

My hands began to shake.

"And then, when she finally gets the chance to tell me everything, she decides to fucking die."

My voice cracked.

"Why couldn’t you keep being selfish?"

The room seemed to grow impossibly quiet.

"Just this once?"

I stared at her still face, searching for some sign that she was going to open her eyes and tell me I was being dramatic, that she had a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this, that she wasn’t actually leaving me with another truth I would have to spend years learning how to live with.

"Why couldn’t you let someone else deal with it?"

My breath shuddered out of me.

"Why couldn’t you be selfish?"

Étienne’s arms came around me from behind.

He didn’t pull me away from her. He didn’t try to make me stand. He simply held me, his chest warm against my back, his cheek near my hair.

"Its alright. I’ve got you," he murmured.

"It’s not all right." The words came out sharper than I meant them to.

I closed my eyes, breathing through the sudden rush of guilt when I heard the hurt flicker in his silence.

"I know you mean well," I added, quieter this time. "I do. But I don’t want to hear that it’s all right right now." I looked down at Isabelle as I said it. "Because it isn’t."

My fingers brushed a strand of hair away from her face.

"Nothing about this is all right."

Étienne didn’t argue.

He didn’t tell me that she had chosen this.

He didn’t tell me that she had saved everyone.

He didn’t tell me that I should be grateful for the sacrifice.

He simply tightened his arms around me for a moment and let me have the anger.

Let me have the grief.

Let me hate her for leaving me.

"Can I be alone with her?" I asked eventually, still unable to take my eyes from Isabelle’s face. "Just for a little while."

"Of course." Étienne answered without hesitation.

The head healer lowered himself carefully beside me, then gently transferred Isabelle’s body into my arms.

She was lighter than I expected.

Much lighter.

I held her against my chest, adjusting her carefully until her head rested beneath my chin. The position felt strangely familiar, even though I had no memory of ever holding her like this.

Perhaps this was how she had held me once.

Before the lies.

Before the secrets.

Before everything became this.

I lowered my cheek against the top of her head.

For a moment, I allowed myself to imagine that I was simply her daughter again, and she was simply my mother.

Nothing more complicated than that.

I heard footsteps retreating across the room.

The door began to close.

Then Ophelia stopped.

She turned back, walked the few remaining steps toward me, and pressed something into my hand.

I looked at it. It looked like an envelope.

My name was written across the front in Isabelle’s familiar, careful handwriting.

I stared at it.

My breath caught.

Ophelia didn’t explain.

She only gave me one last look before stepping away and pulling the door shut behind her.

Then I was alone with my mother.

And the last words she had ever written for me.

I laid Isabelle down gently across the cot and sat beside her, staring at the envelope for a long moment before I finally broke the seal.

My darling Margo, it began.

I read through the opening slowly, about rank, about the fear that had shaped every choice she’d ever made, about loyalty given to the wrong people for the wrong reasons. My vision blurred halfway through, tears dropping onto the page and smudging the ink slightly before I wiped them away with the back of my hand.

I am your mother, she’d written. 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.

I already knew that now. I’d suspected it when she entered that white space, even if the mere idea did not make much sense to me. But seeing it in her own handwriting still tore something open in my chest all over again.

I kept reading.

Do not blame yourself, she’d written, and I laughed, wet and humorless, because of course she’d known exactly where my mind would go. Whatever happens tonight, whatever choice I make, it will not be because of anything you did or failed to do.

"You’re wrong," I said out loud, to no one, to the empty room, to her still, silent face beside me. "It is because of me. Everything you did tonight was because of me."

I kept reading anyway.

Live the life you actually want, she’d written near the end. Not the one your rank assigns you. Not the one your family expects, or your pack demands, or fear convinces you is the only safe option available.

I pressed the letter against my chest and let myself finally cry properly, no longer trying to hold any of it back, no longer worried about looking strong in front of Étienne or Arania or anyone else who might walk back through that door.

I cried for the woman who raised me under a stolen name.

I cried for the mother I never actually got to meet, the one who probably perished scared and terrified but still sacrificed all she had anyway.

And I cried, quietly, selfishly, for myself.

Because no matter how many letters she had left behind, no matter how much of her light, how much of her, apparently still lived inside me, I was never going to get to talk to her again.

I would never get to ask her the questions I had carried for years. Never get to scream at her properly, to demand answers while she stood in front of me and had no choice but to listen. Never get to watch her face when I told her exactly what she had done to me.

And maybe, someday, when the anger finally stopped hurting so much, I would have wanted to forgive her.

Not on a page.

Not through words she had written before she died.

Out loud.

With her there to hear me say it.

But I would never get that chance.

And that, more than anything, was what broke me.

I held the letter to my chest and stayed there beside her body until the tears finally slowed, and even then, I didn’t move for a long time after that.

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