Claimed by the scarred Alpha

ÉTIENNE

Her gaze held mine.

"Especially not one carrying that kind of grief."

"She would have liked this," I whispered. "To see you."

"Tell her I said hello." A faint smile touched my mother’s lips. "And tell her that her mother died trying to redeem herself and her soul, no matter what state Isabelle may have been in before tonight. I was there. I watched what she was willing to sacrifice for us." Her voice softened further. "That tells me plenty about the woman she eventually became."

My throat tightened.

I wanted to ask a hundred more questions. I wanted this conversation to stretch into hours instead of whatever small fraction of time we had left. But something about the way their forms flickered, thinner now than when I’d first seen them, told me time was not being offered generously.

"How much longer do you have?"

My mother’s expression turned gentle and sad at once.

"Not much. The reason we were allowed to linger this long has already been fulfilled. The demon is dead, and the ruin that’s about to befall your uncle, Lucian, is already set in motion. It has been written into the world in a way that cannot be undone now."

"What ruin?"

"That isn’t ours to tell you," There was no hesitation in her answer, only quiet certainty. "Only ours to know is coming. What matters is that the debt is being settled. And because of that, there’s nothing left tethering us here."

"We came back," Yann added, "for the goodbye we never got."

His voice had changed.

"They burned us alive, Étienne. There wasn’t time for words. There wasn’t time for anything except pain, and then nothing at all." His eyes dropped briefly before returning to mine. "We wanted better than that. For you, and honestly, for ourselves too."

Guilt rose inside me before I could stop it, old and familiar, the same guilt I’d carried for years without ever having the courage to give it a name.

"I should have been there." My voice broke. "I should have found some way to stop it. I should have done something. Instead, I lived while both of you..."

"Stop."

Yann’s voice cut through the sentence.

"Yann—"

"No," There was nothing gentle in him now. Only the fierce, familiar protectiveness I remembered from when we were children, the part of him that had always believed it was his job to stand between me and anything that could hurt me. "I mean it. Right there. That’s enough of that."

I stared at him.

"You were a child being sold off into hell while we and our home burned down without you in it. There was nothing you could have done."

"But—"

"No," His expression softened, but his voice remained firm. "And if you spend one more second of your existence pretending otherwise, I will find a way to come back and haunt you properly, little brother."

Despite everything, a broken laugh escaped me.

Yann’s crooked grin returned. "I swear it, Étienne."

I let out another broken wet laugh despite myself.

"There he is," my mother murmured, something warm and proud in her voice.

I looked at her, then at Yann.

"What about Father?" I asked. "Is he here? Is he..."

"He’s not with us," My mother didn’t sound sad when she answered. If anything, there was a quiet acceptance in her voice. "He made his peace with what happened differently than we did. You could say he found peace and his own quiet, wherever it is he ended up. I’m sure it’s the right place. Unlike your brother and me who still has unfinished business, he didn’t need the same kind of goodbye."

I swallowed at the mention of peace. "Are you two at peace now?"

They looked at each other.

Something wordless passed between them, an entire conversation contained in a single glance, and then they both nodded.

"We are now," my mother assured me.

The second those words were said, their forms began to fade.

The light around them thinned first at the edges, their colors becoming softer, almost translucent, bleeding away slowly like ink dissolving into water.

"No." I stepped forward.

I reached for them one last time, some desperate, useless part of me refusing to let this end without trying. I knew what would happen. I’d already felt mother’s handspass through my face.

Still, I reached.

But strangely, this time, they didn’t pass through me.

My arms instead closed around them both and warmth hit me first, then solidity.

For one impossible second, they were real.

My mother. My brother.

I felt my mother’s arms wrap around me, and her hand came to rest against the back of my head in that exact familiar way she used to when I was small enough to fit entirely against her chest. I closed my eyes, breathing her in even though I knew there shouldn’t have been anything to breathe in.

Yann’s arm came around my shoulders, steady and sure.

And for that one suspended moment, we simply held each other.

Three people who should have had decades more time.

Three people who had been robbed of it.

There were no ghosts or demons or ruined lives in that moment. There was only my mother’s embrace, my brother’s hand against my shoulder, and the terrible sweetness of having them back, even if only for a few final seconds.

"Live a long, beautiful life, Étienne," my mother whispered against my hair.

I tightened my arms around them. "I love you."

"We know," she whispered.

Yann’s hand squeezed my shoulder. "Take care of her."

I knew exactly who he meant.

"And take care of yourself too, for once."

A laugh caught painfully in my throat. "I’ll try."

"You’d better."

Then the warmth began to slip away.

Their bodies dissolved slowly from my arms, their forms breaking apart into pale light until there was nothing left for me to hold.

I remained there long after they were gone.

Tears streamed freely down my face, but for once, I didn’t try to stop them.

The ache was still there. The grief hadn’t disappeared. Neither had the years of nearly settled anger, guilt, or everything that had been taken from us.

But beneath all of it was something new.

Something quiet.

I had said goodbye.

I had gotten a chance to see them and do that. It was a miracle.

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