Claimed by the scarred Alpha

LUCIAN

The burning of that trafficking house.

The sudden, obsessive attention Valcourt had developed toward Beaumont over the past few months.

And the way that masked man had looked at me the night he’d first arrived to collect Margaux. There had been something in his gaze I hadn’t been able to name at the time.

I could name it now.

Recognition.

Rage held carefully in check.

My thoughts raced back through the string of deaths I’d been tracking loosely over the past few weeks, connections I’d wanted to dismiss as unrelated business rivalries, isolated incidents that hadn’t seemed worth looking at twice. Until that call.

But now it was crystal clear that they weren’t isolated.

The people being targeted were connected.

My stomach tightened.

I lunged for my phone.

I pulled up the voicemails from my men and played them back one after another.

The first voice was tense but controlled.

"Gamma Lucian, we were attacked. We lost two men. I don’t know who they were, but they moved fast. We’re pulling back for now."

I swallowed and played the next.

"Gamma Lucian, it’s bad. Beta Kayden is dead. They... they beheaded him." The man’s breathing was ragged. "We found others scattered across the property. I think whoever did this is still here."

My thumb hovered over the screen before I forced myself to play the final message.

Static crackled first.

Then a voice, barely more than a whisper.

"Gamma..." the fellow said in a sharp breath. "Please, you need to listen to me. They’re here. They’re killing everyone."

Something crashed in the background.

"Get out of there," another man shouted. "One of us has to escape here alive."

"I can’t. There’s too many of them. The products have joined hands with them too."

The speaker’s breathing grew faster, each breath catching in his throat. "They’re coming. Fuck, they’re coming."

The recording jolted with a burst of static.

"Gamma, we’re not going to make it out alive."

Then the message abruptly ended just as I heard his screams.

I lowered the phone slowly.

Whoever was hunting them hadn’t stumbled across them. They’d come specifically to kill everyone tied to that operation.

Fear crawled slowly up my spine.

I was next.

The realization settled with sudden, absolute clarity.

A knock sounded at the door.

"What is it?" I screamed.

A timid voice answered from the other side.

"I’m sorry to disturb you, Gamma Lucian," she called. "It’s just that you have a letter. From the mail we received today."

I yanked the door open.

"From who?"

"I’m not entirely sure." She held out an envelope with shaking hands. "It just says Isabelle."

I snatched it from her.

"Thank you. You can leave now."

She bowed quickly and hurried off.

I tore the envelope open before I’d even fully closed the door, unfolding the letter with hands that weren’t quite steady.

"This has been a long time coming, big brother," It began.

I kept reading, my pulse climbing with every line.

"By the time you read this letter, I will more than likely be dead."

I stopped, staring at that sentence, then forced myself to continue.

"I understand you, big brother. I understand why you became this man."

I stared at the words for a moment before reading on.

"We were born into a caste system that had already decided what we were worth before either of us could speak. It taught us where we belonged, who we could love, what we could become, and exactly how far we were allowed to reach."

My fingers tightened around the letter.

"I watched what happened when you fell in love with her. I watched you lose the woman you loved because her rank made keeping her impossible. I watched you let them take her from you because you knew there was nothing you could do without destroying everything you’d spent your life building."

My throat tightened.

"I watched that loss hollow you out."

I stopped reading.

For a moment, I could see her again, years younger, standing in the doorway with that same look she’d always given me whenever she thought I was lying to myself.

I lowered my eyes to the page.

"And when the grief should have had time to heal, you filled the empty space with ambition instead. You climbed higher. You became harder. You convinced yourself that if you gained enough power, no one would ever be able to decide what you were allowed to have again."

I read the last line twice.

"I don’t blame you for becoming who you are, Lucian. I only wish you had understood that becoming powerful and becoming cruel were never the same thing."

"But understanding you doesn’t mean I excuse you."

My eyes moved to the next line.

"You let that hollow space consume everything, Lucian. I watched it happen slowly at first, then all at once. You tortured people. You blackmailed them. You murdered them. Every time, you told yourself it was necessary. Every time, you found another reason to believe the next act would finally give you what you had been chasing all these years."

My grip tightened around the paper.

"But somewhere along the way, you forgot what you were chasing in the first place."

I swallowed.

"You don’t even remember the original reason anymore, do you?"

The question sat there between the lines.

"The woman you lost stopped being the reason. She became an excuse. Something you dragged out whenever you needed to justify the next cruelty, the next betrayal, the next person you decided was expendable."

My jaw clenched.

"You kept telling yourself that everything you did was for the life they wouldn’t let you have with her. But if you were honest with yourself, you’d know that stopped being true a long time ago."

She named names.

"Vivianne’s death."

My eyes stopped on the words.

Then I forced myself to keep reading.

"The Archambault massacre."

My fingers tightened around the paper.

"Étienne’s years in that trafficking network."

Line after line followed, each one exposing another crime, another choice, another person I’d sacrificed to protect my secrets.

I reached the next paragraph.

"You have earned every second of what’s coming."

I read the sentence twice.

There was no anger in the words. No accusation sharpened by hatred. Just the neat, careful handwriting I’d known since childhood, each letter formed with the same precision she’d always used.

Somehow, that chilled me more than shouting ever could have.

"I am done being your accomplice, brother."

My breath caught.

"I am done lying, and I am done watching people suffer or die so that our shared secret can remain buried a little longer."

My eyes moved slowly across the page.

"We have done enough."

I felt something tighten beneath my ribs.

"It is fine to stop now. It was always fine to stop."

My hand began to shake.

"You simply never wanted to."

I stared at the words until they blurred. Then I read the next paragraph.

"I wrote letters to others as well. The most important one went to the Alpha."

The letter slipped slightly in my grip.

"If you want any chance of surviving what comes next, I suggest you start running. Immediately."

My pulse hammered against my throat.

"And keep running for the rest of your life, because your deceit, Lucian, will not go unanswered for much longer."

I reached the final lines.

"All the best, big brother."

I swallowed.

Isabelle.

I dropped the letter.

It fluttered to the floor, and I didn’t wait to watch it land.

I was already moving, wrenching the door open and sprinting down the corridor, some primal, animal panic overriding every other thought in my head. I didn’t know how much time I had left. I didn’t know if the Alpha had already read whatever Isabelle had sent him, didn’t know if sentinels were already en route to my door, didn’t know anything except that staying here another minute was suicide.

I burst out into the courtyard, gravel scattering beneath my boots, and threw myself into my car, hands shaking so badly it took two attempts to get the key into the ignition.

The engine roared to life beneath me.

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