Claimed by the scarred Alpha

BASTIEN

I read the last line three times. Then four. The paper trembled in my hands, not from fear but from something harder, something that felt like ice crystallizing in my chest, sharp and permanent.

"Alive."

The word didn’t compute at first. It sat there between the lines of Isabelle’s confession, a foreign object in a language I’d stopped speaking days ago. I’d practically already mourned her. I’d already stood on that balcony and measured the distance between myself and oblivion, already accepted that the only woman I’d ever loved was gone because my mother had decided she was expendable leverage.

But it had actually been Uncle Lucian, and now this dead woman writing from beyond whatever grave she’d chosen told me otherwise.

My hands stopped shaking. The paper went still. Something fundamental shifted in my ribcage, a gear engaging that had been stripped and useless for years. I didn’t feel hope. Hope was too soft for what moved through me now. This was resolve, absolute and pitiless, the kind that didn’t negotiate with obstacles.

I folded the letter with precise movements and tucked it into my pocket. Then I walked to my armoire.

The weapons were already there, waiting like old friends. I selected a Glock first, checking the magazine with muscle memory that didn’t require my eyes. Then a second. Then the hunting knife with the serrated edge I’d been taught how to use since I was sixteen, the one that had opened more than just deer throats during full moons. I strapped it to my thigh and pulled on a coat to cover the bulk at my waist.

I didn’t bother with a plan beyond the address Isabelle had provided. Plans were for people who had time. I had none, and I had everything to lose if I waited long enough for doubt to creep in.

The corridor outside my room was empty, which suited me. I took the servant’s stairs down to the kitchen, then cut through the eastern wing toward the garage.

I almost made it. Almost.

"Alpha Bastien."

Three sentinels materialized from the shadows near the side entrance, their postures straightening as they recognized me. The youngest, a broad-shouldered man named Girard, stepped forward with his hand raised in a gesture that wasn’t quite a block but suggested one.

"It’s early for you to be heading out," he observed, his eyes dropping to my coat, then rising again with the kind of assessment that told me he knew exactly what bulges beneath heavy fabric meant. "The Alpha has also scheduled a council meeting for this morning. Your presence is expected."

"I have business elsewhere."

"Your father was specific about attendance. There have been some developments."

I stopped walking. The space between us suddenly felt charged, electric. I looked at Girard, really looked at him, and saw him register something in my face that made his own expression falter. He took half a step back before catching himself.

"I am your Alpha," I told him, and my voice came out flat, stripped of the diplomacy I’d been trained to wield since childhood. "And my father might hold the seat for now. But he is aging. He might have a few more years. But I suggest you think about today and how it might royally fuck up your future. Because I will be in that seat soon. Me! And ’I’ am telling you to step aside."

Girard’s jaw tightened. He glanced at the other two sentinels, looking for support, finding none. They were watching me with the wary stillness of wolves recognizing a dominant who’d stopped playing by the rules of the den.

"Sir," Girard tried again, "if you could just explain where you’re going, perhaps we could provide escort. Security has been tightened since—"

"Since what? Since my uncle and my false mother tried to have me married off like breeding stock? Since my mother turned out to be my aunt? Since the woman I love was kidnapped and mutilated to ensure my compliance?" I took a step forward, and this time Girard did step back. "Get out of my way. Now."

They moved. All three of them, pressing themselves against the wall like men avoiding a train. I didn’t run as I passed them, but I didn’t walk slowly either. The door clicked shut behind me with a finality that felt like the first honest sound I’d heard in days.

The drive took forty minutes. I spent them in silence, the radio off, my hands steady on the wheel. Isabelle’s directions led me to an industrial district on the outskirts of the city, where warehouses sat shoulder to shoulder like conspirators sharing secrets. Apparently, this was one of Uncle Lucian’s many offices, and this one was above a textile import business, accessible only through a side entrance and a freight elevator that required a key card.

I half expected a sentinel outside. But there was no one there. Maybe they were hiding.

I looked at the key card again.

I didn’t have a key card. I had something better.

I parked three blocks away and walked the rest, keeping to the alleys where the morning sun hadn’t yet burned off the fog. The building looked abandoned from the outside, windows boarded, and some had graffiti tagging the brickwork. But the security camera above the side door was new, its lens gleaming from a recent installation.

I didn’t knock.

The door was steel-reinforced, but the frame was old wood. I put my shoulder into it once, twice, and on the third impact the jamb splintered. The alarm should have sounded, but Isabelle had been thorough. Nothing screamed as I stepped inside; nothing flashed. Just silence and the smell of dust and old machinery.

A freight elevator waited at the end of a narrow corridor, doors sealed tight. I passed it by, choosing the stairs, climbing two at a time, my boots silent against the concrete. At the third-floor landing, I stopped. Voices seeped through the crack beneath the door, muffled yet unmistakable.

Five of them. Their scent reached me now: sweat, gun oil, and the restless musk of men who had waited too long for action.

I checked my weapons. The Glock in my right hand, the knife in my left. Then I pushed through the door.

They played cards at a battered folding table in the middle of what might once have been an office. Five men, all armed, each carrying the easy menace of mercenaries who had long ago stopped caring about right or wrong. The closest had his back to me, a cigarette hanging from his lips.

He died first.

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