Claimed by the scarred Alpha

BASTIEN

"Looks like Lucian’s screwed. Should we even stick around?" one of them muttered.

"It is Gamma Lucian. He always bounces back. Give it two days or until he calls us."

I stayed silent. My first shot echoed, deafening in the cramped room, as I put a bullet in one man’s skull. Chaos erupted—chairs crashed, hands fumbled for weapons.

The next guy barely cleared his holster before my knife found his throat. I left the blade buried, grabbed his shoulder, and used his body as a shield while I fired over him.

The third man took a bullet to the chest, stumbling into a filing cabinet. His scream was just a wet gurgle. I stepped over twitching legs and put another round in his face. There was no time for mercy, no space for hesitation.

The fourth man ducked behind a desk. I watched his gun barrel sweep the edge, hunting for me. I fired three shots straight through the wood, not caring about saving bullets, only about breaking through. He cried out, but my fourth shot silenced him, catching his temple as he tried to rise.

Five. Where was five?

The answer slammed into me from the left. Maybe he’d been hiding in the bathroom or the kitchenette I’d missed. He crashed into my waist, sending us both through the card table, which splintered beneath us. My gun slid away. His hands locked around my throat.

I let him squeeze my throat for half a second as I reached for the knife still lodged in the second man’s neck. My fingers found the blood-slick hilt and yanked it free with a sound that made the fifth man’s stomach turn. I saw it in his eyes—the instant he knew he’d messed up.

I buried the blade in his kidney. He screamed, a high-pitched sound that didn’t match his beard or his tactical vest, and I twisted, feeling the resistance of tissue and the scrape of bone. He released my throat. I rolled on top of him, straddling his chest, and brought the knife down into his eye socket. Once, then two times. Until the screaming stopped and the only sound in the room was my own breathing, harsh and ragged and completely inhuman.

I stood up slowly. Blood covered my hands, my coat, my face. I wiped the knife on the dead man’s shirt and retrieved my Glock, checking the magazine. Seven rounds remaining. Enough.

The room had a back door. I approached it with my weapon raised, listening for movement beyond. Nothing. I kicked it open and found a hallway, three doors on either side, all closed. At the end, a heavy steel door with a keypad lock.

I didn’t have the code. I also didn’t care.

I emptied the remaining rounds into the locking mechanism, the sparks flying, the metal screaming. When the slide locked back empty, I holstered the weapon and kicked the door. It held. I kicked again, feeling something in my foot fracture with the impact, but the door gave way, swinging inward with a shriek of tortured hinges.

The room beyond was small, windowless, lit by a single bulb that swung slightly from the force of my entry. It smelled of urine and fear and old blood. And her.

She was huddled in the far corner, wedged between a rusted filing cabinet and the wall, her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins. She was wearing a dress that might have been white once but was now grey with dirt and stains I didn’t want to identify. Her hair hung in matted ropes across her face.

But it was the side of her face that stopped me cold.

Where her eye should have been, there was only scarred tissue, puckered and pink, healing badly. They’d taken it, he had taken it, to ensure I understood the consequences of disobedience. As Isabelle had said in her letter, he needed to give me something tangible to fear. So directly handing me her eye in a box was the effective path forward.

My gun hit the floor. I didn’t remember dropping it.

"Hey," I whispered.

She didn’t move. Her remaining eye stayed fixed on some point between her knees, unfocused, unseeing. She was trembling, a continuous vibration that made her teeth chatter audibly.

I took a step closer, my hands raised, palms out. "Hey, it’s me. It’s Bastien."

She said nothing at first. It was as if she was somewhere else, locked in a space where my voice couldn’t reach her. I could see some marks on her arms now, bruises in various stages of healing, the cuts that looked self-inflicted or defensive. They’d broken her, or tried to. They’d taken her eye and her dignity and her hope.

Rage moved through me, hot and liquid, but I pushed it down for later. I could kill Lucian later. Right now, there was only her.

I knelt, keeping my distance, not wanting to crowd her. "I’m right here. I’m right here, and I’m not leaving without you. Do you understand? I’m taking you home."

Her head lifted, slowly, as if the movement required tremendous effort. Her left eye, the one that remained, found my face. It took a moment for recognition to spark there, for the glazed distance to clear. When it did, something broke in her expression, a dam collapsing, a wall crumbling.

"Bastien?" Her voice was barely audible, cracked and dry.

"Yeah. It’s me."

"I thought..." She swallowed, her throat working. "He said you would never come. He said that with time, you’d forgotten and eventually, you wouldn’t care."

"I care," I told her, and the words felt insufficient, pathetic against the magnitude of what she’d endured. "I care more than anything. I’ve been looking for you. I’ve been tearing the world apart trying to find you."

She stared at me for another long moment, her eye tracing the lines of my face as if checking for forgery. Then she moved, unfolding herself from the corner with the jerky motions of someone who’d been still too long. She crawled toward me, hesitant at first, then faster, until she was close enough to touch.

I reached for her. She flinched, then caught herself, then let my hands find her shoulders. Her skin was cold through the thin fabric of her dress. I pulled her gently, carefully, and she came into my arms like a child, burying her face against my neck.

"I never thought I’d see you again," she mumbled against my skin, her breath hot and wet. "I knew you’d choose me. I knew you would save me."

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