Claimed by the scarred Alpha

BASTIEN

"I did choose you," I said, holding her tighter, feeling how thin she’d become, how fragile. "I would never choose anyone who was not you. There is no world where that would happen..."

I stopped. Explanations felt pointless now, excuses for something that had cost her an eye and her freedom.

She pulled back slightly, her hand coming up to touch my cheek. Her fingers were trembling. "But you came," she said, and it sounded like wonder, like she couldn’t quite believe it. "The thing is, you actually came."

"Of course I came. I’d burn the world down to get to you. I’d kill every person standing between us." I stood, lifting her with me. She weighed nothing. "We need to go. Can you walk?"

She nodded, then shook her head, then nodded again, confusion and trauma warring in her expression. "I don’t know. I think so. I... yes. I can walk."

"Good. Hold onto me."

I carried her anyway, one arm under her knees, the other supporting her back. She clung to my neck, her face pressed against my shoulder, her breath coming in short gasps that might have been sobs or might have been panic. I stepped over the bodies in the outer room without looking at them, navigating around the spreading pools of blood that made the floor slick.

We were almost to the stairs when the sound came. A phone, ringing with an old-fashioned bell tone, loud and insistent. It was coming from the pocket of the third man I’d shot, the one by the filing cabinet.

I stopped and she tensed in my arms.

"Ignore it," she whispered, her fingers digging into my shoulder. "Please. Let’s just go. I can’t stay here. I can’t..."

"I need to know who it is," I said, though every instinct screamed at me to keep moving, to get her out of this place of death and into the light. "It might be him. It might be Lucian."

I set her down gently, propping her against the wall. She whimpered, a sound of pure distress, but didn’t try to stop me as I walked back to the dead man and rolled him over. The phone was in his jacket pocket, a burner by the look of it, the screen cracked but functional.

The number flashing on the screen was a stranger, but my body knew the truth. Every instinct, every pulse in my veins told me exactly who waited on the other end.

I answered.

For a heartbeat, only breath filled the silence. Then—

Impatience prickled. "Is this you, Uncle Lucian?"

"Bastien?" Lucian spoke with that same velvet voice, refined and cold, untouched by regret. There was a hint of weariness, but no fear. He was still in the dark, unaware of what I had done to his men.

"Where are you?" I demanded, my voice raw and feral, as if some wild creature had taken hold of my throat. "Where the hell are you?!"

"She sent you a letter too. I assume."

I could already hear the next words forming, the tired refrain: Bastien, listen to me... I refused to let him finish.

"I don’t give a shit about any of that! Where are you?" I screamed it into the phone, my grip tightening until I heard the plastic casing crack. "I want to end your life with my own hands. Tell me where you are so I can come there and tear your fucking throat out. Tell me so I can look you in the eyes while you die. Tell me—"

He likely missed most of it, as the call cut off in a burst of static before my words could fully land.

I stood frozen, eyes locked on the phone, breath ragged, a hot red haze creeping into my sight. He had hung up. He knew. He was either fleeing or bracing himself, or maybe just scurrying like a rat that senses the cage door yawning open and the hunter stepping in.

"Bastien."

Her voice snapped me back to the moment. I turned and saw her slumped lower against the wall, her strength ebbing away. Her face was ashen with pain and fatigue, her one eye shining wide with terror.

"We need to go," she said, her voice suddenly steadier, rooted in a well of courage I could not understand. "He is gone. You cannot kill him if he is not here. But you can save me. Please. I am scared. I do not want to be here when the others arrive."

She was right. I knew she was right. The phone call would have alerted someone, somewhere. Reinforcements would be coming. I needed to get her to safety, to medical attention, to somewhere she could heal.

I crossed to her and lifted her again. She wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face against my chest, her body trembling violently now that the adrenaline was fading and shock was setting in.

I carried her down the stairs, through the broken door, out into the morning light that felt obscene in its brightness. The fog had burned off. The city was waking up. People were going to work, buying coffee, living normal lives while I carried my broken love through an alley slick with last night’s rain.

I reached my car and managed to get her into the passenger seat, buckling her in like she was precious cargo, which she was. She was the only thing that mattered. She was the only thing that had ever mattered, and I’d let them take her from me. I’d let them hurt her.

I got behind the wheel and started the engine. She was watching me, her eye tracking my movements with an intensity that made me uncomfortable.

"You’re covered in blood," she observed quietly.

"It’s not mine."

"I know." She paused. "I heard you kill them all."

"Yes."

"Good. They were all barbaric monsters."

The word hung in the air between us, heavy with implications I didn’t have the energy to unpack. I pulled out of the parking space and drove, heading toward the highway, toward the edge of the city, toward anywhere that wasn’t here.

We drove in silence for ten minutes. Then fifteen. Her breathing evened out, and I thought she might have fallen asleep, but when I glanced over, she was staring out the window, her hand resting on her empty eye socket.

"What happens now?" she asked.

"I don’t know," I admitted. "I get you safe. I get you healed. Then I find him, and I finish this."

"And after?"

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how to answer. Because as I drove, as the city gave way to suburbs and then to forest, I found myself thinking about the pack, about my father, about council meetings, political maneuvering, and the weight of a birthright that had never felt like anything but a collar around my neck.

Today, I killed five men. No hesitation, no remorse—only the icy satisfaction of a job finished. This was what freedom felt like, and after a lifetime in a gilded cage, I craved it.

It had nothing to do with violence. But the fact that I could map my own path.

I thought about the balcony. I thought about the letter. I thought about Isabelle’s advice, to write the story I actually wanted rather than the one I’d been handed.

I pulled the car over to the side of the road. She looked at me, alarmed.

"What is it? What’s wrong?"

"Nothing’s wrong," I said. I turned to face her, taking her hands in mine. They were still stained with blood, drying now and flaking off in brown patches. "I just realized something. There’s one more thing we have to do before we go."

"What?"

I studied her, truly seeing the woman who had clawed her way out of hell and still found the courage to wonder what lay ahead. I remembered the life I had sworn to give her, where I would lead as Alpha, and she would stand beside me as Luna. Yet it was the twisted games of the pack that had broken her, that had allowed her abduction and scars.

"Burn it down," I said. "We included."

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