Claimed by the scarred Alpha

BASTIEN

I pulled the car over at a gas station three blocks from the safe house. The pump clicked. I filled a red plastic can with ten gallons, then grabbed another. She watched me from the passenger seat, her one eye tracking my movements through the glass. When I climbed back in, the reek of gasoline filled the space between us.

"We’re going back," I stated.

She turned her head slowly, like the motion pained her. "Back there?"

"So we never have to run or be in danger again. We need bodies that look like us. We need to sell the idea that we’re dead." I screwed the cap on tight. "That we died in that safe house?"

She was quiet for a moment. Her fingers traced the edge of her seatbelt. "You want them to think we died in the fire."

"My family. The council. Everyone who thinks they own me." I started the engine. "They find five dead men and two charred corpses wearing our clothes, they’ll stop looking. We get a head start. Maybe for the rest of our lives."

She nodded. It was a small movement, but decisive. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"I trust you." She looked out the window. "I don’t want to be found either."

I drove back through the morning traffic, the cans thumping in the trunk. The fog had lifted completely now, leaving the city exposed and ugly in the harsh light. When we reached the alley, I parked behind a dumpster where the car wouldn’t be immediately visible from the street. I popped the trunk and grabbed the cans.

She followed me out, limping slightly, her bare feet finding the wet pavement. She’d lost her shoes somewhere in the capture, or they’d taken them. I handed her the smaller can. It was lighter, maybe five gallons.

"Splash it everywhere," I told her. "Upstairs, downstairs. Don’t miss the stairs themselves. We want it to climb."

She took the can with both hands. Her knuckles were white. "What about the bodies?"

"We’ll get to that."

We went in through the back door I’d kicked open. The smell hit us immediately, copper and voided bowels and the particular sweetness of blood going cold. She flinched but didn’t stop. I watched her move into the front room where the first man lay, his skull opened from my initial shot. She stared down at him for a long moment, then started pouring.

The gasoline splashed across his chest, his face, pooling beneath him. She moved methodically, working her way around the room. I took the back hallway, dousing the walls, the floor, the closed doors of the side rooms. I emptied half my can on the stairs, soaking the wood until it dripped through to the level below.

When I came back to the main room, she was standing over the fourth man, the one I’d shot through the desk. He was slumped against the wood, three holes in his chest, one in his temple. She was pouring slowly, almost carefully, covering his tactical vest, his jeans, his boots.

"Save some for the others," I called out.

She looked up. Her eye was clear now, focused. "I’m not wasting it. I’m making sure."

We moved to the back room where I’d found her. I splashed the walls, the filing cabinet, the floor where she’d huddled. The gasoline fumes were thick enough to burn my eyes. I could taste it at the back of my throat, metallic and chemical.

"Two bodies," I said, lowering my can. "Need two that could pass for us."

She set her can down. It was almost empty anyway. "That one." She pointed to the second man I’d killed, the one with my knife still in his throat. "He’s your height. Similar build."

I walked over and looked down at him. She was right. He was lean, maybe an inch shorter than me, but close enough. Brown hair, though longer than mine. In a fire, hair burned away. What mattered was the frame.

"And for you?" I asked.

She scanned the room, her gaze landing on the third man, the one by the filing cabinet. He was smaller, wiry, but his bone structure was narrow, feminine if you squinted. He’d do.

"Him," she decided. "We can make it work."

I retrieved my knife from the second man’s throat. It came out with a wet sound, the blade scraping against vertebrae. I wiped it on his shirt, then looked around for what I needed. There was a toolbox in the corner, probably for maintenance on the building. I found a claw hammer inside, the head rusted but solid.

"Turn around," I told her.

She didn’t ask why. She just turned to face the wall.

I started with the face. The hammer rose and fell with a heavy, meaty sound, like a butcher tenderizing steak. I aimed for the teeth first, the jaw, the cheekbones. Identification needed dental records to fail. I worked systematically, destroying the structure, the features, anything that might suggest this man wasn’t me. Blood sprayed in arcs across my forearms, my chest. Bone fragments skittered across the floor.

When I finished, nothing human remained above the neck. Just pulp and fragments and the white gleam of shattered skull.

I moved to the third man, the one she’d chosen for her stand-in. I repeated the process, though this one was harder. He’d been shot in the chest, not the head, so his face was intact, eyes open, staring. I had to close my mind to that, to the way his nose flattened, the way his orbital socket collapsed. I swung until my shoulder ached, until the hammer handle was slick with sweat and blood and brain matter.

"Done," I announced.

She turned back. She didn’t look at the bodies. Instead, she walked to the bathroom I’d missed earlier, the one where the fifth man had hidden. She came back with a towel. "For your hands."

I took it and wiped my palms, my fingers, the hammer handle. Then I had an idea. I grabbed the smaller body, the one that would be her, and dragged him to the bathroom. She followed me.

I used the hammer to knock out what remained of the teeth, collecting them in my hand. They were small, bloody things, roots and all. I dropped them into the toilet bowl and flushed. The water swirled, carrying the evidence away. I did the same with the other body, dragging him in, smashing out the fragments, flushing them down. The pipes groaned but took it.

"Clothes," I said.

We stripped the bodies. It was gruesome work, wrestling with dead limbs, the skin already cooling and stiffening. I took the man’s tactical pants, his black shirt, his boots. They were tight but would pass. She took the other man’s jeans, his t-shirt, his jacket. She had to roll the cuffs, cinch the waist with a belt from the first man’s corpse.

I found a purse in the corner, probably belonging to whoever had been here before them. It had a hairbrush, some makeup, a compact mirror. She used the brush to tangle her hair further, to add dirt and debris from the floor.

We dressed them in our own clothes and then dragged the bodies to the center of the main room, positioning them close together, entangled like lovers or victims trying to protect each other. I doused them with the remaining gasoline, soaking the clothes we’d put on them, the hair, the ruined faces.

"One more thing," I said.

I went back to my car, grabbed my wallet and my phone, and went back.

"Evidence," I explained when I came back in. "They’ll find it in the investigation. It will help confirm the identity."

She nodded. She understood.

I took her hand. It was cold, trembling slightly. "Ready?"

"Do it."

I found matches in the kitchenette, a book of them wedged behind a spice rack. I struck one and held it up. The flame was small, blue at the base, yellow at the tip. I dropped it onto the nearest pool of gasoline.

The fire caught immediately, a whoosh of heat and light that pushed us back. It raced along the floor, up the walls, climbing the stairs like it had intent. The bodies caught, the clothes burning, the hair crackling. The smell was immediate and overwhelming, burning wool and flesh and the chemical stink of accelerant.

I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the back door. We moved fast, the heat building behind us, the air already thick with smoke. We emerged into the alley, gasping, and I led her away from the building, away from the car, down the alley in the opposite direction.

We walked for two blocks before we heard the sirens. Then we ran.

My foot hurt where I’d fractured something kicking the door earlier, but I ignored it. She ran beside me, her borrowed boots slapping the pavement, her breath coming in ragged gasps. We cut through a park, past joggers who looked at us once and looked away, seeing only two disheveled people in dirty clothes, maybe homeless, maybe drunk.

We ran until we reached a bus station on the outskirts of the city. I had cash in my pocket, enough for two tickets to anywhere. I bought passage on a Greyhound heading north, leaving in twenty minutes. We sat on a bench in the back of the station, out of sight of the street, and waited.

She leaned against me, her head on my shoulder. We were both sweating, breathing hard, reeking of smoke and gasoline and death.

"Your family will mourn you," she whispered.

"Let them." I watched the door, waiting for recognition, for someone to spot us. Nothing. "I could not care less."

"And Lucian?"

I turned to look at her. The fire had put color back in her cheeks, or maybe it was the running. Her eye was bright, alert, alive. "I’ll find him. But not today. Today we disappear."

The bus pulled up, diesel engine rattling. We boarded last, taking seats near the back. I put my arm around her as the bus pulled onto the highway. Through the window, I could see a column of smoke rising in the distance, black against the blue sky. The safe house, burning. My old life, burning with it.

She reached up and touched the ring on my finger. "What now?"

"Now we get off at the first stop with a hospital. Get you looked at. Then we keep moving."

"And after that?"

I looked out the window, watching the city shrink behind us. "After that, we write our own story. No pack. No birthright. Just us."

She was quiet for a moment. Then she leaned her head back against my shoulder and closed her eye. "I’d like that."

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