Chapter 25
title: "Blood Debt" wordCount: 2917
The needle slides into my vein and the world immediately tilts sideways, and I am nineteen again, driving home with my windows down and my music too loud, and I have no idea that in twenty minutes everyone I loves will be dead.
"Wait." My hand shoots out, grabs Iris's wrist. The black liquid is already pushing into my bloodstream, cold as winter water. "What did you mean, there is a reason—"
But the basement is already dissolving around me, Declan's face blurring into shadow, and I am pulling into the circular drive of the Carrigan estate with Taylor Swift blasting through my speakers because I am young and stupid and I think surprising my family for Thanksgiving break is a good idea.
I turn off the engine. The silence hits wrong.
No lights in the windows. No sound of my brothers arguing over the football game. Just smoke, thin and gray, curling from the second-story windows like fingers beckoning me closer.
"Sloane." Declan's voice, distant. "Sloane, stay with us."
But I am already out of the car, already running toward the front door, already smelling the copper-penny reek of blood mixing with the acrid burn of accelerant. The door hangs open. Claw marks gouge the wood.
I step inside.
The foyer is painted red. Not metaphorically. Literally red, the walls dripping with it, the marble floor slick. My brother Connor lies at the base of the stairs, his throat torn out, his eyes still open and staring at nothing. His phone is still in his hand. He was texting someone when he died.
I do not scream. That surprises me, even now, even watching this memory unfold like a horror film I cannot pause. I just stand there, my keys still dangling from my fingers, my backpack still on my shoulder, and I think: This is not real. This cannot be real.
Then I hear voices from the great hall.
My father's voice. And another voice I do not recognize, smooth and cultured and wrong.
I move without thinking, muscle memory from childhood games of hide-and-seek guiding me to the servant's passage behind the dining room. The hidden door is already ajar. Someone else used it recently. There is blood on the handle.
I slip inside. The passage is dark and narrow, the walls close enough to touch on both sides. I follow it to the great hall, to the crack in the paneling that my brothers showed me when I was seven, the one you can see through if you press your face just right against the wood.
I press my face against the wood.
My father is in the center of the hall, circling something. Someone. His shirt is torn, his chest bleeding from three parallel gashes. His wolf is close to the surface—I can see it in the gold bleeding into his eyes, the way his shoulders hunch forward, ready to shift.
The other man is smiling.
He is tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a suit that probably costs more than my tuition. His hair is silver-gray, perfectly styled. His hands are clean. No blood on them at all, even though I can see bodies scattered around the edges of the hall. My uncle. My aunt. Wolves I have known my entire life.
"You cannot win this, Marcus." The man's voice is pleasant, conversational. "Your pack is dead. Your sons are dead. Your wife is in my custody. Surrender, and I will make it quick."
"Garrett." My father spits the name like a curse. "You broke the Accords. You attacked during a truce moon. The Council will—"
"The Council will do nothing." Garrett's smile widens. "I have been very careful, Marcus. Very thorough. By the time they investigate, there will be no evidence I was ever here. Just a tragic pack war, alpha against alpha, the old story."
They lunge at each other.
I have seen my father fight before. Sparring matches, training sessions, the occasional challenge from a young wolf testing his dominance. He is fast, brutal, efficient. He does not waste movement.
But Garrett is faster.
They collide in the center of the hall, a tangle of claws and teeth and rage. My father gets in a good hit, his claws raking across Garrett's ribs, drawing blood. Garrett laughs. Actually laughs, like this is fun, like he is enjoying himself.
Then Garrett's hand closes around my father's throat.
He lifts my father off the ground. Slams him down onto the marble floor hard enough that I hear bones crack. My father tries to shift, tries to call his wolf, but Garrett's other hand is already moving, claws extending, driving into my father's chest.
Not to kill. Not yet. To pin him. To hold him down.
"Any last words, Marcus?" Garrett leans close, his smile gone now, his face cold and empty. "Any final wisdom you would like to impart?"
My father coughs blood. His eyes find the crack in the wall where I am hiding. For one terrible second, I think he sees me. But his gaze slides past, unfocused.
He whispers something.
I cannot hear it from here. But I see Garrett's face go white. See his hand freeze, claws still buried in my father's chest.
"You did not." Garrett's voice is barely audible.
My father laughs. Blood bubbles from his lips, runs down his chin. "It is done. The power is bound. You will never—"
Garrett's claws tear upward, shredding through my father's heart, his lungs, everything. My father's laugh cuts off mid-sound.
The alpha dies.
And I am screaming, screaming, my hands pressed against the wall, trying to get out, trying to reach him, but the passage is too narrow and I am stuck and—
"Sloane!" Hands on my face, forcing me to focus. Declan's eyes, storm-gray and desperate. "Come back. You need to come back."
I suck in air. The basement snaps back into focus around me. I am on the floor, Iris's needle still in my arm, the black liquid half-injected. My mother is on the cot three feet away, Iris working over her with quick, efficient movements.
"How long—" My voice cracks.
"Thirty seconds." Declan does not let go of my face. "You started seizing. Iris said it was normal, that the memories would hit hard, but—"
"It is not finished." Iris does not look up from my mother. She is drawing my blood now, filling syringe after syringe with dark red liquid. "The transfusion requires a full dose. She needs to go back under."
"No." Declan's hands tighten on my face. "Look at her. She cannot—"
"I can." I grab his wrists, pull his hands away. My fingers are shaking but my voice is steady. "I need to see the rest. I need to know what my father said."
"Sloane—"
"Inject it." I look at Iris. "All of it. Now."
Iris's hand hesitates on the plunger for half a second. Then she pushes it down.
The black liquid burns through my veins like acid, like fire, like every nightmare I have ever had made physical. I feel my wolf rising, feel the block in my mind cracking, splintering, breaking apart.
I am back in the passage. My father is dead on the floor. Garrett is standing over him, breathing hard, his suit ruined with blood.
He pulls out his phone. Dials a number.
"It is done," he says. "Marcus Carrigan is dead. But we have a problem."
A pause. Someone speaking on the other end.
"He bound his alpha power to his bloodline. A death curse. As long as any of his children live, the power will flow to them instead of to me." Garrett's voice is tight, controlled, but I can hear the rage underneath. "I need you to find them. All of them. The sons, the daughter. I do not care how you do it. Just make sure none of them survive the night."
He hangs up. Looks down at my father's body.
"You clever bastard," he says softly. "You knew you would lose. So you made sure I could not win."
He turns and walks out of the hall.
I stay in the passage for three hours. I listen to the sounds of wolves moving through the house, searching. I hear them find Connor's body, hear them confirm he is dead. I hear them searching for me, calling my name, their voices falsely sweet.
I do not move. I do not breathe. I press myself into the darkest corner of the passage and I let my wolf pull me down, down, down into the black where the memories cannot reach me.
When I finally crawl out, the house is empty. The bodies are gone. The blood is gone. Everything is gone except the smell, copper and smoke, burned into the walls forever.
I walk out the front door. Get in my car. Drive.
I do not remember where I went. I do not remember the next three days. My wolf took over, buried the memories, locked them away where they could not hurt me.
Where they could not break me.
I come back to myself all at once, gasping, my body arching off the floor. Declan catches me before I hit the concrete. His arms are solid around me, holding me together while I shake apart.
"It is done." Iris's voice, calm and clinical. "The transfusion is complete."
I turn my head. My mother is on the cot, her eyes closed, but her chest is rising and falling in a steady rhythm. The silver veins are fading from her skin, retreating like frost melting under sunlight. Her face is still too thin, still too pale, but she looks human again.
She looks like my mother.
"Mom." The word comes out broken. I try to stand, to go to her, but my legs will not hold me. The room tilts sideways. Declan's arms tighten.
"You lost a lot of blood," he says. His voice is rough. "You need to rest."
"I need to—"
My mother's eyes open.
They are brown. Clear, cognizant brown, not the silver-mad eyes from the video. She blinks slowly, like someone waking from a very long sleep. Her gaze finds me.
"Sloane?" Her voice is a ruined whisper, hoarse from disuse or screaming or both. "Baby, is that you?"
I am crying. I do not remember starting, but tears are running down my face, hot and fast. "Yeah. Yeah, Mom, it is me."
She tries to sit up. Iris puts a hand on her shoulder, gentle but firm. "Slowly, Moira. Your body has been through significant trauma. You need to—"
The basement door explodes inward.
Not opens. Explodes, the wood splintering into a thousand pieces, the hinges tearing free from the wall. Wolves pour through the opening, a dozen of them, all in human form but with their eyes glowing gold. They spread out around the room in a practiced formation, cutting off every exit.
Matthias comes through last. He looks at me and smiles.
Then Garrett Voss steps into the basement.
He is exactly as I remember from the flashback. Tall, broad-shouldered, silver-haired. His suit is immaculate. His hands are clean. He looks like a businessman, a CEO, someone who has never gotten blood under his fingernails.
He looks at me and his smile is warm, almost fond.
"Sloane Carrigan," he says. "You have been very difficult to find."
Declan moves in front of me, his body a wall between me and Garrett. Two of the wolves grab him, force him to his knees. He fights, but there are too many of them. They pin his arms behind his back.
Iris does not move. She stands beside my mother's cot, her face blank, her hands loose at her sides. But I see her eyes tracking the wolves, calculating odds, looking for openings.
"Let them go." My voice is steadier than I expected. I push myself up, using the wall for support. My legs shake but they hold. "This is between you and me."
"Is it?" Garrett tilts his head. "I wonder. You see, I have spent three years trying to understand what your father did to me. Three years researching death curses, alpha bonds, bloodline magic. Three years watching my power drain away, bit by bit, flowing back to you."
He takes a step closer. Declan snarls, tries to lunge, but the wolves holding him do not budge.
"Your father was a clever man," Garrett continues. "He knew he would lose our challenge. He was older, slower. I was in my prime. So he did the one thing that would ensure I could never truly claim his territory, his pack, his power." He stops three feet away from me. "He bound his alpha power to your bloodline with a death curse. As long as you live, I can never be a true alpha. Every day you breathe, my power drains back toward you."
The basement is silent except for my mother's ragged breathing.
"So you see, Sloane Carrigan," Garrett says softly, "this was never about revenge. This is about survival. You are killing me just by existing."
I stare at him. At this man who murdered my family, who tortured my mother, who has spent three years hunting me like an animal. And I understand, finally, why he has been so desperate. Why he could not just let me disappear.
I am his death sentence.
"Then kill me." I spread my arms. "That is what you came here for, is it not? So do it."
"Sloane, no—" Declan's voice is raw.
But Garrett is already shaking his head. "It is not that simple. The curse is tied to your bloodline. If I kill you, the power passes to the next Carrigan. And your mother is still alive."
His gaze slides to the cot. To my mother, who is watching him with clear, aware eyes.
"Hello, Moira," he says. "I trust you are feeling better. The silver sickness is quite unpleasant, I know. But necessary. I needed to keep you weak, keep you from shifting, while I worked on breaking the curse." He pauses. "I was close, you know. Another few months and I would have found the solution. But then your daughter had to go and wake you up."
My mother does not speak. But her eyes are burning, gold bleeding into the brown.
"So here is my dilemma." Garrett turns back to me. "I cannot kill you without killing her. And I cannot kill her without ensuring there are no other Carrigans left to inherit the power. Your brothers are dead. Your father is dead. That leaves just the two of you."
He pulls a gun from inside his jacket. Not a normal gun. The barrel is silver, etched with symbols I do not recognize. He points it at my mother.
"I will make you a deal, Sloane. You can choose which one of you dies first. You, or her. Either way, you both die tonight. But I will let you decide the order."
"No." The word comes from my mother.
Everyone turns to look at her. She is sitting up now, Iris's hand still on her shoulder but not restraining her anymore. Her eyes are fully gold, glowing in the dim light of the basement.
"You cannot kill her, Garrett." My mother's voice is stronger now, resonating with something that makes the wolves around the room shift uneasily. "The curse will not allow it. Marcus made sure of that."
Garrett's smile does not waver. "The curse prevents me from being a true alpha while she lives. It does not prevent me from killing her."
"No." My mother stands. She is unsteady, her legs shaking, but she stands. "You do not understand. The curse does not just bind the power to the bloodline. It binds the bloodline to the power. As long as the alpha power exists, a Carrigan must exist to hold it. If you kill us both, the power will find another vessel. Another Carrigan. Somewhere in the world, there is a distant cousin, a forgotten branch of the family tree. And they will inherit everything."
Garrett's smile finally cracks. "That is not possible."
"It is not only possible. It is inevitable." My mother takes a step toward him. The wolves tense, but she ignores them. "Marcus spent twenty years researching bloodline curses before he cast this one. He made sure there was no loophole, no escape. You can kill us, Garrett. But you will never be free."
The gun in Garrett's hand does not waver. But I see something flicker in his eyes. Doubt. Fear.
"Then I will kill every Carrigan I can find," he says. "I will hunt them down, one by one, until—"
"Until what?" My mother's voice drops, becomes something else. Something ancient and terrible. "Until you die of old age, still chasing ghosts? Until your pack abandons you because you are too weak to lead them? Until another alpha challenges you and wins because you are fighting with half your power?"
She is right in front of him now. Close enough to touch. Close enough for him to shoot her point-blank.
"You have already lost, Garrett. Marcus made sure of that the moment he died."
Garrett's hand tightens on the gun. His finger moves to the trigger.
My mother's eyes snap fully open, glowing gold instead of silver, and she looks at Garrett and says in a voice that echoes with alpha command, "You cannot kill her. But I can."