Chapter 31
title: "The Sister's Price" wordCount: 2426
Garrett's sister doesn't help him up.
She steps over his body like it's debris, her boots leaving prints in the ash and blood coating the warehouse floor. The fires cast her shadow long across the concrete—it reaches me before she does, swallowing the space where I'm still on my knees, still gasping for air through my crushed throat.
Declan screams my name. The silver chains burn him but he doesn't stop pulling, doesn't stop trying to reach me even though his wrists are smoking and the scent of charred flesh fills the air between us.
"Quiet." Lyra doesn't look at him. Her voice carries that layered quality, multiple tones woven together like Siobhan's, and Declan's screaming cuts off mid-breath. Not because he wants to stop. Because he can't make sound anymore.
My good hand claws at the concrete. I try to stand but my legs won't hold me. The broken arm hangs useless, bone grinding against bone with every breath. My ribs feel like shattered glass in my chest.
Lyra crouches in front of me. Up close, her eyes are worse than I thought—silver, yes, but not like mine. Not like Siobhan's. These are mirrors, reflecting the warehouse fires back at me in miniature, and when I look into them I see myself small and broken and bleeding out on the floor.
"You have her eyes," Lyra says. She reaches out, touches the scar bisecting my right eyebrow. Her fingers are cold. "Your mother's eyes. I remember them."
I jerk back. "Do not—"
"Talk about her?" Lyra's smile doesn't reach those mirror eyes. "Why not? She's the reason we're here. The reason Garrett spent three years keeping you alive when he should have killed you the night your pack died."
Behind her, Garrett groans. He's waking up. Blood runs from his nose, his mouth, but he's already moving, already trying to push himself upright.
"Stay down, brother." Lyra doesn't turn around. "You had your chance. You failed."
"I was testing her—"
"You were playing with your food." Now she does look back, and whatever Garrett sees in her face makes him go still. "The way you always do. The way you did with the others."
Others. Plural.
My stomach turns over.
"How many?" The words scrape out of my ruined throat. "How many packs?"
Lyra turns back to me. "Does it matter?"
"Yeah, no, it really fucking does."
She laughs. The sound is wrong—too many voices layered over each other, harmonizing in ways that make my teeth ache. "Three, including yours. We would have had more, but your mother was... difficult. She kept running. Kept hiding. Kept having children in places we couldn't find them."
The watch on my wrist—my father's watch, stopped at 11:47 PM—feels suddenly heavy.
"She knew," I say. "She knew you were coming."
"Of course she knew. The Carrigan line has known about us for generations. They just thought they could outrun the debt." Lyra stands, brushing ash from her knees. "They were wrong."
Across the warehouse, Declan is still pulling at the chains even though he can't scream anymore. His eyes meet mine and I see the question there, the desperate need to know if I'm okay, if I can still fight, if there's any way out of this.
I don't have an answer.
She's stronger than Garrett, Siobhan says in my head. Her voice is quiet, careful. Much stronger. I can feel it from here.
Great. Fantastic. Any other helpful observations?
She's not here to kill you quickly.
I look at Lyra, at the way she's studying me like I'm a problem to solve, and my skin goes cold.
"What do you want?"
"The same thing my family has wanted for two hundred years." Lyra walks a slow circle around me. I try to track her movement but my vision keeps blurring, my body trying to shut down from blood loss and shock. "Freedom."
"From what?"
"From you. From your bloodline. From the curse your ancestor put on mine when she bound us to serve the Carrigan pack until the end of days." Lyra stops in front of me again. "Do you know what it's like, Sloane? To have your will stripped away? To feel the compulsion burning in your blood every time a Carrigan alpha gives an order?"
I think about the three years I spent running from my wolf. The way Siobhan clawed at the inside of my skull, demanding to be let out, demanding her place in my body and my life. The way I shoved her down, locked her away, pretended she didn't exist because I was so fucking terrified of what she represented.
"Yeah," I say quietly. "I know exactly what that's like."
Something flickers across Lyra's face. Not sympathy. Not quite recognition. Something colder.
"Then you understand why this has to happen."
She reaches into her jacket and pulls out a knife. The blade is silver, etched with symbols I don't recognize, and when she holds it up the firelight catches on metal that's been stained dark with old blood.
My blood goes cold.
"The curse can only be broken one way," Lyra says. She's still using that calm, reasonable tone, like she's explaining a business transaction instead of my murder. "The heart of a Carrigan alpha heir, consumed while they're still alive. While their wolf is still present. While the power is still flowing through their veins."
"You're insane."
"I'm desperate. There's a difference." She crouches again, bringing the knife close enough that I can see my reflection in the blade. "Your mother understood. That's why she kept running. That's why she hid you so well. She knew that if we found you, if we completed the ritual, the Voss line would finally be free."
Garrett is on his feet now. He's swaying, blood still dripping from his face, but he's upright and moving toward us with that predator's grace that never quite goes away no matter how badly you hurt him.
"Lyra." His voice is rough. "We agreed—"
"You agreed to wait. You agreed to let me handle this." Lyra doesn't look at him. "Instead you spent three years torturing her. Playing your games. Trying to prove you were stronger than our father."
"I was making sure she was ready—"
"You were making sure you got to be the one who killed her." Now Lyra does turn, and the temperature in the warehouse seems to drop ten degrees. "Just like you wanted to be the one who killed her mother. Just like you wanted to be the one who killed the others. But you're not strong enough, brother. You never were."
Garrett's face goes blank. Then he lunges.
Lyra moves faster than anything I've ever seen. One moment she's crouched beside me, the next she's standing behind Garrett with her hand wrapped around his throat, lifting him off the ground the same way he lifted me.
"I said stay down."
She throws him. Garrett's body hits the far wall hard enough to crack concrete, and he doesn't get up again.
My heart is hammering against my broken ribs. Every instinct I have is screaming at me to run, to fight, to do something other than kneel here bleeding while this woman with mirror eyes explains how she's going to cut out my heart.
But I can't run. Can barely breathe. And fighting got me a broken arm and crushed ribs and a throat that still feels like it's closing up.
We could shift, Siobhan says. If we shift, we might be fast enough—
We shift, we die faster. You know that.
Then what do we do?
I don't have an answer for that either.
Lyra walks back to me. She's not even breathing hard. "I'm going to offer you something Garrett never would have. A choice."
"Not interested in your deals."
"You should be. Because this one determines whether the people you love live or die." She tilts her head, studying me with those mirror eyes. "Come with me willingly. Let me complete the ritual. Surrender your wolf and your power and your life, and I'll spare them. Your mother. Declan. Anyone else you've managed to care about in the three years you've been running."
The mate bond flares in my chest—Declan's rage and terror and helplessness pouring through the connection between us. He's still pulling at the chains. Still trying to reach me even though his wrists are burned down to bone in places.
"And if I say no?"
"Then I kill them first. Slowly. While you watch. And then I take your heart anyway." Lyra's smile widens. "The ritual works either way. But if you surrender willingly, if you give me your power instead of forcing me to rip it from your corpse, the curse breaks cleanly. No loose ends. No chance of it transferring to another Carrigan down the line."
My stomach drops. "There are others?"
"Your mother had three children. You're the oldest. The alpha heir. But if you die fighting, if I have to take your power by force..." She shrugs. "The curse might find your siblings instead. Might bind them the way it bound you. Might make them targets the way it made you a target."
I think about the family I don't remember. The siblings I've never met. The mother who spent twenty-three years running and hiding and trying to keep us all alive.
"You're lying."
"Am I?" Lyra crouches again, close enough that I can see the other faces reflected in her silver eyes—other wolves, other alphas, other people she's killed to get to this moment. "Your mother knew the truth. That's why she split you up. That's why she made sure you never knew each other. Because as long as you were separated, as long as you didn't know about each other, the curse could only hunt one of you at a time."
She's telling the truth, Siobhan says quietly. I can feel it. The curse. It's in your blood. In mine. It's been there since the night you were born.
My vision blurs. Not from blood loss this time. From the weight of understanding settling over me like a shroud.
This is why my mother left me. Why she never came back. Why she spent twenty-three years running instead of fighting.
She was trying to save us all.
"How long do I have?" My voice sounds hollow. Distant. Like it's coming from someone else's throat.
"To decide?" Lyra stands, brushing ash from her knees again. "I'm not unreasonable. I'll give you time to think about it. To say goodbye, if you want."
She walks to where my blood has pooled on the concrete—from my arm, my ribs, the cuts on my face and throat. She kneels, dips her fingers in it, and starts drawing symbols on the floor. They glow faintly in the firelight, pulsing with a rhythm that matches my heartbeat.
"What are you doing?"
"Making sure you can't run." Lyra doesn't look up. Her fingers move with practiced precision, drawing lines and curves and shapes that hurt to look at directly. "The ritual requires your wolf to be present. Fully present. Not locked away in the back of your mind where you've been keeping her for three years."
No, Siobhan says. Her voice is sharp with panic. Sloane, do not let her finish that—
"I'm going to force her to surface," Lyra continues. She's drawing faster now, the symbols spreading across the floor in a pattern that makes my skin crawl. "And once she's out, once you're in your true form, you'll have one hour to decide. Surrender and save the people you love. Or fight and watch them die first."
The symbols pulse brighter. My blood starts to burn where it's touched the concrete, and the burning spreads up through my veins like liquid fire.
I try to move. Try to break the pattern. But my body won't respond—the ritual has already started, already sinking hooks into my blood and bone and the wolf I've spent three years trying to forget.
Sloane. Siobhan's voice is getting louder. Stronger. Sloane, I cannot hold her back. She is coming. She is—
The wolf surges forward.
Not Siobhan. Something older. Something that's been sleeping in my blood since the night my pack died, waiting for this moment, waiting to be called.
My spine arches. Bones start to crack and reform. My skin ripples, fur trying to push through, and the pain is worse than anything Garrett did to me because this is coming from inside, from the parts of myself I've been denying for so long they've turned feral.
I scream. The sound comes out half-human, half-animal, and across the warehouse Declan is pulling at the chains so hard the metal is starting to bend.
Lyra stands, watching me convulse on the floor with clinical interest. "There she is. I was starting to think you'd buried her so deep she'd never come back."
The wolf claws at the inside of my skull. She wants out. Wants blood. Wants to tear Lyra apart with teeth and claws and rage that's been building for three years.
But she's not strong enough. I'm not strong enough. The ritual is forcing the shift but my body is too broken, too damaged, and the transformation is tearing me apart from the inside.
Let me help, Siobhan says. Let me guide her. Let me—
The warehouse door opens again.
Through the haze of pain and transformation, I see figures being dragged inside. Two of them. One is unconscious, head lolling, dark hair matted with blood.
The other is awake. Struggling. Her eyes meet mine across the warehouse and I see my own face looking back at me—older, harder, marked with scars I don't have yet.
My mother.
Lyra smiles. "I thought you might need extra motivation."
The wolf inside me howls. The sound rips through my throat, through the warehouse, through the mate bond connecting me to Declan. His chains finally break and he's running toward me, his hands still smoking from the silver, his face twisted with desperation and rage.
But he's too slow.
The ritual completes. My vision goes white as the wolf surges forward, taking control, pushing me down into the dark places where I've been keeping her locked away. The last thing I see before I lose myself completely is Lyra's smile widening—
And Declan's body being dragged back through the warehouse door, silver chains wrapped around his throat, his eyes locked on mine as the distance between us grows and grows and grows.