CHAPTER 42: WHAT IS OWED

The Alpha will take what is owed.

Those words suddenly came back to me.

Nyren had whispered them to me the night of the Rite. Her white eyes had glinted something strange in them, as if meaning to say something she shouldn’t.

Now, as I stood before the man whose gaze could strip the marrow from my bones, and after what Nyren did to help me find my way out of Levian pack, I finally understood.

When she said the Alpha she hadn’t meant Finn.

She had meant someone else. Him. The Alpha of Undercity.

My chest went up and down as I took a sharp breath. I remembered it was the priestesses who prepared the bloodbane for me. I couldn’t wear the wolfbind during the rite so the bloodbane was a replacement to suppress my wolf. I realized they didn’t give me bloodbane at all.

A trick.

And she had done it for him.

I clenched my fists, my nails biting into my palms as I forced my voice past the tightness in my throat.

There was something else that unsettled me.

"Did you set the fire on our lands?"

It should have been a question, but it came out as an accusation. Sharp, raw, weighted with anger.

His gaze did not waver. If anything, it sharpened, as if amused by the audacity of my demand.

The lamplight brushed over the hard lines of his face, casting shadows across his jaw, making his crimson eyes gleam like coals.

I held his stare, refusing to drop my eyes, though my chest burned with the effort.

The possibility that it had been him gnawed at me, a sickening certainty clawing closer with every breath.

I already bore the guilt of using that tragedy as a chance to flee Finn’s grasp. But if it had been orchestrated for me—if lives had been taken, homes turned to ash, children left without families—because of me...

My stomach twisted.

Rion Morrigan did not flinch beneath my accusation. Instead, he tilted his glass of wine, watching the liquid swirl as though weighing whether the truth was even worth voicing.

Then, with a casual shrug, he said, "I only meant to light a few empty ones."

My breath caught.

"You can’t blame me," he went on, his tone light, infuriatingly unconcerned, "if the wind carried the fire and the houses were too easy to burn."

"You—you..." My voice cracked, falling into a rasp. My throat felt dry, as if dust had filled it. "You’re a monster."

And he smiled. Not with warmth, not with remorse, but with the slow satisfaction of someone who had been called that word too many times to care.

He inclined his head as though I had given him a compliment instead of a condemnation.

"I do hear that a lot," he murmured.

Heat flooded my face, a mixture of rage and terror I could no longer separate.

My chest heaved with shallow breaths as I struggled not to recoil from the darkness in his eyes.

I couldn’t even find an ounce of beauty in them because they resembled blood so much I found it hard to look at them for too long. Afraid that I’d get swallowed into the depths of his monstrosity.

But then he leaned forward slightly, setting the glass of wine against the stone railing a few steps away. His gaze never left mine.

"Don’t give me that look, Vivien," he said, voice low, almost intimate in its softness, though no less cutting for it.

"You begged me to help you. You seem to forget that. I did what you wanted. I saved you from Finn, even if it cost me. And now you give me that loathing look?"

His lips curved, not in humor, but in a smirk stripped bare of joy but laced with subtle annoyance.

The words stung, because he wasn’t wrong.

I had wanted escape. I had prayed for it, begged for it, whispered desperate bargains to the shadows. And he had answered.

But at what cost?

My jaw tightened, and I forced the words past my trembling lips.

"And what did it cost you?"

Surely nothing more than a flick of his hand, a moment of effort. Men like him did not pay prices. They demanded them.

He leaned back, unconcerned. "Just some sacks of gold."

I blinked, startled.

"Couldn’t pass into Levian lands without crossing Selyre," he explained, as though we were discussing trade routes instead of lives. "A pack too small to matter, yet arrogant enough to hold a strong line of defense. Their wards are... irritating, I’ll admit. More trouble than they should be worth." He waved a hand lazily, dismissing them. "So, if we wanted to pass, a bargain had to be made. I wasn’t in the mood for a nonsense fight, so I let them have their way."

I could only stare at him, horror and disbelief crashing against each other inside me.

His voice was light, almost bored, as though bartering with gold and fire and blood were all the same currency.

My jaw clenched until it ached. "You speak of lives as if they’re nothing."

His eyes flicked to me, sharp again, the faintest gleam of amusement glinting in their depths. "And what are lives to you, little wolf? Did you not seize your chance to run while the flames licked at your heels?"

Shame scorched through me, because his words cut deep.

He wasn’t wrong. I had used the chaos to flee. My freedom had been carved from fire and ash.

But I would not let him twist the knife.

I straightened, even as my chest quivered with the effort.

"Why go through all of that? Why burn, why bargain, why chase me across borders? What exactly do you want from me, Alpha?"

He was silent for a beat, his eyes narrowing slightly as though savoring the question.

Then, with terrifying simplicity, he said, "You."

The word lodged in my chest.

My heart thundered. My throat tightened.

"What do I owe you?"

This time, he didn’t smirk. He didn’t shrug. He only straightened, the shadows around him seeming to thrum with power as he fixed me in his gaze.

"Your father owed me a mate," he said, mischievous gaze holding mine. "And so I came to claim you."