Reforging the Alpha

Chapter 3: THE WEIGHT OF THE FORGE

The basement grew steadily hotter as Clara worked. The blue cone of the propane torch was turned to its maximum output, filling the room with a dry, intense heat that made Tariq’s tailored jacket look entirely ridiculous. He had stripped it off, throwing it into a corner, leaving him in a dark grey silk shirt that clung to the sweat-slicked muscles of his back.

He stayed on the opposite side of the workbench, his large hands resting on the edges of the wood, his amber eyes never leaving Clara’s face. He was watching her fingers, analyzing every movement of her wrists, searching for any sign of treachery.

Clara ignored him. She had to. If her mind wandered for even a second, the alloy would spoil, and the resulting gas would suffocate everyone in the room.

She placed the ladle containing Tariq’s blood onto a small iron ring over a secondary burner, keeping the heat low so it wouldn't scorch. Then, she took a small piece of pure copper wire—ninety-nine percent electrical grade—and dropped it into her main crucible.

"Why copper?" Tariq asked, his voice low, vibrating through the roar of the gas.

"Copper is a conductor," Clara said, her eyes fixed on the metal as it began to turn a deep, cherry red. "Not just for electricity. For intent. For life-force. Silver hates copper because copper is vulgar, common. But silver will always move toward copper if it’s heated to the exact temperature of a living body."

She added a pinch of the white borax crystals. The chemical hissed, clearing the surface oxides from the melting metal until it looked like a perfect, mirror-bright pool of liquid sun.

"Your father," Tariq said suddenly, his eyes narrowing as he watched her steady hands. "He was Matthew?"

Clara's hand trembled slightly, a single grain of borax dropping outside the crucible. She didn't look up. "How do you know that name?"

"The Council keeps records of the bloodlines they broke," Tariq said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion, like a historian reading an old ledger. "The Smith-line of the western coast was thought to have ended in the nineties during the purge of the Badagry packs. Matthew the Forger escaped. My father hunted him for three years before he gave up the scent."

"Well, your father was sloppy," Clara said, her jaw tightening as she used her tongs to lift the white-hot crucible from the furnace. "My father died in his bed. Coughing up his lungs, but in his own bed."

She moved the molten copper over to the ladle containing Tariq’s blood.

"Stand back," she warned.

Tariq didn't move an inch.

Clara poured the liquid copper directly into the pool of Alpha blood.

The reaction was instantaneous and violent. A thick, violet smoke erupted from the ladle, filling the room with the intense scent of iron and crushed leaves. The blood didn't burn away; instead, it seemed to fuse with the metal, turning the liquid copper into a strange, dark, oily purple alloy that didn't behave like normal metal. It moved within the ladle like it was alive, sluggishly turning against the sides of the iron.

"Bring him up," Clara commanded, her voice sharp.

Tariq reached down and lifted his brother’s head, propping the boy’s shoulders up against his chest. The teenager’s face was almost completely black now, his lips blue, his breathing reduced to a wet, rattling gasp.

Clara drew a deep breath, her own hands shaking now. She took a small, flat steel trowel—an old tool her father had used for smoothing casting sand—and dipped it into the purple alloy. The metal coated the steel like thick syrup.

She stepped to the boy's side. The heat radiating from the wound was ice-cold—a strange, unnatural paradox that made her fingers numb as she neared it.

"This is going to hurt him," she said, looking up into Tariq’s amber eyes. "And it’s going to hurt you. If you let go of him, the metal will set in his chest and kill him."

"He won't move," Tariq said, his voice dropping into a register that was pure, solid granite. He locked his massive arms around his brother’s torso, pinning the boy’s limbs against his own body. "Do it."

Clara pressed the hot, purple-coated trowel directly onto the open, silver-poisoned wound.

A high-pitched, screeching sound—like metal scraping against stone at high speed—ripped through the basement. It wasn't the boy screaming; the sound was coming from the wound itself.

The teenager’s body went completely rigid, his muscles tight enough to c***k his own ribs. A plume of black, greasy smoke rose from his chest where the purple alloy met the cauterized white flesh.

Tariq roared, his eyes flashing a brilliant, terrifying gold as his own veins swelled along his neck and forehead. The sensory bond of his blood in the alloy was dragging the pain straight into his own system, but his grip on his brother never loosened by a fraction of a millimeter.

Clara watched with wide, intense eyes as the ink-black veins along the boy's neck began to twitch.

Slowly, agonizingly, the blackness began to reverse its flow. Like ink being sucked back into a pen, the poison retreated from the jaw, down the throat, and down the shoulders, crawling back toward the central wound.

The purple alloy on the trowel was changing color now, absorbing the darkness, turning into a dull, brittle, slate-gray crust that looked like dried mud.

"Hold him!" Clara yelled as the boy made one final, convulsive heave.

With a sharp c***k, a small, jagged piece of metal—the broken tip of the assassin’s blade—was rejected by the flesh, popping out of the wound and landing with a dull clink on the concrete floor.

The black veins vanished completely. The boy’s skin instantly turned from a bruised ash-gray back to a healthy, deep brown. His chest rose and fell in a deep, clean, peaceful breath. He had stopped twitching. He was asleep.

Clara stepped back, her legs suddenly turning to water. She dropped the trowel into a bucket of water, a loud hiss of steam filling the room.

She leaned against her forge, her chest heaving, looking at the tiny piece of silver-alloy metal resting on her floorboards.

Tariq lowered his brother back onto the table, his own breathing ragged, his silk shirt soaked through with sweat. He looked down at his brother, then at the floor, and finally at Clara.

The monstrous, predatory amber glow in his eyes slowly receded, replaced by a deep, dark brown that was remarkably human, though no less intense.

"You saved him," Tariq said, his voice quiet, almost reverent.

"I kept him from dying," Clara corrected, her voice trembling as the adrenaline began to leave her system. "The wound still needs to heal. But the silver is out."

She pointed to the tiny shard on the floor.

"Now," she said, looking straight into the Alpha’s eyes. "Tell me who the hell is running around Lagos with a forged Smith-blade, because whoever it is, they didn't get that metal from a normal market."