The Devil’s Bargain: The Price of Power

Chapter 4

CLARA

“Please,” I begged the shopkeeper, my voice breaking. “Just some bread. I can work for it.”

The woman looked me up and down with disgust. “We don’t hire your kind here. Move along.”

I stumbled out of the small village bakery, my stomach cramping with hunger. Three days I’d been wandering this human settlement, and every door had slammed in my face. Every person had looked at me like I was diseased.

“Excuse me,” I called to a man loading supplies onto a wagon. “I’m looking for work—”

“Get away from me.” He spat on the ground near my feet. “Filthy beggar.”

My hands shook as I approached a group of women by the well. Maybe if I explained, if I told them I wasn’t really a beggar, just someone who’d lost everything…

“What do you want?” one of them snapped.

“I just need help,” I whispered. “Food, work, anything—”

They looked at each other and burst into laughter.

“Look at the size of her,” one giggled. “Like a cow escaped from the field.”

“Probably ate herself out of house and home,” another added. “No wonder she’s begging.”

“Please,” I tried again, tears streaming down my face. “I’m not asking for charity. I can work—”

“Work?” The first woman’s voice was vicious. “Who would hire something like you? You’re disgusting. Revolting. A waste of space and air.”

“Go die in a ditch somewhere,” the third woman snarled. “The world would be better off.”

I ran. Stumbled, really, my vision blurred with tears, my heart shattering all over again. Their laughter followed me, echoing in my ears like a death knell.

I collapsed behind an abandoned building, sobbing until I couldn’t breathe. The broken mate bond throbbed in sync with my heartbeat, a constant reminder of my worthlessness. Even strangers could see it—how pathetic I was, how undeserving of basic human kindness.

‘They’re right,’ the dark voice whispered. ‘You are disgusting. You are worthless. You should just die.’

But underneath the despair, something else was growing. Something hot and terrible and consuming.

Rage.

I pushed myself up, wiping the tears from my face with shaking hands. My feet turned toward the forest, toward the cabin hidden in its depths, toward the man who’d offered me everything.

The walk back to Silas felt like a funeral march. Each step carried me further from the girl I’d been and closer to something else entirely. Something that would make them all pay.

I found him waiting on his porch, like he’d known I’d return.

“Ready to stop being a victim?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.” The word came out like a hiss. “I want the potion. I want the power. I want them to suffer.”

Silas smiled, and this time it reached his eyes. “Then let’s begin.”

He brought out the bottle again, that dark liquid shimmering in the lamplight. “You understand the terms? Five years of power in exchange for your life on your thirtieth birthday?”

“I understand.” My voice was steady now, cold. “I trade twenty-five years of misery for five years of making them all burn.”

“Then drink.”

I took the bottle with steady hands and drained it in one gulp. The liquid burned going down, then exploded through my veins like liquid fire. I screamed, my body convulsing as magic rewrote every cell.

When it was over, I was still me—but different. I could feel the change beginning, subtle but undeniable.

“It will take a year,” Silas explained as I caught my breath. “One drop each morning, and the transformation will be complete. By the end, you’ll be everything they said you could never be.”

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The year passed in a blur of daily potions and training. Silas taught me things I’d never dreamed of—how to read people’s desires, how to manipulate with a glance, how to wield beauty like a weapon.

Each morning, I watched in the mirror as my body changed. The weight melted away, my features sharpened and refined, my hair grew lustrous and thick. By month six, I was pretty. By month nine, I was beautiful. By month twelve, I was devastating.

“You could stay,” Silas said on the last day, his eyes drinking in my transformation. “Forget about them. Build a new life here with me.”

I looked at my reflection—no longer Clara Wren, the fat, rejected failure. Now I was Liora Rivers, a goddess among mortals. My Hazel eyes sparkled with power, my body was perfection itself, and my smile could bring men to their knees.

“No,” I said, turning away from the mirror. “I didn’t sacrifice my life to hide in the woods. I did it to make them remember what they threw away.”

“Revenge is a dangerous game, Liora.”

“Good.” I smiled, and even I could feel the predatory edge to it. “I want it to be dangerous. I want them to fear what they created.”

Silas sighed but handed me a small bag. “Money for your new life. Papers with your new identity. And remember—you have four years left. Make them count.”

I took the bag, my heart pounding with anticipation. Four years to destroy everyone who’d destroyed me. Four years to watch Damien realize what he’d lost. Four years to see Sage’s perfect world crumble.

“They thought they were casting out a weak little lamb,” I said, looking back at the cabin one last time. “They have no idea they’re about to face a storm.”

I walked away from Silas’s cabin, from Clara Wren’s grave, from everything I’d been. Behind me lay weakness and pain and rejection.

Ahead lay the Moonlight Pack, completely unprepared for the hurricane that was coming their way.

Let the reckoning begin.