Claimed by the scarred Alpha

ÉTIENNE

I stepped out of the shower and toweled off quickly, pulling on the first clothes within reach. My hands were steadier now than they had been an hour ago, even if nothing beneath the surface had actually calmed.

Laurent was still there when I returned to the room, leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded across his chest.

"I’m coming with you," he declared before I could argue.

"I told you—"

"I had a minute to think about it," he cut in. "And I understand why you want to do this right now. You need somewhere to tip all that rage before it spills somewhere worse. A monster from your past is about as good a place as any to put it."

He picked up the mask from the table and held it out to me.

"But if you let your anger choose your next steps, you’ll make mistakes. So, of course, I’m coming."

I took the mask from him.

I didn’t have the words for what settled inside my chest at that, so I pulled him into a hug instead, quick and hard. He returned it without comment, one hand briefly tightening against my back before he let me go.

We barely spoke during the drive.

The trafficking spot sat on the edge of an industrial district, tucked among warehouses and shuttered factories, the kind of place designed to look abandoned to anyone who wasn’t already searching for it. By the time we parked a few blocks away and walked the rest of the distance, I’d already decided against wearing the mask. I tucked it into my jacket instead.

We went inside as customers.

The place was worse than I’d imagined from the intelligence reports. Low lighting designed to obscure rather than flatter. Music thudding hard enough to swallow sounds that should never have needed hiding. Everywhere I looked, men and women handled frightened people with the casual indifference of people moving furniture.

A boy who couldn’t have been more than sixteen flinched whenever someone’s hand came near him.

A girl huddled in the corner stared at the floor with the particular blankness of someone who had learned that crying only made things worse.

My jaw clenched until it ached.

A madame approached us, a painted smile stretched too widely across her face.

"What are you two looking for tonight?" she purred. "We have a very soft, delicate new girl. Just arrived. She’d serve you both beautifully."

Something inside me nearly broke rank right there.

Laurent caught the change in my expression before it could become something neither of us would be able to take back.

"We already have a room waiting," he interjected smoothly.

The madame pressed a manicured hand to her lips, her smile widening with obvious delight.

"An orgy, then. Okay. Enjoy yourselves."

She sauntered away without waiting for confirmation.

Laurent pulled out his phone and made a brief, murmured call. A few minutes later, another employee appeared and ushered us toward a private room upstairs, where our spies had been embedded for weeks, posing as reoccurring customers and quietly gathering information from inside.

We stepped through the door.

A girl sat on the edge of the bed.

My stomach dropped before I had time to register anything else.

One of the spies immediately caught the change in my expression.

"Alpha Étienne," he murmured urgently, "it’s not what it looks like. She’s with us. She knows what’s happening here, and she’s been helping us from the inside. We had to maintain our cover. If we refused service every time, we’d have been exposed. So we made sure we had someone in our corner."

The girl rose and gave us a cautious nod.

"He’s telling the truth," she confirmed. "They were the first men who came here and didn’t touch me. From the moment they arrived, they made it clear to everyone that I was theirs and no one else was to lay a hand on me."

Her gaze flicked toward the door before returning to us.

"The madame understood what they wanted and started collecting extra from them to keep me exclusively for their use. She thought they were simply paying for privacy, so she never questioned why they kept insisting that no other customer be allowed near me."

Her expression hardened.

"But they never touched me. Not once. Whenever another customer tried to approach me, they reminded him that I’d already been claimed. If someone got too insistent, they paid the madame more to make sure I was left alone. That arrangement kept me safe while they gathered information."

I studied her for a moment, then gave a measured nod even though my suspicion didn’t fully disappear.

"Where is he?"

"Upstairs." The second spy gestured toward the ceiling. "One more floor."

I glanced at Laurent.

"We begin."

Then I turned back to the spies.

"Start the fire."

They exchanged a grim look.

One of them faced the girl.

"Tell the others you’ve gotten onto our side. The ones you trust. Tell them it’s safe to move now."

She nodded and immediately started toward the door.

"We’ll handle the owners," the spy assured her. He crouched beside the bed and dragged out a duffel bag he’d hidden beneath it. When he unzipped it, the dull gleam of blades and firearms caught the low light.

He handed the bag to her and said;"This place is coming down tonight. Anyone who tries to stop you from getting the others out is an obstacle. Deal with them."

She took the bag without hesitation.

Laurent and I left them to it and headed for the stairs.

The moment my foot touched the first step, the music below seemed to fade into the background.

One floor.

That was all that separated me from the man I’d come here to find.

And this time, I wasn’t going to let my anger get there before I did.

The higher we went, the worse the sounds got. Behind one door, we could hear muffled crying. Behind another, there was someone begging in a voice too young to belong to this building at all. My hands curled into fists at my sides, and I forced myself to keep moving, one door at a time, toward the one that was supposed to matter the most.

We reached it.

Laurent knocked, and through the door I heard a struggle, a small voice pleading not to be touched, and a second voice, older, impatient, shouting back at whoever had interrupted.

"What?" the voice snapped.

I froze for half a second, my rage climbing so fast and so total that I nearly tore the door off its hinges right there.

I would not let another kid end up carrying what I still carried.

Laurent’s hand landed on my chest, holding me back, and he leaned close to the door instead.

"Room service," he said, in a soft and pleasant tone

He glanced back at me and flicked two fingers toward my face. I got the message and immediately pulled the mask on.

The door cracked open, and Laurent kicked it the rest of the way, sending it crashing against the wall.

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