Claimed by the scarred Alpha

ÉTIENNE

I stood outside the infirmary where Margaux had asked to be alone, staring at the closed door as though the sturdy wood might somehow tell me what was happening on the other side.

It couldn’t, of course.

Still, I couldn’t make myself leave.

"It’ll be all right," Laurent murmured beside me, his arms folded across his chest.

I glanced at him.

"You keep saying that."

"Because I believe it." He looked toward the door. "Give her the day she needs."

I wasn’t so sure.

I had seen the way her hands trembled around that letter. I had seen the grief on her face when she looked at me and told me, without any real anger behind it, that she didn’t want to hear that everything was all right.

I understood.

She had just lost her mother. Whatever complicated history existed between them, whatever Isabelle had done or failed to do, Margaux was still entitled to be devastated by losing her.

She didn’t need me trying to make the loss easier for her.

But understanding that didn’t make the worry any easier to carry.

"She will not bounce back in a single day," Arania observed, drifting closer, her small wings beating in a slow, steady rhythm. "But she will be fine eventually. Grief like this takes its own time. It cannot be rushed, no matter how much you might wish to rush it for her sake."

I exhaled slowly.

"Why didn’t she come back, though?"

Arania’s gaze settled on me.

"Isabelle. Why is there nothing left of her at all?"

For once, Arania didn’t answer immediately.

She considered the question, her expression becoming more thoughtful.

"I am not entirely certain," she admitted. "But she must have seen reason to pour every ounce of her essence directly into destroying him. When she did so, she eliminated herself along with him."

Her eyes softened.

"It is tragic."

Then, somehow, she managed to make it worse.

"And also, in its own strange way, beautiful."

"Arania!" Ophelia snapped.

Arania blinked at her.

"What?"

She sounded genuinely confused.

Ophelia stepped forward, her expression pinched with apology.

"I’m sorry for her. She means well. She simply has an unfortunate way of expressing it sometimes."

I barely heard them.

My mind had caught on one part of Arania’s explanation and refused to let go.

Every ounce of her essence.

Nothing left.

"So there will be no afterlife for her?" I asked.

The words came more quietly than I expected.

"Nothing? Not even what Prim probably has now, however brief it might be?"

Ophelia’s expression softened.

"There may be some peace in total silence," she replied carefully. "But if you’re asking whether there is some continuation of the self, some place where she might remain as herself, or perhaps reunite with the people she loved before all of this..."

She hesitated.

"That isn’t what happened here."

Something cold settled beneath my ribs.

"What she gave was complete. Total. She did not leave enough of herself behind for anything to carry forward."

I swallowed.

And suddenly I was back in the grove.

I thought about the grove. About standing across from her with that blade caught between our two grips, both of us fighting for the right to be the one who disappeared tonight. If she hadn’t beaten me to it, if she hadn’t gone first, that would have been me standing in her place right now. Gone and with nothing left behind.

Could I have actually gone through with it?

I didn’t know the answer to that, and something about not knowing settled uneasily in my chest.

"We should be on our way now," Ophelia said gently. "But we wish you both the very best. Truly."

I forced myself to look away from the door.

"Thank you."

My voice came out rougher than I intended.

"For everything you did tonight. I don’t think either of us would still be standing here without you."

I glanced once more toward the infirmary.

"Valcourt will forever owe you."

Ophelia nodded, and Arania offered what might have been a small, respectful bow before the two of them turned to leave. The head healer fell into step behind them without a word, though he glanced back once before disappearing down the corridor after his sister, sympathy lingering in his expression.

The moment they were gone, Laurent clapped a hand against my shoulder.

"She’ll rise above this," he assured me. "She’s strong. Stronger than either of us give her credit for, honestly. You just need to be there when she needs you. That’s the whole job right now."

"I know."

I kept my eyes on the infirmary door.

I meant it. I knew what I needed to do. I just wasn’t sure I knew how to do it without trying to take some of her pain away, and I was beginning to understand that some pain could not be taken from another person. It could only be endured beside them.

"Étienne." Something in Laurent’s voice made me turn.

It wasn’t his usual teasing confidence or the steady reassurance he’d been offering me for the past several minutes. His voice had gone quiet, careful, almost uncertain.

I frowned. "What?"

He wasn’t looking at me anymore.

He was staring past my shoulder.

All the color had drained from his face.

"Can you see that?"

A chill crawled up my spine and I turned slowly, following his line of sight.

Two figures hovered at the end of the corridor.

They were translucent, faintly luminous, their forms shifting at the edges like smoke caught in a draft. The light passing through them should have made them look strange, unreal.

Instead, I recognized them instantly.

Recognition landed in my chest before my mind could catch up.

Yann?

My brother stood there exactly as I remembered him. Tall and broad-shouldered, with the same easy, crooked smile he used to wear whenever he thought something was funny and had decided I wasn’t clever enough to understand the joke.

And beside him stood my mother.

For a moment, I could only stare.

Tears blurred my vision almost immediately, and I blinked furiously, as though clearing my eyes might somehow make them disappear.

It didn’t. They remained there.

Both of them looking at me.

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t breathe properly.

There were a hundred things I had imagined saying to them over the years, especially to Yann. Things I had rehearsed in my head when grief was fresh, then buried when enough time had passed that I was supposed to have learned how to live without them.

None of those words came now.

My throat closed around every one of them.

"Yann?" His name finally escaped me, barely more than a whisper. "Mom?"

His smile widened.

It was so warm, so familiar, so painfully him that something inside my chest cracked open all over again.

"How have you been, Étienne?"

The simple question nearly broke me.

Because it was so ordinary.

So completely, absurdly ordinary.

As though he hadn’t been dead for years.

As though I hadn’t spent all that time learning how to exist in a world where I could never hear his voice again.

As though he had simply been away and had finally come home.

"Hello baby."

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