Claimed by the scarred Alpha

ÉTIENNE

Morning found Margaux still curled against my side, right there on the floor outside the infirmary doors, her head tucked into the crook of my shoulder and her breathing slow and even for the first time since everything had gone wrong the night before.

I hadn’t noticed how long we’d been sitting there until Laurent’s footsteps echoed down the corridor.

"You two actually slept out here," he said, his voice carrying the particular quiet people use around anyone who might still be sleeping.

"She did," I said. "I mostly just watched her."

He crouched down beside us, studying her peaceful face for a moment before glancing back at me.

I gathered her carefully into my arms, bridal style, careful not to jostle her awake, and rose to my feet. She stirred slightly against my chest but didn’t wake, and I carried her down the hall toward our room, Laurent falling into step behind me.

"Can the body be taken to the morgue?" he asked, once we’d reached the door.

"Yes," I said, setting her gently down on the bed, pulling the blanket up over her shoulders. "Thank you for handling that."

"What happened to Isabelle’s letters?" I asked, turning back toward him. "The other ones she wrote."

"I sent them out yesterday," Laurent said. "People should already have received them by now."

I nodded, something settling in my chest at that, one less thing weighing on the growing list of details I hadn’t yet found time to properly grieve.

"Thank you," I said again.

Laurent studied me for a moment, something careful in his expression.

"Are you okay?" he asked. "Seeing your family again. That must have hurt more than you’re letting on."

"Quite the opposite, actually," I said. "Seeing them fixed something I’d genuinely thought I’d already outgrown. Something I didn’t think still needed fixing at all." I let out a slow breath. "I can finally forgive myself completely. For all of it."

Something eased in Laurent’s face at that.

"I’ll be on my way, then," he said. "Let you two rest."

I watched him go, the door clicking softly shut behind him, and turned back toward the bed.

Margaux’s eyes were open.

"Hey," I said, crossing back to sit beside her.

"Hey," she murmured, her voice still thick with sleep.

I reached out and brushed a strand of hair away from her face, and she leaned into the touch slightly, something soft passing between us that neither of us needed to name out loud.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

"I don’t know yet," she admitted. "I heard my mother being mentioned. Where is she? Her body, I mean."

"The morgue," I said gently. "She’s not going into the ground until you’re ready. Whenever that is."

She nodded slowly, absorbing that.

"I also heard something about letters," she said. "Did she write others? Besides mine?"

"Three others," I said. "One for your brother. One for your father. One for your uncle Lucian."

She let out a long, tired sigh.

"I should visit Beaumont," she said.

"Why?"

"If she was as honest in those letters as she was in mine," Margaux said, "then she would have told them everything. Who she really was. What she and Lucian did to Beaumont and to you, to keep the truth buried." Her eyes met mine. "She would be a wanted woman there right now, if she were still alive to be wanted. I want them to know she’s gone. That whatever justice they think they’re owed, they’ll never actually get to collect it."

"I don’t know about that," I said carefully.

"What do you mean?"

"If she was truly honest," I said, "she would have told them you’re her daughter too. Not Vivianne’s. Hers." I watched the weight of that land on her face. "Alphas value their pride above almost everything else, Margo. They don’t take kindly to discovering they’ve been tricked for over decades, and they take even less kindly to the person who tricked them or their offsprings."

I hated saying the next part, but she deserved honesty more than comfort right now.

"I hate to say it," I said, "but I think your life at Beaumont is essentially over. Whatever place you had there before, it likely doesn’t exist anymore."

"He raised me," she said quietly. "Even if he disowns me the second he learns the truth, I still owe Isabelle that much. My mother. Whatever else she was, she raised me, and I think I owe her the dignity of not letting her die as some anonymous traitor no one in Beaumont ever properly mourns or hate."

I didn’t know how to respond to that.

I understood the sentiment completely. I also knew, with absolute certainty, that I would never let her walk into Beaumont territory right now, not with grief still coloring every decision she made, not when I had no idea what kind of reception waited for her there.

Grief made people reckless. In time, she’d understand that herself. I could only hope that understanding arrived before she did something neither of us could take back.

My phone rang.

I glanced at the screen, surprised to see the contact name, my inside person embedded at Beaumont, calling on the burner line we only used for genuinely urgent business.

"I’ll be right back," I told Margaux, pressing a quick kiss to her forehead before stepping out into the hallway.

I answered.

"What’s going on?"

"Beaumont is a melting pot right now," the woman said, her voice low and rushed. "Gamma Lucian has been exposed as a traitor. He’s on the run. Should be easy pickings for whoever finds him first, honestly, given how disorganized his own people are without him."

"That’s good news," I said. "Though I suppose I’m partly responsible for how that unraveled."

"There’s one more thing, Étienne," she said.

Something in her tone made my stomach tighten.

"They know who you are."

I stood there for a moment, processing that, wondering if Isabelle had included it in one of her letters after all, though it didn’t quite track given everything else she’d written. Still, I couldn’t think of another explanation that made sense.

"I always knew it would come out eventually," I said. "That’s not really a surprise."

"It’s more than that," she said. "They believe this was revenge from the start. That taking Luna Margaux was the entire point, the culmination of some plan you’d been building for years." Her voice dropped lower, grave. "Beaumont intends to start a war, Étienne."

"A war," I repeated, my grip tightening around the phone. "Over what exactly? A marriage they arranged themselves even if I did force their hand?"

"That’s the thing," she said. "They’re not framing it as political anymore. You had goals but your framed yours as wanting to extend Valcourt’s border. That sort of thing happens and is tolerated. This is not a broken alliance either, none of the usual language packs use when they want other territories to stay out of it. They’re calling it something else entirely."

"What are they calling it?"

"An act of war against the sanctity of marriage," she said. "They’re saying you used Margaux as a weapon, that you never intended honest partnership from the start, only revenge dressed up as marriage. And they intend to use your Archambault lineage. Framed that way, it stops being a private Beaumont matter and becomes something every pack with a daughter or a sister married off politically has a reason to care about."

I felt something cold settle low in my stomach.

"They’re building a coalition," I said.

"Exactly that," she said. "I’ve already heard three neighboring packs mentioned by name. Territories that owe Beaumont favors, or fear what it means if this kind of manipulation becomes an accepted precedent. Framed as an attack on the institution of mating itself and a rogue’s sick revenge, rather than a grudge between two Alphas, you become everyone’s problem. Nobody wants to be the pack that stayed silent while a common rogue infiltrated a bloodline for revenge."

"Clever," I said, bitterness threading through the word.

"There’s more," she said, hesitating in a way that told me the worst of it was still coming.

"Say it."

"They don’t just want Valcourt weakened," she said. "They don’t want reparations, or a forced annulment, or even your title stripped. I heard it directly from someone in the room. They intend to end your life, Étienne. Publicly, if they can manage it. Quietly, if they can’t. Either way, they consider your death the only acceptable resolution to this."

I stood there in the hallway, absorbing that, my mind already racing ahead toward everything it meant. Sentinels to reposition. Alliances to shore up before Beaumont could poach them first. A conversation with Margaux I didn’t particularly want to have right now, given everything else already sitting on her shoulders.

"How much time do I have," I said, "before this coalition actually mobilizes into something with teeth?"

"Days, maybe," she said. "A week if you’re fortunate. They’re still gathering commitments. Nobody wants to move first and risk standing alone if the others back out."

"Keep listening," I said. "I need names. Every pack they approach, whether that pack agrees or refuses. I need to know exactly who we’re facing before this becomes public enough that posturing replaces honesty."

"I’ll do what I can," she said. "Be careful, Étienne."

"Understood," I said. "Thank you. Truly."

I ended the call and stood there for a long moment, staring at the closed door behind which Margaux was still recovering from losing her mother barely twelve hours ago, and I understood, with a clarity that settled heavy and immediate in my chest, that whatever peace we’d found in that hallway last night had just become considerably more fragile than either of us had realized.

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