Claimed by the scarred Alpha

SÉVERINE

The dining room stretched before me, empty except for the polished silver and untouched place settings that reflected noon light in fractured patterns across white linen.

The Omega who’d set my plate down hovered near the doorway with her hands clasped in front of her apron. Her eyes didn’t quite meet mine when I asked the question that already had an answer written in the hollow quiet surrounding me.

"Did you reach out to the others?"

"Yes, Luna Séverine." Her voice came out soft and careful. "Alpha Theodore is occupied with matters that require his immediate attention. Invaders wee caught not too long ago. The new Luna is indisposed at the moment. And Luna Céline requested her meal be brought to her chambers."

I looked down at the food arranged on my plate. Eggs that had probably been perfect when they left the kitchen. Toast cut into precise triangles. Fruit arranged with the kind of artistic care that felt insulting given the circumstances. Like someone had thought pretty food would make this isolation more bearable.

I picked up my fork and took a bite of the eggs. They tasted like nothing. Or maybe everything tasted like nothing now. Hard to tell when your entire world had shattered a few hours ago and you were still picking psychological glass out of your heart.

"What about Alpha Dorian?"

The Omega shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "We decided to take his food up to him, Luna. He’s having one of his better mornings, but movement is still difficult and he heard about the situation with the new bride so he decided to just stay in his chambers."

"Wow." The word came out flat. "Everyone seems busy."

She nodded quickly, relief flickering across her face like I’d just given her permission to stop pretending to stop giving a fuck.

"Thank you," I said.

"Should I stick around? In case you need anything, Luna Séverine?"

For someone whose whole thing was pretending to give a fuck about higher ranks, the offer was genuine enough. It probably came from actual concern rather than duty. But the thought of having someone watch me eat alone while the rest of this house had the time of their lives made my teeth grind.

"No." I set my fork down with more force than necessary. The sound of metal hitting porcelain echoed in the empty room. "I would prefer no company at all."

She bowed and left without argument. Her footsteps faded down the hallway until even that small proof of another living person disappeared into silence that pressed against my eardrums like water.

I stared at my plate. At the cooling eggs and the toast that had probably gone soft by now. At the carefully arranged fruit that someone had taken time to make beautiful for a breakfast nobody would share with me.

Movement caught my eye. Black fur materialized on the table’s surface. My familiar took shape in his cat form and padded across white linen toward my plate with the kind of casual disregard for propriety that he wore like a second skin.

"It is unsanitary for a cat to be on the table."

He ignored me completely. His paws left no marks on the cloth as he stepped closer. Blue eyes fixed on my face with intelligence that had nothing to do with feline curiosity and everything to do with knowing exactly what I was thinking before I thought it.

"Is this not too much, Séverine?"

I picked up my fork again and cut into the eggs. They’d definitely gone cold. "Basking in my loneliness, you mean? I’d say it’s exactly the right amount of pathetic for the situation."

"This is not the time to joke, Mistress." His tail flicked once. Iy had the audacity to mix its sharp tongue with irritation. "You know I mean what you plan to do with the girl."

The eggs turned to ash on my tongue. I swallowed anyway and reached for my coffee. "Which girl? You’ll have to be more specific. There seem to be several causing problems at the moment."

"Mistress...."

It was about Prim no doubt and since it was clear he was not going to let it go. I let him have at it.

"The magic I helped you with is complex." He sat down and wrapped his tail around his paws. He looked like the picture of patience except for the way his eyes bored into mine. "There will be consequences."

"There are other marked ones, are there not?" I took another sip of coffee. It had gone lukewarm. Everything in this room seemed determined to be the wrong temperature. "We’ve done this before. We can spread the cost across multiple vessels so no single person bears the full weight."

My familiar’s ears flattened against his skull. It did not quite look like anger. It was something closer to resignation mixed with the kind of exasperation that came from watching someone walk toward a cliff edge while insisting the ground was perfectly solid.

"Do you even know how that Omega figured you out?"

I set my cup down and met his stare. "I am sure you will tell me whether I want to hear it or not. You seem determined to ruin what’s left of my appetite."

"One of the Omegas we marked as sacrifices for dire magic use was her friend." He spoke with the kind of clinical detachment he used when delivering bad news. "She noticed a pattern. Some serious magic we probably cast with no care in the world probably sent the consequences onto that girl, and she got sick. So sick that she eventually died."

My hand stilled halfway to reaching for more toast.

"Then we moved to Prim." His tail flicked again. "You marked Prim. That was when she realized what really happened to her friend. What she suspected, anyway. Then she kept watching you with the other Omegas, and what would you know? That was when she started connecting the dots. Every Omega you favored suddenly carried similar markings that looked like birthmarks within days. The girls you defended, the ones you comforted, the ones you treated gently when nobody else did. They all began getting sick afterward. She realized it was you. Her friend was only the beginning. Prim realized your kindness was never just kindness. It was the ritual, and she just wanted proof of that effect."

I forced myself to take another bite of eggs. They tasted like cardboard mixed with guilt. "Well, she is not sensitive to magic. She could never see you. So her suspicions meant nothing without evidence."

"Imagine if she were though." He leaned forward slightly. "Imagine if she could see me. If someone else in this house can."

"Well, they have not noticed yet." I pushed the eggs around my plate. "And now we are getting rid of her. Problem solved."

"If she could notice even without sight, someone else will notice eventually."

The fork clattered against porcelain. I gripped the edge of the table hard enough that my knuckles went white against dark wood.

"I do not rely on my magic all the time. These are desperate times. Desperate measures and all that tired justification."

My familiar watched me with eyes that had seen centuries of human foolishness and found mine particularly entertaining. "When the magic takes root and Prim attacks you at midnight like you want, an Omega will die for that. We cannot spread it this time around. The consequences have to transfer to one of the Omegas we’ve marked. Someone innocent has to pay the price."

"And it will be blamed on Prim regardless." I picked up my fork again. "She’ll be executed for attacking a Luna. For working with rogues. For whatever story you planted in her head while you were rearranging her memories. The marked Omega’s death will just be collateral damage that gets attributed to the same conspiracy."

He tilted his head. The gesture was almost human despite the cat form. "Well, you do have a point there. But..."

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