Claimed by the scarred Alpha

ÉTIENNE

The memory came without invitation.

Summer.

I was probably thirteen then. Maybe younger. Old enough to remember the heat sticking to my skin, not old enough to understand why certain moments stayed with you afterward.

The afternoon dragged in that strange way summer afternoons do. Too lazy to matter, too bright to forget. I sat at the edge of the pool with my feet in the water while Margaux floated on her back nearby, arms spread wide like the whole sky belonged to her.

She had a forget-me-not tucked behind her ear.

I kept telling myself I was not staring. My eyes just happened to drift there every few seconds because there was nothing else worth looking at. Because the flower was bright against her hair. Because the water kept moving around her slowly enough to make everything else feel still.

Then she turned her head and caught me.

I looked away so fast my neck hurt and stared hard at the water by my feet like I had suddenly discovered something important there.

Her laugh came softly. The kind that sounded like she already knew exactly what I had been doing.

"I am parched," she said dramatically, speaking more to the sky than to me. "Truly dying, I think."

"I can get lemonade," I said immediately.

I had said it too quickly and regretted it the moment the words left my mouth. They sat there between us for half a second too long before I pulled my feet from the water and rubbed them dry against the grass because the towel was too far away and I did not feel like going back for it. I went inside before anyone could say anything else, moving fast enough to make it seem like I had somewhere to be.

The kitchen was cooler than outside. Quiet too. The kind of quiet that only happened in the middle of the afternoon when everyone else was either resting or pretending to. I opened the refrigerator and reached for the lemonade, letting the cold air spill over my face while I grabbed a glass from the cabinet.

That was when I heard Margaux’s mother, Vivianne, speaking in the sitting room.

Not loudly. If anything, too softly. Like she was ashamed of what she was saying, even before she finished.

"I do not understand what is happening to me."

I paused with the glass halfway off the shelf.

"It feels like I am getting mad."

The words settled strangely in my chest. I stayed where I was, even though I knew I should not have. The sitting room was just past the archway beside the kitchen. Close enough that their voices carried clearly when they spoke low.

"I have wanted to talk to the head healer," Vivianne continued. "But the cankerworm it would bring." She laughed quietly then, though there was nothing amused in it. "A mad Luna. Do you know how many women would love an excuse to tear me out of this position?"

My mother murmured something I could not catch.

"I was just a Gamma who married up," Vivianne said. "The Beaumonts only tolerated diluting their bloodline because of what Lucian offered them. If people start believing I am schizophrenic..." Her voice thinned around the word. "Armand will not defend me. If anything, I think he would like an excuse to dump me and marry up finally. He will remove me from the pack strategically and call it mercy."

Something about hearing her say that made me grip the glass tighter.

My mother spoke again, soft and reassuring in the way she always did when somebody came to her unraveling at the seams.

But Vivianne kept going.

"I do not think I am mad."

Silence followed that. Not long. But sure, long enough to make the room beyond the doorway feel heavier.

"There are creatures that come to me."

The refrigerator hummed behind me. Somewhere outside, I could hear water shifting faintly from the pool.

"They say they want to make deals," she said. "I even asked them what they were once... and... they told me what they were. Some were dead people who did not want to leave this world behind until their unfinished business was finished. Others..." She hesitated. "Others wanted to remain here until the end of time and would make a deal to ensure that remained the case."

My mother sighed softly.

"Vivianne, those things are not real. You are overwhelmed. Armand is difficult, the pack is demanding, and you are exhausted. That is all."

I looked down at the counter without really seeing it.

"There is a thread I see on our hands right now," Vivianne said.

My mother sounded confused. "What thread?"

"I do not know." Her voice lowered further. "But it is everywhere lately. The children have it too. Étienne and Margaux have a red thread tied to their pinkies."

Before I could stop myself, I looked down at my own hand.

Nothing was there—just my fingers around the glass.

My mother laughed softly then, affectionate and dismissive at once. "The red string of fate? Vivianne, you are working yourself into a state of fear over nothing. I will find someone outside the pack to help you sleep—some herbs for your nerves. You will be alright. I assure you."

For a second, I thought Vivianne would let it go.

Then she spoke again, quieter this time.

"But the thread connecting us..."

Something in me tightened.

"It is black."

My mother said that sounded ominous.

Then Margaux ended that conversation when she came careening through the hallway doorway, screaming, "Étienne. For goddess sake, where is the lemonade?"

Both mothers appeared almost immediately after that. Whatever had been sitting in that room before vanished so fast it made my stomach twist.

"It is in the kitchen," I said, lifting the jug slightly.

"Well, obviously."

Margaux took it directly from my hands before I could reach for another glass.

Vivianne frowned. "Margaux."

"What?" she asked, already drinking from the jug.

"You are not five."

"She asked where the lemonade was, not where the glasses were," I muttered.

Margaux pointed at me immediately without looking away from the jug. "See? Étienne understands me."

"That is unfortunate for him," my mother said.

Margaux swallowed and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "You people are obsessed with unnecessary decorum."

"You were raised with decorum," Vivianne replied.

"And I reject it bravely."

Vivianne looked at her then, properly looked at her, and something in her face softened in a way that made me glance away afterward before I understood why.

"She gets that from Armand," my mother said.

"No," Vivianne answered quietly. "That part is mine."

The memory released me.

The corridor reappeared around us. I stared at the stone floors and the uneven weight of my ankle with every step.

I looked at Margaux walking beside me and tried to sort out the logic of what she had just told me. A ghost. Theodore’s ghost. The actual dead man whose name I wore like a borrowed coat, manifesting in the infirmary where my wife had been recovering from an attack that had nearly killed her.

The immediate and reasonable conclusion of anyone would be that she had hit her head harder than anyone realized.

But... given what I knew... I wondered...

Fuck that!

"You hit your head too hard." I kept my voice flat. "Perhaps let the head healer check you out again."

"I mean it." She said it without looking at me. "Every word."

I wanted to leave it there. I had a very clean and logical reason to leave it there.

But the memory of Vivianne standing in that kitchen, saying there was a thread she could see on our hands years ago, suddenly sat somewhere uncomfortable behind my sternum.

"What is next?" I said, before I could decide not to. "We have threads on our fingers?"

She stopped walking.

I felt it through the bond before I saw it on her face. The surprise hit me like a fist to the chest, sudden and total. Her emotions crashed through the connection with enough force that I momentarily went rigid myself.

She turned to look at me, and I noticed that her eyes had gone wide.

"Yes." The word came barely above a whisper. "How do you..."

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