Claimed by the scarred Alpha

MARGAUX

What I had done was bold. I felt it instantly, the corridor air rushing in to fill the space between us. My wolf, though, cared nothing for caution.

He loves us, she announced cheerfully, somewhere behind my sternum.

I kept walking.

He loves us not.

I kept my face even.

He loves us.

I pressed my lips together and stayed silent. Sparring with my own wolf in the middle of a hallway felt like a defeat I refused to claim.

The truth was simple: my shields were up, and I knew he could sense it. I felt him on the other side of the bond, not pressing, just testing the edges like someone testing ice before stepping forward. Curious. Unsatisfied. He had confessed something unplanned and watched me turn away, and now I offered him nothing to read.

Good.

He loves us, my wolf said again, deeply unbothered by my silence on the matter.

I pushed the infirmary door open.

The head healer glanced up from his worktable. His face flickered through several emotions before settling into the practiced neutrality of someone who knew reactions came at a cost.

"Luna Margaux." He straightened. His eyes moved to Étienne. "Alpha Theodore."

"She scratched something while encountering what we believe to be the magic user," Étienne said. His voice had gone fully practical again, that flat and controlled register that left no room for anything personal. "Whatever is under her nail needs to be scraped and preserved. We want to see what can be identified."

The head healer’s expression shifted. The professional in him overrode whatever personal feelings were operating beneath the surface, and he moved toward me immediately, reaching for his kit.

"Which hand?"

I held out my right.

He examined my nail with such focused attention that I felt less like a person and more like a puzzle waiting to be solved.

"Can it actually find anything?" I asked. "Realistically."

He worked carefully, extracting what was there with a thin instrument and transferring it to a sealed slide. "Nothing is definitive at this stage," he said. "But it could help tremendously, especially if they are still somewhere on these grounds pretending to be kin."

"What do you mean if they are still here?"

He passed the slide to an assistant with a short instruction, and the younger woman moved toward the back corridor at a near run. Then he turned back to me.

"No pure witch could survive hiding among wolves for any extended time. The smell alone would give them away within days. Wolves are territorial, and their noses do not forgive." He set down his instrument. "Unless they are part of this world already. Part of this pack."

The word landed quietly.

"Oh... a hybrid," I said.

Étienne moved closer. "I agree. I did think at first they were just an assassin. Someone brought in for a specific job." He paused. "But if Margaux is seeing them in broad daylight now, walking like they own the place, then perhaps more digging is in order." He looked at me directly. "You can recognize the face?"

I nodded.

"Good." He held my gaze for a moment longer than the conversation required. Then he pulled out his phone. "Excuse me. I need to speak to Laurent."

He crossed to the far corner and raised the phone to his ear, but his eyes flicked back to me before he turned away. I caught the glance, then met the head healer’s gaze, his expression unreadable.

"You are sort of nice now," I said.

He didn’t answer immediately. He busied himself tidying the instruments from the extraction, his movements suggesting he was deciding something.

"I have to be," he said finally. "Considering Alpha Theodore almost tore my throat out for the truth I spoke."

I remembered that moment clearly. The way Étienne’s hand had moved before thought could catch up with it, the genuine threat of it, and I felt something that might have been satisfaction and might have been something warmer.

"I didn’t think that would be enough to make you change direction, though," I said. "You struck me as the type to hold your ground."

He glanced at me briefly before looking back at his worktable. "Plenty of the reason I disliked you and was willing to find any avenue for the Alpha to dehumanize you, Luna Margaux, was because it was no secret how Alpha Theodore feels about Beaumont wolves." He picked up the slide from the assistant who had returned and examined it one more time before passing it back. "But it seems there are a few exceptions now."

I turned to where Étienne stood in the corner, his back to us, one hand pressed flat against the stone wall as he spoke in a low voice I could not catch. His shoulders held the tension of someone absorbing news that demanded instant action.

"If you will keep being open," I said, turning back, "can I ask something?"

The head healer looked at me with a mildly resigned expression. "You can ask. I am not obligated to answer."

He added, after a beat: "Luna."

I almost smiled. "He is not wearing a mask. I think you can tell that is not actually Alpha Theodore."

He looked me directly in the eye without blinking.

"I have no idea what any of that means," he said. "That is clearly Alpha Theodore." His gaze held mine steady and patient. "Is there something you are insinuating, Luna Margaux? Because... forgive my dumb self, I do not quite get it."

I nodded slowly. "Got it."

He sighed, not with exasperation, but with the weariness of someone long accustomed to carrying something heavy. He glanced at Étienne’s back, then looked away.

"It is unsettling," he said quietly, "seeing him in public without one of those masks. You have not even spent a full week here, and already he does not care about showing his face." He exhaled. "I can tell you are partly the reason."

I didn’t say anything.

"Forgive me for being blunt, because I will be whether you forgive me or not." He met my eyes. "I do not like you, Luna Margaux. That has not changed. But this is a good thing for him." His voice had lost its edge and gone somewhere more tired and more sincere. "When the accident happened, and I was brought in to help, he was obsessed with having many faces. He could hide behind many masks. He would spend hours choosing which one to wear for which occasion. It started to feel like the faces were armor for him." He paused. "It was like he viewed himself as a beast without it."

I knew exactly what he was talking about. I now knew some details of what he went through in the trafficking house, the deliberate destruction, the agony of it, and the why underneath the agony. The words settled in my chest with a particular weight.

I was about to respond when Étienne reappeared at my side.

"I assume you’ve gotten everything you needed," he said to the head healer.

The man nodded once. "I have sent it to the lab. We should have preliminary results within a few hours."

"Good." Étienne turned to me. "Let’s head to my study. Laurent is bringing the security feed along with a full list of the estate workforce, current and past. If you can put a name to the face, we move from there."

I nodded and followed him out. At the door, I glanced back at the head healer. He had already turned to his worktable, but something must have caught his attention because he looked up, and I smiled at him.

His face did something complicated. His guard held for half a second and then, briefly and against what was clearly his better judgment, the corner of his mouth moved upward. He caught himself almost immediately, and his expression fell back into something far more severe, but the moment had already happened.

I turned and walked out before either of us could acknowledge it.

In the corridor, Étienne pulled out his phone and looked at the screen.

"Looks like your best friend has grown cold feet." He didn’t look up. "Does she love her brother at all?"

"You still have Chris’s phone, right?" I said. "I’ll call her myself."

He reached into his pocket and held it out. "I switched it off to avoid unnecessary calls coming through. It might be locked."

I took it, powered it on, and typed in the passcode without pausing.

The phone unlocked.

Étienne made a sound beside me. I looked up.

His expression was doing something between amused and deeply unimpressed. "You know his password by heart."

"That is a weird hill to die on," I said.

He said nothing further, but the look on his face said several things without any of them needing words. I scrolled to Shanelle’s contact and hit call before he could find another angle to come at me from.

My wolf, somewhere underneath everything, was still humming.

Oh Goddess... he is jealous again. That can only mean that he loves us, she said, entirely too pleased with herself.

I pressed the phone to my ear and waited for Shanelle to pick up.

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