Claimed by the scarred Alpha

MARGAUX

Laurent cleared his throat.

Which made me look in his direction, and he let the moment breathe before he spoke.

"Since we cannot see whoever this is, but you can," he said, "perhaps you could describe them. We can have them drawn up, or we can just pick up traits by cross-referencing them against the digital workforce file. If they are part of this pack, they will be in there."

I eased away from Étienne and straightened, smoothing my dress with both hands, searching for something to do with the restless energy in my fingers.

"When has a description ever actually helped anyone find someone?" I said.

"Valcourt has good artists," Laurent said without apology. "And our tech is better than most people realize."

I lingered on the memory of those blue eyes, their uncanny intelligence at odds with a face that had materialized from nothing in a corridor. The sharp cut of his jaw, the exact hue of his skin in the bracketed light—all of it stayed with me.

I described him as precisely as I could, beginning with the eyes I could not forget. Laurent typed each detail into the tablet, his focus sharp and efficient, as if he had done this many times before.

When I finished, he ran it through whatever system the tablet was connected to and studied the results for a moment.

"Twelve Omegas," he said. "Twenty sentinels. Eight deltas. Those are the people whose physical features fall within the range you described." He held the tablet out to me. "You can go through them. See if any of them matches the face you saw."

I took it and started scrolling.

The profiles loaded one after another, faces attached to names, ranks, and years of service. I moved through them methodically, looking for something I couldn’t quite put into words beyond the certainty that I would know it when I saw it.

"I suppose there was something about you after all."

Étienne’s voice came from slightly behind my left shoulder, low and thoughtful. Not mocking. Just observing something he was turning over in his mind.

I kept scrolling. "What do you mean?"

"You were being targeted from the beginning." He paused. "Is that what it was for? This ability?"

"I don’t think so." I moved past another profile without recognition. "Before today, I couldn’t see him at all. The bathroom, the garden, I had no idea he was there. I only started seeing him in that corridor, and I think I now know why. When I saw Theodore’s ghost..."

Laurent had gone still when I said those words.

I looked up from the tablet and found him watching me with a stillness so intense it felt as if even his breath had paused.

"Theodore gave me something," I said. "When he asked me to help him, and I agreed, he said he would give me a boon. I didn’t know exactly what that meant. But when he left, right before he vanished, he said something." I tried to recall the exact words. "He said something like, if you can see it, you can run from it. I didn’t understand it then."

Laurent’s jaw worked. He pressed his lips together and looked at the floor for a moment.

"But now... I believe he is the reason I can see them now," I said. "Whatever he gave me, that was it."

The silence in the study changed, thickening around us. Étienne stayed quiet long enough that I glanced over and saw him lost in thought, his eyes fixed on the distance, wearing the look he got when he was drawing scattered threads together.

"You should talk to your mother," he said.

I looked at him.

"What is happening to you seems similar to what I remember from when we were younger," he said. "She had that same quality of seeing things others couldn’t. She might know considerably more about it than either of us does." He paused, and then added with the reluctance of someone admitting something they would have preferred not to: "She might actually be able to help you."

I thought about it.

The truth was, he was right. I had not been there when mother had been confessing these things to his mother. She, after all, had the bad habit of hiding her every flaw. But he could not be lying. not with everything that he had revealed. So, mother had to be in the know about this.

"I will call her tonight," I said.

I returned to the profiles, scrolling through face after face. None of them held the singular quality of those blue eyes, none of them sparked the recognition I was waiting for.

I reached the end.

"It’s none of them," I said.

Laurent nodded slowly, unsurprised. "He is a warlock. I would assume there is magic available to him that includes changing his face." He set the tablet on the desk. "It could genuinely be anyone."

"I don’t believe that." Étienne moved away from the window where he had been standing and crossed to the desk. His voice had taken on the particular flatness that came before he had made up his mind about something. "I think this is deliberate opposition. Someone wants to demonstrate that I cannot protect what is mine." He said it plainly, without self-consciousness, and I felt the word mine settle somewhere in my chest before I could redirect it. "A bride forcibly taken from Beaumont is being stalked and attacked on my own grounds. A sentinel is dead. This has the marks of internal opposition all over it. Someone who wants to show the pack I am not fit to lead."

"Then what do you intend to do?" Laurent asked.

"For every wolf with blood and stake in this pack swears their vows again." He said. "All of them. It clears the field, and if I happen to be wrong, that ends there."

Laurent’s expression shifted into something between concern and resignation. "That includes the elders, Étienne. Alpha Dorian’s extended family. If you call a vow renewal without warning, they will read it as an accusation. They already distrust a false Alpha. This could push the ones who are still neutral into the opposition’s hands."

"Then I will tell them exactly what we are facing." His voice did not waver. "If that explanation isn’t enough for them, then they were never going to be neutral."

"Alpha Dorian’s word only extends so far."

"He will support it."

"Because he loves you without question," Laurent said, and there was something in the way he said it that was not quite criticism and not quite admiration.

"That is exactly it." Étienne looked at him steadily. "And I intend to use all of that to my advantage, send word to every wolf with blood and stake in this pack. That is final."

Laurent held his gaze for a moment, then exhaled through his nose.

"If that is what you want," he said. "I will see to it."

Étienne glanced at the window. The light outside had shifted into something amber and long, the particular quality of early evening.

"It is nearly dinner," he said. "I need a bath."

A knock then came at the study door.

"Come in."

The sentinel who entered was young, and he bowed with the slightly self-conscious detail of someone who was still getting used to doing it.

"There is a wolf at the gate," he said. "Her name is Shanelle. She claims that she is a friend of the Luna, and she has a file she says you wanted."

I blinked. "That was fast."

"She probably used the arcs," Étienne said.

I frowned at that. "She wouldn’t have the blood right. She is not Valcourt."

He turned to look at me. He took one step closer, and his voice dropped to something quieter and considerably more deliberate.

"We are married, remember."

Heat rushed to my face before I could stop it, rising all the way to my ears. I had nowhere to look except at him, which only made things worse because the look he gave me was not helping at all.

He leaned back, and the almost-smile faded back into composure, but not quickly enough.

"You should come with me," he said. "A familiar face will help."

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