Claimed by the scarred Alpha

MARGAUX

"What kind of person is she?" Étienne asked as he put on his stag mask.

We made our way down the corridor toward the visitor’s lounge, and he asked it the way he asked everything, as if he were gathering evidence for some secret dossier rather than making conversation.

Still, I took the bait.

"She is one of the kindest people I have ever known," I said. "She would do anything for the people she loves." I paused. "She will also hate you to the bone."

He glanced at me sideways. "I disagree."

"You haven’t met her yet."

"I have a way with people."

A laugh nearly escaped me. "That is certainly one way to put it."

"Do try not to call me Étienne when she is around," he said, and his voice had gone back to practical.

I nodded and said nothing else.

The visitor’s lounge branched off the main entrance corridor, a space that managed to look expensive yet remain cold, the kind of room built to dazzle, not to comfort. Shanelle perched on the edge of a chair, trial file in her lap, her posture stiff with the discomfort of someone sitting out of duty, not relaxation.

She was on her feet the moment she saw me.

The file landed on the cushion beside her as she crossed the room in three quick strides and pulled me into a hug that was all instinct, nothing held back. Her arms locked around me, fierce and unyielding, and I felt her breath shudder out against my shoulder, the long, shaky exhale of someone who had been holding it since that unexpected phone call.

"You look terrible," she said into my hair.

That was one way to put it. "Thank you."

She drew back, holding me at arm’s length, her gaze sweeping over my face with the meticulousness of someone taking inventory. She checked my throat, my arms, then gently tilted my chin to inspect my cheek. I let her, knowing resistance would only drag things out.

"I’m fine," I said.

"It looks like you have a bruise here." She touched just below my jaw, light as anything.

"I am fine, Shanelle."

Her gaze slid past me to Étienne, who lingered a few feet behind. Whatever she saw in his face, she disliked. Her expression barely changed, but a familiar stillness settled in—the kind that meant her mind was made up.

She picked up the file and held it out to him.

"There." Her voice was pleasant on the surface, but it meant the opposite underneath. "Your precious file, Alpha Theodore."

Étienne took it. "Thank you for bringing it personally."

"It was not for you."

"I assumed as much."

She looked at him for another moment, then turned back to me. "Are you eating? They are feeding you properly?"

"Yes."

"Are you sleeping?"

"Shanelle."

"I am asking basic questions." She folded her arms. "Forgive me for wanting to know whether my best friend is being kept like a person or like a trophy. Your husband here did not hesitate to show you as a conquest on your fucking wedding day."

Étienne said nothing. I could feel him behind me, present and quiet, absorbing the room the way he did.

"When does my brother get released?" Shanelle asked, directing it at him with the blunt efficiency of someone who had decided to deal with a problem directly rather than around it.

"Immediately." He turned to Laurent, who had appeared in the doorway with his usual unhurried timing. "Help them out, will you?"

Laurent inclined his head. "Of course."

The four of us moved through the estate toward the lower levels, and Shanelle fell into step beside me while Laurent and Étienne walked slightly ahead. She waited until there was enough corridor between both men and us before she started talking, which was not very long at all.

"This place is enormous," she murmured, her voice dropping. "Unsettling, really. It feels like it was designed to make people feel small."

"You get used to it."

"You should not have to get used to it." She glanced ahead at Étienne’s back. "He is taller up close. I thought monsters were supposed to be squat and ugly."

"Shanelle."

"I am just making an observation." She paused. "He also walks like he owns every room he enters, and he probably does, which somehow makes it worse."

"He is the Alpha."

"He is a tyrant who threatened our entire pack to get a wife." Her voice stayed low, but it had an edge in it now. "How is this place actually treating you? And I do not mean the sanitized version you gave me on the phone or back at the lounge."

I remembered the bathtub. The garden. The cold infirmary floor and the panic attack in the study. I remembered Étienne’s forehead pressed to my shoulder, his arms around me in the corridor, and how none of it was ever meant to happen for either of us.

"It has been difficult," I said carefully.

"Define difficult."

"There have been some complications."

She looked at me the way she always looked at me when I was hedging, which was the look she had been giving me since we were young and I had tried to convince her I wasn’t upset about something that had very obviously upset me.

"You are defending him," she said.

"I am not."

"Every single thing I have said about him, you have softened or deflected. That is defending him, Margo." She slowed her pace slightly. "Please do not tell me he has already gotten into your head. Because that is a very specific and very concerning thing that happens to people in situations like—"

"It is not that."

"Then what is it?"

I looked ahead at the back of Étienne’s head, at the way he was listening to something Laurent was saying with his face turned slightly to the side. He was not looking back at us. He was giving us the conversation deliberately, and that consideration was so specific and unexpected coming from him that I had no idea what to do with it.

We got down into the true pits of the dungeon, and Laurent got the keys from the sentinels standing guard.

"There are things I cannot explain right now," I said. "But I promise you I am not losing myself here."

Shanelle was quiet for a moment.

"We are friends," she said finally. "Whatever it is, you can tell me. You know that."

"I know."

The word slipped out softer than I meant, and she caught every bit of meaning in that softness, as she always did. She reached over and squeezed my hand, quick and unceremonious, and I squeezed back. We finished the walk in a silence that felt easy, not awkward.

Chris stood when we reached his cell, hands gripping the bars, jaw clenched with the strain of waiting longer than his patience allowed. The instant he saw Shanelle, his shoulders dropped. When his eyes found me, relief washed over his face so raw and sudden my throat tightened.

Laurent produced the key, and the cell door swung open.

Chris stepped out and gave his sister a quick, fierce hug before turning to me. His eyes scanned my face just as Shanelle’s had, searching for damage, and I let him.

"I’m alright," I said.

"You look—"

"I’m alright, Chris."

He held my gaze for a moment and then exhaled. "Okay."

"Thank you." I meant it, every word. "For coming. For trying. But please." I met his eyes. "Do not throw yourself into something like this for my sake again. I cannot ask you to bear that."

"You didn’t ask," he said. "I chose."

"Then choose differently next time."

He almost smiled. "You know I cannot do that."

"Try." I held his eyes. "I am not going through hell here. I need you to believe that so you can stop looking at me like I am already broken."

The other sentinels were released while Laurent managed the logistics with his characteristic efficiency. They came out looking considerably worse for the day they had spent in the lower level, and Chris spoke to them in low, clear sentences that left no room for question.

"You go back to Beaumont," he said. "All of you. Tonight." His voice carried the particular flatness of someone giving an order they expected to be followed without discussion. "Nothing about this leaves your mouths. Not to your families, not to the Alpha, my father, or to anyone who asks. You were never here."

One of the older sentinels nodded. "And you, sir?"

"I will follow shortly." He held the man’s gaze until the answer settled into place. "Go."

They bowed once, clean and unified, and filed toward the exit without argument.

When the last of them had turned the corner, Chris looked back at me.

"I am staying the night."

"No." The word came out before I could frame it better. "That is not necessary."

"You don’t know that." His voice was calm but certain. "That freak got what he wanted. I want to see whether that changes anything for you before I leave."

He glared at Étienne, who seemed to enjoy the attention more than he should have.

"He does not trust you here. Neither will the others." I tried to keep my voice reasonable. "It will cause problems."

"Good," Shanelle said. "Then I am staying too."

I turned to her. "Shanelle—"

"Valcourt welcomes friends and family of the new Luna. They are now an extended part of us, after all."

Laurent’s voice came from slightly behind my left shoulder, smooth and entirely too unbothered.

I turned around and gave him a look that I hoped would convey the full extent of my feelings on the subject.

He held my gaze without flinching, then leaned in slightly.

"I think," he said, very quietly, just for me, "that Étienne will be considerably less irritable with them here. Especially once he starts reading that file."

I looked at him.

He looked back at me with the expression of someone who had said exactly what they intended to say and had no plans to walk it back.

I considered it for a moment and realized he had a very valid point. Reading that file would reopen old wounds for Étienne. Would he not become cruel again?

And would it not be nice to have people I trusted and did not have to walk on eggshells around?

I said nothing further about Shanelle and Chris staying.

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