Chapter 70: Free Mind
ÉTIENNE
I turned toward Laurent with enough force that my ankle screamed in protest. The sharp pain radiated up my leg, but I ignored it. Margaux was here. In the dungeons. When she should have been resting in the infirmary under the head healer’s supervision.
"Why is she here?"
Laurent met my stare without flinching. His expression carried something I couldn’t quite read. Exhaustion mixed with resignation, maybe.
"The head healer cleared her." He gestured vaguely toward Margaux, who was still clinging to Chris through the bars. "She was worried about her friend. How could I hold her back?"
I looked back at them. At the way their fingers laced together with desperate familiarity. At how Chris leaned as close as the platinum would allow. At the tears still streaming down Margaux’s face while she apologized for suffering I’d orchestrated.
Worried?
"That much is clear."
The words came out flatter than I intended. I forced my attention back to Laurent and really looked at him for the first time since he’d arrived.
His hair sat disheveled in ways that suggested he’d been running his hands through it repeatedly. His jacket hung slightly askew. The normally precise lines of his appearance had softened into something more rumpled. More... human.
"Are you alright?"
Laurent’s jaw worked silently for several seconds. When he finally spoke, his voice came out quieter than usual.
"I am..." He paused. "Mostly."
His eyes drifted past me toward where Margaux and Chris still clung to each other through the cell bars. Something passed across his features that looked almost like longing mixed with old grief.
"I do hope... I do hope you do not mess this up."
The statement landed wrong. It felt too personal. It was weighted with implications I didn’t want to examine.
"What are you talking about?"
Laurent’s gaze snapped back to mine. His expression hardened into something that looked almost like determination.
"I understand that you want revenge for what was done to you." He crossed his arms over his chest. "But she also wants redemption, and those two paths cannot cross when they are on uneven ground."
My spine went rigid. The dungeons suddenly felt too small. Too confining for whatever conversation Laurent was trying to force.
"You cannot care for her while simultaneously hurting her." His voice dropped lower but lost none of its intensity. "You cannot have both. The duty you have to your dead parents and your bond with her. At this point, I fear you have to choose one."
Heat crawled up my throat. My hands clenched into fists at my sides hard enough that my nails bit into my palms.
"You really have to start dropping this." The protest came out sharper than I’d intended. "I do not love—"
"Deny it all you want." Laurent cut through my words without hesitation. "But we all have eyes, and we can see."
The certainty in his tone made something twist uncomfortably in my chest. I wanted to argue. To tell him he was wrong. That whatever he thought he saw was just projection or wishful thinking or anything except the truth he was trying to name.
"You will hurt yourself..." Laurent continued before I could formulate a response. "Her and Séverine as well if you do not get your act together."
A nervous laugh bubbled up from my chest. The sound came out wrong. Too high. And way too strained.
"And you said something did not happen when it clearly did." I gestured toward his disheveled appearance. Toward the haunted look that hadn’t quite left his eyes. "You are mad, and you are projecting on me."
Laurent’s expression shifted. Something passed across his features that looked almost like acceptance mixed with bone-deep weariness.
"I am mad, but I do not think I am projecting on you anymore."
The admission caught me off guard. I’d expected him to deny it. To deflect or change the subject or do anything except acknowledge whatever had just happened to leave him looking so thoroughly wrecked.
"There is something you do not know." Laurent straightened his shoulders like he was preparing for battle. "But I think it is time you do know."
Unease prickled along my spine. I didn’t want to hear whatever confession was building behind his teeth. I didn’t want to know what secret he’d been carrying that had suddenly become too heavy to hold alone.
"The life you have now..." His voice steadied. "It belonged to someone I cared very deeply about, and though I was livid when Alpha Dorian brought you home and intended to parade you as his resurrected son, I fell under that madness too with time."
The words landed like stones dropped into still water. Ripples spread outward and multiplied.
"Some part of you did remind me of him..." Laurent’s hands uncrossed. They hung loose at his sides in a posture that suggested surrender. "And even I started to believe that you were sent my way for me to make something right. So I did project."
My throat tightened. The air in the dungeons felt too thick. Too hard to pull into my lungs.
"Laurent... I think..."
"Fuck, can you let me talk?"
Whatever this was about was heavy. He needed to let it all out. So I shut up.
"It is technically my fault that Margaux got hurt in the garden." The confession came out quiet but clear. "I was the one who told her about the forget-me-nots."
Rage ignited in my chest. Hot and immediate. The kind that made my vision narrow and my wolf snarl warnings in the back of my mind.
"Laurent, what the fuck—"
"I know." He raised one hand in a gesture that might have been an apology or simply an acknowledgment. "I know."
He sighed. The sound carried a weight that spoke of regrets piling up faster than he could process.
"But I saw the tragedy that was going to happen between you and..." He paused and swallowed hard. "Between you and her, and I thought I had to be the fucking fairy godmother and prevent a sordid history from repeating itself. A history like mine."
The anger in my chest twisted into something more complicated. I watched Laurent’s expression shift through emotions too quickly to identify. Grief mixed with guilt mixed with something that looked almost like hope dying in real time.
What did he mean by that? I was not aware that Laurent had a...
"But..." His voice dropped lower, cutting off my train of thought. "You and Margaux are not Theodore and me."
The name and how he said it made something click into place with sudden clarity. Understanding crashed through my confusion with enough force to make me take a step back.
"You and Theodore?"
Laurent didn’t answer. His silence confirmed what I’d just figured out. What he’d been holding back since the moment Alpha Dorian had brought me home and given me his dead son’s identity.
"Oh... I..."
The words stuck in my throat. What could I possibly say to that? How was I supposed to respond to learning that my Beta had been in love with the man whose life I’d stolen? That every time Laurent looked at me, he saw someone else? Someone he’d lost?
"Why did you not tell me?"
Laurent’s jaw tightened. He still didn’t answer the question directly. Instead, he pushed forward like the confession had broken whatever dam had been holding back everything else he’d wanted to say.
"You need to stick to one side." His tone hardened. "Your revenge or whatever else you want."
He looked past me toward where Margaux still stood at Chris’s cell. The movement was deliberate. Pointed in ways that made my chest constrict.
"The girl deeply cares about you." The statement landed heavily between us. "And you are going to hurt her, yourself, and Séverine."
My hands clenched tighter. Nails bit deeper into my palms.
"If revenge is your focus, burn it all to the ground now." Laurent’s eyes met mine again. "Reject her before our wolves and the goddess... Tell Séverine where your heart now lies, then start the war and get your pound of flesh."
The suggestion made my wolf snarl. Rejection wasn’t an option. It hated the mere thought of it.
"But keeping her in your cage..." Laurent continued before I could protest. "Do not act like this is anything other than what it is... your hate has done a full circle... and in that circle, it has turned into... I don’t even know what to call it, and I am sure neither do you."
The accusation hit harder than it should have. Harder than I wanted to admit. Because he wasn’t wrong. The hate I’d cultivated so carefully had started twisting into something else. Something I couldn’t name and didn’t want to examine too closely.
Laurent sighed. The sound carried defeat.
"But while she did carry fault in what happened to you, she was just a stupid teenager." His voice gentled slightly. "We know how most packs deal with women. Can you really throw all of that weight on her because she is somehow just a teeny bit more privileged than most?"