Claimed by the scarred Alpha

VIVIANNE

I wondered if my eyes had deceived me.

I hadn’t seen it, not at first, not when he’d walked into that corridor looking like a stranger wearing an unfamiliar face. It was only after, when he called my daughter by the nickname Margotine, that the resemblance climbed up through my chest and settled there like something cold taking root. That name. Nobody called her that anymore. Nobody except once upon a time, family and close friends and that nickname has been reserved for those who had known her as a child, back when the world still made sense and no one’s life had been rearranged by fire.

The one who had never seemed to let that nickname go even was her closest friend and mate at the time; Étienne.

I stared at him and the room tilted slightly around the edges.

It explained so much, all at once, in the cruelest possible way. It explained why my daughter had grown so cold toward me over these past weeks, why every message she sent carried a bite underneath the politeness, why she’d started questioning everything I’d ever told her about Étienne and the fate of that family. It explained the files. Goddess, the files. Why Valcourt had wanted them so badly, and, why Chris had been so desperate to hand them over that he’d risked everything doing it.

He kept coming closer.

"Are you alright?" he asked, and the concern on his face was the worst part of it, because it looked entirely genuine, like he had no earthly idea why the sight of him would unravel me this badly from the inside out.

I forced myself up off the floor where I’d fallen, using the wall for support, my palm flat against cool stone while my legs remembered how to hold weight again.

"You cannot deceive me," I said. "I know who you are."

He didn’t answer immediately, and that silence told me everything I needed.

"That is why you married her." The words tumbled out of me faster than I could organize them, understanding arriving in ugly, disjointed pieces. "Oh my goddess. That is why you have been so obsessed with my pack. My people." I felt the blood drain from my own face as I said it. "Revenge."

"What are you talking about?" he said, and it wasn’t even a question, more an accusation dressed up as one.

I closed the distance between us before I fully decided to, grabbed the front of his shirt with strength I didn’t know I still had at my age, and slammed him back against the wall hard enough that something rattled in the frame nearby.

"Do you think you can fool me?" I demanded.

He raised his hands akimbo like I was the crazy one. That did not stop me though.

"Where is my daughter?" I demanded said, even as he was entirely unbothered by my hands fisted in his collar, which frightened me more than if he’d fought back. "What sick plans do you have for her?"

Tears blurred my vision before I could stop them, hot and humiliating, spilling down over cheeks that hadn’t cried in front of a stranger in decades.

"Because Margo knew none of it," I continued. My voice cracked apart on her name. "Everything she did, every single decision, I pushed her into it. I forced her hand." My knees gave out entirely and I sank to the floor in front of him, my pride crumbling along with the rest of me. "Spare my daughter. Please... She is innocent."

He crouched down too slowly until we were level with each other, until I couldn’t avoid looking directly into a face that no longer carried the soft youth that had defined him for so many years, a face that had somehow become handsome in their absence, which felt like its own particular cruelty.

"It was fun at first," he said, quiet, almost conversational. "But I am not having fun anymore."

He reached out and wiped at my tears with his thumb, a gesture so tender it made my stomach turn, because tenderness from this man felt like being handled by something that had already decided my fate and simply hadn’t announced it yet.

"I remember begging too," he said.

Hearing that. That confirmation... My blood went cold in my veins.

"I know my whole family begged," he continued, his voice never rising, never breaking from that same level, terrible calm. "We said we were innocent. Over and over. Plenty of me believes you knew that too. That you knew we were innocent all along." His eyes held mine without blinking. "So why did we have to go?"

I did not know if this was the universe begging that I be honest but before I could even make a decision, his phone vibrated loudly.

I watched him reach into his pocket and pull out his phone, studying it for a long moment, his expression unreadable in the low light.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Nothing that should concern you." He didn’t even glance up. "Answer my question."

"How did you even survive?" The question tore out of me before I could stop it, some part of me needing to know despite every instinct warning me the answer would be worse than not knowing.

"It was hell," he said simply. "Your brother, Lucian made sure of it." He finally looked up from the phone. "Did he tell you what he did to me?"

"I asked him to spare you." My voice shook badly now, all pretense of composure gone. "Margaux did too. You were but a child. You did not deserve to die with them."

He smiled at that, and it was the smile that frightened me most of everything he’d done so far, because there was nothing cruel in it on the surface, nothing that announced itself as a threat, and yet it chilled me down to the marrow.

Because it almost looked like that smile told enough stories. He wanted to strangle me. To death.

"Thanks to you," he said, flexing his fingers because the alternative would be a lot more violent, "I was a sex slave to sick, depraved adults for many years." He let that sit in the air between us like a blade left resting against skin. "How kind of you. Thank you for thinking of the children."

I nearly retched right there on the floor, bile rising fast enough that I had to press my hand against my mouth for a moment before I could speak again.

"I didn’t know..." I tried to say at first but it was such a selfish copout.

I couldn’t be thinking about me now. Margaux. She was why I was here.

"Margaux," I managed. "Margaux didn’t know. Do not punish her for what she doesn’t know."

"I would never hurt Margaux!"

The force of it, the sudden crack in that terrible composure, actually settled something in me rather than frightening me further. It was the first honest reaction I’d gotten out of him since I’d realized who he was, the first crack that told me whatever else this man had become, whatever revenge he’d spent years building brick by brick, my daughter existed somewhere outside its reach.

I wiped roughly at my face, forcing myself to breathe, forcing the shaking in my hands to still.

"It is important I speak with her," I said. "There is something after her."

That caught his attention immediately. I watched it happen, watched the careful, cultivated calm slip for just a moment as real alarm bled through underneath it.

"What?" he said.

"A demon."

The word landed between us and hung there, and for the first time since I’d arrived at this cursed estate, I watched Étienne look genuinely, entirely unsettled.

"What?" he said again, and this time the question came out sharper, faster, all pretense of amusement gone from his voice entirely.