Claimed by the scarred Alpha

SÉVERINE

The footage played again. Frame by frame, I watched Étienne tear through his bedroom door like a man possessed. His face twisted with terror I’d never seen before. Not when we’d faced down rogues at the border one time while travelling. Not when his past had clawed its way back into conversation on the nights he couldn’t sleep.

Never.

My finger hovered over the replay button. The screen glowed blue in the darkness of his study room, where he had left me, casting shadows across the walls that seemed to breathe with my mounting frustration.

The moment came again. Étienne’s body moving with inhuman speed. His hands plunged into the bathwater after slamming that bathroom door fully open. The way he’d cradled Margaux’s limp form against his chest like she was something precious instead of the weapon and a slave he’d claimed to want her as.

My jaw clenched.

I’d stood there frozen in the doorway. Watching him breathe life back into her lungs with a desperation that made my stomach turn even now. And then he’d turned on me. The words had come out sharp and cutting, ripping through the air between us.

"Séverine, go!"

The roar still echoed in my ears. I’d seen rage from him before. I’d weathered his darker moods and learned to navigate the shadows that lived behind his eyes. But this had been different. This had been primal and raw. The kind of fury that came from fear so absolute it consumed everything else.

He’d been terrified she would die. I was a woman too. So I knew what that meant. The weight of it sat with me.

My hands curled into fists against my thighs. The laptop sat balanced on my knees, the screen casting harsh light across my face.

He was supposed to hate her. That was the entire point of this marriage. Revenge wrapped in legal binding. Proximity to the Beaumont pack so he could finally get what he’d been searching for since the day he’d been taken into this territory by Alpha Dorian to play his dead son.

That had donned many names. Justice... Truth... Whatever he wanted to call the obsession that drove him.

But the man on this screen didn’t look like someone enacting revenge. He looked like someone watching his world end in real time.

My finger pressed play again.

Étienne sprinted down. His bare feet hit marble with enough force that I could almost hear the impacts through the silent recording. Then he hit the bathroom door with his hands and with a force that bordered on violent.

"How?" The word escaped before I could stop it. "How could you even tell that quickly she was in danger?"

The question hung in the empty room. Unanswered because the only person who could provide one had long gone to talk to the girl he was supposed to hate with a burning passion minutes ago.

A soft meow broke through my spiraling thoughts.

I looked down. A black cat sat near my feet, its fur so dark it seemed to absorb the light around it. Blue eyes stared up at me with an intelligence that always made my skin prickle despite years of familiarity.

The cat’s form rippled. Shadows gathered and shifted until a man stood where the animal had been. Black hair fell across his forehead in waves that matched the texture of the fur he’d worn seconds before. Those same blue eyes watched me with patient expectation.

"Come here."

He moved forward without hesitation. His steps made no sound against the floor. When he reached my side, I angled the laptop toward him and replayed the section where the camera shifted.

"Your unseen hands seem to grow even more pathetic as time passes."

His expression didn’t change. No shame flickered across his features. No defensive posturing either.

He expected me to dogpile on him. He did know me best so why did that surprise me.

"That keen-eyed Beta bastard noticed your tricks." I kept my voice level despite the anger simmering beneath my ribs. "Laurent caught it within minutes of reviewing the footage."

"The manipulation was not supposed to be clean." His tone stayed matter-of-fact. Clinical in a way that grated against my nerves. "It was just supposed to be efficient enough to block sight of the bathroom while I worked."

He gestured toward the screen where the camera angle had shifted just enough to obscure the doorway.

"She was going to die. Blame would have been pushed on rogues. That one Omega who is close to clocking your existence takes the fall for enabling their entry." He paused. "But then your beloved intervened before I could finish. And now..."

"And what?"

The familiar’s jaw tightened. A tell I’d learned to recognize over the years we’d been bound together.

"I assure you that you are not going to like this, Mistress."

My hands gripped the edge of the laptop hard enough that the metal creaked under the pressure.

"The bitch is somehow alive." I forced the words out through clenched teeth. "And it is becoming increasingly clear to me now that Étienne is not as cookie cut clean about the affairs of his heart like he thought."

The familiar tilted his head and studied me with those unsettling blue eyes that saw too much.

"Is that not why you instructed me to take her out?" His voice carried no judgment. Just observation delivered with the bluntness that came from centuries of existence. "You were never okay with him bringing or marrying his past fling for revenge and proximity to Beaumont. You just never like to show your hands. Like the witch that runs in your blood."

Heat rushed up the back of my neck. My fingers twitched with the urge to strike him. To remind him exactly who held the leash in this relationship.

"I could send you back to Gehena if you will not be a useful familiar."

He sighed. The sound carried weight that suggested he’d heard similar threats before.