Claimed by the scarred Alpha

CÉLINE

My father’s good days and bad days had long since abandoned any pattern, so I always came to his door braced for anything, quietly wishing for something in between.

I knocked twice and waited.

"Come."

The room carried the sharp tang of medicine and the heavy stillness of air left untouched since dawn. He was dressed, which counted for progress. Seated by his favored window, his eyes looked clearer than they had at sunrise, signaling one of those in-between states: the fog had thinned enough for coherence, but not enough for trust.

I kissed his cheek and straightened.

"Dinner is ready," I said. "I thought you might want to come down tonight."

He looked at me for a moment and then looked past me at the door, as if expecting someone to follow me through it.

"I thought I told Theodore to come and see me." His brow furrowed. "I sent word through you. Did he not receive it?"

"You are forgetting again, Father." I kept my voice gentle. Patient. The way you spoke to someone you needed to believe you were on their side. "Theodore could not come."

"Why not?"

I hesitated for exactly the right length of time.

"He had to spend time with his new wife." I paused again, then added, almost as an afterthought: "Sorry. I meant he had to save her. Priorities, you know."

My father’s gaze sharpened. Even now, with so much of him hollowed out by illness, his instinct for hierarchy and threat remained untouched. It was the oldest part of him, and the last to fade.

"Save her?" He turned toward me more fully. "From what?"

"Oh, it is nothing to worry about." I moved to help him to his feet, one hand at his elbow, guiding him toward the door. "There was some trouble. An attack on the estate grounds. Theodore handled it."

"What kind of attack?"

"The magical kind, apparently." I opened the door and steered us gently into the corridor. "A sentinel was killed. She was also nearly drowned in his own quarters." I let that settle before I continued. "He has been rather occupied with her situation since yesterday."

A low sound rumbled in my father’s throat. We moved down the corridor at a measured pace, his grip steady on my arm, each step deliberate but determined.

"He should not be distracted by a woman’s problems." His jaw worked. "He has a pack to run. He has responsibilities that existed long before that girl arrived."

"I know." I kept it simple, offering nothing more. Anything extra would have been too obvious, and my father, even now, could sense when he was being steered. The secret was to let him find his own way and believe it was his own discovery.

We reached the top of the staircase and started down.

"He has changed," my father said. It was not a question.

"People change," I offered, neutral as still water.

"He did not use to be like this." He gripped the banister with his free hand. "Before this marriage, he was focused. Everything had a purpose. He was building something. For this pack. For me."

"He is still building," I said. "He just has other considerations now."

My father stopped on the landing.

I stopped with him.

"What other considerations?" His voice dropped to a hush, which with him was always a warning. Silence meant he was gathering his thoughts, and what he assembled in those moments was rarely gentle.

"She was attacked twice," I said, keeping my voice light and informational, as though I were simply filling him in on administrative matters. "He has been personally involved in investigating both incidents. He saved her the second time himself." I paused. "Threw himself through a window, actually from a third floor. You had to be there."

The silence on the landing pressed in, thick and textured.

"He threw himself through a window," my father repeated.

"He heard she was in danger." I resumed walking, and he followed, because stopping felt too pointed. "He moved quickly."

"For a Beaumont girl. Did he not hate those bastards as much as I did?"

"She is his wife now, Father," I said, making sure to say it in the tone of someone offering a perfectly reasonable explanation, even though I knew perfectly well it explained nothing to the person hearing it.

My father finished the stairs in silence. I watched thoughts flicker across his face like weather sweeping over open fields, swift and gathering force.

"Your grandfather would be ashamed," he said at the bottom.

"I think he would have done the same," I said carefully, "if he loved someone."

The word love landed between us like a stone in a pond, and I saw my father’s face react just as I expected: eyes tightening, chin retreating, the reflexive disgust of a man who had always treated love as a weakness reserved for others.

"Love." He said it the way he said things he found contemptible.

"I am only speculating," I said. "I do not know what he feels."

"I know what he feels." He pushed through the dining room door ahead of me. "I can see it. I have always been able to see these things, and what I see is a boy letting a woman rewire him." He moved to his chair at the head of the table and gripped the back of it. "A Beaumont woman. Of all the women available to him. A girl from the pack that—"

He stopped himself.

I sat down on the right side of him and said nothing. Saying nothing was frequently the most productive contribution I could make to his trains of thought.

"She has been here less than a week," he said.

"Yes."

"And he is already throwing himself through windows."

"He did land badly," I offered. "His ankle was hurt."

My father looked at me.

"His ankle," he repeated, with a flatness that suggested he was not sure whether to be furious or incredulous and had settled on both simultaneously.

"He was limping when I last saw him," I said. "But I am sure he is managing it. Now that the goddess gave him a second chance... he would not waste it or leave himself to waste."

"He is managing it." My father lowered himself into his chair with the deliberate care of someone whose body required negotiation. "While running a pack. While dealing with magical infiltrators. While nursing an injured leg, he received by jumping from the third floor of his own estate for a girl who has been here less than seven days."

I unfolded my napkin and placed it in my lap.

"I am sure he has his reasons," I said.

"Love is not a reason." He picked up his glass. "Love is a liability. It is the oldest vulnerability in the world, and every enemy we have ever had has understood that better than we have." His eyes moved to the empty seat where Étienne usually sat. "I did not raise him to be vulnerable."

I studied my father across the table and considered, with deliberate care, the meaning of the word raise.

"No," I agreed. "You did not."