Claimed by the scarred Alpha

MARGAUX

"Get the fuck out of here," Chris said.

His fist swung toward Laurent before either of us had time to process the shift, the movement carrying the wild, untrained momentum of someone fighting on emotion rather than skill.

Laurent moved like he had been waiting for exactly this.

He threw the tablet to the bed and stepped sideways out of the punch’s path with barely a foot of clearance, the kind of practiced economy that came from someone who had thrown and dodged a thousand punches before this one ever reached him, and his counter caught Chris across the ribs with a sound that made my stomach turn. The blunt collision of bone and muscle was sharp, final, and absolute.

Chris staggered back, one hand flying to his side, but he recovered fast and swung again. Just as wild this time. No technique behind it, just raw fury looking for somewhere to land.

Laurent ducked under it easily.

"Stop!" I shouted.

Neither of them stopped.

Laurent drove an elbow up into Chris’s sternum, and Chris folded forward with a sharp exhale, the air leaving him in one violent rush. He caught himself before he hit the floor and came up swinging again, low this time, aimed at Laurent’s gut, and Laurent simply stepped back out of range and let the momentum carry Chris past him into empty air.

"You do not actually want to keep doing this," Laurent said, his voice irritatingly calm given the circumstances. "I would suggest reconsidering."

"Fuck you!"

Chris came at him a third time.

This time, Laurent did not dodge.

He absorbed the punch on his forearm, redirected the force with a twist of his hips, and used Chris’s own forward momentum against him, sweeping one leg beneath him with brutal precision. Chris hit the floor hard, the impact knocking a grunt out of him, and before he could push himself back up, Laurent was already there, one knee pressed into his back, one hand twisting his arm at an angle that made Chris cry out.

"Stay down," Laurent said.

Chris did not listen.

He bucked against the hold, throwing his weight sideways, and for a moment, I thought he might actually break free, given how desperately he was fighting. Laurent adjusted his grip and applied pressure that made the desperate struggling stop almost instantly, Chris’s whole body going rigid against the floor.

"You are under arrest," Laurent said, breathing only slightly harder than normal, his voice otherwise perfectly level despite the chaos that had just unfolded across half the room. A vase had gone over at some point. I had not even noticed it happen. "For assaulting a Valcourt Beta and laying hands on Valcourt’s Luna without consent."

"She is not your—"

"She is." Laurent applied more pressure, and Chris hissed sharply through his teeth, his face pressed sideways against the stone floor now instead of the wall. "And you have violated two separate offenses that carry real consequences in this territory, regardless of what pack you came from and your relationship with Luna Margaux."

"Laurent." I stepped forward, my hands raised slightly. "Wait."

He glanced at me without releasing his hold, his expression edged with the wary vigilance of someone who had just fended off an attack and could not yet trust that the threat was truly gone. "Margaux, he attacked me. He had his hands on you before that even happened."

"I know what I saw." I kept my voice steady, even though my hands were not entirely steady themselves, adrenaline still working its way through my system from the speed and brutality of what had just played out in front of me. "But something is wrong with him, Laurent. This is not Chris. I have known him for years. I have never once seen him behave like this, not even close."

Chris’s chest heaved against the floor, his cheek still pinned at an uncomfortable angle, but his eyes had found mine and held there with something pleading buried beneath the obvious pain.

"When he was talking to me," I continued, "before you came in, I saw something. On his throat. A mark, glowing red, almost like a chain wrapping around his neck. It appeared every single time he tried to say something specific, something he clearly wanted to tell me, and then it would vanish completely once he stopped trying." I held Laurent’s gaze steadily. "I do not think this is him acting freely. I think someone did something to him."

Laurent’s expression shifted. "The magic user."

I nodded.

He kept his knee pressed to Chris’s back, but a subtle shift in his posture signaled the fury fading, replaced by a colder, more deliberate calculation.

"That is partly why I am here," he said.

"What do you mean?"

He kept one hand firm on Chris’s restrained arm and, with the other, pointed at the tablet. I got his message, went to retrieve it, and handed it over to him. He tapped a few things, and he held it up so I could see the screen, angling it carefully while still keeping Chris pinned beneath his knee.

"The witch has been identified," he said. "Or rather, named."

"Named as who?"

"Prim."

I stared at him. "Prim? The Omega who was put in charge of looking after me?" My mind scrambled to reconcile the gentle, soft-spoken girl who had brought me a change of dress and a kind smile with whatever monstrous thing had supposedly attacked Séverine just hours ago and me several times over. "She seemed genuinely kind, Laurent. She never gave me a single reason to distrust her, not once."

"I want you to help me figure that out," Laurent said. "Because I think the same too."

He paused, glancing briefly down at Chris, who had gone quiet beneath him now, his breathing ragged but his struggling finally, fully stilled.

"Théodore believes Prim is guilty," Laurent continued, lowering his voice slightly. "He is in a state right now. Rage, grief, panic over Séverine, all of it tangled together into something he cannot think clearly through. And I understand that. I do not blame him for it. But it feels convenient to me. Too clean. An Omega with access and opportunity, caught on camera doing exactly what the footage needed her to do." He met my eyes directly, his expression deadly serious. "I want you to use your sight. Look at this properly before the sentinels hunt her down and he executes someone based on footage that might not be telling the whole truth."

I looked at Chris one more time.

The mark had not reappeared, but the hollow look in his eyes remained fixed on me, and I understood, with a kind of dawning unease that settled cold in my chest, that whatever was happening in this estate ran deeper and more deliberately than any of us had yet managed to account for.

"Okay," I said. "Show me the footage."