Claimed by the scarred Alpha

MARGAUX

The mushrooms had staged a complete takeover, and my surrender was plain for both of us to see.

Étienne regarded the cutting board with the restraint of someone containing a brewing tempest, then silently set aside his task and crossed the kitchen in a few decisive strides.

"Move," he said.

"I am doing it."

"You are creating abstract art." He stepped in behind me, his hands enveloping mine on the knife handle before I even realized he was that close. "Like this."

His fingers adjusted my grip, guiding my hand with a precision that was as essential as it was distracting. The warmth of his chest pressed against my back. He steered the knife through the mushroom in a fluid, expert arc, creating flawless slices that left me equal parts awed and embarrassed.

"Oh," I said.

"Yes."

"That is significantly easier."

"Most things are when you do them right." He kept his hand over mine as we tackled the next mushroom, and I fixed my attention on the cutting board, determined to ignore the sensation of his breath brushing the back of my neck.

"You can let go," I said. "I understand now."

"Do you?"

"I am a fast learner."

He let go and stepped back, and I immediately turned the next mushroom into three wildly misshapen pieces.

Behind me, he made a noise that was not quite a laugh, but unmistakably its cousin.

"Give me that," he said, and took the knife from my hand.

"I was improving."

"You were not." This time, he moved beside me instead of behind, which was somehow worse, because now I could watch his face, most of it anyway, as he worked. He had the focused efficiency of someone who learned to cook out of necessity, not joy, and there was a difference in how he moved here compared to everywhere else. Less armor. Less calculation.

After that, we slipped into a rhythm: he took charge of the tricky parts, nudging me toward tasks I could actually handle, which were fewer than I cared to admit. He assigned me to arrange prosciutto on cling film in a meticulous pattern, and when I inevitably messed it up, he leaned over to fix it without a word, his arm brushing mine. I stared up at the ceiling, trying to regain my composure.

By the time the tenderloin was wrapped and resting, we had found a pace that felt nearly effortless, our conversation drifting in and out of the work as naturally as breath itself.

"This reminds me of old—" I stopped.

The word hung in the kitchen.

I looked at Étienne.

He looked back at me with an expression that was careful but not closed.

"You can say it," he said quietly. "Old times."

I let the breath out. "Old times," I said. "We used to sneak into your mother’s kitchen when everyone was asleep. Do you remember? You always knew where she kept the good chocolate."

Something moved through his face. Brief and then managed, but I saw it.

"Third shelf," he said. "Behind the dried herbs where she thought no one would look."

A smile slipped out before I could stop it, and I redirected my focus to the counter.

"I saw something at dinner," I said, after a moment.

"And what could that be?"

"Threads," I answered, "On Céline."

He went still beside me.

"She had several." I kept my voice even. "One connected to your... to Alpha Dorian. One to Laurent. One to you. They were all black." I paused. "Has black ever meant something good, in your understanding? Any context where it is not a warning?"

He thought about it genuinely. "If those threads connect her to all three of us, I find it difficult to believe they mean something purely negative. She is connected to people she cares about, even if the relationships are complicated."

"I don’t know," I said honestly. "This one I feel certain about. It cannot be good."

He didn’t respond to that immediately.

"What other colors have you seen?" he asked. "Aside from black."

"Gold," I said. "I thought I understood what it meant because it was what I saw that Laurent and Theodore shared. But for some reason, Céline and I share it too." I paused. "I don’t know what to make of that."

He seemed to turn that over in his mind. While he did, another color surfaced in my memory.

"There was also purple."

"Purple?" he asked.

I looked at him sideways.

"You and Séverine share purple," I said carefully. "And Chris and I do as well."

He stood motionless at my side.

"What about Séverine?" he said. "What color connects her to you?"

"Black." I set down what I was holding. "Which, as I said, does not feel good to me. She hates me, and I cannot honestly say I blame her for it." I turned to look at him properly. "How did you two even meet? You could not be more different on the surface."

"You do not know Séverine." His voice was measured. "She had a difficult upbringing. A complicated relationship with her father and guilt for what happened to her mother. We are more similar than you would think."

I turned back to the counter. The question sat heavy in my throat until I finally let it go.

"Do you love her?"

A hush fell over the kitchen.

He turned to me slowly, wearing the look he reserved for moments when he was weighing whether to shut me out or let me in.

"You are asking this because," he said.

"Because I want to help you get justice for your parents." I kept my voice steady. "For you. For everything Uncle Lucian did. But once that is done, once you have what you trapped me here for, what happens?" I met his eyes. "I do not want to be something that stands between you and whatever life you are trying to build with her. If there is no place for me here, or in your heart, I need to know that. Not because I am asking you for something. Just because I would rather have the honest answer than the careful one."

"As if," he said.

"Please." The word came out softer than I intended. "Do not do that. Not here, not now. You hate hypocrisy. You have told me that directly. So do not shut me out the way you always do and call it something else. Can we just talk like adults?"