Claimed by the scarred Alpha

SÉVERINE

I walked away lighter than I deserved, a strange, illicit relief blooming where dread should have lived.

That was the truth of it. I had left the corridor with Étienne’s name still suspended between us, and instead of the familiar ache of watching him choose her in a hundred silent ways, something new had settled in my chest—something startlingly close to relief.

The infirmary had been chaos, and I would not pretend otherwise. My plan was frayed at the edges, hastily stitched together, and the result had veered off course. But even flawed plans could take root. The seed was sown. Tonight would see it bloom.

I moved through the corridor at a deliberate pace, refusing to rush, letting my mind slice through the tangle of feeling and strategy as I always did. Étienne had nearly kissed her. I had caught it before I entered—the tilt of his body, the way his focus narrowed until nothing else existed. Yes. I had seen it.

At first, something sharp and molten had surged up my throat at the sight.

There had been an urge to just let it go and kill the girl right there and then.

But then I forced myself into stillness and thought.

It did not matter. None of it mattered, not with what was coming tonight. Whatever fragile, tangled thing tugged at him through that bond, whatever flicker of weakness I had witnessed, it would all dissolve once she was gone. I just had to get hurt badly, and Étienne just had to get hold of those files. Once, he stood afresh before the truth of his parents with raw eyes and a grief desperate to be unleashed, in any direction I chose.

He would hate again—purely, without shadows or doubt.

The girl was already scheming too. Leaving the infirmary to give us space, followed by her rambling about some fucking warlock.

I pushed open the door to my room.

My familiar stood in the center of it, in his human form, which he used only when he had something to say that required the full weight of a face. He was pacing. Two short steps in one direction, then back, then again. His blue eyes snapped to mine the moment I entered.

"What has got you hot and bothered?"

He stopped and turned to face me fully.

"She saw me."

I stared at him. "Who saw you?"

"The girl." He said it with a stillness that made the words land heavier than they should have. "Margaux."

The door closed behind me, and I stood there for a second, replaying the corridor. Her voice. Her pointing at nothing. Her certainty.

"How would that be possible?" I heard my own voice come out flat, stripped of everything except the question. "She is not a witch. You attacked her twice. She never saw you before."

"I know." He looked genuinely unsettled, which was not a thing I saw from him often. "Which is why I am standing here and fucking surprised."

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

"Why were you even near her?"

"I was concealed." His jaw tightened. "Completely. The way I always am."

I moved further into the room and let the silence work for a moment while I thought it through. If she were a hybrid like me, we would have known immediately. Right? The first attack would not have gone the way it did if that were the case... Right? We would have been looking at a full magical conflict, not an unconscious girl in a bathtub needing saving.

"Is she a hybrid?" I did not even think about it when it left my mouth. He was the old and knowledgeable one. He would know more than I.

"Then we would not be having this conversation." He said it simply. "The first time we came for her, it would have been a war. She does not smell like a witch, nor does she have a familiar."

"Then what? What is she?"

He was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that meant he was choosing words carefully.

"Her eyes," he said. "When she looked at me. There was a sheen over them. A particular quality that was odd. It was not that way before. Like when I was fucking choking her in the bathtub." He paused. "I think she now has some sight."

The word settled in the room between us.

"Some sight," I repeated.

"She is not magic the way you are magic. But only something with a connection to the unseen can feel the unseen." He met my eyes steadily. "She is something. I do not know what yet. But she is not a fluke. She touched me even while I was cloaked."

That last sentence landed differently from the rest.

"She touched you?"

"Yes. She fucking touched my arm and even left scratches." His expression shifted into something that was not quite discomfort but lived in that general direction. "This is all new. I have not been touched in this form by a mortal in a very long time."

I pressed my fingers together and thought.

I slowly remembered. She had mentioned it. That she had scratched him. She had his DNA, or whatever passed for DNA on a creature like him, under her nail. She had told Étienne about it. She was going to have it scraped and examined, and she believed it meant something, and the terrifying part was that she might be right.

"We have to be careful," I said, mostly to myself.

"Yes." He did not soften it. "Extremely."

I crossed to the window and gazed out over the estate, where afternoon shadows stretched long across the garden paths winding toward the heart of forget-me-nots. I pictured her in the corridor, alone, seeing what should have been hidden, and instead of fleeing or breaking, reaching for it.

She was far more dangerous than I had ever credited her, and I loathed that realization.

"The Omega," I said. "The one we are using tonight. Do you think there would be a problem now? The girl happens to be serving that Margaux, too. Should we hold off on the plan?"

"No. I believe the girl is now more useful than ever." He moved to stand beside me. "Think about it. We brand her as the witch, and after she is taken care of, I disappear. If anyone has doubts about her guilt, particularly that Beta who seems determined to question everything, the girl’s newfound sight actually works in our favor."

I turned to look at him. I still did not quite get what he was getting at.

"She saw something real," he continued. "She will say so."

"I am still lost."

"Well, Mistress... There was a camera where the girl noticed me. If she has the sight, I would be seen in it. Though no one else will see what she sees."

"But she will just look crazy," I argued.

"Not when the feed from the first attack is shown to her, and she can accurately point at me and what I was doing."

My heart started to skip again. Were we cooked? What the hell!

"People will believe her then. Then we can use her to spin the story as we need, and that will be by giving them a guilty Omega to be the face of the crimes." He tilted his head slightly. "Her credibility becomes our cover."

It was elegant. More elegant than I had planned.

"But that would mean that the attack on the Omega needs to happen on camera," he added.

"Why?"

"Keep up, Séverine. Because the girl’s sight is our ace card. While Laurent will continue to be the thorn by our side. If he senses something about the attack that he believes should be questioned, we need footage that tells the story first. Footage is harder to argue with than thought." He said it practically. "Let the camera be the dominant narrative. Her sight becomes the stamp, too."

I thought about Laurent. His particular brand of thoroughness, his habit of pulling at threads other people left alone. Then I thought about Étienne, and the files, and everything that was going to happen once they were in his hands.

"Still... after tonight," I said, "we will most likely walk on eggshells around her."

"Yes." He agreed without hesitation. "Until she is taken care of. Which I am sure the files will help us out with."

I thought the same. But he had a tendency to blindly agree with me sometimes when he knew I would not budge, and that was what I wanted to hear.

"And you think the files will be enough." I turned back to the window. "To kill whatever the bond has started doing to him."

"The files and the trial of brutality I leave behind tonight." His voice was steady and certain in the way it got when he had already run the calculation and found the outcome. "He will have the truth about his parents. And he will find you broken. Whatever the bond has been whispering to him, the sight of you like that will drown it out. New grief and new guilt are very loud." He paused. "A rejection will just have to follow. Given how you have now played your cards."

The word rejection sent an odd warmth blooming in my chest.

"Good," I said.

Then a thought snagged.

She had scratched him. She had taken something from him.

"Wait." I looked at him. "If she has your DNA, or whatever it is you leave behind. Can she find anything from it?"

He was quiet for long enough that the quiet became its own answer.

"Demons," he said at last, "have not been studied enough."

I stared at him.

He looked back at me with those blue eyes that always knew more than they said, and he offered me nothing else.

I turned back to the window.

The garden shadows grew longer, darkening at the edges. Evening crept in, bearing everything I had set in motion.