Claimed by the scarred Alpha

CÉLINE

The nightmare clung to me longer than I wanted to admit.

I had spent the morning performing composure for every face that crossed mine, and I had performed it well, but underneath the performance, the image of Theodore’s broken neck and his patient, hungry smile kept surfacing whenever my attention slipped even slightly.

I had decided against feeding my father his pills this morning.

The decision had not come easily. Doing it myself, even quietly, even just once, risked someone seeing me in that role again, the dutiful daughter tending to her ailing father rather than the woman temporarily holding pack authority. I needed distance from that image now, not proximity to it. Still, I wondered, in the colder part of my mind that rarely went quiet, whether enough lucidity might creep back into him without the dosage to make him reconsider what he had handed me last night.

It was a small risk. I had decided it was worth taking.

Then there was Laurent.

I had hoped, when the sentinels assembled to organize the hunt for the witch hiding somewhere in our walls, that the moment would let me establish myself properly. Instead, I had watched, with mounting irritation, as every eye in that room turned toward Laurent the second he opened his mouth. They deferred to him instinctively, the way you deferred to someone you trusted without needing to be told to.

That had infuriated me more than I let show.

No matter. Once this crisis resolved itself, I intended to address Laurent properly. Publicly, if possible. He was an emotional man underneath his composure, and emotional men broke predictably when you brought the right wound back into the light. His devotion to Theodore had always been his most exploitable weakness, and I intended to use it eventually, carefully, at the moment it would do the most damage.

Assassination of any social leader, in the figurative sense that mattered to me, required wearing their crown convincingly afterward. I understood that better than almost anyone in this house.

I decided that the most effective way to announce my authority publicly was to host a dinner. Small, deliberate, the Elder’s Circle present, the kind of gathering that signaled control without requiring me to shout about it.

I crossed to the vase of forget-me-nots sitting on my study desk and pulled one free, turning it absently between my fingers before tearing the petals apart one by one, my mind already drafting the guest list.

A knock sounded at the door.

"Luna Céline." The sentinel’s voice came through muffled. "Luna Margaux requests an audience."

I considered the request for a moment, curiosity outweighing irritation.

"Let her in."

The door opened and Margaux stepped through, composed but carrying something underneath her expression that I could not immediately place.

"Good morning, sister-in-law," I said, setting down the ruined flower. "Eventful morning, is it not? To what do I owe this visit? If this is an invitation to tea, I am afraid I have considerably less leisure time than I used to."

"What would you give," she said, "to speak to your brother again?"

I blinked. "What are you talking about?"

"What if your brother, despite being dead, could still speak to you? What would you give for that?"

"I do not concern myself with the dead." My voice came out sharper than I intended.

"Theodore is in this room with us right now."

Goosebumps crawled up my arms before I could stop them, the image from my nightmare surfacing immediately and viciously, his broken neck, his smile spreading like a crack through glass.

"I think you should leave," I said.

"I know how this sounds. Mad. Insensitive, even." She held my gaze steadily, unwavering despite the absurdity of what she was claiming. "But I am not lying to you, Céline. I can see your brother. And it is very clear to me that he has unfinished business with you specifically."

I looked around the room despite myself, scanning corners that held nothing visible, and the realization of how I must look, the Luna entertaining a madwoman’s claims with genuine alarm, settled over me with mortifying clarity.

"Get out," I said, "or I will have that sentinel drag you out by force."

"You will have to forgive me for this, then."

She did not move toward the door.

Instead she turned slightly, addressing the empty air beside her with the calm, deliberate tone of someone speaking to a person rather than nothing at all.

"Theodore," she said. "I want a favor from you. Like before." Her eyes stayed fixed on that same empty space, waiting. "What do you want to say to your sister?"

***

MARGAUX

"What do you want to say to your sister?" I asked.

The answer that came back through my mind was not what I expected. The Theodore I had helped find peace with, the one who had thanked me and dissolved into gold light the night I freed him from Laurent’s grief, had carried warmth even in his anger. This Theodore carried something else entirely.

"I want her dead. Then I will rest."

I actually recoiled. "What the fuck?"

"What... what is happening?" Céline’s voice had gone thin.

Then she turned to the door as if considering calling the sentinel in.

"Why," I said, directing it at him, ignoring her for the moment. "Why would you want that?"

"Because this bitch is the reason I am dead."

I turned to Céline slowly. "He says you killed him."

"That did not happen!" Céline’s face had drained of color entirely, her composure cracking wide open for the first time since I had met her. "I did not touch my brother. I would never—"

Theodore scoffed and turned to me instead.

"If you will not do it," the voice cut through, sharper now, give me dominion. "I will finish what needs finishing myself."

"No," I said, firm, immediate. "I am not giving you that. I asked for your help because I want to help you but this is not help.I want nothing with vengeance."

The vase on Céline’s desk lifted.

Not floated, not drifted. It simply launched, fast and violent, crossing the room in a blur before slamming into the far wall and shattering into a hundred pieces, the sound cracking through the study like a gunshot.

My breath caught.

Theodore had not touched anything in the corridor that night, not once, not the apparition I had helped before. He had been smoke and light and grief given shape, incapable of moving so much as a curtain.

This Theodore however had just thrown a vase across the room.

He looked at his own hand, turning it over slowly, and the surprise on his face mirrored what I felt rising in my own chest. Whatever this version of him was, whatever business kept him tethered here instead of resting, he had not expected that either.

Then he turned toward his sister.

"No!"