Chapter 2: One Daughter
MARGAUX
Chairs scraped marble. That sound? It fucking sliced straight through my nerves like razor wire.
I didn’t stick around for whatever dismissal ritual they had planned. I just shoved back my own chair and left before anyone who still remained could plaster on that awful sympathy face, or worse, congratulate me as if I’d actually won something.
Behind me, the war room doors swung shut, muffling voices already pivoting to logistics, timelines, and goddess knows what strategy.
They were planning my wedding like a business deal. Like a merger where I was the asset—the thing being acquired, not a person.
Dad’s patterns were predictable, like clockwork. After council sessions, he’d retreat to that penthouse office where he could survey Beaumont territory and play god. I rode the elevator solo, watching numbers climb. The polished steel doors reflected back someone I barely recognized. My mascara was smudged to hell. My lipstick was completely gone. The girl who’d been twirling around a gala maybe two hours ago? She was a total stranger to me now.
Ding. The elevator rang, and the doors opened.
The hallway stretched out, lined with abstract art that cost more than most pack members earned in a year. I walked past those million-dollar paintings without really seeing them. My vision had tunneled hard on that heavy oak door waiting at the end.
I didn’t knock when I forced my way in.
His office sprawled like a command center—machinery and information everywhere—pretending to be luxury real estate. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed off the city lights below. Our territory spread in every direction. One wall was covered in market maps, all color-coded by value and vague "strategic importance." Another wall held real-time data feeds tracking our holdings.
Dad stood at his desk, tablet in hand, already reviewing something. The marriage contract’s fine print, probably. Making sure Valcourt hadn’t slipped in clauses that’d cost him something other than his daughter, with how quick he was to sell me out.
He glanced up, and his expression settled into that boardroom neutrality he’d perfected across decades of pack politics.
"Margaux."
"You can’t do this." I managed, steadier than I felt, honestly. I planted my hands on his desk, leaning forward the way I’d watched my big brother do when he meant business. "There has to be another option. Trade agreements. Territory concessions. Literally anything that doesn’t involve selling me like I’m...fucking livestock."
"Language." He warned.
I immediately rolled over. "Sorry."
Then he went on.
"The decision has been made." He set the tablet down with careful precision, aligning it perfectly against the edge of his desk calendar. "Council approved it unanimously, and the Valcourt bastard surprisingly accepted my terms. Both packs are satisfied with the arrangement."
"Both packs..." Something cracked inside my chest. "What about me?"
He looked at me then—really looked—and I saw nothing but a chilling void. No flicker of regret, not a shred of apology, only the cold weight of decision.
"You are one daughter. The pack is everything."
Those words felt like a physical blow, as if I’d been struck in the chest, making me step back. I became acutely aware of the space he occupied in the room and how small I felt standing there. All those years I’d spent trying to prove I mattered—beyond my name, beyond being the youngest, the girl, the one invisible in the true pack hierarchy. Every attempt to anchor myself in meetings. Every question I asked was about border politics. Every effort to grasp the machinery powering our world.
He’d somehow managed to dismiss it all because I was just "one daughter."
"Everything you have touched your entire life was handed to you by this pack." His tone shifted. "Those schools you insisted on. The accounts you never had to think about. The invitations that arrived because of your surname, before anyone even met you. None of that came from you, Margaux. It came from me..."
He stepped out from behind the desk, unhurried, as if this were just another negotiation he intended to close.
"...It came from Beaumont."
Something in my chest tightened, but he didn’t pause long enough for it to matter.
"And Beaumont does not give without expecting something back."
I let out a quiet breath that almost passed for a laugh. "So that’s what this is?" I asked. "You finally found a use for me."
His expression softened just enough to make it worse. Like I was a child who didn’t understand why the medicine had to taste bad.
"This isn’t about use, Margaux." He said it gently, almost kindly, the way you’d explain something obvious to someone too young to grasp it. "You think I want this? You think any father wants to send his daughter away this way?"
I wished I believed it.
"But this is how we keep you safe. How we keep everyone safe. The Valcourt’s heir is a good man, from what I understand. Educated and mostly civilized. You’ll want for nothing. You’ll still be a ruling Luna. You will be honored here, too. Remembered. That’s more than most women could ever hope for."
"Honored like a martyr because I am being sold off?"
His jaw tightened, just a fraction, and the gentleness evaporated. "You will be cared for, provided for, sheltered under one of the most powerful packs in the region. You lose nothing. Do you think I would send you somewhere you’d be harmed? You will still have a future, Margaux. The fact that it also serves the pack—that both things can be true—doesn’t make this cruel."
Ding. The elevator chimed behind me. I turned.
Bastien and Rémy stepped into the office, both looking like they’d rather be literally anywhere else.
I looked at Bastien first. My eldest brother was groomed for leadership his whole life. He was always the reasonable one, the diplomat who could talk through conflicts that otherwise would’ve ended in bloodshed.
"Tell him this is insane," I said.
Bastien’s eyes slid past mine, focusing on something over my shoulder. The view, maybe. The market maps. Anything except my face.
"Bastien."
He shifted weight. His jaw was working like he was chewing words he wouldn’t let out. The silence stretched until I wanted to scream.
I turned to Rémy instead. My younger brother had never cared about propriety or pack politics. He said what he thought, consequences be damned. If anyone would back me up, it’d be him.
"There must be another way," Rémy muttered. His voice barely carried across the room. He pushed off the doorframe, took half a step forward, then... stopped. "I mean, this is pretty medieval even for pack politics."
For three breaths, hope blazed up in my chest, hot and reckless.
Then he shrugged and fell silent.
That was it. A muttered complaint and a shrug, like I’d asked him to commit treason instead of just speak up.
The realization settled over me like ice water. Nobody was going to defend me. Not Bastien with all that diplomatic training. Not Rémy with his rebellious streak. Not council members who’d watched me grow up.
I was... stripped bare. Exposed. Utterly alone.
"I refuse." I lifted my chin and met my father’s eyes. "I won’t do it. You can’t force me to marry someone I’ve never met just because you’re too weak to defend our territory without selling your own daughter."
My father didn’t even blink. He walked back to his desk, pulled up something on his tablet, and turned the screen toward me.
"If you reject the marriage alliance, Valcourt has made their alternative terms very clear. They will breach our borders at dawn. The border villages fall first."
I stared at the screen. Maps showed small communities scattered along the edge of our territory. Clusters of middle-class homes and businesses had existed there for generations. I recognized some names. Bellerose. Sommet Gris. Vallée Claire.
Omega and Sentinel settlements.
Places where pack members without high rank or political power built their lives. Teachers, artisans, farmers, soldiers. Families who’d never set foot in a building like this, had no say in pack politics, and probably didn’t know their lives were being used as bargaining chips right now.
"Thousands live there," my father continued. "Innocent lives. Valcourt won’t show mercy. They’ll burn everything, kill anyone who resists, and enslave the survivors. All because you chose your pride over pack survival."
The tablet screen glowed between us. Demographic data scrolling past. It was like he prepared this. Population numbers. Age distributions. How many children lived in those villages? How many elderly? How many families would be slaughtered if I said no?
"So you’re holding them hostage." My voice shook. "Using their lives to force me into this."
"You’ve spent your whole life trying to prove you’re more than a daughter," he said, quieter now. "That you understand what this pack needs. That you can stand where your brothers stand."
My fingers curled at my sides.
"This is that moment, Margaux."
Something broke inside me then. I hated that it didn’t come with screaming or hysterics or any of those emotional outbursts my father always claimed women were prone to.
Maybe I just didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right. So I turned and walked toward the elevator.
"Margaux." My father’s voice followed me. "The ceremony is in two days. Your mother will talk to you."
I didn’t answer. I stepped into the elevator and jabbed the ground-floor button. The doors slid shut on my father’s office and on my brothers’ guilty silence.
The descent was excruciating. Numbers blurred past as my vision swam with unshed tears and grief seared my throat, burning so badly it hurt to swallow. My chest constricted, as if invisible hands were crushing my ribs one by one.
The elevator chimed when it reached the ground floor.
I walked through the lobby on autopilot, barely seeing anything.
The night air chilled my bones when I pushed through the front doors. I stood there on the steps, trying to remember how to breathe properly.
A Sentinel stood near one of the black cars lined up at the curb. I recognized him from earlier. He was one of the men who’d dragged me out of the gala like a criminal.
"You." My voice came out rough. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Drive me home."
He opened the rear door without a word. I slid into the backseat, and the door closed behind me with a heavy thunk.
The car pulled away from the curb. I pressed my face against the tinted window and watched the Alpha Council Hall disappear behind us.
Then the tears came. They rolled down my cheeks and dripped onto my dress, the same dress I’d worn to a gala where the biggest problem in my life had been finding Shanelle to tell her about the man in the stag mask.
That felt like a lifetime ago.
I cried the whole way home while the Sentinel drove in silence, pretending not to notice the girl falling apart in his backseat.